5 AUGUST 1972, Page 26

Sir: Mr Edgar P. Young (Letters, July 29) suffers from

the delusion that I was, to quote his words, "in Soviet Russia, in November 1917, fighting with the Red Army." He is even kind enough to commiserate with me on having entered my dotage. Old age, of course, is a relative concept, but in fact I was born only in 1925. All Mr Young's other statements — concerning the voluntary union of the Soviet Republics, their free right of secession, the ' fascist ' natu,re of anti-Russian national feelings and so on — are on exactly the same level of factual accuracy.

Tibor Szamuely Department of Politics, Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences, University of Reading.