A Just Decision

K. Batmanov, A Just Decision. January 24, 1980

Original Source: Izvestiia, 24 January 1980.

Academician Sakharov has been deprived of the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and of all government awards and prizewinner titles. This is an extraordinary measure, but it is just.

Who is this Sakharov? Whom does he serve? Sakharov embarked on a path of outright betrayal of the interests of our homeland and of the Soviet people, became a shameless opponent of the socialist system, and wound up in the camp of bellicose anticommunists, in the camp of ardent cold war champions. Those are the forces that he began to serve as he slipped into the quagmire of reaction.

Our enemies-imperialists and anticommunists of every stripe-made a hero of Sakharov because they saw in him a convenient instrument for conducting ideological sabotage against the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist commonwealth.

The struggle of ideas is nothing new. It was not born yesterday, and it will not die tomorrow. While advocating peaceful coexistence and the deepening of the process of detente, Communists know very well that there never has been and cannot be any "ideological coexistence" in relations between states with different social systems. Our adversaries are also well aware of this. But instead of waging a struggle of ideas, they are doing all they can to broaden the front of "psychological warfare" by attempting to turn their mass information media into full-fledged tools of ideological sabotage, especially under cover of the artificially inflated furor in the West over so-called "violations of human rights" in the socialist countries.

To carry out sabotage one needs saboteurs, of course. After World War II, they were recruited from the pool of traitors and collaborators. But the older generation of fascist hangmen and murderers left the scene. New cadres were needed. So now Western recruiters are seeking out weaklings who are attracted by the possibility of gaining a sort of "international reputation" by betraying their homeland. Professional anti-Soviets try to portray such people as "fighters for civil rights" or "victims of human rights violations." Let us say outright that the catch of renegades within our country was very skimpy indeed. It could not have been otherwise. A few criminals and a few vain half-educated people trying to attract attention to themselves in this way, since nothing else had worked. They had their say over the various anti-Soviet "voices" and then left. Few people want to listen to such pitiful renegades.

But then a bigger fish landed in the anticommunists' nets-Academician Sakharov. He was caught in the iron grip of those whose job it is to engage in sabotage against our country, including ideological sabotage: diplomats and journalists, from both Western Europe and overseas, men in civilian clothes, and also men in civilian clothes with a military bearing. In a flash, they realized that by using his name and his words they could concoct a good deal of slander about the USSR, and that Sakharov's regalia and titles could shore up their fabrications about the existence of "dissidents" in our country.

How did the Western recruiters lasso Academician Sakharov? Several years ago Sakharov, an extremely ambitious and conceited person, apparently tiring of theoretical research in the field of physics and feeling that his creative work had reached a point of crisis, decided to try to win fame in the political field, so to speak. He even announced that if his studies in nuclear physics began to interfere with the "political struggle" he would, of course, give preference to "politics." It was then that Sakharov came out with his fantastically nonsensical idea that, to eliminate the threat of thermonuclear war, socialism would have to surrender to imperialism. Nonsense is nonsense, even if it comes from an Academician. That was how we reacted to it. But the West saw an opportunity here. So, feelers were put out to Sakharov-the Academician began to hold intensive, unofficial meetings with Western diplomats, a large part of them Americans, and with journalists, some of whom were interested mainly in Sakharov's previous work, which was directly related to our country's defense. In his talks with them, Sakharov repeatedly blurted our things that every state protects as important secrets. Debates on these topics flared up in the US Embassy, which he visited regularly.

He began to make all kinds of statements in which he heaped filth on the Soviet people and state, on our socialist system and on our domestic and foreign policy. All sorts of slanderous "documents," "statements," "appeals," "protests," etc., etc., followed thick and fast. On the basis of materials hostile to the Soviet Union that Sakharov concocted, Western radio stations waging "psychological warfare" put out hundreds of anti-Soviet broadcasts.

Sakharov acted as a proponent of imperialist policy and ideology in its most aggressive forms. Here are just a few examples of Sakharov's role as an agent of imperialist propaganda.

He openly urged the American military to mount a major escalation of the war against the Vietnamese people, so that they would be forced to their knees before the interventionists. Singing in unison with the most aggressive American circles, Sakharov advised that the maximum pressure be put on the USSR to prevent weapons deliveries to democratic Vietnam.

No normal person could make head or tail out of these "appeals" issued by Sakharov, or of his statement about the beginning of an "era of consolidation and rebirth" in Chile under the bloody clique of the fascist Pinochet.

In his moral degradation, Sakharov sank so low as to ask the American authorities not to turn over to Soviet justice the Brazinskas bandits, father and son, who had shot and killed a stewardess on a Soviet passenger plane and wounded a pilot. When the blood of women and children was shed as a result of the explosions perpetrated in the Moscow subway by the terrorist Zatikyan and his accomplices, Sakharov again took up the pose of defender of these vile murderers.

He systematically incites aggressive circles in capitalist states to interference in the internal affairs of socialist countries and to a military confrontation with the Soviet Union. He plays into the hands of the enemies of peace and detente in their attempts to sabotage the efforts of peace-loving states to solve the disarmament problem.

Surpassing in zeal even the most rabid American "hawks," Sakharov called on the US to build up its armed forces to a level two to three times that of the Soviet forces.

He hailed the Pentagon's militarist plans for the production of neutron weapons and their deployment in Western Europe. But after all, he knew full well that these weapons are intended for use against the socialist countries, against the Soviet Union-the state where he grew up and in which he lives-and against Soviet people.

Imperialist propaganda willingly uses Sakharov's inflammatory statements to whip up anti-Soviet hysteria, to spur the arms race, and to aggravate international tension still more. Also, one has to mention the fact that quite recently Sakharov burst out in a new fit of slander against our country and against the national-liberation movement and, for the umpteenth time, urged the imperialist powers to step up military, economic and political "pressure on the Soviet Union."

Meanwhile, the people overseas are demanding more and more services from Sakharov. He is called a "Trojan horse" in the camp of socialism, and new provocations are expected from him-for which he will be paid, needless to say. A traitor is called a traitor precisely because he sells himself. A Nobel Prize was awarded to Sakharov in 1975, not at all for scientific discoveries but for the fact that the West had "discovered" him as a rabid anti-Soviet. After this there followed lavish fees from reactionary newspapers and magazines, from hostile centers and radio stations, etc.

Sakharov has not only put himself outside the law, has crossed out everything that the homeland and our people have given him. Attempts at persuasion and warnings were completely lost on him.

Did we want to save him? Yes. We put up with him for a long time. Other Academicians, prominent Soviet scientists and representatives of public organizations talked to him. Soviet official bodies repeatedly pointed out the impermissibility of his anti-civic behavior; he even had to be warned three times by personnel of the USSR Prosecutor's Office. He completely ignored all these steps, stubbornly continuing to hew to his anti-Soviet line.

In addition to depriving Sakharov of the titles and awards he had received, the competent agencies made an administrative decision to banish him from the city of Moscow.

These measures are just, and the reason for them can be found in Sakharov's behavior as a whole. The measures are also necessary because, among other things, Sakharov had begun to be used by the imperialist powers' special services as a channel for finding out important state secrets of the Soviet Union.

It is no longer possible to tolerate the sabotage of this renegade and apostate. This outcome is the logical consummation of the long, unseemly and dirty story of the degradation of a man who has disavowed his own people and placed himself at the service of foreign masters.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Vol. XXXII, No. 3 (1980)