LETTER TO WILLIAM BENTON FROM ALLEN W. DULLES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000400620026-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2002
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: May 19, 1956
• Content Type: LETTER

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1 9 MAY 1.9,.)6
Mr. William BenUtai/
.Publisher arid- Chairs**
Encyclopaedia britannioa
342 Madison Avenue
Suite 702
les fork 17s 11. T.
DISN' 21111*
Thank you for year letter of lbor 2 attaching yew speech at the
institute for Stud, at the U8320 3: have read it with greet interest,
and found it a lively onamary with *WsI ma in posrai steeenent*
In the diseussiom of whether there ars Mende tee hePe in the
henedened edmeetion of the Sevistas / TIM the difforengs
between we nerreeing. As I told you in one of INY roost Utters,
many of the resent visitors to the USSR, particularly those who speak
the language and were able to simile in University ,and similar eirelea,
have reported doubt, disbelief and even politicel Jobea eedh as we
would net have anticipated three years Its. heeennees in nonciet
suggestion, / hid in mad sloe the Ilig7 point yes Amass that Soviet
youth onoe having ettaimed a higher edesation will velment 'being
aesigmed to nem Whitipieollar jabs. ie fiats I think they &iron*,
resent being assigned at all. Within the last weeks I mete that the
lame en labor diseipline home been relemed. Nee the Soviet, eentinme
to deal with this problem will be something to watch very eleseiy.
sell your attentioeu aloe to t
April which referred to the eeme:aive
.ditorief early
which the nem freedom
of (mitts:Me was being serried obviouslyseeming that the government
itself me beim' critisimed and cited specifically a group in a
scientific institute.
Another as pest which will b.mr close watching Is the extent to
which the perusal competition for position,'ibid., yen will described,
is affected by .nspetias and by'beelk AfgelLifi.atione degrees, etc. The
USSR seems to be reaching very rapidly the paint wAere esniectione
count heavily and also the point where of fective Gamete are aimed
to those who have not reached a certain educational Isle24 This has
advantages from their standpoint, but it can surely be oarrisd too Cass
generating both discontent among the unchasen and correptin4n the -
educationil selootion foresees itself. DOCUMENT NO.
NC CHANGE *1 CUSS.
LI DECLASSIFIEDiT
CLASS. CHANGED -rix Ts $
tiFxr Kvew DATE: C
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TAT
STAT
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18 Short, the dimply false haste of the systan
in terms of human veimes, 1 think it not =likely that its materiel
efficiency will be affected over time. If this be optimism. Osage
don't ever designate it as anyth-Lng but cautious' 414* detaitIOXY
long term.
With hest regards,
Drafted:
DISTRIBUTION:
16 May 1956)
Orig aaie?.. addresses
2 Signer's files
1 Executive Registry
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>4,,,,, WNCLASSIFIED
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICIAL ROUTING SLIP
TO
NAME AND ADDRESS
INITIALS
DATE
d DD/I
,DP0/106"
71
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ACTION
DIRECT REPLY
PREPARE REPLY
APPROVAL
DISPATCH
RECOMMENDATION
COMMENT
FILE
RETURN
CONCURRENCE
INFORMATION
SIGNATURE
Remarks:
SUSFERSE: 15 May 1956
Preparation of reply for DCI signature.
DCI requests that someone side line the
portions of the attached speech that he should
read.
STAT
LD HERE TO RETURN TO SENDER
,, ME. ADDRESS AND PHONE NO.
DATE
1
Assist. to the Director
8 May 56
i.ir Reattt020M08/ki ? hiaktPirtNth 1 hooc4gOgnEnT2AL
FORM NO.3 7 Replaces Form 30-4
I APR 55 which may be used. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1955-0-342531
6-6
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
342 MADISON AVENUE
SUITE 702
NEW YORK 17, N.Y.
WILLIAM BENTON
PUBLISHER S CHAIRMAN
May 2, 1956
Mr. Allen W. Dulles
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington 25, D.C.
Dear Allen:
Your generous letter of April 9th
emboldens me to send along to you my speech of
last Saturday morning in which I opened the
current conference of the Institute for Study
of the USSR.
Erecutke P
As you will see, I quote you in
this, as I have in many of my current speeches.
I testified on Tuesday to the
Atomic Energy Committee and I will surprise my-
self if I haven't quoted you againl
Very sinceL
rely y urs,
?
WB:bf
enclosure
ham B to1n
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Opening Address by
Hon. Wm. Benton, Publisher
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
Institute for Study of the USSR
Carnegie Endowment Building
New York, N.Y.
April 28, 1956
THE USSR: SOME ELEMENTS OF STRENGTH
AND SOME OF WEAKNESS
I am honored by being here today. I do not myself have ex-
pert knowledge about the Soviet Union such as that possessed by the
members of this Institute. My credentials are merely that from time
to time I have occupied positions in which I have participated in
United States policy-making on problems raised by the Soviet threat.
In preparation for a visit to the USSR last fall, I read
books I should have read before. I talked to men I should have known
before. I visited London to learn from the Foreign Office far more
than I could extract from our State Department. If the State Depart-
ment thinks the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia is of any significance,
it is not willing to let me in on the secret. I learned about this
and much more in London last year.
Since my return last November I have kept trying. I have
learned much, for example, from a critique by Mr. Harry Schwartz,
famed Russian expert of the New York Times.
However, we Americans agree with the Soviet leaders on
Clemenceaufs dictum: that war is much too important to be left to
the generals, and this is my best credential. In our American
society the USSR is far too important even for you experts. The
most important desideratum in the U.S. today is knowledge and under-
standing of Russia. The problems posed by the Soviet Union involve
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every area of our American society. Policy to meet these problems is
decided by our elected officials and their advisors. Presidents
Eisenhower and Truman and Roosevelt have had to make the great policy
decisions. In making them they are influenced not only by what their
advisors tell them, but by their own preconceptions and by the common
stock of ideas about the Soviet Union which they share with the great
majority of our people.
Many of our past mistakes can be traced to the deficiencies
of the common stereotypes which have so powerful a hold on our collect-
ive minds. Even you professional scholars have made no secret of the
deficiencies in your own knowledge. The notion that Russia is a
riddle, a mystery, an enigma is so pervasive that even the most expert
evaluation of the Soviet Union is believed by the policy makers to
contain large elements of guesswork. One of my friends who qualifies
as a Russian expert goes so far as to say that the situation in Russia
today is more obscure than at any time since the 1917 Revolution. I
don't believe this. Such differences in interpretation encourage
policy makers to substitute their own intuition or preconceptions for
the evaluation offered by specialists or for unpalatable advice. Thus
wishful thinking has often been substituted for rational analysis.
Recently it has even been substituted for the facts by an official so
high ranking that he shall be nameless. This topsy-turvy substitution
occurred before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The official
gave us a new version of victory, an upside down version which made
him sound more like a Madison Avenue public relations man than a
statesman. He flatly denies the Soviet leaders are leading from
strength and suggests that their hand is a Yarborough.
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To help the policy makers minimize risks and to reduce our
percentage of error is the urgent role of this group, and I congratu-
late you and your leadership. There are few men with whom I have
worked intimately whom I respect as I do Mr. Howland Sargeant. The
job of many of you is to work with him in helping people of the free
world season their intuition with the facts.
This morning I shall begin your conference of 1956 by out-
lining briefly a few areas in which it seems to me that we Americans
are today guilty of over-estimation and of underestimation of the
Soviet Union. As a generalization, I suggest that the balance of our
past errors is heavily weighted: we have grievously underestimated
the USSR and its capabilities. Do you remember, for example, the
assertions from high quarters which we receive in June and July of
1941 that the Soviet Union would collapse quickly before Hitler's
onslaught? No less revered a figure than General George Marshall
participated in these prophecies.
Today, however, the pendulum may be swinging too far in the
other direction, towards overestimation. The assumption is even being
made in some quarters that the "new Soviet man" is indeed ten feet
high, and incorruptible and unselfish as well, and that the Soviet
government can perform any feat it decrees.
I shall first describe three areas of errors of underestima-
tion.
Most obvious of the three are our bad guesses about Soviet
science and technology. Here the evidence seems crystal clear. We
American people were astonished by the appearance of the Soviet atom
bomb; we were startled by the Soviet hydrogen bomb; and recently we
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have been amazed by high class Soviet jet fighters and bombers and
passenger planes. Even responsible U.S. government officials had
not expected such Soviet triumphs until years later. For years,
Senator Symington has been warning us of Soviet progress in guided
p.nd ballistic missiles. This week from London we've had the ballis-
tic and intercontinental warnings of Khrushchev himself, and I shall
tell you this: on my recent trip I decided that although the Russian
leaders don't always mean what they say, they often do, and most
often on military technology.
Successful Soviet security measures have played a role
lb nurturing our habit of underestimating Soviet science and tech-
nology. The habit, however, has deeper roots than this. Until very
recently, we Americans have tended to think of Soviet citizens as
ignorant peasants, illiterate, and incapable of handling machinery
or grappling with advanced scientific ideas. We forgot the great
Russian technological talent which gave de Seversky and Sikorsky to
the U.S. We ignored the enormous Soviet effort to train technicians
and scientists, to funnel the best brains of the USSR into the making
of the most deadly military equipment. Moreover we fed our disdain
for Soviet science with such aberrations as the Lysenko fantasy. We
comforted ourselves with the belief that political interference with
Soviet science doomed it to sterility. We failed to remind ourselves
that, in the field of military production, results were valued by the
Soviet leaders above ideology. We ignored the fact that scientists
who gave merely formal verbal obeisance to Marxism-Leninism and yet
produced results were likely to be wearing the order of Lenin. Our
failure to ponder past Russian history also played its role. Why
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shouldnot a country which in the 19th century gave the world such
geniuses as Mendeleev and Lobachevski produce great innovators in the
20th century? Why ahould it not breed even more of them, under its
current educatonal program and its deliberate and intensive search
for scientific talent?
A second example of underestimation is the area of Soviet
economic progress. Only eleven years ago, the Soviet Union lay nearly
prostrate, much of its industry and many of its most productive cities
ravaged. Who in our government dreamed that the damage could be re-
paired so quickly, and with annual industrial production soaring to
record highs? The USSR has indeed achieved its economic progress
through the abysses of revolution, tyranny, disaster and war. The
Four Horsemen have seemed to be the allies of Soviet industrial prog-
ress. The 39 year story is one of progress through catastrophe. It
is the story of not one Chicago fire but many. Mrs. O'Leary's cow
burned down a city which hoped to rival St. Louis. The new Chicago
which rose from the ashes soared to commercial dominance over our
whole mid-American empire.
The Soviet industrial victories remind me of a luncheon I
attended in August of 1943 in Manchester, England. This was at the
peak of the nightly obliteration bombings of German industry. Said
a worried British manufacturer, "Just think of those efficient and
modern new factories the Germans will build in Hamburg after Field
Marshal Harris ("Butcher" Harris to the Germans) has pulverized them
into cinders and ashes." He was prophetic, as we now know. After the
war the Germans didn't have to worry about amortization allowances,
and neither do the Russians today. The Soviet leaders predict
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68,000,000 tons of steel by 1960. These are 10% heavier metric tons.
From the standpoint of national security, on their past record of
success we must accept the likelihood that their prediction will be
realized. Moreover, when we compare Russian steel production with
ours, let us not console ourselves overmuch because ours is larger.
Would we not be wiser to recall how much of our own steel goes into
gadgets and refrigerators and Cadillacs? Soviet steel goes into arma-
ments and heavy industry; it isn't diverted to the more joyous and
pleasurable outlets.
We Americans have put too much emphasis on the low Soviet
standard of living, on the chronic Soviet housing crisis and the high
prices for consumer goods. When we read that Secretary Mitchell says
that the U.S. worker produces "2-1/2 times more than his Soviet counter-
part," we pat ourselves on the back and conclude there is little
reason to worry. Yet at the same time and in the same paper a British
expert tells us that a Soviet steel worker produces as much per man as
a British steel worker, though he is paid only half as much.
One reason why Americans have underestimated Russia's capacity
for industrial progress is our failure to appreciate the capacity of
a totalitarian regime to drive its people mercilessly towards its ob-
jectives. We have not grasped the peculiar Soviet admixture of pres-
sure, incentive and propaganda. Especially, have not understood the
talent for propaganda of the Soviet leaders, and the power of propa-
ganda to incite the people. From our own experience in a democratic
society we have found it hard to understand the terrible disproportions
which are a key to the Soviet economy. That a country can invest in
gigantic new steel mills and new machinery plants while its people are
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ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed has seemed incredible to many of
us. Except in war, we of the U.S. would not stand for such continu-
ous sacrifices to the government's dictates. We Americans have
failed to understand what could be accomplished by a government which
could extract daily sacrifices and keep on extracting them.
I have said that in the first place we have underestimated
Soviet science and technology. Secondly, I have stressed our under-
estimation of the USSR's economic progress. Now for my third area of
tI
underestimation: this is our failure to pay tribute to the technical
efficiency of Soviet leadership. This failure is partly because we
are blinded by the econolnic and political ideas of the leaders, which
to us seem naive, irrational and indeed cock-eyed. Until recently
the figure of Stalin dominated our thoughts about leadership within
the Soviet Union. We knew that he had destroyed thousands in the
blood purges of the 1930's, and that leaders who survived had lived
in deadly fear. But we failed to recognize the high order of ability
that had surged to the top.
The most vivid impression of my trip of last fall to the USSR
is of the calibre of the Soviet leaders I met. The 40 or 50 with
whom I visited from 90 minutes to three hours seemed to me not only
competent but vital, relaxed, confident of themselves and. of their
objectives. If these men were Americans, they would be among our
big corporation presidents, our leading financiers, our top politi-
cians and, I believe, they might well serve democracy as ably as they
now serve communism.
Soviet society has been and is highly competitive for the
individual. In one of my several exposures to Washington, the one
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which I shared with Howland Sargeant in the State Department, I public-
ly remarked that the personal ccmpetition in Washington made what goes
on within or between Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, or General
Motors and Ford, look like a game of dominoes - in contrast to the
effort to crack the four minute mile.
This type of personal competition within the USSR, greatly
intensified over anything we know in the U.S., to a point which liter-
ally involves life and death, has been the mother's milk of the pres-
ent crop of Soviet officials. The old ruling class and the old
bureaucracy were wiped out in 1917. Opportunities thus opened up
everywhere. In the middle 1930's, the purges vacated thousands of
top posts. Hundreds of thousands of subsidiary roles were regurgi-
tated. Over and above these revolutionary annihilations of those in
power, the steady and continuous expansion of the Soviet economy has
developed a constant new supply of opportunities. To fill these, an
expanding school system - for the old and aging as well as the young
- has trained ever greater numbers.
Not only have there been ample opportunities for the able,
but there have been incentives. The able Soviet citizen is richly
rewarded, relative to Soviet standards, even though such rewards
; make a mockery of socialism's original egalitarian ideas. The Soviet
scientists, bureaucrats, writers and others in the creative arts are
,the new plutocracy. However, the system of promotion is based upon
a cruel demand for performance. The manager who overfulfills The
Plan is well paid and promoted. The manager who underfulfills faces
the threat of prison or even of execution for sabotage. A hard system
this is, but most surely it is bitterly competitive for the individual.
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It pays off for and by results. Why should we then be surprised that
it has brought able leaders to many top positions? This is not the
first revolution so to do.
The great inequalities this process has brought in its train
have evoked discontent among those who do not scale the ladder's top
rungs. We see the results of this discontent in the latest move to
cut the high incomes of some groups among the Soviet privileged
classes. Only this week Welles Hangen, a remarkably able young re-
porter of the New York Times, reports from Moscow a reduction in
salaries for "Soviet professional and administrative" classes of as
much as 50%.
Because I met seven of the members of the Praesidium last
fall, I asked about the family backgrounds of all 13. Their back-
grounds may illustrate the high mobility of Soviet society generated
by the 1917 Revolution. Surely they demonstrate the competition
which has generated the opportunity for men of ability to forge to
the top. Do some of you recall the refrain of one of the poems of
our great American poet, Carl Sandburg, "the strong men keep coming
on?"
In Russia today, the leaders whom I met seem to me to be
the strong, the tough, the dominant. They represented the survival
of the fit, even though almost certainly not of the fittest. They
terrify me by their quiet confidence as they do by their profound
ignorance of western civilization. The most dangerous opponent is
one who is strong - and rich - and ignorant.
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But let us look at the backgrounds of some of these top men.
Bulganin - son of a white collar worker.
Kaganovich - son of poor working class parents; went to
work at 14.
Khrushchev - son of a coal miner.
Malenkov - petty bourgeois background, father may. have been
petty official.
Mikoyan - son of a worker.
Molotov - son of fairly prosperous bourgeois parents.
Pervukhin - son of a blacksmith. (When I met Pervukhin
and asked him about his background, he said,
"My father was a blacksmith but he made me
well."
Saburov - son of a miner, went to work at 13.
Voroshilov - son of a railroad watchman.
Zhukov - son of a poor peasant.
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Does this brief casual listing of the family background of
some of Russia's top leaders show how easy it is for some Westerners
to underestimate them? Does this help explain why I cite as a third
area of error of underestimation our failure to appreciate the talent
of the leadership that has surged to the top in this competitive
society? I could develop a fourth area or a fifth, but I think the
three I have cited illustrate how we of the west, in our judgment of
the policy and potential of the USSR, have too often been influenced
by obsolete ideas and. by wishful thinking and by our intense dislike
for totalitarianism,
We have not even been willing to admit the heavy world-wide
impact of the Soviet international propaganda. For more than two
decades we have grossly underestimated its skills and effectiveness.
I startled some of my colleagues in the U.S. Senate when I argued. on
the Senate floor that China fell to Red propaganda rather than to Red
arms. I shall never forget a statement I heard General Marshall make
early in 1947 shortly after he returned from China. He said, "China
might have been saved by the massive use of radio and motion pictures,
on a scale hitherto undreamed. of." At that time, this statement was
unrealistic of course - as he very well knew. The battle of ideas in
China had by then been lost. There were at that time in China no
radio receivers or movie projectors. The United States exported arma-
ments instead of radios or movies. The Communists, years before, had
sent into China thousands of Moscow-trained agitators and propagan-
dists, village by village, using the propaganda themes they knew would
be effective.
Now let me turn to some of our American errors in overesti-
mating Soviet strength and capabilities. These I think are far less
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serious. Civilizations (like businesses) destroy themselves by under-
estimating their competition rather than by overestimating it.
Yet this second area of error, that of overestimating Soviet
potential and power, can still betray us in today's world. It can
betray us in our domestic budget as well as in our expenditures over-
seas. It can upset America's budget and economic stability. Further,
the voices urging it upon us grow stronger daily. Soviet offers of
capital equipment abroad have led to exaggerated expectations that
the Soviet Union may be about to conquer so-called "uncommitted bil-
lions" by delivering massive amounts of economic aid. A British
economist has suggested that as early as 1963 the Soviet Union may
attain the 1955 level of American industrial production. Senator
Malone who preceded me to Moscow cried that we should discontinue the
Voice of America because the Russian people have embraced their
regime and do indeed support it wholeheartedly.
Some feel that the Soviet peoples are so devoted to their
regime and their way of life that all western or satellite hopes of
disunity are senseless.
In such views can lie a road to disaster for American policy.
Such views can lead us down a road which can betray us.
To be more specific, there is, first, the overestimation of
the link between the present Soviet regime and its people. Put
another way, this is the underestimation of the discontent existing
\
in the Soviet Union. If anything is plain in the dispatches from
Russia, it is the widespread discontent. How deep and politically
significant this is we cannot tell, but we know at least this, that
the Soviet leaders have responded to it and that it is far from
assuaged.
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The Soviet people have borne the sacrifices of more than a
quarter century of frenzied industrialization and war. But they have
not enjoyed the sacrifices any more than would. we. Today their
standard of living is still painfully low. They observe their gov-
ernment continuing to pour vast resources into heavy industry. They
watch it offering hundreds of millions of dollars abroad. They see
that for two years in a row there have been no significant price re-
ductions and no elimination of queues and shortages.
May I pause to tell you a Russian joke? Do you know why you
see only the young in the Soviet queues to get a permit to buy auto-
mobiles? Do you know why at the same time you see only the old driv-
ing the automobiles? Do you really know? Think a minute. Think 2
or 3, if this may help, but Im sure that only a Russian would grasp
the horns of the dilemma of the joke.
The answer. Only the young have the strength to stand in the
queues. Then they sell the ration tickets to the old. Only the old
have the rubles for the purchase of the car.
The point: derision of the black market and the bureaucratic
processes on which it thrives.
Can we suppose that all this background of sacrifice, and even
of joking, is without effect? Can we not assume that the link between
the regime and the people isn't iron-tight? What of the Malenkov per-
iod, when promises were held out for an improved standard of living,
and this to be attained. quickly? Do not such promises help show the
pressure which the running sore of discontent exerts on the Soviet
leaders?
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Shall we American policy makers not also consider the current
ferment as the Russian people reel under the impact of the revelations
about Stalin? Only this week Khrushchevis attacks on Stalin are re-
ported. to be growing still tougher. Stalin is alleged to have been
more anti-semitic than Hitler, with all Jews having been scheduled
for deportation to Siberia. Can and should we now assume that the
' Soviet people are so stupid that they will not draw conclusions from
the evidence given them by their own leaders, now laid each week be-
?'ore them, of how a madman deceived them, of how he lied to them and
,of how he even killed their brothers and sisters, their fathers and,
mothers?
1
The caution with which the revelations about Stalin are being
?.ed out to the Soviet people seems to show the rulers' fear of popu-
lar reaction.
Can it be that because of the tremendous successes of the
Communist propaganda since 1917 and even before - can it be that the
Soviet leaders have now at last overestimated the power of their
propaganda? When they now tell the youth of Russia about Stalin,
when they tell the youth of Russia that Stalin was not infallible -
) may they not be sowing the seeds of unbelief in the Soviet propaganda?
, I'm not too hopeful here, because I am too impressed and too terrified
by the successes of the Communist propaganda. But I have some hope.
I 'like a phrase of Allen Dulles'. He writes me of his "cautious op-
\ timism? and. from such seeds as the present cynical reversal on Stalin,
\from these may we not hope that future disbelief and. discord. may de-
velop?
As an example, as a possible ground for cautious hope, may we
not take the recent riots in Georgia, the clashes in Tiflis which
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resulted in deaths now reported by the Associated Press to number per-
haps up to 100. Do not these indicate that Georgian nationalism is
not dead? Can we not assume that Ukrainian nationalism, Estonian
nationalism, Uzbek nationalism are not dead? Khrushchev himself told
1 the world in his opening speech at the last Party Congress that there
\
' is friction between the 16 Soviet Union Republics over appropriations
and allocations. He hinted at jealousy and even at conflict among
them.
Now let me turn to a second present danger of overestimation
of Soviet progress. This is exactly the reverse of a point I made
earlier when I argued that we tend. to underestimate Soviet economic
progress. Now let me argue that we are overestimating the strength
of the USSR applied to the immediate future. Its recent industrial
progress has been so impressive and so disquieting that we can easily
be overwhelmed by the shadow of the future. But must we assume that
the ambitious goals of 1960, as announced, will be carried out and in
the time planned?
Skepticism would seem to be justified. To achieve the an-
nounced goals of the 68,000,000 metric tons of steel and 600,000,000
tons of coal these and other goals of the Sixth 5-year-plan -
millions of workers will have to be sent to now uninhabited regions
of Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia. Great new cities will have
to be built. Huge investment funds are required. Soviet leaders
have never before projected such a vast program. Never have they
seemed to be so imbued with gigantomania, with huge projects seemingly
almost for the sake of huge projects. May they not have miscalcu-
lated? We should not assume that they have, but most surely we should
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not assume they have not. Here is the area in which scholars like
you at this annual conference must give guidance to men like me who
sometimes make the big decisions. Do you remember Al Smith? He was
the man who in 1928 I supported for President of the United States.
He said, "The expert must be on tap but not on top."
All of us know that the Soviet leaders, like our own leaders,
have miscalculated in the past. To get the Kuibyshev hydro-electric
power station to begin work in the last days of 1955 they had to
transfer resources from elsewhere. As a result, the Stalingrad hydro-
electric station is now scheduled to provide power in 1958, not 1956.
We once heard much of the Chief Turkmen Canal designed to turn a vast
desert into a garden; we heard of vast forest shelter belts to end
the menace of drought. Where are these projects now? They were
Stalin's "visions." They have vanished into thin air; the effort
expended on them wasted.
Many among us here today ask how long will the Soviet people
allow themselves to be exploited mercilessly. Recently Khrushchev
has been forced to promise shorter hours of work, higher wages, and
higher pensions. But as yet little has come of such promises. And
surely it is no accident that the Soviet press is now hiding from its
readers the concrete steps being taken in Poland to improve the con-
ditions of the workers.
And what of Soviet agriculture? Shall we overestimate its
progress while we underestimate its difficulties? Suppose the rains
do not come in Kazakhastan again as they failed to come last year?
What if there is drought in the Ukraine after last year's fabulous
harvest? Again, how strong may the peasants' reaction be against
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Khrushchev's plans for cutting down their private gardens and depriv-
ing them even of their family cow? I ask these questions merely to
suggest the serious gambles being taken by the so-called collective
leadership. But the Presidium is of course a group of trained and
professional gamblers. No man or group of men can take over the
home town, the country, the state, the nation or the world except by
gambling. I'm willing to agree that the odds are on their side when
they bet on their collective farms and agricultural productivity,
about which they have much more knowledge than have I. I must also
calculate, as a policy maker, that even the professional gamblers can
back the wrong horse. The members of the Soviet Presidium are ac-
customed to gambling for colossal stakes, for life and death itself.
But let us remember they are gambling, even while we pay tribute to
their professional skill. Let us continue to recall our Mississippi
heritage, that it doesn't take a royal flush to beat two of a kind.
And now what of the Soviet youth, what of the new surging
millions who are about to get ten years of compulsory schooling and
who then - most of them of course but by no means all - are then to
be asked to become workers like their fathers and mothers? The
Soviet cartoons show the 17-year-old girl graduate with her disdain-
ful nose sky-high, while her parents humbly and beseechingly follow
her, begging her to work. Khrushchev is deeply concerned about these
white-collared and white-shod young, and we can hope he may be right.
He made his concern clear in his last speech in Moscow before he left
for Great Britain. He said, "Recently some part of the youth has
begun to show incorrect views on labor in our Soviet society. This
is reflected, for example in such facts: finishing ten years of
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school, young boys and girls say, it's not fit that we, educated
people, should go to the factory, to the building area, to the state
or collective farm. Such educated people don't think that they live
in a house built by building workers, that their fathers work in
plants and factories, that they eat bread grown in state or collec-
tive farms by our Soviet people...It is hardly a secret that some
parents think: 'They can't put my daughter who's finished high
school to milking cows!'"
Now I will ask this group of scholars whether this new youth
will be willing to put up with the needless hardship and. exploitation
suffered by the peasant masses of yesterday? I happen to think that
the Soviet rulers are too smart to ask it to do so. With their new
youth which has gone to school and studied physics as well as the
3 R's, with this new youth which is the alleged prototype of the
phoney "new Soviet man," with this new youth the political leaders
will use not only the stick but the carrot. Here I pause and bow
towards Mr. Allen Dulles. In spite of the carrot and stick,
Mr. Dulles finds grounds for hope in the rapidly accelerating stand-
ards for Russian education. He thinks a Russian with schooling and
education is more likely to think independently and to think for
himself. For myself, I wish I had found more evidence, in my quick
look at the USSR, to support this thesis.
All of us here this morning, I am sure, share respect for
Soviet economic accomplishments and concede that we shall see more in
the future. What I now warn against, however, - as I ask you to ex-
amine the areas in which we may overestimate the USSR - is too mechan-
ical a judgment, too automatic a projection of past trends into the
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future. If a nation's productivity is tiny, it is not too much of a
trick to double it in a Five-Year-Plan. But if its production is
huge, then the doubling of it can be far more difficult. In their
current 5-Year-Plan, the Soviet rulers are promising a 70% step-up
by 1960.
An illustration of difficulties the Soviet leaders are now
having in Asiatic Russia in the building up of great new enterprises
is this comment from Trud of April 15, 1956, on the problems at the
giant Sokolovsko-Sarbaisky iron ore combine in Kazakhstan which is
scheduled to become one of the great Soviet iron ore sources:
"Last year the builders fulfilled their plan by only 61.5%
and basically only an account of secondary, less difficult jobs.
There were not built such important buildings as a garage, the depot,
a warehouse for explosives. There was no electricity - in the
trenches there work only two or three excavators, although more could
be put to work."
I would conclude my comments on the possibility of over-
estimating Soviet progress by once more saying that this is not the
side of the coin which convinces me. We Americans are rich beyond
the dreams of avarice or even of J. P. Morgan and the Chase National
Bank. If we overestimate Soviet program, this may be so much the
better for us. In the field of education, for example, this may only
stimulate us to do some of the things we should do anyway, in pursuit
of our own American dream.
1 But as an optimist and a democrat, I choose to think that it
Is reasonable to assume that the aspirations and desires of the Soviet
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(people for a better life, for decent housing, for more leisure, will
not forever be frustrated. I am sure that these aspirations will re-
main vital. That they must be served is the great hope and goal
which the free world shares with the people of the USSR. This hope
;
,must constantly be in the minds of the policy makers of the west as
uthe necessity for serving it seems to be constantly in the minds of
the policy makers of the USSR.
I have outlined some areas of overestimation of the USSR and
some of underestimation. In these areas, your Institute, I would
suggest in conclusion, has a growing and expanding role to play.
By the quality and objectivity of your research, you can help
feed the stream of information which we of the free world need so
desperately today, a stream which must be strong and vital if it is
to present the Soviet reality to free men everywhere, here as in
Asia, and I now refer first and foremost to the needs of the American
people because American attitudes often shape the decisions of the
so-called policy makers of the free world. Any morning in the United
States the headline of the big story on the front page of the New
York Times is likely to be triggered by the attitudes in Fargo, North
Dakota and Boise, Idaho. This is why, on my return from the USSR, I
emphasized that the Soviet government had one and only one big con-
cession to make to us of the U.S. in the field of proposed "exchanges"
about which I heard so much while I was in the Soviet Union. We are
glad to admit to the U.S..the Soviet technicians and in most cases to
show them all, but in return the Soviet leaders should admit, and
freely admit, our journalists, our photographers, our motion picture
men, and perhaps most importantly of all our scholars - so that these
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Americans can in turn tell Fargo and Boise and all America what they
have seen in the USSR. What should be our quid for the Soviet quo?
I propose that we lay the following condition on our welcome to the
Soviet technicians: they can come here provided our scholars and
journalists are given in the Soviet Union freedom of movement and
freedom of access to information. We will trade our know-how for a
better understanding of the Soviet Union. For know-how we only want
know-us, know the USSR. Then and thus our democratic judgment will
be better. This role of informing the free world is also the role of
your scholars here this morning, indirectly as you may think you work
at it.
Among you men and. women of the Institute are that infinites-
imal portion of the Soviet-educated. intelligentsia which now has the
opportunity to assess the Soviet Union objectively and honestly, and
without fear of violating the Party line or of punishment. In your
work in the free world is the continuation of the great tradition of
scholarship of the Soviet peoples, of Tugan-Baranowsky, or Klyuchevsky,
of the statisticians who serve the zemstvos. You, the free scholars
who have escaped. the Soviet dictatorship, you have in your hands the
obligation and the opportunity of the future. Your knowledge of the
Soviet Union, where you spent most of your lives, is unique and in-
valuable to our common effort of understanding the true nature of
Bolshevism. Your presence here today shows that you feel that you
are still responsible to the enslaved peoples from whose midst you
come. I am confident that by your scholarship and your work in the
months and years ahead you will meet that obligation honorably and
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courageously, and dedicated. to the world of hope and. freedom. By
your presence here, you show ?that you are determined to seize that
opportunity and to make your great contribution that is your poten-
tial, to our common goal within the United States and. to the common
goal of all peoples.
This is the goal of peace and. freedom.
THE END
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