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closed[w85,jmc]		The Soviet Union as a Closed Society

The Soviet Union as a closed society, Proceedings of the conference

Stanford, September 14-15,1985,
Andrei Sakharov Institute, 3001 Veazey Terrace, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005

also

Proposal - Center for Democracy
by Yuri Yarim-Agaev
39124A Sundale Drive
Fremont, CA 94538

Comments:

	Bukovsky proposed the declassification and publication of as
much CIA collected information about the Soviet Union as possible
including an atlas.  This is indeed important.  It would also be
worthwhile to publish in Russian as well as English many additional
books about how the Soviet Union works.  This is because a lot of
information about how the Soviet system works, of a kind that would
be published by someone in an information-free country, is not
available publicly inside the Soviet Union.  While much of this
information is transmitted informally, there is very large ignorance.
Any Soviet individual may be ignorant of many facts well known in
other spheres of activity.  For example, on being shown a Soviet
internal passport in 1965 and reading the part about how individuals
required to have passports should get them at age 16, I asked, "who
is not required to have a passport?".  I got the answer that everyone
is required to have a passport from a mathematics graduate of Moscow
University. This was incorrect.  At that time most collective farmers
were not allowed to have passports.  This was part of the serfdom.

random
	Arbatov isn't an expert on American public opinion; there aren't
even any American experts on that.  He probably is an expert on
American liberal journalistic opinion, and can advise his bosses
on what is likely to get favorable treatment from CBS, the New York
Times and the Washington Post.