The Russian connection
Sir: Auberon Waugh is taken to task by J. C. Q. Roberts, Director of the Great Britain-USSR Association (Letters, 16 January), over his comments on Mr Frank Giles's involvement in that Association. Mr Waugh's strictures are cast aside on the grounds that the Association not only con- tains a number of distinguished people who have received honours from Her Majesty, but is in receipt of financial assistance from the Foreign Office. How very reassuring. Doubtless if a Friends of the Gulag Society
were to be established in order to promote contacts with the KGB, it too would obtain
a Foreign Office grant. If it were headed by the much decorated 'Sir' Anthony Blunt it would be above all criticism. .
The Foreign Office has a notable record of providing active assistance to the Soviet Empire, not only at Yalta, and in the betrayal of the Cossacks at the end of the second world war, but more recently in its infamous rearguard action to prevent the erection of a monument to corrunemorate, the victims of the Polish troops murderen by the Soviets at Katyn. At a time when the Kremlin is presiding over the brutal extinguishing of freedom in Poland, is it not deplorable that Her Majesty's Government should be providing financial assistance to the Great Britain' USSR Association? If the editor of the Sun- day Times, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other decorated supporters of the Association really cherish culture and civilisation, as Mr Roberts claims, thueY should concentrate on supporting tl'e patriots who refuse to bow to the stifling totalitarian terror of the Soviet system. It Is with these brave men and women that the free world should converse. There can be no excuse for promoting cultural and social links with a regime Ilia, is profoundly uncultural and anti-social. All such links should be broken until the Kremlin learns to live with freedom. This we owe to the tens of millions of Pel. who have paid with their lives 1c) demonstrating their opposition to the tyranny of Soviet socialism.
Simon Richards
27 Hilbre Court, South Parade, West Kirby, Wirral, Cheshire
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