ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL BANQUET THIRTIETH ANNUAL MEETING VIRGINIA STATE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R001700030012-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2006
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 9, 1954
• Content Type: SPEECH

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ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL BANQUET
THIRTIETH ANNUAL MEETING
VIRGINIA STATE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
APRIL 9, 1954
It is a great pleasure to be with you tonight in the historic city of
Richmond,
In my job as Director of Central Intelligence, public addresses are
the exception as far as I am concerned. But when your distinguished Eenic)r
Senator and also your fellow-townsman, .: ssistant Secretary of State
Robertson, joined in asking me to meet with you I could not refuse.
The Central Intelligence k.gency has no better friend in Washingt,)n
than Senator Byrd. s one of the senior members of the E- rmed Services
Committee, I see him often on the affairs of the i gency. He has always
been understanding and helpful.
1 s for Walter Robertson, few men who have come to Washington, in my
experience, have made a deeper impression than he by over-all competence
and mastery of his subject. If any person thinks that Mr. Robertson has an
easy job these days, as the State Department official most directly re:;ponsibte
for dealing with our day by day crises in the Far East, I am sure that Walter
Robertson would be glad to let that person take a crack at his job.
Those who are directing our foreign policy these days have a double
problem. They need to know the facts bearing on our international retation;
and then they must decide what to do about them.
Until the Communists introduced the idea of building a kind of Chines
Wall around their domains, it wasn't so difficult to get a reasonable idea as
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to the facts in a given situation. Generally we can get, through normal and
overt means, a fair idea of the power potential ot the various countries of
the world and their intentions and policies can be deduced within a reasonag:.e
margin of error,
Today, however, there is a vast area of the globe -- the entire Sovie.ccording to the Communists' own admissions, it appears that the
only area in the field of agriculture where a real increase is to be notEd is
in "red tape".
The Central Committee of the Communist Party admits that bur? aucr^ t?
practices in the handling of agricultural problems have developed to a point
where main attention is "concentrated on compiling various directives,
resolutions, letters, and so forth. "
Even the Communist n wspaper, "Pravda", complained that district
farm offices were literally inundated with all kinds of paper. ice regional
executive complained that hours were needed daily to read the government
directives and the rest of the time was taken up with a series of unnec>3ss.:r V
conferences.
The Soviet leaders have admitted quite frankly the serious nature of
their agricultural problems.
First - the USSR is not richly endowed with agricultural resources. le
land area where both climate and soil are at all favorable for farming is
small relative to the population, and most of it is in use. Hence, exp:insic}i
of output requires more intensive cultivation.
Second - in pursuit of industrialization, Soviet economic policy has
starved agriculture of capital and drained it of labor. This drain of l ibor?
has been largely male labor. 0n the Soviet farms today about 80 percent vt
the work is done by women. The balance of the workers are old men, war
cripples, and children. Few boys over 16 are seen on the farms.
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Third - the record of Soviet planning of agricultural production has been
consistently unimpressive. Lgricultural goals set by the Five Year Aars
regularly proved excessive and stop-gap emergency measures genet zlly
failed to achieve the results demanded. The official reaction to the$ V fa luR S
was to attain output plans by demanding greater shares of output from thy:
farmers. With farm incomes already low, these measures did much to
increase the demoralization of the Soviet countryside.
As an illustration of what happens to those who are continually faced
with unrealistic plan requirements, there is the case of the clever Soviet
factory manager who in order to fulfill his monthly production quota was t:=~d
to "borrow" a day or two from the next month. This solution worked very x all
until after a year he owed the government a month's production. He han'`a
been heard from since.
Fourth - the newly adopted "new look" has apparently been delayed until
the chronic problems of Soviet farming had taken an acute turn in same
important branches. This deterioration will have to be stopped before the
new expansion can begin. Yet the measures were decreed too late last ytr
to affect 1953 production and it seems most doubtful that enough of the ado t onal
investment planned for agriculture will be supplied in time to have much ::ltuct
on this year's crop production.
,ll this justifies considerable skepticism as to whether the new program
stands much chance of succeeding on schedule. Moreover, there a2 e g 31
indications that it has actually got off to a slow start, with bureaucratic
bottlenecks about as numerous as ever.
Vvhat we have just seen in the sphere of agriculture shows the effc_-chi
of having a strong dictatorial government extend its hand far beyond the
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strict field of government itself. The attempt to eliminate privatt property
in the Soviet's productive wealth has not resulted in socialized property b ~t
in property in the hands of the dictatorship. Ls a result, the leading
members of the Communist party control the uses of productive wealtht.
direct the process of investment to suit themselves, decide how L,_rge az
part of the national income the masses will receive, and are in a posit. oil
to see to it that their own economic welfare remains at a level satisfactC,R--v
to them. The gulf between the incomes of the elite in the Soviet Union and
the ordinary workers is appalling.
If we feel that we here in the United States have our problems becati~e
of farm surpluses, we might well ponder with some satisfaction th-, con-
sequences of the Soviet agricultural system with a crippling bureaucracy
and critical farm shortages. At lease we need to have no misconc pticn
about the fruits of Communism in agriculture.
In conclusion, I would mention one further misconception about thi
Soviet world that I believe is shared by many. Here I am glad to rddporl
that the evidence indicates that any apprehensions are not well fou tided.
Many people seem discouraged at the fact that totalitarianism has
lasted so long in the Soviet Union. They tell us that in a totalitarian st t as
new generations come along with no experience of the meaning of freedo m,
the yearning for it may just die away.
This idea is based on the thought that the love of liberty might coma
largely from enjoying the fruits of it or from observing the experience of
one's neighbor who lived in liberty. There seemed to be some reason to ooubt
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whether there was here an inherent attribute of men and women apart fro-in
past experience, knowledge or upbringing.
During recent years in my present work I have had a good deal of
experience, direct and indirect, with persons who have sought asylum in thf
West from the conditions of human slavery that exist behind the Iron Curtain.
I have had contact with young people who have fled to free countries and wh.-
had never known any form of life except Communist totalitarianism. Yet
somehow they have had a yearning for something better and had exper ienrt~,;:
a feeling of basic revolt against what they had been taught and against the
manner of life they had been forced to live. The two young Polish fli.~rs
who brought their planes to freedom not so long ago are good examples of
this. They have taught the Soviet and the satellites that it is not safe to
expose any of their peoples to the breath of freedom.
This has created a basic problem for the Soviet in handling their
military, their diplomatic and their security service personnel, somu_ of
whom must come in touch with the free world to carry out their official
duties.
P.t least here is one misconception about the Communist world of whip:
we can all disabuse our minds: If we press forward with a vigorous d.afens
of the liberties for which this country and the free world stand, we have no
need to fear that we are in a losing race against the totalitarian way cf lift.
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