HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE— SOVIET UNION Albert Szymanski INCLUDING COMPARISONS WITH THE U.S.A. Human Rights in "the Soviet Union Al Szymanski To the disappeared persons and thousands ofothers who have been killed in Latin America since the mid-1960's for their advocacy of freedom; and for D.R. Zed Books Ltd., 57 Caledonian Road, London Nl 9BU, Contents first published by Zed Books Ltd., Human Rights in the Soviet Union was i 57 Caledonian Road, London Nl 9BU, in 1984. Preface 1V Copyright ©Al Szymanski. 1984 ^Introduction J Proofread by Miranda Davies Freedom; Some Definitions 2 Typeset by Shirley Coombs Historical Logic of Restricted Cover design by Jacque Solomons The 13 Printed by Biddies of Guildford Emigration and Exit Comparative Analysis 26 All rights reserved A Note on Sources 30 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 2. The Asian Nationalities in the USSR 33 Szymanski, Albert Origins of Soviet Power in Central Asia 34 Human rights in the Soviet Union. 37 1, Civil rights — Soviet Union Economic Development I. Title Welfare 43 323.4'0947 JC599.R9 Education ^ ISBN 86232 018 6 51 ISBN 86232 019 4 Pbk Cultural Development Politics 59 Soviet Policy Towards Islam 61 US Distributor Anti-Soviet and Anti-Socialist Nationalist Biblio Distribution Center, 81 Adams Drive. Totowa. Attitudes and Movements 63 New Jersey, 07512. Attitude of Soviet Asians to USSR Intervention in Afghanistan 66 Conclusion 67 (X)The European Nationalities in the USSR 72 Economic Development 72 Health Care and Education 74 Cultural Development 75 Nationalism and Dissidence in the European Republics 77 The Jewish People in the USSR 88 Conclusion 99 2 and Repression in the USSR: m Toleration 4. in the USSR 102 y Women 1918-54 204 The Rights of Women 102 Civil War, Invasion, and Relaxation (1918-27) The Family, Housework and Child-Care 107 How History Judges: I. Famine and Education HO Collectivization (1928-34) 212 Labour Outside the Home 1 1 How History Judges: II. The Growing Threat of Legislation 117 Protective Invasion and The Great Purge (1935-39) 229 in Political Positions 1 18 Women Traitor Mania and the Moscow Trials of 1936-38 235 12 Analysis The Numbers of Those Affected 241 Conclusion 124 The Politics of the Executions: 1936-38 248 128 Effects 250 j5) Economic Rights Causes and Living Standards 128 Invasion, Reconstruction and the Renewed Imports 1 29 Threat of Invasion: 1941-54 257 Consumption and the Social Wage 134 Social Tolerance and Repression in the Soviet Union: 137 ® Job Rights 1965-82 267 Rights of Participation in the Management Trends in Contemporary Soviet Policy and the of Enterprises 140 Dissident Movement 267 General Enterprise Meetings and the Definition of Dissident Activity in the USSR 269 Permanent Production Conferences 141 The Extent of the Dissident Movement 273 The Role of Enterprise Branches Strategy and Tactics of the Dissident Movement 276 of the Unions 142 Sanctions against Dissidents 279 The Role of the Enterprise Branch of the Dissidents Categorized as Schizophrenic 282 Communist Party 145 Numbers of Dissidents Confined 284 Job Rights in the USA 146 Political Tendencies of Dissident Activists 285 Conclusion 148 Comparisons with the USA 290 6. The Land of the Free 1 52 & Conclusion 295 The American Revolution and Civil Liberties 152 Summary 295 Federalists vs Jeffersonians: 1798-1808 155 State Power and Civil Liberty 299 The Conflict over Slavery and Civil Liberties: Factors Determining the Level of the Civil 1830-77 157 Liberty of Public Advocacy 305 The Repression of the Working-Class Movement: The Class Basis of Civil Liberties 313 1866-1914 161 Disinformation and the Cold War 314 Repression of the Left: 1917-24 164 Trends in Rights in Capitalist and 930-45 172 Depression, War and Civil Liberty : 1 Socialist Societies 318 Repression of the American Communist Party and Civil Liberties: 1947-56 175 Bibliography 323 187 The 1960s and Political Repression Index 333 United States Support of Repressive Regimes Overseas in the 1960s and 1970s 195 Conclusion 198 List of Tables 2.1 Produced National Annual Income and Index of Acknowledgements Monthly Wages 1978. by Republic 38 2.2 Percentage of Total Working Population Engaged in Different Economic Sectors 40 2.3 Healthcare: 1971 45 2.4 Literacy: Percentage of Population Aged 9-49 47 2.5 Number of Pupils and Students in the Union Republics 47 2.6 Higher Education by Nationality 49 2.7 Scientific Workers by Nationality 1971 50 2.8 Books and Newspapers Published in Union Republics. 1970 52 This book like all others is, in C. Wright 2.9 Speakers of Languages of Major Nationalities Mills* words, a product of the inter- section of biography and history. Its coming into being has of USSR, 1970 53 been a result of the social forces operating on myself 2.10 Titular Nationality as Percent of Republic as author, acting through my family, my schooling, my structural position as a US professor of Population. 1959-70 57 sociology, and my political involvements. This book, perhaps more than others, owes a great 2.1 1 National Composition of CPSU, 1 January 1972: deal to the influence of my parents who shaped my Union Republic Nationalities 59 fundamental attitudes to equality, tolerance, liberty, authority and freedom. 3.1 Books/Newspapers in the National Language in the It also owes a great deal to my teachers from Ward Baltic Republics, Armenia and Georgia. Senior High School, through the University of Rhode Island to graduate school at Columbia compared to % of Nationals 75 University, who introduced me to the theories and debates around 4.1 Women's Higher Educational Achievements: the questions of freedom and rights. My students and co-teachers at the University of Oregon during Some Comparisons between the USSR and the USA 111 the 1970s provided 4.2 Distribution of Women Workers and Employees and continuing stimulation (usually critical, but sometimes supportive) which had a major impact on the development Average Monthly Earnings, by Economic Sector. of the ideas in the book. But most of all, the ideas have been formed through 1975 (USSR) 113 my political involvements since the late 1950s. 5.1 Nutrition: Comparative Figures for the USSR My first political act was to join the National and the West: 1975- 77 129 Association for the Advancement of Colored People 5.2 Soviet Grain (Millions of Metric Tons. Annual Average) 130 at the beginning of the civil rights movement in 1959. My second was, as a naive freshman, to 5.3 Soviet Livestock 1955-1979 131 send a letter of outrage to the student newspaper comparing 8.1 US Aid, Investment Climate and Human Rights the harsh penalties inflicted by the Dean of Women on female students who smoked in Ten Countries 197 cigarettes in their dorm rooms to the horrors of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four. In the early 1960s I defined my political commitments as two: support of civil rights for Black people, and support of civil liberties for all, especially for students who were then subject to the (since discarded) university doctrine of in loco parentis. I joined t he American Civil liberties Union and became an outspoken advo- cate of the right of all to voice their political views. As president of the University of Rhode Island S.D.S. Chapter in 1962, 1 was responsible, to the considerable irritation of Dean Quinn, for bringing to town the first Com- munist Party member in 15 years to speak publicly on the campus. But gradually, during the mid-1960s, with the intensification of the student and Black movements, as well as the growth in my generation oi support for the Cuban, Vietnamese, and Chinese Revolutions, my commit- ment to abstract civil liberties became transformed into an appreciation of i Human Rights in the Soviet Union A ckn o wledge merits Swept up in the political and intellectual excitement of the last half of the refugees and so on, in socialist countries? Statistics on rising living standards, 1960s, I became a Marxist, but retained my earlier concern for questions of social security, political participation, national independence, equality, liberty and rights. never satisfy such criticism. Necessarily, then, all socialists must take a Donna Rae Crawford must be specially acknowledged as my research position on the question of civil liberties/repression in the socialist countries. assistant for this book. She carefully checked the references, quotations and One tendency of the socialist movement argues that some or all of the 'so- calculations, thereby making this work considerably stronger. She must also called' socialist countries, are not really socialist, but instead new types of be thanked for her supportive friendship during the time of this book's class societies, equally, if not more repressive than, the older types. Others production. answer that because of such problems as economic backwardness and foreign Robert Molteno, Neil MacDonald and Anna Gourlay of Zed Books, as invasion faced by socialism where it has come to power, it has become well as Beverly Jones and Lawrence Hill, must be especially thanked for fundamentally distorted and thus must repress significant numbers of its stimulating the growth of this manuscript into a full fledged book from two people in order to survive. Another sector of the left merely dismisses all long papers on Asian minorities and dissidents in the USSR. Their critical evidence of political repression as 'capitalist propaganda'. comments and suggestions were vital to the forming and shaping both of the Having written a book on the basic economic and political nature of the