From the Managing Editor

By Henry Muller and Andrei Voznesensky Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

For more than three decades, Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky has combined genuine literary genius with political courage. When we met in Moscow earlier this year, we talked about, among other things, America, perestroika and the house in which we were having dinner, a mansion that was once home to Frol Kozlov, a crony of Nikita Khrushchev's. Voznesensky told the story of how Khrushchev had publicly denounced him for straying from the ranks of builders of communism.

Today Voznesensky's concerns are quite different. He is at the University of Pennsylvania for two months to lecture on Russian poetry, but his mind is on his homeland, which faces the bleakest winter in many years. The other day, shortly before George Bush announced up to $1 billion in food aid to the Soviet Union, Voznesensky came by my office in New York City with an illustration he had created, as well as a remarkable open letter to Americans. In this holiday season, I wanted to share both the illustration and the letter with TIME's readers worldwide.

Feed Perestroika!

My dear American friends, men and women of America:

My country is threatened by hunger. The stores are empty. Women spend hours in lines with little hope of getting anything. There is no meat. Soon there will be no milk in Moscow.

I'm asking for your help.

From the war, when I was a child, I still remember the taste of American powdered eggs, and we were saved by American canned meats. Stalin tried to beat the love for Americans out of us, but he couldn't destroy the memory of our stomachs. The memory of the stomach remains as long as a person lives.

Our family shared a suit jacket that came to us from the distribution of American clothing packages. Later it was turned into a coat for me, which I wore to school.

Help us, and today's children will remember you lovingly in the 21st century.

Why is there a crisis? It is the "logical" result of totalitarian economics. Stalin destroyed the best farmers in his camps. But not only that. This is payment for democratization, for uncensored newspapers, for free elections. The adherents of the camp system are sabotaging democratization and want to create popular unrest, anti-Semitism and civil war. In the woods outside Moscow, people found tons of rotting meat that had been dumped rather than allow it to reach the stores.

Help us. Feed perestroika.

Our country has committed horrible crimes; it created the Gulag; it threatened America with its missiles; but now it is another country, opening its heart to the world. Don't let it slide back into totalitarianism -- feed perestroika.

A few days ago, a telebridge devoted to high culture and mass culture took place among New York City, Los Angeles and Moscow. I was asked to open the evening with my poetry. I refused. I pictured the hungry eyes of Muscovites, the children hoping for food, the women standing in lines. You see, I simply couldn't talk to them about visuality, about my beloved Marcel Duchamp ((the French Dadaist)), when their eyes were filled with the need to find food.

Feed perestroika!

I know that you are going through a difficult time yourselves, but please help us. I appeal to my friends and fellow poets, to the cultural figures, writers, filmmakers, human-rights activists, businessmen and politicians who saved our culture more than once from political repression. I am convinced we'll survive, but help the nation of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Pasternak get through this winter.

This could be a parcel from a family in Maine; it could be a plane filled with food -- I don't know. Christmas is coming -- be Santa Claus for our children. Our countries are neighbors through the skies.

Allen Ginsberg, do you remember many years ago when we read our poetry at a fund raiser in St. George's Church to help the hungry of Bangladesh? It never occurred to me then that I would be asking for help for my country.

Feed perestroika.

Two private groups sending aid to the Soviet Union: CARE, Soviet Relief, 660 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016, 1-800-521-CARE; and AMERICARES Foundation, 161 Cherry Street, New Canaan, Conn. 06840, 1-800-486-HELP.