Baltimore-i Értesítő, 1978 (14. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1978-07-01 / 7-8. szám

the massacre as the spring of 1940, when the Soviets controlled the Katyn Forest. Yet the allies, having joined the Soviet Union in the war against the Nazis, kept the atrocity hushed up.

After the war, the Kremlin imposed severe restrictions on any mention of the Katyn Forest incident by thé communist press. We have obtained the actual ruling from the Polish Communist Party’s Book of Directives and Recommendations. “Any attempt to blame the Soviet Union for the death of Polish officers'in the Katyn Forest," it decrees, “should not pass the censor."

For scholarly works, the directive permits only such phrases as “shot by the Nazis at Katyn," “died at Katyn" or “perished at Katyn." But it adds sternly: “No statement of this type can be published with a date of death earlier than August 1941," which the Soviets insist was the date of the massacre. This, of course, was safely after the Nazis took over the Katyn Forest.

The brave Andrzej Braun, risking possible imprisonment, spoke out against the censorship at the Polish Writers Congress. His heroism did not go unrecorded; the Warsaw correspondent for the Voice of America, Ron Pemstein, filed an account of Braun’s remarks to Washington.

We have seen Pemstein’s original dispatch. It reports that the poet, as an example of censorship, “cited the murder of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at Katyn Forest in 194Ö.” The dispatch went on to say that his speech drew “wild applause from the writers at the congress and attacks from party officials.”

Pemstein filed his dispatch in Warsaw at 10 a.m. on May 5, 1978. By 10:32 p.m. on the same day, all critical references to the Soviet Union had been excised. The censorship occurred in two stages. First, the words “by the Soviet Union" were removed. Then later the 1940 date was dropped. The final story, which the Voice of America broadcast, stated simply: “Braun cited the murder of Polish officers in World War II.”

By a strange coincidence, the deletions were the same ones that the Soviet censorship code specifies. Thus the broadcast conformed completely with the official Soviet version of the Katyn Forest incident.

This offended 11 Poles who' work for the Voice of America. They drafted a letter of protest to Hans Holzapfel, who heads the Voice’s European division. He responded by convening a meeting of his Polish employes and scolding them..

Our associate Howard Rosenberg contacted Holzapfel to seek his comments. He flatly refused to discuss the circumstances surrounding the broadcast. Later, he changed his mind and explained that the deletions were made by lesser officials at a late hour, when no senior staff members were on duty.

But Bernard Kamenske, chief of the news division, called the distortion of Pemstein’s story an “outrage.” Such “omissions, short quotes, misquotes or inserts are strictly forbidden." The editing of the Katyn Forest reference, he said, was a “total violation.”

The Voice of America director, R. Peter St raus, offered this comment: “ With the benefit of 29-20 hindsight, we would have done it differently, and we would not have made those editing changes. It was an error in judgment by the news editor, hardly a federal case.”

J A

THE. NEW YORK TIMES,

A Fable: May Day In Moscow

Once upon -a lime—this was away back in 1978—the Georgians of the Soviet Union and the Georgians of the United States had a big party, and in the happy confusion, one of the American Georgians—Jody Powell by name —suggested that President Leonid Brezhnev hold an Atnerican-style press conference on May Day in the Kremlin.

Question: How are you feeling these days? We heard you’d been sick.

Brezhnev: Vicious propaganda. Never felt better in my life.

Q: President Carter is having trouble with His press and Congress, How are you getting on with yours?

A: Just fine. Under our democratic system, our birds are not like your Byrds. They know their place.

Q: Tne May Bay parade in Red Square this year was a little different -—all flags and banners and smiles, no new big missiles or even any Backfire bombers. Why the change?

A: As is well known, the Soviet Union is for peace, détente, coexistence, the political independence and territorial integrity of all nations, and human rights.

Q: Human Rights?

A: Human Rights are written into the Soviet Constitution, including freedom of the individual, freedom of religion, and all Other freedoms that don’t interfere with the_freedom of the state. We oppose Humán Rights only when misguided citizens try to exercise them.

Q: The Soviet Union seems to be getting into all kinds of trouble these days with the United States, China, Japan, Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa. How do you explain this?

A: These are passing misunderstandings by many well-intentioned or misled people, -who don’t understand our philosophy of Marxist-Leninism.

Q: On the unity of Marxist-Leninism, how are you getting on these days with the Chinese?

A: The new leaders of China have the wrong view of the Communist revolution. We have offered to stop telling lies about them if they promise to stop telling the truth about us, but they refused. They insist on having normal diplomatic relations with Japan, Western Europe, and even the United States in order to modernize their 900 million people. This is an obvious provocation and threat to the security of the Soviet Union.

Q: Comrade Brezhnev, why are you having so much trouble with the Communist Party of Italy and the other nations of Western Europe?

A: Italy is not a nation. It is a jumble of political and theological factions, which cannot hold together without the support of the Communist Party. As Lenin said the revolution

must proceed by stages—first the exposure and destruction .of the capitalist parties, then control of the cities, then participation in a Popular Front and finally Communist emancipation and control. We must be patient.

Q: If the triumph of Communism is inevitable, how do you explain the defeat oft he Communist-Socialist coalition in the recent French elections?

A: They were divided. This is a major problem of the stupidity of intelligent people. They keep thinking selfishly in personal and national terms, and putting the standard of living ahead of world revolution.

Q: Speaking of the standard of living, may we turn to domestic Soviet questions?

A: If you must.

Q: Since the Soviet political system is so much better than all those other systems, why don’t Russians eat better, and live in decent houses?

A: You have obviously been listening to the lies of the Voice of America and the BBC. The standard of living is higher now in this country than ever.

<2: Then why must food and technology be imported from the Americans, the Germans, and the Japanese?

A: We believe here in the Soviet Union in international cooperation. We tearn from other peoples. The Americans have their Monroe Doctrine to keep us out of their sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere (though we fooled them in Cuba). We have our Brezhnev Doctrine that keeps them out of Eastern Europe. They don’t know how to control their economies or foreign policy. They have surpluses, we have shortages. They have good weather, we have bad weather. So we try to cooperate. We relieve them of their surpluses, provided, of course, that they make available the necessary credits.

Q: Comrade, could you explain your relations with President Carter?

A: I don’t think so. His Georgians are even more difficult than our Georgians. Carter is always talking about what he thinks instead of what I think, and when I ask him what he thinks, he always has to consult the House, in Washington, which disagrees with the Senate, or with that anti-Soviet Pole, Brzezinski, who disagrees with Secretary of State Vance. How can you do business with these people or without them?

Q: How do you like these open press conferences, Comrade?

A: I don’t like them, but at least they make me understand what Carter is up against. Poor man! Questions are more dangerous than bullets, and he hasn't understood the point.

Moral of the fable: Jody Powell had the right idea: AI ways make the other guy answer the questions.

A young man's wife was ill, so he took her to a doctor. After an examination, the young man anxiously asked. "Does she have Russian flu?" “No,” replied the physician, “it's definitely Egyptian. In seven months I predict she'll be a mummy."