ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL LAW DAY OF THE WALTER F. GEORGE SCHOOL OF LAW BY ALLEN WELSH DULLES, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE 28 OCTOBER 1955

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100250067-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 7, 2000
• Sequence Number: 67
• Publication Date: October 28, 1955
• Content Type: SPEECH

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ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL LAW DAY
OF THE WALTER F. GEORGE SCHOOL OF LAW
MERCER UNIVERSITY, MACON, GEORGIA
BY ALLEN WELSH DULLES, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
28 OCTOBER 1955
Judge Tuttle, Dean O'Neal, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I sincerely appreciate the invitation extended to me to attend
your Annual Law Day celebration. Your School of Law bears the name
of a distinguished citizen who in a period of great stress in our history
has made a high contribution to our national security.
As Director of Central Intelligence I have the task, among others,
of weighing the impact of our policy on the rapidly changing events of a
troubled world. Here, no factor has more significance than the ability
of our spokesmen to act for a united country. Senator George's contribution
in developing and sustaining the bi-partisan and above-partisan character
of our foreign policy has proved of incalculable value in giving force to
our actions in our international relations.
Though my chosen profession is the private practice of the law, I
have, since 1916, had the opportunity and the privilege of serving the
Government under every President from Woodrow Wilson, who was
President of Princeton when I entered there some 45 years ago, to
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who entrusted me with my present
appointment.
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Many people outside of government have tried to commiserate
with me and with others in government service at what they call the
sacrifice of serving one's government. I take no stock in this.
True, there is a financial sacrifice. Personally, I have always
found that serving the government is a high privilege and I have
sought no sympathy. The rewards of such service far exceed the
financial and other sacrifices which maybe involved.
We lawyers are fortunate in exercising a great profession
which, when the call comes, we can leave from time to time to serve
our government, but still have the hope that one day we can be
welcomed back to its ranks -- possibly a little rusty as far as
the latest laws and decisions are concerned, but still, I believe,
with a broadened concept of the essential place of law in our over-all
governmental fabric.
By this I do not wish to imply that I have any intention of
giving up my present job. It is certainly one of the most fascinating
in Washington.
When I started on this work late in 1950, during the Korean
War, I had the firm promise that I could return to my law practice
in New York in a few months. Little did I realize that I should
still be in Washington five years later.
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Here is how this came about, and I mention it as a warning to
those of you who wish to avoid becoming involved in the work of
government. President Truman in 1948 had asked me to preside over
a small Committee which was to study and report on the workings of
the CIA which had been created in 1947 by the law which unified the
Armed Services in the Department of D.fense. A couple of years
later General Bedell Smith, then Director of Central Intelligence,
asked me to come down to Washington to help put into effect the
recommendations of our Committee. I could hardly refuse to do this,
particularly as General Smith is a very persuasive man. He said
it would only take a few months. I am still on the same job.
Naturally, it is intelligence with respect to the Communist
dominated areas of the world which is our highest priority in CIA.
That does not mean merely information as to the day by day happenings
in the countries behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. A great deal
of information of a more basic type is necessary. It is important
to know why the Communist countries act or react as they do, what
motivates them in approaching the decision which they take. In
fact, we need to get at the philosophical, temperamental and even
the legalistic bases of action.
Many mistakes in judging the Soviet Union and its Communist
Allies stem from the fact that we assume they would react as would
we; that they judge events as we would judge them and even give the
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Today, I propose to consider some legal factors as they bear
on Soviet actions which particularly affect our relations with them.
It is all too easy to be beguiled by the idea that the Soviet have
turned over a new leaf and that, overnight, we can find a satisfactory
basis for what is popularly called "coexistence". Let us hope that this
will come. But before it can come, it seems to me that there must be
certain rather basic changes in the underlying philosophy of Soviet
conduct in government. This involves issues of interest to those of us
who are in the legal profession.
Every lawyer in the Soviet Union is an agent of the State.
His salary is paid by the State. If a lawyer is appointed to defend
a man brought by some police agency before a Soviet court, the
defense lawyer as well as the prosecutor are both paid by the State.
You could almost say that the defense lawyer is paid by the prosecutor.
Such a situation may be difficult for us to imagine. This may give
you some idea of the profound differences that divide a legal
philosophy of a dictatorship from a democracy.
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Andrei Vyshinski was one of the leading Soviet jurists and his
works on Soviet law furnish an interesting guide to Soviet legal
thinking and point up some basic differences between our system. and
theirs. Put in a few words, the most significant difference is
that law in the Soviet Union is an arm of the State, not a shield
for the people. Each decision as it affects an individual is framed
to protect what a small group in the Kremlin deem to be best for the
Communist State. The rights of the individual are wholly subordinated.
In effect, where the State is concerned, the Soviet individual
has no inherent rights; only the State has rights. This is a lawyer's
way of saying that under Communism, the citizen lives to serve the
state while in Western Democracy, the State is created to serve the
citizen.
Here is the way Vyshinski put it, writing about a decade ago: -
"Neither court nor criminal procedure is or could be
outside of politics . . . the contents and form of judicial
activities cannot avoid being subordinated to political class
aims and strivings . . . The judge must know how to conduct
the court proceedings and how to write the judgment in a
manner which shows with clarity the political significance
of the case so that the defendant and those present in the
courtroom sees clearly the policy of the government in
court action. "
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In legal cases where a loyal citizen of the Socialist State has
been involved against anyone not in this category, there is political
significance. The Communist state, claiming that it derives its
power from the proletariat, supports the members of the proletariat
in the courts as a concept of justice.
We can find many cases in which a Soviet court has ruled in
behalf of a toiler in these words:
"From the record it is apparent that the accused was a
toiler . . . and that he was not a class enemy. "
In Murmansk, during the war, a number of American servicemen
were embroiled with the Soviet law, and brought to trial. In every
case known to an American officer who was present, servicemen, after
the formalities of a trial, were found guilty.
Ultimately, the American officer asked the Soviet prosecutor
if it might not be possible that one of the American offenders might,
in some case, be found innocent. The prosecutor replied, "No". He
explained that the Americans had been arrested by the Soviet militia
and the testimony of the militia was of course accepted by the Soviet
court as the truth about the circumstances. Ergo: the Americans
were found guilty.
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In addition to this basic difference between our views and those
of the Communist world as to the role of the state and the rights of
individuals, a second difficulty arises from the fact that when we speak
to each other the very words we use have totally different meanings.
Due to long tradition stemming both from the Roman Law and from our
Anglo-Saxon common law concepts, language in the Western world at least
has come to have a precise meaning. But in our dealings with the Soviet
Union, our words and theirs, though they seem alike on paper, are "like
ships that pass in the night. II
Let us take a few examples: in the Soviet world, the term
"democratic stale" means a state which controls every detail in the life
of its people, supposedly in the interest of what they call the proletariat.
In fact, however, no state is really more reactionary or totalitarian
than the Soviet Union.
With us a "democratic state" means, as Lincoln put it, "" . . . o
the people, by the people, and for the people."
Then they use the term "free elections" in Soviet parlance in an
entirely different way than we. With them it means, true enough the
right to cast a vote, but to vote only for the candidates nominated by
the Communist Party. The Yalta agreements contained adequate promisee
of free elections and we know what kind of free elections they had in
Poland, Rumania and elsewhere. As Stalin pointed out in a speech he made,
in 1936, and there has been no basic change in this since that time, in
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a classless society such as the Soviet, there is no ground for the
existence of different political parties or for the freedom of those
parties since in the USSR only one party can exist.
Again, when we talk about mutual security and non-aggression
pacts, we find that our conception and that of the Soviet is totally different.
These terms, according to the Soviet themselves, have constantly
fluctuating meanings. Foreign Minister Molotov, in a speech on
October 1, 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II, pointed out
that with "one swift bl._-w to Poland, first by the German army and then
by the Red army, and nothing remained of this ugly offspring of the
Versailles Treaty." Poland was then "protected" by a non-aggression
pact entered into with Russia in 1932, which was later (May 1934)
extended to the end of 1945. Molotov went on in the same speech to
point out that in the few preceding months "such concepts as 'aggression'
and 'aggressor' have acquired a new concrete connotation, a new meaning.'
"It will be easily understood," he said, "that we can no longer employ
these concepts in the same sense as, say, three or four months ago."
And then in this same speech in referring to "security" agreements
with the Baltic States, he said, "The special character of these mutual
assistance pacts in no way implies any interference on the part of the
Soviet Union in the affairs of Esthonia, Latvia, or Lithuania," We well
know how the independence of these states was totally blotted out.
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Thus, not only are there instances where words start out with
meanings which are totally foreign to us, but in the Soviet world they
have flexible and changing meanings as the needs of the state require.
Then there are other basic legal differences between us. In
addition to public law and procedure, which is the only law we know,
they have in the Soviet Union secret law and secret police to guard the
security of the state. The name of the organ through which this law
and this police force functions has been changed many times. It began
as CHECKA, later became OGPU, and then MVD. The MVD still exists
as a law enforcement agency, but its secret police powers have largely
been transferred to a new agency, the KGB. With all the change of name
there has been little change in procedure.
Possibly there has been some relaxation since the death of Stalin.
We do have some reports that the special administrative Tribunals of the
MVD were abolished in September of 1953, but if so, this fact has been
kept about as secret as were the proceedings of these extraordinary
Tribunals. After all it is not many months ago that we were told of the
execution of Beria who was destroyed by the machinery and procedures of
which he, himself, had been one of the chief architects.
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I do not suggest that Beria did not richly daserve the fate
accorded him. Few men have been responsible for as much human misery
as he. One may ponder, however, whether Soviet legal procedures have
really been liberalized since the sweetness and light campaign following
Stalin's death. Here we see the Number Two man in the regime
liquidated by secret procedures without any prior public presentation
of charges or any opportunity for public defense. During the purges
of the 1930's there was at least the semblance of public trial.
Under Kremlin doctrine, persons may also become "socially
dangerous," which means "politically dangerous" for any number of
reasons -- even reasons which may never be known to the persons
themselves. Quite recently a new type of procedure, somewhat
extra-legal, has appeared which is applicable not to crimes but
to deviations. Self confession under the stress of brain washing
techniques or of court procedures has appeared quite frequently in
the Soviet and Satellite trials of deviationists. But in the case
of deviations of a more subtle or technical character, these self
confessions may be imposed on those who have erred slightly from
the ideological path or who have failed in their assigned tasks.
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We well remember how Malenkov fell from his high estate, though
retaining a,position in the Politburo, as he confessed his incompetence in
dealing with the tasks assigned him. Now Mr. Molotov, on the eve of
important negotiations, suffers the humiliation of a public confession of
ideological error which even to a confirmed Marxist, I would believe, must
seem to be of the most trivial sort. Thus, the state has at its command not
only the secret police procedure for the more serious failings of the indi-
vidual, but a more subtle way of devaluing those high officials who have lost
the stamp of absolute correctitude by some state imposed standards.
I cite these examples merely to show the nature of the difficulty
in arriving at common understanding between the two worlds. We both
may talk of co-existence but yet our basic philosophies are so far
apart that the term becomes quite meaningless.
As a lawyer talking to lawyers, I would point out another clear
difference between the role of law here and in the Communist world.
Lawyers in this country have played an outstanding, even dominant part
in developing our system of government since the days of the drafting
of the constitution and to the present time. It is interesting to note
that so far as we can ascertain from the records, there has never been
a single lawyer in the Pclitburo, the highest governing body of the
Soviet. Andrei Vyshinski came close to it by being an alternate member
for a short time.
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Possibly the lawyers in the Soviet Union have been fairly smart
after all. Of the 48 full members who have been in the Politburo since
it was organized in 1917, thirteen were executed, purged, or else
disappeared; two were murdered or assassinated; one committed suicide;
and eight may have died natural deaths. Eleven are full members still
and thirteen others are still extant. Actually the attrition or
casualty rate is higher than these statistics suggest. Before 1952,
when the Politburo was enlarged for a brief period, the attrition rate,
by violence, was about 60 per cent. So membership in this organization,
despite the power it gave, has not proved to be a very enviable job.
Today the Soviet Union and its European satellites have again
started a vigorous campaign, just as they did in the early 1920's, to
lure back behind the Iron Curtain their former citizens who fled to
freedom in the West. Amnesty measures have been widely advertised,
and all sorts of lures are held out to these people. And they are
tempted. At best the lot of the expatriate is a hard one.
But those who are tempted to leave the lands of freedom should
remember the fate of returnees who previously have trusted Soviet
promises, particularly those who went back after the war's end in 1945.
For the most part they have either disappeared from sight or been
identified as inmates of Siberian camps. The fate of the few notorious
Western defectors to the Soviet Union is also shrouded in mystery.
There is no place in the Soviet system for those who have once failed
it and they put little trust in those who desert to it.
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In the past Soviet jurisprudence has shown no quality of mercy.
There has been no forgiveness for those who are classed as sinners against
the Soviet state.
Prominent members of the American Bar have taken a leading part in
pointing up the gulf which exists between Western legal thought and
practice and that of the Communist world. They were among the organizer
of an International Commission of Jurists which was formed following a
conference of Western lawyers held in Berlin in 1952. This Commission
has now collected an impressive documentary record on the workings of
Soviet jurisprudence. This they laid before a conference held this last
June in Athens. One hundred and forty-eight eminent jurists from 49
free countries, including several leaders of the American Bar, attended.
The Athens conference unanimously adopted a statement of principle:
now known as the lawyer's Hippocratic oath. This statement, widely
publicized in Europe and the United States, eloquently points up the
basic difference between law among the free peoples and the legal
practices of the Soviet world. The rights of the individual, it points
out, were developed through history in the age-old struggle of mankind
fur freedom and declares that the state is subject to the law; that
governments should respect the rights of the individual under the rule
of law; that judges should resist any encroachment by governments or
political parties on their independence as judges and preserve the
independence of their profession.
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A whole generation has grown to maturity in the Soviet Union
under a political and legal system which denies these principles of
the Athens charter.
Here in this country it is possibly somewhat of a national
characteristic of ours to be impatient. We hope for change over night.
We would like to see the millennium around the corner.
It is well that we should realize that asicc anges in a
structure such as that of the Soviet Union can only come slowly.
Systems of law and government evolve gradually in any society. Our
own concepts of law and of the rights and dignity of the individual
have roots centuries old, but they have been developing and changing
over these many years. It has taken generations to firmly ground
individual rights and to establish these rights as against
encroachment of the state.
The men in the Kremlin have great facility for changing their
tactics as convenience and circumstance dictates. They need consult
no one but themselves. It may be convenient for them to make us
believe that since Stalin's death there have been basic fundamental
changes. True, there have been som, ut until in the Soviet Union
ewe system is devised for the people's ultimate control over the
decisions of the Politburo, we cannot put much faith in their
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Of course one would be foolish to reject any moves they might make,
under internal and external stresses and strains, which might enlarge
the area of the free world. There will, however, be no lasting security
and no basis for relaxing our vigilence or our defense as long as
the present Soviet system remains, and until the men in the Kremlin
become subject to some checks and balances stemming from the Russian
people themselves who, we have every reason to believe, are basically
a peace loving people.
Is this evolution of the Soviet state -- so necessary if world
peace is to be preserved -- a possibility?
Recently at Columbia University, I Ind an opportunity to
discuss the effect on the Soviet people of the effort they are making
to bring education to a great majority of their youth. I predicted
that this should bring in its train increased expectations on the
part of the educated; that no matter how much the Soviet can condition
a man's mind and control his destiny, the state cannot in the end
prevent a human being with education and with outlook to a broader
world from exercising a greater critical sense. The Soviet in
affording education to its peoples are thus taking a great and
calculated risk. This process may bring about an evolution of
Soviet law and legal procedures.
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We may now be on the threshold of greater contact between the
professional, cultural and scientific peoples of the Western World
and those of the Soviet Union. This may include meetings between
our leading jurists and lawyers from the Communist world. If this
takes place, we should not need to do any proselytizing. Let them
see the fruits of a society where law is based on the maintenance of
human dignity. Let them contrast that with a system where law is
the arm of repressive government..
We are fortunate to be living in a country where laws made
by the people's delegates, not dictators, determine our fate.
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