NEWS FROM TYRANNY
SIR,—Anthony Thwaite, in his review of Robert Con- quest's valuable anthology of recent poetry from the Communist countries, suggests that the book ought to be stocked by every United States Informa- tion Service centre throughout the world. There may be a slight technical difficulty in this : early in Presi- dent Eisenhower's administration, USIS centres burned books by authors suspected of Communist sympathies. The poets appearing in Mr. Conquest's volume are acknowledged, if critical, Communists : it is not fair to ask US1S officials to take the risks of ordering their works.
A more serious point remains. Critical of their own regimes and societies to the point of rebellious- ness, the Communist revisionists are not necessarily friends of the West. It is morally impermissible to use their agonies as an excuse for exercises in Western spiritual pride. Tactically, of course, it does the re- visionists no good at all—as the Pasternak episode showed. In the circumstances, aid and encouragement from the West to the revisionists is difficult—I can think of no easy solutions to the problem. But it might be an effective tribute to them if Western in- tellectuals turned to their own Augean surroundings instead of concentrating on this distant drama.— Yours faithfully,
NORMAN BIRNBAUM
50 Willow Road, Hampstead, NW3
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