No More Learning

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favor war, which would be fearfully costly to them, to
spread socialism when they are confident that this new
system will in due course sweep the earth anyway. Mr.
George F. Kennan, present American Ambassador to the
U. S. S. R. , after citing one outworn statement by Lenin
on the inevitability of war, tells us: "Current Stalinist
doctrine does not demand war. On the contrary, it also
teaches that eventually capitalism will fall largely of its
own weight, i. e. , as a result of the inner 'contradictions'
which the Communists believe it embodies. They see
the role of communism as one of hastening the collapse
of capitalism and assisting, as a midwife, at the birth of
the socialist order. In theory, they seem inclined to re-
gard this as primarily the task of the native Communists
in each country, and not of the Soviet Red Army.
"There is nothing in Stalinist doctrine which would
make it necessarily the main responsibility of the armed
forces of the Soviet Union themselves to overthrow cap-
italism everywhere by direct military action. This pre-
mise would actually seem illogical and improper, from
the Communist point of view; for it would imply that
capitalism, in the absence of such an attack, would be
basically sound and capable of coping permanently with
its own 'contradictions. ' "29
Finally, we can state that the basic psychology of the
Soviet people, reinforced by education, law, historical
conditioning, philosophy and economic interests, is defi-
nitely anti-war. Unlike the Germans under Hitler, the
Russians do not have a background of aggressive militar-
ism. With World War II successfully concluded, they
have no humiliating defeat to live down, nor are they out
to wreak revenge on anyone. Indeed, in the conflict with
fascism they won the greatest military victory in their
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
history, overwhelmingly defeating their ancient foe,
imperialist Germany. And in the East they evened up
old scores with a treacherous aggressor, imperialist Japan.
From 1941 to 1945 the Soviet Union rolled up a record
of military prowess and glory sufficient to last it indefi-
nitely.
Yet in spite of the remarkable achievements of Soviet
soldiers and generals during the late war, there has been
no sign of unusual military influence in Soviet governing
circles. No Soviet military figure was elevated, for in-
stance, to the position of Foreign Minister, although in
the United States General George C. Marshall, Chief of
Staff during the Second World War, served as Secretary
of State from 1947 to 1949. Nor did the Soviet Govern-
ment send high-ranking military men as envoys to the
United States, although General Walter Bedell Smith
and Admiral Alan G. Kirk were the American ambas-
sadors to the U. S. S. R. during the immediate post-war
years. No Soviet general has become anywhere near as
important in non-military affairs as General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who was appointed President of Columbia
University in 1948 and ran for President of the United
States on the Republican ticket in 1952.
Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov has been prominent in
Soviet governmental activities for twenty-five years and
has long been a member of the Politburo of the Com-
munist Party. But this represents no change since World
War II. Although Premier Joseph Stalin was Comman-
der-in-Chief in that conflict, he has always been primarily
a civilian figure. Since the war there has been added to
the Politburo one military man -- Colonel Nikolai
Bulganin, who was Vice-Minister of Defense during the
struggle with Nazi Germany. It is clear that on the whole
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civilian authority still reigns supreme in the Soviet
Union. As Dorothy Thompson has summarized the
situation in her column, "Soviet generals are very much
in the background. No hint comes out of Russia that
they have anything to do with making political policy.
American generals are all over the place, and patently do
influence political policy. "30
As for Premier Stalin himself, having successfully
seen his country through to the establishment of the first
socialist commonwealth in history and having led the
Soviet people to victory in the Second World War, it
seems likely that he would prefer now to enhance his
reputation as a statesman by helping to ensure an era
of peace for the U. S. S. R. and mankind. Surely he has
no desire to go down in history, like Adolf Hitler, as a
notorious leader of military aggression and as one of the
most infamous war criminals of all time.
Many Americans think that the outbreak of war in
Korea during the summer of 1950 was due to Soviet
aggression. I do not believe that we can accept this inter-
pretation. The situation in Korea was a most complex
one, aggravated by the continuation of the cold war, the
barring of the Chinese People's Republic from the
United Nations and the rottenness of the reactionary
South Korean regime led by the unspeakable Syngman
Rhee. President Rhee had made provocative threats of
military action against Communist-controlled North
Korea and serious incidents had taken place along the
border marked by the 38th parallel. Both North and
South Koreans seemed to be spoiling for a fight; and
competent observers reported it was only a matter of
time before a bitter civil war would break out.
Precisely what occurred on the fateful morning of
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June 25, 1950, still remains shrouded in obscurity. The
North Koreans claimed that the South Koreans attacked
first; the South Koreans asserted they were blameless, a
view promptly adopted by the United States Govern-
ment and the United Nations. What is absolutely certain
is that on the afternoon of June 25 the U. N. Security
Council, with the Soviet delegate absent, passed a resolu-
tion calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and
for the withdrawal of the North Korean forces to the
38th parallel.
It seems probable to me that the North Koreans were
guilty of the initial aggression; but even if they were not,
they committed a colossal political blunder and an un-
pardonable act of international immorality in continuing
their march southward in defiance of the United Nations
cease-fire order. This surely constituted deliberate ag-
gression. The Soviet and Communist apologists for the
North Koreans have repeatedly argued that the Com-
munists of the East were afraid that South Korea would
become a threatening American military bridgehead on
the continent of Asia. In my opinion, however, neither
this nor any other excuse could justify the North Korean
Government in going through with its invasion of South
Korea. In so doing it not only brought the entire world
to the brink of war, but unleashed a chain of events
which led to the devastation of all Korea and worked out
disastrously for the North Koreans themselves.
Yet admitting all this, I still claim that the aggres-
sion was that of North Korea and not of Soviet Russia;
and that foreign intervention on behalf of the North
Koreans in the fall of 1950 came from Communist China,
which felt menaced by the U. S. -U. N. advance toward
the Manchurian border, and not from Communist Rus-
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
sia. It is regrettable that the Soviet Union did not use
its influence at the outset to dissuade the North Koreans
from their mad venture. But, again, its failure to do
so was not the same as Soviet aggression or intervention.
Finally, as I have already pointed out, the Russians were
instrumental in getting under way the long-drawn-out
conference for a cease-fire in Korea.
While the Soviet Government, since World War II,
has at times acted in an arbitrary, brusque and obdurate
manner in the conduct of its foreign relations, it has all
along made clear its willingness to make reasonable com-
promises on behalf of world amity. Despite this attitude,
however, the Truman Administration has constantly
kept the American people stirred up over the supposed
imminence of Soviet aggression.
In the spring of 1948 Administration rumor-mongers
spread through the halls of Congress the sensational state-
ment: "We will be at war with Russia in thirty days. "
About the same time U. S. intelligence agents in Europe
sent back word that the Soviet Union was preparing to
launch an armed attack on Western Germany. It later
turned out, as explained in an official report of the Com-
mission for Reorganization of the Executive Branch of
the Government, of which ex-President Herbert Hoover
was Chairman, that these agents were "mistaken. " The
character of other far-fetched stories concerning Soviet
military moves is well brought out in a 1951 dispatch in
The Chicago Daily News from its European correspond-
ent: "A wave of resentment swept Paris as the result of
what newspapers hint is a deliberate attempt by the
American Government to alarm the public on Soviet
troop concentrations. "
It is no wonder that the conservative Wall Street
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Journal declared in April, 1951: "Unfortunately, the
tactic of the manufactured crisis has been used so often
that neither the Congress nor the people know what they
can believe. "31 In August, 1951, the same newspaper said:
"Grim warnings from the Pentagon are largely propa-
ganda. Global war danger is increasing, according to
Marshall and Pace. What they really fear is a let-down
in the arms program, as fighting subsides in Korea. And
they want to be sure Congress will appropriate the full
61 billion dollars they're asking for defense in the current
fiscal year. Hence the scare talk. Actually, military ad-
visors and diplomats have no evidence of new Russian
moves. A build-up in Soviet satellites got headlines re-
cently, but it's old stuff. Intelligence sources say the dan-
ger of war hasn't changed, for better or worse. "32
The myth of Soviet aggression, then, while it hardly
serves the cause of peace, does help push through the
largest peacetime armaments program in the history of
the world. And it discourages any genuine steps to end
the cold war and reach a peaceful agreement with the
Soviet Government on the basis of mutual advantage.
Thus the false proposition that Soviet Russia aims at,
works for and intends military aggression has had the
most disastrous effects on the formulation of an intelli-
gent foreign policy by the United States and other West-
ern countries. In international affairs, as in other spheres
of human relations, disregard of the truth is not sound
strategy.
3. Incitements to War against the U. S. S. R.
It is natural for Soviet Russia, having been the victim
of ruinous aggression during the First and Second World
Wars, to wonder whether its enemies are going to make
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
a third attempt to put an end to the first socialist com-
monwealth. The Soviet Government and the Soviet
people cannot fail to note, in addition to concrete military
steps endangering their country, the constant, provocative
and well-publicized war talk against the U. S. S. R. , ema-
nating particularly from the United States. The journal-
istic peak of incitements to war against Soviet Russia
occurred, in my opinion, with Collier's special edition
of October 27, 1951, entitled: "Russia's Defeat and Occu-
pation 1952-1960, Preview of the War We Do Not Want. "
The editors of Collier's devoted this entire issue, includ-
ing profuse and lurid illustrations, to a melodramatic ac-
count of a Third World War. They printed and sold
hundreds of thousands of extra copies.
In a foreword Collier's stated: "Our over-all concep-
tion of this issue was confirmed in study and consultation
with top political, military and economic thinkers -- in-
cluding high-level Washington officials and foreign-affairs
experts, both here and abroad. "33 This gave the issue
a quasi-official standing which was certain to be noted
in diplomatic circles throughout the globe. A United
States Senator, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, was one
of the twenty-one prominent individuals who wrote a
special article for the edition. Others who in like man-
ner contributed to this remarkable enterprise were Han-
son W. Baldwin of The New York Times; Stuart Chase,
economist; Allan Nevins, Professor of History at Colum-
bia University; Walter Reuther, president of the United
Automobile Workers of America; Robert Sherwood,
dramatist; and Walter Winchell, newspaper columnist
and radio commentator.
According to the Collier's fantasy, the Soviet Govern-
ment initiated the Third World War in May, 1952, by
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sending to Belgrade two secret agents to assassinate Mar-
shal Tito (the attempt failed); and then ordering the
Albanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian armies,
backed by fifteen Soviet divisions, to attack Yugoslavia.
As one read through the various articles by big-name
writers, all suddenly become "experts" on the U. S. S. R. ,
the issue took on more and more the aspect of a stream-
lined psychological scheme for justifying war against
Soviet Russia. And there can be no question that it pro-
vided a carefully worked out blueprint for the conquest
of the Soviets. Even the bitterly anti-Soviet New Leader
stated: "While Collier's editorially disclaims the theory
of preventive war, its special number can be construed,
not inaccurately, as a plea for preventive war. "34
The cover of this edition had a map showing U. N.
and U. S. forces in occupation of Moscow, the whole of
the Ukraine and all the so-called satellites. And the con-
tents tried to allay the American people's natural appre-
hension over a war with Russia by picturing the defeat
of the Communist bloc as "inevitable. " In Collier's
simple victory program, the American-led coalition
knocked out the Russians in three years and a half, with
Communist China conveniently deserting the Soviet
Union after a little more than a year of conflict and with
the Soviet people opportunely rising in revolt against
Stalin at the right moment. According to the piece by
Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune,
the U. S. S. R. lost 32,000,000 dead during this war.
Russians who saw the Collier's preview of World War
III must have been simply appalled. We can sense their
reaction by imagining our own feelings if a prominent
Soviet magazine were to give over a whole issue to de-
scribing Soviet Russia's conquest of the United States,
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occupation of its key regions and the sovietization of its
economy. In fact, a French magazine, L'Observateur,
satirized Collier's idea by precisely reversing it, printing
a cover with a Russian soldier standing guard over
America and the Red flag flying over the city of Washing-
ton. The effect of the Collier's coup was far-reaching in
Western Europe. Asserted Alexander Werth in The
Nation: "Collier's has managed not only to make the
United States odious in the eyes of millions of Europeans
-- as years of Communist propaganda have not done --
but also to make it rather ridiculous. "35
Soviet journalism's considered reply to the Collier's
war issue constituted a dramatic contrast.
It took the
form of a special series in the January 1, 1952, number
of New Times, a weekly Moscow magazine published in
Russian, English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and
Swedish editions. This series, with several contributions
from prominent foreign authors, was written as of Decem-
ber, 1955, on the assumption that three years previously
the United Nations had put through a Five-Power Peace
Pact, the world-wide banning of the atom bomb and a
considerable reduction in conventional armaments. The
articles described the splendid economic and psycholog-
ical effects of these agreements throughout Europe and
America, and stressed the widespread use of atomic
energy for constructive economic purposes.
As the foreword of this "Report from the Future"
stated, the 1952 agreements have "not solved all the
problems facing the masses in many countries. Never-
theless, the elimination of the immediate threat of war
has had a great influence and has relieved international
tension. . . . The cold war is over, normal economic rela-
tions have been restored between West and East, the
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burden of armaments, which weighed so heavily on the
peoples, has been substantially diminished. "
During the very same week of Collier's sensational
issue, The Saturday Evening Post published an article
by a retired British general, J. F. C. Fuller, calling for
the immediate adoption by the Western Powers of a plan
completely and permanently to dismember the U. S. S. R.
"This means," General Fuller said, "that the Soviet Em-
pire must be dealt with as was the Turkish -- that is,
split up into its component parts, each part becoming
an independent country. "36 In this mad scheme the
General would have the Western Powers cooperate with
an organization known as the Anti-Bolshevik Block of
Nations, the A. B. N. The New Leader describes this
organization of reactionary emigres as a "fascist band of
separatist sects. "37
Such open incitements against the Soviet Union have
been going on for years; they predated the post-war ten-
sions between the United States and Soviet Russia and
were widespread long before the Second World War
ended. They had, in truth, already reached a danger
point shortly after the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad
in February, 1943, when the diehard anti-Soviet elements
in America and Europe became horrified at Soviet social-
ism's immense strength and commenced to refurbish the
thesis that Russia was the real enemy. At that time the
notion of a war with the Soviets was so much discussed
that Maurice Hindus, in his Mother Russia published
in the spring of 1943, felt obliged to include a whole
chapter called, "Will We Have To Fight Russia? " Mr.
Hindus, a well-known writer on the U. S. S. R. , answered
in the negative.
In September of 1944, almost a year before the final
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triumph over the Axis Powers, William C. Bullitt, em-
bittered ex-Ambassador to Soviet Russia, played up the
idea of a Third World War in an article in Life entitled
"The World from Rome. " According to Mr. Bullitt,
Western civilization was being threatened "by hordes of
invaders from the East. " Talking about what he claimed
was the prevailing viewpoint of the Italians, he wrote:
"A sad joke going the rounds in Rome gives the spirit
of their hope: What is an optimist? A man who believes
that the Third World War will begin in about fifteen
years between the Soviet Union and Western Europe,
backed by Great Britain and the U. S. What is a pessimist?
A man who believes that Western Europe, Great Britain
and the U. S. will not dare to fight. "38
In 1945, subsequent to President Roosevelt's death
and the surrender of the Nazis, the American Govern-
ment became so concerned over the rising tide of war talk
against the U. S. S. R. that it took specific action. Thus
on May 26, 1945, over a nation-wide broadcast sponsored
officially by the U. S. State Department, Archibald Mac-
Leish, then Assistant Secretary of State, lashed out at the
suggestions of an inevitable Armageddon between the
United States and Soviet Russia: "There is no necessary
reason in the logic of geography, or in the logic of eco-
nomics, or in the logic of national objectives, why the
U. S. A. and the Soviet Union ever should find themselves
in conflict with each other, let alone in the kind of con-
flict reckless and irresponsible men have begun now to
suggest. "39
In 1947 Paul H. Griffith, National Commander of the
American Legion and later Assistant Secretary of Defense,
urged President Truman to order an atomic bomb drop-
ped "some place over there" in order to demonstrate
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American support of "the people of the world who
wanted to remain free. " Mr. Griffith himself revealed
this fact in a radio interview at Washington, D. C, on
June 6, 1950. Reported The New York Times, "Presum-
ably Mr. Griffith meant that a bomb be dropped on the
Soviet Union, but this could not be confirmed. . . . Mr.
Griffith declined to comment on the meaning of 'some
place. ' "40 However, this coyness ought not to deceive
anybody as to what country he had in mind.
Also in 1947 George H. Earle, Democratic ex-Gover-
nor of Pennsylvania and former American Minister to
Bulgaria and Austria, advocated on the radio an attack
on the Soviet Union as soon as possible and without a
formal declaration of war. "One nice little bomb drop-
ped on the Kremlin," Earle boasted, "and the Russian
people of 165,000,000 would fly to pieces with centrifugal
force. "41 Previously Earle had ranted against the Rus-
sians over the Town Meeting of the Air and had demol-
ished the straw-man of a Soviet atom-bomb assault on the
United States with the violent assertion: "We can and
will wipe out every city, town and village in Russia. "
During 1948 there took place a mounting crescendo
of American war incitements against the Soviet Union.
In February, in a letter to The New York Times, Mr.
Maxwell Anderson, the dramatist, lamented the fact that
Russia "tries to give us no provocation that might lead
to war" and demanded that the United States force "a
showdown of military strength with Russia before Rus-
sia's military strength has caught up with ours. " Speaking
with incredible recklessness, Mr. Anderson concluded:
"I don't know how to bring on a crisis, but there are pro-
fessional diplomats who might know how if our nation
were sufficiently aware and had the will to do it. "42
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In March former Major General Claire Chennault
of the U. S. Air Force told the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, as PM correspondent Alexander H. Uhl re-
ported it, "that air bases in Western China were superior
to those in North Africa for bombing the industrialized
areas of Russia in the Ural Mountains. The whole Com-
mittee watched with fascination as he pointed out the
'target objectives,' as he called them, on an illuminated
globe. "43
In May Newsweek ran a featured article discussing a
recent speech by General George C. Kenney, Commander
of the U. S. Strategic Air Command. The General, start-
ing with the pretense that the Soviets might soon assault
the United States, outlined plans to carry death and
destruction by means of air power to the very vitals of
the Soviet Republic. Expanding on the implications of
this thesis, Newsweek explained that "American strategy
called for securing bases around the perimeter of Russia
and then striking back from the air. . . . " Planes loaded
with atom bombs "would go out from England in very
small groups -- perhaps in twos and threes. Flying at
more than 35,000 feet they would seek to slip into Russia
unnoticed. Their targets: first, Moscow -- Moscow above
all. Then the other large cities of European Russia --
Kiev, Leningrad, Kharkov, Odessa. . . . American stra-
tegists are thinking . . . in terms of closing the circle of
air bases around Russia, making it smaller and smaller,
tighter and tighter, until the Russians are throttled. This
means getting bases through combined air, sea and
ground operations ever closer to Russia's heartland,
then using the bases for sustained bombing and guided-
missile attacks. "44
On June 9, 1948, the Soviet Government vigorously
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protested to the American Government against the
Newsweek article, stating that it violated a United
Nations resolution against war propaganda. This resolu-
tion in part reads: "The General Assembly condemns
all forms of propaganda in whatever country conducted,
which is either designed or likely to provoke or encour-
age any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of
aggression. "45 The American Government took no action
regarding the Soviet protest.
In its issue of Sunday, May 30, 1948, The New York
Times Magazine published "What Air Power Can--and
Cannot--Do," by Hanson W. Baldwin, well-known mili-
tary expert of the Times. Mr. Baldwin discussed frankly
some of the chief difficulties in the way of successfully
bombing Soviet Russia from the air and thought that
ordinary strafing in the daytime would be too dangerous
for American planes. "Night bombing," he frankly as-
serted, "or bombing from high above the clouds would,
therefore, be preferable. " Yet, complained Mr. Baldwin,
"and this is perhaps the greatest disadvantage the offense
would suffer in bombing attacks upon Russia, we have
no really satisfactory maps of most of the Russian in-
terior. " It was this article to which Andrei Vishinsky,
then a Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union,
called attention in an address before the United Nations
Assembly at Paris on September 25 as an instance of the
open instigation "of war against the U. S. S. R. and the new
democracies. "
Not to be outdone, Look magazine, on June 22, the
precise anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia,
ran as its lead article, "Air Force Plans for Bombing
Russia," as the title was announced on the front cover.
The author, Ben Kocivar, declared that he had "recently
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talked about the problem with a number of top Air
Force and Navy officials," one of whom at least favored
a so-called preventive war against the Soviet Union. The
Look analysis pointed out that "the only long-range
planes we have in operation ready to go are our World
War II B-29's with an operating radius of some 2,000
miles. 'Draw a couple of thousand-mile circles around
the industrial heart of Russia,' a general told me [Mr.
Kocivar], 'and you will see why we must have operating
bases outside this country. ' The two-thousand-mile ring,
as the map shows, borders Greenland, Iceland, England,
France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India.
We need these bases not only for offensive operations,
but to prevent the Russians from using them against
us. "46
In August, Henry Luce's Life, taking up the refrain,
printed a detailed description by General Carl Spaatz,
retired Chief of Staff of the U. S. Air Force, on how the
United States could bomb the Soviet Union into sub-
mission. General Spaatz said that "air bases have the
same significance that naval bases had in the last century"
and that, comparable to the British Empire in its heyday,
America must at once secure a global framework of bases
for the development of air power. "Space is no longer
an effective shield," asserted the General. "Now an
attacker would not have to plod laboriously and bloodily
along the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow road to strike at the
Russian vitals. The air offers a direct, operationally feas-
ible route for a determined attacker to knock out the
industries that it has cost the Russians so much to cre-
ate. "47
In September The Saturday Evening Post, determined
to keep up with its rivals, made its own blood-curdling
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contribution to the master plan of smashing the U. S. S. R.
In an article entitled "If War Comes--", Joseph and Ste-
wart Alsop, using the well-worn pretext of a Soviet attack
on America, predicted: "From Baku north to Leningrad,
from Smolensk east to Novosibirsk, the vitals of the Soviet
state will be scorched and destroyed with the terrible fire
of the atomic bomb. "48 Then the authors listed the many
places where the United States must have air bases, be-
yond its own borders, in Europe, the Near East and the
Far East.
For 1949 I find in my files a clipping from The New
York World-Telegram of March 14, with the dateline of
Washington, D. C, and reading as follows: "About
seventy strategic targets in Russia have been marked by
military planners as possible objectives for attack in event
of a war, it was learned today. The Air Force has given
the Joint Chiefs of Staff documented assurances that the
B-36 superbomber could strike every one of these, flying
out of bases on this continent and returning without re-
fueling. The targets have been marked off on top-secret
maps at the national defense establishment. Reliable
military authorities said they include major Soviet in-
dustrial centers. All would be within a 4,000-mile radius
of air bases in Alaska and Labrador. "
In August, 1950, Francis P. Matthews, Secretary of
the Navy, told an audience in Boston that the United
States should be willing to pay "even the price of insti-
tuting a war to compel cooperation for peace. " This
recommendation of a preventive war against the Soviet
Union caused such a scandal in official circles that the
next day the U. S.