Index on Censorship

ISSN: 0306-4220 (Print) 1746-6067 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rioc20

USSR: Brave new words

Hella Pick

To cite this article: Hella Pick (1976) USSR: Brave new words, Index on Censorship, 5:4, 78-79,
DOI: 10.1080/03064227608532586

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03064227608532586

Published online: 24 Oct 2007.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rioc20

Download by: [University of Toronto Libraries] Date: 18 November 2015, At: 07:32
 78 FOR THE RECORD
or aspiration,' said Tristao de Athayde, a leading
newspaper columnist. ' It is a crisis caused by
political authoritarianism and censorship.'
Book publishers say they are wary about
investing money on works that might be seized on
publication. Even popular songwriters say that
censorship weighs heavily on them.
' You never know when you are going to be
censored,' said Paulinho da Viola, a leading samba
lyricist. ' It is such a subjective thing, so you end
up practising self-censorship.'
The opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic
Movement, has frequently argued against
government censorship, and the banning of the
Bolshoi Ballet telecast led to another debate in
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 07:32 18 November 2015
congress.
But the government party, ARENA, which has a
majority in both legislative houses, has generally
supported the censors or has preferred to deal with
the problem case by case. *>
' I am not concerned about ballet because it is
art for the elite,' said Jose Bonifacio, the majority
leader in the Chamber of Deputies.
He added, however, that he would have protested
if the censors had prohibited the telecast of a
soccer match because ' then we would be talking
about a national passion '.
USSR:
Brave new words
The USSR, together with most of the loyalist
Communist block countries, have not published
the sharp criticism made by some of their
fellow-Communists . . . the information curtain
that was temporarily lifted in East Berlin came
down again as soon as the party chiefs departed.
For the summit, the German Democratic
Republic really allowed Western as well as
Communist journalists into East Berlin. An
efficient press centre was set up, where they
could follow all the speeches on television
monitors with simultaneous translation in several
languages. Texts of the speeches were provided,
though some of the more critical ones appeared
only after several hours' delay.
A few journalists were allowed into the
conference room itself for the opening and closing
speeches. Western newspapers and periodicals
were on sale at the press centre and at the
journalists' hotel, which had been cleared of all
other visitors and was tightly guarded against
outsiders.
But as soon as it was over, all these facilities
were again withdrawn. The Western newspapers
disappeared, and the Western journalists were told
that their visas had been issued only for the
summit, and that they should not expect to meet
East German officials, or travel outside Berlin to
report about the GDR itself.
The summit speeches had been televised only
by the East Germans and made available to
Intervision, the organisation that exchanges
televised material between Communist countries.
Intervision also offers film to Eurovision, the
Western link up that distributes TV news film
to member countries, but on this occasion
Eurovision soon realised that its Communist
counterpart was offering only selective extracts
from the speeches.
And while Neues Deutschland stood by its
undertaking and printed the speeches in full with
honest translations, it did not report an informal
press conference given late one evening by Signor
Berlinguer where he was deeply cynical about the
' loyalists' and showed that he had little faith
in the Soviet Union's good faith in respecting
the independence and sovereignty of Communist
countries.
There, was no editorial comment in Neues
Deutschland about the summit until it was all
over. Instead, it marked the closing day with a
prominent display of the toast that Mr Brezhnev
• delivered at a reception. Having just accepted a
document designed to kill the idea that Moscow
was European Communism's leading centre, Mr
Brezhnev took it upon himself to assert that the
summit had confirmed the solidarity and will to
cooperate of the Communist system.
It had, in fact, done the very opposite. Yet this
is the theme that has since been developed by
the official party papers in all the loyalist
Communist block countries. Pravda has given the
lead by telling its millions of Soviet readers that
the Congress was an unqualified success,
' producing greater cohesion and closer
cooperation than ever in the European Communist
moment'.
The Communist block'press has not merely
twisted the conclusions to be drawn from the
summit. It has also been highly selective in telling
its readers and television viewers about the
summit. Poland has been better than most, and
printed almost the whole Italian speech. But Pravda
readers have no idea of Signor Berlinguer's biting
remarks that Eastern Europe's brand of
communism has no attraction for the Western
countries. They do not know that the Spanish
Communist Party leader, Seiior Carillo, said that
Europe's Communist parties had now reached
maturity and no longer looked to Moscow as
their church. They know nothing of the
Eurocommunists' insistence on civil liberties, and
the support which they expressed for pluralism
and parliamentary democracy . . . There has been
heavy censorship of the critical passages, and
nothing has appeared in the Communist block
press that shows how close to schtsm the
European Communist movement has come.

Despite his brave words about communism's
open society, Mr Brezhnev does not want his own
people to know even the doubts that other
Communists express about the Soviet Union.
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the
concern that the Soviet leadership appears to
feel about the destabilising effect that Basket
Three could have on the Soviet empire in
Eastern Europe. • •
Hella Pick in The Guardian 7 July 1976
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 07:32 18 November 2015
Rumania:
Divided family
Irina Curelaru, a 40-year-old physicist and one of
Rumania's leading nuclear scientists, was sentenced
on 14 January in absentia to six years'
imprisonment, loss of civil rights, confiscation of
property and a fine of about £18,000. Her crime?
She did not return to Rumania from abroad.
At present working as a research assistant at
Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg,
Irina Curelaru left Rumania in January 1974, having
been offered a grant by the International Atomic
Energy Agency for eight months' research in
Sweden. While she was there, she learned that her
research project in Rumania had been cancelled
without her knowledge and without any subsequent
explanation. In August 1974 she decided to stay in
Sweden and has since been trying to obtain
permission for her family-husband loan Curelaru,
a doctor, nine-year-old daughter Maria-Ana, seven-
year-old son lon-Nicolae, and her mother Mrs
Maria Marinescu, a 74-year-old retired teacher-to
join her in Sweden.
The cancellation of her research project was only
the last in a long series of official actions against
Irina Curelaru over the past twelve years. The
harassment and persecution began in 1964, when
she returned home after working at the Joint
Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna in the
Soviet Union. She was asked to provide secret
reports on the activities of her colleagues at the
Institute for Atomic Physics in Bucharest, and when
she refused she was not allowed to complete her
Ph.D. project. For the next eight years she was
barred from entering the laboratory or using
experimental equipment, her promotion was
stopped, and she was prevented from attending
conferences. Her appeals to the director of her
institute, the President of the Rumanian Academy
of Sciences, and finally to President Ceausescu
himself remained unanswered. Instead, she was
repeatedly urged to give up her work and leave the
institute. In 1972 she agreed to change her field
from elementary particles to corrosion of nuclear
FOR THE RECORD 79
Newspeak: Open society
' The socialist countries are not a closed
society. We are open to everything that is
truthful and decent, and are prepared to
multiply contacts in every way, making the
most of the congenial conditions created
by detente.'
Leonid Brezhnev at the Communist summit
in East Berlin, June 1976
materials, so that she could return to scientific
research. Her work in this new field proved so
promising that she was offered the opportunity of
continuing her research in Sweden.
Until recently she was able to talk to her husband
and children on the phone, but now these
conversations are constantly being cut off. Her
husband, a specialist in anaesthesia and intensive
care techniques, and her mother have been
interrogated and threatened with reprisals unless
Irina Curelaru returned home to serve her prison
sentence. Dr Curelaru has been expelled from the
Union of Medical Sciences and is prevented from
publishing his work, attending international
gatherings and having access to medical literature.
The family's property was recently confiscated. On
11 May the family was informed that they would
be allowed to leave Rumania as soon as some
formalities had been completed. On the following
day they were told that permission for them to join
Irina Curelaru in Sweden had been withdrawn and
that they would never be allowed to leave the
country. Dr Curelaru was at the same time warned
that if he continued to apply to the authorities for
exit permits for himself, his children and his
mother-in-law, he would be suspended from his
job. • •
East Germany:
Wall of silence
A week ago East German border guards shot and
killed Benito Corghi, an unarmed Italian truck-driver,
as he walked back to the customs post at
Hirschberg on the Bavarian frontier. He walked
back to collect some papers relating to his cargo
of pork which he had left by mistake in the
customs post. No one knows why the border
guards killed him. They simply shot him dead for
walking along a road. On Monday he was buried in
his home town of Rubiera, near Reggio in Emilia.
Perhaps because Signor Corghi was a Communist,
perhaps out of a general sense of remorse, the East
German Charge d'Affaires in Rome turned up at the
funeral. This was what Benito's widow told him: