BRAINWASHING
SIR.—As one of the correspondents covering the Powers trial, of whom Mr. Bernard Levin has been good enough to say that we 'did as good a job as the circumstances allowed,' I agree with his remarks about the Soviet censorship. Personally I found this censorship extremely irritating and at times in- comprehensible.
For instance, my cabled description for the Sunday Times of the trial as 'an impressive but carefully contrived judicial spectacle' was allowed by the telegraph censor to go out. On the other hand, for a radio news broadcast for Independent Television, in which I intended to describe the spectacle as 'altogether well rehearsed and well produced,' my 'copy,' which I had to submit before- hand. was returned to me by the telephone censor with these words heavily scored out. Yet litera scripla inanent.
On the bigger issue of whether or not Powers was brainwashed, I must differ from Mr. Levin. Mr. Levin believes he was, and by brainwashing I assume him to mean pre-trial conditioning designed to make the accused in the dock say what the prosecution wishes him to say regardless of its intrinsic truth.
Mr. Levin cites the experiences of Mr. Alex Weissberg (Conspiracy of Silence) and Mr. Z. F. Stypulkowski (Invitation to Moscow). He apparently forgets that these belong to a previous period, I might almost say age-the age when Stalin was all- powerful and the security organs of the Soviet State were in the hands of degenerate sadists like Yezhov and ambitious yes-men like Beria. Since the enact- ment of the new Soviet criminal code in 1958, and indeed for some time before, the protracted and frequent nocturnal questioning, the lack of sleep, the undernourishment and all the rest of it have been unpleasant memories of the Stalinist past. It is true that between the time of his arrest and his appearance in court, Powers was held incom- municado from the outside world, with the sole exception of his defence counsel. But this feature is not peculiar to the Soviet legal system. It obtains in several Western countries, such for example as Denmark.
I have no doubt that in this case the accused's pre-trial investigation was detailed and thorough and that Powers was repeatedly taken over the ground covered in the indictment. But there is no evidence that the investigating officers did their work otherwise than humanely. On the contrary, there is the evidence of Powers's letters home, his demeanour and statements in court, and publicly expressed opinions of his wife and parents, which all point to his having been well treated and well fed during his confinement. None of his family who saw and talked with him after the trial was over found any signs of brainwashing or drugging, such • as may have happened to at least one of the defen- dants in the Metropolitan-Vickers trial in 1933.- Yours faithfully,
H. MONTGOMERY HYDE
Marl pits Cottage, Nutley, Sussex
[Bernard Levin writes : 'I am sorry to see so distinguished an authority as Mr. Hyde taking so nominalist a view of Soviet behaviour. By all accounts, the Russian terror is now far less terrible than at its worst under Stalin: but it is as absurd to take the new Soviet criminal code of 1958 at its face value and calmly declare that the brainwashing horrors are nothing but "unpleasant memories" now as it would have been (and many people did) to take the elaborate paper safeguards in the Stalin Constitu- tion of 1936 at their face value. What counts is not what the Soviet authorities say but what they do. It is true that Khrushchev has not had his fallen rivals killed, as Stalin did : but talk of "degenerate sadists like Yezhov" cannot alter the fact that Khrushchev himself was responsible, under Stalin, for some of the most terrible mass slaughter in his- tory, and there is no reason to believe that, if he thought it necessary, he would now shrink from any methods to gain his ends. Legalised brutality is still part of the Soviet system, even if a much smaller part. Captain Powers may not have been tortured; but his own statements that he was "humanely" treated can certainly not be accepted as evidence, since precisely such statements were made time and time again under the Stalin terror by men who were later known to have been tortured mercilessly. As for Mr. Hyde's bland comparison of the Soviet legal system with the Danish, there is one vital difference: in the Danish system the defence counsel is on the prisoner's side. Or does Mr. Hyde claim that Grinev was not acting under orders? Come to that, does he claim that the judges had not been told before the trial opened what the sentence was to be?'-Editor, Spectator.]
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