Letter: Brecht dissolves the electorate

Neal Ascherson writes: "After the East Berlin rising in 1953, Bertolt Brecht is supposed to have made the ironic suggestion that the Communist regime should dismiss the people and appoint a new one." ("Are we the electorate they deserve?" 23 March). There's no supposed about it. These words are to be found in one of Brecht's most famous poems, "The Solution":

After the uprising of June 17th

The Secretary of the Authors' Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Which said that the people

Had forfeited the government's confidence

And could only win it back

By redoubled labour. Wouldn't it

Be simpler in that case if the government

Dissolved the people and

Elected another?

Philip Hoy

London N8