Volume 22, Number 11 · June 26, 1975

Escapes From Freedom

By Boris Shragin, Translated by Mirra Ginsburg
From Under the Rubble
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, by Mikhail Agursky, by A.B., by Evgeny Barabanov, by Vadim Borisov, by F. Korsakov, by Igor Shafarevich, translated by A. M. Brock, by Milada Haigh, by Marita Sapiets, by Hilary Sternberg, by Harry Willetts, under the direction of Michael Scammell

Little, Brown, 308 pp., $8.95

Unlike the West, where people openly discuss problems in their search for solutions, Soviet Russia merely boasts of its achievements and triumphs. Symptoms of economic, social, and moral decline and obvious stagnation are ignored officially, because they cannot be explained away. Everyone must pretend that everything is in good order and proceeding according to the 'Leninist' plan, carefully laid out in advance. Society thus submits itself, will-lessly and thoughtlessly, to arbitrary, destructive forces, like a sick man who pretends he is well for fear of treatment.



Review, 3158 words

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