For example: In one scene, Bonner signals for silence and points to light fixture, indicating the probably placement of a KGB microphone. I had exactly the same experience in 1991, at the apartment of a Russian friend in Moscow. Given the sophisticated technology of today and the Bushevik obsession with secrecy and surveillance, how can we expect to be secure in our private conversations? Even as late as the mid-nineties, after the fall of the Soviet regime, I was advised by my Russian friends always to assume that my mail to Russia, both e-mail and postal, would be read by government agents. Of course, at the time I had no such concerns about my domestic mail back home. No longer. Like my friends in Moscow and St. Petersburg, I must now expect that my mail might be read and that my phones might be tapped.
Sakharov 's writings were smuggled out and published abroad but were not published in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Soviet government and media launched a relentless campaign of insult and denunciation against the Sakharovs. Not all that different from the attacks against Gore ( "invented the internet ") and Kerry ( "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "). In fact, as Jamison Foser clearly indicated and documented in Media Matters last week, any Democrat who achieves prominence can expect to be insulted and attacked in the mainstream media.
One of the most chilling practices of the Brezhnev/Andropov regimes was the incarceration of political dissenter in psychiatric institutions. In the movie, two of Sakharov 's associates "play-acted " an interrogation of a dissident by a KGB psychiatrist:
"Patient: " Why me? I followed the Constitution to the letter!
"Interogator: " But what normal person takes Soviet law seriously? You are living in an unreal world of your own invention. You must be insane! Lock him up.
P. I 'm not insane. Ever since I made my first legal protest, you 've hounded me.
I. Who has?
P. The KGB. I 've been followed. I 've been photographed.
I. ... Obviously paranoid. For his own good, lock him up.
P. All because I don 't agree with the state?
I. Exactly! You are in conflict with society.
P. Some of our greatest socialist leaders were in conflict with society. Lenin himself...
I. You compare yourself to Lenin? Delusions of grandeur. Obviously insane. Lock him up.
Could never happen here, you say? Not yet. But consider the "journalistic " response to Al Gore 's speech to MoveOn on, May 26, 2004.
Charles Krauthammer (on FOX News): It looks as if Al Gore has gone of his lithium again.
