Letter from R.I. Kosolapov to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, "Comrade" M.S. Gorbachev (1986)To the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade M.S. Gorbachev
Dear Mikhail Sergeevich!
For several months now I have felt an urgent need for a frank conversation with you (even a brief one) about the nature and direction of the work of "Kommunist" in the current conditions. Usually the editor-in-chief of the magazine was invited for such a conversation by the newly elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Rumors persistently leak out from academic and literary, journalistic and even church circles, from foreign embassies about me as a "disgraced" editor, who "backed the wrong horse", came "out of place", etc. These rumors cannot help but make the Kommunist workers nervous and affect their attitude toward the editorial board. I must immediately note that I have never backed any "horses", have never attached myself to any "courts", have never belonged to any group, and have always considered myself a party man. All comrades who are impartial toward me, who have observed my behavior over the course of twenty years of work in the Central Committee apparatus, know this. The fact that I, like other party members, carried out the orders of the three previous general secretaries, cannot discredit me.
Of course, I did not contact you for career reasons. They have not played a role in my life. I am concerned with something else - maintaining the authority of the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the trust in it of the readership that has grown in the last period, and the maximum use in the interests of the party of the potential of a talented, combat-ready team, which we have basically managed to put together over the past ten years.
Over the course of a quarter of a century, since my first major publication, in addition to the positive development of theoretical issues, I have had the opportunity to participate, to the best of my ability, in polemics against right and “left” opportunism, versions of Yugoslav and market socialism, Maoism, Czechoslovak revisionism, “Eurocommunism.” Against voluntary and involuntary burps of petty bourgeoisness, erroneous interpretations of current problems, which, alas, are still encountered, and sometimes intensified, in our press.
Thus, at the end of the 60s, I spoke out
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