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p People have always been aware that an enterprise which engages in dubious transactions constantly attracts all kinds of villains, shady characters, morally bankrupt individuals—men of doubtful reputation in general. So a scrutiny of those who broadcast to Eastern Europe will help us to see how "humane, just and socially usefull" are the broadcasts of the Western radio centres beamed to countries that have chosen the noncapitalist road of development. And how can these broadcasts be "honest, objective and accurate" if behind them stand morally bankrupt, degraded characters who do not themselves believe in the ideals they preach, and propagate them only because it is a well-paid job?

p Apparently the US Administration and official bodies in other NATO countries have reasons for keeping silent about the personal and business qualities of their broadcasters and about their shady past.

p For instance, the Director of the United States Information Agency, Charles Wick, has been a controversial figure almost from the moment he assumed that post. "The furor over his secret taping of telephone conversations and the row over an agency ‘blacklist’ of persons not to be sent abroad as speakers for the United States are only the latest in a string of embarrassing episodes involving Wick, a close California friend of President Reagan’s. Previously, he was censured for using federal funds to finance politically oriented enterprises, 118 criticized for hiring the relatives of top administration officials and forced to reimburse the government for money used to install a security system at his private residence.”^^1^^ This is far from being a complete list of Wick’s misdeeds.

p The USIA Director got into the bad books of eighteen members of the House of Representatives who in late 1983 sent to the White House a letter demanding Wick’s resignation from his position as Agency Director. To let such a man hold the post of USIA Director, the letter emphasized, would be like appointing an arsonist as a fireman. The reason for sending such a letter was Wick’s comments concerning British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. During a tour of San Francisco, Wick declared that the negative stance of official London and, in particular, of Margaret Thatcher, towards the US invasion of Grenada was because the Prime Minister was a woman. It turned out that the blacklisting of USIA employees was accompanied by check-ups on suspicious members of the staff. "Very little was ever committed to paper and officials rarely, if ever, explained to staff the reasons for blacklisting people... In the 135 weeks that the blacklisting continued, 5,000 names were reviewed, and 95 people were barred from the speaking programme.. .^^2^^ The US press noted with irony that the person whose main duty was to build up the prestige of the United States was creating for himself a very dubious reputation. But the Congressmen did not know everything about Wick’s swindles or even the crimes he had committed. In its November 1984 issue the magazine Mother Jones^^3^^ carried an article entitled "What the Senate Didn’t Know About 119 Charles Z. Wick. How the USIA Chief Ran His Nursing Home Business", written by the American journalists Seth Rosenfeld and Mark Schapiro. The article provides numerous facts and photographs about the inhuman conditions in the so-called "Visalia Convalescent Hospital", which is the private property of Charles Wick. Wick and Co. have profited from human suffering, the article points out, and made more than a million dollars between 1970 and 1983. The stormy political scandal which erupted with Wick being at the centre of it all resulted in a special statement from the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which controls USIA activities. The statement expressed deep anxiety about the fact that Wick’s machinations might have an adverse effect on the agency’s ability to carry out its mission. "I think it’s not an overstatement to say morale is at its lowest,"^^4^^ said Middlebury College President Olin Robinson, who resigned from the Advisory Commission in protest over Wick’s secret taping of telephone conversations. The case concerning this taping was investigated by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During the investigation Wick behaved dishonourably—he lied and denied that he had taped telephone conversations without the consent of all the parties concerned.^^5^^. Wick was expecting a severe ruling by the Commission, but since it was controlled by Republicans, the whole business was soft-pedalled. Nevertheless, under those circumstances Wick could not and should not have continued to head the United States Information Agency. President Reagan, however, took him under his wing. "I do not think that Charles Wick is a dishonourable man in any way,"^^6^^ he said. It was the firm belief of politicians and journalists in Washington that Wick should have resigned of his own free will. But he said he was "absolutely not" going to resign, and that the President had said he was not going to fire him.^^7^^

p It is common knowledge in America that the broadcasting centre of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is located in Munich. But the way of life at the radio station itself, the standards of morality adhered to by the administrative staff and the emigre employees remain a behind-the-scenes affair.

p The emigre personnel at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty represent the outcasts of history and human society; they are criminals, traitors, scoundrels, political swindlers and other shady characters. Among them are, for example, Igor Glazenap, who served with the Nazis, an activist in emigre monarchist organizations, and Ivan Laponov who was police chief i-n the occupied village of Gremyachye. Afterwards he 120 joined the SS and was promoted to the rank of officer. In the spring of 1943 Laponov himself shot Soviet patriots in the village of Navlya near Bryansk.

p Radio Liberty employees Tulyaganov, Pylaev, Dudin, Tsvirko, Menchukov, Tenson—all served in the Gestapo in the past; they tortured and hanged Soviet men and women. Sultan Garif participated in the execution of the poet and anti-fascist Musa Jalil. These criminals implement directives from the United States, engage in the "exchange of information and ideas" on the air, and preach about democracy and "socialism with a human face”.

p Let us take a closer look at them:^^8^^

—Shigap Nigmatullovich Nigmatullin, alias Nigmati, alias lozef Aksam-ogly, alias Yusuf-ogly. In 1941, Nigmatullin, a Red Army lieutenant, defected to the Nazis. At first he was sent to the propaganda school of the so-called Eastern Affairs Ministry, which enrolled traitors. After finishing he recruited prisoners, for the same kind of “studies”, in the camp of Wustrau and Ziethenhorst. Later on he became editor of a nationalist newspaper and was awarded the title of SS Obersturmfuhrer.

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p In late 1944 he threw off his Nazi uniform and fled to the western part of Germany; he forged documents for himself and became a free citizen of Turkey under the name of lozefAksam-ogly. He forged ration cards until he was caught and jailed. A former employee of the Nazi Eastern Affairs Ministry who found refuge in the British intelligence service, one Professor Mende, learned about Nigmatullin’s predicament and helped him out. In 1949 Aksam-ogly was put on trial for dealing in counterfeit money; in 1 951 he was finally expelled from MI6 for habitual drunkennes and rowdyism.

p In Munich he was imprisoned again—for rape. At that time Radio Liberty was in urgent need of an editor for its TatarBashkir section. The Americans got Nigmatullin out of jail and placed him behind an editor’s desk...

p —On the very first day that the Nazis occupied Kiev, L. Dudin went to the German Commandant’s office and offered his services. Because of his denunciations, dozens of Soviet citizens were caught, shot or incarcerated in concentration camps. On the recommendation of SS Obersturmfuhrer Gerhard Meissner, Dudin was appointed department head of the newspaper Novoye ukrainskoye slovo ("New Word in the 122 Ukraine"), and later on editor-in-chief of the weekly Posledniye novosti ("Latest News"). He followed his masters when they fled to the West. Now this war criminal is trying to teach Soviet citizens how to live, telling them all kinds of lies which he passes off as the truth.

p —Garanin, whose real name is Sinitsyn, was a village schoolteacher and studied law. In 1942 he surrendered voluntarily to the Germans and became an instructor at the Wustrau camp. With his help, in 1943 the fascists caught and shot dozens of Communists. He tracked down people who listened to radio reports from the Soviet Information Bureau. Afterwards he became procurator in the “army” of the traitor Vlasov, who betrayed the Soviet people and collaborated with the Nazis. He arrested hundreds of people who had been forced to join this “army” or duped into joining it by Nazi propaganda. At his demand a death sentence was pronounced if there was the slightest suspicion of “disloyalty”. Garanin subsequently was picked up by the US secret service and installed at Radio Liberty.

p —0. Krasovsky, editor at the Russian Service of Radio Liberty. At the beginning of the war he surrendered to the fascists and began to collaborate with them. Very soon he was promoted to one of the top posts at a special military school and made a captain. After the war he became an active member of the so-called Alliance of Russian Solidarists, a diehard anti-Soviet organization nourished by the Nazi secret services. Krasovsky was sent by the Alliance to Hungary in 1956 to establish contact with counter-revolutionary elements and conduct subversive activities among Soviet Army personnel there. At the height of US aggression against Vietnam, Krasovsky was sent to South-East Asia, where he prepared radio broadcasts justifying and extolling the US interventionists.

p —V. Tsyganko, who collaborated with the Nazis, is also hiding at Radio Liberty from Soviet justice. After the war the US secret services sent him to Radio Liberty in Munich, where he engaged in recruiting Soviet citizens who came to Western Europe either as tourists or as members of sport and other delegations. During the Olympic Games at Sapporo and in Munich, Tsyganko was included in special groups of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty personnel whose task was to indoctrinate sportsmen from the USSR and other socialist countries with anti-Sovietism.

p —K. Yershov defected to the Nazis at the beginning of the war and was recruited by the German army 123 counterintelligence unit "Abwehr-Group-312". His assignment was to pick, from among the Soviet prisoners of war, commanders, Party members and organizers of the underground. In 1943, as a member of a special detachment, he took an active part in punitive operations against partisans in the Nazi-occupied territories of the Baltic republics. He is currently an editor at the Russian Language Service of Radio Liberty.

p —I. Gordievsky. Before the Second World War his father, a member of the anti-popular organization of Ukrainian nationalists, passed on intelligence information to the German Consulate in Odessa. The Soviet security service put an end to his spying activities on the eve of the war. The son followed in his father’s footsteps. When Odessa was temporarily occupied by the Nazis he defected to them. After the liberation of Odessa he fled to the West and began to work for the US secret services, which placed him in one of the anti-Soviet emigre organizations. Later on he was sent to Radio Liberty under the name of Andrei Kulitsky.

p —During the Second World War B. Bernatovich served in the fascist police force and took part in punitive operations. In 1944-1945 he underwent training at a German intelligence school in Austria; afterwards he worked for the US secret services and completed special courses for radio operators in the Federal Republic of Germany. He now works for Radio Liberty’s broadcast monitoring section.

p —Avtorkhanov-Kunta, alias Alexandrov, alias Professor Temirov, who deserted from the Red Army during the Second World War and published on occupied territory a newspaper with the motto "Allah is above us, Hitler is here with us". Afterwards he joined the Gestapo.

p —V. Yurasov, alias Rudolf, alias Zabinski, was sentenced by a Soviet court to eight years’ imprisonment for a criminal offence. He escaped from prison and changed his name, joined a fascist punitive force, and participated in the execution of Soviet patriots. He has published a book entitled Parallax, in which he calls for nothing more or less than a war against the USSR.

p War criminals or collaborators with the Nazis have also found refuge at Radio Free Europe. Among them are the war criminal Ladislav Niznansky, former commander of the SS Edelweiss unit responsible for the murder of civilians in Slovakia, and editor Imrich Kruzliak, former head of propaganda for the so-called state of Slovakia under the Nazis. They and others like them took part in mass reprisals against 124 civilians during the Second World War. Today, in their capacity as CIA mercenaries, they are trying to split the socialist camp.

p —Asen Ivanov Mandikov is a confidential agent of the CIA. When still a schoolboy in his home town of Pleven, Bulgaria, he was leader of the “legionaries” at grammar school and cooperated with the police. During his stay in Germany in 1943 he collaborated with the Gestapo. He and his wife Milka Ruseva from the town of Yambol (she was an agent of the Bulgarian police) betrayed progressive Bulgarian citizens who were residing in Germany to the Nazis. Through their denunciations the well-known musicians Nedyalka and Vasil Cherniaev were sent to a concentration camp in the spring of 1944.

p —Since his youth Todor Pipev had been an active participant in fascist youth organizations. After the victory of the September 1944 Revolution in Bulgaria the people’s government gave him the opportunity to study and work, but he led an undisciplined life and maintained illegal ties with US embassy staff, who paid him for information. Pipev now sits in front of Radio Free Europe’s microphones and throws dirt at his Motherland.

p Let us now take a look at the new generation of employees at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—people who emigrated to Israel but found themselves in Western Europe and finally at RFE/RL. Here are some of them:

p —M. Geller was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for the misappropriation of state property. After serving his sentence he went abroad, where he met Max Ralis, a US secret agent who found a job for him in Paris. Ralis offered Geller the post of "adviser on Russian problems" at a branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, called "Audience and Opinion Research Department". Since 1969 Geller has been working for US intelligence under the surname of Kruchek.

p —A. Roytman, a former member of the bar in Kiev, from which he was expelled for trying to persuade a witness not to give evidence; he speculated in icons and cigarettes in Schonau (Austria). In the West he married an American woman named Sheron Goller, a member of the Jewish Defence League, who found him a job at Radio Liberty.

p —V. Matusevich was recruited by the CIA during his stay in Norway in 1 968. He has a sex-related mental disorder and is a molester of minors.

p —Natalya Urbanskaya has an intense hatred for the Russians; she is a trouble-maker and blackmailer. At Radio 125 Liberty she has the reputation of being a woman of loose morals. She engages in speculation and pilfers in the Munich shops. At Radio Liberty she collected funds for the building of an Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and pocketed some of the money.

p —Rakhil Samoilovna Fedoseyeva went to Israel with her husband in 1971. She is active in the lobby of Radio Liberty; she gathers afl kind of scandalous material. She is reputed to be an "inveterate scandalizer" and fomenter of conflicts on grounds of nationality.

p —Velichko Peichev emigrated to Italy in 1973 and joined the anti-Bulgarian campaign the so-called "Antonov case". He claims to be a relative of the Antonov family.

p —Gospodin Gospodinov fled to Greece and was detained at a US Army camp, where he was recruited. He was infiltrated several times into Bulgaria as a member of terrorist groups. His wife is a CIA employee and secretary of the professional radio management at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

p —Eduard Oganessian squandered an enormous sum of government money and fled abroad, leaving his wife and three children behind. In France he entered the role of a fighter against the Soviet government and fell into the hands of the US secret services. He was passed through the Ralis bureau and appointed to the Armenian section of Radio Liberty, where he proved to be a careerist and an intriguer. He spreads rumours about the “incompetence”, “stupidity” and “ weaknesses” of Leon Mikirtichian, the head of the Armenian section.

p This atmosphere of intrigue can be felt in all the national sections, where there is a struggle by any dishonourable means for a place in the sun, a struggle in which one strives to demonstrate one’s loyalty to the Americans, to work one’s way higher and higher up the ladder and get more money. Hence Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a scene of constant squabbling and mutual accusations, with appeals being made to the American management. Here is what Der Spiegel, for example, writes in an article entitled "The Russian Spirit":

p “The fact that Radio Liberty, which merged with Radio Free Europe, has for some time been torn by feud is not directly connected with a linguistic babel.

p “The main causes are rooted in the Russian section, whose one hundred employees have turned into a malignant tumour, at any rate not because of a language barrier...

p “The kindling of hatred between nations’, ’an assembly place for Nazis’, ’a refuge for Nazis and fascists’—such 126 attributes and descriptions can be found in the letters and political articles which are distributed more and more often at the radio station and which are becoming longer and longer.

p “A leaflet signed by ’Russian nationalists’ and headed ’Enough!’ puts the blame for these accusations on the ‘woman-chasers’, ‘prostitutes’, ’agents provocateurs’, ’ plagiarists’ and ’KGB agents’, whom in the last few years ’a third wave of emigres has swept onto the shores of Radio Liberty’.

p “To the inactivity and ’dove cooing’ of the radio station’s management, which only ’composes soothing memoranda’, these nationalists ’want to respond with resolute measures’, for ’the time of chit-chat and reassuring peacemaking is over’...

p “After an editorial meeting in the summer of 1975, announcer Victoria Semyonova stated, in a letter to the head of her section, the ’bitter truth’, which consisted of the fact that many Radio Liberty programmes ’lacked character’ and suffered from the ’absence of the Russian spirit’.

p “...A pamphlet, according to which the Jews of the socalled Russian section of Radio Liberty are balanced by only nine non-Jews, openly warned that ’the Jews are penetrating the other sections’.

p “The incomprehensible acquired even sharper contours when, in a report delivered to the sections’ employees in January, the Ukrainian emigre L. Plyushch, who lives in Paris, mentioned secret fascist organizations in Leningrad and Lvov which bear the swastika and accuse Jews all over the world of ’bringing an entropy to civilization’.

p “... Radio Liberty Director Starr confidentially told a reporter from the Internationa/ Herald Tribune that national and racial dissensions in his department had obviously affected the quality of broadcasts. Over the last two years the number of listeners had fallen ‘dramatically’ from 6.2 million to 3.1 million.”^^9^^

p An appeal made by the radio station’s management entitled "To All Radio Liberty Employees", in which the management proposed burying the hatchet, was like the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

p On the very next day a memorandum was distributed at Radio Liberty. It read:

p “We, the undersigned, state that an intolerable situation has been brought about at our radio station by the excessive aggravation of the nationality problem. Two camps have been formed whose adherents have been making public accusations, which in a number of cases have developed into personal insults and insinuations of a political nature.

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p “As to our multinational collective, we are witnessing, unfortunately, the most pitiful, yet the most dangerous, of all possible historical scenarios: a division into two camps, a polarization, a clash, an explosion! In this war of ’all against all’, the course of which after a certain critical point is no longer dictated by the interests of one or the other group (interests which are, moreover, poorly understood), but exclusively by the dynamics of group conflict, there can be no victors, for grief will befall not only the vanquished, but everybody in general...

p (Giovanni Bensi) (S. Mirsky)"^^10^^

p Apparently it is really difficult to manage such a mixed team of emigres. The American journalist Jack Anderson, however, has his own view on the situation at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He managed to find the key to the enigma, when the radio stations "choking in a stream of propaganda have been spending money like a drunken sailor and making incredible blunders, like beaming the wrong programmes to the wrong countries in the wrong language".^^11^^ It turns out that the whole trouble is that the men at the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich have been swimming in beer, wine and hard drink. It seems that these men want to turn Bavaria’s famous Bacchus festival in October into an all- theyear-round affair. Drinking sprees have become the custom for the staff of the radio stations.

p According to research carried out by the American journalist, all the sins are ascribed to the technical and engineering personnel, to the office and other workers, i.e., to the small fry. What would Jack Anderson have written had he known about the even more serious and conspicuous misdeeds committed by hundred per cent Americans who are on the management board of the radio stations, such as Hyman S. Busch, Director of the General Services Department? Although, to be fair, we should start with his predecessor, Henry Berliner, initiator of a custom far more original than swilling beer on Thursdays.

p Henry Berliner had been Director of the General Services Department ever since the foundation of the radio station. A respectable family man and a great lover of dogs, it seemed he would not have harmed a fly. Soon the Germans, when talking amongst themselves, began to call the respectable Henry Berliner "Mr. Ten Per Cent" because he would not conclude any deal for the purchase of cars, furniture, various electrical 128 equipment or refrigerators for the radio centre unless ten per cent of the cost of the goods purchased was put into his personal account. Apart from this, he became a partner in the local building firm which did all the construction work for RFE/RL by investing four per cent of the capital in it. When all these facts became public knowledge the enterprising Berliner had to leave the radio station. He was succeeded by Hyman S. Busch, another full-blooded American. He followed in the footsteps of his predecessor. It is not known as yet what rate of interest Hyman has imposed on his partners; that is his commercial secret. But his business is obviously flourishing, Mr. Busch already has 2.5 million marks accredited to his account at the Bavarian United Bank. This new millionaire went further than his teacher, Henry Berliner, and began to take a large monthly sum even from the lease-holder of the restaurant on the radio centre’s grounds.

p When his contract expired in the spring of 1984 Busch managed to extend it for another year. How much he paid for this is another one of his commercial secrets. It is said at Radio Liberty that he apparently shared bribes with influential men on the management board, individuals such as RFE/RL President James Buckley and Radio Liberty Director George Bailey. Here, for example, is what Horizont magazine of the German Democratic Republic has to say about the Director of Radio Liberty^^12^^:

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p “When the appointment of George Theodore Bailey as Radio Liberty Director became known, many of those who knew him as George Bibel, Georg Thomas, Jack Thomas, Mr. Troimann, or Major Frank—in short, as a US secret agent, were greatly surprised.

p “On the pages of the official bulletin George Bailey looked like a venerable writer and famous journalist.

p “But who in fact was this ‘venerable’ and ‘famous’ man?

p “He was born and raised in the Hungarian community of Chicago. When the war broke out, George sent an application to an Air Force school, but found himself in an intelligence school. In 1943 he was sent to London to attend six-month courses for the study of East European languages, where he mastered Romanian. Subsequently when talking to his agents he would say: ’I am a Hungarian, but I was educated in London.’

p “In 1948 he was sent to work in the American zone of occupation in Germany. First he served at Camp King, a unit of US intelligence in Frankfort on the Main, and in May 1951 he received an appointment in West Berlin. His cover: an operative of Section C-2 at the headquarters of the 759th Military Police Battalion.

p “Also working in Section C-2 were David Kreetchevski and K. G. Junau, alias Julian. This group formed part of the Political Subversion Unit based at Passatstrasse 9, Bogenhausen District, Munich. The unit was headed by Williams Kereck; his deputy was Stuart. The tasks of the unit were political intelligence and organizing uprisings and a guerrilla movement on the territory of the USSR. In carrying out this task, George Bailey tried to persuade Soviet citizens to betray their country and recruited emigres to be sent to the Soviet Union on spying missions.

p “His very first steps as a spy showed that Bailey was incompetent at his job. His carelessness was simply astonishing. In violation of all the rules of secrecy he went tp secret addresses in the same Ford of a sand-grey colour. In the same flats he received the same informants, so that his neighbours even began to exchange greetings with his agents.

p “Through absent-mindedness and carelessness he lost a number of important secret documents, including the directive plan and those detailing the sources of his information, which he had left at a safe house or in an unlocked car.

p “Bailey’s assistants were affected by his own carelessness. For instance, the resident agent Pozdnyakov (Bailey’s 130 confidential agent) kept in his flat at Ottingerstrasse 10, Munich, copies of reports conveyed to US intelligence and lists of the commanding officers in Vlasov’s ’Russian Liberation Army’, and in the basement lay two large suitcases with receipts from 131 agents for sums of money received, with various secret addressed and old intelligence dispatches.

p “By that time Bailey had learnt the ABC of book-keeping by double entry: he began to cover his own expenses by 132 pocketing the money earmarked for his informants. That is, he began to ‘milk’ the CIA as well as his informants.

p “But that was only a beginning. In 1952, when George Bailey became chief of the C-2 Secret Service Unit, his double-entry book-keeping assumed even greater proportions.

p “There were, of course, agents who refused to give false receipts, such as Count Landsdorf. Bailey did not stand on ceremony with such men. He sent denunciations to Munich, calling them misinformants and Soviet agents. He also had Junau, his rival for the post of chief of C-2, removed. He told headquarters that as regards intelligence operations Junau was inefficient and even incapable. This method brought the desired results: Junau was urgently recalled to the United States. Bailey is following the same line today as he fights for survival against Jon S. Lodeesen, his rival for the post of Director of Radio Liberty. He secretly warned the Board for International Broadcasting about Lodeesen’s would-be inefficiency as Director of the Planning and Research Department of Radio Liberty, and complained that he was creating a nervous situation at Radio Liberty.”

p Many are unable to tolerate such an atmosphere at the radio station and leave, as did Ambartsum Khlgatyan. We cite an extract from his open letter addressed to a fellow employee of the Armenian section of Radio Liberty, Mf. Leonard Fox. It was published in the United States in the newspaper Russky go/os ("Russian Voice"), February 23, 1984:

p “I have decided to stop working for Radio Liberty as a freelance contributor....

p “Five years of living in the United States have gradually changed my ideas about the West and my opinion about its so-called ‘values’...

p “I shall single out what to me are the more important aspects:

p “1. Acquaintance with the facts from within has convinced me that the Soviet authorities were right in affirming that the so-called ’human rights movement’ in the USSR (we of the Armenian group were proud of participating in it), far from being the fruit of social development or the requirement of our country (as we were ignorant and naive enough to believe), was planned in a centre in the West of which you and I are aware and brought into being by outside efforts for purposes hostile to the USSR.

p “2. Our country is making a fresh start and is experiencing 133 an unprecedented upsurge of spirit and energy. I am happy at my own transformation and immensely glad that I can combine devoted love for my country with the deepest trust and pride in the Soviet leadership.

p “3. My assessment of the present US Administration is the direct opposite and absolutely negative...

p “Probably never in the past has the United States had a more incompetent, reactionary and irresponsibly dangerous government. One is saved from the feeling of fear only by firm belief in the political maturity of the Americans, who will doubtless reject and do away with this catastrophic policy pursued by men who are living in the past.

p “Propaganda of such a policy is simply criminal.

p “4. When portraying Soviet life Radio Liberty uses black paint only, forgetting about the range of expression in the West’s overemphasized pluralism; and it describes in glowing terms the ‘delights’ of the ‘Free’ West. Not a word is said about the exploitation of labour in the West. An even stricter taboo protects the name of Israel and its ‘chivalrous’ behaviour towards its Arab neighbours and towards the fellow citizens of former Palestine.

p “It is not to the Soviet people that Radio Liberty addresses itself, but to a small alien group in the Soviet Union, and it tries to make heroes out of rabble. Such a method has nothing to do with reality, truthfulness or objectivity.

p “The national sections of Radio Liberty are obliged to denounce the international friendship between, and the unity of, the Soviet peoples, and, while brandishing the slogan of national independence and sovereignty (which in fact all Soviet and socialist nations possess), they sow the seeds of national discord....

p “5. While away from my homeland I discovered that my love for it was even stronger, and my heart suffered agonizingly and bled from the immense and irreplaceable loss of my country. There is no, nor can there be, any aim that can justify this tragic sacrifice.

p “On the contrary, truth, honour and dignity are on the side of the classless society of my Motherland, and the champions of free enterprise and pluralism have turned Western society into a jungle, while they themselves wallow in lies, injustice, immorality and dishonour. Looking around me, I find no Western ‘values’ worthy of defence; on the contrary, a great many of them ought to be scrapped.

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p “As a result of this change in my views, I can no longer bring myself to blacken my country: to do so is against mv conscience.

p “As for myself, I have made up my mind to cease participating m activities which, despite advertisement to the contrary do not serve the high demands of humanism, peace, social justice and all-round enrichment of the human personality.

p December 15, 1983
New York 

Ambartsum Agasievich Khlgatyan"^^13^^