Following the Second World
War, Eastern Europe's Communist Parties, which had in
most cases led the underground struggle against the Nazis,
emerged with great strength and prestige; and they every-
where used their new-won power to political advantage.
War, Eastern Europe's Communist Parties, which had in
most cases led the underground struggle against the Nazis,
emerged with great strength and prestige; and they every-
where used their new-won power to political advantage.
Soviet Union - 1952 - Soviet Civilization
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
the following syllogism: Joseph Stalin believes that 2 and
2 make 4; Mr. X in the U. S. A. believes that 2 and 2
make 4; therefore Mr. X is a dangerous Soviet agent.
Non-Soviet Communists do not deny, however, that
since the Soviet Communist Party was the first one to put
across a successful revolution and to build socialism,
Communists everywhere naturally take into considera-
tion the Soviet Party's great experience and prestige, and
tend to defer, perfectly freely, to its wisdom. With the
recent rise of a triumphant Communist Party in a second
major Power, China, it is improbable that the Soviet
Communists will continue to play such a paramount role
as heretofore in the world Communist movement.
Yet even granting the extreme -- and I believe incor-
rect -- view that Communist Parties the world over slav-
ishly obey the orders of the Kremlin, the aim of these
Parties, as repeatedly set forth in official books, pamph-
lets, newspapers, speeches, demonstrations and political
campaigns, is not to embroil their respective nations in
war, but to establish socialism in their native lands and
urge on the populations to world peace. One of the most
effective slogans of the Russian Communist Party in the
Revolution of 1917 was precisely "Peace. " Ever since
then Communist Parties everywhere have steadily em-
phasized the peace issue, and in fact to such an extent
that capitalist governments have considered it necessary
continually to warn their peoples against "Communist
peace propaganda. " So, even if Moscow is laying down
this anti-war line for foreign Communist Parties, it is
not one that can sensibly be interpreted as a call to inter-
national aggression.
Plainly, the danger of "Soviet aggression" must be
distinguished from the tendency in one country or an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
other for Communist movements, exploiting backward
economic and social conditions, to come into power.
Western propaganda has illogically striven to equate
these two alleged dangers and to brand vigorous Com-
munist political action anywhere as an example of and
due to Soviet aggression.
This loose use of the term "aggression" is typical of
the vehement yet vague charges which the governments,
press and radio of the Western World fling about in
reference to the artificially concocted Soviet menace.
American commentators constantly talk as if the militant
propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union were itself
equivalent to military aggression. Perhaps such propa-
ganda can be classified as "ideological aggression"; but
if so, then the United States and England, with high-
powered press and radio networks circling the globe, can
certainly be accused of the same thing. The main point,
however, is the necessity for distinguishing clearly be-
tween military and ideological aggression. Throughout
modern times various revolutionary governments, highly
organized religions and dissenting philosophies have done
their best to spread their particular messages throughout
the world.
Americans and the American Republic have been
active from the beginning in secular missionary work.
It was President Thomas Jefferson who said, "Nor are
we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human
race. "23 There is nothing reprehensible as such in a
particular country or some group in a particular country
having a sense of world mission and trying to get their
ideas across national frontiers and into the minds of the
various peoples of the earth. With the remarkable de-
velopment of techniques of communication during the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
twentieth century, the opportunities for effective inter-
national propaganda have of course greatly increased.
Soviet Russia has taken advantage of these opportunities
to further the cause of universal socialism, as has the
United States on behalf of democratic capitalism. In
neither case is it reasonable or accurate to describe such
propaganda as "aggression. "
What many Americans in particular seem unable to
grasp is the indigenous origin, the fundamental moti-
vation and the broad scope of the revolutionary move-
ments which have been sweeping into the vacuum left
by the downfall of the Axis and achieving state power
throughout much of Europe and Asia. In an address in
1951, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas well
described what is happening: "The plain fact is that the
world is in a revolution which cannot be bought off with
dollars. There are rumblings in every village from the
Mediterranean to the Pacific. A force is gathering for a
mighty effort. We think of that force as Communistic.
Communists exploit the situation, stirring every discon-
tent and making the pot boil. The revolutions which are
brewing are not, however, Communist in origin nor will
they end even if Soviet Russia is crushed in war.
"The revolutionaries are hungry men who have been
exploited from time out of mind. This is the century
of their awakening and mobilization. . . . The spirit
which motivates these people is pretty much the same
as the one which inspired the French and American
Revolutions. . . . The complaints of the peasants of Asia
are just as specific as those in our own Declaration of
Independence; and to the people involved they are just
as important. . . . These people, though illiterate, are
intelligent. The people of Asia have a catalogue of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
specific complaints. The absence of medical care always
comes first. The absence of schools is always second. Then
comes land reform. . . . The right to vote, the right to
elect a representative government, the power to expel
and punish corrupt officials -- these too are important
claims to reform. Finally they have a new sense of na-
tionality . . . an exultant feeling of independence and
resentment against intermeddling by outside powers. "24
Justice Douglas makes it clear that the primary reason
for today's revolutions is not Soviet propaganda, plots or
intervention, but a deep-seated reaction against poverty,
starvation, disease, graft, cultural backwardness, exploi-
tation by feudal land-owners, and foreign domination.
As one keen observer puts it: "To assert that the U. S. S. R.
causes Communist revolutions wherever they occur is
like saying that the first horse to finish a race causes the
other horses to finish! "25 When native Communist
Parties win leadership of the masses, popular unrest and
upsurge is already well under way.
In important instances the post-war upheavals have
been both anti-Soviet and anti-Communist. This is true
of the Labor Government's attempt to establish socialism
in England; of Prime Minister Nehru's efforts to strength-
en and stabilize India's newly won freedom; of Iran's
nationalistic and anti-Western move, led by a right-wing
administration, in taking over ownership of the country's
southern oil wells from British interests; and of Egypt's
drive to oust the English from the Suez Canal Zone and
the Sudan.
Obviously the Soviet Russians were very happy when
in the Far East the Chinese Communists, led by Mao
Tse-tung, finally overthrew in 1949 the reactionary and
corrupt government of Chiang Kai-shek and set up the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
People's Republic of China. But the Soviets had not
given Mao Tse-tung and his followers either military or
material aid. The country which supplied most arms to
the Chinese Communists, though indirectly, was the
United States, since large quantities of the more than
$4,000,000,000 worth of American materiel for Chiang's
armies reached the Communists through secret sale by
grafting officials or through capture from the demoralized
Nationalist forces. The Communists also obtained valu-
able arms from the Japanese invaders after their collapse
in the summer of 1945.
The Communist-controlled Chinese Government na-
turally established close and friendly relations with the
Soviet Government and in 1950 cemented those relations
in a detailed and mutually advantageous Treaty of
Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Aid. In this pact Soviet
Russia agreed to give the Chinese Government long-term
credits for payments for Soviet industrial and railway
equipment. It also agreed to withdraw Soviet troops
from the harbor of Port Arthur not later than 1952 and
to discuss the special Soviet privileges at the harbor of
Dairen after the conclusion of a Japanese peace treaty.
There was nothing in the Chinese-Soviet Treaty to
bear out the charge of the U. S. State Department that the
Chinese Republic had become subject to the control and
exploitation of Moscow. Of course, Soviet Russia has
great influence in Communist China, but that does not
prove that President Mao Tse-tung and his colleagues are
puppets of the Kremlin. And it does not seem likely
that the proud new China, with its population of almost
half a billion and finally free from the shackles of West-
ern imperialism, is going to submit to the domination of
any foreign Power whatever. In the fall of 1951, the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Indian Ambassador to China, Mr. Sardar K. M. Panikkar,
commenting on Soviet-Chinese relations, took the view,
according to The New York Times correspondent at
New Delhi, "that the greater weight of influence was on
the Chinese side. In other words, he thought that the
Soviet Union was more influenced by the importance of
China than Peiping was by Moscow. "26 I do not think
that any reasonable person can legitimately claim that
the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution and
the subsequent course of Chinese affairs have constituted
Soviet aggression.
If we turn our attention to Eastern Europe, we shall
see that such aggression has not taken place there either.
Towards the end of World War II the Soviet armies
marched into Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hun-
gary, Romania and Austria not as aggressors, but in pur-
suit of the Nazi, Hungarian and Romanian forces which
had earlier invaded the U. S. S. R. Soviet troops occupied
Bulgaria, which had been an ally of Hitler. While Soviet
soldiers and occupation authorities remained stationed,
by international agreement, in these various countries,
they of course actively encouraged the liquidation of the
old fascist elements and the establishment of People's
Republics dedicated to drastic social-economic reform
and favoring friendly relations with the U. S. S. R.
That such governments, firmly supported or control-
led by the domestic Communist Parties, finally did come
into being along the Soviet border from the Black Sea
to the Baltic is hardly to be attributed to Soviet aggres-
sion. Soviet influence has naturally been especially strong
in these nations because the Red Army liberated them
from the Nazi yoke; because, with the exception of Hun-
gary and Romania, their peoples are dominantly Slavic
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
and feel a deep kinship with the Slavs of Soviet Russia;
and because close economic and political relations with
the U. S. S. R. seem to their national self-interest.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union itself has brought
pressures to bear for the establishment in these lands of
peaceful and friendly regimes, instead of governments
bitterly hostile to the U. S. S. R. and ready to serve once
more as springboards for military assault against it. For-
tunately, high officials of the American Government have
clarified this situation for us. At a meeting of the Na-
tional Council of American-Soviet Friendship in New
York's Madison Square Garden on November, 14, 1945,
the Honorable Dean Acheson, then Under Secretary of
State, told the audience:
"The attack upon the Soviet Union came from just
beyond her western borders. There was grave danger
of attack from just beyond her eastern border. We can
get some idea of the consequences of this attack -- the
second of its kind in a quarter of a century -- if we
imagine the United States invaded by the German Wehr-
macht, and an area roughly comparable to the New
England and Middle Atlantic States almost completely
devastated. If we imagine this area as including not only
the industrial centers of New York, Boston and Pitts-
burgh, but a large part of the Middle Western bread
basket and a third of our population as well, we can learn
what aggression means to the Soviet people. We can
understand also the measure of their determination to
prevent it. *
"We understand and agree with them that to have
friendly governments along their borders is essential both
for the security of the Soviet Union and the peace of the
world. Secretary Byrnes made this clear beyond doubt
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
in his speech of October 31st. "27 Mr. Acheson was refer-
ring to an address by James F. Byrnes, then U. S. Secretary
of State, who, recalling the evolution of the American
Good Neighbor policy from the Monroe Doctrine, had
said:
"We surely cannot and will not deny to other nations
the right to develop such a policy. Far from opposing,
we have sympathized with, for example, the effort of the
Soviet Union to drew into closer and more friendly
association with her Central and Eastern European neigh-
bors. We are fully aware of her special security interests
in those countries and we have recognized those interests
in the arrangements we have made for the occupation
and control of the former enemy states. We can ap-
preciate the determination of the people of the Soviet
Union that never again will they tolerate the pursuit of
policies in those countries deliberately directed against
the Soviet Union's security and way of life. "28 Growing
hostility against the U. S. S. R. on the part of the West has
made the 1945 statements of Acheson and Byrnes even
more relevant in this year of 1952.
In the spring of 1948 the Communist elements in the
Czechoslovakian coalition government, acting after the
resignation of several of the less radical Ministers and
fearing a counter-revolutionary movement against the
Left under American stimulus, took advantage of the
parliamentary situation and set up a new coalition gov-
ernment clearly Communist-dominated. Loud cries of
"Soviet aggression" immediately went up throughout
Western Europe and the United States, although all
Soviet occupation forces had long before left Czechoslo-
vakia. Western anger over the events in Czechoslovakia
was certainly not unconnected with the fact that, as Mr.
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
Walter Lippmann pointed out, Communist control of
the country effectively sealed off one of the main gateways
for a military attack on the Soviet Union.
Although I have always regretted that the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia took such drastic action, I have
never been able to view it as an example of Soviet aggres-
sion. Even with Soviet encouragement, the new Czecho-
slovakian Government could not have been successfully
established unless the internal situation and political
relationships favored it.
Following the Second World
War, Eastern Europe's Communist Parties, which had in
most cases led the underground struggle against the Nazis,
emerged with great strength and prestige; and they every-
where used their new-won power to political advantage.
Only in Finland, which also has a long frontier with the
Soviet Union, has the Communist Party been too weak
to gain a commanding position in the government. Yet
in that case, where Soviet aggression would be necessary
to bring the Communists into control, there has not been
the slightest sign of a Soviet military move in the post-war
period; and relations between the Finnish and Soviet
Governments have become increasingly amicable.
These observations about the small states bordering
Soviet Russia on the west lead naturally to some conside-
ration of the charge that the Soviets seek eventual world
domination, if not through outright conquest, then by
means of control over foreign Communist Parties. In
my judgment the Soviet Union not only can never achieve
world domination; it also does not include this aim in its
dynamic view of the future. The Marxists do indeed look
forward to world socialism or world communism, but
they have never envisaged it in terms of one country
dominating all other countries. The goal is, rather, a
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? SOVIET ClVlLTLATlOn
Communist form of federalism on an international scale.
The paramount influence of Soviet Russia on its
western neighbors is no more a mystery than the like
influence of the United States on the countries of Latin
America. But when a Communist regime takes over in
a major Power such as China, then influence is likely to
be a two-way process on an equal basis. And if additional
Powers go Communist, the authority of the Soviet Union
will grow less and less. All this, I believe, the leaders of
the Communist Party and of the Federal Government in
the U. S. S. R. recognize as a normal development.
Turning now to what goes on inside Soviet Russia,
it seems to me that if Soviet propaganda, intemperate
and full of invective as it often is, ever called for military
aggression against any nation or nations and urged the
dropping of atom bombs upon them, that would indeed
indicate aggressive designs on the part of the U. S. S. R.
But at no time during the troubled years since World
War II has any responsible leader or commentator in
Soviet military, governmental, economic, journalistic or
cultural affairs made the suggestion that the Soviet army
or air fleet should attack any foreign country. Instead,
in March, 1951, the Supreme Soviet passed a law declar-
ing any kind of war propaganda illegal throughout the
Republic and imposing penalties of up to twenty-five
years in jail for its violation. * The Government itself has
year after year gone on launching peace campaigns, which
the U. S. State Department keeps insisting are altogether
phony.
Yet the entire atmosphere in the Soviet Union indi-
cates that both the Government and the people are sin-
cere in their desire for world peace; and that they wish
* See also p. 354.
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICT
to go ahead with their economic upbuilding and the
transition to full communism without again having their
program wrecked and set back for years by an all-out
war. Repeated and reliable reports from the U. S. S. R.
since 1945 show that the Soviet people are preoccupied
with tremendous projects of construction and that their
minds are not dwelling on military conquest. On Janu-
ary 1, 1951, they launched a Fifth Five-Year Plan de-
signed to continue the great economic gains registered
in the Fourth Five-Year Plan concluded at the end of
1950.
Soviet socialism as a whole, together with the physical
characteristics of the country, definitely makes for the
elimination of the chief economic roots of war-making
and war-mongering in the U. S. S. R. The Soviet Union,
from east to west twice the width of the United States
and stretching all the way from the Baltic Sea to the
Pacific Ocean, possesses within its continental domains
practically all the raw materials necessary for its economy.
It needs no new territories to provide it with natural
resources, although it is glad to supplement its own basic
wealth through doing business with other nations. The
huge size of Soviet Russia, together with its material
riches and accelerating economic development, means
that it has plenty of room for and can readily support its
expanding population. Over-population, which has often
been a spur to military conquest, is not a problem in
the U. S. S. R.
Furthermore, the economic stability of the Soviet
socialist system and the steady rise in the standard of
living make altogether needless and irrelevant the classic
method of military adventure as a way of temporarily
submerging internal crises and sidetracking the revolu-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
tionary discontent of the population. Likewise, because
the home market is always sufficient to absorb the goods
produced, there is no overwhelming pressure to acquire
foreign markets and spheres of influence for getting rid
of surplus products. As for private individuals and groups
who might profit financially from armaments or some
activity connected with war, they simply do not exist,
since there is public ownership of the main means of pro-
duction and distribution.
As an indication of the Soviet Union's peaceful inten-
tions, there is the fact that since the end of World War
II it has undertaken no concrete military moves anywhere
against any country. On the other hand it carried out
extensive demobilization of its armies during 1945, 1946
and 1947. The continual rumors in the West of threat-
ening Soviet troop movements have never turned out to
have a basis in fact. However, regular army maneuvers
do take place from time to time in the U. S. S. R. , as in
other nations.
If the Soviet Government were really plotting mili-
tary aggression against, for example, Western Europe, it
would presumably have started its assault before the re-
armament of America and the Atlantic Powers had made
such headway and at a time, like the fall of 1950, when
the United States forces were preoccupied in the Far
East. Moreover, the Soviet leaders, if they intended war,
would have preferred to see the American army bogged
down indefinitely in Korea. Instead, Deputy Foreign
Minister Jacob A. Malik, chief Soviet delegate to the
United Nations, initiated the conference for a cease-fire
and peaceful settlement by his special U. N. broadcast of
June 23, 1951.
We must ask, too, whether the Soviets can logically
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
favor war, which would be fearfully costly to them, to
spread socialism when they are confident that this new
system will in due course sweep the earth anyway. Mr.
George F. Kennan, present American Ambassador to the
U. S. S. R. , after citing one outworn statement by Lenin
on the inevitability of war, tells us: "Current Stalinist
doctrine does not demand war. On the contrary, it also
teaches that eventually capitalism will fall largely of its
own weight, i. e. , as a result of the inner 'contradictions'
which the Communists believe it embodies. They see
the role of communism as one of hastening the collapse
of capitalism and assisting, as a midwife, at the birth of
the socialist order. In theory, they seem inclined to re-
gard this as primarily the task of the native Communists
in each country, and not of the Soviet Red Army.
"There is nothing in Stalinist doctrine which would
make it necessarily the main responsibility of the armed
forces of the Soviet Union themselves to overthrow cap-
italism everywhere by direct military action. This pre-
mise would actually seem illogical and improper, from
the Communist point of view; for it would imply that
capitalism, in the absence of such an attack, would be
basically sound and capable of coping permanently with
its own 'contradictions. ' "29
Finally, we can state that the basic psychology of the
Soviet people, reinforced by education, law, historical
conditioning, philosophy and economic interests, is defi-
nitely anti-war. Unlike the Germans under Hitler, the
Russians do not have a background of aggressive militar-
ism. With World War II successfully concluded, they
have no humiliating defeat to live down, nor are they out
to wreak revenge on anyone. Indeed, in the conflict with
fascism they won the greatest military victory in their
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
history, overwhelmingly defeating their ancient foe,
imperialist Germany. And in the East they evened up
old scores with a treacherous aggressor, imperialist Japan.
From 1941 to 1945 the Soviet Union rolled up a record
of military prowess and glory sufficient to last it indefi-
nitely.
Yet in spite of the remarkable achievements of Soviet
soldiers and generals during the late war, there has been
no sign of unusual military influence in Soviet governing
circles. No Soviet military figure was elevated, for in-
stance, to the position of Foreign Minister, although in
the United States General George C. Marshall, Chief of
Staff during the Second World War, served as Secretary
of State from 1947 to 1949. Nor did the Soviet Govern-
ment send high-ranking military men as envoys to the
United States, although General Walter Bedell Smith
and Admiral Alan G. Kirk were the American ambas-
sadors to the U. S. S. R. during the immediate post-war
years. No Soviet general has become anywhere near as
important in non-military affairs as General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who was appointed President of Columbia
University in 1948 and ran for President of the United
States on the Republican ticket in 1952.
Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov has been prominent in
Soviet governmental activities for twenty-five years and
has long been a member of the Politburo of the Com-
munist Party. But this represents no change since World
War II. Although Premier Joseph Stalin was Comman-
der-in-Chief in that conflict, he has always been primarily
a civilian figure. Since the war there has been added to
the Politburo one military man -- Colonel Nikolai
Bulganin, who was Vice-Minister of Defense during the
struggle with Nazi Germany. It is clear that on the whole
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
civilian authority still reigns supreme in the Soviet
Union. As Dorothy Thompson has summarized the
situation in her column, "Soviet generals are very much
in the background. No hint comes out of Russia that
they have anything to do with making political policy.
American generals are all over the place, and patently do
influence political policy. "30
As for Premier Stalin himself, having successfully
seen his country through to the establishment of the first
socialist commonwealth in history and having led the
Soviet people to victory in the Second World War, it
seems likely that he would prefer now to enhance his
reputation as a statesman by helping to ensure an era
of peace for the U. S. S. R. and mankind. Surely he has
no desire to go down in history, like Adolf Hitler, as a
notorious leader of military aggression and as one of the
most infamous war criminals of all time.
Many Americans think that the outbreak of war in
Korea during the summer of 1950 was due to Soviet
aggression. I do not believe that we can accept this inter-
pretation. The situation in Korea was a most complex
one, aggravated by the continuation of the cold war, the
barring of the Chinese People's Republic from the
United Nations and the rottenness of the reactionary
South Korean regime led by the unspeakable Syngman
Rhee. President Rhee had made provocative threats of
military action against Communist-controlled North
Korea and serious incidents had taken place along the
border marked by the 38th parallel. Both North and
South Koreans seemed to be spoiling for a fight; and
competent observers reported it was only a matter of
time before a bitter civil war would break out.
Precisely what occurred on the fateful morning of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
June 25, 1950, still remains shrouded in obscurity. The
North Koreans claimed that the South Koreans attacked
first; the South Koreans asserted they were blameless, a
view promptly adopted by the United States Govern-
ment and the United Nations. What is absolutely certain
is that on the afternoon of June 25 the U. N. Security
Council, with the Soviet delegate absent, passed a resolu-
tion calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and
for the withdrawal of the North Korean forces to the
38th parallel.
It seems probable to me that the North Koreans were
guilty of the initial aggression; but even if they were not,
they committed a colossal political blunder and an un-
pardonable act of international immorality in continuing
their march southward in defiance of the United Nations
cease-fire order. This surely constituted deliberate ag-
gression. The Soviet and Communist apologists for the
North Koreans have repeatedly argued that the Com-
munists of the East were afraid that South Korea would
become a threatening American military bridgehead on
the continent of Asia. In my opinion, however, neither
this nor any other excuse could justify the North Korean
Government in going through with its invasion of South
Korea. In so doing it not only brought the entire world
to the brink of war, but unleashed a chain of events
which led to the devastation of all Korea and worked out
disastrously for the North Koreans themselves.
Yet admitting all this, I still claim that the aggres-
sion was that of North Korea and not of Soviet Russia;
and that foreign intervention on behalf of the North
Koreans in the fall of 1950 came from Communist China,
which felt menaced by the U. S. -U. N. advance toward
the Manchurian border, and not from Communist Rus-
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
sia. It is regrettable that the Soviet Union did not use
its influence at the outset to dissuade the North Koreans
from their mad venture. But, again, its failure to do
so was not the same as Soviet aggression or intervention.
Finally, as I have already pointed out, the Russians were
instrumental in getting under way the long-drawn-out
conference for a cease-fire in Korea.
While the Soviet Government, since World War II,
has at times acted in an arbitrary, brusque and obdurate
manner in the conduct of its foreign relations, it has all
along made clear its willingness to make reasonable com-
promises on behalf of world amity. Despite this attitude,
however, the Truman Administration has constantly
kept the American people stirred up over the supposed
imminence of Soviet aggression.
In the spring of 1948 Administration rumor-mongers
spread through the halls of Congress the sensational state-
ment: "We will be at war with Russia in thirty days. "
About the same time U. S. intelligence agents in Europe
sent back word that the Soviet Union was preparing to
launch an armed attack on Western Germany. It later
turned out, as explained in an official report of the Com-
mission for Reorganization of the Executive Branch of
the Government, of which ex-President Herbert Hoover
was Chairman, that these agents were "mistaken.
? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
the following syllogism: Joseph Stalin believes that 2 and
2 make 4; Mr. X in the U. S. A. believes that 2 and 2
make 4; therefore Mr. X is a dangerous Soviet agent.
Non-Soviet Communists do not deny, however, that
since the Soviet Communist Party was the first one to put
across a successful revolution and to build socialism,
Communists everywhere naturally take into considera-
tion the Soviet Party's great experience and prestige, and
tend to defer, perfectly freely, to its wisdom. With the
recent rise of a triumphant Communist Party in a second
major Power, China, it is improbable that the Soviet
Communists will continue to play such a paramount role
as heretofore in the world Communist movement.
Yet even granting the extreme -- and I believe incor-
rect -- view that Communist Parties the world over slav-
ishly obey the orders of the Kremlin, the aim of these
Parties, as repeatedly set forth in official books, pamph-
lets, newspapers, speeches, demonstrations and political
campaigns, is not to embroil their respective nations in
war, but to establish socialism in their native lands and
urge on the populations to world peace. One of the most
effective slogans of the Russian Communist Party in the
Revolution of 1917 was precisely "Peace. " Ever since
then Communist Parties everywhere have steadily em-
phasized the peace issue, and in fact to such an extent
that capitalist governments have considered it necessary
continually to warn their peoples against "Communist
peace propaganda. " So, even if Moscow is laying down
this anti-war line for foreign Communist Parties, it is
not one that can sensibly be interpreted as a call to inter-
national aggression.
Plainly, the danger of "Soviet aggression" must be
distinguished from the tendency in one country or an-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
other for Communist movements, exploiting backward
economic and social conditions, to come into power.
Western propaganda has illogically striven to equate
these two alleged dangers and to brand vigorous Com-
munist political action anywhere as an example of and
due to Soviet aggression.
This loose use of the term "aggression" is typical of
the vehement yet vague charges which the governments,
press and radio of the Western World fling about in
reference to the artificially concocted Soviet menace.
American commentators constantly talk as if the militant
propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union were itself
equivalent to military aggression. Perhaps such propa-
ganda can be classified as "ideological aggression"; but
if so, then the United States and England, with high-
powered press and radio networks circling the globe, can
certainly be accused of the same thing. The main point,
however, is the necessity for distinguishing clearly be-
tween military and ideological aggression. Throughout
modern times various revolutionary governments, highly
organized religions and dissenting philosophies have done
their best to spread their particular messages throughout
the world.
Americans and the American Republic have been
active from the beginning in secular missionary work.
It was President Thomas Jefferson who said, "Nor are
we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human
race. "23 There is nothing reprehensible as such in a
particular country or some group in a particular country
having a sense of world mission and trying to get their
ideas across national frontiers and into the minds of the
various peoples of the earth. With the remarkable de-
velopment of techniques of communication during the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
twentieth century, the opportunities for effective inter-
national propaganda have of course greatly increased.
Soviet Russia has taken advantage of these opportunities
to further the cause of universal socialism, as has the
United States on behalf of democratic capitalism. In
neither case is it reasonable or accurate to describe such
propaganda as "aggression. "
What many Americans in particular seem unable to
grasp is the indigenous origin, the fundamental moti-
vation and the broad scope of the revolutionary move-
ments which have been sweeping into the vacuum left
by the downfall of the Axis and achieving state power
throughout much of Europe and Asia. In an address in
1951, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas well
described what is happening: "The plain fact is that the
world is in a revolution which cannot be bought off with
dollars. There are rumblings in every village from the
Mediterranean to the Pacific. A force is gathering for a
mighty effort. We think of that force as Communistic.
Communists exploit the situation, stirring every discon-
tent and making the pot boil. The revolutions which are
brewing are not, however, Communist in origin nor will
they end even if Soviet Russia is crushed in war.
"The revolutionaries are hungry men who have been
exploited from time out of mind. This is the century
of their awakening and mobilization. . . . The spirit
which motivates these people is pretty much the same
as the one which inspired the French and American
Revolutions. . . . The complaints of the peasants of Asia
are just as specific as those in our own Declaration of
Independence; and to the people involved they are just
as important. . . . These people, though illiterate, are
intelligent. The people of Asia have a catalogue of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
specific complaints. The absence of medical care always
comes first. The absence of schools is always second. Then
comes land reform. . . . The right to vote, the right to
elect a representative government, the power to expel
and punish corrupt officials -- these too are important
claims to reform. Finally they have a new sense of na-
tionality . . . an exultant feeling of independence and
resentment against intermeddling by outside powers. "24
Justice Douglas makes it clear that the primary reason
for today's revolutions is not Soviet propaganda, plots or
intervention, but a deep-seated reaction against poverty,
starvation, disease, graft, cultural backwardness, exploi-
tation by feudal land-owners, and foreign domination.
As one keen observer puts it: "To assert that the U. S. S. R.
causes Communist revolutions wherever they occur is
like saying that the first horse to finish a race causes the
other horses to finish! "25 When native Communist
Parties win leadership of the masses, popular unrest and
upsurge is already well under way.
In important instances the post-war upheavals have
been both anti-Soviet and anti-Communist. This is true
of the Labor Government's attempt to establish socialism
in England; of Prime Minister Nehru's efforts to strength-
en and stabilize India's newly won freedom; of Iran's
nationalistic and anti-Western move, led by a right-wing
administration, in taking over ownership of the country's
southern oil wells from British interests; and of Egypt's
drive to oust the English from the Suez Canal Zone and
the Sudan.
Obviously the Soviet Russians were very happy when
in the Far East the Chinese Communists, led by Mao
Tse-tung, finally overthrew in 1949 the reactionary and
corrupt government of Chiang Kai-shek and set up the
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
People's Republic of China. But the Soviets had not
given Mao Tse-tung and his followers either military or
material aid. The country which supplied most arms to
the Chinese Communists, though indirectly, was the
United States, since large quantities of the more than
$4,000,000,000 worth of American materiel for Chiang's
armies reached the Communists through secret sale by
grafting officials or through capture from the demoralized
Nationalist forces. The Communists also obtained valu-
able arms from the Japanese invaders after their collapse
in the summer of 1945.
The Communist-controlled Chinese Government na-
turally established close and friendly relations with the
Soviet Government and in 1950 cemented those relations
in a detailed and mutually advantageous Treaty of
Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Aid. In this pact Soviet
Russia agreed to give the Chinese Government long-term
credits for payments for Soviet industrial and railway
equipment. It also agreed to withdraw Soviet troops
from the harbor of Port Arthur not later than 1952 and
to discuss the special Soviet privileges at the harbor of
Dairen after the conclusion of a Japanese peace treaty.
There was nothing in the Chinese-Soviet Treaty to
bear out the charge of the U. S. State Department that the
Chinese Republic had become subject to the control and
exploitation of Moscow. Of course, Soviet Russia has
great influence in Communist China, but that does not
prove that President Mao Tse-tung and his colleagues are
puppets of the Kremlin. And it does not seem likely
that the proud new China, with its population of almost
half a billion and finally free from the shackles of West-
ern imperialism, is going to submit to the domination of
any foreign Power whatever. In the fall of 1951, the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Indian Ambassador to China, Mr. Sardar K. M. Panikkar,
commenting on Soviet-Chinese relations, took the view,
according to The New York Times correspondent at
New Delhi, "that the greater weight of influence was on
the Chinese side. In other words, he thought that the
Soviet Union was more influenced by the importance of
China than Peiping was by Moscow. "26 I do not think
that any reasonable person can legitimately claim that
the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution and
the subsequent course of Chinese affairs have constituted
Soviet aggression.
If we turn our attention to Eastern Europe, we shall
see that such aggression has not taken place there either.
Towards the end of World War II the Soviet armies
marched into Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hun-
gary, Romania and Austria not as aggressors, but in pur-
suit of the Nazi, Hungarian and Romanian forces which
had earlier invaded the U. S. S. R. Soviet troops occupied
Bulgaria, which had been an ally of Hitler. While Soviet
soldiers and occupation authorities remained stationed,
by international agreement, in these various countries,
they of course actively encouraged the liquidation of the
old fascist elements and the establishment of People's
Republics dedicated to drastic social-economic reform
and favoring friendly relations with the U. S. S. R.
That such governments, firmly supported or control-
led by the domestic Communist Parties, finally did come
into being along the Soviet border from the Black Sea
to the Baltic is hardly to be attributed to Soviet aggres-
sion. Soviet influence has naturally been especially strong
in these nations because the Red Army liberated them
from the Nazi yoke; because, with the exception of Hun-
gary and Romania, their peoples are dominantly Slavic
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
and feel a deep kinship with the Slavs of Soviet Russia;
and because close economic and political relations with
the U. S. S. R. seem to their national self-interest.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union itself has brought
pressures to bear for the establishment in these lands of
peaceful and friendly regimes, instead of governments
bitterly hostile to the U. S. S. R. and ready to serve once
more as springboards for military assault against it. For-
tunately, high officials of the American Government have
clarified this situation for us. At a meeting of the Na-
tional Council of American-Soviet Friendship in New
York's Madison Square Garden on November, 14, 1945,
the Honorable Dean Acheson, then Under Secretary of
State, told the audience:
"The attack upon the Soviet Union came from just
beyond her western borders. There was grave danger
of attack from just beyond her eastern border. We can
get some idea of the consequences of this attack -- the
second of its kind in a quarter of a century -- if we
imagine the United States invaded by the German Wehr-
macht, and an area roughly comparable to the New
England and Middle Atlantic States almost completely
devastated. If we imagine this area as including not only
the industrial centers of New York, Boston and Pitts-
burgh, but a large part of the Middle Western bread
basket and a third of our population as well, we can learn
what aggression means to the Soviet people. We can
understand also the measure of their determination to
prevent it. *
"We understand and agree with them that to have
friendly governments along their borders is essential both
for the security of the Soviet Union and the peace of the
world. Secretary Byrnes made this clear beyond doubt
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
in his speech of October 31st. "27 Mr. Acheson was refer-
ring to an address by James F. Byrnes, then U. S. Secretary
of State, who, recalling the evolution of the American
Good Neighbor policy from the Monroe Doctrine, had
said:
"We surely cannot and will not deny to other nations
the right to develop such a policy. Far from opposing,
we have sympathized with, for example, the effort of the
Soviet Union to drew into closer and more friendly
association with her Central and Eastern European neigh-
bors. We are fully aware of her special security interests
in those countries and we have recognized those interests
in the arrangements we have made for the occupation
and control of the former enemy states. We can ap-
preciate the determination of the people of the Soviet
Union that never again will they tolerate the pursuit of
policies in those countries deliberately directed against
the Soviet Union's security and way of life. "28 Growing
hostility against the U. S. S. R. on the part of the West has
made the 1945 statements of Acheson and Byrnes even
more relevant in this year of 1952.
In the spring of 1948 the Communist elements in the
Czechoslovakian coalition government, acting after the
resignation of several of the less radical Ministers and
fearing a counter-revolutionary movement against the
Left under American stimulus, took advantage of the
parliamentary situation and set up a new coalition gov-
ernment clearly Communist-dominated. Loud cries of
"Soviet aggression" immediately went up throughout
Western Europe and the United States, although all
Soviet occupation forces had long before left Czechoslo-
vakia. Western anger over the events in Czechoslovakia
was certainly not unconnected with the fact that, as Mr.
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
Walter Lippmann pointed out, Communist control of
the country effectively sealed off one of the main gateways
for a military attack on the Soviet Union.
Although I have always regretted that the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia took such drastic action, I have
never been able to view it as an example of Soviet aggres-
sion. Even with Soviet encouragement, the new Czecho-
slovakian Government could not have been successfully
established unless the internal situation and political
relationships favored it.
Following the Second World
War, Eastern Europe's Communist Parties, which had in
most cases led the underground struggle against the Nazis,
emerged with great strength and prestige; and they every-
where used their new-won power to political advantage.
Only in Finland, which also has a long frontier with the
Soviet Union, has the Communist Party been too weak
to gain a commanding position in the government. Yet
in that case, where Soviet aggression would be necessary
to bring the Communists into control, there has not been
the slightest sign of a Soviet military move in the post-war
period; and relations between the Finnish and Soviet
Governments have become increasingly amicable.
These observations about the small states bordering
Soviet Russia on the west lead naturally to some conside-
ration of the charge that the Soviets seek eventual world
domination, if not through outright conquest, then by
means of control over foreign Communist Parties. In
my judgment the Soviet Union not only can never achieve
world domination; it also does not include this aim in its
dynamic view of the future. The Marxists do indeed look
forward to world socialism or world communism, but
they have never envisaged it in terms of one country
dominating all other countries. The goal is, rather, a
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? SOVIET ClVlLTLATlOn
Communist form of federalism on an international scale.
The paramount influence of Soviet Russia on its
western neighbors is no more a mystery than the like
influence of the United States on the countries of Latin
America. But when a Communist regime takes over in
a major Power such as China, then influence is likely to
be a two-way process on an equal basis. And if additional
Powers go Communist, the authority of the Soviet Union
will grow less and less. All this, I believe, the leaders of
the Communist Party and of the Federal Government in
the U. S. S. R. recognize as a normal development.
Turning now to what goes on inside Soviet Russia,
it seems to me that if Soviet propaganda, intemperate
and full of invective as it often is, ever called for military
aggression against any nation or nations and urged the
dropping of atom bombs upon them, that would indeed
indicate aggressive designs on the part of the U. S. S. R.
But at no time during the troubled years since World
War II has any responsible leader or commentator in
Soviet military, governmental, economic, journalistic or
cultural affairs made the suggestion that the Soviet army
or air fleet should attack any foreign country. Instead,
in March, 1951, the Supreme Soviet passed a law declar-
ing any kind of war propaganda illegal throughout the
Republic and imposing penalties of up to twenty-five
years in jail for its violation. * The Government itself has
year after year gone on launching peace campaigns, which
the U. S. State Department keeps insisting are altogether
phony.
Yet the entire atmosphere in the Soviet Union indi-
cates that both the Government and the people are sin-
cere in their desire for world peace; and that they wish
* See also p. 354.
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICT
to go ahead with their economic upbuilding and the
transition to full communism without again having their
program wrecked and set back for years by an all-out
war. Repeated and reliable reports from the U. S. S. R.
since 1945 show that the Soviet people are preoccupied
with tremendous projects of construction and that their
minds are not dwelling on military conquest. On Janu-
ary 1, 1951, they launched a Fifth Five-Year Plan de-
signed to continue the great economic gains registered
in the Fourth Five-Year Plan concluded at the end of
1950.
Soviet socialism as a whole, together with the physical
characteristics of the country, definitely makes for the
elimination of the chief economic roots of war-making
and war-mongering in the U. S. S. R. The Soviet Union,
from east to west twice the width of the United States
and stretching all the way from the Baltic Sea to the
Pacific Ocean, possesses within its continental domains
practically all the raw materials necessary for its economy.
It needs no new territories to provide it with natural
resources, although it is glad to supplement its own basic
wealth through doing business with other nations. The
huge size of Soviet Russia, together with its material
riches and accelerating economic development, means
that it has plenty of room for and can readily support its
expanding population. Over-population, which has often
been a spur to military conquest, is not a problem in
the U. S. S. R.
Furthermore, the economic stability of the Soviet
socialist system and the steady rise in the standard of
living make altogether needless and irrelevant the classic
method of military adventure as a way of temporarily
submerging internal crises and sidetracking the revolu-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
tionary discontent of the population. Likewise, because
the home market is always sufficient to absorb the goods
produced, there is no overwhelming pressure to acquire
foreign markets and spheres of influence for getting rid
of surplus products. As for private individuals and groups
who might profit financially from armaments or some
activity connected with war, they simply do not exist,
since there is public ownership of the main means of pro-
duction and distribution.
As an indication of the Soviet Union's peaceful inten-
tions, there is the fact that since the end of World War
II it has undertaken no concrete military moves anywhere
against any country. On the other hand it carried out
extensive demobilization of its armies during 1945, 1946
and 1947. The continual rumors in the West of threat-
ening Soviet troop movements have never turned out to
have a basis in fact. However, regular army maneuvers
do take place from time to time in the U. S. S. R. , as in
other nations.
If the Soviet Government were really plotting mili-
tary aggression against, for example, Western Europe, it
would presumably have started its assault before the re-
armament of America and the Atlantic Powers had made
such headway and at a time, like the fall of 1950, when
the United States forces were preoccupied in the Far
East. Moreover, the Soviet leaders, if they intended war,
would have preferred to see the American army bogged
down indefinitely in Korea. Instead, Deputy Foreign
Minister Jacob A. Malik, chief Soviet delegate to the
United Nations, initiated the conference for a cease-fire
and peaceful settlement by his special U. N. broadcast of
June 23, 1951.
We must ask, too, whether the Soviets can logically
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
favor war, which would be fearfully costly to them, to
spread socialism when they are confident that this new
system will in due course sweep the earth anyway. Mr.
George F. Kennan, present American Ambassador to the
U. S. S. R. , after citing one outworn statement by Lenin
on the inevitability of war, tells us: "Current Stalinist
doctrine does not demand war. On the contrary, it also
teaches that eventually capitalism will fall largely of its
own weight, i. e. , as a result of the inner 'contradictions'
which the Communists believe it embodies. They see
the role of communism as one of hastening the collapse
of capitalism and assisting, as a midwife, at the birth of
the socialist order. In theory, they seem inclined to re-
gard this as primarily the task of the native Communists
in each country, and not of the Soviet Red Army.
"There is nothing in Stalinist doctrine which would
make it necessarily the main responsibility of the armed
forces of the Soviet Union themselves to overthrow cap-
italism everywhere by direct military action. This pre-
mise would actually seem illogical and improper, from
the Communist point of view; for it would imply that
capitalism, in the absence of such an attack, would be
basically sound and capable of coping permanently with
its own 'contradictions. ' "29
Finally, we can state that the basic psychology of the
Soviet people, reinforced by education, law, historical
conditioning, philosophy and economic interests, is defi-
nitely anti-war. Unlike the Germans under Hitler, the
Russians do not have a background of aggressive militar-
ism. With World War II successfully concluded, they
have no humiliating defeat to live down, nor are they out
to wreak revenge on anyone. Indeed, in the conflict with
fascism they won the greatest military victory in their
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
history, overwhelmingly defeating their ancient foe,
imperialist Germany. And in the East they evened up
old scores with a treacherous aggressor, imperialist Japan.
From 1941 to 1945 the Soviet Union rolled up a record
of military prowess and glory sufficient to last it indefi-
nitely.
Yet in spite of the remarkable achievements of Soviet
soldiers and generals during the late war, there has been
no sign of unusual military influence in Soviet governing
circles. No Soviet military figure was elevated, for in-
stance, to the position of Foreign Minister, although in
the United States General George C. Marshall, Chief of
Staff during the Second World War, served as Secretary
of State from 1947 to 1949. Nor did the Soviet Govern-
ment send high-ranking military men as envoys to the
United States, although General Walter Bedell Smith
and Admiral Alan G. Kirk were the American ambas-
sadors to the U. S. S. R. during the immediate post-war
years. No Soviet general has become anywhere near as
important in non-military affairs as General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who was appointed President of Columbia
University in 1948 and ran for President of the United
States on the Republican ticket in 1952.
Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov has been prominent in
Soviet governmental activities for twenty-five years and
has long been a member of the Politburo of the Com-
munist Party. But this represents no change since World
War II. Although Premier Joseph Stalin was Comman-
der-in-Chief in that conflict, he has always been primarily
a civilian figure. Since the war there has been added to
the Politburo one military man -- Colonel Nikolai
Bulganin, who was Vice-Minister of Defense during the
struggle with Nazi Germany. It is clear that on the whole
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
civilian authority still reigns supreme in the Soviet
Union. As Dorothy Thompson has summarized the
situation in her column, "Soviet generals are very much
in the background. No hint comes out of Russia that
they have anything to do with making political policy.
American generals are all over the place, and patently do
influence political policy. "30
As for Premier Stalin himself, having successfully
seen his country through to the establishment of the first
socialist commonwealth in history and having led the
Soviet people to victory in the Second World War, it
seems likely that he would prefer now to enhance his
reputation as a statesman by helping to ensure an era
of peace for the U. S. S. R. and mankind. Surely he has
no desire to go down in history, like Adolf Hitler, as a
notorious leader of military aggression and as one of the
most infamous war criminals of all time.
Many Americans think that the outbreak of war in
Korea during the summer of 1950 was due to Soviet
aggression. I do not believe that we can accept this inter-
pretation. The situation in Korea was a most complex
one, aggravated by the continuation of the cold war, the
barring of the Chinese People's Republic from the
United Nations and the rottenness of the reactionary
South Korean regime led by the unspeakable Syngman
Rhee. President Rhee had made provocative threats of
military action against Communist-controlled North
Korea and serious incidents had taken place along the
border marked by the 38th parallel. Both North and
South Koreans seemed to be spoiling for a fight; and
competent observers reported it was only a matter of
time before a bitter civil war would break out.
Precisely what occurred on the fateful morning of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
June 25, 1950, still remains shrouded in obscurity. The
North Koreans claimed that the South Koreans attacked
first; the South Koreans asserted they were blameless, a
view promptly adopted by the United States Govern-
ment and the United Nations. What is absolutely certain
is that on the afternoon of June 25 the U. N. Security
Council, with the Soviet delegate absent, passed a resolu-
tion calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and
for the withdrawal of the North Korean forces to the
38th parallel.
It seems probable to me that the North Koreans were
guilty of the initial aggression; but even if they were not,
they committed a colossal political blunder and an un-
pardonable act of international immorality in continuing
their march southward in defiance of the United Nations
cease-fire order. This surely constituted deliberate ag-
gression. The Soviet and Communist apologists for the
North Koreans have repeatedly argued that the Com-
munists of the East were afraid that South Korea would
become a threatening American military bridgehead on
the continent of Asia. In my opinion, however, neither
this nor any other excuse could justify the North Korean
Government in going through with its invasion of South
Korea. In so doing it not only brought the entire world
to the brink of war, but unleashed a chain of events
which led to the devastation of all Korea and worked out
disastrously for the North Koreans themselves.
Yet admitting all this, I still claim that the aggres-
sion was that of North Korea and not of Soviet Russia;
and that foreign intervention on behalf of the North
Koreans in the fall of 1950 came from Communist China,
which felt menaced by the U. S. -U. N. advance toward
the Manchurian border, and not from Communist Rus-
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? SOVIET FOREIGH POLICY
sia. It is regrettable that the Soviet Union did not use
its influence at the outset to dissuade the North Koreans
from their mad venture. But, again, its failure to do
so was not the same as Soviet aggression or intervention.
Finally, as I have already pointed out, the Russians were
instrumental in getting under way the long-drawn-out
conference for a cease-fire in Korea.
While the Soviet Government, since World War II,
has at times acted in an arbitrary, brusque and obdurate
manner in the conduct of its foreign relations, it has all
along made clear its willingness to make reasonable com-
promises on behalf of world amity. Despite this attitude,
however, the Truman Administration has constantly
kept the American people stirred up over the supposed
imminence of Soviet aggression.
In the spring of 1948 Administration rumor-mongers
spread through the halls of Congress the sensational state-
ment: "We will be at war with Russia in thirty days. "
About the same time U. S. intelligence agents in Europe
sent back word that the Soviet Union was preparing to
launch an armed attack on Western Germany. It later
turned out, as explained in an official report of the Com-
mission for Reorganization of the Executive Branch of
the Government, of which ex-President Herbert Hoover
was Chairman, that these agents were "mistaken.
