Soviet Union: Cracking Down

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Medvedev described the threat against him as part of a widespread crackdown. To the friends and foreign correspondents who flocked to his home after he returned from the prosecutor's office, the historian described police sweeps that are going on throughout the Moscow area and elsewhere in the country under Andropov's new Minister of Internal Affairs, Vitali Fedorchuk, who became notorious for brutal methods when he was KGB chief in the Ukraine. "You can't imagine the scale of these sweeps at stores, restaurants, movie houses and even the public baths," said Medvedev. The purpose of the raids is to root out individuals who do not possess residence permits to live in the capital and other major cities or who have taken time off from their jobs. Medvedev described one operation at the Univermag supermarket near his home. Two busloads of uniformed police swept down upon the shoppers and demanded to examine the internal passports every Soviet citizen must carry. Those whose papers were not in order, or who looked as if they should be at work, were herded into the buses and driven to the local police station. "These are actions that have no legal justification," Medvedev pointed out. "The police have a right to check a person's documents, but only if they suspect he or she has committed a crime."

In line with Andropov's determination to impose better labor discipline, the daily Sovietskaya Rossiya announced a new drive to round up alcoholics, tramps, drug addicts and other "social parasites" for treatment in special camps, to be followed by "corrective labor." The newspaper Trud (Labor) said that industrial managers would be held responsible for reporting alcoholics to the authorities.

In particular jeopardy were members of the small but active unofficial peace organization that sprang up last June under the name Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Its members have been harassed by the KGB for spontaneously forming a pacifist group outside the ranks of the official Soviet Peace Committee. Then, late last year, TASS launched a strong anti-Semitic attack on the pacifists, several of whom are Jewish. Though there is no evidence that the peace group members have a pro-Israeli bias, TASS made the claim that "while supposedly fighting for peace, they openly regret that they did not have an opportunity to take part in the bloody slaughter organized by the Zionists in occupied Lebanon." There is a fear that the current campaign characterizing the peace group as an anti-Soviet "Trojan horse" is intended to prepare public opinion for a trial of its members.