USSR Peace Groups still growın growıng
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-01-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
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By Alex Simpson has NEWS has reached the West of the formation of two new independent peace groups in the USSR.
The cities of Riga and Kiev join eight other places in having a small collection of brave individuals ready to run great risks as the price of organisational independence in the struggle for world peace.
No details as yet are known about these two latest groups, but the public declaration alone of their existence is a great encouragement.
It testifies to the fact that despite the enormous obstacles placed in the way of independent peace activists the Party's desire to maintain a total monopoly on the question of organisation with the official Soviet peace committees has been frustrated.
The same optimistic prospects for survival and growth seem to be at work in Moscow. It is the home of the original and much perpetuated independent group. The Moscow group has sustained the arrest and imprisonment of several of its original members and a near intollerable level of harassment and intimidation against the rest, yet has managed new recruits.
The fear of some sympathisers in Western Europe that the peace group would be isolated to a small, isolated and ever dwindling band of beleagured individuals being picked off one by one has most fortunately not been realised.
The Soviet authorities have been forced to grudgingly tolerate the group's existence at least for the immediate period. It is restrained from the option of wholesale liquidation of Moscow's group and correspondents in other cities because the Russians are aware that the eyes of the Western peace movements are upon them.
Solidarity
It is only the limited international solidarity of Western peace activists that has enabled our Soviet comrades to keep their heads above water in the precarious and persecuted existence they lead.
The independent Soviet peace movement has demonstrated the ability for survival and even growth and we must correspondingly step up our help and support.
Footloose and skint
YCND comme roge Newham 8 Pan 6
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