Nonetheless, it seems probable that more and more
of the Soviet population will come to accept the purely
secular philosophy of Dialectical Materialism.
of the Soviet population will come to accept the purely
secular philosophy of Dialectical Materialism.
Soviet Union - 1952 - Soviet Civilization
S.
R.
has been carried on with far more forbearance than hos-
tile and exaggerated reports in the foreign press would
indicate. Common sense and political strategy have been
guiding factors in this matter, since obviously the Com-
munists have not wished to give unnecessary offence to
backward elements in the population. At its Thirteenth
Congress in 1924 the Soviet Communist Party declared:
"Special care must be taken not to offend the religious
sentiments of the believers, which can only be overcome
by years and decades of systematic educational work.
This last point is to be borne particularly in mind in
the Eastern Republics and districts. "
Another Communist Party pronouncement, made
several years later, counseled: "Anti-religious propa-
ganda in the village must have the nature of a quiet,
cautious talk, a deepening propaganda influencing the
minds of the hearers. With no less caution it is necessary
to carry on anti-religious propaganda among the workers,
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
particularly at present when there is observed a consider-
able influx of peasantry into the working class. " These
official statements call to mind the warning given in 1928
by Anatole Lunacharsky, Soviet Minister of Education:
"Religion is like a nail; the harder you hit it, the deeper
it goes into the wood. "14
Certainly, however, there were periods and places
in which Lunacharsky's good advice was not followed.
Some of the policies and activities of the Union of Mili-
tant Atheists, in its heyday, so affronted the religious
feelings of Church members that they became more
passionate than ever in their allegiance to the old beliefs.
This anti-religious organization, formed in 1925, was
responsible for many scurrilous and offensive attacks on
religion, including the most crude and derisive posters,
and at times outright hooliganism. The churches, how-
ever, never lost the right of appeal to the Soviet courts
against excesses on the part of anti-religious enthusiasts.
For example, in 1936-37 the courts tried 157 complaints
by individual churches and granted damages in 78 per-
cent of these cases. And in 1939 a group of anti-religious
offenders received sentences ranging from six to eighteen
months for rowdyism on Easter Day outside a church in
Yaroslav.
The Union of Militant Atheists reached its height of
organizational strength and influence about 1932 when
it reported 5,500,000 members as compared with an
anticipated membership of 17,000,000. Much of its use-
ful work on behalf of the new socialist society was accom-
plished in the rural sections of the country where, as I
have said, religious superstitions were a real obstacle to
the achievement of collectivization among the peasants.
After the marked success of the collective farm movement
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AHD RELIGIOH
in 1933 and 1934, the membership of the godless organ-
ization steadily declined. And anti-religious education
in the Soviet Union became more mellowed and mature.
During the same period the Second Five-Year Plan,
1933-38, got into its stride and the Soviet leaders felt
reasonably certain that the underlying economic founda-
tions of socialism would be completed in short order.
The standard of living was rising and tensions were
easing. With the Constitution of 1936 came the restora-
tion of full civil rights and voting privileges to the clergy
as well as to former Tsarist officials and former capitalists.
In 1940 the Soviet Government, after experimenting for
about a decade with a six-day week and a rotating free
day in the urban centers, restored throughout the nation
the seven-day week with Sunday as the rest day. One of
the reasons for this experiment had been the hope of
weakening the hold of Sunday as a religious holiday.
The Union of Militant Atheists in vain protested the
Government's action in re-establishing the old system.
When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1941, it was the confident expectation of
Hitler and Goebbels that religious groups throughout
the U. S. S. R. would welcome the Germans as liberators
and help to overthrow the Soviet Government. On the
contrary, although a few isolated churchmen in the occu-
pied districts of western Russia did become traitors to
their country, Soviet religious leaders and believers in
general quickly rallied to the support of the Soviet re-
gime. On the day of the invasion the head of the Ortho-
dox Church, the Metropolitan Sergius, issued a message
to all the parishes, stating in part:
"The fascist robbers have fallen upon our homeland.
Despising treaties and promises, they have suddenly
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
descended upon us, and now the blood of peaceful citi-
zens is already wetting the land of our birth. 15 . . . Our
Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the
people. Together with the people she stood trials and
shouldered burdens and rejoiced over successes. She will
not desert the people now. We, the pastors of the
Church, at this time when our motherland calls all to
heroic deeds, would indeed prove unworthy if we re-
mained silent and just watched what was happening
around us without encouraging the faint-hearted, with-
out comforting the distressed, without reminding the
hesitant of his duty and God's will. 16 . . . The Church
of Christ gives its blessing to all Orthodox for the defense
of the sacred borders of our homeland. May the Lord
give us victory. "17
The Orthodox Church and other religious bodies
in the U. S. S. R. maintained this attitude during the dark-
est days of the Nazi onslaught. Instead of opposing the
Government, priests constantly offered up prayers for
it and for the valiant Soviet armies in the thick of battle.
Religious congregations were zealous in subscribing to
the national Defense Fund. And the Government author-
ized, after being petitioned, two "all-church" tank col-
umns, which were equipped through contributions from
the Orthodox Church and the Armenian-Gregorian
Church respectively. In 1942 the Moscow Patriarchate
of the Orthodox Church published a handsome, illus-
trated volume entitled The Truth about Religion in
Russia. This book exposed the horrors of Hitler's cru-
sade against the Soviet Republic and the myth of Nazi
friendship for religion. It also explained the constitu-
tional guarantees of freedom of worship and expressed
the Church's satisfaction with them.
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AXD RELIGIOH
The Government responded cordially to the moral
and material support which religious organizations gave
to it during the war. It is significant that The Truth
about Religion in Russia was printed on the presses of
the Union of Militant Atheists. In the previous year,
1941, the leading publications of the Union had been
suspended on the grounds that there was a paper short-
age. Soon thereafter the atheist organization became
quite inactive, if not altogether dormant. In 1943 Prem-
ier Stalin, Foreign Minister Molotov and three Orthodox
bishops held a conference at the Kremlin on the relations
between Church and State. As a result of this conference
the Orthodox Church was able to hold a Congress of
Bishops later in the year at Moscow and to elect the
Metropolitan Sergius as the Patriarch of Moscow and All
Russia. This was a momentous step because it meant
the re-establishment of an independent Patriarchate for
the first time since it was abolished in 1721, over 200
years before.
The Kremlin conference also decided to set up a state
Council on Affairs of the Orthodox Church, with head-
quarters in Moscow and over 100 field representatives, to
act as a clearing house for the complex relations between
the Church and various government agencies. For the
reason that nation-wide economic planning, controlled
by the State, is the dominant factor in the socialist econ-
omy, this Council has as one of its chief problems the
organization of the production and distribution of the
many things, such as ikons, candles, vestments, printing
facilities and repairs, which a church needs for its regular
functioning. Prior to 1943 there had been great ineffi-
ciency in these matters.
The Government also established a Council on Affairs
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
of Religious Cults to handle state relations with the non-
Orthodox religious bodies in the U. S. S. R. These include
the Armenian-Gregorians, the Greek Catholics, the Ro-
man Catholics, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Evan-
gelical Christian-Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists,
the Old Believers (a schismatic offshoot of the Orthodox
Church), the Jews, the Mohammedans (second in num-
ber to the Orthodox adherents), the Buddhists, the
Lamaists, the Shammanists and lesser sects. This Council
is likewise centered in Moscow and has many branch
offices.
In 1944 the Chairman of the Council on Affairs of
the Orthodox Church, Mr. Georgi Gregorievich Karpov,
asserted in a news interview: "The only rule the Soviet
Government insists upon is that religious instruction
must not violate the basic principle of separation of
Church and State. Under our laws each person may or
may not teach his children religion. However, religion
may not be taught in the schools. Parents may educate
children in the privacy of their homes or may send their
children to the homes of priests for such education.
Children of any number of parents may also gather or
be gathered in groups to receive religious instruction. "18
(Formerly the law forbade religious education to persons
under eighteen in groups of more than four. )
Mr. Karpov went on to say: "We have given explicit
permission for the Church to order any quantity of Tes-
taments, prayer books and liturgical books and are ready
to facilitate this step in every way, even to the extent of
making representations to the paper rationing author-
ities. As to the distribution of such materials, there is
no objection and no restrictions. "19 In a later statement
he averred: "Priests may go to their parishioners and
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? SOVIET RUSSIA ANJD RELIGIOH
may engage in proselytizing work without any restric-
tion except those placed on every orderly citizen of the
U. S. S. R. They may go about church business wherever
they wish. "20 The mention here of "proselytizing work"
is of particular significance because it indicates that the
Government is again permitting freedom of religious
propaganda, as under the first Constitution of 1918.
Early in 1945 the Orthodox Church held a plenary
meeting or Sobor in Moscow to elect a new Patriarch
to take the place of Sergius, who had died in 1944. It
was a most representative gathering and included four
Metropolitans and forty-one Archbishops, 126 clerical
and lay delegates, and the Metropolitan Benjamin, who
represented the Orthodox congregations of the United
States and Canada. The Sobor proceeded to nominate
and unanimously elect as the new Patriarch the Metro-
politan Alexius of Leningrad and Novgorod, a holder
of the Leningrad Defense Medal for heroism during the
defense of Soviet Russsia's great northern city.
Present as guests at the Sobor were high religious offi-
cials from the Orthodox Churches of Serbia, of Rumania
and of several cities of the Near East such as Constanti-
nople and Jerusalem. This was the first occasion since
1917 on which representatives of the Orthodox religion
outside the Soviet Union had officially and openly met
together with the Russian Church authorities. And it
raised hopes that there might be organized, as proposed
by the late Patriarch Sergius, a Confederation of the
autonomous Orthodox Churches of the world. Reg-
ular consultation and mutual action on the part of these
Churches would be a natural thing in view of their com-
mon creed and their opposition, with the Anglican and
other Protestant groups, to the claim of the Roman
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
Catholics that the Pope is the true and only Vicar of
Christ on earth. The Great Schism between the Eastern
and Western branches of Christianity occurred over this
very issue nine centuries ago in 1054.
The Government itself can hardly be indifferent to
the political and international implications of the reju-
venation of the Russian Orthodox Church. Increasing
influence for this religious body in Eastern Europe serves
both to further Slav unity and to weaken the hold of the
passionately anti-Soviet Catholic Church. Premier Stalin
and his associates undoubtedly welcomed the announce-
ment in 1946 that the Greek Catholic or Uniate Church
of the western Ukraine had broken its centuries-old union
with the Vatican and returned to the Russian Orthodox
fold. The Assembly of the Uniate Church sent a special
letter to Mr. Stalin in which it referred frankly to "proud
and power-loving Rome, which had always dreamed
of establishing its own dictatorship in the Christian
world. "21 In 1948 the Greek Catholic or Uniate Church
of Rumania also broke away from the Roman Catholics
and rejoined the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The best available estimate for the number of Ortho-
dox churches functioning in 1952 in the U. S. S. R. was
22,000 as compared with 46,457 in 1917. Close to 100
monasteries and nunneries were open, in comparison
with 550 in 1917. In 1914 the Orthodox Church, in a
country so pious that it was constantly referred to as
"Holy Russia," boasted of more than 90,000,000 com-
municants. Although no reliable statistics are available
on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union
today, it seems probable that the Orthodox faithful have
been reduced by at least one-half since the Revolution.
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AHD RBLIGIOH
Some of the Protestant sects, however, for the first time
possessing equal rights with the Orthodox Church, have
gained in membership. As would be expected, religion
remains strongest among the peasants and is weakest in
the urban districts, especially in the scores of new indus-
trial centers which have sprung up under the Five-Year
Plans.
The more tolerant attitude of the Soviets toward
organized religion in the U. S. S. R. has been due not only
to the Church's loyalty during the Second World War,
but also to the fact that even before the war religious
leaders and their following had finally accepted the estab-
lishment of a socialist economy and commonwealth and
had determined to live in peace with the new order of
things. There is nothing in the social principles of
Christianity that cannot be reconciled with a socialist
economic system; and there is much in a socialist eco-
nomic system that aids in the actualization of the social
principles of Christianity.
The Soviet Government and the Communist Party
have evidently decided, that the economic, educational
and temporal power of the Church has been permanently
broken and that religion no longer constitutes a political
threat. There were two times, especially, in Soviet de-
velopment, the years of the Civil War and the period
of farm collectivization, when religious organizations did
become hostile and dangerous foci of opposition to the
regime. Since the objective situation has led Church and
State, though for different reasons, to become more con-
ciliatory towards each other, in my judgment the present
harmonious relations between the two are likely to be
of long duration. The practical policy of the Govern-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
ment and the Communist Party does not, however, mean
that they have altered their basic anti-religious phil-
osophy.
It remains to be said that the persistence of religious
faith among considerable sections of Soviet citizens proves
that the creation of socialism does not automatically put
an end to religion. The capitalist system did not bring
religion into existence and its disappearance will not
necessarily usher religion out. The Marxists are con-
vinced that the social-economic roots of religion, as pre-
sently embodied in capitalism, will wither away along
with the capitalist order. But granting the great impor-
tance of these social-economic roots, I am of the opinion
that certain psychological and biological phenomena
which have in the past helped to stimulate religious belief
will continue to exist under any economic system. There
are always likely to be, for instance, various kinds of
personal frustration; and above all there will always be
the event called death. Thus, even if the last theist re-
nounced belief in the last god, religious concepts center-
ing around the hope of immortality might well endure
or revive.
Nonetheless, it seems probable that more and more
of the Soviet population will come to accept the purely
secular philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. This in-
clusive, affirmative, and life-asserting philosophy is per-
haps best described as socialist Humanism. The entire
educational apparatus of the country, working in har-
mony with ever more successful social and economic con-
struction, is geared toward teaching this way of life. And
the younger generations, reared for the most part in an
atmosphere hostile or indifferent toward religion, are
growing up with the Communist world-view as a natural
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AND RELIGIOH
and accepted part of their intellectual outlook. As new
generations reach maturity this attitude will become ever
more deeply ingrained and widespread.
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? CHAPTER V SOVIET ECONOMIC AND
CULTURAL PROGRESS
1. What the Second World War Showed
On September 7, 1941, two and one-half months after
the Nazi armies attacked the Soviet Union, the conserva-
tive Boston Herald ran an editorial entitled "The Rus-
sian Revelation," which read in part as follows: "Amer-
icans are forced to revise their beliefs as to the physical
prowess of the Soviets, the skill of the leaders, the morale
of the civilian populace, the willingness of all, women
as well as men, to make tremendous sacrifices to turn
back the invaders. . . . How strange it seems! A nation
which was thought to be the most backward, careless,
least efficient and least patriotic in the world has checked
a mighty host from the nation which has been assumed
to be the most advanced in organization, morale, leader-
ship and efficiency. "
As time passed, this generous admission from an un-
expected quarter was more and more confirmed by events.
In December, 1941, the Soviet armies went on the offens-
ive and hurled back the Germans from the approaches
to Moscow. In 1942 they held the Nazi juggernaut month
after month at the desperate Battle of Stalingrad and
destroyed in ferocious fighting at close quarters the
flower of Hitler's Wehrmacht. In the final encirclement
of the invaders, the Soviet command killed off more than
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
200,000 enemy troops and captured 91,000. In 1943 the
Soviet forces unleashed a general counter-offensive along
a line more than 1,000 miles in length, all the way from
Leningrad in the north to the Caucasus in the south.
This far-flung counter-offensive, one of the most re-
markable in military annals, steadily pushed back the
Nazis and gathered further momentum in 1944, greatly
aided by the Anglo-American invasion of France in June
of that year. In July the Red Army crossed into Poland
and marched on towards the German frontier. Then in
tne first months of 1945 came the rapid sweep across
Eastern Germany, as the Allied troops stormed over the
Rhine and dealt body-blows to Hitler from the west.
On May 2 Marshal Stalin proclaimed the capture of
Berlin by the Soviet army and on May 8 the German
military forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies
and Soviet Russia. Finally, early in August, 1945, the
Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, its armies
quickly subduing the considerable Japanese concentra-
tion in Manchuria.
Unquestionably the Russian Revelation had grown
ever more impressive since the Boston Herald's acknow-
ledgment of 1941. And as we pursue the logic of the
Soviet showing against the combined forces of Germany,
Hungary, Romania and Finland, we see in more detail
the meaning of what the Soviet people, leaders and
armies accomplished. Admittedly, the natural advan-
tages of the country, such as its vast size, the rigor of its
winters and its tremendous reserves of man-power, were
significant factors in the downfall of Hitler; but these
advantages were also present during the First World War
when the German armies inflicted overwhelming defeat
upon the Russians. It is clear that additional factors must
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
have contributed to what the Russians achieved in the
Second World War.
The immense Soviet military strength displayed from
1941 to 1945 had certain definite implications. First, it
meant that the Soviet armies possessed up-to-date, me-
chanized equipment, in large quantity and of excellent
quality, with which to combat the most highly mechan-
ized attacking force yet assembled in history. Otherwise
Hitler's ruthless Luftwaffe and fast-moving panzer divi-
sions would indeed have knocked out the Soviet Union
in a matter of weeks, as the cocksure prophets of Soviet
doom had with relish kept repeating.
Second, we realize that the hard-hitting Soviet tanks,
artillery, airplanes, machine guns and rifles did not just
appear miraculously out of the blue. In fact, they came
from those very Russian factories which for so long had
been described by the American press as hopelessly inef-
ficient and bogged down in general confusion. The
Soviets did receive valuable military supplies through
American-British Lend-Lease. But these supplies did
not start coming through in great quantity until after
the Battle of Stalingrad and they never added up to more
than 10 percent of the total military materiel at the dis-
posal of the Soviet armies. Contrary to reports circulated
abroad, the workers in the Soviet defense industries did
an excellent job during the pre-war years in producing
armaments of the highest grade. The proof of this is in
what those armaments did to the Nazis.
Soviet defense industries and armaments workers did
not function in a vacuum. They were part of an ambi-
tious program for the development of industry through-
out the U. S. S. R. and especially of heavy industry, which
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
is so basic to the manufacture of armaments. The third
implication, then, is that the country's industrial expan-
sion was a noteworthy success and that the Five-Year
Plans, often ridiculed as "Red Smoke," achieved their
main objectives in industry. Furthermore, these Plans
provided for the erection of vast industrial facilities
behind the Ural Mountains and throughout Siberia
where enemy bombers could not reach them. And this
was a major reason why the Soviets were able to keep on
turning out armaments all through the war, in spite of
the occupation by the invading armies of so much of
western Russia, including the great industrial centers
of the Ukraine.
Fourth, the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany demon-
strated that the socialist economic system as a whole had
developed in a remarkably successful manner under the
Five-Year Plans and that it continued to function effect-
ively under the terrific stress of an all-out war. The de-
fense industry, and heavy industry in general, of course
had to be closely integrated with the rest of the economy,
including the vital facilities of transportation. The anti-
Soviet critics had frequently called transportation the
"weak link" in the Soviet economic order and had pre-
dicted that it would break down disastrously under the
strain of war conditions. Yet transportation, whether by
railroad or otherwise, made a brilliant record for itself
from 1941 to 1945. The notable defensive and offensive
operations could not possibly have been carried out
unless there had been a transportation system function-
ing fairly efficiently behind the lines. This is not to gain-
say the fact that during the last two years of the war
several hundred thousand American trucks and jeeps
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? sovmr civilization
were of immense assistance to the mobility of the Red
Army.
One of the feats of the Soviet railways was the removal
of whole factories on flat cars from the path of the ad-
vancing Nazi forces to eastern regions beyond the reach
of the enemy. Then the factories in their component
parts were set down, quickly assembled, and harnessed
to production again in short order. Approximately 1300
plants were moved in this manner and 1,000,000 freight
carloads used to do it. The New York Herald Tribune
called it "a miracle. " But behind all such war-time "mir-
acles" in the Soviet Union was a long sequence of eco-
nomic cause and effect stretching back over the years and
always an integral part of the country-wide socialist plan-
ning.
Another sector which performed in outstanding
fashion during the war years was agriculture. The pro-
duction of food would surely have broken down during
this period had it not been for the prior collectivization
of agriculture so that it could operate on a large scale
with modern machinery. What this meant for the war
effort Alexander Werth explains in his book, The Year
of Stalingrad: "It was, indeed, one of the remarkable
achievements of the Soviet war machine that, by contrast
with the war of 1914-18, the Russian Army was, on the
whole, well fed. There were occasional hitches due to
transport difficulties, especially when a unit was more
or less isolated; but in the main the army ate better than
anybody else in the Soviet Union, even in the very dif-
ficult days of 1941 and 1942, when many cities were
hungry. In 1943 the situation became even better, with
the influx of American supplies. "1
The fifth point is that clearly neither the pre-war de-
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? ECOHOMIC AH. D CULTURAL PROGRESS
velopment of the Soviet economy nor its functioning dur-
ing the Nazi invasion nor the victories of the Red Army
could have taken place unless in general the workers had
become well trained in modern industrial techniques and
the soldiers in the effective use and servicing of mechan-
ized war equipment. Mass production of the implements
of war and of countless other things necessary for an in-
dustrialized society meant that millions of Russians must
have learned to operate the complicated machinery so
typical of the twentieth-century world. In order to de-
feat the Nazis, Soviet plane pilots, tank drivers, machine-
gunners, artillery-men, engineers, mechanics and the rest
must have mastered their jobs in both theory and prac-
tice.
Mr. W. Averell Harriman, former Ambassador of the
United States to the U. S. S. R. and head of an American
Mission to that country in 1941, stated in a radio broad-
cast shortly after he left the Soviet Union: "The Russian
has become a first-class mechanic in this last generation.
. . . Out on the airfields, where much has to be done with
little equipment, our American officers report -- and I
quote from one of them -- that they have never seen such
skill, ingenuity, resourcefulness and morale. The Rus-
sian mechanics work without shelter in sleet, rain and
wind an average of fourteen hours a day. Their pilots
learn to fly American aircraft as quickly, as skilfully, as
our own pilots or the British. And so we have our answer
to why Hitler's time schedule has been dislocated. The
clumsy Russian mujik has become a skilled mechanic. "2
Lord Beaverbrook, the English press magnate, testified
at the same time that Soviet "pilots are of the very best,
just as much experienced as any pilots anywhere. And
the mechanics who service their aircraft compare in all
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
respects with the mechanics of Great Britain and the
United States. Indeed, the Russians have a genius for
mechanization. "3
The vast extension of education and technical train-
ing in the Soviet Union since 1917 has included all seg-
ments of the population. Women as well as men have
become wise in the ways of the machine. This was of
crucial importance during World War II because hun-
dreds of thousands of women had to take over the skilled
jobs of men who had been called into the army. Especial-
ly was this true in agriculture where in many districts
the women had to shoulder the major part of the respons-
ibility, driving the tractors and mechanical reapers.
Another aspect of the cultural revolution that proved
significant was the improvement in the science of medi-
cine. In contrast to the First World War, the Soviet
doctors were able to prevent any large-scale epidemics
in the armed forces and the population at large. And
the medical services of the Red Army made a spectacular
record in restoring wounded soldiers to full health or
at least in making them available for civilian work. Sur-
gery of all varieties contributed notably to this result.
The sixth implication of the war effort was that
leadership in the army and government was well quali-
fied to cope with the crisis caused by the Nazi invasion.
The reservation must be made here that during the first
few weeks of the war the Soviet forces suffered severe
defeats and enormous losses in prisoners. When Hitler
struck on June 22, 1941, he took the Soviet armies to a
large extent by surprise and was able, for instance, to
destroy many hundreds of Soviet planes before they could
get into the air. Why Premier Stalin and his associates,
explicitly warned of the coming attack through reliable
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? ECONOMIC AN[D CULTURAL PROGRESS
information forwarded by President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Churchill, were not more on guard against the
approaching storm, is still a mystery.
Nonetheless, on the whole both generals and civilian
administrators carried through with eminent success the
formidable tasks imposed upon them. Events did not
bear out the claim that the Moscow Trials and general
purges of 1937-38 had fatally weakened Soviet leadership.
The crushing by the Soviet Republic of an extensive
conspiracy to overthrow it -- a conspiracy having definite
links with Nazi Germany -- resulted in strengthening
Soviet leadership and morale.
This brings us to the seventh and final point: that
the economic developments of the Five-Year Plans, the
first-class fighting equipment of the Red Army and the
educational progress of the population would have
availed but little if the people had been lacking in morale.
Here again the actual course of the Nazi-Soviet conflict
disproved any number of misconceptions. Although a
certain number of traitors, Hitler collaborators, or
slackers appeared among them, the people as a whole
rallied to the defense of their country with ardor and
determination. This was proved daily by the fighting
spirit of the armies, the widespread activity of the guerril-
las, the civilian defenders of Leningrad and other cities,
and the relentless execution of the scorched earth policy.
Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propagandists expected
that the peasants, particularly in the Ukraine, would
revolt against the Government and welcome the invading
forces as liberators. On the contrary, with few exceptions
the peasants in the enemy-occupied regions remained
loyal to the regime and joined the guerrilla bands by the
scores of thousands. And those guerrilla fighters, coming
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
from a population whose individual initiative had sup-
posedly been stamped out by the Communist dictator-
ship, displayed remarkable initiative. The Nazis also
hoped that discord would break out among the different
minorities. This did not happen either, though five
minor groups did not fulfil their patriotic obligations.
All but a fraction of the more than 170 minority peoples,
constituting almost one-half of the total population, gave
their utmost in the nation's supreme ordeal and played
an indispensable role in the final debacle of Hitler's
legions.
Despite the tons of newsprint expended in America
and other lands to show that they were the slaves of a
bloodthirsty tyranny and seething with hatred for the
Stalin regime, the people evidently thought from 1941
to 1945 that their new socialist system was worth fighting
and dying for. We cannot afford to forget that socialism
is more than an economic system and a political affilia-
tion; it is an inclusive way of life capable of arousing the
most intense devotion in those who give it allegiance.
## *
To recapitulate my review of the implications which
we can draw from the Soviet achievement in the Second
World War, I believe that it showed, first, that the armies
possessed up-to-date and mechanized equipment, in large
quantity and of excellent quality; second, that the bulk
of this war materiel was efficiently produced in Soviet
factories; third, that the industrial program in general
had been a conspicuous success; fourth, that the country's
socialist system as a whole functioned most effectively
under the terrific impact of the Nazi invasion; fifth, that
the population had made impressive advances in educa-
tion and technical training; sixth, that the leadership
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? ECOHOMIC AKD CULTURAL PROGRESS
lived up fully to its responsibilities during the war crisis;
and, seventh, that the people displayed splendid morale
throughout the entire titanic struggle with Hitler.
It seems to me that any objective student, conservative
as he may be in outlook or antagonistic as he may be to
the Soviets, must arrive at similar conclusions if he faith-
fully follows through the logic of the showing against
the Nazis. That logic demonstrates, through pragmatic
reference to the incontestable records of history, that
Soviet socialism possesses formidable and deeply rooted
powers of resistance and endurance. It does not demon-
strate that Soviet socialism is superior to capitalism, since
both the United States and Britain put on their own
magnificent performances during the war.
has been carried on with far more forbearance than hos-
tile and exaggerated reports in the foreign press would
indicate. Common sense and political strategy have been
guiding factors in this matter, since obviously the Com-
munists have not wished to give unnecessary offence to
backward elements in the population. At its Thirteenth
Congress in 1924 the Soviet Communist Party declared:
"Special care must be taken not to offend the religious
sentiments of the believers, which can only be overcome
by years and decades of systematic educational work.
This last point is to be borne particularly in mind in
the Eastern Republics and districts. "
Another Communist Party pronouncement, made
several years later, counseled: "Anti-religious propa-
ganda in the village must have the nature of a quiet,
cautious talk, a deepening propaganda influencing the
minds of the hearers. With no less caution it is necessary
to carry on anti-religious propaganda among the workers,
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
particularly at present when there is observed a consider-
able influx of peasantry into the working class. " These
official statements call to mind the warning given in 1928
by Anatole Lunacharsky, Soviet Minister of Education:
"Religion is like a nail; the harder you hit it, the deeper
it goes into the wood. "14
Certainly, however, there were periods and places
in which Lunacharsky's good advice was not followed.
Some of the policies and activities of the Union of Mili-
tant Atheists, in its heyday, so affronted the religious
feelings of Church members that they became more
passionate than ever in their allegiance to the old beliefs.
This anti-religious organization, formed in 1925, was
responsible for many scurrilous and offensive attacks on
religion, including the most crude and derisive posters,
and at times outright hooliganism. The churches, how-
ever, never lost the right of appeal to the Soviet courts
against excesses on the part of anti-religious enthusiasts.
For example, in 1936-37 the courts tried 157 complaints
by individual churches and granted damages in 78 per-
cent of these cases. And in 1939 a group of anti-religious
offenders received sentences ranging from six to eighteen
months for rowdyism on Easter Day outside a church in
Yaroslav.
The Union of Militant Atheists reached its height of
organizational strength and influence about 1932 when
it reported 5,500,000 members as compared with an
anticipated membership of 17,000,000. Much of its use-
ful work on behalf of the new socialist society was accom-
plished in the rural sections of the country where, as I
have said, religious superstitions were a real obstacle to
the achievement of collectivization among the peasants.
After the marked success of the collective farm movement
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AHD RELIGIOH
in 1933 and 1934, the membership of the godless organ-
ization steadily declined. And anti-religious education
in the Soviet Union became more mellowed and mature.
During the same period the Second Five-Year Plan,
1933-38, got into its stride and the Soviet leaders felt
reasonably certain that the underlying economic founda-
tions of socialism would be completed in short order.
The standard of living was rising and tensions were
easing. With the Constitution of 1936 came the restora-
tion of full civil rights and voting privileges to the clergy
as well as to former Tsarist officials and former capitalists.
In 1940 the Soviet Government, after experimenting for
about a decade with a six-day week and a rotating free
day in the urban centers, restored throughout the nation
the seven-day week with Sunday as the rest day. One of
the reasons for this experiment had been the hope of
weakening the hold of Sunday as a religious holiday.
The Union of Militant Atheists in vain protested the
Government's action in re-establishing the old system.
When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1941, it was the confident expectation of
Hitler and Goebbels that religious groups throughout
the U. S. S. R. would welcome the Germans as liberators
and help to overthrow the Soviet Government. On the
contrary, although a few isolated churchmen in the occu-
pied districts of western Russia did become traitors to
their country, Soviet religious leaders and believers in
general quickly rallied to the support of the Soviet re-
gime. On the day of the invasion the head of the Ortho-
dox Church, the Metropolitan Sergius, issued a message
to all the parishes, stating in part:
"The fascist robbers have fallen upon our homeland.
Despising treaties and promises, they have suddenly
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
descended upon us, and now the blood of peaceful citi-
zens is already wetting the land of our birth. 15 . . . Our
Orthodox Church has always shared the fate of the
people. Together with the people she stood trials and
shouldered burdens and rejoiced over successes. She will
not desert the people now. We, the pastors of the
Church, at this time when our motherland calls all to
heroic deeds, would indeed prove unworthy if we re-
mained silent and just watched what was happening
around us without encouraging the faint-hearted, with-
out comforting the distressed, without reminding the
hesitant of his duty and God's will. 16 . . . The Church
of Christ gives its blessing to all Orthodox for the defense
of the sacred borders of our homeland. May the Lord
give us victory. "17
The Orthodox Church and other religious bodies
in the U. S. S. R. maintained this attitude during the dark-
est days of the Nazi onslaught. Instead of opposing the
Government, priests constantly offered up prayers for
it and for the valiant Soviet armies in the thick of battle.
Religious congregations were zealous in subscribing to
the national Defense Fund. And the Government author-
ized, after being petitioned, two "all-church" tank col-
umns, which were equipped through contributions from
the Orthodox Church and the Armenian-Gregorian
Church respectively. In 1942 the Moscow Patriarchate
of the Orthodox Church published a handsome, illus-
trated volume entitled The Truth about Religion in
Russia. This book exposed the horrors of Hitler's cru-
sade against the Soviet Republic and the myth of Nazi
friendship for religion. It also explained the constitu-
tional guarantees of freedom of worship and expressed
the Church's satisfaction with them.
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AXD RELIGIOH
The Government responded cordially to the moral
and material support which religious organizations gave
to it during the war. It is significant that The Truth
about Religion in Russia was printed on the presses of
the Union of Militant Atheists. In the previous year,
1941, the leading publications of the Union had been
suspended on the grounds that there was a paper short-
age. Soon thereafter the atheist organization became
quite inactive, if not altogether dormant. In 1943 Prem-
ier Stalin, Foreign Minister Molotov and three Orthodox
bishops held a conference at the Kremlin on the relations
between Church and State. As a result of this conference
the Orthodox Church was able to hold a Congress of
Bishops later in the year at Moscow and to elect the
Metropolitan Sergius as the Patriarch of Moscow and All
Russia. This was a momentous step because it meant
the re-establishment of an independent Patriarchate for
the first time since it was abolished in 1721, over 200
years before.
The Kremlin conference also decided to set up a state
Council on Affairs of the Orthodox Church, with head-
quarters in Moscow and over 100 field representatives, to
act as a clearing house for the complex relations between
the Church and various government agencies. For the
reason that nation-wide economic planning, controlled
by the State, is the dominant factor in the socialist econ-
omy, this Council has as one of its chief problems the
organization of the production and distribution of the
many things, such as ikons, candles, vestments, printing
facilities and repairs, which a church needs for its regular
functioning. Prior to 1943 there had been great ineffi-
ciency in these matters.
The Government also established a Council on Affairs
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
of Religious Cults to handle state relations with the non-
Orthodox religious bodies in the U. S. S. R. These include
the Armenian-Gregorians, the Greek Catholics, the Ro-
man Catholics, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Evan-
gelical Christian-Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists,
the Old Believers (a schismatic offshoot of the Orthodox
Church), the Jews, the Mohammedans (second in num-
ber to the Orthodox adherents), the Buddhists, the
Lamaists, the Shammanists and lesser sects. This Council
is likewise centered in Moscow and has many branch
offices.
In 1944 the Chairman of the Council on Affairs of
the Orthodox Church, Mr. Georgi Gregorievich Karpov,
asserted in a news interview: "The only rule the Soviet
Government insists upon is that religious instruction
must not violate the basic principle of separation of
Church and State. Under our laws each person may or
may not teach his children religion. However, religion
may not be taught in the schools. Parents may educate
children in the privacy of their homes or may send their
children to the homes of priests for such education.
Children of any number of parents may also gather or
be gathered in groups to receive religious instruction. "18
(Formerly the law forbade religious education to persons
under eighteen in groups of more than four. )
Mr. Karpov went on to say: "We have given explicit
permission for the Church to order any quantity of Tes-
taments, prayer books and liturgical books and are ready
to facilitate this step in every way, even to the extent of
making representations to the paper rationing author-
ities. As to the distribution of such materials, there is
no objection and no restrictions. "19 In a later statement
he averred: "Priests may go to their parishioners and
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? SOVIET RUSSIA ANJD RELIGIOH
may engage in proselytizing work without any restric-
tion except those placed on every orderly citizen of the
U. S. S. R. They may go about church business wherever
they wish. "20 The mention here of "proselytizing work"
is of particular significance because it indicates that the
Government is again permitting freedom of religious
propaganda, as under the first Constitution of 1918.
Early in 1945 the Orthodox Church held a plenary
meeting or Sobor in Moscow to elect a new Patriarch
to take the place of Sergius, who had died in 1944. It
was a most representative gathering and included four
Metropolitans and forty-one Archbishops, 126 clerical
and lay delegates, and the Metropolitan Benjamin, who
represented the Orthodox congregations of the United
States and Canada. The Sobor proceeded to nominate
and unanimously elect as the new Patriarch the Metro-
politan Alexius of Leningrad and Novgorod, a holder
of the Leningrad Defense Medal for heroism during the
defense of Soviet Russsia's great northern city.
Present as guests at the Sobor were high religious offi-
cials from the Orthodox Churches of Serbia, of Rumania
and of several cities of the Near East such as Constanti-
nople and Jerusalem. This was the first occasion since
1917 on which representatives of the Orthodox religion
outside the Soviet Union had officially and openly met
together with the Russian Church authorities. And it
raised hopes that there might be organized, as proposed
by the late Patriarch Sergius, a Confederation of the
autonomous Orthodox Churches of the world. Reg-
ular consultation and mutual action on the part of these
Churches would be a natural thing in view of their com-
mon creed and their opposition, with the Anglican and
other Protestant groups, to the claim of the Roman
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
Catholics that the Pope is the true and only Vicar of
Christ on earth. The Great Schism between the Eastern
and Western branches of Christianity occurred over this
very issue nine centuries ago in 1054.
The Government itself can hardly be indifferent to
the political and international implications of the reju-
venation of the Russian Orthodox Church. Increasing
influence for this religious body in Eastern Europe serves
both to further Slav unity and to weaken the hold of the
passionately anti-Soviet Catholic Church. Premier Stalin
and his associates undoubtedly welcomed the announce-
ment in 1946 that the Greek Catholic or Uniate Church
of the western Ukraine had broken its centuries-old union
with the Vatican and returned to the Russian Orthodox
fold. The Assembly of the Uniate Church sent a special
letter to Mr. Stalin in which it referred frankly to "proud
and power-loving Rome, which had always dreamed
of establishing its own dictatorship in the Christian
world. "21 In 1948 the Greek Catholic or Uniate Church
of Rumania also broke away from the Roman Catholics
and rejoined the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The best available estimate for the number of Ortho-
dox churches functioning in 1952 in the U. S. S. R. was
22,000 as compared with 46,457 in 1917. Close to 100
monasteries and nunneries were open, in comparison
with 550 in 1917. In 1914 the Orthodox Church, in a
country so pious that it was constantly referred to as
"Holy Russia," boasted of more than 90,000,000 com-
municants. Although no reliable statistics are available
on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union
today, it seems probable that the Orthodox faithful have
been reduced by at least one-half since the Revolution.
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AHD RBLIGIOH
Some of the Protestant sects, however, for the first time
possessing equal rights with the Orthodox Church, have
gained in membership. As would be expected, religion
remains strongest among the peasants and is weakest in
the urban districts, especially in the scores of new indus-
trial centers which have sprung up under the Five-Year
Plans.
The more tolerant attitude of the Soviets toward
organized religion in the U. S. S. R. has been due not only
to the Church's loyalty during the Second World War,
but also to the fact that even before the war religious
leaders and their following had finally accepted the estab-
lishment of a socialist economy and commonwealth and
had determined to live in peace with the new order of
things. There is nothing in the social principles of
Christianity that cannot be reconciled with a socialist
economic system; and there is much in a socialist eco-
nomic system that aids in the actualization of the social
principles of Christianity.
The Soviet Government and the Communist Party
have evidently decided, that the economic, educational
and temporal power of the Church has been permanently
broken and that religion no longer constitutes a political
threat. There were two times, especially, in Soviet de-
velopment, the years of the Civil War and the period
of farm collectivization, when religious organizations did
become hostile and dangerous foci of opposition to the
regime. Since the objective situation has led Church and
State, though for different reasons, to become more con-
ciliatory towards each other, in my judgment the present
harmonious relations between the two are likely to be
of long duration. The practical policy of the Govern-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
ment and the Communist Party does not, however, mean
that they have altered their basic anti-religious phil-
osophy.
It remains to be said that the persistence of religious
faith among considerable sections of Soviet citizens proves
that the creation of socialism does not automatically put
an end to religion. The capitalist system did not bring
religion into existence and its disappearance will not
necessarily usher religion out. The Marxists are con-
vinced that the social-economic roots of religion, as pre-
sently embodied in capitalism, will wither away along
with the capitalist order. But granting the great impor-
tance of these social-economic roots, I am of the opinion
that certain psychological and biological phenomena
which have in the past helped to stimulate religious belief
will continue to exist under any economic system. There
are always likely to be, for instance, various kinds of
personal frustration; and above all there will always be
the event called death. Thus, even if the last theist re-
nounced belief in the last god, religious concepts center-
ing around the hope of immortality might well endure
or revive.
Nonetheless, it seems probable that more and more
of the Soviet population will come to accept the purely
secular philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. This in-
clusive, affirmative, and life-asserting philosophy is per-
haps best described as socialist Humanism. The entire
educational apparatus of the country, working in har-
mony with ever more successful social and economic con-
struction, is geared toward teaching this way of life. And
the younger generations, reared for the most part in an
atmosphere hostile or indifferent toward religion, are
growing up with the Communist world-view as a natural
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? SOVIET RUSSIA AND RELIGIOH
and accepted part of their intellectual outlook. As new
generations reach maturity this attitude will become ever
more deeply ingrained and widespread.
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? CHAPTER V SOVIET ECONOMIC AND
CULTURAL PROGRESS
1. What the Second World War Showed
On September 7, 1941, two and one-half months after
the Nazi armies attacked the Soviet Union, the conserva-
tive Boston Herald ran an editorial entitled "The Rus-
sian Revelation," which read in part as follows: "Amer-
icans are forced to revise their beliefs as to the physical
prowess of the Soviets, the skill of the leaders, the morale
of the civilian populace, the willingness of all, women
as well as men, to make tremendous sacrifices to turn
back the invaders. . . . How strange it seems! A nation
which was thought to be the most backward, careless,
least efficient and least patriotic in the world has checked
a mighty host from the nation which has been assumed
to be the most advanced in organization, morale, leader-
ship and efficiency. "
As time passed, this generous admission from an un-
expected quarter was more and more confirmed by events.
In December, 1941, the Soviet armies went on the offens-
ive and hurled back the Germans from the approaches
to Moscow. In 1942 they held the Nazi juggernaut month
after month at the desperate Battle of Stalingrad and
destroyed in ferocious fighting at close quarters the
flower of Hitler's Wehrmacht. In the final encirclement
of the invaders, the Soviet command killed off more than
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
200,000 enemy troops and captured 91,000. In 1943 the
Soviet forces unleashed a general counter-offensive along
a line more than 1,000 miles in length, all the way from
Leningrad in the north to the Caucasus in the south.
This far-flung counter-offensive, one of the most re-
markable in military annals, steadily pushed back the
Nazis and gathered further momentum in 1944, greatly
aided by the Anglo-American invasion of France in June
of that year. In July the Red Army crossed into Poland
and marched on towards the German frontier. Then in
tne first months of 1945 came the rapid sweep across
Eastern Germany, as the Allied troops stormed over the
Rhine and dealt body-blows to Hitler from the west.
On May 2 Marshal Stalin proclaimed the capture of
Berlin by the Soviet army and on May 8 the German
military forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies
and Soviet Russia. Finally, early in August, 1945, the
Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, its armies
quickly subduing the considerable Japanese concentra-
tion in Manchuria.
Unquestionably the Russian Revelation had grown
ever more impressive since the Boston Herald's acknow-
ledgment of 1941. And as we pursue the logic of the
Soviet showing against the combined forces of Germany,
Hungary, Romania and Finland, we see in more detail
the meaning of what the Soviet people, leaders and
armies accomplished. Admittedly, the natural advan-
tages of the country, such as its vast size, the rigor of its
winters and its tremendous reserves of man-power, were
significant factors in the downfall of Hitler; but these
advantages were also present during the First World War
when the German armies inflicted overwhelming defeat
upon the Russians. It is clear that additional factors must
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
have contributed to what the Russians achieved in the
Second World War.
The immense Soviet military strength displayed from
1941 to 1945 had certain definite implications. First, it
meant that the Soviet armies possessed up-to-date, me-
chanized equipment, in large quantity and of excellent
quality, with which to combat the most highly mechan-
ized attacking force yet assembled in history. Otherwise
Hitler's ruthless Luftwaffe and fast-moving panzer divi-
sions would indeed have knocked out the Soviet Union
in a matter of weeks, as the cocksure prophets of Soviet
doom had with relish kept repeating.
Second, we realize that the hard-hitting Soviet tanks,
artillery, airplanes, machine guns and rifles did not just
appear miraculously out of the blue. In fact, they came
from those very Russian factories which for so long had
been described by the American press as hopelessly inef-
ficient and bogged down in general confusion. The
Soviets did receive valuable military supplies through
American-British Lend-Lease. But these supplies did
not start coming through in great quantity until after
the Battle of Stalingrad and they never added up to more
than 10 percent of the total military materiel at the dis-
posal of the Soviet armies. Contrary to reports circulated
abroad, the workers in the Soviet defense industries did
an excellent job during the pre-war years in producing
armaments of the highest grade. The proof of this is in
what those armaments did to the Nazis.
Soviet defense industries and armaments workers did
not function in a vacuum. They were part of an ambi-
tious program for the development of industry through-
out the U. S. S. R. and especially of heavy industry, which
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
is so basic to the manufacture of armaments. The third
implication, then, is that the country's industrial expan-
sion was a noteworthy success and that the Five-Year
Plans, often ridiculed as "Red Smoke," achieved their
main objectives in industry. Furthermore, these Plans
provided for the erection of vast industrial facilities
behind the Ural Mountains and throughout Siberia
where enemy bombers could not reach them. And this
was a major reason why the Soviets were able to keep on
turning out armaments all through the war, in spite of
the occupation by the invading armies of so much of
western Russia, including the great industrial centers
of the Ukraine.
Fourth, the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany demon-
strated that the socialist economic system as a whole had
developed in a remarkably successful manner under the
Five-Year Plans and that it continued to function effect-
ively under the terrific stress of an all-out war. The de-
fense industry, and heavy industry in general, of course
had to be closely integrated with the rest of the economy,
including the vital facilities of transportation. The anti-
Soviet critics had frequently called transportation the
"weak link" in the Soviet economic order and had pre-
dicted that it would break down disastrously under the
strain of war conditions. Yet transportation, whether by
railroad or otherwise, made a brilliant record for itself
from 1941 to 1945. The notable defensive and offensive
operations could not possibly have been carried out
unless there had been a transportation system function-
ing fairly efficiently behind the lines. This is not to gain-
say the fact that during the last two years of the war
several hundred thousand American trucks and jeeps
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? sovmr civilization
were of immense assistance to the mobility of the Red
Army.
One of the feats of the Soviet railways was the removal
of whole factories on flat cars from the path of the ad-
vancing Nazi forces to eastern regions beyond the reach
of the enemy. Then the factories in their component
parts were set down, quickly assembled, and harnessed
to production again in short order. Approximately 1300
plants were moved in this manner and 1,000,000 freight
carloads used to do it. The New York Herald Tribune
called it "a miracle. " But behind all such war-time "mir-
acles" in the Soviet Union was a long sequence of eco-
nomic cause and effect stretching back over the years and
always an integral part of the country-wide socialist plan-
ning.
Another sector which performed in outstanding
fashion during the war years was agriculture. The pro-
duction of food would surely have broken down during
this period had it not been for the prior collectivization
of agriculture so that it could operate on a large scale
with modern machinery. What this meant for the war
effort Alexander Werth explains in his book, The Year
of Stalingrad: "It was, indeed, one of the remarkable
achievements of the Soviet war machine that, by contrast
with the war of 1914-18, the Russian Army was, on the
whole, well fed. There were occasional hitches due to
transport difficulties, especially when a unit was more
or less isolated; but in the main the army ate better than
anybody else in the Soviet Union, even in the very dif-
ficult days of 1941 and 1942, when many cities were
hungry. In 1943 the situation became even better, with
the influx of American supplies. "1
The fifth point is that clearly neither the pre-war de-
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? ECOHOMIC AH. D CULTURAL PROGRESS
velopment of the Soviet economy nor its functioning dur-
ing the Nazi invasion nor the victories of the Red Army
could have taken place unless in general the workers had
become well trained in modern industrial techniques and
the soldiers in the effective use and servicing of mechan-
ized war equipment. Mass production of the implements
of war and of countless other things necessary for an in-
dustrialized society meant that millions of Russians must
have learned to operate the complicated machinery so
typical of the twentieth-century world. In order to de-
feat the Nazis, Soviet plane pilots, tank drivers, machine-
gunners, artillery-men, engineers, mechanics and the rest
must have mastered their jobs in both theory and prac-
tice.
Mr. W. Averell Harriman, former Ambassador of the
United States to the U. S. S. R. and head of an American
Mission to that country in 1941, stated in a radio broad-
cast shortly after he left the Soviet Union: "The Russian
has become a first-class mechanic in this last generation.
. . . Out on the airfields, where much has to be done with
little equipment, our American officers report -- and I
quote from one of them -- that they have never seen such
skill, ingenuity, resourcefulness and morale. The Rus-
sian mechanics work without shelter in sleet, rain and
wind an average of fourteen hours a day. Their pilots
learn to fly American aircraft as quickly, as skilfully, as
our own pilots or the British. And so we have our answer
to why Hitler's time schedule has been dislocated. The
clumsy Russian mujik has become a skilled mechanic. "2
Lord Beaverbrook, the English press magnate, testified
at the same time that Soviet "pilots are of the very best,
just as much experienced as any pilots anywhere. And
the mechanics who service their aircraft compare in all
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
respects with the mechanics of Great Britain and the
United States. Indeed, the Russians have a genius for
mechanization. "3
The vast extension of education and technical train-
ing in the Soviet Union since 1917 has included all seg-
ments of the population. Women as well as men have
become wise in the ways of the machine. This was of
crucial importance during World War II because hun-
dreds of thousands of women had to take over the skilled
jobs of men who had been called into the army. Especial-
ly was this true in agriculture where in many districts
the women had to shoulder the major part of the respons-
ibility, driving the tractors and mechanical reapers.
Another aspect of the cultural revolution that proved
significant was the improvement in the science of medi-
cine. In contrast to the First World War, the Soviet
doctors were able to prevent any large-scale epidemics
in the armed forces and the population at large. And
the medical services of the Red Army made a spectacular
record in restoring wounded soldiers to full health or
at least in making them available for civilian work. Sur-
gery of all varieties contributed notably to this result.
The sixth implication of the war effort was that
leadership in the army and government was well quali-
fied to cope with the crisis caused by the Nazi invasion.
The reservation must be made here that during the first
few weeks of the war the Soviet forces suffered severe
defeats and enormous losses in prisoners. When Hitler
struck on June 22, 1941, he took the Soviet armies to a
large extent by surprise and was able, for instance, to
destroy many hundreds of Soviet planes before they could
get into the air. Why Premier Stalin and his associates,
explicitly warned of the coming attack through reliable
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? ECONOMIC AN[D CULTURAL PROGRESS
information forwarded by President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Churchill, were not more on guard against the
approaching storm, is still a mystery.
Nonetheless, on the whole both generals and civilian
administrators carried through with eminent success the
formidable tasks imposed upon them. Events did not
bear out the claim that the Moscow Trials and general
purges of 1937-38 had fatally weakened Soviet leadership.
The crushing by the Soviet Republic of an extensive
conspiracy to overthrow it -- a conspiracy having definite
links with Nazi Germany -- resulted in strengthening
Soviet leadership and morale.
This brings us to the seventh and final point: that
the economic developments of the Five-Year Plans, the
first-class fighting equipment of the Red Army and the
educational progress of the population would have
availed but little if the people had been lacking in morale.
Here again the actual course of the Nazi-Soviet conflict
disproved any number of misconceptions. Although a
certain number of traitors, Hitler collaborators, or
slackers appeared among them, the people as a whole
rallied to the defense of their country with ardor and
determination. This was proved daily by the fighting
spirit of the armies, the widespread activity of the guerril-
las, the civilian defenders of Leningrad and other cities,
and the relentless execution of the scorched earth policy.
Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propagandists expected
that the peasants, particularly in the Ukraine, would
revolt against the Government and welcome the invading
forces as liberators. On the contrary, with few exceptions
the peasants in the enemy-occupied regions remained
loyal to the regime and joined the guerrilla bands by the
scores of thousands. And those guerrilla fighters, coming
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
from a population whose individual initiative had sup-
posedly been stamped out by the Communist dictator-
ship, displayed remarkable initiative. The Nazis also
hoped that discord would break out among the different
minorities. This did not happen either, though five
minor groups did not fulfil their patriotic obligations.
All but a fraction of the more than 170 minority peoples,
constituting almost one-half of the total population, gave
their utmost in the nation's supreme ordeal and played
an indispensable role in the final debacle of Hitler's
legions.
Despite the tons of newsprint expended in America
and other lands to show that they were the slaves of a
bloodthirsty tyranny and seething with hatred for the
Stalin regime, the people evidently thought from 1941
to 1945 that their new socialist system was worth fighting
and dying for. We cannot afford to forget that socialism
is more than an economic system and a political affilia-
tion; it is an inclusive way of life capable of arousing the
most intense devotion in those who give it allegiance.
## *
To recapitulate my review of the implications which
we can draw from the Soviet achievement in the Second
World War, I believe that it showed, first, that the armies
possessed up-to-date and mechanized equipment, in large
quantity and of excellent quality; second, that the bulk
of this war materiel was efficiently produced in Soviet
factories; third, that the industrial program in general
had been a conspicuous success; fourth, that the country's
socialist system as a whole functioned most effectively
under the terrific impact of the Nazi invasion; fifth, that
the population had made impressive advances in educa-
tion and technical training; sixth, that the leadership
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? ECOHOMIC AKD CULTURAL PROGRESS
lived up fully to its responsibilities during the war crisis;
and, seventh, that the people displayed splendid morale
throughout the entire titanic struggle with Hitler.
It seems to me that any objective student, conservative
as he may be in outlook or antagonistic as he may be to
the Soviets, must arrive at similar conclusions if he faith-
fully follows through the logic of the showing against
the Nazis. That logic demonstrates, through pragmatic
reference to the incontestable records of history, that
Soviet socialism possesses formidable and deeply rooted
powers of resistance and endurance. It does not demon-
strate that Soviet socialism is superior to capitalism, since
both the United States and Britain put on their own
magnificent performances during the war.
