By FYODOR BREVS

MOSCOW (APN) — The Rus-
sian word “‘tselina’’ (virgin lands)
traditionally had only one mean-
ing, “‘untilled areas’. But for the
past 25 years it has been used to
designate a vast area which yields
a good deal of low-cost grain as a
result of intensive development
programs.

Soviet president Leonid

_ Brezhnev believes that the de-

velopment of the Kazakh virgin
lands was a profitable undertak-
ing as well as a large-scale one. In
the past 24 years, Kazakhstan has
sold the state over 250 million
tons of grain and the country
eared 6.1-billion roubles net
profit. These impressive results
characterize the victory in the
greatest ‘‘battle for grain’’ in the
economic history of humanity.

The significance of one event or
another can be better appreciated
years, even decades after the
event itself: a poet once said that
great things are seen better froma
distance. The development of
virgin lands gave rise to specific
literature, including economic
and sociological studies, a series
of scientific papers on soils, ag-
rotechnics and environmental
protection, statistical books,
poetry and memoirs. The latter
evoked lively public interest

whether penned by a tractor

driver, state farm manager or pub-
lic leader.

We believe that Brezhnev’s
memoirs, ‘*Virgin Lands,’’ re-
cently published in Moscow and
which have already attracted the
attention..of publishers in many
countries, will hold a place of
consequence among the numer-
ous and varied books about the
virgin lands. The impressive
economic data mentioned above
are cited in the book. Both Soviet

Dean Reed
cleared of
all charges -

By FILS DELISLE
Tribune Berlin Correspondent

BERLIN — In a statement to
the press and media of the GDR,
Dean Reed, the American actor-
singer who is one of the most
popular artists in the socialist
world, declared that his exonera-
tion before a court in Buffalo,
Minnesota, was won by the sol-
idarity shown him in the GDR, the
USSR, other socialist countries
and by leading personalities in the
USA.

Reed was arrested in Min-
nesota along with 19 others, after
their participation in a farmers’
demonstration. Reed had also
been showing his film about
Chile, El Cantero in Minnesota
before his arrest.

His imprisonment, and that of
his fellow civil rights fighters,
brought a flood of protests to the
U.S. government from people
from here to Moscow. Following

the court verdict which cleared .

him of the charges, Reed ap-
peared on GDR television, via
Telestar, to warn that he and his
colleagues were ‘‘only a few of
the thousands of people” denied
their human rights in the USA
and kept imprisoned there. The
fight for their human rights, he
said, had to continue.

and foreign reviewers have al-
ready noted that Brezhnev de-
picts those events as a party
leader and statesman, with the
breadth of vision and depth of
thought that are characteristic of
him, and that he wants Soviet soc-
iety to continue making use of the
great lessons of the virgin lands.

The author makes a point of
those lessons, and the following
of them merit particular attention.
Western literature is replete with
absurd explanations of the moti-
vation of both individual heroic
deeds and mass-scale heroism of
the Soviet people: among the
more favourite ones are greed,
fierce one-upmanship “‘pressure
from above,”’ ‘dictatorship’ and
so on and so forth.

Brezhnev’s book is ‘‘peopled’’
with many individuals whom he,
then Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist
Party of Kazakhstan, knew per-
sonally and for whom he has re-
tained profound respect and sin-
cere attachment.

The virgin lands were de-
veloped, above all, by young
people whose distinctive traits
were romanticism, impulsiveness
and pioneering spirit. It would be
simplistic, however, to regard
those traits as the source of indi-
vidual and mass-scale heroism
demonstrated by the pioneers of
the virgin lands and their accep-
tance of temporary lack of com-
fort and even privations, such as
life in tents put up in the snow,
excruciating heat and arduous
daily toil on the tractor, plowing
two-by-two-kilometre squares in
the boundless steppe, as flat as a
table.

I have more than once found
out in my life, the author says,

that in the usual circumstances

true heroes are as a rule modest
and inconspicuous. They do their
work unpretentiously and unfail-
ingly. Tractor driver Daniil Nes-
terenko was such a man. He
helped his fellow-workers drive
tractors across an ice-bound river
in the steppe, but the ice gave way
under his machine. No one at
his state: farm knew that Nes-
terenko was awarded the title
Hero of the Soviet Union.

The development of the virgin
lands, Brezhnev points out, can-
not be ascribed to the “‘insight’’
and will of any single pérson. It is
an outstanding achievement of
the Party and the Soviet people as
a whole. The Party has never
taken major and fundamental de-
cisions without consulting the
people. The economic and public
life today are so complex that
only the powerful collective intel-
lect can comprehend it. There-
fore, specialists and scientists —
representing more than one trend
or school of thought — should be
listened to and the advice of the
people should be sought to avoid
“‘rush -actions’’ and half-baked
and ill-considered voluntarist de-
cisions. This is the first conclu-
sion of the author.

His second conclusion is as fol-
lows: there is heroism of the mo-
ment, heroism of the periods of
trial in the life of the whole
people, as exemplified by the war,
and heroism of everyday life,
when people face difficulties vol-
untarily and of their own volition,
fully aware.that they could have
avoided them elsewhere. I think,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 24, 1978—Page 6

tics, that the climate of public ac- .

Brezhnev says, that the people of
the virgin lands proved to be
heroes.

“‘Heroism in- everyday life’’ is
an apt description of a specific
feature of the Soviet way of life.
The development of the virgin
lands yesterday and the harnes-
sing of the fuel and energy riches
of. Siberia today should be re-
garded as links of one and the
same chain. We have every
reason to characterize this con-
tinuity as a well-developed fea-
ture of the Soviet way of life. It is
here, at the point of contact bet-
ween big economics and big poli-

tivity is created, filling everyday
life with examples of conscious
individual and _  mass-scale
heroism.

For the Kazakhs the develop-
ment of the virgin lands was an
arduous task, Brezhnev recalls. z
For many centuries the Kazakhs
were concerned with livestock —

breeding, whereas now many of : .

them had to abandon their tradi-
tional way of life in the steppe and

become grain-growers, « farm

machine operators, specialists in
grain production. The Kazakh
people rose to the historical occa-
sion and, aware of the needs of
the whole country, demonstrated
their revolutionary _inter-
nationalist features.

In this way the fruitful charac-
ter of the alliance of more than
one hundred big and small nations
comprising a new historical

Brezhnev writes of the virgin lands
_ Heroes in everyday life

Brezhnev as senlene! in the. army y with a ‘nistiow officer just before the
storm of Novorossik in 1943 (above). In 1962, as President of the Sup-

reme Soviet (bottom).

community, the Soviet people,
forcefully manifested itself in the
virgin lands.

Describing these and other ee
tures and traits of socialist reality
and the Soviet way of life on the
example of the virgin lands,
Brezhnev comes to the conclu-
sion that in the virgin lands mill-
ions of Soviet people continued to

forge revolutionary experience,
replenished the achievements of
the revolution in a new historical
situation, and created the live ex-
perience of the victorious building
of developed socialism. That is
why, he concludes, ‘‘the years
fully devoted to that land have re-
mained forever memorable and
dear to me’”’

Action must he taken against
neo-Naziism, Jewish leader warns

By FILS DELISLE
Tribune Berlin Correspondent

BERLIN — -Helmut Aris,
Chairman of the Jewish com-
munities of the GDR, has issued a
warning that there is a dangerous
resurgence of neo-Naziism and
anti-Semitic agitation in Western
countries which has to be met
with effective counter-actions.

The Jewish leader raised the
issue of the rebirth of fascism and
racism in the Federal Republic of
Germany and elsewhere in a
statement on the occasion of the
40th commemoration of the in-
famous Kristallnacht (Crystal
Night). That was the night of
Nov. 9, 1938 when the Nazis or-
ganized their murderous assault
on Jewish homes, businesses,
synagogues and institutions in all
parts of Germany.

Aris’ statement was made in
the midst of a whole series of new
anti-Semitic developments in the
FRG, France and other capitalist
countries of the West.

‘Anti-Semitism and racism
were a basic expression of the
anti-human ideology of German
fascism,’’ Aris recalled. In the
Kristallnacht pogroms against
German Jews 40 years ago, he
pointed out, ‘‘267 synagogues
were burned down and desec-
rated. Prayer rooms and Jewish-
owned businesses were laid in
ruins. All Jewish citizens up to the
age of 70 were arrested and
thrown into concentration camps
and prisons.’

' The Jewish leader said that it

was ‘‘absurd and inconceivable’”’
that the perpetrators of such

crimes would no longer be prose-
cuted after 1979 in the FRG under
a special law of limitations. ‘‘The
nazi crimes,” he said, ‘‘were
crimes of murder against the
peoples which cannot and. must
not come under any law of limita-
tions. Developments in the FRG
and in the other Western coun-
tries — namely, the resurgence of
neo-Nazi activities, the issuing of
anti-Semitic and fascist literature
— not only arouse concern but
demand counter-actions, above
all in the countries involved.

““We raise our voices tirelessly
in warning, because the barbarian
pogroms against the Jews of 40
years ago are a reminder of our
responsibility to ban racism and
anti-Semitism from the lives of
the peoples forever.’’

‘Speaking of the situation in the
GDR, ‘‘where we enjoy equal
rights and equal respect’, Aris
declared: ‘‘the position of equal-
ity of citizens of Jewish faith here
is guaranteed by our constitution.
Anti-Semitism has been rooted
out and every racist incitement is
a punishable offense. Above all,
youth here are being raised in the
spirit of humanism and of friend-

ship between the peoples. Our

history textbooks are clear evi-
dence of that fact. Our youth is
growing up in the spirit of respect
for, and solidarity with, all human
beings, regardless of religion,
color and creed.

“In the GDR, freedom of belief
and religion is fully guaranteed;
citizens of Jewish faith can fulfill
their religious needs in every way
and without any hindrances

whatsoever. Our eight Jewish
communities receive very gener-
ous support from the state. New
synagogues have been built in
Dresden and Erfurt. The desec-
rated synagogues in Berlin, Leip-
zig and Halle have been rebuilt. A
new community house with
prayer facilities has been set up in
Karl Marx City. The Jewish
community centres in Magdeburg
and Schwerin also have fine
prayer rooms. _

“The Federation of Jewish
Communities im the GDR, which
has its headquarters in Dresden,
sponsors the Leipzig Synagogue
Choir. The Berlin community op-

erates an old people’s home. All

the Jewish cemeteries are looked
after with the help of finances

made available by the state.

“We Jews see in our German
Democratic Republic our home-
land. We are proud to have made
our contribution to its construc-
tion and to be able to make a
further contribution to its -blos-
soming in the future.”’

In West Berlin and the FRG, on
the other hand, as the West Ger-
man press and television them-
selves report, fascist and anti-
Semitic incitement is now a part

_of daily life. In West Germany

Jewish cemeteries are desecrated
almost daily. Neo-Nazi groups
demonstrate publicly and pro-
vocatively under the massive pro-
tection of the police. Jewish citi-
zens: are increasingly receiving
hate-latters, and as the West Ber-
lin newspaper, Abend, last week
said of the growing anti-Semitism
in the West: the Nazi past ‘“‘is
catching up-with-us again’’.

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