THE FATE OF FAMILIES

Late last week a brown Volvo rolled through the snowy streets of a Vermont ski village and stopped in front of a restaurant, where TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin was waiting. A hazel-eyed woman got out and greeted Levin with a manuscript. She was Natalya Solzhenitsyna, 37, wife of the famed Russian author and exiled dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. With their three children (ages 6, 4 and 3) and her 14-year-old son, the Solzhenitsyns now live and work in Vermont. At TIME'S request, Mrs. Solzhenitsyna wrote about the families of Soviet dissidents and what can be done to help them. Here are her words, translated from the Russian:

People in the West occasionally hear of the cruel conditions in Soviet labor camps: about prisoners being tortured by hunger and cold, about the denial of medical care to sick prisoners and about forced psychiatric treatment of perfectly sane people in mental hospitals. But very little is known about the frightening fate of political prisoners' families--of their wives and children and aged parents.

In the U.S.S.R., a sentence for a political offense is always a sentence against the offender's family. Persecution against them starts immediately. Not only has the family lost its main provider but often the wife also loses her job. She has to feed her children, but she cannot find another job because there is but one employer--the state.

But instead of dwelling on the bitter list of sufferings, I would like to invite you to share with a prisoner's wife a rare moment of joy. If the prisoner has in no way aroused the wrath of the camp authorities, once a year he has the right to receive a visit from his family members. You can easily imagine how eagerly his wife or mother waits for that encounter. But the trip to the distant camps is lengthy and costly. And what about the children? Somebody has to take care of them while their mother is away, and she is lucky if she still has some true friends left to do her the favor: the KGB does its best to frighten them away. Of course, she can take her child with her, but she knows that her little daughter can be subjected to the same body search that is in store for her. Even if she somehow manages to provide for her family's needs, this one trip will completely upset her budget. And she will have to go on somehow, repeating to her children: "Your father is an honest man who wished his country well." This will continue for years: five, seven, ten, 15 years.

Such relentless pressure on political prisoners' families is not just the regime's revenge against those who oppose it. It is far-sighted strategy. Those people who do not fear for themselves must fear for their families; they must know that their wives and children will go hungry, cold and homeless, will be subjected to humiliation, so it is better to give up any thought of dissent.

The Russian Social Fund, created in 1974 in Switzerland by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is dedicated to helping the families of political prisoners. I am the managing director of the fund. Alexander turned over to it all his income from the publication of The

Gulag Archipelago. Fees for his speeches, articles and public appearances are also turned over to the fund.

Alexander Ginzburg, the poet who was arrested in early February, was the fund's main representative in the U.S.S.R. Material help is distributed to political prisoners' families there only with great difficulty; the authorities are not prepared to tolerate help to their victims. Families are threatened: if you accept help, so much the worse for your relative in camp. Very few people had the courage to accept help directly from the fund. They received it, instead, through Ginzburg, who acted with remarkable courage and self-dedication. He never sought renown in the West, in order not to jeopardize his humanitarian work. But he is in need of active help now. The charges against him are false. A harsh sentence is to be expected. His family, wife and two small sons have no means of subsistence. And it is not only Ginzburg who needs the defense of the free world. That defense is necessary to help all prisoners and their families.

During the last few years, the prevailing view in the U.S. was that one should not anger the Soviet Union by mentioning human rights, that the failure to do so would make the Soviet leadership more conciliatory and open to negotiation. This view allowed much of what was happening in the U.S.S.R. to be passed over in silence.

Now it is said that the defense of human rights in the U.S.S.R. is important, but that there is no direct connection between it and other issues between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. However, I believe that there is a connection: if the population of the Soviet Union could really use its proclaimed but nonexistent right to voice its opinion, the Soviet leadership would no longer be free to make arbitrary use of the country's resources.

The Soviet Union has many serious problems: the population does not have enough to eat, Soviet agriculture is obsolete, hostility between ethnic groups is increasing. The regime does not solve the problems--it simply prevents them from being raised. Every Soviet citizen from childhood on is well aware that if he voices his dissatisfaction he ends up in jail. In the U.S., a cold winter and fuel shortage immediately become a national problem that is examined by the President and the Congress. In the U.S.S.R., people have not had enough food or clothing for 60 years, but their dissatisfaction concerns only the KGB.

If the people of the Soviet Union could defend their rights without the threat of prison, Soviet leaders would be compelled to concentrate on solving the country's internal problems. But they cannot do so with what remains, to the free world's hazard, a war economy. That is why the West has a direct interest in the possibility that the people of the U.S.S.R. will be able to make use of their natural, human right of free expression.

I spent 34 years of my life in the U.S.S.R. I lived in Moscow, where life is by far easier than in the rest of the country. But even so, I have seen around me much sorrow and despair, and many lives destroyed. The force that destroyed these lives is trying to expand, and it is difficult for me to understand the free world's shortsightedness.

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