THEM Takes Long View of Soviet Union
The title is THEM, and if who they are is not immediately evident, the “E” is a stylized hammer and sickle.
The first issue of THEM, subtitled “a Magazine on the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc,” will be out in a few weeks with an introductory essay inviting Americans “to peek behind the Iron Curtain.”
Iron Curtain? The phrase seems an anachronism in this new age of glasnost , perestroika, treaties, summits, citizen exchanges, and commentary that “peace is breaking out all over.”
Is THEM, published by a Los Angeles-based group of former Soviet citizens, a backlash against America’s current romance with things Soviet?
Fairfax Office
Sitting in a crowded suite of tiny offices in the Fairfax district, editor-in-chief Si Frumkin and managing editor Alexander Polovets looked momentarily stunned and perplexed at the question, as if the point has been missed entirely.
Not at all, they said. Glasnost, in fact, has made the magazine possible, since much of what they are printing appeared first in the Soviet press. Frumkin, beaming in amusement, describes a Soviet article they may use in the future, a complaint about the high cost of condoms.
“Before glasnost, not in a zillion years would that have been printed,” Frumkin exclaimed, Polovets nodding his head in agreement.
Nevertheless, Polovets and Frumkin have not built their reputations praising things Soviet or joining in many “hands across the ocean” activities with that country. THEM’s temporary office, in fact, is the permanent office of Panorama, a Russian-language weekly newspaper that Polovets has published since 1980.
Polovets, who says he worked in various publishing houses in Moscow, left the Soviet Union in 1976. Frumkin, originally from Lithuania, has been here since 1949. Recently retired from the textile business, he has been an activist on behalf of Soviet Jews for years, serving as chairman of the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews. In his many public statements and writings about the Soviet regime there seem to be two constant threads: The Soviets are not to be trusted and Americans are constantly hoodwinked by Soviet propaganda.
The introductory essay describes the Soviet Union as an enigma, “a workers paradise that does not allow its citizens to leave for a Capitalist Hell,” “a society that extols equality but has a ruling class that lives in luxury while old women pave its streets,” “a racist state that nevertheless proclaims the Brotherhood of Man and usurps the word Peace.”
If not backlash, what then?
“Healthy realism, based on direct knowledge,” Frumkin said, acknowledging that “much of the press describes us as Cold Warriors who see a Commie under every bed. We’re not trying to convert. I’m not necessarily anti-Soviet. I just think they’ve got a lousy government, and that’s finally being recognized by all those who were telling us (former Soviet Premier) Brezhnev was great. They are saying now the same things we’ve been saying for 10 years.”
“We’re not sure of the nature of this glasnost,” Polovets said, adding that so far it has surprised him. He sees the reform movement as part of something cyclical in Soviet, and Russian, history, something long overdue. “I just hope this part of the cycle lasts longer.”
While it lasts, at least, there will be plenty to publish. THEM draws from the Soviet press, policy analysts living outside the Soviet Union and works that have been smuggled out of the country, Frumkin said, “that the Soviets would not print.”
Among the latter, in the first issue, is an eyewitness account of the recent uprising in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis. The article calls the particular incidents in the town of Sumgait a pogrom against the Armenians.
In another piece, a Soviet soldier in Afghanistan, later killed in action, writes about his experience there. The story was “rejected by the Soviet press, praised by his comrades-in-arms, smuggled out and published in the West,” first in West Germany, an editor’s note says.
From the Soviet press there are articles on emigration and its treasonable nature, prostitution as a public problem, and the frustrations and outrages of daily life.
Soviet emigres have written on the rise of fascism in the U.S.S.R. and a new Nazi movement among Soviet youth; on the intrinsic and essential nature of Soviet anti-Americanism, and on the unlikely possibility of the emergence of a middle class in the Soviet Union.
The First Issue
Also in the first issue: A piece on the “tragedy of Yugoslavia,” fiction by emigres, and a sampling of current underground jokes circulating in the Soviet Union.
THEM is intended for average Americans, Frumkin said, “the people who buy Time, Newsweek, and The Los Angeles Times.” For that reason, he and Polovets said, that have rejected some material as too intellectual.
“The average American does not get to talk to the average Soviet. The (American) press does not talk to them,” Frumkin explained, attributing this to a relatively still-closed society and language and cultural barriers that incline Americans to seek out their Soviet intellectual and class peers, and dissidents.
“What we are getting,” he said, “is an inclination to take the ideal and spoken for reality. It’s the easy thing to do. Reality is ascribed in terms that do not correspond to experience. For example, medical care is free. It’s another story what that medical care consists of. There is a right to work, yes. So five are hired to do one job. Finally, this is being published by the Soviets themselves, so maybe we’ll be believed now.”
There has been a “tremendous response” so far, the two editors said, with contributions coming in from the emigre community--$5, $10, $25, even a few in the hundreds--a fact that surprises both men since Soviets do not arrive here with philanthropy in their blood, they said.
“I can only interpret it that most immigrants feel Americans are singularly ill-informed about what goes on in the Soviet Union,” Frumkin said.
With actor-comedian Elya Baskin and a few others, they have formed the tax-exempt Foundation for Media Analysis to publish the magazine. They have 100 subscriptions ($12 for the first six issues), feelers from potential advertisers, and plans to put it on newsstands, compile mailing lists, approach foundations. The initial run for the first 48-page, illustrated, slick, full-color issue will be about 1,500.
“We’ll see what happens,” Polovets said, adding he will believe fully in glasnost when his publications are for sale on Soviet newsstands.