No More Learning

The contrast between Soviet socialism and fascism
receives perhaps its most striking exemplification in the
diametrically opposed policies of the two systems toward
racial and national minorities. The fascist states have
invariably set up discrimination against and persecution
of racial and national minorities as an intrinsic part of
their program and philosophy. Of course the outstanding
example was the cruel and hideous treatment of the Jews
in Hitler's Germany and in the extensive territories oc-
cupied by the Nazis during World War II. It is reliably
estimated that the Nazis killed off more than 6,000,000
Jews in Europe during the war years through planned
starvation or exposure in concentration camps or direct
slaughter by means of gas chambers, mass shootings and
the like.
Nazi racist doctrines, as contrary to scientific truth
as to moral principle, went far beyond legitimate national
pride in the historical achievements of the German people
and glorified the pure "Aryan" Germans as the chosen
of the earth and a master race therefore rightfully entitled
to rule the globe. The foundation-stone of Nazi politics,
ethics and biology was a colossal arrogance unmatched
in history. It was not Jews alone who were held in con-
tempt. At the 1936 Olympic Games Nazi officials accused
America of bad sportsmanship for entering "fleet-footed
animals," that is, Negroes, in the races. The subject
Czechs, Poles, Belgians, Dutch, French, Yugoslavs and
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AHD FASCISM
other conquered peoples in Hitler's "New Order" were
looked down upon as degenerate and treated as serfs
under a regime of terror. And the Nazis regarded as
inferior not only their most powerful enemies like the
English, Russians and Americans, but also their allies
such as the Italians and Japanese. The concepts of the
brotherhood of man and the equality of peoples can have
no possible place in fascist philosophy.
As we have observed, these concepts are cardinal prin-
ciples in the Soviet philosophy. From 1917 down to the
present the Soviets have bent every effort to overcome
the deep-seated racial prejudice and discrimination in-
herited from the Tsarist regime and to establish full
equality among the numerous peoples and nationalities
of the U. S. S. R. In both theory and practice ethnic de-
mocracy has been a constant preoccupation of the regime.
It is written into the Constitution and the law of the land;
it is a basic precept in Soviet education; it is an ideal
that has been reiterated by recognized leaders such as
Lenin and Stalin. And the Soviets consider ethnic de-
mocracy desirable not only at home, but also in the world
at large.
In 1942 Premier Stalin officially stated that the war
aims of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition must include
"abolition of racial exclusiveness" and "equality of na-
tions. " In 1944 he went into the question in further
detail, saying: "Soviet patriotism does not disunite, but
on the contrary consolidates all nations and nationalities
in our country into one single fraternal family. In this
should be seen the basis of the indestructible and still
stronger friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union. "1
And in speaking of Germany in this same speech, Stalin
brought out the Soviet opposition to hatred or prejudice
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
on the grounds of nationality: "The Soviet people hate
the German invaders not because they are people of a
foreign nation, but because they have brought our people
and all freedom-loving peoples misery and suffering. It
is an old saying of our people: 'The wolf is not bad
because he is gray, but because he ate the sheep. ' "2
A prime reason for Soviet influence among the yellow
and brown peoples of the colonial and semi-colonial
areas in the East is precisely that these peoples, all the
way from Iran to China, realize that the Soviets both
preach and practice racial equality and are opposed to
the arrogant fascist attitude as well as to imperialistic
exploitation by any nation, white or non-white. All in
all we can assert that Soviet policies toward racial and
national groups, in both the domestic and international
fields, offer the greatest contrast to those of Nazism and
fascism.
Another sphere in which Soviet socialism and totali-
tarian fascism are at opposite poles is in the treatment
of women. The fascist position is that the female sex is
inherently inferior to the male. In Hitler's Germany
there was a decided intensification of the traditional
view that women are fit only for the well-known trinity of
"Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" (Children, Kitchen, Church).
Family life in the fascist countries has centered around
the needs and desires of the male partner and the breed-
ing of children to augment the fighting man-power of
the war-making state. The fascist dictators, while crying
out one day that their people were being suffocated for
lack of space or "Lebensraum," on the next were urging
all mothers to bear more and more children. At the same
time, under the Nazis, women were dismissed or barred
from all important governmental posts and were auto-
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AHD FASCISM
matically paid lower wages than men in the limited
types of job open to them.
In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, the principle
of full equality between the sexes is upheld. As we saw
in our discussion of the Soviet Constitution, the impor-
tant category of sex democracy is embodied in that docu-
ment. * The actualization of women's rights in the U. S.
S. R. is ensured by affording women equally with men the
right to work, fair remuneration, rest, recreation, social
insurance and education; and by government guarantees
for the welfare of mother and child, pregnancy leave
with pay, and ample maternity homes, nurseries and kin-
dergartens. The economic, legal, political and social
position of women is at opposite poles from the status
they have in any fascist country.
One of the first steps which the Nazi regime took to
crush democracy was to destroy the trade unions, root
and branch. This enabled the individual employer un-
der fascism to exploit the workers according to his own
free, profit-motivated will; and enabled the state, repre-
senting the dominant business groups as a whole, to go
ahead with its armament and aggression programs un-
hampered by organized opposition from the working
class. In place of the old trade unions the Nazis estab-
lished fake workers' organizations with control from the
top down and with democratic procedures as completely
absent as in the nation at large. Italian fascism had a
similar set-up.
Unlike the fascist states, the Soviet Union has from
its earliest days, as part of its emphasis on economic
democracy, placed unceasing reliance upon the trade
unions and encouraged their growth in membership and
? See p. 77
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
influence. A far larger proportion of wage and salary
earners are members of trade unions than in any other
country. In 1949, out of some 33,500,000 eligible for
membership (and this excludes agricultural workers,
except those on State farms), about 28,500,000 or more
than 85 percent belonged to one of the sixty-seven dif-
ferent unions. Membership in a trade union is of course
voluntary. While industries are publicly owned, the
trade unions carry on collective bargaining with the
managements of factories and other enterprises over
wages, hours and working conditions.
The official Soviet labor code enacted into legislation
is so comprehensive that it covers many matters that in
the United States and other nations are subject to collect-
ive bargaining between trade unions and management.
Contrary to the general impression abroad, strikes are
not illegal, but are expressly authorized by law as one
means of enforcing compliance with labor legislation.
However, very few strikes actually take place for the
reason that a workers' government is in power, that the
elimination of the private profit motive eliminates the
chief factor in management's resisting legitimate demands
on the part of labor, and that there is on the whole an
identity of interest between labor and management for
maintaining maximum, uninterrupted production. In
England under the Labor Government, whose main
political support lay in the trade union movement, a
similar tendency was observable for labor-management
problems to be settled before they spilled over into the
wasteful procedure of strikes.
In 1933 the Soviet Government, indicating its high
opinion of the trade unions, turned over to them the
entire administration of social insurance benefits, which
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AND FASCISM
so substantially supplement regular wage income. More-
over, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions
itself drafts the annual government appropriation bill for
social insurance. Thus the trade unions as such play a
direct and important part in the functioning of the Gov-
ernment and in the carrying out of state services on be-
half of the public. The trade unions are also active in
various community enterprises such as the maintenance
of factory restaurants, cultural centers and recreational
facilities.
3. The Other Contrasts
The differing attitudes of Soviet socialism and fascism
towards trade unions tie in naturally with their contrast-
ing positions in regard to the proletariat and the class
struggle. Far from having any particular love for the
working class, the fascists continued to exploit it to the
utmost and keep it "in its place. " The Nazis insisted
on establishing the "leadership principle" in industry,
which meant in effect setting up each capitalist boss as
a little fuehrer in his own right. The fascists wanted to
forget the class struggle, and their "corporate state"
represented an attempt to reconcile divergent class inte-
rests on behalf of capitalism. They never pretended that
they were backing the proletariat or trying to eliminate
the bourgeoisie and create a classless society.
But Soviet socialism from the start has proclaimed
its primary reliance on the working class both in over-
throwing the old government and in instituting the new.
No slogan has been more honored in the Soviet Union
than Marx's "Workers of the world, unite! " Whether
one supports or condemns proletarian class struggle, it is
incontestable that the Soviet Communists have given
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
primary stress to that struggle as a means for the attain-
ment of socialist power and for the eventual achievement
of a completely classless commonwealth. Indeed Marxist
and Soviet theoreticians make so much of the class
struggle that they give it a central place in their highly
developed philosophy of history known as Historical
Materialism. There is nothing in fascism remotely cor-
responding to all this.
Still another fundamental difference between Soviet
socialism and fascism lies in the functioning and objec-
tives of their respective economic systems. In the fascist
countries, although there is a considerable increase in
state controls, the main means of production and distri-
bution remain in the hands of individual capitalists; and
the decisive economic power is wielded by a small group
of reactionary businessmen, in particular the armament
monopolists, working closely with the government. Eco-
nomic enterprise is run for profits and super-profits to
enrich the few at the expense of the people as a whole.
The partial planning of fascism has for its chief pur-
pose the accumulation of colossal armaments and the
waging of aggressive war. This means in effect planning
for poverty as well as for war, since the workers are ex-
pected and required to subordinate their entire existence
to the needs of the state for enhanced military resources.
Here General Goering's famous phrase "Cannon instead
of butter" well expressed the basic principle. In fact,
living standards and real wages in Germany, Italy and
Japan declined steadily under fascism. There can be
intense industrial activity and lack of unemployment in
fascist states due to the stimulus of armaments and war;
but such shots in the arm do not indicate any lasting
way out of underlying economic difficulties.
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AH. D FASCISM
In the Soviet Union social-economic planning is truly
nation-wide and has for its aim the achievement of secur-
ity and abundance for all the people. This planning is for
use, not profit; and it proceeds on the basis of the collect-
ive ownership and operation of the natural resources, the
agricultural lands, the industries and the means of dis-
tribution. There are no capitalists left. The great Five-
Year Plans were able spectacularly to increase production,
though unfortunately much of the industrial output had
to go into armaments and defense. But the successful
functioning of the economy does not depend on the stim-
ulus of armaments, the piling up of which naturally
holds back to one degree or another the standard of liv-
ing in terms of consumer goods.
The long and short of it is that in Soviet Russia there
exists a full-fledged socialist economy, while under fas-
cism the capitalist system continues--a capitalism which
is in its last stages of decay, desperation and imperialism
and which has eliminated all vestiges of democracy.
Those who declare that the Soviet and fascist states are
basically the same are essentially making the ridiculous
statement that there is no real difference between a social-
ist economic system and one which remains fundamen-
tally capitalist.
The retrogression of culture under book-burning, art-
killing, genius-banishing fascism offers a dramatic con-
trast to the general development of culture under Soviet
socialism. As one of the Nazi leaders put it: "When I
hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver. " Hitler's
anti-Semitic terror caused brilliant German intellectuals,
like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, to emigrate;
imprisoned others in concentration camps; and drove
still others to suicide. The Nazi police-state naturally
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
banned the work of Jewish writers and artists, even of
figures long dead like the composer Mendelssohn and
the poet Heine.
In the fascist states the whole of education from the
tenderest years to the more mature, from physical train-
ing to reading in the classics, is turned into a glorification
of military conquest and the attuning of mind and body
to the ferocities of war. And the appreciation of Nature
is transformed into a study of military strategy in the
open country. Since fascism is anti-democratic in its very
essence, there is no room where it rules for such a thing
as cultural democracy. The people are viewed as innately
inferior and incapable of developing the mental capacity
or aesthetic sensitivity to comprehend the higher intel-
lectual and artistic pursuits.
Hand in hand with the tremendous material progress
of the Soviets has gone a cultural expansion of equally
great proportions. The Communist regime has brought
about a true cultural revolution by making art and
literature, the drama and the opera, music and the ballet
a shared asset and enjoyment for all of the people. The
cultural awakening has extended to tens of millions of
formerly ignorant and primitive peasants as well as
to the once backward minority peoples. The total num-
ber of students in a vastly expanded system of higher
educational institutions was over 1,000,000 in 1951, more
than nine times the figure of Tsarist days.
A fundamental educational aim is to teach the popu-
lation the facts and methods of modern experimental
science. And Soviet science in general has made mighty
strides since 1917. It is, moreover, science geared to the
service of the people; it has no prior obligation, as under
fascism, to the enterprise of aggressive war and of profits
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AN? D FASCISM
for the few. The ultimate goal is to build, on the founda-
tions of economic security and equilibrium,, a culture
of socialist Humanism unequalled in qualitative achieve-
ment and in the proportion of the people participating
as creators and sharers.
One index of the quality of a civilization has always
Deen the nature and level of its philosophic thinking.
The fascists never worked through a consistent, over-all
view of man and the universe. The Nazi philosophy, if
we can call it that, was a weird mixture of pseudo-scien-
tific mumbo-jumbo and the misleading, compensatory
myths of supernaturalism. Nazis who turned against
Christianity substituted for it ancient tribal superstitions
like the worship of Wotan. And central to the Nazi way
of life was the mystic concept of pure and impure races,
of the innate inferiority or superiority of certain peoples,
of the Jews as the most degraded race on earth and the
"Aryan" Germans as the most glorious. In Italy and
Spain the fascists in general accepted the backward super-
naturalist doctrines of Catholicism and maintained the
preeminent position of the Catholic Church in religion
and education.
The Soviet Union, however, as we have clearly seen,*
teaches an advanced, rigorously thought out philosophy
of life known as Dialectical Materialism, first formulated
by Marx and Engels in the nineteenth century. Dialect-
ical Materialism, with deep roots in the earlier Material-
isms of ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Western Eu-
rope, is based primarily on modern science and the ex-
perimental method. The ponderous phrase Dialectical
Materialism really means Dynamic Materialism; it
stresses the ceaselessly active, ever-changing, onrushing
* See pp. 130-131.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
quality of life and existence in contrast to more mechan-
ical and static interpretations given by certain philos-
ophies of the past. This Soviet philosophy is anti-theo-
logical and anti-religious. Hand in hand with it goes
opposition to the church and to religious teaching; and
insistence upon the separation of church and state, and
of church and education. Only an upside-down logic
could possibly equate these aspects of socialism with
fascist practices.
Closely related to our discussion of the cultural, in-
tellectual and philosophic superiority of Soviet socialism
over fascism are the respective merits of representative
fascist and Soviet leaders. Compare, for example, Adolf
Hitler, the Nazi Fuehrer, Benito Mussolini, the fascist
Duce, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign
Minister, with Vladimir I. Lenin, first head of the Soviet
Republic, Joseph V.
Stalin, Soviet Premier since 1941
and Generalissimo during the Second World War, and
Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Foreign Minister from 1930 to
1939.
In contrast to these figures, Hitler, Mussolini and von
Ribbentrop were ignoramuses and demagogues. Both
the German and Italian dictators were strutting sawdust
Caesars cowing the population under their sway by bom-
bastic oratory and fierce appeals to the violent emotions.
The mental content in their speeches and writings was
always at a minimum. Von Ribbentrop was a small-
minded peddler of hate and distrust, a smooth plotter
against peace and the freedom of peoples, who ended up
properly on the gallows as a war criminal. These three
fascist adventurers betrayed the welfare of their own
countries as well as of Europe, leading their nations into
a war of aggression which in the end resulted in disaster
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AND FASCISM
and degradation for both Germany and Italy.
All three of the Soviet leaders mentioned stand out
as intelligent and educated, with broad social vision and
a keen understanding of the problems of the modern
world. Lenin and Stalin were rugged men of action dur-
ing a most tempestuous period of history and displayed
iron ruthlessness in putting across the Russian Revolu-
tion and in building socialism. Yet throughout their
careers they showed genuine statesmanship and an un-
ceasing concern for the welfare of the people. Both of
them carried on intellectual work of an impressive char-
acter and wrote books of real substance in philosophy
and other fields. Their speeches were usually quite calm
and without rhetoric, giving in plainest terms carefully
reasoned analyses.
After meeting Stalin, Wendell Willkie reported:
"On the personal side Stalin is a simple man, with no
affectations or poses. He does not seek to impress by any
artificial mannerisms. His sense of humor is a robust
one and he laughs readily at unsubtle jokes and re-
partee. "3 Certainly we must rank Stalin as a great
world leader with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill, while decrying the unending adulation of
the Soviet Premier within the U. S. S. R.
Maxim Litvinov, a charming and cultured person,
whom I talked with on several occasions when he was
Soviet Ambassador to the United States, made an out-
standing record in the sphere of international relations.
In the pre-19 39 years of fascist aggression, he became
mankind's most eloquent spokesman on behalf of peace
through collective security and earned the respect of the
Western democracies. Litvinov stands out as one of the
most impressive international statesmen and diplomats
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
during the era between the First and Second World Wars.
His death late in 1951 was a loss to all peace-loving
peoples.
So far as the personal lives of fascist and Soviet leaders
are concerned, I think that a brief passage from Ralph
Parker's Moscow Correspondent sums up the matter
rather well: "During the whole of the seven years I have
spent in Russia, I have never heard it suggested that
Party leaders abuse their power to provide themselves
with extravagant comforts. Not a breath of scandal is
breathed about the private lives of the rulers of Russia.
How different was the case in Nazi Germany, where, in
a single-party system, the rulers led lives of wild extrava-
gance and pomp, outraging the public with their ex-
penditures on mansions and mistresses! "4
Finally, Soviet socialism stands firmly for interna-
tional peace and cooperation among the peoples of the
earth in utter contrast to fascism's drive toward armed
aggression and the enslavement of peoples. Obviously it
was fascism's aggressive character and ambition for the
military domination of the world, aided by appeasement
on the part of the Western democracies, that brought on
the Second World War. The fascists have never made
any secret of the fact that war-making, like racial op-
pression, is a basic part of their philosophy. Mussolini
stated, "War is to man what maternity is to woman.
We reject the absurdity of eternal peace, which is foreign
to our creed and temperament. " His son Vittorio called
war "the most complete and beautiful of sports. " And
Hitler asserted that "in eternal struggle humanity has
grown to greatness; in eternal peace it will go down to
destruction. "
It cannot be denied that the German, Italian and Jap-
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM ANJD FASCISM
anese fascists carried out their philosophy of war to the
utmost of their ability. Their attacks upon Ethiopia,
Spain and China were simply previews of their world-
wide aggression in the Second World War. Hitler,
Mussolini and their satellites succeeded in transforming
the pleasant and plentiful continent of Europe into an
appalling welter of slaughter-house and cemetery, prison
and desert. On the other side of the globe, in China and
the Far East in general, the Japanese imperialists likewise
did their brutal best in depopulating the earth and
flaunting high the banner of barbarism.
On the other hand, the Soviet Republic, since its
birth in 1917, has been consistently opposed, in both
theory and practice, to international war. War is as
counter to its general self-interest as to its ethical ideals.
And it is impossible to find any statement by any re-
sponsible leader or citizen praising or glorifying war as
such. In the pre-war period of fascist aggression, the
Soviet Union loyally supported the principle, supposedly
embodied in the League of Nations, that peace, as Lit-
vinov said, is indivisible and can be preserved only
through genuine collective security, a banding together
of the peace-loving countries to stop any aggressor or
potential aggressor.
Since the victory in 1945 of the United States, Great
Britain, Soviet Russia and their allies over the Axis, the
U. S. S. R. has maintained its solid support of world peace.
While I believe that the Soviet Government has commit-
ted its share of errors in foreign policy, it has sincerely
striven to make the United Nations a functioning organ-
ization for collective security and enduring peace. All
the mountains of post-war propaganda about Soviet ag-
gression have failed to disclose a single act of military
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
aggression on the part of Soviet Russia since the close of
World War II. And the Soviets would be only too happy
to be relieved of the heavy burden of armaments which
the requirements of self-defense in face of a hostile world
have forced upon them throughout their existence.
There is one further point which I want to make
about the differences between Soviet socialism and fas-
cism. That concerns the reactions to these two systems
in the outside world. The indisputable fact is that in
foreign countries many socially sensitive and progressive
intellectuals, writers, artists, teachers, scientists, trade-
unionists, social workers and clergymen have been and
are sympathetic to Soviet achievements, while practically
all such persons have been and are militantly anti-fascist.
In the non-Soviet and non-fascist nations there has
scarcely been a single outstanding leader in any walk
of life, except in the most conservative business, political
and military circles, who has been favorable to fascism.
I do not believe that the sympathy of so many first-rate
minds for the Soviet regime and their opposition to fascist
rule is a mere coincidence.
Such people have realized clearly all along that, what-
ever the shortcomings of the U. S. S. R. , the charge that
Soviet socialism and fascism are substantially the same
is an outright libel on the Soviet Union. In this chapter
I have pointed out ten basic differences between the fas-
cist and Soviet systems. To employ a simile suggested by
Mr. John Strachey, Minister of War in the late British
Labor Government, the two systems are like two express
trains rushing by each other and going in totally opposite
directions. Fascism and Soviet socialism may look alike
to an unsophisticated observer, but any profound student
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? SOVIET SOCIALISM AHD FASCISM
must reach the conclusion that this likeness is superficial
and extends only to some of their methods.
Although happily German and Italian fascism no
longer exist, Spanish fascism under Generalissimo Fran-
cisco Franco still does survive. For those who view the
world scene objectively there could hardly be a greater
contrast between two countries than between semi-feudal,
culturally backward, economically unprogressive, pover-
ty-stricken, church-ridden Spain today and Soviet Russia.
When Franco came into power fourteen years ago -- early
in 1938 -- the economy and culture of Spain resembled
in many ways those of Russia in 1917. The Spanish dic-
tator has kept things that way.
If Franco's fascism were essentially the same as social-
ism in the U. S. S. R. , it would have put through many
fundamental changes. Long ago it would have cracked
down upon the wealthy landowning classes (actually the
economic mainstay of the regime), divided up their es-
tates among the peasants, started a collective farm pro-
gram, initiated vast economic plans to industrialize the
country, socialized the main means of production, re-
formed the educational system to stress science and the
class struggle, declared for full equality between women
and men, broken the economic, educational and political
power of the dominant religious body (the Roman Cath-
olic Church) and made Materialism Spain's official phil-
osophy. But all such measures are abhorrent to Franco
and his Falangist Party. So when we translate the ab-
stractions "fascism" and "socialism" into terms of con-
crete programs, we see at once that what fascists do and
do not differs from what Communists do and do not
do as night from day.
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? SOVIET CIVIUZATIOH
To make our contrast complete, had Spanish fascism
been truly a form of socialism or communism, the foreign
capitalist powers-that-be would have done everything pos-
sible to encompass its downfall, as they did in the case of
Soviet Russia. Yet everywhere individual capitalists and
capitalist governments have been on the whole sympa-
thetic towards the Franco regime; and the United States
has taken it to its bosom as a military ally and is helping
to bolster up its sagging economy.
Let us recall, finally, that Hitler, in order to deceive
the German people and to exploit whatever anti-capitalist
feeling existed among them, utilized the demagogic slo-
gan "National Socialism. " But the Nazis' ersatz social-
ism resembled the Soviet system about as much as the
Fuehrer's literary style resembled Shakespeare's. The
repeated assertion that Soviet socialism and totalitarian
fascism are twins in the realm of public affairs is the sort
of desperate and preposterous "big lie" to which the
Nazis and fascists themselves have been accustomed to
resort -- a slander of such absolute enormity that its very
daring and extravagance lend it weight among the un-
informed. This evil untruth, so disruptive of world peace
and understanding, does not stand up for a moment
under the clear light of reason.
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? PART II
AMERICAN-SOVIET RELATIONS
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? CHAPTER VII THE HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
1. From the American Revolution to the Russian
For more than a hundred years, from the early part
of the nineteenth century to the early part of the twenti-
eth, American-Russian cooperation was a significant fac-
tor in the international situation. The friendly associa-
tion of the United States and Russia during this period
was due in the first instance to their geographical posi-
tions in the world. Although the continued expansion of
the United States and the Tsarist Empire gave the two
countries seaboards on or near both the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, they had no basic territorial rivalries or
conflicts. Their collaboration in diplomacy was based
in the second instance on their possession of mutual an-
tagonists in the international arena. And geography
interacted with the shape of global politics so that Amer-
ica and Russia became each for the other, as Mr. DeWitt
Clinton Poole has put it, "a potential friend in the rear
of potential enemies. " It is worth remembering, too,
that the United States and Russia, whether Tsarist or
Soviet, are the only two Great Powers in history that have
never declared war on each other.
During the American Revolution Russia pursued an
armed neutrality which favored the American colonies;
but it turned a deaf ear to the appeal of the Continental
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Congress for direct assistance. Following the establish-
ment of the American Republic, Catherine the Great of
Russia, hostile to any form of political democracy and
fearing the influence of democratic ideas, refused to
recognize the new Government. It was not until 1809,
thirty-three years after the Declaration of Independence,
that the Russian Government, under Tsar Alexander I,
recognized the United States.
President Thomas Jefferson carried on a warm cor-
respondence with Alexander I and said in a letter to a
friend in 1807: "I am confident that Russia (while her
present sovereign lives) is the most cordially friendly
to us of any Power on earth, will go furthest to serve us
and is most worthy of conciliation. "1 Throughout the
nineteenth century Russia acted as a counterpoise to
those European Powers hostile to the United States,
principally Great Britain and to a lesser degree France.
When America and Britain became embroiled in the
War of 1812, Alexander I volunteered to mediate. The
American State Department immediately accepted the
offer, but the British Foreign Secretary rejected it.
In 1832 America and Russia signed their first general
Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, which lasted almost
a hundred years. In 1854 the United States sought to aid
the Russians by offering to mediate the dispute between
England and Russia that led to the Crimean War. In
this conflict in which Britain, France and Turkey com-
bined to attack the Russians, American public opinion
was distinctly favorable to Russia. In 1863 during the
American Civil War Russia sent naval squadrons to
New York and San Francisco, with the effect of dis-
couraging Great Britain and France from recognizing
the Confederacy or giving it other decisive aid. This
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
visit by Russian warships was a great psychological stim-
ulus to the North; and the U. S. Secretary of the Navy
gave a public expression of gratitude by saying, "God
bless the Russians! "
Meanwhile, possible friction between the American
Republic and the Tsarist regime had been eliminated
by the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 by
the United States. This not only made plain that Amer-
ica would not permit intervention in Latin America on
the part of European nations, perhaps backed by Russia
and the Holy Alliance; but also was designed to put an
end to further Russian encroachments in the Pacific
region where Russian traders had come south from Alaska
and established an outpost only forty-eight miles north
of San Francisco Bay. In 1867 Russia withdrew from
North America entirely by selling Alaska to the United
States for $7,200,000 in gold. Bering Strait then became
the border between Russia and U. S. possessions. The
mainlands of Alaska and Siberia are fifty-six miles apart,
though scarcely three and a half miles of water separate
Alaskan and Russian islands in the Strait.
During the last decade of the nineteenth century
Russian imperialist ambitions in China aroused Amer-
ican resentment and contributed to Secretary Hay's pro-
nouncement of the Open Door policy in 1899. With the
outbreak of the Russo-Japenese War in 1905 both the
American Government and the American public favored
the Japanese. As the conflict progressed, however, Presi-
dent Theodore Roosevelt became concerned lest Japan
win too much in the Far East and upset there the balance
of power which he thought to America's interest.