BRAT PACK IN MOSCOW

So the Hollywood “brat pack” has taken it upon itself to show Americans that the Soviet “people aren’t ogres but ‘just like us’ ” (“The Brat Pack’s Moscow Mission,” by Ronald Brownstein, Jan. 22). This truth has provided the moral foundation for the policies of the Cold War. For if Russians and other subjects of the Soviet empire are just as human as we are, how can any decent human being tolerate a government that denies him the right to select his leaders, to express ideas freely, to hear diverse points of view, to practice religion and to emigrate? How many Soviet apologists in this country would stand for the denial of these basic human rights by their own government? It is the “peace” activists who, by trivializing the importance of freedom, have demonstrated an appalling lack of sympathy for the Soviet people. While most of the “brat packers” appear to have had their eyes opened by their Moscow trip, others have yet to shed their moral blinders and remain content to resign others to a fate that they would never accept for themselves.

DAVID B. COHEN

Los Angeles