A-1 (47)
from tim carter Saturday night 30 Sep. 1978
TUC [Trade Union Council] Silver Anniversary BarB-Q & Dance
Tim, Terry [Carter Jones], Debbie [Touchette], Jimmy [Jones Jr.], Yvette [Muldrow Jones], Eugene [Smith]
– As soon as we arrived and sat down at a table (next to where the Soviet Trade Union rep was sitting, and other TUC officials) the Soviet representative came over to our table, shook hands with everyone, and proceeded to sit down and talk with us. All together we must have talked for over two hours. He introduced us to the Cuban union delegate while we were talking.
– The Soviet representatives name is Igor . I had met him once previously when we had taken Mark Lane to dinner at the Tower and he was dining with Timofeyev. He recognized us immediately and was quite open with his friendship. He said he had heard much about us from Timofeyev, who he described as “a good guy who likes to drink a little once in a while” and who’s major language he said is Spanish, not English, so we should forgive him if his English was a little stilted. (This guy spoke flawless English.)
He said he had travelled all over the world representing the Soviet Trade Unions, and that he had also been to the USA several times, mostly concentrating in the Northeast. He asked us if we knew Dick Hongisto, and we said yes, etc., and he called Dick a “determinist” and a “liberal” but thought he was an OK guy. He said Hongisto had travelled to the Soviet Union only two days after he had been fired from his Cleveland job, and that now he was in charge of crime in Albany, New York. He said Hongisto admitted to him that he had Marx and Lenin in his library at home, and that socialism was a superior economic system, but Igor said he was too caught up in his comforts and bourgeois lifestyle to become a real socialist. He said that he liked the Soviet Union very much. I asked him if he knew Mike Davidow, and he said he did, very well.
He is going to be travelling to San Francisco in November of this year, and he said he would very much like to visit our people there, if it was O.K. with us and if we weren’t afraid of the political repercussions. I told him that we have had delegates of up to 25 Soviets at a time visiting our Temple, and that we were good friends with the Soviet-American Friendship Society, and that we were not ashamed of the our support for the Soviet Union, and that Jim had supported the Soviet Union for 25 years, and had never backed down from that. He seemed impressed by this, and he said that he would definitely be in touch with our people in November, and would look us up through the Soviet-American friendship society. Neither one of us could remember Noel Bransford’s name at the time.
He said that he had heard much about us, and that we were known throughout the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries. He said that news of us had been published in the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia and also ii Poland. He said that he had read an article in a Yugoslavian paper that had depicted us as sort of a hippy organization, one that had established a community where people shared things equally and lived collectively, etc. He kind of apologized, for the article, saying that the Soviet people understood why many of the bad things were said about our organization, but that the Yugoslavians were trying to report objectively. I was a little taken back that we were in any Yugoslav newspaper. He said more than once that the Soviet people understood why we were being attacked in the press and why so many bad. things were said about us. He said that we were quite a controversial organization. He said he knew we were Marxists, because Timofeyev had told him. I explained to him the background of the conspiracy briefly, Mark Lane’s independent investigation, etc. He didn’t seem bothered at all by whatever it was he might have heard, he was very, very friendly to us. At one point he even made the statement that “maybe I defect this country to live in Jonestown,” and then laughed to show he was joking, but it was a compliment.
I don’t know if he is a member of the CP, but I do know that he is a teacher for the Young Communist League and also for the trade unions in tire Soviet Union. He is not impressed with Guyana. He said that the country is definitely western oriented and definitely consumer conscious. He said that the political situation here was going downhill, that the economic situation was going downhill, but that the trade union unity situation was improving. He was very critical of the honoring of the scabs by Burnham. He talked of his conversations with Cheddi Jagan, saying he had several. He said the country was very much divided racially, and we told him about apanjat. He said he had heard of that, but wasn’t sure about its truth. We told him it was real, and he seemed to be very disapproving. He agrees that the Guyanese for the most part are very pro-US.
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A-1 (48)
[Reverse side of A-1 (47) is undated receipt for $19.80 for four cans of carbide, sent from US to Jonestown]
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A-1 (49)
He talked of the difference between Soviet people and Guyanese people. He said in the Soviet Union if it was necessary that some people work on weekends or for a day on the weekend, that the people always volunteered and did it with enthusiasm.
He said that they are making a big push for the Olympics, and that alot of hotels and other things are being built. He said that whether or not you’re a clerk, a miner, or whatever, everybody works on construction when something like this has to be done. He said that you will not find that kind of spirit in Guyana .
He said that he is definitely not religious, and was curious about our background, how we believed, etc. He wanted to know what a person was thinking when they believe in a god in the sky, as if he could not relate to it at all, which I believe he couldn’t. I explained to him how I came about atheism, and how I had been brainwashed as a child, etc. When I told him that Marxism-Leninism was the answer that I had been searching for all my life, but I just hadn’t recognized it, he seemed to appreciate what I was saying.
He talked of some of the problems of life in the Soviet Union. He was very concerned about those elements left in Soviet society that he termed “selfish’ and/or ”anarchistic”. He was concerned, for example, with the family that refused to send their child to a collective nursery or school – which is not obligatory – and that child is raised to be selfish, with an individualistic conscience instead of a collective one. He was also concerned about those in Soviet society who were brainwashed by Western propaganda into a consumer consciousness. He talked about some ballerinas who had defected to the US, and how you never run into that kind of problem with nine workers, or other labourers. He said that this wasn’t a real “problem” in Soviet society, but it was something that had to be dealt with. He said there are other e people who just invent things to be dissatisfied with, or to sympathize with dissenters for, because they have had a everything provided for them. They have guaranteed employment, guaranteed medical care, guaranteed housing, etc. (I’m not sure if I exactly followed his point here, but I got the idea I think.) He said that he felt that for sure 99% of the Soviet Union was no problem, and that only 1% were really troublemakers.
– he told of how an American friend had tried to use the Bible to tell him there was going to be a big war between the USSR, USA. and China. He kind of chuckled and then said “bullshit story”. It a was a crack up to hear him criticized the bible like that, he was very concerned about the China question. He said that they had accomplished some things domestically, but that they had made alliances with every fascist country in the world in their foreign policy, strictly on an anti-Soviet basis. We agreed with him, etc.
Edwin James was there, and he was quite friendly. He said he had tried twice to get to Jonestown but the plane was filled both times. He said that Sinclair did not have the time to visit when he was in the Northwest, as his schedule was very tight and shorter than he expected.
– he said that there is a delegation of Guyanese going to Turin, Italy in November for a special Congress of nations around the world to express solidarity with Chile, and discuss the Chilean question, and he said they had decided that one of the representatives they wanted to attend would be a delegate from Peoples Temple. He said he would be talking about this to us in the near future.
– he said that he had come under fire from Cheddi Jagan at the TUC meetings during the week for the helping to sponsor the DPRK Juche Idea seminar. Jagan attacked him because the DPRK is supposed to have ties with China, which is tied with all the imperialist countries and is anti-Soviet, and consequently the Juche idea is something that shouldn’t be supported. He said that Jagan was threatened by the success of the seminar (and it really was a success, there’s no doubt about it), and. so is attacking all those who helped make it a success. (I told him I didn’t understand