—

on

Review

PARTING WITH ILLUSIONS. By Vla-
dimir Pozner. Atlantic Press, New York,

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Co-op Bookstore.

1990. Hardcover, $24.95. At the People’s

Parting With Illusions is one man’s per-

' sonal account of life in the Soviet Union

today. Renowned author and long-time
Soviet commentator Vladimir Pozner is
funny, lively and truthful, and any North

« American who grew up around the left wing
knows exactly where he is coming from.’

This book is in its fourth publication, and
it’s easy to see why.

Pozner, who was born in France of a
French mother and a Russian father, grew
up in New York city. Now a Soviet citizen
and a member of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, he has kept up with events
in America, for reasons he says are

i@ unknown even to himself.

In an interview on the Phil Donahue
Show not so long ago, Pozner said his
American period was during the war years
when the country was an ally of the Soviet
Union; domestically, unions weré being
built, and it seemed everyone was singing
the songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger

‘and Paul Robson.

After the war, Pozner relates in his book,

| “The moral authority of the Soviet Union in

general, and of Joseph Stalin in particular,

|) was extremely high. The Soviets had won

the war against Hitler, and Stalin, it would

‘seem, had almost single-handedly, against

stupendous odds, destroyed the mightiest
war machine the world had ever known.
“The truth about his blunders that cost

‘millions of lives was as yet unknown, as was

the scope of the terrible crimes committed
under his leadership... . to left-wingers, who
had stood up to years of red-baiting, the
Soviet victory over Hitler was akin to per-
sonal victory and triumph.”

By 1947, the Cold War was in ascen-
dency, and his father lost his job in the
motion picture industry because he would
not give up his Soviet citizenship. Pozner
himself was having fights in school for being
a “commie lover,” and the family decided to
go “home” to a socialist Soviet Union.

He tells of the euphoria, the joy, he felt on
arriving in Moscow to the home he had
built in his mind’s eye: “the most desirable
home in the world.” He was 19 years old.

Reality soon set in. His father, though
highly qualified, was unable to find
employment. “Had Stalin not died on
March 5, 1953, just two months after our
arrival, I feel certain we would have suffered
the same fate as millions of Soviet citizens
before us.” The elder Pozner’s Jewish orig-
ins, his “foreign past” and French wife were
reason enough, Pozner writes, to pack them
off to some Siberian gulag.

“How can an American understand the

phenomenon of Stalin? A tyrannical politi-

cal system supported by the majority?” he
asks in acknowledging Stalin’s crimes. But
he counterpoises this with illustrations of
USS. events: the McCarthy era in the U.S.,
the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the
trauma of the Vietnam War and the shame
of Watergate. For Americans to fully
acknowledge the import of these events
would mean, “having to acknowledge the
existence of an all-powerful oligarchy. In
short, it would mean that government

which is by and for the people, a concept to
American faith in their system, is a hoax.”

Although Pozner studied to be a biolo-
gist, he became a journalist, during the
height of de-Stalinization — what Pozner
calls, “The Thaw,” the period of Nikita
Khrushchev. Although Khrushchev was
not a popular leader, “‘for all his shortcom-
ings, he had. de-Stalinized the country....
He had unleashed the great potential of his
country’s genius ... He had demonstrated
compassion for the downtrodden of gulag
(exiles) and had personally intervened to
have Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich published in Novy Mir
magazine.”

Pozner’s first assignment was as a corres-
pondent for Soviet Life, a magazine created
to give Americans a positive image of the
Soviet Union. In 1967 he joined the staff of
Sputnik, “‘a kind of red Readers Digest” of
the Soviet press for international distribu-
tion. In 1970 he worked for the North
American service of Radio Moscow, the
Soviet equivalent of the Voice of America’s
Russian-language service, writing and
reading his own copy on domestic topics.

In 1973 he was offered his own talk show
on international radio, “Vladimir Pozner’s
Daily Talk,” which continued until 1986.
By that time he was pretty well known
internationally, especially in America, but
virtually unknown in the Soviet Union.

| Pozner tells of ‘parting with illusions’

In working for Radio Moscow he
enjoyed a freedom very few Soviet journal-
ists had, His broadcast began at 2 a.m. and
ended at 7 a.m.; “because of that, nobody,
or almost nobody in the Soviet Union ever
listened to me. Ham radio operators
maybe, but certainly not much of the
bureaucracy. :

“But freedom by default does not com-
pare with what journalists enjoy today.
Glasnost has freed us completely —
almost.” He stresses the. point that since
Gorbachev, Soviet journalists enjoy far
more freedom and less restrictions than
Western writers.

This is the period he calls the “‘break-
through.” It was also his own break-
through. It began with the Leningrad-Seattle
“space bridge,” a satellite TV hook-up
between the citizens of the U.S. and Soviet
cities, co-moderated by Pozner and Phil
Donahue. It was seen by at least 180 million
people in both countries.

This book is full of marvellous personal
stories, and frank admissions of the pain in
acknowledging hard truths. “Parting with
illusions is painful because there is no medi-
cation, no rehabilitation centre and hard as
it is for individuals, it is even harder for
societies.” Pozner is confident that human-
kind will create a humane world. He has no
illusions about being there to enjoy it.

— Jonnie Rankin

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Pacific Tribune, June 4, 1990 e 7