Editor:


Some of my Russian friends -- several of whom have had their wages held back for months, face the threat of unemployment or whose children are suffering from bad schooling due to the lack of finance -- are asking who is paying for the special importing of two Rolls-Royces complete with their own petrol supplies to convey the queen around Moscow. Who is paying for the special cleaning of the Red Square that Mrs. Windsor is due to visit? Do schools get repaired only because some rich landowner from abroad wishes to meet ordinary Russians?


They are right to ask. The Russian government should pay its own debts to its workers first before splashing out on undertakings such as the royal visit. If, as I suspect, the British government is footing some of the bill, then that too goes against the wishes of much of the British population, who in the past few years have been more vocal in their opposition to the huge cost of the royal family.


It is particularly distasteful to see this unelected head of state visiting Russia, giving diplomatic and other support to a president who only a year ago bombed his own parliament into submission and whose entourage is openly toying with postponing elections for who knows how many years.


It is the height of hypocrisy for a member of the British monarchy to come to Russia to support "democratic reforms." Their own "democratic" credentials are very doubtful. Mrs. Windsor's mother was a keen supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Mr. Windsor is well known for his reactionary views. Mr. Windsor's uncle, Lord Mountbatten was, according to the British Sunday Times, a leading light in a planned coup d'etat against the then British Labor Government in 1968. It was Mrs. Windsor herself who, through her representative in Australia, sacked the then Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1975.


Given the record of the British royal family, it is not surprising that many Britons have began to question the need for the monarchy. These doubts have been strengthened by the money-grasping attitude of members of the royal family and their hangers-on; by their demands for state money to rebuild Windsor Castle after a recent fire; by the hypocritical comments of Prince Phillip, married to the richest woman in the world, who thinks that poverty no longer exists in Britain; by the moral teachings of a family riddled with failed marriages.


This visit, in my mind, is designed to create the impression amongst the Russian people that there is nothing wrong with having an unelected head of state who lives divorced from the realities of life. It is designed to help rehabilitate the idea of monarchy. I am certain we will wait in vain for a condemnation of her relative Tsar Nicholas II, who presided over the bloody crushing of protest movements against his autocratic rule, who financed and encouraged the Black Hundred and their anti-Jewish pogroms. I am sure we will not hear a condemnation of the vile anti-Semitism that echoes around Russia's corridors of power today, most recently voiced by the archbishop of Petersburg, who blamed the collapse of the ruble on a Jewish conspiracy. Neither, for that matter, will she denounce Russian monarchists, who are calling for the return of the autocracy. Instead her visit will serve to bolster such people.


Therefore, I for one, as a British citizen, will be making clear to my Russian friends and colleagues that the money spent on this trip would have been better spent on schools, housing and healthcare and that it probably won't be long before the British state is modernized to become a republic.


Robert Jones


Moscow


Editor:


I'll never forget the day when I received a letter from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II responding to a letter that I had sent her along with some of my poems. I had written to her about my lifelong interest in England and the cultural heritage of the English people from Shakespeare to the present day.


I told the queen about my difficult, but happy fate. As a child, I lost both legs during a German air raid on Moscow. Nonetheless, I finished school and an institute, and then became a poet. At the time of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, I wrote a poem about sport and peace that was turned into the song "Shine On, Planet of Sport," which was heard throughout the world.


I wrote to the queen about the importance of peace, without which human happiness is impossible, and sent her my best regards. She wrote back saying that she had read my poems attentively and appreciated my warm regard for the English people. To this day I treasure that letter as a token of the past and am planning to visit England in the near future in order to become better acquainted with life there and to see for myself the treasures of that beautiful country. In the meantime, I once again send my warmest greetings from Moscow to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and to her entire nation.


Igor Mikhailusenko


Moscow