U.S. Assistance for Soviet Union

Eleanor Randolph’s column on the grim and sorry lives of Soviet women (Commentary, Nov. 18) had all its facts right but it was completely off in its basic premise. She says that “the Russian women’s officially equal status over the last seven decades is disintegrating daily . . . “ with the clear implication that the situation is somehow novel, and that, in the past, in the pre- glasnost days, women were better off.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The situation today is, if anything, somewhat better than it was in the past, as Soviet women become aware of women’s rights movements in the West and begin to speak out for change.

The Soviet women always had the right to dig ditches, work heavy machinery or pave roads on terms of complete equality with men. What the Soviet woman could not do, however, was to rise to higher and more responsible positions even when her education and background entitled her to do so.

I have lectured on the true situation in the Soviet Union for more that two decades, and I have always included the comment that I considered the Soviet women to be the most oppressed individuals on the face of the Earth. I bolstered my arguments by quoting the statistics presented by Randolph, statistics that did not in any way originate with perestroika but are a legacy of the 70 years of oppression.

SI FRUMKIN, Studio City