VADIM BELOTSERKOVSKY
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tragedy of the Russian experience, broad circles of educated people in
the West still dream of repeating this experience?
3) On Medvedev 's thesis that the West is indifferent to the
democratization of the USSR .
With this assertion , Medvedev spreads despondency among
Soviet people who set their hopes on support from the West . Unlike
most other Soviet citizens , Medvedev has access to Western literature
and therefore cannot help knowing that in the West-side by side with
indifferent groups-a growing number of people, many of them from
the liberal intelligentsia , are increasingly aware that democratization
of the Soviet Union is indispensable to the achievement of a genuine
relaxation of international tensions .
The rise of such moods in the West disturbs the Soviet leadership
seriously . In this respect Medvedev is actually assisting Soviet propa–
ganda. Not only does he attempt to convince the West that it is harm–
ful and futile to support Soviet dissidents, but he tries to frighten it at
the same time with the specter of Soviet competition in the event that
reforms and democratization are actually carried out there . And yet he
is perfectlywell aware that such competition is out of the question-on
the one hand , because of the enormous potential pit of scarcity in the
Soviet Union and , on the other hand, because the restoration of a
capitalist system greedy for foreign markets is unthinkable in that
country . The experience of the freedom movement in Eastern Europe
demonstrates that the only alternative to state capitalism is a society of
self-governing collectives with group ownership of the means of
production and a legal , democratic government .
At times Medvedev 's article sounds like the speech of a Soviet
diplomat . When discussing the need for mutual concessions on the
part of the Soviet Union and the West , for instance , he puts on the
same level the Soviet jamming of Western radio broadcasts and the
" possible refusal of the American Congress to grant the USSR the
trade status of 'most favored nation'." "Our Country," he writes,
" has already made that
concession
(that is has stopped jamming radio
broadcasts) and now it is the turn of th'e American Congress to grant
most-favored-nation status to the Soviet Union." In other words , we
have stopped gagging you and now you must pay us for it! All this , too ,
