Six Crises (49 page)

I knew the broadcast was important, but my schedule was so full that I had no time whatever during the day to prepare my remarks. For four days before the broadcast I used every free moment to jot down notes. For the two nights before the broadcast, I did not go to bed at all, using the time to write my final draft. I tried to get what sleep I needed by dozing on long automobile or plane rides.

As I worked on the broadcast, I thought back on a week of crisis, of unrelenting pressure created and controlled by the Communist authorities. The discipline and the cohesive line of attack of the Communist functionaries, big and small, which had extended from Moscow to Leningrad and into Siberia, had been both impressive to me and discouraging. Yet, there was one encouraging factor that I had noted in every city I visited: the unrestrained expressions of friendship on the part of the Russian people. This was evident particularly in those areas where the people were less under the eye of Communist authorities. Shipyard workers in Leningrad had cheered references to Eisenhower in my speech. In the heart of Siberia, people had leaned out of windows and from jam-packed streetcars to cheer and to applaud our party of Americans. Thousands had gathered on the streets outside of each building we entered and they had cheered when we came out. School children in the Urals threw bouquets of flowers into our cars and had shouted in English, “Friendship . . . friendship,” for that was one of the first words they had been taught in their English classes. A workman in a construction project in the Urals had thrown his arms around me and had said, “I met many Americans during the war and I never want to fight against them.”

Working on my speech at a desk in Spaso House, I thought of the
contrast between the warm, friendly, gracious, and good people I had met—and the tough, cold, ruthless Communist leaders. It was the same here in the heartland of the Communist empire as in all the countries I had visited. The Communists are a class apart. They are a minority with enormous power. This did not mean, of course, that the Russian people are ready to rebel against their government. But it did point up the fact, which any observant visitor can see, that the Communists gain and retain their power through an iron discipline in an elite class of leaders and organizers, not through any development of true mass support. While this is the strength behind Communist tactics, it also is potentially a fatal weakness in the international Communist movement.

These and many other thoughts flowed through my mind as I selected what I wanted to say to the Russian people. One basic decision I had to make was whether to aim my speech primarily at the Russian people or at the American people, for I realized that this speech would be heard by the Russian people but also read in the press by the American people. With the 1960 presidential election not far off, a tough blasting speech would be politically expedient for me and, with some justification, I was tempted to deliver my own thoughts about the obvious evils of a Communist police state which I had seen firsthand.

However, with all things considered, I chose to speak out solely with the Russian people in mind. The best use I could make of my historic opportunity was to cite some facts for the Russian people which they never got in the Communist press. I tried to present these facts in such a way that the Russian people would recognize that I was not being belligerent or bellicose or discourteous to my hosts. For one thing, I intended to give the Kremlin hierarchy no excuse for preventing other American visitors, particularly President Eisenhower, from also addressing the Russian people. I was the first high American official to have this opportunity. I did not want to be the last.

Ambassador Thompson, whose intimate knowledge of the Soviet Government and people proved invaluable, advised and guided me through this task. At his suggestion, I included the whole story of the incident at the vegetable market, when the Soviets had accused me of trying to bribe a citizen. While on the surface this seemed a minor incident, it proved to be one of the most effective parts of my speech: it was the first time in recent Soviet history that anyone had publicly challenged the veracity of
Pravda.
According to reports I received later, it stimulated quite a bit of debate among the Russian people
about the accuracy of the news they were receiving. In fact, the speech itself set off a wave of new discussions within the Soviet Union, for never before had the Russian people been given so fully the Western side of the East-West conflict.
²

I spelled out in detail that the United States had fought in two great world wars and had never exacted any territorial gains or reparations and that the United States had no designs on world conquest. Our armaments, our bases were for defense. Following Foster Dulles' advice, I firmly placed the responsibility for peace upon Khrushchev's shoulders and told the Russian people:

I would not be so presumptuous to give [Mr. Khrushchev] advice on how he should fulfill that responsibility. But could I relate something that I noted on the trip I have just completed? In every factory and on hundreds of billboards, I saw this slogan, “Let Us Work for the Victory of Communism.”

If Mr. Khrushchev means by this slogan working for a better life for the people within the Soviet Union, that is one thing. If, on the other hand, he means the victory of Communism over the United States and other countries, this is a horse of a different color. For we have our own ideas as to what system is best for us.

If he devotes his immense energies and talents to building a better life for the people of his own country, Mr. Khrushchev can go down in history as one of the greatest leaders the Soviet people have ever produced. But if he diverts the resources and talents of his people to the objective of promoting the Communization of countries outside the Soviet Union, he will only assure that both he and his people will continue to live in an era of fear, suspicion and tension. . . .

The next day, Sunday, August 2, was my last in the Soviet Union. I attended a pleasant reception for our American personnel at the Embassy. Then I went through a long press conference with the newsmen who had covered my trip. I tried to be scrupulously fair in recognizing alternately Soviet and American reporters. But one of the
Pravda
reporters proceeded to launch into a long harangue, charging I was discriminating against the Soviet newsmen. James Reston of the New York
Times
came to my defense and set the record straight, something for which I was most grateful at the end of what had been a long and trying ordeal.

I had a final talk with Ambassador Thompson and confided to him my sense of frustration over my visit. I felt that my personal contacts with the Russian people on my tour outside of Moscow would have
some lasting effect for good and might in turn affect Khrushchev, for no dictator can totally ignore the deep-seated desires of his people. I felt I must have convinced some of the Russian people of our desire for peace, which matched theirs. But I knew that I had had no success whatever in getting through to Khrushchev and the Soviet leaders.

In thinking of the little progress I had made against the enormity of the task, I was left with a sense of depression. Even the way the Soviets had carried my television speech was typical. They complied with their technical agreement to give me similar exposure to that of Mikoyan and Kozlov in the United States, but they did so on the smallest possible network and with no advance notice of my appearance.

Thompson, however, reassured me. “Five years ago,” he said, “it would have been absolutely unthinkable for anyone to say the things you did to the Russian people. Those of us who have lived with this problem know what a momentous thing this was for them [the Soviet leaders] to do.”

I was reminded of a similar comment about the course of progress made by Prime Minister Macmillan—to the effect that one hundred years elapsed between the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who beheaded her councilors who fell out of favor, and Queen Anne, who because of the pressure of public opinion, could only send hers into exile. And now, only five years had elapsed between Stalin, who had executed his real or imagined rivals, and Khrushchev, who had demoted Malenkov from Premier to manager of a small power plant, and Molotov from Foreign Minister to an Embassy post in Outer Mongolia. Perhaps even in the Communist empire there is a ray of hope for peaceful change.

•  •  •

On the two-hour flight from Moscow to Warsaw, I looked back on my trip to the Soviet Union with little satisfaction, and on my impending visit to Poland with even less hope. And the reason had nothing whatever to do with material power. After seeing the Soviet Union, I was not concerned about the ability of the United States to stay well ahead of the Communists militarily and economically. But what had most impressed me was the ruthless efficiency of the whole Communist operation.

None of the Communist functionaries who had challenged me were as able as Khrushchev. Some were obviously limited in their educational background for the assignments they were undertaking. But whether it was Khrushchev, Mikoyan, or Kozlov, a lesser Communist functionary running a factory in the Urals, a shop steward on an assembly
line, or a miner, there was a steel-like quality, a cold determination, a tough, amoral ruthlessness which somehow had been instilled into every one of them. I knew that whereas many of the Russian people might not realize what kind of a victory they were working for, the Russian leaders had no doubt on that score. Their goal was not just victory over the poverty, inequality, and misery which is still the lot of millions of Russians, but victory for Communism in every non-Communist nation. They would never be satisfied until they had achieved their ultimate objective of a world completely Communist-controlled.

It was not a question of who was on the right side, at least not in the short run. History is full of examples of civilizations with superior ideas which have gone down to defeat because their adversaries had more will to win, more raw strength physically, mentally, and emotionally, to throw into the critical battles. It was not Khrushchev's shameless bragging about his ability to overtake the United States economically, or about his superiority in the field of science and missiles, that concerned me. The primitive condition of the Soviet transportation network alone is enough to keep them from even starting to close the gap between their production and ours for years to come. Nor was it the comparative productivity of our factories, the strength of our arms, or of our abilities in the field of scientific research.

I thought of our people, our leaders, and those who represented us at home and abroad, in private enterprise as well as in government. And here my concern was not with educational background or basic intelligence. The question was one of determination, of will, of stamina, of willingness to risk all for victory. How did we stack up against the kind of fanatically dedicated men I had seen in the past ten days?

I thought how ironical it was that the Communist leaders were getting more production out of their people by special incentives. In a nation which supposedly is guided by the philosophy of “everyone receives according to his needs and produces according to his ability,” the disparity between the amounts paid more efficient workers and those who are less efficient is far greater than in the United States. Yet at a time when they have found it necessary to turn our way in order to get more production from workers and to encourage their more talented people, we seem to be turning their way with economic policies which increasingly tend to penalize rather than to reward our more creative people.

Why do men like Alger Hiss, from our best families, educated in our finest schools, become conscious agents of the Communist conspiracy? Not because they want money or power, but because they become
convinced that Communism as a way of life is superior—even more, that it is the wave of the future.

And worse still, there are other Americans, with the same advantages of background and education, who have so immersed themselves in competition for material gain that they deliberately stay above the great battle of the generation in which they live. They will not take the time to learn what this world struggle is all about. And because they lack knowledge, they fail to develop the intelligence and the will to act, to think and speak effectively for our cause, as the Communists do for theirs.

I thought of others who do care enough about the outcome of this struggle to participate in it, but who are always insisting on trying to find an easy way out.

“There can be no answer to Castro until we raise the economic standards of all of Latin America,” they proclaim.

When there are riots in Caracas or Lima, all we have to do is spend more money for radio broadcasts to Latin America, so that our neighbors to the South will “understand us and like us better.”

Or, at the other extreme, when the Communists probe some area of the Free World, all we have to do is to increase our military budget to demonstrate our determination to resist them—we need not bother with trying to meet them in the economic and political areas on which the Communists are concentrating.

As one who had supported all programs of this type in government, I recognized their importance. But I knew they were only part of the answer. If we relied on any one of them alone, we would go down to certain defeat. We need all the weapons—military, economic, and ideological—to fight the most complex battle in world history.

The Communists have developed a completely new concept of conquest—one in which they go under borders, rather than over them, to dominate a non-Communist country. They not only have developed new tactics, but they have brought to the battle an iron will which could only stem from faith and convictions deeply held.

How can we instill in our children not only a faith greater than theirs but the physical, mental, and moral stamina to outlast the enemies of freedom in this century of crisis?