Muffled Voicesn”The Noise of the City Cannot BenHeard” was the title of a very popularnsong in the Soviet Union just afternWorld War II. According to AleksandrnSolzhenitsyn, the song was so much inndemand that “no singer, even the mostnmediocre, could perform it withoutnreceiving enthusiastic applause.” ThenSoviet Chief Administration ofnThoughts and Feelings was puzzled bynall this, yet permitted performance ofnthe song until “suddenly they discoverednwhat it was all about—and theynimmediately crossed it off the permittednlist.” It seems that the songwriternhad treated the theme of the “doomednprisoner” in the Gulag with a slynallusiveness quickly decoded by thenmasses but mihally escaping detechonnby the literal-minded censors. Thensuccessful honest writer in Eastern Europenresembles Leo Strauss’s Maimonides:nhis works have one message onnthe surface, but here and there encodednmessages are inserted to alert thencognoscenti. Today the struggle to expressnforbidden truths continues in thenSoviet Union, Eastern Europe,nChina, and Nicaragua, as well as inn481 CHRONICLES OF CULTUREnTYPEFACESnmany noncommunist states. Monitoringnthese courageous efforts are annumber of magazines and newslettersndeserving wider attention andninfluence.nIndex on Censorship might well benconsidered the flagship of this doughtynfleet of periodicals. Edited by GeorgenTheiner and published by Writers &nScholars International Ltd. (a nonprofitninstitution headquartered innLondon), every monthly issue of thenIndex exposes repression of writers,nintellectuals, and believers throughoutnthe world—in Russia and China, innYugoslavia and Poland, in Pakistannand Taiwan. The litany of oppressionn—of writers imprisoned years for ansingle poem or short story, of trials innwhich the verdict is decided before thencharges, of abductions and torture, ofnveiled threats and mysterious deathsn— is unquestionably grim. On thenother hand, it is not depressing: evennin the worst of circumstances there arenmen and women who dare to affirmnthe supreme worth of liberty andntruth, even if expressed only in crudelyntyped manuscripts circulated furtivelynamong friends. In a typical issue of thenIndex, we can read a poem by thenNobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert (“InnLenin’s Mausoleum”) that has beennbanned in his native Czechoslovakia,nwe are privy to an anonymous reportndocumenting the pervasive state coercionnof thought in Saudi Arabia, andnwe can learn of the methods employednin Nigeria, Uganda, and Thailand toncensor their news. If anything, thenIndex is evenhanded to a fault in itsncoverage of state controls on expression.nConsidering the record of unmitigatedntyranny compiled by communism,nreaders may wonder about thenIndex’s decision to publish interviewsnand articles sympathetic to the Marxistnguerrillas in El Salvador in recentnissues. As the dismal chain of events innNicaragua has shown, the triumph ofnsuch guerrillas could only mean anothernsamizdat nation.nReports of artistic, intellectual, andnnnreligious repression may also be foundnin the bimonthly Freedom at Issuenedited by James Finn. Included arenappeals from Cuban political prisonersnand informative accounts of forcednlabor in the growing Soviet nuclearnindustry, of the numerous abductionsnand deaths linked to Nicaraguan authorities,nand of the harrassment andnimprisonment of Christian priests andnlaymen in Russia. But because FreedomnHouse, the institution that publishesnFreedom at Issue, aims atn”strengthening democratic institutions,”nthe magazine is broader innfocus than Index on Censorship.nArticles on the health of democracy innIndia, on the need for civic educationnin America, or on the proper strategynfor arms negotiators dealing with thenSoviets appear alongside the reportsndescribing the threats in various countriesnto free inquiry and expression.nUnique to Freedom at Issue is an annualnsurvey of “Freedom Around thenWorld,” in which every state is ratednon seven-point scales for political andncivil freedoms and then classified asn”free,” “partiy free,” or “not free.”nResults are tabulated in a useful comparativenchart and translated into anschematic map. (The most recent surveynpointed to “two of the most importantntrends in recent years: the erosivendecline of freedom in most of Africanand the progress of freedom in thenAmericas.”)nFreedom House also assists in thenproduction of Survey: A ]ournal ofnEast & West Studies, published quarterlynin London in cooperation withnthe Institute for European Defence &nStrategic Studies. Here Americannscholars such as Edward Rozek andnCarl Gershman join with such leadingnEuropean thinkers as Alain Besangon,nGiuseppe Are, and editor LeopoldnLabedz in analyzing political and culturalnissues in the West and East, withnparticular emphasis on the challengenof Soviet communism. Though devotednless to investigative exposure of statenoppression and more to scholarly re-n