An Outline of the Soviet System

Abstract

In August 1986 a conservative Soviet newspaper published a vicious attack on Soviet religious believers, on religious organisations in Britain and on named British students who had attended a certain Soviet university.² The author made no secret of using material supplied by the Soviet Committee of State Security (KGB); the article’s purpose seemed to be to intimidate people in the groups mentioned. A fortnight later the Moscow correspondent of an American magazine was arrested by the KGB and charged with espionage.³ Some western journalists doubtless have been spies, but there seemed little doubt in this case that it was a piece of simple hostage-taking — to gain a pawn to swap against a serious spy arrested in New York, or perhaps to jeopardise the planned summit between the US President and the Soviet leader, M. S. Gorbachev, who had been in office eighteen months.

‘Imagine an autonomous Gulag in which the commandant resolves to carry out radical reforms, with the aim of making the camp system, well, if not exactly civilised, then at least capable of dealings with civilised society.’

(Yu. Shreider)¹