No More Learning

The question is not whether all the ten points in the
Soviet peace program I have outlined are acceptable; but
whether these recent moves in the direction of world
peace do not indicate that the Soviet Russians are sin-
cerely seeking a reasonable international settlement. It
is my feeling that their various proposals, while of course
provoking much disagreement, do provide a hopeful
agenda for discussion by the Western Powers. The Amer-
ican attitude, however, has seemed only too often to be
one of shutting -- or slamming -- the door against all
Soviet peace overtures on the ground that to entertain
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
them seriously would jeopardize Western rearmament
and unity of purpose. Such a foreign policy, encouraging
on principle tensions that produce a brink-of-war mental-
ity and implying that all peace offers to the West must
be indefinitely rejected, is both unintelligent and dan-
gerous.
Again and again over the past few years the U. S. State
Department has issued releases to the effect that "the
Soviet peace offensive" is solely intended to embarrass
and impede Western rearmament. But the Soviet Union's
foreign policy has remained substantially the same since
the end of World War II; and the Russians are almost
always conducting some kind of peace offensive, whether
the Western Powers are demobilizing, disarming, rearm-
ing, intervening, occupying, withdrawing, sending notes,
holding conferences or anything else. It is not rational,
then, to claim that the unceasing Soviet drive for peace
is merely Machiavellian in its import.
It has not been my intention in this chapter to try
to cover the entire complex course of American-Soviet
relations since 1945; or to assess the precise amount of
blame on either side for such exacerbated happenings as
the Berlin crisis of 1948, with the Soviet blockade and the
American airlift, and other tense situations in the cold
war. There have been numerous instances in which the
U. S. S. R. has plainly been in the wrong. I think especially
of the harsh and insupportable practice of Soviet flyers
in shooting down foreign airplanes, some of them pas-
senger planes, which may be inadvertently violating Sov-
iet territory or the Soviet zone in Germany. In the spring
of 1952 this happened to both French and Swedish air-
planes.
Frankly, however, I do think that the United States
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
bears the major responsibility for starting the cold war
and that after Hitler's defeat in 1945 the Truman Ad-
ministration took the first hostile steps towards the Soviet
Union rather than the other way around.
The first such step to arouse Soviet resentment was
the abrupt order, issued by Leo T. Crowley, chief of the
Foreign Economic Administration, on May 12, 1945,
four days after the Nazi surrender, for the suspension of
all Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union. The
American Government took this action without any
previous consultation with or warning to the Russians,
to whom it appeared as an insult and as a handicap in
carrying out their promise to join forces later against
Japan.
Under Crowley's order ships on the high seas with
supplies for the U. S. S. R. were recalled and other ships
about to sail with goods were unloaded. Among the
equipment never delivered to Soviet Russia were forty-
six wide-gauge locomotives built especially for the Soviet
railways at a cost of almost $4,000,000 and not usable
anywhere else -- valuable equipment which the U. S.
Army ultimately auctioned off as scrap. The Crowley
directive was later relaxed to some extent; but President
Truman soon put an end to the whole business when on
August 21, 1945, one week after the Japanese collapse, he
terminated Lend-Lease for all countries which had been
receiving it.
The second thing which so antagonized the Soviet
Union was the U. S. treatment of Soviet reparations
claims against Germany. The Soviet proposal had been
that Germany should pay total reparations of $20,000,-
000,000 with half of it going to the U. S. S. R. It was
Stalin's judgment at Yalta that the aggregate German
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
industrial plant at the end of World War II was as large
as, if not larger than, it had been in 1939, wartime ex-
pansion having been greater than all the destruction.
This estimate was later substantiated by the facts. Since
the Nazis had wrought property damages in the U. S. S. R.
of more than $125,000,000,000, the Soviet claim for
$10,000,000,000 in reparations was not exorbitant.
The issue came to a head shortly after Hitler's de-
feat when President Truman sent to Germany and Soviet
Russia a Reparations Commission chairmaned by an oil
executive, Edwin W. Pauley, a political appointee who
proved to be without the slightest competence for the job.
This whole mission on reparations was a tragic debacle.
There were no actual discussions with the Soviets that
by any stretch of the imagination could be called nego-
tiations; and the result was that Pauley arrived at the
Potsdam Conference in the latter part of July, 1945, with
nothing to present except a beautifully embossed "pro-
gress report" looking like the Gutenberg Bible. It con-
tained a perfect hodge-podge of views emanating from
individuals on the American staff whose brief "inspec-
tion" tour of German industry had been primarily a
sightseeing junket.
Of course neither Pauley's Commission nor any other
body ever worked out an agreement on total reparations
with the Soviets. And the Western Powers never came
anywhere near fulfilling the guarantees made in the
Potsdam Declaration for the removal of industrial equip-
ment from the western zones of occupation as reparations
for the U. S. S. R.
** *
I have not attempted to state all the problems or give
all the answers in the broad sphere of American-Soviet
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
relations. Rather I have endeavored to fill in some of
the gaps in the general knowledge of the average Amer-
ican in this field; and to present facts and interpretations
concerning the subject which are neglected at present
by U. S. public opinion in its preoccupation with the cold
war. It is my thesis that whatever the defects of the Amer-
ican and Soviet systems, whatever the past mistakes of
their respective governments, whatever those govern-
ments' disagreements as so far expressed, they can come
to an intelligent over-all agreement that will stop the
drift towards war and turn the tide instead in the direc-
tion of peaceful co-existence between the two countries
and between the capitalist and Communist blocs in
general.
As that oracle of conservative sanity, the Wall Street
Journal, stated in commenting on the desirability of an
American settlement with the Soviet Union: "The U. S.
has many differences with nations with which it lives at
peace. To live together peaceably it is only necessary
that differences be resolved to the point where the re-
maining disputes seem less important than the danger
of war. What is necessary is not perfect agreement, but
only a method of living together. "47
So far as concrete Soviet peace moves are concerned,
there is much in them that is valid for the U. S. A. as well
as the U. S. S. R. A sound American peace policy is bound
to have a number of basic points in common with Soviet
policies. During the war against the Axis, Soviet Russia
and the United States drew up and faithfully carried out
many joint military agreements which were to the ob-
vious interest of both countries. In these years high
officials in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations
did not turn down suggestions merely because they were
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
initiated or advocated by the Soviets. It is not sensible
to do so today.
War and violence have always been the worst ways
to deal with problems between countries. There is a far
better method for the solution of current dilemmas -- for
nations, for peoples, for governments, for capitalists, for
Communists, for conservatives, for radicals, for politi-
cians, for businessmen, for this alliance and that bloc,
for East and West. That is the method of reason, under-
standing, negotiation and compromise. I believe that this
method now demands that the American Government
give more serious and reasonable consideration to the
major Soviet peace proposals; and that it should accept
the invitation of the Soviet Government to have highest
ranking officials from each side sit down and talk things
over calmly, with the aim of settling the chief issues in
dispute on terms advantageous to both.
The President of the United States during the next
four years will have an unexcelled opportunity to serve
America and humanity through initiating more construc-
tive measures for international peace than those sup-
ported by the Truman Administration. And if he is
politically wise, the President will realize that nothing
will gain him stronger backing among the American elec-
torate than success in putting across a peace and disarma-
ment program that reverses the trend of the past few
years towards global disaster; and that embodies the
principle of atomic power for life, not death. The Amer-
ican people themselves have their own unique power
and responsibility in the current situation. They can
elect public officials who are pledged to carry through
a genuine peace policy; and they can maintain steady
pressure on the President, the State Department and Con-
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
gress to avoid extremist actions and to pursue the path
of world amity.
Military aggressors have gone down to defeat many
times in history, but mankind has never succeeded in
doing away with international conflict itself. In every
country the living generations of today have the chance,
in this era of unprecedented possibilities for both good
and evil, of bestowing on their direct descendants and
all posterity the greatest boon in the records of the race:
the permanent abolition of the scourge of war. That is
the supreme challenge of these fateful times.
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? f -<<? ? i"<<v 4 jr. -
. . . . -- ,5'-l/-. -. ^7
CHAPTER X
FINAL REFLECTIONS
If we compare the United States and Soviet Russia,
certain basic similarities stand out. Both countries possess
large and vigorous populations inhabiting huge domains
of continental extent and untold natural wealth. Both
nations have had to cope with geographic, economic and
social problems of a like character. Just as American
enterprise pushed west to the Pacific, settling the land and
developing the resources, so Russian enterprise pushed
east to the Pacific, creating finally under the Soviet Re-
public an impressive new industrial civilization through-
out the former wasteland of Siberia. Both peoples believe
in the desirability and possibility of continued progress
and rely upon scientific method and machine techniques
to implement that progress. And historically we have
both been pioneers in seeking to hew out new paths for
the well-being of all the people.
In make-up the populations of America and Russia
are alike in containing many diverse nationalities and
races; and so it is that each nation aims at full ethnic
democracy. Both peoples are friendly and democratic in
spirit; frank, warm and informal in their social behavior.
Mrs. Vera M. Dean, herself Russian-born, writes: "In
many ways the Russians resemble the Americans more
than any other people. Like Americans, they are eager
to ask questions and learn new things; they are not afraid
to make mistakes; they have an attitude of breezy but not
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? FIHAL REFLECTIOHS
annoying self-confidence, born of the knowledge that they
have vast spaces and great material resources at their
disposal; and they adapt themselves readily to new and
entirely untried conditions. "1
Both Americans and Russians have about them a cer-
tain largeness of vision and broad sense of humanity that
expresses itself in the struggle for freedom and in the
goal of international peace. "To be a genuine Russian,"
said Dostoyevski, "means to become the blood brother of
all human beings. "2 A strong sense of social and inter-
national idealism has been typical of Americans and Rus-
sians. Great leaders of the respective countries, such as
Woodrow Wilson and Franklin XJ. Roosevelt, Vladimir
I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, could with equal sincerity
subscribe to the thought, "Above all nations is humanity. "
These considerations show clearly enough that in spite
of all the ideological disagreements between the United
States and Soviet Russia, there exists a sound basis for
close and fruitful cooperation between them. Geography
and modern techniques of communication and transpor-
tation have made the two countries neighbors; mutual
enemies, international crises and world wars have made
them associates and allies; intelligent self-interest and
patient understanding on both sides can result in the
attainment of their common aims of living in peace to-
gether, enjoying mutually profitable trade relations and
participating in wide cultural interchange with each
other.
Turning finally to the situation in the Soviet Union,
I shall call as a witness the eminent British historian,
Thomas Babington Macaulay. In his Essay on Milton
Macaulay, describing the English Revolution of 1688,
wrote: "Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the
acquisition been worth the sacrifice? . . . We deplore the
outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more
violent the outrages, the more we feel that a revolution
was necessary. The violence of these outrages . . .
will
be proportioned to the oppression and degradation
under which the people have been accustomed to live. . . .
"It is the character of such revolutions that we always
see the worst of them first. Till men have been some
time free they know not how to use their freedom. The
final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, modera-
tion and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious
crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most
clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. . . . It
is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. . . .
If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and
good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. "
Macaulay's reflections are applicable without the alter-
ation of a word to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and
the subsequent course of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. And they pose our central problem in evalu-
ating Soviet Russia: Do the evils existent during the first
thirty-five years of the Communist regime, especially in
the realm of means, outweigh the total good achieved or
reasonably to be anticipated for the near future? My
answer is "No"; in a complete and true balance sheet,
the Soviet good greatly outweighs the bad.
Macaulay's enduring words give insight into the harsh
reality that altogether democratic means for the attain-
ment of fundamental economic and social changes can be
expected only in a society which has already achieved
full democracy. No such national community exists
today, although we can see an approximation to it in
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? FINAL REFLECTIONS
Great Britain and to a lesser extent in the United States.
In these two countries, the comparatively high degree of
democracy, despite serious violations of its principles and
processes, leads intelligent men to rely on democratic
procedures for liberal reforms or radical transformation.
But in Tsarist Russia of 1917 the development of democ-
racy did not remotely approach that of the Anglo-Saxon
commonwealths. This important truth is not easy for
many of us to remember.
And while the American people have attained the
highest material standard of living on record, that con-
siderable advantage functions as a disadvantage in their
judgment of other nations. For it tends to make Ameri-
cans forget or neglect the abysmally low living standards
of the majority of the human race, whose struggle to
maintain a bare existence necessarily comes first and
often to the neglect of democratic and cultural values
which more advanced peoples take for granted. President
Truman indicated understanding of this problem when
he said in a 1952 speech on Point Four: "If we could
help the people of the Orient to get a well-balanced diet
-- three square meals a day -- instead of the few mouth-
fuls of rice that most of them eat now, just that one change
alone would have more impact on the whole world than
all the armies and battles in history. "3 Malnutrition or
famine, debilitating disease, exhausting over-work or
heart-breaking unemployment, inadequate clothing and
pitiful housing afflict at least one-half of the earth's popu-
lation, possessors of an annual per capita income of less
than $100.
Those same evils, for ages past the lot of the masses
of mankind, prevailed to a large extent in the old Russia.
To eliminate them was the primary aim in the domestic
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
program of the Soviet Communists; they have gone far
in achieving this goal. What they have not achieved are
the democratic patterns of living which they believe can
be permanently established only on the basis of economic
security and with the assurance of international peace.
Accordingly, the need for more time is of the essence,
considering the pressing initial problems -- such as coun-
ter-revolution, foreign intervention and fascist aggression
-- with which the Soviet regime has had to cope.
Westerners who today dismiss Soviet socialism as a
horrible failure and an international menace disregard
the lesson of history that it is reckless to make hasty ad-
verse judgments on far-reaching revolutionary movements
before those tradition-shattering upsurges of peoples and
nations have had an opportunity to work themselves out,
to correct their cruelties and crudities, to fulfill the gen-
erous ideals of their founders. I could be wrong; but in
my opinion the objective verdict of coming generations
will be that the Soviet Russians, during their first thirty-
five years, laid the foundations of a great new civilization
of enduring achievement and high promise, ranking in
world historical significance with the outstanding civil-
izations of the past.
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? . <^*qr<<Tr y --
NOTES
Preface
1 Corliss Lamont, You Might Like Socialism, Modern Age Books, 1939,
p. 141.
2 Corliss Lamont, Soviet Russia versus Nazi Germany, American Council
on Soviet Relations, 1941, p. 8.
3 New York Sun, Jan. 22, 1942.
4 Letter to Corliss Lamont from Mrs. Ruth B. Shipley, Chief, Passport
Division, U. S. Department of State, dated July 3, 1951.
Chapter I. On Evaluating Soviet Russia
1 Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Putnam's, 1941, p. 173.
2 New York Times, Sept. 23, 1951.
3 Ibid. , July 8, 1951.
4 New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 22, 1944.
5 Richard H. Rovere, "Letter from Washington," New Yorker, April 22,
1950, pp. 107-108.
6 PM, Oct. 11, 1946.
7 In Fact, Feb. 7, 1949, pp. 1-2.
8 Walter Lippmann, "Today and Tomorrow," New York Herald Tribune,
Sept. 4, 1941.
9 American Slavic and East European Review, April, 1949, pp. 137-144.
10 Margaret Mead, Soviet Attitudes toward Authority, McGraw-Hill, 1951,
p. 56.
11 Bruce Lockhart, British Agent, Putnam's, 1933, pp. 240, 308.
12 New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 28, 1932.
13 John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Holt, 1920, p. 176.
Chapter II. The Soviet Constitution
1 J. V. Stalin, On the Draft Constitution of the U. S. S. R. , Cooperative Pub-
lishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U. S. S. R. , Moscow, 1936, p. 11.
2 Stalin Reports (to the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party
of the U. S. S. R. ), International Publishers, 1934, pp. 72-73.
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? HOT ES
3 William Mandel, "Truly a New Civilization," Soviet Russia Today,
Nov. , 1948, pp. 31-32.
4 Quoted by Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Woman Question, International
Publishers, 1934, p. 19.
5 Andrei Y. Vishinsky, The Law of the Soviet State, Macmillan, 1948,
p. 617.
6 Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Houghton Mifflin, 1948,
pp. 288-289.
7 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization,
Scribners, 1938, Vol. II, pp. 1158-1159.
8 Letter to the Honorable Alexander S. Panyushkin from Margaret Lamont,
Corliss Lamont et al. , dated June 10, 1950.
Chapter III. Soviet Ethnic Democracy
1 Quoted by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Jews and Other Minor National-
ities under the Soviets, Vanguard, 1928, p. 8.
2 Quoted by H. H. Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution,
Stanford University Press, 1934, p. 467.
3 Nicholas Mikhailov, Land of the Soviets, Lee Furman, 1939, p. 293.
4 Franz Boas, "Relationships between North-West America and North-
East Asia," in Race, Language and Culture, Macmillan, 1940, p. 344.
5 New York Times, Jan. 15, 1931.
6 Joseph V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, International
Publishers, 1942, p. 12.
7 New York Times, June 8, 1952.
Chapter IV. Soviet Russia and Religion
1 Sir Bernard Pares, "Religion in Russia," Foreign Affairs, July, 1943,
p. 636.
2 Quoted by Julius Hecker, Religion and Communism, Chapman and
Hall, London, 1933, pp. 200-201.
3 Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, New York Labor News Com-
pany, 1924, p. 112.
4 Karl Marx, Introduction to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law,
1844.
5 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, op. cit. , Vol. II, p. 1134.
6 John C. Bennett, Christianity and Communism, Association Press, 1948,
pp. 16-17, 52.
7 Pares, op. cit. , p. 641.
8 V. I. Lenin, Religion, International Publishers, 1935, pp. 19-20.
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? HOT ES
9 Karl Marx, Capital, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, George Allen &
Unwin, London, 1928, pp. 864-865.
10 Quoted by Lenin, op. cit. , pp. 52-53.