Workers Against the Gulag Edited by Viktor Haynes and Oiga Semyonova Pluto, E1.95 THERE are, I believe. a few eccentrics on the left who continue to believe that the Soviet Union can he called a "workers state For them in particular this well edited should be compulsory reading TOPCITWIEN STUTLET Workers' State by Miklos Haraszti, a remarkable account of work in a HUTTERING BE BACKEY For writing and circulating that book Hariti was, Inevitably, put on trial, for incitement to hatred of the state, For planning to publish parts of the book, and for speaking in defence of Haraszti at his trial, the editor of a leading sociological Journal lost his job.
nevertheless, relative liberalism of the Hungarian sate Was contemplate publication, and in the end Haraszti received no more than TELL BALAS sentence T00UTIAE SEE BONE Berry got at the end of the ABC trial. Big Brother No such relative lemiency tempers the harshness of repression Hungary's Big Brother neighbour. the Soviet Union. There you do not have to write a book, or cogage in anY and ol consciously protest, in order to become the victim al colce MarsMent and worse As Workers Against the Gulag makes painfully and repeatedly clear. all you need to do is to complain that vos are not receiving the wage 10 Advise and rule For Her Own Good — 150 Years of the Experts Advice to Women By Barbara Ehreareich and Deirdre English Pluto Press. £3.60 THE most interesting part of this thorough book is the chapter entitled Motherpathology. in which American women ure blamed for eversthing Trom conmunism:
"Korea revealed that American youth was soft:
Sputnik showed it WAS stupid...
*Clearly American youth was unfit to face the Едету. Then the mosements of the *60s came along and revealed that youth was the enemy."
The attacks American MADE DOCT came during the frostiest period of the Cold War, in which Soviet youth was parudoxically made out to model citizens tand probably were).
"We Americans don't want to move the world.
But we don't want anyone else to eitler.
'So Johnny had better learn to read. Because you bet that Ivan CHEE spending a lot of time on his books, The ways in which American women were told bow to manage their each generation and For: Her Own Good is a mine of usciul information. but the book has a number of weaknesses. o1 documents a sign of the possible to suspended jail political persist in More: details would have given as a better understanding of how control has functioned historically how women reproduce the desired attitudes in their children.
Enfortunately, Ehrenreich and English tackle the subject at the level of the Individual rather than the ways in which attitudes are generully transmitted in societyTheir answer is posed o0 Iwo fronts. First, in terms of women s gullbility and helplessness; and at the other extreme, which you think you are entitled: or criticise the works managment for not observing the safety regulations. For making such apparently trivial protests you can easily lose your job, And if you are tash enough to your objections, the ikelihood is that you will end up in the capitalist-patriarchal plot.
What the book is really about the official, scientific response to the 'woman question' confronted by busbands of idle' women nothing lo do but mind the children The use of such experts went hand-in-hand with the deniul and destruction of women's autonomous sources of knowledge their mothers neighbours.
Hut the book does not adequately deal with the social control of individone of those notorious psychiatric 'hospitals" - 11 rely, prisons which, it is clear from this book, are still doine a flourishing trade.
On the evidence of the 49 case historics given in this book, waiting rooms of such bodies as the Central Committee of the Party are particularly cos places seems that if you wait too long, you are more likely to see the inside of a prison than the office of the tunctionary you were naively hoping But now an attempt has been made to bring together some of these independent spirits in the Soviet working class within the Free Trade Union- Association Working People.
Independent As the editors point out, there have been no genuinely independent workers* organisations in SALE HEL 1920% So. the lormation of the FTUA, small and relentlessiy harassed as it is. may mark the te emergence of a working class, and not merely intellectual, opposition to the tyranny of the Soviet state.
Ir ought be the particular concern of the left to expose these evils, and express its solidarity with Russia's working class protesters.
• these PrOTONSIS Nikolay Yevgrafov, says in a moving appeal to socialist and communist activists: Soviet totalitarianism is using Marxism as a cover.
in publishing this book not omiy gives support to a brave struggle for working class rights; it is also helping to restore the good name of Marxism, to which the Soviet rulers have done so much damage. the