Moscow

ON THE WORLD TODAY

WHILE what has been described as the “cold war” between the Soviet Union and the United States rages unabated, the Kremlin is about to emerge victorious from an intensive internal battle — the Battle of Bread — with consequent vital repercussions in foreign and domestic Soviet policy. The harvesting of a bumper crop is well advanced in southern European Russia, and reports from other food-raising areas indicate an estimated total yield of 264 billion pounds of grain cereals — a figure which approximates that of the best pre-war year.

This agricultural success follows the disastrous summer of 1946 when what Russian experts called the worst drought of the generation scorched the land between the Volga and the Carpathians. Stalin was not only unable to keep his pre-election promise to abolish the rationing system for bread and cereals but was compelled to reduce bread rations for 1947 and increase basic food prices up to 300 per cent while wage rises did not exceed 25 per cent.

The decline of real wages caused by the scarcity of food has been balanced in part, however, by the reduced prices of manufactured goods made possible by the steady progress of reconversion. The accelerated development of light industry has yielded, for the first six months of this year, a net increase over the corresponding period in 1946 varying between 40 and 100 per cent in cotton goods, woolens, leather.

Prices of consumers’ goods in the so-called stateoperated commercial shops, in the open market, and in the industrial cooperatives have been lowered between 10 and 50 per cent.

Housing remains — and for many years will remain Russia’s worst headache, but over four million peasants in devastated areas are reported to have moved, since the end of the war, to newly built farmhouses. Gutted cities like Stalingrad, Rostov, Minsk, and Voronezh still contain millions of inhabitants living in cellars, dugouts, and tents. In the capital, whose pre-war population of four and one-half millions has swollen to an estimated seven millions, housing conditions are a nightmare.

“All for a successful harvest”

The Battle of Bread has been won by a combination of luck and management, by favorable weather and skillful generalship. Launched early last autumn, when the Kremlin realized the serious effects of the crop failure, the government and party campaign for a good harvest had all the seriousness, singleness of purpose, and atmosphere of a military campaign.

The best party workers were mobilized for the agricultural front, the peasants were organized into brigades, and the leaders among them were, by the thousands, designated “Heroes of Socialist Labor,” the peacetime equivalent of the highest military order, “Hero of the Soviet Union.” The state released some of its grain reserves for sowing; and later, where manpower was short, the Army was called in to aid in harvesting.

Not since the early days of collectivization and industrialization has the Kremlin waged such serious “offensives” on the economic front. It was easy to convert the wartime slogan “All for the front” into “All for a successful harvest.”

Stalin himself, who during the war gave up most affairs of state to direct the war effort, is reported to have devoted most of his time during the past few months to the agricultural campaign. To the Ukraine, one of the country’s principal food-producing republics, he sent the Kremlin’s number one trouble-shooter, dynamic Lazar Kaganovich.

In addition to supervising the economic rehabilitation of the Ukraine, the most devastated part of the Soviet Union, Kaganovich has had to liquidate survivals of political and cultural influences of the occupation. He has behind him a rich agricultural experience acquired in the early days of collectivization when he directed the coordination of collective farming and the introduction of machine-tractor stations.

The good news from the agricultural front will give the people a much needed booster shot. While absorbed in the battle of survival the Soviet GI (meaning practically every Soviet adult, since mobilization was total in the Soviet Union) did not visualize the enormousness of his country’s destruction and the new sacrifices that would be required of him in the first few years of the reconstruction period.

Generous American Lend-Lease and the first contact with American troops in Germany gave him reason to expect equally liberal post-war aid in rehabilitation. And unless he was a professional pessimist — a rare phenomenon among Russians — he could not anticipate the swift breakdown of Allied amity.

How the Russian feels toward America

The average Russian is unquestionably worried about the prospects of war. But in spite of the extraordinary demonstration of American power during and since the war, in spite of the atom bomb, notwithstanding the bitter diplomatic war between the two countries, and in spite of the occasional publication in the Soviet press of some of the more extreme anti-Soviet views voiced in America, the average Russian does not appear to have accepted the inevitability of an armed conflict.

Until recently America was beyond evil in the minds of millions of Russians. In no other country have traveling Americans been received by the common people with as much warmth and hospitality as in Russia. The admiration of American science, technology, and literature bordered on worship.

Russia is a country where Jack London and Mark Twain are almost national writers and are as well known as Pushkin and Tolstoy. Two years ago, Mark Twain’s anniversary was celebrated in Moscow by the publication of a new edition of his works and a literary soiree at Voks, the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

Thirty years after the Revolution there still exists an enormous reservoir of good feeling for America and its institutions. English is the most popular foreign language in Russia and is a required subject in many secondary schools.

Now America is slowly but perceptibly in danger of becoming public enemy number one in the Soviet Union. A generation ago, among the favorite insulting epithets of Soviet children were phrases like “filthy Samurai,” “vicious Fascist,” “ Trotskyite vermin.” An American on a Moscow street a few weeks ago was shocked to hear a Soviet child, who had apparently quarreled with his playmate, abusively shout, “You —American imperialist.”

By America, when used derogatively, Russians of course mean what their pundits call “American reactionary circles,” “remnants of fascism,” “military-imperialistic groups,” “financial oligarchs.” Even so vitriolic a critic of America as Ilya Ehrenburg in a Pravda article was careful to distinguish between the American people, who presumably could do no wrong, and the advocates of immediate atomic warfare.

Said Ehrenburg: “The average American isn’t naive enough to want to die for the dividends of oilmen, arms manufacturers, and other atomists [sic]. Americans have heads, good hearts, and humanity. They are now worried about the future, the oncoming crisis, the greed of businessmen, the rise of prices, and the rise of reaction. They are not politicians but. living people — these average Americans. They wish to live, work, and amuse themselves. They cannot be driven back to war transports. The louder our enemies shout, the more friends we have. With us are the former soldiers of the Allied armies — Englishmen — Americans — Frenchmen.”

The Kremlin expects peace

But though the Russian people are not easily given to hysteria, all the martial language that is being bandied about in press and radio has had its effect. Talk of war, coming on top of the food shortages, overcrowded living, and hard work, is causing the Soviet citizen plenty of worry. Consequently, it is no surprise that Soviet leaders are making every possible effort to play down the possibility of war.

The feeling that atomic warfare will be outlawed sooner or later is gaining, and since Stalin’s declaration to that effect, the people have been breathing much more easily. Incidentally, the Stalin prizes recently awarded for science indicate continued and intensive Soviet research in atomic fission.

On the official level there is no indication that the hardheaded realists in the Kremlin expect war in the near future. On the contrary, both their internal policy and their external policy seem to be based on the assumption of peace for some time.

Permanent censorship

During the war, optimistic Russian GI’s dreamed of a flow of domestic and foreign consumers’ goods. Even hopes of travel abroad did not seem too fantastic. The ordinary Russian has never been and is not yet an isolationist, but now definite trends in that direction are discernible. Two recent decrees have emphasized the isolationist mood in the Kremlin. The first, published early in March, caused considerable shock to public opinion by banning marriages between Soviet citizens and foreigners.

The second law of isolationist character, which may seriously affect relations between Soviet citizens and foreigners, was enacted early this summer. The Soviet Council of Ministers issued a new list of items of information constituting “state secrets,” the divulgence whereof is punished by imprisonment for from four to twenty years.

The official classification is broad enough to include almost anything the government chooses to call a secret. For example, in addition to ordinary military data which might be considered confidential in any country, it is now criminal to divulge: —

1. Anything concerning industry as a whole or any branches thereof, anything on agriculture, trade, and transportation, which the Council of Ministers declares to be of secret character.

2. The balance of state funds, foreign currencies, financial plans of the U.S.S.R., place and method of keeping rare metals and currency.

3. Plans and projects for imports and exports.

4. Geological deposits, output of rare, non-ferrous metals, and mineral resources.

Of special interest to foreign scientists is the provision penalizing the unauthorized publication, prior to their completion, of inventions, discoveries, technical improvements, and research and experimental work in all branches of science, technology, and national economy.

Finally, the law enjoins the communication of any “information relating to negotiations, relations, and agreements between the U.S.S.R. and foreign states as well as data concerning any measures in the field of foreign policy and foreign trade not contained in officially published documents.” This paragraph, which makes diplomatic reportage and speculation virtually impossible, caused near pandemonium among foreign correspondents. Not that Soviet sources have hitherto been free with information on diplomatic matters, but one of the certain effects of this law is to make the censors increasingly haish with news dispatches.

The prominent publication of the decree in the Moscow press served to add to the chill that, has been developing for some time in the ordinary intercourse between foreigners and Russians everywhere. In an atmosphere of mounting tension in international affairs, and with the revival of some of the pre-war anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist slogans, it takes much less than the prospect of prolonged penal servitude to make the Soviet citizen extremely cautious in his communication with foreigners.

The “liars” of the foreign press

Among the most unhappy victims of this complex of distrust and suspicion is the small group of embittered and frustrated Anglo-American correspondents. Sitting on top of the most important story of the post-war world, they feel impotent to relate it.

There has been perhaps no greater tragedy in the experience of Moscow correspondents than the illfated Conference of Foreign Ministers. About one hundred British, American, and French correspondents invaded the Red capital and some of them made a field day of it. Some of the reports that went out of Moscow and those that were published at the end of the conference apparently confirmed the Soviet authorities in all their prejudices against the foreign press.

Little, or not at all, impressed by the fact that a substantial number of reporters were men of high professional skill and integrity, leaders in their field, who did as objective a job as could be expected under the circumstances, the Russians found sufficient evidence of biased and malicious reporting to draw the worst possible conclusions. They felt perfectly justified in retaining the censorship and generally cracking down on the resident newspapermen.

No sooner was the conference over than the Soviet press launched a vigorous campaign against the “liars and slanderers” of the foreign press. A strong editorial in the authoritative magazine New Times excoriated the foreign correspondents, “who had every opportunity to report the work of the session fully and truthfully.”

Rejecting the argument that the Soviet censorship is an obstacle to mutual understanding between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-Saxon world, the New Times laid down the law of permanent censorship and contended that “the sole purpose of censorship is to protect the public of all countries from the lies and misinformation about our countries which are usually sent by their correspondents in Moscow every time the censorship is lifted.”

The Moscow Association of Anglo-American Correspondents wrote to Generalissimo Stalin politely pointing out that the most objectionable false reports emanated from sources outside Moscow.

Yet, as long as the Russians remain convinced that “slandering the Soviet Union is the chief specialty of certain newspapers and the profession of venal journalists,” they may be expected to apply the limitations on all newpapers and journalists.