Amalrik Discusses Rights Sa Limits Thresher Election Comment Transfers May Get Rice Degree

"The possibility of speaking out freely has an enormously therapeutic effect on society," said Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik, speaking Monday night about the Human Rights movement in the Soviet Union. " T o s o m e e x t e n t t h e Revolution was successful. A new man and a new state were created, but it was a dreadful product, a police state," he commented. According to Amalrik, the human rights movement is based on the rights and moral r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s of t h e individual. "Our movement respects the worth of the individual. But the people who represent the Soviet system do not. Instead, they have a welldeveloped sense of the worth of their position." Amalrik mentioned three principle of the human rights movement: a search for unity among peoples, a belief in values outside and above the individual, and the belief that human rights must include the freedom to choose between jobs and places of residence. M i n o r c h o i c e s l i k e of occupation or residences "may seem banal, but they shake the system in which I lived." The search for unifying interests is an important one, the noted dissident author explained. "In the Soviet Union they have tried to solve fragmentation by artificial means and it has created a vicious circle leading to much greater fragmentation." This fragmentation occurs up to even the highest levels of Soviet government. "Everyone is conscious that nothing is expected of him. The only link is the common fear of losing one's privileges." The lack of freedom of choice in many aspects of life is not totally without its advantages, he said. "But these advantages have been chosen the way parents choose things for their children." Those who have the least freedom in Soviet society are the party officials and KGB operatives. "I passed an interrogator who had once questioned me on the street in front of the KGB office. He wouldn't speak to me because he knew if he did someone would inform his superiors." It is not just the KGB who must bend to the system. "The Intelligentsia has gotten so used to saying one thing, thinking a second, and doing a third that they hardly notice t h a t they a re doing it anymore." What happens to those who do not conform? "First, they (continued on page 5) Hie Rica Thresher volume 65, number 17 thursday, december 1, 1977