THE VERY DEVIL Stn,—Mr. Peter Wiles has performed a valu-
able public service in exposing the political bias and the misleading omissions of Mr. Barker's monograph Some Problems of Incen- tives and Labour Productivity in Soviet Industry because this work is a typical pro- duct of Professor Baykov's Department of Economics and Institutions of the USSR at the University of Birmingham.
The really important issue which emerges from the present controversy is whether a Western university, or one of its departments, should study Soviet industrial progress—or indeed any 'progress'—without relating it to the human misery and suffering which made it possible and whether the institutions of the USSR should be studied without relating them to the horrors and hecatombs on which they were built. In other words, can we study seri- ously the Soviet phenomenon without refer- ence to the humanitarian principles of our Western civilisation? Some people like Pro- fessor Baykov think that this is both possible and desirable. They argue that as alor.° judgements cannot be 'scientific,' they are compatible with academic detachment that objectivity ends where condemnatO begins.
Often it is not realised that to condo inhumanity is an objective act. For inst30; many people get very emotional when th„c think about the millions of Jews killed by Nazis. Does this make the condemnation Nazism a subjective act? I am satisfied ths, far from condemning the abuses of 111 Soviet regime, Professor Baykov has ignor,c,,, them whenever possible and when faced vin: then he and his disciples usually tried minimise them or 'explain' them. Profess° Baykov claims that the only pro which. IS ever fostered among his pupils and publc3j. tions was 'pro-knowledge.' How coloured ail unilateral this knowledge is appears clea,°1 from Mr. Wiles's scholarly analysis of Mf,' Barker's work (edited by Professor BaY0'). —Yours faithfully,
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