Soviet dissent
Sir: In an otherwise typically perceptive article on the future of Soviet dissent (July 15),. Tibor Szamuely claims that Andrei Amalrik, one of the most intelligent as well as bravest of reformers, was 'much disliked and even reviled by most of the other dissenters.'
This is simply not true — as he would know if he had mixed at all with the reformers in Moscow in the heady 'sixties — and it unfortunately, unintentionally or not, carries undertones relating to a KGB-inspired whisper campaign suggesting that Amalrik was in fact an agent provocateur. Amalrik, desperately shy and sensitive, was loved, not merely liked or respected, by the front-runners of the reform movement' such as Pavel Litvinov, Pyotr Grigorenko, and Pyotr Yakir. He was trusted by all those who knew who could be trusted and who could not.
John Miller 211 The Welkin, Lindfield, Sussex.
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