ABSTRACT
Michel Legris's book is a piece of polemical pamphleteering, but it uses many exact quotations and is never crudely argued. Le Monde's almost hysterical reaction in fact provided Michel Legris with his best argument; and it turned the book into a cause celebre. One apt point against Legris' book was made by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in his L'Express. In the first place, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has expressed definitive views on complex matters on which he lacks anything that can be called empirical knowledge. Solzhenitsyn told the Spaniards on Radio Madrid recently not to feel too badly about their present post-Franco political transition and to enjoy certain personal and cultural liberties which Soviet subjects hardly dare dream about. The censored passages included comments on the various Italian regions, the political parties, and the trade unions. The Solzhenitsyn testimony remains; the political implications remain to be discussed, or perhaps to be ignored.
