The Glasnost Papers: Voices on Reform from Moscow

There is now open public debate in the Soviet Union on such topics as the arms race, the role of the military in society, individual rights, emigration, the economy and the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Samizdat, no longer criminal, is growing closer to respectable self-publishing. The social and political ferment is captured in a compendium of articles excerpted from mainstream Soviet newspapers and journals, combined with essays, readers' letters and unifying commentaries by Melville, vice-president of the Soviet Peace Committee, and Lapidus, political scientist at UC-Berkeley. While contributors sometimes raise crucial issues only to retreat into timid or inconclusive formulations, this collage, though not well-organized, is a historic document. Revealing the novelty of the present social-political scene in the U.S.S.R., it is also a distillation of the broad-based activity shaping a ``revolution from below.'' (Sept.)