No More Learning

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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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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needed a considerable understanding of United States
foreign policy and world affairs, in order to cast his ballot
intelligently in elections that involve issues of foreign
relations. What I am saying is that to do this he does not
himself have to be an international expert, either in rela-
tion to the U. S. S. R. or other lands or the world as a
whole.
The objective study of Soviet affairs, like the study
of anything else, requires reliance on the method of
reason in seeking out the facts and in reaching depend-
able conclusions. The method of reason implies not only
great diligence in distinguishing the true from the false,
but also a comprehensive evaluation. In line with this
approach, I wish to suggest a few general propositions
which it is well to keep in mind in attempting adequately
to assess Soviet life. These propositions are closely inter-
related and are to some extent overlapping, but each
bears on distinguishable aspects of the subject.
First of all, I believe we should recognize the simple
point that Soviet Russia is neither a heaven nor a hell.
The U. S. S. R. is such a controversial topic and evokes
such passionate reactions that many Americans tend to
think of that vast country in terms of either all black or
all white. The fanatical Russia-haters maintain that the
Soviet Union is a veritable hell on earth; the fanatical
Soviet-worshippers maintain that it is paradise itself
finally come into being on this terrestrial globe. The
intelligent and common-sense approach does not fall into
either of these extremes.
The obvious truth is that Soviet Russia, like the
United States, Great Britain or Mexico, is a mixture of
good and bad, of noteworthy accomplishments and dis-
tressing failures and a sincere striving for future better-
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ment. The U. S. S. R. is an enormous country of continen-
tal dimensions with an immense population and a thou-
sand and one different aspects of development. Yet num-
berless Americans have gone to the Soviet Union and
apparently seen nothing but the defects of the socialist
system in process of evolution there. They return to the
United States and write exaggerated books or articles
depicting Soviet Russia as one horrible bottomless pit
of grinding poverty and grueling dictatorship, economic
inefficiency and human misery.
Some of their observations have a factual basis, but
they neglect entirely to give the other side, the positive
side of Soviet life which has resulted in such tremendous
achievements over the third of a century since 1917.
Unfortunately the altogether negative picture that such
observers give of the U. S. S. R. has been eagerly seized
upon and accepted by the majority of the people in the
United States and other capitalist countries. This biased
and false viewpoint has been the prevailing one outside
of Soviet Russia and has been responsible for an infinite
amount of misunderstanding.
On the other hand, there are those Americans who
visit the Soviet Union and seemingly have an eye only
for its good points. They come back to the United States
and, forgetting or overlooking the many and serious
shortcomings of the new Soviet civilization, talk as if the
Russians had already achieved the millennium. Now
these observers who insist that Soviet Russia has become
some sort of Utopia are not only unrealistic; they are also
more Russian than the Russians, who themselves are
often extremely critical, particularly in comments in their
press, concerning conditions within their country.
The enthusiasts who believe that the long-sought
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heaven-on-earth of human hopes and ideals has come
to pass in the Soviet Union present a one-sided viewpoint
and also build up false expectations. They stimulate
others to visit the U. S. S. R. with the notion that they will
find there the practically perfect state. When these others
make the trip, they see that existence in Soviet Russia
is still pretty difficult, that living standards are quite
low and that the Communists are a tough-minded group
of revolutionaries hard on both themselves and others.
Frequently the paradise-seekers, with their religious
psychology, become quickly disillusioned, leave the
U. S. S. R. with their naive hopes blasted and forthwith
take a bitter, anti-Soviet attitude. On their return to
the United States they find a ready market for articles,
books and lectures which denounce the Soviet Union
and all its works. This pattern repeats itself again and
again; and it is easily discernible in the very titles of
anti-Soviet best-sellers such as Assignment in Utopia by
Eugene Lyons and The Dream We Lost by Freda Utley.
It seems to me that in order to avoid the extremes
which I have been describing, we ought to take a middle-
of-the-road position which gives honest consideration to
both the defects and virtues of the U. S. S. R. For instance,
I believe that Soviet Russia, for various reasons that I
shall comment on later, still lags lamentably behind the
United States in the development of civil liberties and
political democracy, notwithstanding grave American
shortcomings and backslidings in these fields. On the
other hand, the Soviet Russians have forged far ahead
of America in the establishment of ethnic equality and
racial democracy among the many different minority
nationalities and races that live within the far-flung
borders of the U. S. S. R. Anti-Semitism and other forms
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of racial prejudice and discrimination have almost en-
tirely disappeared in Soviet Russia. It would be possible
to make a number of other comparisons between Ameri-
can and Soviet life, some of them favorable to the U. S. A. ,
some of them favorable to the U. S. S. R.
It is folly to be either completely condemnatory of
Soviet civilization or completely uncritical of it. Specific
criticisms of Soviet institutions and policies are often jus-
tified; what we must object to are general obsessions
about Soviet Russia resulting in denunciation of practi-
cally everything Soviet and an automatic finding that the
U. S. S. R. is always wrong. Through the jaundiced eyes of
the Russia-haters what ordinarily would be regarded as
a virtue is interpreted as a vice when it manifests itself
in Soviet life. These fanatics, when during World War
II Soviet troops demonstrated signal bravery in fighting
the Nazis to the death and in refusing to surrender even
in the most impossible circumstances, claimed that this
showed Stalinist contempt for human life and for the
worth of the individual.
Again, in a book, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority,
published in 1951, the author, Miss Margaret Mead,
stresses the present re-establishment of parental author-
ity in the U. S. S. R. as compared with the early years of
the Revolution; and then surprisingly treats this unsur-
prising development as an undemocratic introduction
into the home of dictatorial attitudes which "bear a closer
resemblance to Stalin's relationship to every Soviet citi-
zen. "10 Yet I had thought that "Honor thy father and thy
mother" was a precept valued throughout the world and
not considered altogether outmoded even in democratic
America. Miss Mead also makes the remarkable sugges-
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tion that the wily Russians smoke heavy pipes in order
to conceal their facial reactions. Here of course is the
key to the sinister pipe-smoking of Joseph Stalin! So it
is that those who feel psychologically compelled to con-
demn everything Soviet must likewise discover a way of
stigmatizing even innocent personal habits.
This kind of attitude tends to blame all evil in the
sphere of international affairs on Moscow. In this man-
ner the Russia-haters turn the U. S. S. R. into a convenient
scapegoat for the collective sins of mankind; and in effect
assign to it the role of the old-time devil. Professor
Phillip Marshall Brown, formerly of Princeton Univers-
ity provided a good example of what I mean in his letter
to The New York Times on February 2, 1949, in which
he attributed to Soviet Russia not only the troubles
among the Jews, the Arabs and the British in Palestine,
but also the violence and unrest in Indonesia resulting
in armed hostilities between the Netherlands Govern-
ment and the Indonesian Republic. Anyone with a mite
of information knows that seething cauldrons of local
tensions had long existed in both Palestine and Indonesia
and required no Communist intrigue to make them boil
over.
As for Europe and Asia, the blame-it-on-Russia atti-
tude overlooks, among other things, the fact that the
larger portions of these continents are still in the throes
of recovering from the most destructive war in history,
brought about by fascist aggression; and that many
peoples, trying their best to reconstruct their economies
and to remedy ills ruinous to them in the past, have
shown a leftward trend which in some degree or other
would have existed with or without the stimulus of Soviet
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socialism. Socialist developments in Great Britain under
an anti-Soviet Labor Government lend support to this
point.
The approach that I am suggesting to the subject of
Soviet Russia gets away from the fanaticism of both the
Russo phobes and the Russo-philes. It weighs both the
pros and cons in the unceasing debate about the Soviet
Union. It attempts to assess the contributions of Soviet
Russia to international peace and to the downfall of the
fascist Axis in World War II as well as its domestic
achievements and failures. In short, this approach calls
upon us to take an over-all view of Soviet civilization
that includes a thorough and honest balance sheet of the
credits and debits in the Soviet ledger.
Secondly, we should take into constant consideration
the extraordinary complexity of the Soviet Union.
The U. S. S. R. is by far the biggest national unit on
the face of the globe, with a total area of approximately
8,597,000 square miles spreading out over two continents.
As a European country alone it is the largest in Europe
and even as an Asiatic country the largest in Asia. It is
greater in size than all of North and Central America.
It covers a territory amounting to over one-sixth of the
earth's land surface. From west to east the Soviet Union
extends more than 6,000 miles; from north to south at
the widest point more than 2,700.
Within its borders there are to be found all sorts of
climate, vegetation and animal life; and an infinite
variety and scope of basic natural resources such as min-
erals, oil, water-power, fertile soil and timber. The old
peasant proverb is indeed true: "Russia is not a country,
it is a world. " Plainly, then, the Soviet regime has been
operating in what amounts to an entire continent
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rather than in one nation in the ordinary sense of the
word. The huge proportions and great natural wealth
of the Soviet Union of course carry with them preemi-
nent advantages in economic self-sufficiency and military
defense. But they also create formidable problems of
administration, transportation and general development
-- problems that go far to explain many of the troubles
that the Soviet Government has encountered during its
existence.
Another continuing complexity in Soviet Russia is
that its fast-growing population, approximately 210,000,-
000 in 1952 and outnumbered only by that of India and
China, is made up of over 170 distinguishable races,
nationalities and tribes. The ethnic minorities range
from the Baltic peoples in the northwest to the Ukraini-
ans and Moldavians in the southwest; from the Armen-
ians and the Georgians of the Transcaucasus to the
Uzbeks and Kazakhs of Central Asia; from the Tatars
and Mari of the middle Volga River to the Yakuts and
Buryat Mongolians of eastern Siberia.
The autocratic Tsarist governments oppressed the
national minorities in the extreme, attempting to impose
upon them a strict Russification and to stamp out their
native cultures. The Soviet regime reversed this policy
and established complete ethnic equality. It has had
the task of encouraging the minority languages and cul-
tures while uniting all the different peoples in the im-
mense work of building a socialist economy and state.
The existence in the U. S. S. R. of so many minority
groups, and in 1917 at so many different stages of culture,
has been a serious complicating factor.
Considering both the geographical extent and the
ethnic make-up of the Soviet Union, we see that it is
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unique in being a great multi-national, multi-racial Eu-
rasian federation that combines European and Asiatic
peoples and cultures. Instead of a cleavage between East
and West, there is a merging of East and West. Marxism
originated in the West, in Germany; but its first actuali-
zation in state and economic forms came in a nation that
fans out from Europe clear across Asia to the Pacific
Ocean and Far East. This East-West union is a fact of
utmost significance and in itself makes the Soviet Repub-
lic harder to comprehend than a purely Western country
like England or France.
These reflections lead us to a further recognition of
complexity. In the Soviet Union there is a unique
merging not only of East and West, but of old and new.
In 1917 one of the most backward nations in the world,
economically and culturally, was Tsarist Russia. It was
hardly modern in any sense of the word. When the Com-
munists took power they immediately set out to establish
something so modern that it had never been tried before,
namely a full-fledged, nation-wide socialist society based
on Marxist principles. Marx had thought that such a
society would probably first come into being in one of
the highly industrialized states like England or Germany.
Instead it happened in the least industrialized of all the
Great Powers.
The Soviet Communists proceeded energetically and
enthusiastically with their unheard-of job, hitching a
powerful twentieth-century automobile engine, as it were,
to an antiquated horse carriage. The strange combina-
tion went ahead by fits and starts, with frequent break-
downs and numerous repairs. Gradually the Communists
succeeded in constructing a fairly adequate chassis for the
engine. The pervasive and dramatic interweaving of
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medieval and modern and ultra-modern in the U. S. S. R.
is a phenomenon that demands the most careful analysis.
Truly the Soviet Union presents a most complex picture.
Continuing with our introductory bases of judgment,
I suggest, thirdly, that we should be aware of the histor-
ical and cultural background of Soviet Russia.
The Revolution of 1917 took place in a semi-feudal
country which had lived under Tsarist absolutism for
some 400 years. Russia had never experienced the pro-
gressive, invigorating influences of a Renaissance and
Reformation, an Enlightenment and Bourgeois Revolu-
tion. It had never gone through anything remotely re-
sembling the long evolution of democracy and civil liber-
ties characteristic of England and the United States.
While the oppressive Tsarist dictatorship, noted for the
number and cruelty of its political persecutions, made
a concession towards democracy by instituting, as a result
of the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905, the Duma or
House of Representatives, this body was soon reduced
to a parliamentary nonentity.
In 1917 approximately 85 percent of the population
were peasants engaged in agricultural pursuits and using,
for the most part, primitive methods. Only in 1861 had
the Russian peasants been legally freed from the old
medieval system of serfdom. Grafted onto an incredibly
inefficient and backward agricultural economy, there was
in 1917 a weak and spasmodically developed capitalist
industry, largely depending on foreign financing and
foreign technical management. The peasants and the
relatively small working class endured an extremely low
living standard comparable to that of India and China.
About 70 percent of the entire people were illiterate; and
enjoyment of the splendid Russian achievements in
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drama and literature and music was limited to a thin
top-layer of the economically and socially privileged. In
the development of industry Tsarist Russia was in 1917
at least a century behind advanced countries like the
United States and Great Britain; in the development of
democratic institutions easily two centuries behind.
The influence of the Tsarist background upon Soviet
Russia cannot be exaggerated. Many of the weaknesses
and shortcomings that the U. S. S. R. has demonstrated
during its existence can be traced to the Tsarist inheri-
tance. No people can quickly throw off the habits and
customs of centuries. Part holdovers from Tsarist days
are the intense Soviet suspicion of foreigners, the per-
vasive activity of the secret police, the lag in free speech
and civil liberties, and a certain unsophisticated and
frequently undiplomatic bluntness of language.
The basic principles of Marxism are internationally
relevant and applicable. Yet the precise way in which
these general principles are put into effect is moulded
by the traditions and circumstances of each country in
which they take root. The evolution of both Christianity
and capitalism indicates such an outcome. Inevitably the
whole complex of a particular people's history, geograph-
ical situation, economic resources, national characteristics
and cultural level condition that people's future, some-
times for the better, sometimes for the worse. Soviet
socialism, therefore, is bound to differ from British
socialism in the West and from Chinese socialism in the
East, though they all share certain fundamental economic
and social methods and objectives.
In March of 1917, following more than two and one-
half years of disastrous belligerency in the First World
War, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and a provisional Gov-
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ernment of liberals and middle-class Republicans took
over the state. Under its muddling eight months' rule
things went from bad to worse throughout the land.
When Lenin and his colleagues seized control in Novem-
ber, they faced the chaos of a completely disorganized
economy, with the transportation system in collapse and
famine threatening; and the problems of a people whose
morale had been shattered by defeat after defeat at the
hands of the Germans, by some 7,000,000 military casual-
ties, including over 2,000,000 dead, and by overwhelm-
ingly trying economic conditions. Such were the unpro-
pitious circumstances under which the Russian Bolshe-
viks set out to construct the first socialist commonwealth
in history.
No sooner had the new Soviet Government made
peace with imperialist Germany, through signing the
humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918,
than it was forced to rally all its strength to resist a fresh
invasion, from east, west, south and north, on the part
of the Allies. This Allied intervention of 1918-22 con-
tinued for four years after final defeat of the Central
Powers had done away with the shadowy excuse of trying
to re-establish the Eastern Front. And it quickly joined
hands with the White counter-revolution in a joint cam-
paign to overthrow the Soviets by force. During this
period the armies of fourteen nations, including expedi-
tionary units from the United States, invaded the Soviet
Republic.
Although finally victorious, the Soviet regime suffered
enormous property losses and approximately 2,000,000
more dead. One of the worst effects of the combined
intervention and Civil War was that the Soviet Govern-
ment, forced to fight for its very life, found it necessary
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to tighten up the political dictatorship and to institute
the most repressive measures against the White counter-
revolutionaries. When the Communists actually took
power in 1917, they did so with a comparatively small
loss of life throughout Russia. Bloodshed on a large
scale came later. The author R. H. Bruce Lockhart (later
knighted), attached to the British diplomatic corps dur-
ing the exciting Civil War days and never a Soviet sym-
pathizer, throws light on these matters.
In his book British Agent Mr. Lockhart, referring
to the early months of 1918, writes that the Communists
"had not yet embarked on their own campaign of sup-
pression. I mention this comparative tolerance of the Bol-
sheviks, because the cruelties which followed were the
result of the intensification of the Civil War. For the in-
tensification of that bloody struggle Allied intervention,
with the false hopes it raised, was largely responsible . . .
and sent thousands of Russians to their death. Indirectly
it was responsible for the Terror. "11 The Communists
as well as their opponents fought ferociously and with
little regard for the so-called rules of warfare. Both
sides in the terrible civil conflict fully bore out an old
Russian saying, "One life, one kopek. "
During this period, in the autumn and winter of
1921-22, the Soviet Union suffered a fearful drought and
famine, aggravated by the shattered state of transporta-
tion, the ravages of counter-revolution and intervention,
and the war-weariness of the peasantry. This crisis of
crops and hunger brought another fearful toll, with at
least 1,000,000 people perishing. To its lasting credit
the American Relief Administration rendered yeoman
service to the Soviet Russians in this emergency and so
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offset to some degree United States participation in the
Allied invasion.
On October 25, 1922, when the Japanese forces and
the last remnants of the White armies evacuated Vladi-
vostok in Far Eastern Siberia, civil war and armed foreign
intervention finally came to an end. * Not until almost
five full years after the Revolution of 1917 was the Soviet
Government able to cease military operations and settle
down to the immense tasks of peaceful reconstruction.
With the odds heavily against them at the start and the
whole world expecting their downfall, the Soviets had
struggled through to victory over foreign invasion, civil
conflict, territorial loss, economic breakdown and famine,
all inflicted on a country that had already experienced
three calamitous years of the First World War and two
far-reaching revolutions. It was an epic triumph.
These first five years of the Soviet Republic's existence
naturally conditioned its entire future. The long battle
for survival made it doubly aware and doubly suspicious
of enemies plotting violence against it both at home and
abroad. The dictatorial features of Soviet political life
were accordingly accentuated. Well-founded fears of
still another attack on the part of foreign powers retarded
the evolution of democracy in the U. S. S. R. and held
down living standards by necessitating enormous invest-
ments in the production of armaments for self-defense.
Despite earnest efforts on behalf of international
amity, Soviet Russia continued to live in a world bitterly
hostile to it and reluctant to enter into normal diplomatic
and trade relations with it. The United States did not
* Japanese military units remained in the Soviet northern half of the
Far Eastern island of Sakhalin until April, 1925.
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officially recognize the Soviet Government until 1933
during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Handicapped by a credit blockade, the Soviet regime
was unable to obtain foreign loans of any substance and
had to lift itself by its own bootstraps in regard to eco-
nomic reconstruction and development.
Fourthly, it follows from what I have already said
about the historical background of the Soviet Union that
in comparing the U. S. S. R. with other countries, we must
pay constant attention to the principle of historical rela-
tivity.
I mean by this that different peoples of the earth are
in different stages of historical development and that
it would not be fair to apply to all of them the same
absolute measuring rod of judgment. Since Russia in
1917 was from one to two centuries behind the United
States in most of the ways we deem modern, it is obvi-
ously absurd to expect that the Soviet Union, having
to cope with such Herculean tasks as the repulse of the
Nazi invasion, could completely catch up to America in
a short thirty-five years. The building of either a highly
advanced capitalist society or a highly advanced socialist
society takes a good deal of time. And frequently in dis-
cussing some special aspect of Soviet life, our real ques-
tion should be: How much have conditions improved
since Tsarist Russia of 1917?
I would apply the same principle of relative com-
parisons to any country that had been in a generally
backward condition and had made some drastic change
in government or economic system in an effort to develop
a more mature and secure civilization. So today we
would all do well to judge with restraint, and with some
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understanding of the past, recent revolutionary events
in India and China, both of which have joined the
twentieth-century march toward progress.
The need of making comparisons between the U. S.
S. R. and other nations on a relative as well as an absolute
basis extends to all spheres of Soviet life. Regarding the
average material standard of living in Soviet Russia, un-
questionably it is still considerably below that enjoyed
in the United States. Yet it has gone up a great deal
since 1917 and promises to advance to much higher
levels. Those Americans who emphasize the fact that
Soviet living standards in terms of consumption goods
lag far behind what we take for granted in the U. S. A.
tend to forget that the American standard of living is
by all odds the highest in the world and has for a long
time outstripped that of any European or Asiatic country.
It is easy to overlook or romanticize the material short-
comings of lands other than Soviet Russia.
Many return from the U. S. S. R. , however, and con-
demn it wholesale for the sort of material backwardness
that they regard as merely picturesque in other parts of
the world. And they will construct whole books or lec-
ture tours around the lack of those mechanical gadgets
and modern conveniences for which the United States
is noted. But it is hardly to be expected that the Soviet
Russians, who have had a multitude of world-shaking
and world-making problems, could have turned the
U. S. S. R. into a tourist's paradise in so short a time or
would in any case have made that a main objective.
Actually, in 1938 when I last visited Soviet Russia,
traveling was becoming fairly comfortable there; and the
Russians were becoming increasingly efficient in the
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