destroy the absolute control currently exercised by the Soviet government; in addition, the basic premises of such a system are antithetical to orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
Although To Defend These Rights purports to do little more than analyze the Soviet legal system, in reality Chalidze describes in chilling detail the effects of totalitarianism on not only those in opposition to the government but the silent majority of the citizens. This portrait of a society in which any individual choice is for all intents and purposes eliminated is rendered all the more horrifying by the restraint and precision with which it is outlined. Man’s ability to resist the state’s encroachments upon his freedoms has always been tenuous, and Chalidze believes that Communism, because it implicitly accepts those principles by which governments have suppressed their citizens for centuries (“with us or against us,” “the end justifies the means,” “the interests of the state above all”), presents a dangerous threat to the cause of all human rights on an international scale. The publicizing of the sufferings endured by the Russian people at the hands of their government in To Defend These Rights and other writings by Soviet dissidents, if it cannot improve the situation in Russia, may at least serve as a warning, Chalidze hopes, for those who would sacrifice civil and political rights in order to gain a rather dubious economic equality. □
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