SIGNS OF WEAKNESS IN SOVIET DICTATORSHIP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100160003-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 10, 1998
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 23, 1956
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Intelligence Chief Sees-
SIGNS OF WEAKNESS
IN SOVIET DICTATORSHIP
CPYRGHT
Can the Kremlin, cracking down, now hold
Russia's Red empire together by force?
Allen Dulles, America's Intelligence chief,
indicates here that the answer may be "No."
Russia's present dictators, he says, find
themselves facing this basic quandary:
? Clamp down tight and, history shows,
CPYRGHT
revolt is inevitable, from pressure generated
by people's "instinctive urge for freedom."
? Let up a little bit-say, 20 per cent-and
people get a chance to blow off steam. But
this, too, turns to revolt under dictatorship.
Moscow, Mr. Dulles says, is up against a
dilemma without an answer in history.
by Allen W. Dulles
Director of Central Intelligence
The task of an Intelligence officer during these days is no
easy one. To say that the world is in ferment is to put it mildly.
The free world-and in particular the countries we include
among the Western democracies-face, on almost a world-
wide basis, problems such as these: (1) Revolt against the
last vestiges of colonialism, (2) uprising within the satellite
states of Europe against Moscow domination, (3) the all-out
attempt by the Communist bloc to sell its theories and its
wares throughout what we call the uncommitted areas of the
world, and (4) the conflict between the free world and its
program of building up a society based on the principles of
freedom and the attempt by the Communist bloc to make over
the world in its image.
These and other issues have deepened into acute crises in
Poland and Hungary; in Egypt and other Arab states.
# 0 *
It is probably inevitable but unfortunate that in the public
mind the name "intelligence" should become linked with the
story-book concept of the cloak and dagger. Frankly, I regret
that such sensationalism should ever becloud the main and
vital function of this Agency. This function is to co-ordinate
the work of finding the facts in the international situation
without bias or prejudice, and to make those facts available
to others in our Government that have the infinitely difficult
task of charting a policy which will make for peace among
nations, help to build prosperity at home and abroad, and
raise the standards of living and the levels of understanding
among peoples.
When I mention that it is our duty to try to find the facts
of the international situation, this statement may seem clear
and simple. In fact, it is infinitely complex in execution.
Facts have many facets.
One type of facts, for example, relates to what we collo-
quially call "hardware." By "hardware" we mean the physical
assets a particular country may have. For example, as applied
to the Soviet Union, it would mean the size of the armed
forces, their equipment, particularly in modern strategic
weapons such as aircraft, guided missiles, atomic stockpile
and the like. To know what this constitutes and its disposition
within the Communist bloc is one type of fact.
Closely related to this, and another important fact, is the
over-all industrial potential of a country like the Soviet Union.
Then, alongside the hardware, comes the more difficult as-
sessment of technical competence of the leadership and of
manpower. How good are Soviet aviators? How able are So-
viet scientists? How well organized is the Soviet Government
machinery?
Then we come to an assessment of another and more diffi-
cult type of fact to analyze, namely: What are the basic in-
tentions of a particular country, how is it likely to react in a
given situation? To our policy makers the intentions of a
country in a crisis may be more important, and always more
difficult to ascertain, than the amount of its hardware and its
over-all military might.
Let me illustrate what I mean from a fairly recent and
greatly debated issue of about six years ago-namely, the
intervention of the Chinese Communists in the Korean war
in October of 1950. I can speak about this from an entirely
detached viewpoint, since at the time I was in private life
and an outside observer of events.
At that time it was well known to American Intelligence
and to our policy makers approximately how many troops
and how much equipment the Chinese Communists had
close at hand north of the Yalu River on the borders of Ko-
rea. Thus, we knew about the "hardware" element. We could
also judge within a reasonable margin of error how long it
would take these particular troops to intervene in the North
Korean struggle.
What we did not know with any assurance was whether
or not the Chinese Communists would risk actual intervention
and war with the United States. Under these circumstances
the Intelligence officer has to weigh the pros and cons, to cite
all indications of physical preparations and of probable
courses of action and to reach an over-all estimate of inten-
tions. In fact, in retrospect I think that my predecessors pre-
sented a competent analysis of the situation-though they
did not call all the shots.
In the various crises which face us today we have many
problems of the same nature. Again we know with reasonable
accuracy the hardware which the various contestants in the
U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Nov. 23, 1956
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 MOV 2 3 1966
Midgle East have available to put into the struggle if the un-
easy cease-fire should be broken. In the case, for example, of
we knew what forces the Soviet had available and
Hungary
,
approximately wbe're they were located to throw into that
eople if the Soviet finally elected, as they did, to take the
course of ruthless repression.
What we, in Intelligence, are constantly seeking to learn
are the motivations and the ambitions and the pressures affect-
ing each country whose actions might threaten our own na-
tional security and what these pressures may impel a particu-
lar country to do.
* a *
An Intelligence officer has no business to be either a
prophet of gloom or a congenital optimist. It is all too easy to
be overimpressed with Soviet strength and military might if
we look only at their war machine and become bemused with a
supposed infallibility because the Kremlin can act more swiftly
than countries with representative forms of government.
Certainly it is as important to know the weaknesses of an
adversary as it is to point up its power and strength.
a a a
Often, when we, in the Intelligence community, are about
to produce a paper showing that the Communists in Moscow
are working to carry out some imposing blueprint for foreign
or military policy, they pull off a bureaucratic bungle or make
some fantastic move that would put in the shade the mistakes
made by governments in the free world.
Limits on a Dictatorship
The military might of a dictatorship as we learned both
from Hitler and Stalin is a formidable thing, but, if we take
the same test of long-range political acumen, their power has
definite limitations.
a a a
Dictatorships have a rigidity which gives the false
effect of strength. The democracies have a flexibility which
sometimes appears a source of weakness but which can stand
blows and react in a way that is impossible in dictatorships.
The Soviet Union, over the past year and more, apparent-
ly started some moves to temper the rigidity of the Stalinist
type of dictatorship.
When the history of this period is written, I imagine that
historians will agree that the most important document to see
the light of day in the year 1956 was the famous secret speech
of Khrushchev delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress on
Feb. 25, 1956. The text was published in the free world
some three months later. The people in the Soviet Union
have never had this text given them over the Soviet radio or
in the Soviet press. They have had little bits and pieces here
and there about Stalin's crimes and misdemeanors, but have
been largely kept in the dark while millions of people through-
out the free world have had the full story.
Here is one of the weaknesses of dictatorship. They dare not
tell their own people the truth. In the modern age, even with
the millions of dollars the Soviets spend on jamming foreign
radio broadcasts, they cannot keep the truth out. Some, but
unfortunately not all, of the facts banned by the Soviet Gov-
ernment eventually reach the Soviet people.
Also, when they send their people abroad, even though
generally under careful control, these travelers nevertheless
bring back information to others.
When a people begin to discover that their leaders are
not telling them the truth, the seeds of mistrust and lack of
confidence are sown. These may breed slowly, but they do
breed surely. Similarly the Russian people have been told
none of the real facts of the Soviet ruthless repression of Hun-
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CPYRGHT
gary. Some day, too, the real truth of this situation will seep
over the borders to them.
It was a great gamble that Nikita Khrushchev took when
he denounced Stalin and the crimes of the Stalin era. His own
fulsome praise of Stalin must have been in the minds of the
Soviet people. What can one think of a leader who for years
was the trusted lieutenant and the recipient of the favor of
the Stalin whom he later denounced as a deviationist and
murderer? When a dictatorship deliberately turns upon and
degrades its former dictator, it is by that very fact under-
mining itself.
In essence, the Soviet leaders, frightened at the conse-
quences of Stalin's policy at home and abroad, tried to ease
the iron grip of the Stalinist police dictatorship and to give
to Communism some of the surface attributes of a decent
way of life.
They hoped in this way to win for the Communist system
a greater degree of willing consent of the governed at home
and a degree of political respectability to attract new sup-
porters abroad. This is in a nutshell what the latest "new
look" and "de-Stalinization" policy is all about. Superficially,
this seems to be an astute policy. There is no doubt that it
has constituted a subtler threat to innocents abroad who like
to think that Communists are solely interested in the welfare
of people whose friendship they cultivate.
I say this is a great gamble, however, because Khrushchev
and his colleagues are trying to repudiate Stalin and the un-
popular characteristics of Stalinist rule without relinquishing
the monopoly of power enjoyed by Stalin's heirs in Moscow
or abandoning control of the great neocolonial empire built
up on the European border of the U.S.S.R.
This points up the real dilemma which dictatorships are
always facing. A dictatorship, as the term implies, means
that you tell people what they are to do and you enforce the
doing of it. Khrushchev proposed to relax that a little bit at
home-to have an 80 per cent dictatorship but, in that 20
per cent margin, to allow the people some liberty of action
and thought. This raises the basic question as to whether you
can have a partial dictatorship.
True, we have heard of benevolent dictatorships, but there
the authority of the Fiihrer or leader remains complete but
he only exercises that authority in such a benevolent way so
as to keep his people temporarily satisfied.
Less Harshness, More Trouble
Any relaxation of the iron authority, and that is what in
effect may have been contemplated under the so-called "new
look" in the Soviet Union, raises great problems.
These problems are even more serious in the satellite area,
where, in effect, an alien rule was foisted upon brave, proud
peoples with long traditions of Western culture and with an
intense yearning for freedom. A little relaxation of freedom in
the Soviet Union-where, after all, Russians were ruling Rus-
sians-was a very different thing from Eastern Europe, where
Russians were ruling peoples who were once free and came to
be dominated and controlled by a hated foreign power.
The consequences of the relaxation of Soviet dictatorship
in Hungary has been poignantly pointed up these last few
days. The Hungarian people were not content with half liber-
ties, qualified freedom. The prospects frightened the Kremlin
and caused an abrupt reversal of policy, with consequences
that it is hard to estimate.
In crushing the Hungarian revolution, the Kremlin in effect
repudiated an official declaration which the Moscow Govern-
ment had made on the 30th of October. This followed Hun-
gary's first bold bid for freedom, which Moscow apparently
accepted.
The Soviet Government said that it was necessary to make
 U. S. News & World Report
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. . . "We may be back again to days of ruthless Stalinism"
CPYRGHT
a statement in connection with events in Hungary. It ad- people, and more effective consultation of the wishes
mitted serious shortcomings, expressed deep regret that de-
velopment of events in Hungary had led to bloodshed. It
admitted that the further presence of the Soviet Army ele-
ments in Hungary could serve as a cause for even further
deterioration and stated that the Soviet Government had in-
structed its military command to withdraw the Soviet Army
units from Budapest as soon as this was recognized as neces-
sary by the Hungarian Government. It agreed to negotiate the
whole question of the presence of Soviet troops in the terri-
tory of Hungary.
It seemed that a miracle had happened, that what the
pessimists had always predicted was impossible had oc-
curred. It seemed that an uprising of people largely unarmed
could prevail even over tanks and modern implements of war,
not because the revolting people were strong but because no
butcher could be found who would dare use all the might of
modern weapons to crush a people rising in wrath and seiz-
ing freedom with both hands.
When dictatorship was thus put to the test, undoubtedly
the men in the Kremlin who debated the issue reached the
conclusion that their control not only in Hungary but through-
out the whole Soviet domain was at stake. There was a com-
plete reversal of their short-lived policy of tolerance. All
promises made were broken. The dictatorship became a
dictatorship again, not benevolent but ruthless. If this is any
guide to what may happen in the U.S.S.R., we may be back
again to the days of ruthless Stalinism.
But it is not alone in the satellites that dictatorship is put
to its harsh test. In the Soviet Union itself they have a
long-range problem which goes to the very heart of their
ability to keep dictatorial control in the hands of a few men
in the Kremlin.
Education: Danger to Soviets
In order to compete with the Western world in the field of
science and industry, which was vitally important for their
economic growth and their rearmament program, it was es-
sential for the Soviet to speed up the education of their peo-
ple, especially in the scientific and technical field. After
Stalin's death the regime encouraged more objectivity in sci-
entific inquiry, and put on the shelf some pseudo scientists
such as Lysenko [who said that changes in an organism that
are due to its environment can be inherited by its offspring].
After all, they had found out early in the game that in the
present nuclear age one could not fool around with scientists
who tailored their art to the whims of Marxism.
Here we immediately see that the Communists, in escap-
ing one difficulty, were necessarily running into another that
may be of even greater dimensions in the long run.
Obviously, the Soviet leaders could not limit their educa-
tional processes to the scientific fields, and more and more
young men and women are graduating from schools which
correspond to our high schools and colleges, and are taking
advanced degrees comparable to our degrees of master of
arts and doctor of philosophy. Even with all the indoctrination
in Communist teaching which they give to their young stu-
dents, it is impossible to prevent education from developing
the critical faculties which every thinking human being
possesses.
Education is a most dangerous drug for dictators, and
Soviet leaders may be creating a situation in the U.S.S.R.
which eventually-not tomorrow but sometime-will cause
pressures for further liberalization of political life, still less
police coercion, greater economic benefits for the Russian
o C C
As we review the events in Hungary and Poland and els
where in the Soviet orbit, we find another weakness of
dictatorship which many even in the free world did not a
ticipate.
tively long period during which they had held and indo
without question the dictates from Moscow. For almost 4
years now the Soviet system has controlled the U.S.S.R., an
for 10 years or more they have held the satellites and
iron discipline.
During all this time the new generations have been
doctrinated year by year in Marxism and Leninism with a
overdose of Stalinism. Their bibles have been the writin
of Marx, Lenin and, until recently, Stalin. They have bee
largely cut off from the outside world. Under these circu
stances, how could the younger generation-and it is amon
the youth especially that revolt appears-have known any
thing about freedom and liberty? How could they aspire ti
new and different and better things when they never ha
tasted and enjoyed them?
But, in fact, by their ardent pursuit of freedom, youths i
Poland, Hungary and elsewhere are disproving the Kremlin
"Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at la
becomes a disease. The man and the citizen disappear for
ever in the tyrant."
"Youth Against Tyranny"
We now find and can take infinite encouragement fro
the fact that this theory is false. Over recent years it ha
It has been the youth who have risked their lives and sacr
ficed them in order to achieve a freedom that they never hay
enjoyed but which instinctively they yearn for and are read
to die for. You will recall the young Polish aviators who hay
flown their planes to freedom in the West. There was a grou
of young men who recently seized a Hungarian plane an
brought it to safety in Germany. It was youth and those wh
toiled with their hands who sparked the movements in Polan
and in Hungary, and it was youth and the workers wh
manned the barricades in the streets of Budapest, as well a
soldiers who would no longer serve an alien master.
The gravest danger which a Communist dictatorship face
today is the uprising of youth against tyranny. No amoun
to alter the basic urge to assert the right of free expression.
A few human beings, it is true, can be brain-washed an
lose for a time any sense of right and wrong, and the desi
to assert themselves. One thing you cannot do is to brain
wash a whole nation.
If we go back through history to the earliest times, we wil
find that the most distinguishing feature of man is the instinc
tive revolt against tyranny, the instinctive longing for liberty
If a dictator fails to recognize and yield to these forces
the long run the liberties he may grudgingly have given wil
prove his undoing.
Foregoing are excerpts from an address by Mr. Dulle
before the American Association of Land Grant Colleges an
State Universities in Washington, D. C., on Nov. 74, 1956
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