Soviet Union: What Are We Ashamed Of?

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A twice-wounded war vet complains that service to his country counts for nothing when he seeks an apartment for his young family. An amputee's brother claims that the wounded man's benefits were inexplicably downgraded. A construction worker says that when his son was killed in action, a newspaper refused him an obituary. Asks the father: "What are we ashamed of?"

Bitter vignettes from the American home front after Viet Nam? No, those complaints came last week from the pages of the Soviet Communist Party daily Pravda. They apparently were a bid to whip up concern for the sacrifices made by servicemen in the estimated 115,000-member Soviet force occupying Afghanistan. One letter writer from Volgograd wondered why tombstones of Soviet soldiers make no mention of service in Afghanistan. "The war is still going," she wrote, "and we are already trying to blot it from our memories."