Trial of missed opportunities
David Levy
Moscow By suing two American reporters for libel the Soviet authorities, in the guise of the State Committee for Radio and Television's main evening news show Vremya, have introduced a new twist into the troubled history of Western news coverage from here that will take considerable time to digest. If, the new ground rules that they seem to be introducing are to be taken seriously (and this is far from clear yet) it would amount to the return of censorship after a fifteen-year hiatus.
In the immediate sense, however, the Russians have taken risks by this action that may or may not have been calculated carefully in advance. So enamoured were they with the righteousness of their case against Craig Whitney of the New York Times and Harold Piper of the Baltimore Sun that signs can be detected of a headlong approach in staging the trial last week. Aside from risking the usual storm of indignation in the outside world, as well as the possibilities of tit-for-tat action in Washington, they risked triggering what would have been the sensation of the decade, that of a prison inmate brought specially from Tblisi to Moscow as a prosecution witness pleading to the world for some sort of rescue before the camera that was filming for three major American television networks. Precautions taken against such an eventuality seemed virtually nil, unless one believes that the prisoner, a dashing Georgian serving a relatively light sentence for anti-Soviet agitation by virtue of having repented, had been suitably drugged into complete docility.
In a crisp blue suit, button-down shirt open at the neck and sporting a full shock of black hair (i.e. unshorn) Zviad Gamsakhurdia strode briskly into the courtroom on Kalanchevskaya ulitsa flanked by two khaki-clad officers of the MVD (Interior Ministry) army which in this country supplies the prison guard force. For a brief second he cast a truly fox-like glance at the audience of foreign and Soviet correspondents seated on rows of benches at the rear of the court (did he espy the New York Times's other correspondent, David Shipler, his old friend and confidant?) before turning his back on them to face judge Lev Almazov. To the square-jawed, steel-grey judge he confirmed that his repentance had been genuine in all respects, including his repentance recorded on a news clip telecast last May by the Vremya programme, which, Whitney and Piper had reported, was believed by friends of the accused to be a fake.
Neither of the American defendants was in the country, and it had been feared that
their absence might have caused a disappointing adjournment. But no; the show had to go on, particularly as Gamsakhurdia had been transported all the way from Tblisi at what must have been considerable expense judging by the court costs of 2,289 rubles and 7 kopeks (£1,760.83) which the defeated defendants were ordered to pay on a fifty-fifty basis. A battery of cameras had been lined up aganst one wall for Soviet television and Fotokhronika coverage while the correspondents of the three major US networks bobbed and wove their way around the hall doing their own pool filming.
Before Gamsakhurdia entered the court a screening took place of the news clip of him confessing to permit us to judge fo r ourselves the authenticity of the sound track, to ascertain that no artful dubbing-in of repentant statements had taken place. Then, for some obscure reason, a second screening took place in Gamsakhurdia's presence. It was at this point, as the Americans' pool camera was trained on him and their Sungun was shining in his eyes, that he could have denounced the proceedings and screamed to the world that he had only repented to gain an easier sentence and that he was, in truth, still an unreconstructed opponent of Soviet totalitarianism. This much would have been possible before he would have been dragged away to whatever fate such an outburst would have earned him. The evidence of Soviet repression would have been in such a case completely unassailable.
• But it did not happen, and we are technically required to accept that Gamsakhurdia, a man who had not so long ago been hobnobbing with Western correspondents to whom he had regularly delivered himself of outrageous anti-Soviet harangues (including the message that the Americans should stage an 'intervention' in Georgia to liberate it, which he told Judge Almazov 'never entered my head') had made a genuine peace with the Soviet regime through an outpouring of repentant rheto ric. The Soviet Union is that kind of Wonderland, where the impossible happens before your very eyes, where fiyoh b'vayit, everything exists.
But hark the Russian medical expert who said privately that Gamsakhurdia had, no question about it, been drugged to rob him of the will to exploit the once-in-a-lifetime chance to appeal directly to a world audience via American television. Or rather, don't hark! I urge you not to believe it, otherwise I could be seen to be commending belief to you and thus could be sued by the Soviet authorities for libel under the precedent the, trial of the two Americans has set. Whitney and Piper had, after all, only reported the words of others, the friends of the repentant dissident who had said the television interview of him repenting was a fake. They dir1 not allege it themselves, just as I—mark you. — am not alleging that Gamsakhurdia was, drugged into docility when he appearo before an American TV camera in a Soviet court. No matter, said the prosecutor; Whit' ney (pronounced by Judge Almazov as Oo-eetnee) and Piper reported their sources' words in such a way as to reconr, mend belief. And so bang went one line 01 defence that the absent American defendants had put up in written form befo re going on holiday. The other line of defence they had put uP was the proposition that they had not written fora Soviet audience and therefore could not have damaged the plaintiff, Soviet TV, in the way it was alleged they had. Perhaps, said the dapper prosecutor, Georgy Skaredov, whose inaudible voice and slurred diction were arlY" thing but reminiscent of Vishinsky; but, first of all, some people do subscribe to the New York Times and to the Baltimore Sun in the Soviet Union — particularly libraries — and, secondly, the well-known International Herald Tribune had picked the story 1-1P and retailed it to a fairly wide audience in tr,",e Soviet Union (unspecified) while, thirrhY and most important, it was broadcast back t° the Soviet Union in Russian and other Soviet languages by Voice of America and Radio Liberty. All in all, it had to be granted that in purelY legal terms, in terms of clever court argt1; ment that concentrated on the prejudices 0' the defendants (not to mention those of the_ judge) as opposed to the technicalities of journalist attribution to sources and of news. targeting, the Russian side did not do at all badly, in fact quite well. On the other hand, the Russian side was, anything but innocent of ulterior intent itselt in taking this action. It wished to make it far more difficult from now on (presuming we, believe that they will persist with such libel actions as this one in the future) for western journalists to 'keep the tiny band of dissidents in business', to quote RobertKalser's. rather colourful view of the functionht upon Western journalists by the Soviet dispensation of no freedom, no terror. The Soviet side also spoilt its arguments hY the obvious orchestration and organisation of a guaranteed outcome for the libel trial. By their sheer inability to accept the pas' sibility of losing, the Russians in the end lost. What they won in legalistic argument they lost in a stupid sacrifice of credibility. As for the Americans, by refusing to show up at the trial they too lost a tremendous chance to refute the speciousness of the overall Russian case and to expose its transparently propagandistic intent. It will certainly be harder now to tax the Soviet press authorities with the reproach that they only allow their side of the case to see the light of day. Here was a perfect chance to give the other side, in a Soviet court and before 3 world audience, and to see how the Russians would cope with honest debate. But the Americans blew it.
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