The Different Kinds of Freedom in Russia

In Steve Cohen’s letter (April 11), “Single Thing,” he questioned Soviet visitor Katya Lycheva’s statement that, “so far I haven’t seen a single thing that my friends don’t have.” Cohen was particularly concerned about “freedom.”

When recently I visited the Soviet Union, I spent an hour in a small park with a Soviet woman who had come there with her children. As was typical of many Soviets that I met, she spoke excellent English, which allowed us to spend a good deal of time questioning each other about our countries’ ideas, attitudes, and values. The conversation inevitably came around to “freedom.”

Her response to me was that there are different kinds of freedom. She said that in the United States we particularly valued the freedom of expression and mobility. She felt that those were important freedoms and that she hoped that they would be part of Soviet society in the future, but that the most valuable freedom to her today was the freedom from the fear of not having a job, a home, and food on the table. She was willing to forgo our type of freedom for hers, especially considering the history of her country.

We in this country do have freedom of expression, but we are not free from pornography and rampant violence in our media. We are free to bear arms, but we are not free from murder on our streets and accidental killings in our homes. There are trade-offs in valuing any particular freedom.

I value the freedoms we have in this country, but they are not the only values or the only freedoms desirable. Our country is richly diverse in ideas and values and this diversity contributes to our strength. We work very well with that diversity and I would hope that we could begin to move away from fear of diversity globally.

LENORE RAY

Sherman Oaks