No More Learning

On the same level is the claim that the Russians, and
especially Joseph Stalin, are inscrutable Orientals whose
devious ways it is impossible for Westerners to fathom.
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? ON EVALUATING SOVIET RUSSIA
To consider Russia and the Russians as a mystery, a
riddle or an Oriental enigma gives the anti-Soviet forces
free reign to describe the Soviet Union as they choose
and to make the most exaggerated charges against it. For
if the truth about the U. S. S. R. is really impossible to
obtain, then one statement about that country is as good
as another and the wildest surmises are permissible.
The shallowness and partisanship of those who prop-
agate on every possible occasion Mr. Churchill's quarter-
truth is revealed in their failure to give the context of
the quotation in his speech of October 1, 1939, comment-
ing on the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland after
Hitler's decisive defeat of the Polish army. The Soviet
occupation, said Churchill, is "the assertion of the power
of Russia. Russia has pursued a cold policy of self-interest.
We could have wished that the Russian armies should
be standing on their present line as the friends and allies
of Poland instead of as invaders. But that the Russian
armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for
the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. . . .
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is
a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but per-
haps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
It cannot be in accordance with the interest or the safety
of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the
shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the
Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south-
eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic
life-interests of Russia. "1
So Churchill himself significantly qualified the half-
sentence which is usually quoted all by itself from his
speech. He did not regard the Soviet march into Eastern
Poland as a riddle in the slightest; to him it was a measure
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
of justifiable self-protection against Hitler. And although
Churchill did not claim prophetic powers for the future,
he strongly suggested an interpretation of Soviet policy
that took it entirely out of the category of mystery.
Soviet "national interest," evaluated always in socialist
terms and with especial reference to self-defense, is indeed
the foundation-stone of Soviet foreign policy, even
though other factors also play a role. Churchill's realistic
analysis in essence contradicts his briefer, more quotable
rhetoric.
Leaving now the question of Winston Churchill's
prose and its misuse to confuse the international situa-
tion, I wish to state that on both the American and
Soviet sides there have all along existed serious barriers
to the exchange of news and cultural materials. I deplore
the present censorship of foreign newspaper correspond-
ents by the Soviet Government and hope that it will be
removed as time goes on. I also deplore the fact that the
Soviet authorities, evidently responding to the fears and
suspicions engendered by the cold war, have extended
the usage of terms like spy and espionage so broadly as to
hamper legitimate reporting and scholarly inquiry.
The cold war has also been responsible, I believe,
for a growing lack of interest on the part of Soviet author-
ities over the past few years in an exchange of students,
teachers, scientists and artists with the United States. A
number of American universities during this period ex-
tended invitations to Soviet scholars to lecture or teach,
but none of them were accepted and in several cases no
acknowledgment was made. American efforts to have the
Red Army Chorus and a Soviet ballet company perform
in the United States came to nothing. At the same time
the Soviet Government, always hesitant to allow within
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? OH EVALUATIHG SOVIET RUSSIA
its borders foreigners who have expressed hostility to-
wards the new regime, has made it increasingly difficult
for Americans to obtain visas for travel in the U. S. S. R.
On the other hand, the United States Government
and Congress, in thrall to a blinding anti-Soviet psychosis,
have created their own special barriers to cultural
interchange. During the past few years the U. S. De-
partment of State has repeatedly denied passports to
Americans who dissent from government policies. Also
it is not generally realized that Congress passed a law as
far back as 1918 which forbids the entry of known Com-
munists into America from the U. S. S. R. or elsewhere,
except in cases where the State Department is willing to
make a special ruling granting alien applicants a visa.
A good example of how this law works is to be seen
in the handicaps and hindrances that the American
Government placed in the way of the Soviet and other
foreign delegates wishing to attend the Cultural and
Scientific Conference for World Peace held in New York
City during March, 1949. A number of foreign delegates
planning to come to the Conference had their American
visas canceled at the last minute. The noted Soviet com-
poser, Dmitri Shostakovich, and other delegates from the
Soviet Union and Eastern European countries were
scheduled to make a country-wide tour on behalf of Amer-
ican-Soviet understanding and world peace at the close
of the Conference. This tour the U. S. State Department
made impossible by limiting the visas of the delegates to
the New York affair alone and insisting that they return
home without further appearances in America.
Since September, 1950, when Congress passed, over
President Truman's veto, the Internal Security Act
(McCarran Bill), the situation regarding the admission
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
of foreigners, even temporarily, into the United States
has become much worse. This Act excludes from the
United States all persons who are or ever were members
of a Communist or fascist party anywhere, or who ever
belonged to an organization "affiliated" with such a party
or who ever advocated "the economic, international and
governmental doctrines of world communism. " These
inclusive and vague provisions effectively bar out not
only all Communists and ex-Communists from whatever
land, but all citizens of the Soviet Union (except diplo-
mats and other government representatives), as well as
many individuals from non-Communist countries whose
only crime has been to dissent openly from prevailing
orthodoxies or to join an organization whose aim was
world peace.
In a letter printed in The New York Times on Sep-
tember 23, 1951, Dr. Paul Doty, Associate Professor of
Chemistry at Harvard University, described the baneful
effects of the Internal Security Act on the fall meetings
in New York City of the International Congress of Pure
and Applied Chemistry, the International Union of
Chemistry and the American Chemical Society. Wrote
Professor Doty: "The unexpected absence of a consider-
able number of well-known members of the scientific
community cast a shadow over the proceedings. A num-
ber of scheduled papers could not be presented and often
in discussion the expert in a given field was not there
to comment. Those absent were for the most part scien-
tists who had previously visited this country but who on
this occasion were denied visas due to the sweeping and
indiscriminate regulations of the McCarran Act. "2
If the McCarran Act can so cripple conferences in
one of the less controversial natural sciences, one can
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? OH EVALUATING SOVIET RUSSIA
easily see how much more seriously it affects meetings
on economics, political science or race relations. In fact,
strict enforcement of the Act means that no Soviet expert
in any subject can now come to America and present his
viewpoint to his fellow-scientists. I agree fully with what
President Truman said in his letter of July 7, 1951, to
Nikolai M. Shvernik, Chairman of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Supreme Soviet: "We shall never be able
to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war
until communication is permitted to flow, free and open,
across international boundaries. "3 But certainly the
United States, as well as Soviet Russia, is constantly
violating this ideal.
In other words, there are curtains of considerable
thickness originating on both sides. And from 1917 on
a majority of the American people have had a formi-
dable mental block against possible light from the direc-
tion of the Soviet Union. "Never have so many known
so little about so much" was the telling way one observer
a few years ago summed up American understanding of
Soviet Russia.
Illustrative of the American attitude is an incident
related by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech
about foreign policy in 1944. He told how in 1933 a cer-
tain lady, presumably Mrs. Roosevelt, went on a trip
during which she attended the opening of a schoolhouse.
"And she told me," said the President, "that she had
seen there a map of the world with a great big white
space on it. No name, no information, and the teacher
told her that it was blank, with no name, because the
school board wouldn't let her say anything about that
big blank space. Oh, there were only 180,000,000 to
200,000,000 people in it! It was called Soviet Russia, and
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
there were a lot of children, and they were told that the
teacher was forbidden by the school board even to put
the name of that blank space on the map. "4
Yet even when Americans have made some attempt
to fill in "that big blank space," they have tended to fill
it with misinformation about the Soviet Union gleaned
from hostile sources. The curious notion has taken hold
in the United States that only those who are basically
anti-Soviet are qualified to write and speak objectively
about the U. S. S. R. This is an absurd idea. In learning
about the Civil War we do not depend primarily on
the memoirs of southern slave-owners who favored seces-
sion; nor in evaluating the principles of democracy do
we rely principally on the opinions of the fascists or others
who despise the democratic way. A deep-seated and over-
powering emotion of hate is not conducive to an object-
ive treatment of any country. And it is to be recalled
that the classic study of democracy in the U. S. A. was
made in The American Commonwealth by James Bryce,
who had an attitude of critical sympathy toward Amer-
ican institutions.
Thus an attitude of critical sympathy toward the
Soviet Union does not disqualify anyone as an objective
observer concerning Soviet affairs, so long as he retains
a hearty respect for the facts. Actually, the temptation
that beckons most persistently for American writers on
the U. S. S. R. is to take an unsympathetic attitude toward
that country and to conform to the prevailing hostility
against it. The pressures against that small minority of
Americans who through the years have remained open-
minded toward the Soviet Union, and who have tried to
tell the unpopular truth about it, have been heavy in-
deed, frequently leading to the loss of jobs, friends and
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? OH EVALUATING SOVIET RUSSIA
standing in the community. Such persons are unconscion-
ably vilified as subversive and un-American. It would
in many ways be much easier and safer for them to stay
silent or go over to the anti-Soviet camp.
One of the worst aspects of the situation is that people
display such anger and intolerance in discussing Soviet
Russia or American-Soviet relations. Temperatures on
both sides in the dispute are likely to rise so high that the
participants are soon screaming at each other and accus-
ing those who differ with them of being utter scoundrels
and inveterate liars. I decry this mode of argument, for
it violates the method of reason and closes the gates to
a rational settlement of the issues involved. I hope I
will not appear self-righteous if I say frankly that while
friends and acquaintances have frequently excommun-
icated me for my position in regard to the Soviet Union,
I have never myself broken with anyone because he dis-
agreed with me about the U. S. S. R. I habitually move in
so many different political circles that keeping cool on
hot issues is for me a necessity of life.
Aside from the personal pressures that affect him, it
is very difficult for the average American to withstand
the terrific barrage of anti-Soviet propaganda that assails
his mind daily in the press and on the radio and televi-
sion. This propaganda makes constant use of what has
aptly been described as "the multiple untruth," an un-
truth which "is composed of so many parts that anyone
wishing to set the record straight will discover that it is
utterly impossible to keep all the elements of the false-
hood in mind at the same time. Anyone making the
attempt may seize upon a few selected statements and
show them to be false, but doing this may leave the im-
pression that only the statements selected are false and
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
the rest true. An even greater advantage of the 'multiple
untruth' is that statements shown to be false can still be
repeated over and over again with impunity, because no
one will remember which statements have been dis-
proved and which ones haven't. "5
Even when American newspapers print factual news
about the U. S. S. R. , they are prone to twist it against
the Russians in the lead sentences or to headline it in a
provocative or misleading way. Honest reporters have a
difficult time with their editors. Thus, in telling of his
trip to the Far East in 1946, the late Richard E. Lauter-
bach, noted correspondent for Time and Life, wrote this
revealing comment: "It's tough to make page one. . . .
Home-office cables reiterate that U. S. versus Russia stories
make the headlines. It would be super-human of the men
assigned to the Orient if they didn't dig around for a
good Russian-American squabble or an angle that slam-
med the Soviets. "6
Mr. George Seldes, well-known author and editor,
reported in 1949 a similar situation in Yugoslavia, at
that time still allied with the Soviet Union. An assistant
in the Belgrade Bureau of the Associated Press told him:
"We can't write the news straight from Yugoslavia. We
have to wrap it up. " Citing the trial of Mikhailovich,
the former Yugoslav patriot who finally turned traitor,
Mr. Seldes' informant stated: "Not one foreign corres-
pondent at the trial doubted that Mikhailovich was guilty
of treason. In fact, his confession and admissions were
enough to hang him. But we did not report the news that
way. . . . Here at the A. P.
the cables arrived daily saying
that the newspapers taking the service were protesting
that we 'favored' the government, that we were not fair
to Mikhailovich, and we were told to change the style of
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? OH EVALUATIHG SOVIET RUSSIA
our cables. In other words, we were told to slant the news
in favor of Mikhailovich instead of reporting the facts
as they were. . . . So the head of the bureau said, 'Wrap
it up, write it so it gets by the papers which buy the service
and which want crooked news. ' So we wrapped it up. "7
In addition to such pressures on newspaper men as de-
scribed by Mr. Seldes, there are those stemming from the
U. S. State Department. When Mr. Wilfred May, editor
of the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, reported over
the radio in April, 1952, his impressions of the Interna-
tional Economic Conference at Moscow, the announce-
ment was made before his broadcast that it had been
cleared by the State Department. This points up the fact
that American correspondents abroad, depending to a
large extent on U. S. embassies for both valuable social
contacts and news tips, are likely to see to it that what
they write is not offensive to the State Department and its
diplomatic representatives. This consideration has loomed
larger and larger in recent years because of the Passport
Division's tendency to refuse or revoke the passports of
Americans who are critical of U. S. foreign policy. If many
American foreign correspondents become dependable pro-
pagandists for their country's foreign policy, that fits in
well with Secretary of State Dean Acheson's encourage-
ment of what he has described as "total diplomacy. "
American newspapers revel in printing, over and
over again, the most fantastic rumors so long as they are
calculated to fan anti-Soviet sentiment. During the sum-
mer of 1946 there were repeated dispatches in the press
that the Soviet army was shooting long-distance rocket
bombs over Sweden and other European countries. As
these rumors multiplied, reports came in that rocket
missiles had also been seen flaming through the night in
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
France, Greece and Italy. Editorials began to appear
denouncing these new acts of "Soviet aggression. " On
September 24, William Henry Chamberlin, who had
often posed as a scholarly authority on Soviet affairs,
wrote a perfectly serious article in the New York Journal
American in which he charged that the Red Army had
been firing the bombs from a base on the Baltic Sea and
thereby threatening world peace.
On October 2 the whole mid-summer's madness col-
lapsed when some Swedish astronomers issued a statement
that the so-called rockets were meteorites pure and simple.
It was further pointed out that the annual meteor showers
usually reached their climax during August just when
the rocket rumors were at their peak. This entire episode
constitutes an excellent example of how easily mass fear
and hysteria of an anti-Soviet character, when stimulated
by an unscrupulous press, can spread. It pointed to the
possibility of an uninformed and gullible public becom-
ing so aroused over a false and cooked-up charge of Soviet
aggression that actual war might result.
Of course the most horrendous mistake of all result-
ing from American ignorance and prejudice concerning
Soviet Russia -- and one that was completely exposed by
events -- occurred over the crucial matter of Soviet resist-
ance to the Nazi invasion in World War II. During those
early summer days of 1941 when Hitler's mechanized
legions surged over the Soviet border with the supposi-
tion that they would smash the Russians in a brief blitz-
krieg, the press and public opinion in the United States
overwhelmingly supported the idea that the Germans
would win decisively within three weeks or six weeks or
three months at most. The Nazis, as several commentators
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? OH EVALUATING SOVIET RUSSIA
put it, were going to slice through the Soviet defense "as
a knife through butter. "
In March, 1941, Mr. Walter Lippmann had said, in
his column "Today and Tomorrow" in the New York
Herald Tribune, that the Nazis would find the Soviet
Union "easy to conquer and well worth conquering. "
By September he had changed his mind and with some
asperity wrote: "In the first days of July . . . it was the
almost unanimous conviction of our staff officers that the
Germans had already broken through the Russian de-
fenses and disorganized the Russian army, that a gigantic
Russian military disaster was in the making, that the
Russian regime would collapse and be replaced by one
under German control, and that Hitler would have
finished with Russia at the latest sometime in Septem-
ber. "8 Only a handful of American observers held with
me that the Soviets were strong enough to resist Hitler
successfully and ultimately to defeat him.
Coming back to the theme of American facilities for
learning about the Soviet Union, I contend that in spite
of everything, reliable information concerning that coun-
try is and has been available in the United States. A few
American newspapers publish the texts of official state-
ments by the Soviet Government. There are frequent
news stories about conditions within the U. S. S. R. which,
however angled they may be, cannot conceal altogether
the progress that the Soviet people have made. The big
news services -- Associated Press, United Press and Inter-
national News Service -- as well as a paper like The New
York Times, have their own correspondents in Moscow.
Weekly journals of opinion such as The Nation and the
New Republic contain special reports and analyses of real
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? SOVIET CIVILTZATIOH
value concerning Soviet affairs. And monthlies such as
Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly occasionally run
good articles about the Soviet Union.
For nineteen years, 1932-1951, the illustrated month-
ly Soviet Russia Today, the only American magazine
that has concentrated entirely on the U. S. S. R. , provided
a mine of information regarding Soviet affairs under the
able editorship of Miss Jessica Smith. In 1951 it became
the New World Review, covering not only the Soviet
Union, but also the Communist countries of Eastern
Europe and the Far East.
For twenty-five years beginning in 1926 the recog-
nized center of information and research on Soviet Russia
in the United States was the American Russian Institute
of New York City, with its scholarly quarterly, The
American Review on the Soviet Union. At its head-
quarters there was readily available to students, writers
and the general public a large collection of books, period-
icals and clippings relating to both Tsarist and Soviet
Russia. Since the Institute's demise in 1950, its valuable
collection has been acquired by the Library for Inter-
cultural Studies. American Russian Institutes continue
to function in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The vigorous National Council of American-Soviet
Friendship, through its meetings and publications, has
also done much to spread knowledge of the Soviet Union.
For this crime of attempting to make known the truth
about the U. S. S. R. the Attorney General of the United
States, granting no hearing and possessing no justification,
put the National Council on his list of "subversive" or-
ganizations. The Council contested this listing by bring-
ing suit; and in April, 1951, the U. S. Supreme Court
ruled that the Attorney General must present in court
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? OH EVALUATIHG SOVIET RUSSIA
adequate reasons for listing the group as subversive and
thus crippling its activities.
For many years the Soviet Embassy in Washington
published the semi-monthly U. S. S. R. Information Bul-
letin, to which anyone could subscribe and which printed
a great deal of useful official data emanating from Soviet
sources. The Soviet Government, however, is bound by
its agreement not to attempt the spread of propaganda in
the United States; and this is a major reason why it does
not, like so many other foreign governments, maintain
a general information bureau on American soil. The
British Library of Information, for instance, with head-
quarters in New York City, has been in existence for
more than twenty-five years and has branches in three
American cities. Its annual budget comes to approxi-
mately $1,000,000.
The American counterpart of the Soviet Embassy
Bulletin was Amerika, a colorful illustrated monthly
about life in the United States published, beginning in
1944, by the International Information Administration
of the U. S. State Department. Amerika was sold on
news-stands in the big Soviet cities and reached a top
circulation of 50,000 copies. In July, 1952, the State
Department closed down this magazine and simultane-
ously ordered the Soviet Embassy to discontinue publica-
tion of the Bulletin, with its circulation of 15,000, and
any supplementary pamphlets and periodicals. The
American Government took this latter step as a retalia-
tory measure on the grounds, primarily, that the circu-
lation of Amerika had fallen to 13,000 due to restrictions
imposed by the Soviet Government. But there was no
proof that the Soviet authorities had directly intervened
in the manner charged. And the action of the Truman
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Administration seemed neither wise nor conducive to
international understanding.
Also tending to refute the claim that a solid, Soviet-
erected Iron Curtain keeps the people of the U. S. S. R.
from learning the truth about the United States was the
publication in Moscow in 1946, in a second edition of
90,000 copies, of a Soviet handbook on the U. S. A. entitled
The United States of America, first issued in 1942. Edited
by a group of four Soviet scholars, this 576-page work
included an elaborate statistical and analytical survey of
American geography and economy, sections on American
history, government, the armed forces and foreign pos-
sessions, and a summary of the American cultural scene.
There were occasional errors in the statistics, but on the
whole the figures were substantially accurate. The volume
did not attempt to compare the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R.
Its severest criticisms were reserved for the American
press. As Paul H. Aron of the Sarah Lawrence faculty
wrote in the scholarly American Slavic and East Euro-
pean Review: "The over-all picture of our country which
a Soviet citizen would derive from this book is distinctly
favorable. . . . The book can in no sense be classified as
anti-American propaganda, and the dominant note seems
to be one of impartiality. "9
So much printed material comes into America from
the Soviet Union that in 1948 the Library of Congress
started to publish each month a substantial document
called Monthly List of Russian Accessions. This itemizes
under seventeen different section headings, ranging from
Fine Arts to Medicine to Political Science, the publica-
tions received by the Library itself and a group of co-
operating public and university libraries in the United
States. A typical copy of this List, the issue of January,
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? ON EVALUATING SOVIET RL/SSIA
1952, contains no less than 621 Soviet items -- 453 for
books and monographs, 168 for periodicals.
In February of 1949 the Joint Committee on Slavic
Studies, appointed by the American Council of Learned
Societies and the Social Science Research Council, began
weekly publication of the Current Digest of the Soviet
Press. Its headquarters is near Columbia University in
New York City. This Digest translates, prints in full or
condenses the more important articles and news items
from over forty of the leading Soviet newspapers and
magazines. These include the two most authoritative
dailies, Pravda (Truth), leading organ of the Communist
Party, and Izvestia (News), official organ of the Govern-
ment, as well as periodicals concerned with some special
field, such as The Whistle, newspaper of the railroads;
Red Star, the army daily; Labor, organ of the trade
unions; Culture and Life, dealing with the arts; Soviet
Music; Soviet Education; Problems of Philosophy; and
the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, dealing with the
Russian Orthodox Church. This Current Digest of the
Soviet Press, presenting every week an enormous amount
of information and opinion from Soviet sources, alone
disproves the charge that an impenetrable Iron Curtain
prevents foreigners from knowing what is taking place in
the Soviet Union.
American colleges and universities, since the United
States and Soviet Russia fought as allies against world
fascism, have increasingly expanded curriculum facilities
for teaching the Russian language and have established
numerous courses of a general character on Soviet affairs.
Pioneering in the Soviet field was Cornell University
with its Intensive Study of Contemporary Russian Civil-
ization during the summer semesters of 1943 and 1944.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Professor Ernest J. Simmons, outstanding authority on
Russian literature, was the Director and moving spirit
of this Intensive Study, which included five basic courses:
The History of Russia and the Soviet Union; Soviet
Government and International Relations; Soviet Eco-
nomics; Soviet Social Institutions and Life; and Soviet
Literature.
Professor Simmons later became head of the Depart-
ment of Slavic Languages at Columbia University and
helped to initiate Columbia's new Russian Institute,
modeled after the Cornell experiment and set up on a
permanent basis in 1946 with the aid of a $250,000 grant
from the Rockefeller Foundation. Other educational
institutions such as Harvard, Leland Stanford, Yale and
the University of California have developed in a some-
what similar fashion staffs concentrating on Soviet civili-
zation.
Serious students wishing to learn about Soviet affairs
under competent direction can find plenty of opportunity
today in America. And writers on the U. S. S. R. continue
to be overwhelmed by the amount of factual material
on the subject. In general where there is a will to under-
stand the Soviet Union, there is a way.
3. Some Standards of Judgment
It is not necessary to be an expert on the subject of the
Soviet Union in order to have sound opinions about that
country. It is my contention that the average literate
person in America can, through judicious reading, listen-
ing and thinking, reach valid judgments concerning
Soviet Russia, Great Britain, China, Spain or almost any
other foreign nation. Since the First World War and
even more since the Second, the American voter has
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? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:29 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp.