Profits in U.S.S.R.

I applaud Masha Hamilton’s article “Perils of Profit in U.S.S.R.” (Part A, March 31). It is clear that Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika’s greatest adversary is not Yegor Ligachev or other “hard-liners,” but rather is seven decades’ inculcation of Marxist-Leninist ideology into the Soviet people. It is the ideas of these men, not their disciples, that may ultimately defeat Gorbachev in his attempt to save the state they created.

Lenin may have failed economically but he has succeeded philosophically. Gorbachev’s economic reforms are doomed as well unless he conducts a purge--not of the Politburo or the Central Committee--but rather one of the minds of the Soviet people of the flawed ideas of the founders, political and philosophical, of the modern Soviet state.

JOHN T. TERLESKY

Studio City