AThe Times Munster, Indiana Tuesday, July 18, 1972 - Page 8
Russian Dissent Mounts
The Soviet government has been embarrassed in recent months by the surfacing of protests against its persecution of religious and ethnic minorities and intellectuals.
Now the Kremlin is confronted with an underground movement voicing dissent with the very essence of the Soviet system.
A paper circulated by a “citizens committee” tells the Soviet worker that his Communist government is robbing him of the fruits of his labor. It is filled with economic information well known to the rest of the world but carefully suppressed inside the Soviet Union.
The worker is being told that the purchasing power of his wages is barely 10 per cent of that of his counterparts in America. Great Britain and West Germany; that in those countries 50 to 80 per cent of the families own automobiles, while in the Soviet Union only one-tenth of one per cent can own a car.
More d***ing, the paper says the Soviet people are being kept in penury so the government can export food and goods to support the war effort of the North Vietnamese Communists and to shore up Cuba and Arab states.
The government, it says, is more interested in “achieving world domination” than in improving the lot of the Soviet people.
The man on the street in Moscow is now being called on to protest and strike on his own behalf—sure a startling and disturbing prospect for Soviet leaders.
Russian Dissent Mounts 18 Jul 1972, Tue The Times (Munster, Indiana) Newspapers.com
