To the Editors:

The people of Poland need immediate help.

The military-police coup carried out by the Polish generals, with the obvious support of Moscow, threatens to throw the country many years back to a fascist dictatorship of the Stalin type.

For many months the Polish workers, peasants, intelligentsia, and clergy have been defending their civil rights and freedoms, heroically and nonviolently resisting the dark forces of Partocracy, which had driven their country to complete destitution. Today thousands of patriots have been arrested and beaten; in the cities the machine gun and bludgeon reign, the blood of many people has already been spilled.

In Poland not only the fate of its much suffering people is being decided, but, just as in 1939, the fate of all Europe and all humanity is being decided. The Poles, as often in the past, are fighting for their own and for our freedom.

We call on the governments of all countries, members of the UN, especially those which signed the Helsinki Accords, we call on people of good will from all over the world to HELP THE POLES. Undertake all possible diplomatic and social measures. It is not too late! It is still possible with the help of economic and political sanctions, by means of persistent social action, to stop this new attack of totalitarianism, which strengthens the threat of a new military catastrophe.

Vasily Aksenov, Efim Etkind, Pyotr Grigorenko, Zinaïda Grigorenko, Lev Kopelev, Pavel Litvinov, Maya Litvinov, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Carl R. Proffer, Ellendea Proffer, Andrey Synyavsky, Boris Shragin, and others

This Issue

February 4, 1982