THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Communist leaders of Soviet Russia are outraged by comparisons between Stalinist Russia and Hitlerite Germany made by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. They condemn Solzhenitsyn for informing the free world that the Government of Imperial Russia was "liberal" and "loving" toward the people and that Hitlerites were "gracious" and "merciful" both to the Russians and the peoples of Eastern Europe, which the West failed to protect from the Soviet occupation.

It should be strongly emphasized that the same comparisons were made by many American citizens of Eastern European descent who fled from their native countries at the close of the Second World War. Those refugees left their native countries because they considered Communism the curse and pestilence of mankind.

Nevertheless, wide circles of the Eastern "Liberal" Establishment ignored the stories of those refugees in spite of the fact that the outrageous crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Communists in once independent Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and in the Russian puppet states in Eastern Europe were well-documented by the resolutions passed by the U.S. Congress. When those Americans of the Eastern European descent appealed to the conscience of the free world, they were met with a conspiracy of silence. In many cases those anti-Communists were greeted by the self-styled liberal circles with open hostility. It is an amazing fact that our liberal papers and TV networks, which blame President Richard M. Nixon for covering up the Watergate affair, have studiously refrained themselves from informing the general public about the Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Therefore, millions of Americans of the Eastern European descent are confronted with the outspoken credibility gap created by liberal papers and TV networks. Dr. Alexander V. Perks   Farmville, Virginia