_ WORLD

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

Tom Morris

Turning wine
into water

In as patently greedy amove
_ 48 could be imagined, the or-
ganizing committee for the

1988 Calgary Winter Games

(OCO) has ignored the Olym-
pic charter, which prohibits
_using the Games symbol with

alcohol or tobacco advertising,

and permitted Labatt brewer-
ies to put the five-ringed
Olympic symbol on its beer
Cans and bottles.

Money, you see, is what
Calgary ’88 is all about — and
John Labatt offered fistfulls of
money. The OCO isn’t really a
Games organizing group as
much as it’s a sales team. Beer,
Cars, cameras, clothing, ‘‘ex-
Clusive rights’? — peddling the
hame and logo to corporate
giants, is what OCO does best.

Sports and athletes are sim-

ply the excuse. Labatt, owner _

of the Toronto Blue Jays base-
ball team, is living proof of this
theory.

To “‘fit’? Labatt into the

Olympics, the OCO reverted
to magic. It ruled that beer and
wines aren’t alcoholic.

2000 years ago Jesus turned
water into wine. The OCO has
managed to mess up a miracle
for a few pieces of silver.

I guess had Johnny Walker
offered big bucks, OCO would
declare whiskey a fruit juice.
Cigarettes then could be called
candy and lung cancer a minor
headache.

No let-up
to harassment

Botha’s regime is certainly
nothing short of perverse.
. No sooner had it released
Govan Mbeki after 23 years
imprisonment (banning him
the following day), then it un-
leashed its police and soldiers
against the home of Winnie
Mandela. =

At 5:30a.m., Nov. 13, police
and troops rushed into Man-
dela’s home, arrested five of

Winnie Mandela stands outside
her house, her grandson in her
~ arms, as cops search the prem-
ises.

her guards and searched the
premises. They also ordered
her daughter Zindzi to report
to the police station.

Mandela said this is just the
latest in many such acts of har-
assment against her family.

More like Hitler
than Horatius

Reagan’s Central America
policy received another sting-
ing defeat Nov. 12 when the
United Nations General As-
sembly voted 94-2 demanding
the U.S. comply. with last
year’s World Court ruling
which called for an immediate
end to contra aid.

On June 27, 1986, the Inter-
national Court of Justice found
the U.S. guilty of violating
both the UN Charter and
international law ‘‘. . . by train-
ing, arming, equipping,
financing and supplying contra
forces...’’ It rejected the
American contention that the
Court had no jurisdiction in the
matter and ordered Washing-
ton to stop its illegal interven-
tion.

The U.S. reply last year was
to arrogantly and angrily reject
the Court’s ruling. It appointed
itself the sole judge of its own
policy in the region which has
so far cost 50,000 Nicaraguan

lives and devastated that coun-
try’s economy.

And last week, joined by
only Israel, the U.S. again set
itself against the world.

The UN vote was its re-
sponse to Nicaragua’s plea to
give the Arias Peace Plan,
signed on August 7 by the five
regional presidents, a chance
to live. Central to the Plan’s
hope for success, the delegates
were reminded, is an end to all
outside military aid. :

Like Horatius at the Subli-
cian bridge, Reagan appears to
be hell-bent on single-handedly
preventing peace and indepen-
dence from breaking out in
Central America. He seems
determined to spend the last 13
months of his disasterous
presidency breathing life into
the corpse of American gun-
boat diplomacy.

But Reagan hardly cuts the
heroic Horatius-like figure
holding off the Etruscans. He
more closely resembles Hitler
during his last hours in his Ber-
lin bunker.

tvization was carried out is to some ex-
tent responsible for the problems we
Ve in agriculture today.” ss
During these years Chudinova knew
_ 4nd worked\very often with Joseph Stal-
M. She remémbers very clearly how he
@Ppeared at meetings.

Fecalls. ‘‘I would say that he was a phy-
Sically ugly person. His diction was very
Dad. He spoke as if he was always chew-
-!N8 something in his mouth. But he was
able to speak in a manner that was highly
_ Persuasive — you couldn’t help but
agree with what he was saying.”’
Chudinova remembers her feeling in
the mid-to-late 1930s that dark clouds

—

Crushed in whole regions, the kulaks
(ich peasants) and others expelled from
their homes. It happened very rapidly,
and without a careful plan. As a result
terrible mistakes were made, and in
SOme areas the peasants were liquidated
almost completely. I.am.quite-sure. that
You can’t do in two minutes what takes a
Year of work ... The way the collec-

_ “Toften met Stalin in those days,”’ she .

Chudinova’s interrogation alone last-
ed two years. “‘I trained myself never to
pronounce the word ‘yes’,’’ she says.
‘And in the protocols of my interroga-
tion — which I was able to read many
years later — the word ‘yes’ never ap-
pears.”’. Following. this,..she. spent 15
more years in prison camps.

‘That was a very painful time for me,”’

| she says. “‘I had six children, and I wor-

ried about them constantly while I was in
prison. During the war, two of my sons
fought in the Red Army. One of them was
killed at the front.”” A spasm of pain
crosses Chudinova’s face as she remem-
bers this. ;

Following Stalin’s death, Chudinov
was one of the first to be amnestied. The
party immediately sent her back into the
camps to work with the prisoners, to help
speed procedures of release.

She brings out a document that was
issued to her by the Special Department
of the Ministry of the Interior in Krasno-
yarsk. It is dated May, 1954, and bears
her name. It says ‘‘Completely rehabili-

slowly with a finger, and stops at the final
line. It reads:

“They should take 17 years off your age —
and put them back in our country’s history.””

Chudinova has powerful memories of
the 20th Congress of the Communist Par-
ty, where the crimes of Stalin were finally
revealed and repudiated. ‘‘You know,
after the 20th Congress I think my social-
ist convictions became stronger than
ever,” she says. ‘That congress opened

sible. I recall what Lenin said at the 8th
party congress, after a certain black
market had been forced to close down in
Moscow. He said: ‘Comrades, it is not so
easy to shut down the black market with-
in us.’ This is the problem that disturbs
us now.

““Gorbachev always stresses this
point. We must reconstruct our con-
sciousness,’’ she says.

**T think that if we could have one Gor-

‘Lenin was right: No
revolution is possible
without a cultural
revolution...’

a

‘We have to reconstruct,
or continue in the old
way and degenerate...’

Were gathering in Soviet life. ‘‘Before I
Was arrested, I began to understand that
Something was wrong around me,” she

| Says. ““T saw many of Lenin’s compan-

we arrested and shot. The most terrible
Ing was to see so many of our military
Cers arrested.”’
he herself was taken in 1938. ‘I was
eused of anti-Soviet Trotskyist activi-
Ss,” she remembers. ‘‘I was never a
Totskyist. I have always been a direct
Onductor of the party’s voice,’ she
, ‘ays, visibly shaking with emotion.

tated.’ But: further down, Chudinova
notes, it says that her sentence had been
extended three times while she was in the
camps. “I was never even informed
about this at the time,’ she says. There is
a strange look on her face. It seems to me
to be a look of fierce pride, but tempered
with sadness. In her life it has been no
easy or simple matter to remain an hon-
est Communist.
Then she brings out a verse, written
for her on her 80th birthday by the Soviet
poetess Leontiova. She traces the page

our eyes. Of course, we had seen every-
thing ourselves, but this congress opened
our eyes.”

She stops to collect her thoughts. ‘‘I
want to say,’ she begins again, ‘‘that I
never believed in Stalin the slogan, Stalin
the myth. The achievements — real
achievements — of our time were ac-
complished by the whole Soviet people
working together.”’

Chudinova also had an extensive ac-
quaintance with Krushchev, whom she
remembers well. “I worked with Krush-
chev,” she says. “He had a good atti-
tude. I know all of the mistakes that he
made, but none of these can be compared
with those of Stalin. And the good he did
was enormous: In the first place, he freed
millions of people, and set our country on
a new road. His main negative feature, I
would say, was his personal lack of
education.”

And what does she think of today’s
perestroika?

‘The situation today is very difficult,”’
she says. ‘We cannot reconstruct in a
moment, it is psychologically impos-

bachev in every city and town of the
USSR, the success of perestroika would
be guaranteed. You know, the Russian
people are very persistent. If everybody
makes some effort, we will succeed. In
reality, we have no alternative. We have
to reconstruct, or continue in the old way
and degenerate.” :

She stops and thinks for a minute
again. “I am totally in favour of pere-
stroika,”’ she says. “*I have always want-
ed to see our country prosper and be
respected by the world.

‘‘There aren’t many of us old Bolshe-
viks left now,’’ she says softly. She is
growing tired. ‘‘Yes, I am the oldest one,
the longest-serving member of the party
who is left. Those of us who survive, we
are one hundred per cent behind the re-
structuring. Yes, I am still enthusiastic.”

As we are leaving she tells us: ‘‘I have
a plan. I want to tell the whole story, but I
need five more years. I hope I can make
iC

PHOTOS — COURTESY OF
NOVOSTI AGENCY

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 25, 1987 e 9

Resin ae aac ot ened Le ne wae er Ree a EE a WA a Pa al NG