A new addition to the displays outside the teachers convention this year was that of the Vietnam-Cambodia

Mais

Committee, established last year by a number of concerned teachers to raise money to provide supplies and
equipment for schools in the two countries. Here, committee member Betty Griffin (right) gets a pledge from
Vancouver teacher Don Sage as Powell River delegate Vic Anderson looks on.

Vital Soviet literature
— without Solzhenitsyn

Such is the power of the media
that a street poll taken today in any
city across the country asking
passersby to name a living Soviet
writer would probably elicit one
answer: Solzhenitsyn.

With a consummate skill in
turning the truth upside down, the
monopoly controlled media —
newspaper and magazine
publishers, book publishers and
book clubs, television and radio —
present as “the conscience of
Russia” an anti-Russian writer
who excels even them in standing
truth on its head.

Not only is Solzhenitsyn anti-
Soviet — he is anti-Russian. His
venom is not confined to poisoning
the minds of his readers against
the socialist world, and the Soviet
Union in particular, which is the
reason daily newspapers spread
his writings across their feature
pages and publishers reprint his
books in millions of copies. _

Like Hitler, who felt that the
German people in defeat had
shown themselves unworthy as a
people, Solzhenitsyn regrets that

the Soviet people won the war, for

victory, from his warped
viewpoint, consolidated ‘“‘Soviet
tyranny.”

Ignore the fact that 20 million
people gave their lives to crush
German fascism, which otherwise
must have triumphed over all
Europe and faced Canada and the
United States with the ultimate
threat of invasion. To Solzhenitsyn
the real patriots were the anti-
Soviet elements who enlisted in the

New studios
for Mosfilm

Plans for the construction of new
facilities for Mosfilm Studios have
been included in the 10th five-year
plan adopted by the CPSU at its
recent congress.

Mosfilm was originally built in
1927 on the Lenin Hills just outside
of Moscow and was expanded in
1946 to its present capacity of 13
studios. Some 50 full-length feature
films are produced each year, and
at any one time there may be up to
60 films in production.

renegade General Vlasov’s forces
to wage a campaign of rapine and
terror in the occupied lands.

This is the man now being ac-
claimed as ‘‘Russia’s greatest
living writer” by those who equate
his egocentricity with genius. This
is the ‘‘profound moralist,’’
repudiated by his own people,
whose revenge for his rejection has
made him a millionaire.

And what is the ultimate aim of
his moralizing? To warn the West
as a doomsayer turning his back on
the future, as he has turned his
back on his own people, that the
policy of detente is a snare and a
delusion.

While Solzhenitsyn is expanded
to fill the literary horizon as
viewed from the draped windows
of the Book of the Month Club and
the New York Review of Books, the
outstanding Soviet authors being
read by millions in the socialist
world are ignored in this country,
their books in English translation
available in a very few stores in
our major cities.

For those who want to know what
is being written in the Soviet
Union, there is no better in-
troduction than Soviet Literature.

Alexander Chakovsky, editor of
the Literary Gazette,
visited Canada twice in recent
years, has completed an epic novel
in five books on the siege of
Leningrad, of which he is himself a
veteran.

Exerpts from The Siege have
appeared in Soviet Literature, the
most recent in the November, 1975
issue, and this condensed excerpt
relating the incident of a man who
lost his whole family’s ration cards
conveys the tension that sustain
the narrative throughout its
length:

Veli ts ky. understood
Magrachov’s tragedy. In
Leningrad ration cards were not
replaced under any cir-
cumstances. And it was another
two weeks — he counted the days in
his head — till the end of the
month. So the young man’s whole
family would die before-his eyes.

“ ‘What a disaster’, he said
quietly.

“ “That’s the siege’, Babushkin
added fiercely, but in a similar
quiet voice...

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 2, 1976—Page 10

who has’

“But the door. opened and the
young woman again entered the
room. She went up to the desk,
placed a ration card in front of
Babushkin and said, ‘Give it to
him’.

“Babushkin glanced at the
brown scrap of paper and his face
paled.

“‘What’s this . . . What are you
trying to do, Olga?’ he cried in
consternation.

“ ‘Give it to him’, the woman

repeated, and went out again as
quickly as she had entered,
banging the door behind her.

“« “So she managed to get one?’
Valitsky cried in surprise and joy.

“* ‘She didn’t manage to get -

anything’, Babushkin replied.
‘She’s giving him her own card’.

Chakovsky is one of hundreds of
novelists, short story writers, poets
and artists from all of the Soviet
republics whose work appears in
the pages of Soviet Literature. To
read them is to understand why
Solzhenitsyn failed in his own

country . . . and succeeds only in
anti-Soviet circles in our own
country.

Far from the impression created
by emigre dissidents seeking to
justify their own anti-Soviet
stance, the better to maintain their
names in the news, literature is
flourishing in the Soviet Union on
an unprecedented scale.

The January issue Soviet
Literature was devoted entirely to
the prose and poetry of the Soviet
peoples of the Far North — peoples
numbering no more than a few
hundreds in some instances who, in
a period of less than 60 years, have
regained their native cultures and
created a new literature in their
own native languages.

Well might Soviet Literature say
of them: ‘‘These are literatures of
the peoples whose recent history is
little short of a miracle . . . This

miracle is their unbelievably fast.

transition from age-old back-
wardness to a level of economic
and cultural development equal to
that of all other peoples of the
Soviet Union.”’

When shall we be able to make
the same proud claim for our
northern Indian and_ Innuit
peoples?
— Hal Griffin

MEGA publishin

to take 30 years

The works of Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels are today more
widely distributed throughout the
world than the Bible, which for
centuries was, unchallenged in its
position as the, most printed book.

And, for the first time, the
publication of a complete version
of the collected works of the two
writers has been undertaken in the
German Democratic Republic, in
what will be the largest publishing
project ever.

The complete works (called
MEGA, from the initials of the
German title ‘‘Marx-Engels-
Gestamtausgabe’’) are being
published by Dietz Verlag of Berlin
and will be printed by Interdruck
in Leipzig.

A number of things make the
publication of MEGA unique in the

history of book publishing. Con-

sidering its size — approximately
100 volumes, someof which contain
several books; and the time needed
for its publication — three decades
— it is the greatest project ever
undertaken by a publishing house.
Also unique to this project is that it
is being carried out by social
scientists from two countries, the
Soviet Union and the GDR. Both
countries are the publishers of this
important scientific work.

The sheer size of the project is
overwhelming, with over 100
scientists working in the MEGA
collective in both Berlin and
Moscow. These scientists are
responsible for the research and
compilation of the volumes, and
are bolstered by the work of
hundreds of librarians, printers,
and proof-readers.

In addition to the direct staff of
the MEGA collective, institutes,
libraries, and archives in capitalist
countries, the International In-
stitute for Social History in Am-
sterdam, and scholars from
around the world are contributing
to the publication of the works.

Apart from the texts, articles,
and letters that are already well

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- BOOK SALE

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' records, prints, stamps and

—~

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THE FUTURE OF
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known, a whole series of unl
published or newly discovered
works will be included. All
manuscripts, plans, notes, ex
cerpts, and marginal notes will
also be published. The MEGA
edition will not only include letters
written by Marx and Engels, but
also those written to them by third
parties.

Through this, it is hoped that
MEGA will contribute a great deal
to what is known about the
theoretical, practical, and political
achievements of the founders o
scientific communism and will
make clear the universality of
their creative work.

Again, unique to the publicatiot
of MEGA, all texts will be
published in the language of the
original. This task is itself for
midable since between them, Mar*
and Engels wrote in over 2
languages. Most of their writing®:
almost two-thirds of the total, are
in German. The rest appear
English, French (both with @
relatively large share of the total)
and lesser amounts written i
Italian, Spanish, Russian, Latif
the Nordic languages, Portugues®
Persian, Greek and others.

The new edition will also includ?
extensive commentary, and i
troductions to the volumes. The),
commentary is designed to tie all
of the works of one volumé
together and integrate the entire)
edition into the history of Marxis™,
at the same time sketching out

The project, advocated by Lenil
over 50 years ago, is scheduled fot
completion in the 1990’s. The
MEGA will be the most extensive
most complete purely scientific
work on Marx and Engels and wi
provide a consistent~ source fof
future translations of their work:

An English language edition
the collected works of Marx all
Engels, based on the work of thé
MEGA collective, is in the proces
of being released, with volume
one through four now available.

handicrafts all at 20
to 80% discount,
Friday March 19

to Saturday

685-5836

ae