Early in 1969 the Sunday Times of London printed three lengthy articles about recent intellectual developments in the Soviet Union.' They were written by an anonymous Western journalist, resident in Moscow, and constitute one of the most perceptive pieces of reporting on the Soviet scene by a non-Russian in recent years. He describes with rare sensitivity, the current plight of the intellectuals, but his general thesis is that their hopeless isolation forbids their exercising effective pressure or having any influence on the Soviet government. This reporter writes: There is, finally, the argument that the current repression is the beginning of the dictatorship's death throes: that the old guard is losing its grip. . . I have heard this hypothesis often enough in the Westbut never in Russia, either from men who operate the dictatorship or who suffer from it. Whatever the dictatorship's prospects in the longest run, there is little hope in Moscow for its demise in this century. Despite the alienation of intellectuals and almost total expiration of revolutionary and ideological fervor, the dictatorship in many ways controls the country more completely than before.2