To the Editor:
The most impressive aspect of Vladimir Bukovsky’s article, “The Peace Movement and the Soviet Union” [May]—beyond its tremendous clarity and historical knowledge—is its understanding of Western disarmers. The main impetus of the movement’s rank and file isn’t really fear—it’s a kind of exhaustion, or a desire, despite all available evidence, to find a way out of the present unresolved crisis. This is a matter that is very difficult to argue against because it is not rationally based.
Mr. Bukovsky’s views on the proper response to Soviet aggression also seem more sensible than other options being discussed. He demonstrates that the weakest feature of Soviet rule is its unpopularity, and that in order to maintain their power Soviet leaders must always appear to be advancing. The Soviets’ least controllable problem is their economy, and it is our greatest advantage over them. . . .
It is encouraging to encounter an honest viewpoint in this debate. . . .
Evan Goldsby
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
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To the Editor:
I have lived in Denmark for some years now and write as an observer of the European scene, in particular its northern part. I can only congratulate Vladimir Bukovsky on the accuracy and cogency of his article. I have only one minor comment to make, in relation to his description of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It is not, for better or worse, an “obscure establishment,” but an international research organization with sixteen researchers and an annual budget, wholly provided by the Swedish government, of over $1 million. Its annual report on armaments the world over is the second most important source of information on the subject, next to the Military Balance published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. By and large, the details on Western and Third World armaments in SIPRI’s Yearbook are accurate, but Mr. Bukovsky is entirely correct in his supposition that SIPRI does not attempt to estimate Warsaw Pact armament levels. The Institute for Critical Peace Research of Denmark is carrying out a study of SIPRI sources and has already established that the proportion of Western to Eastern information in the Yearbook is 22 to 1.
Admittedly, Eastern data (Warsaw Pact and Chinese) are hard to come by, but the somewhat artificial and perhaps not wholly innocent pedantry which insists on verifiable and “open” sources for the Yearbook leads to an entirely misleading overemphasis on Western arms developments. This, of course, as Mr. Bukovsky points out, strengthens the assumption not only of the “peaceniks” but of many bureaucrats, politicians, and ministers in Western Europe that the West, and especially the U.S., is the sole source of increased armaments and hence of instability and war threats in the world.
I am myself carrying out a study of the North European peace movement with reference to some of these very problems and hope to be able to communicate my results before too long.
David Gress
Stege, Denmark
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To the Editor:
Vladimir Bukovsky in his splendid article, “The Peace Movement and the Soviet Union,” makes it plain that the Soviets set the present peace movement in motion to prevent the invasion of Afghanistan from isolating them internationally.
Their strategy is this: by raising the specter of the most threatening crisis of all, nuclear war, they hope that their planned seizure of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf will appear less threatening and even acceptable to the West.
But this is nothing new in the Soviet bag of tricks. Didn’t the apocalyptic alarm created by the Cuban missile crisis make the regime of Fidel Castro—which we were trying to overthrow—acceptable to us? As long as there is no nuclear war, let Castro stay in Cuba, we foolishly thought, believing he could work no harm in our hemisphere. But today the dominoes are falling in Central America. And tomorrow? Who knows what fate awaits the Persian Gulf states, and the security of the free world, now that the peace movement has legitimated Soviet rule in Afghanistan?
Bruce F. Sterling
Staten Island, New York
