KREMLINS MINDS GIVEN LOW RATING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP72-00337R000200170017-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 32
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 2, 2002
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: January 26, 1970
• Content Type: NSPR

NEW YC i-dliihV[E& Release 2002/01/22 :73 ? 8 $E11t0200 AOm]F7-1 i 2--
l r tish Writer Calls Lea
,'IIectually Third Ra:
$y P'I E>ti'G"RxS ; ;
$HINGTQN, Jan. 25- c
pq
c.nty on Soviet affairs,-Iii
tellectually third-rare:
wou`1c a ways'"r
bnaI or co1ierent T
R r tw-, d a-hatf
o id st, author "of
nn uvtlfth '6e .5 el3atP
bt e? 'like 1'a`n` academic
thaf_ a ative ex-.
Ws'a?s opened hearit gs
ions. The author testt
15, and the tran-
?by the subcommittee
aim and method to, our
point for us todat, `in-
ally third-rate, evert
_ Pf cation
"An unsatisfactory approach
eational affairs arises
from alargely unconsdou$, as-
un ption that the Cpmmuniet .
sips are susceptible to
ess the same `pssm'es
an maneuvers, as oUf C$WtI "
=he lfd:
Mr Conquest cited the re-
of Sewery1 Bialer,
of governmal Co
lu~bias that many members of
the present Central committee
communist party in,
__Of tUp cow 'ad primary s oT mg
e fflftft and then higher edu-
cation, but not secondary edu
'Cation.
__. A`This type of education, with
tho &le missing, is a usual
formula for half-ba k ekC ness,"
Mr. Conquest said.
---Senator Abraham ibicoff,
Defocrat of Connecticut, who
Dx eo at the heari in the
absence 'of the subcvn~m ,
chairman, Henry M. Jackson,
Democrat of Washington, asked
bout the implications of the
Russian leaders' intellectual 'cab
pacity for future negotiating.
Expect them to Blunder'
"The first thing to expect =of
theta issthat they will blunder
ituations," Mr. 'Conquest-
second thin is that
they do not have a dear aM
single will, nor could they easily
break out of their limitations
in a given instance even if they
wanted to."
"Basically, you can make
some things clear to third-rate
minds," Mr. Conquest went on.
"In, every conceivable hypothet-
ical situation, Western policy
I must be clear to them."
Mr. Conquest's latest book
was."The Great Terror: Stalin's
Purge of the Thirties," pub-
lished in 1968 by the Macmillan
Company. He argued that the
ertt leadership is what was
over Ater those t* S-
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INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
HEARINGS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
0
Printed for :the use of the Committee on Government Operations
U.B. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
38-7360 WASHINGTON : 1970
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HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington
SAM J. EE VIN, JR., North Carolina
EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine
ABRAHAM RIBICOFF, Connecticut
FRED R. HARRIS, Oklahoma
LEE METCALF, Montana
EUGENE J. McCARTHY, Minnesota
JAMES B. ALLEN, Alabama
KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota
JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
CHARLES H. PERCY, Illinois
TED STEVENS, Alaska
EDWARD J. GURNEY, Florida
CHARLES MCC. MATHIAS, JR., Maryland
JAMES R. CALLOWAY, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
ARTHUR A. SHARP, Staff Editor
HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington, Chairman
EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota
ABRAHAM RIBICOFF, Connecticut CHARLES H. PERCY, Illinois
FRED R. HARRIS, Oklahoma EDWARD J. GURNEY, Florida
EUGENE J. McCARTHY, Minnesota TED STEVENS, Alaska
DOROTHY FOSDICK, Staff Director
ROBERT W. TUFTS, Chief Consultant
RICHARD N. PERLE, Professional Staff Member
JUDITH J. SPAHP., Chief Clerk
RICHARD E. BROWN, Research Assistant
WILLIAM O. FARBER, Minority Consultant
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CONTENTS
Page
Opening statement, Senator Abraham Ribicoff------------------------ 1
Testimony of Robert Conquest______________________________________ 2
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INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1969
U.S. SENATE,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS,
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,
Washington, D.C.
[This hearing was held in executive session and subsequently ordered made
public by the chairman of the subcommittee.]
The subcommittee met at 10 a..m., pursuant to notice, in room 3112,
New Senate Office Building, Senator Abraham Ribicoff presiding.
Present : Senators Ribicoff, Gurney, and Stevens.
Also present : Senators Allott and Baker.
Staff members present: Dorothy Fosdick, staff director; Richard N.
Perle, professional staff member; Judith J. Spahr, chief clerk; and
Richard E. Brown, research assistant.
OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR RIBICOFF
Senator RIBICOFF. The subcommittee will come to order.
We are certainly grateful for your being with us, Mr. Conquest.
Senator Jackson wants me to express his deep regrets. His sister died
suddenly this weekend in the State of Washington and he left to attend
the funeral. All of us convey our sympathy and regret to Senator
Jackson.
This yeas, under the chairmanship of Senator Jackson, the subcom-
mittee initiated a major inquiry into the process and problems of in-
ternational negotiation. This is the first hearing in that inquiry.
Clearly, the road to the future is difficult and dangerous, and if the
United states hopes to travel it successfully, we must learn how to
take advantage of opportunities for negotiation along the way while
avoiding the pitfalls and booby traps of the negotiating process.
Clear thinking about this subject is very important. OOne cannot read
the newspapers or listen to TV or radio these days without finding
evidence of seine dangerous misconceptions about negotiation-espe-
cially about negotiation with adversaries.
In approaching this subject, the subcommittee has published this
year a number of background documents. One is "The Soviet Approach
to Negotiation", and a second, "Peking's Approach to Negotiation".
They include a fascinating collection of papers by Westerners, who
draw on their experiences in negotiating with Communist governments.
In addition, we issued a publication entitled "Czechoslovakia and
the Brezhnev Doctrine", a case study of the tragic plight of Czecho-
slovakia "negotiating" with Russia the continuing subjugation of her
people.
1
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The subcommittee is also encouraging a number of new studies on
different aspects of international negotiation. The first of these papers
was issued by the subcommittee, in October. It is a pioneer analysis
of the problems of negotiating scholar exchange programs with the
Soviet Union by Professor Robert F. Byrnes and is entitled "Ex-
changes of Scholars with the'Soviet Union : Advantages and Dilem-
mas".
In undertaking any negotiation, I can think of nothing more essen-
tial than an understanding of the attitudes, backgrounds, and practices
of the Other side. How, for example, can we reach sound judgments in
negotiating with the Soviet Union if we are under misapprehensions
about what is really going on in the Soviet political world and the
nature of the Soviet ruling group?
It is our good fortune to have as our witness today a man who has
made the nature of Soviet leadership the special subject of his studies
and writings. Noted British author and distinguished analyst of Soviet
history and of Soviet political leaders, Robert Conquest is the author
of a number of books on the Soviet Union including Common Sense
About Russia (1960), The Pasternak Affair (1961), Power and Policy
in the U.S.S.R. (1961), Recssia After Khrushhchev (1965), and The
Great Terror (1968). This latest book is a broad and carefully docu-
mented history of Stalin's purge of the thirties and is accepted as the
classic work on this period of violence, falsehood, and intrigue.
We welcome Mr. Conquest here today. We shall be happy to have you
proceed in your own way.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT CONQUEST
Mr. CONQUEST. Gentlemen, it is an honor to be asked to speak to you.
I, too, am sad that Senator Jackson is not present. I wish to associate
myself with the remarks about his personal family tragedy.
I hope it won't be thought an impertinence if some of the things I
say may seem, by implication at any rate, to be critical of views some-
times found among public men, and commentators on affairs, in the
United States as well as in Britain. I am one of those who believe that
the interests of our two countries are for all major purposes identical.
I am before you in the capacity of a student of the Soviet Union. In
the most general -way, I would hold that an unsatisfactory approach
to international affairs arises from a largely unconscious assumption
that the Communist leaderships are--not indeed of quite the same type
as our own-but at any rate susceptible to more or less the same pres-
sures and maneuvers.
In a world of rapid communication and the easy transmission of
news an impression is given of greater cultural unity than anyone
would have suggested 100 or 500 years ago. Where every political
leader wears trousers, it seems to be felt that basic cultural differences
cannot exist as they would have been understood to do between a
turban-clad Sultan and a periwigged Hanoverian King. It is always
tempting for us to take the unconscious assumptions of our own society,
absorbed in our upbringing, as natural and universal. The polity
created by Stalin and inherited by the present leadership does not
have the norms of our own (though in many respects claims to have
them, thus further confusing the outside observer).
The Soviet leaders speak, in however debased a form, one of the
political dialects of the West. In it they constantly imply that the main
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difference between the USA and the USSR is one of social organiza-
tion. In :reality, this has little bearing on the matter-as can perhaps
be deduced from the Soviet use of almost identical propaganda criteria
in differentiating between the USSR and Yugoslavia as between the
USSR and the USA.
The differences, in reality, are at basic levels of civic culture and
cannot be understood in terms of "capitalism" and "socialism". (If it
comes to that, the United States, as well as being more capitalist than
Russia, is more socialist too, if socialism has anything to do with the
idea of society exerting some control over the economy.)
Misunderstanding of the Communist attitudes does not seem to be
a matter of "left" or "right" opinion among the Westerners-the
Americans-concerned. Some of the mistakes made in Vietnam surely
stemmed from the idea that the war could be treated as a sort of mili-
tary-political chess game, in which the other side could be presumed to
be bound to reply in a predictable manner to given moves or escala-
tions on our part. In fact, the Politburo in Hanoi. was not, in the sense
assumed of it, a rational, predictable chess player.
Our knowledge of Soviet intentions, of Soviet politics, of the bal-
ance and the nature of faction within the Politburo at a given moment,
is bound to be defective. So we must surely abandon the notion of pre-
cise and scientifically analyzed challenges and responses, and return
to Bismarck's dictum, "Politics is not an exact science."
But we do know it great deal about the Russian leadership. And
this knowledge is adequate to the construction of it general attitude, of
ti general policy, towards Russia : At the very least, any policy which
ignores what we do know is bound to !be fallacious. If we are not in
the position of being able to read their intentions at a given moment,
we nevertheless have it reasonable knowledge of the motivations and
attitudes which will go to form those intentions. We are, it may be said,
in the position of it general, who naturally does not know his oppo-
nent's intentions, but knows the style and traditions of that opponent's
army and his personal style of fighting
(Just as, before Atlanta, when Hood was appointed to succeed
Joseph Johnston, General Sherman could not learn Hood's plans but
lie could and did consult men who had known Hood at West Point and
receive perfectly sound answers about his military character-nearl
meeting with disaster from failing to realize 'how sound they were.
What I would hope to develop is that the Soviet Union is a very
strange and idiosyncratic polity, not to be 'understood or dealt with
without it considerable conscious effort. The Soviet leaders are not to
be treated as though their motives and conceptions were in our sense
natural and rational. The particular leadership now in control in Rus-
sia-one which is thoroughly representative of the ruling caste as a
whole-derives from a tradition which is alien in both aim and method
to our own. But it is also, and this is it major point for us today, intel-
lectually third-rate, even within that tradition.
What I s'hall say is, give or take a few points, the opinion not merely
of myself, but of most students, right, left or center. The facts I shall
be citing are fairly readily available to all who look for them. The
trouble is, rather, that these facts, and the estimates based on them,
do not seem to be continually in the minds of those who form Western
policy, or at any rate of those who form Western opinion on policy,
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NATURE OF SOVIET LEADERSHIP
Senator Rinicorr. That is a very provocative statement, Mr.
Conquest.
As we go along with the questioning' now, anyone around the table
should feel free to join in.
Mr. Conquest, you talk about the present Soviet leadership as being
a particularly difficult group and inferior to earlier Soviet leaders.
What do you think are the reasons for this? What is the nature of the
inferiority?, How would you explain it?
Mr. CONQUEST. I think this is not a mere accidental thing as may
happen in any political system, where go here and b d read rs, se ond-
rate and first-rate leaders come and go,
from the next for no very deep reason. I think the Soviet situation can
be traced to the total background. It is natural to the present moment,
to the present time in the Soviet political scene, and any conceivable
substitute (for the immediate future at least) will be of the same
mediocrity.
Basically, I suppose the answer to your substantive question would
be what the German Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg said of
Lenin's regime as early as 1918-that the suppression of freedom of
speech,, of political democracy was fatal. She opposed it not on moral
grounds, not that she minded the bourgeois party being suppressed,
but because this gradually narrowed political thought itself and took
the life out of the whole bureaucracy. She 'predicted what was to
happen.
I think this is a perfectly sound analysis. "Life dies out," were her
words, in the ruling group when they don't have free discussion. And
discussion narrowed down considerably from her time on.
The present leadership is the first which is the pure product of the
Stalin era, you may say. By the early '30s, the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union was, to all intents and purposes, already an agency
of Stalin. His allies and supporters fully controlled it. But between
that point and the end of the'30s, the Party was thoroughly massacred.
Since my book on the subject, The Great Terror, to which you have
referred so kindly, carne out, we have had fianres from various Soviet
commentators-not published in the Soviet Union, but the "self-publi-
cation stuff" that comes out from various historians and others-which
indicate that about half the Party was executed or died in prison
during that period.
This included almost the entirety of the leading, second, and third-
ranking secretaries of the provinces and everywhere else. 'To be pro-
moted at that time, you had to have certain specific characteristics.
There were official instructions, for example, saying that everybody in
the Party should not merely attack so-called enemies of the people, but
even the "silent ones", people who were not adequately denunciatory.
In fact, at that time you had to be a denouncer and an accomplice in
the purge.
This is the actual moment of political birth of most of the current
leaders. To take two of them briefly :
In 1935, Kosvgin was a foreman in a textile mill, and an active
member of the Party in Leningrad. Over the next four years, he rose
to become a Minister via being Director of Factory, head of a depart-
ment in the City Party Committee, and Mayor. At each point his
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INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
predecessor had been shot. Of the 150-odd delegates from Leningrad
in the 1934 Congress of the Communist Party, none were left to attend
the 1939 Congress. They weren't necessarily all shot, but it was a pretty
thorough sweep. You rose by participating in the purge. There, was no
other method of doing it.
BrezJhnev had a. similar career in the Ukraine.
Brezhnev's first promotion was in 1937, when he was Deputy Mayor,
in effect, of a. town in the Ukraine. In 1938, lie got a, further promotion
within the Party machine. By 1939, he was Secretary of a City Com-
mittee of the Party. In the Ukraine, the situation was then much the
same as in Leningrad. Of the local Central Committee of 102 members
only three survived this period. The provincial secretaries, of which he
became one, were all shot, and all their successors were shot.
I could trace most of the other members of the present Politburo in
the same,way. Kirilenko, forexample, was similarly from the Ukraine
and rose in much the same terms.
The point I would like to urge is that while such as Molotov,
Khrushchev, and Malenkov had been Stalinists, had joined in the in-
stallation of this terror regime with enthusiasm, they were at least not
its actual products. The Brezhnevs and Kosygins actually owe the for-
mation of their political lives and characters purely to the events of
those days.
It is not just a question of intellectual third-rateness. It is a rather
specific character you had to have to rise. You had to be ruthless. I
don't mean merely in the sense of cruelty of character, but of a total
lack of worry about what happened to your colleagues, being prepared
to denounce them for your own promotion and survival.
I might quote a physicist, who was in jail himself, on the point I
have just been making.
Dr. Alex Weissberg was involved in. Ukrainian industrial develop-
ment. He is talking about Ukrainian industrialists : but his comment
applies to the lower political leadership even more so. He noted that
only the third or fourth man kept the average post. The way he puts
it is that these eventual beneficiaries of the terror "had not even the
normal advantages of youth in their favor, for the choosing had been
a very negative one. -They were men who denounced others on innumer-
able occasions ... They were morally and intellectually crippled."
Senator GURNEY. May I ask a question for background?
What education have these top people, like Kosygin and Brezhnev l
Mr. CONQUEST. They have mostly been to industrial schools, except
for two or three of them, who went to party ideological schools. But
to develop that one, some research has been done by Professor Bialer at
Columbia, and he finds that a very high proportion of the present
Central Committee had primary education and higher education but
not secondary.
They left out high school. They had primary education, no high
school and then college, although the college would normally be an
industrial academy or a Party school. In fact, this type of education,
with the middle missing, is a usual formula for half-bakedness.
You will recall that throughout this period Party thought has in-
eluded a very large number of crackpot ideas in,,for example, the field
of medicine and biology. They have always been-this isn't only the
present leadership-susceptible to ideas which may sound all right
to the layman but which the sensible layman nevertheless prefers to
38-736 0-70-2
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6 INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
leave to the expert to judge, accepting his condemnation of them : the
equivalents of phrenology or more lately of flying saucers, with us. One
wouldn't find many adherents of such among the Cabinet in the United
States.
There were a whole series of crackpots. On doctors alone, Lenin
warned. Maxim Gorki in 1913, not to go to Bolshevik doctors, but to
stick to, decent bourgeois ones. "Really, in 99 cases out of a 100, doctor-
comrades are asses ... To try on yourself the discoveries of a. Bol-
shevik--that's terrifying !"
He saw that aura of crackpot which surrounded the sect : but few
others were as clear. Throughout the '30s, a series of totally absurd
notions-those of Professor ;Schwartzman and of Dr. Kazakov, for
example, were supported in high places, and even discussed actually in
the Soviet Cabinet.. After the war, you had various similar absurd-
ities-those of Lepeshinskaya, for example. Nor has it stopped since
Stalin's death. There was a quack cancer cure being supported by the
current Leningrad leadership for years about the beginning of this
decade, the so-called "Kachugm method."
And this is to confine ourselves to medicine. Similar things could
of course be said about Lysenkoite biology, Marrist linguistics, Zhda-
novite aesthetics and so on and soon.
This whole tendency to a specific type of irrationality is based, I
think, on the notion that you know it all already. As you are master
of Marxism, the super-science, you don't have to be told by a scientist
which theory is right within his own discipline. And it is the Central
Committee which decides, as you know, in principle, on such matters
as biology.
Senator GURNEY. Is it also true that in recent years there is an anti-
intellectual atmosphere in Russia? Is that because of a distrust of the
intellectuals by theseleaders?
Mr. 'CONQUEST. Yes. Stalin, we are told by several people who knew
him, actively enjoyed duping intellectuals, including Western intellec-
tuals. It gave him great pleasure. These people are very much in the
Stalin machine's tradition. They do, I think, despise intellectuals. And
I think they fear them, too, to some extent, although at present the
intellectuals are in a very weak position in Russia.
IMPLICATIONS FOR CONDUCT OF U.S. POLICY
Senator RIBICOFF. It is disturbing to hear you speak of the agreement
among experts, whether they are left, central, or right, that the Soviet
Union is led by a third-rate set of officials operating by a committee
process.
What are some of the implications of this in the field of negotiations?
Mr. CONQUEST. I suppose it depends on the particular matter being
discussed. It is at the higher policy level that they get themselves into
trouble. The Czechoslovak invasion, for example, was blundered into.
I think the first thing to expect of them is that they will blunder
into situations. The second thing, I think, is that they do not have a
clear and single will. Nor could they easily break out of their limita-
tions in a given instance even if they wanted to, since they are no
longer the obvious and natural superiors of the run-of-the-mill of the
Central Committee, of the whole of the Soviet ruling apparatus, but
rather a projection of it.
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Senator Rimcorr. You speak of the Soviet leadership as third-rate.
how do you rate the leadership of the West, whether it is England,
France, or the United States? Basically, I am curious how the rest of
the world rates the West.
Mr. CONQUEST. That is a very general judgment you ask me to make.
Senator RIBICOFF. You make a judgment as an Englishman about the
Soviet Union.
Essentially, the question is : Are there first-rate minds dealing with
third-rate minds or are there third-rate minds across the world dealing
with one another?
Mr. CONQUEST. Our leaderships may seem to be second-rate, possibly
with first-rate ingredients. But I don't think there is any real com-
parison between the levels. There is in the USSR a narrowness far
beyond anything we can imagine. Even the poorer of our leaders, both
here and in London-well, are on a differentlevel.
All who have studied, or experienced, the Soviet leadership take this
view. Even, for example, the: Czechoslovak Communist leaders who
were arrested and taken to Moscow in August 1968. They came back
saying they had expected the Soviet leaders to be narrow dogmatists,
but they hadn't expected them to be "vulgar thugs," I think was the
expression used.
Senator RiBicorF. This becomes fascinating because whether you are
dealing with a rogue or not, if smart people are dealing with smart
people, you know what the objectives are and what you are trying to
achieve. But if you are dealing with third-rate minds, what happens
in the negotiating process on big decisions and objectives? How do
you negotiate broad policy matters with third-rate minds?
Mr. CONQUEST. I would have said basically you can make some things
clear to third-rate minds. At any rate, in principle, it seems especially
important, as far as possible, to make one's position absolutely clear
beyond all doubt-and in good time too.
In the Cuban confrontation you had 10 days or so to let it be known
what American policy was and the then Soviet leadership was slightly
superior to the present one. But what happens if you have a crisis
that boils up very, very suddenly, a life-or-death crisis, say in the
Middle East?
I think the answer (easy to say but far less easy to effect) is that in
every conceivable hypothetical situation, or anyhow in the main hypo-
thetical situations, Western policy must be clear, and clear to them, if
not in every conceivable detail at least on every major point.
Senator GURNEY. Western policy should be very simple and positive
so that they get the message?
Mr. CONQUEST. Very clear; yes.
Senator BAKER. May 'l ask a question, please?
I don't think anybody would quarrel with the idea that America's
or anyone's policy ought to be clear and fairly simple, in very general
outlines. But I am wondering if that is shorthand for saying that it
ought to be unified and of one voice.
Doesn't this theory require that there not be apparent division
within the governing authority of a nation on what that posture ought
to be, what the policy of the nation ought to be? I am wondering, then,
projecting it one step further, if that isn't virtually impossible.
Mr. CONQUEST. This is the problem of democracies in general, isn't
it?
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Senator BAKER. Yes. So, how do you manage to have a central,
clearly defined, unmistakable foreign policy in a democratic system?
Mr. CONQUEST. The Executive has to cope with any immediate crisis,
I take it? But what I noticed, for example, about the Hungarian crisis
in 1956 was that the West seemed to have no contingency planning at
all.
I do agree that you can't be as clear-cut as perhaps I was seeming to
suggest. But I am not really wishing to specify policies so much as to
c'haracterize the Soviet component in the situations which policies are
framed to deal with.
Senator BARER. I don't intend to impose on you to extend beyond the
parameters that you have outlined. However, I think, underlying this
little colloquy is the presupposition that we must attribute to the Soviet
Union a fairly high level of political sophistication and intellectual
capacity in order to afford the luxury of diversity which is essential in
a representative democracy. If we can't assume that they have a fairly
high intellectual capacity, and if we can't assume that they are fairly
sophisticated in their understanding of foreign affairs, then there is a
question of whether or not we can afford the luxury of democratic
diversity in foreign policy.
That creates a dilemma that none of us are anxious to cope with,but
it is implicit in the conversation.
Mr. CONQUEST. I think you are right. I think it raises immense
difficulties.
It is politically impossible in a democracy to have a totally unified
attitude in foreign policy. I would have thought that vis-a-vis the
Soviet Union, it would have been possible to have enough consensus. It
isn't a matter of 100 percent. It is a matter of avoiding giving the
appearance of faction which they might -feel would play into their
hands, while retaining the right and power to criticize and suggest. I
would feel the important thing to be as clear a definition of policy as
possible prior to any crisis, and a certainty that the Executive will pur-
sue that policy in any particular crisis. Dissent, or useful and construc-
tive dissent, surely comes best in debates on the formulation of-policy
in comparatively uncritical interludes. In an actual crisis it is less
'constructive.
You had that in 'Cuba, to some extent. There were voices, quite loud
ones, to President Kennedy to climb down. If the Executive copes with
a crisis, and -does it right, afterwards no one is going to complain.
Senator BAKER. Just to make sure I am on record correctly, what
I am trying to do is point out that the level of competence and political
understanding and sophistication of the Soviet leadership is directly
and vitally related to the democratic process in the United States as
it bears on foreign policy; and, therefore, the apparent quality of
Soviet leadership that you describe, as well as their apparent lack of
political sophistication in this field, makes an infinitely more difficult
job for us in the conduct of United States foreign policy.
Mr. CONQUEST. Yes ; absolutely.
Senator RiBicorr. What are the implications of what you have said
for two big sets of negotiations now going on-for the future progress
of negotiations on Vietnam and the Middle East?
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As far as the United States is concerned, in addition to the arms
control negotiations, including the SALT talks in Helsinki, there are
the two big issues, Vietnam and the Middle East, where we are working
with Communist governments to try to get successful negotiations.
What are the implications of what you have said for these negotia-
tions?
Mr. CONQUEST. First of all, at the present, (and this applies to the
Helsinki negotiations, of course), it is clear enough that they have
themselves in the position of having enemies on all fronts all around
the world--both China and the West. The whole Helsinki thing, I am
sure, can be looked on as a cooling down of the Western Front, as it
were. That is natural enough. But how far are they prepared to go
in real negotiations? Are they ready to take taheir apparent wish for
detente to any logical conclusion?
The Soviet Union's attitude to Vietnam-or so it seems to me-has
always been conditioned by their attitude to China and they don't
basically care very much about Vietnam, as such. (This is not new to
you, I am sure.) The idea of making the North Vietnamese Army de-
pendent on modern arms is a reflection of the attempt to build up a
pro-Soviet faction among those Chinese soldiery who advocate modern,
fully equipped, Russian supplied armies, as against the Maoists now
in control, who talk in terms of guerrilla warfare and retiring to the
interior, that type of thing.
On the Middle East-and in the whole business of having fleets
cruising around the Indian Ocean and so on they have let themselves
get into an area beyond the real interests of Russia in much the same
way, you may say, as William II, ignoring Bismarck's advice not to
bother about Africa, got himself into naval adventures and colonial
adventures which were of no use to Germany, and simply extended her
into provoking everybody everywhere.
This is, I would say, due to the combination of two things. One is
general thoughtlessness and swagger, like the Kaiser's "place in the
sun." They seem to think in terms of "we are a great power so whatever
great powers have or do we must have or do."
Secondly, I would have thought it reflected divided counsel. Some-
body among the leaders wants a blue water fleet. Somebody wants a
more forward policy in the Mediterranean. Others, with other preoc-
cupations? let him have his fleet, his intervention-at least, until trouble
arises. Tliis, at least to some extent, can be documented.
At the time of the last Israel War, there were open signs of division
in the Soviet leadership, and the then -Secretary of the Moscow Com-
mittee made a speech urging a much tougher policy, in effect. After-
wards, recriminations came and he was finally thrown out of his job.
Nevertheless, it indicated that a faction had been trying to drag them
in a bit further.
There is always debate, of course, and wings develop, and separate
interests in these essentially military or semi-military types of foreign
political maneuver. I don't know if you read the Penkovsky papers.
He gives his account of the meetings of the Soviet Defense Committee.
Even in Khrushchev's time, when there was an established senior
leader, there was considerable chaos when he wasn't there, with Kozlov
or somebody chairing, the generals and political men concerned with
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defense used to leave the committees not knowing what had been de-
cided-different decisions every time.
And when you have a, leadership which isn't as united as it was then,
it seems very probable indeed that they simply bungle into things at a
minor level. And then, all too often, the minor* level decisions can com-
mit them gradually and accidentally into major areas.
Senator ALrorr. I would like to ask a couple of questions, Mr.
Chairman.
Following up on your discussion of the intellectual level of the
Soviet leadership, do you regard the decisions made by the Soviets
at the time of their Czechoslovak invasion as ones made in an at-
mosphere of virtual hysteria?
Mr. 'CONQUEST. You wouldn't call Hitler or Ribbentrop great intel-
lectuals, but if you compare their invasion in 1939, which was thought
to be crude at the time, it went, politically speaking, with considerable
smoothness and satisfactory planning. They got the President to sign
away his rights. (They had to chase him around the table, but they
got ~iim to sign.) The 'Czech Government handed over formally and
correctly to the German representatives. A few tanks went through
Prague. They even managed to get a sort of Slovak rising in Bra-
tislava-something the Russians seem to have wanted but failed in.
There was none of this complete bungling on the spot. I don't think it
was because Hitler was more intellectual ; and Ribbentrop wasn't a
great :intellectual either.
Senator ALLOTT. There were stories from one source and another
which indicated that there was, in fact, in the Russian hierarchy, a
group of people who panicked at this time with the idea that -Czecho-
slovakia actually was getting away from them as a satellite. This view
precipitated the carrying out of what were well-laid military plans.
Militarily, the Soviet plans were smooth, they were quiet, they were
effective.
Mr. CONQUEST. Yes, on the whole.
Senator ALLOTT. Maybe you don't think this element of panic was
significant in their decision.
Mr. CONQUEST. I think from their point of view the invasion was
their only way out. Assuming their own interests, the invasion was a
logical thing to do. It is rather that they let the situation get to this
stage. It didn't have to reach this stage. It was the bungling and then
this gave the air of having been done in-well, panic perhaps isn't
quite the word.
Senator ALLOTT. Perhaps it is a strong word.
Mr. CONQUEST. It was something like, "We must act now or else."
It was certainly one of the great examples of this extraordinary
lack oF political sense in foreign affairs.
I would like to read in, if I can, a remark by a very left-wing com-
mentator in England on this point-writing not immediately after the
invasion but in the New Statesman of the 25th of April 1969. K. S.
Karol, a very left-wing man, even by New Statesman standards, says,
"Stalin's heirs have shown themselves completely incapable of carry-
ing on either his mission or his methods. They have forgotten all he
previously taught them on the art of dividing the opposition or of
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dressing up every action in plausible doctrinal robes. In a word, they
are completely ignorant of politics, incapable of deceiving even the
citizens of their own country."
He develops that at some length.
Senator RIBICOrF. Do you think the people of the Soviet Union are
aware of the bungling nature of their leadership ?
Mr. CONQUEST. I suppose the answer to that is it depends on what
one means lb people.
Senator RIBICOFF. The general feeling, the population, the
population as a whole. Do they sense this bungling character?
Mr.CONQUEST. I should say yes in a general way. Well, they know
that their leaders have now got Russia into the position of having the
West against them and China, and everybody ; even the Western
Communist. Parties are attacking them.
UNDERSTANDING COMMUNIST ATTITUDES
Senator ALLOTT. Just one other question.
I note your sentence, "In fact, the Politburo in Hanoi was not, in the
sense assumed of it, ~a rational, predictable chess player." In view of
what has happened in that area, historically, it seems to me that it has
been a predictable chess player.
Mr. CONQUEST. My "predictable" was a criticism of the predictors. I.
would say that a lot of the escalation-and-response stuff makes this
false assumption about the other man. You can't assume he is going to
reply according to your rules if you check his king. He may kick you
on the shins under the table. That is his rule. He does not play the same
game.
THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP AND DISSENT
Senator STEVENS. Mr. Conquest, perhaps naively I have been assum-
ing that the coming generations in Russia have been enjoying more and
more intellectual freedom. This is the impression I have gotten, I guess,
from the news media.
Is this incorrect?
'Mr. CONQUEST. It was a wavy graph=iip and down-until about
1966. It is becoming increasingly difficult and increasingly more Party
controlled, For example, in 1963 under Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn was
able to publish his great labor camp book One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich. But he hasn't been able to publish anything in the last year
or two, and is now in very serious trouble.
Senator STEVENS. We have had some Alaskans going across to Mos-
cow. They have visited me and left me the impression that there was
a great deal more freedom in the eastern part of the country, in Siberia,
than there is in the Moscow area. One of the things they comment on
is that the many young people there are brighter ; they are quicker.
They want to visit; they want to be involved.
Is this a false impression they are coming back with?
Mr. CONQUEST. In a very general sense, I think it is true of some of
the young people-in the sense of the young educated people.
Senator' STEVENS. These are young engineers, scientists.
Mr. CONQUEST. Scientists in particular are showing a great amount
of revulsion. Not all of them, of course, but many certainly are. But
neither they, nor the young, at present (and for the foreseeable future
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12 INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
I should imagine) have any political influence at all on the decisions
taken, on politics.
Senator STEVENS. Would you distinguish between the older and the
younger members of the present ruling group in Russia in their rela-
tion to the Stalin purge era?
Mr. CONQUEST. The older ones were, in effect., products and minor
accomplices of the terror. As to the younger, one usually hears Shele-
pin taken as an example, since he only came into politics at all, and
started rising in the Party, about 1940, after the height of the terror
was over. He worked his way up through the Young Communist
League, and was appointed head of that body by Stalin in 1952-a
pretty bad period, and the Young Communist League at this time, it
was officially said under Khrushchev, was largely a sort of agency
of the police, at that political level. C
I would say, to get to the present-day young people considered
politically, that the difficulty is that the young man who rises in poll-
tics is, in Russia, even at the University, not the bright young scientist.
He is the person who becomes secretary of the Young Communist
League group or the Party group. He is selected, obviously, as an
ideological conformist or trusty on the one hand, and man of political
ambition within the machine, on the other.
The idea one gets from the people who go to the Russian universities
is that these young secretaries are disliked and feared perhaps even
more than their superiors. They are the representatives of the old
tradition, and they crush, denounce and everything as in the old days.
They don't shoot people, but the principle of "I will ruin you" is still
there,.
Senator STE YENS. What is the threat today in Russia if there is no
liquidation concept? Is it correct that political dissidents are no longer
being sent to Siberia? What is the threat to keep down those who would
be the outspoken opponents of the current regime?
Mr. CONQUEST. The labor camps are not by any means empty. Esti-
mates are very difficult to come by. I hesitate to make one. Russians
talk in terms of anything from about 200,000 political prisoners up,
which is quite large. One often hears higher figures.
They do imprison them. There are a lot of cases of Ukrainians,
writers, people who are in prison, like Sinvavski, Marchenko.And they
do send people to Siberian exile as well, like Pavel Litvinov. But even
if they don't go that far, they fire them from their jobs.
There was a case of a young woman teacher which came up the other
day in one of the Soviet papers. All she did, as I recall, was go to the
court where some of the writers were being tried. She was simply fired
from her job and expelled from the teachers' union.
Senator RIBICOFF. What happens with a person like that who gets
fired from a job? Can they get another job, or how do they live?
Mr. CONQUEST. They are not actually forbidden from getting other
jobs but they are harassed. It is more like the Czechoslovak runner,
Zatopek. You saw him getting jobs as a dustman or something.
Senator RIBICOFF. If one is a school teacher and gets fired, then she
gets to be a cleaning woman or to do some menial job?
Mr. CONQUEST. This depends on the courage and good will of some-
body one knows, basically, or if one moves somewhere where he is not
known.
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Larisa Daniel, the wife of the writer, is now in Siberia as a free
exile. I can't remember her precise specialty, but it is an academic one.
They needed it there and she was accepted but the police stepped in. She
lives on a menial job now.
THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP AND FOREIGN POLICY
Senator STEVENS. Do you see that there is anything we might do-
and I don't mean we as a Congress but as a country-to have an impact
upon this trend that I gather you believe exists-namely, the declining
competency of the Russian leaders? Could we, for instance, by stimu-
lating some sort of an exchange program or of trying to find some
greater ways to, say, open the door to intellectual freedom there, have
an impact on this situation? Or should we keep our hands off of it?
Mr. CONQUEST. I suppose in a general way the Western policy, being
firm but not provocative, eventually weakens them. I would agree that,
on the whole, exchange is useful, but not that it much affects anything
politically, at the leadership level. Their dogmatism against our views
is virtually total.
Malenkov and Molotov, Khrushchev and people, the last gener-
ation of leaders, were men who had been at the top for 20 years, 10
to 20 years. They had a reputation of their own, among the Party.
They were greatly senior to and prestigious among the Central Com-
mit-tee. They were big men in their way.
There are now many members of the Central Committee who are of
equal seniority and equal competence with the leaders. These leaders
are, you might say, just ectoplasm of the apparatus. In any political
system, in foreign affairs particularly, the leaders should not be people
who try to put into effect the grass roots fanaticisms of their political
party, You can't really conduct, let's say in England, a foreign policy
which your true, hard-working, conservative militant would regard as
a real Conservative policy, and it is the same with Labor. The leader
gets around this in part because lie has the support of the voter. He
doesn't depend simply upon the party militant, the party organizer,
the party fanatic.
Well, in Russia they haven't got the voter, the man below. The effect
of this can be seen, I think, in Russia even before the present people,
because in turn, Beria, when lie had his moment of power in 1953, and
Malenkov in his period, and, again, Khrushchev in 1963-1964 were
making serious attempts to solve the German problem-in ~eria's
case, perhaps even to the extent of dissolving the whole Ulbricht
regime. But they couldn't get away with sensible maneuvers because
the men below them in each case were opposed on dogmatic grounds.
And in each case it was one of the main reasons for their fall.
Nowadays, you have people who are not of sufr-icient seniority, or de-
tachment even to try to conduct a reasonable foreign policy. They will
conduct ,,t policy suited to the mind of the apparatus.
POSITION Or THE MILITARY IN RUSSIA
Senator STEVENS. To what extent does the military figure into this?
I have the impression that the people you just mentioned had very deep
roots in the military, to begin with. Is this present ruling group in
Russia as wedded to the military group, and vice versa, as in the days
of Stalin and Khrushchev?
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Mr. CONQUEST. I think we have to be careful about being dogmatic
about the position of the military in Russia at the moment. There has
only been one occasion on which the Army, as such, pretty nearly came
to play an important political role. That was when they had the faction
fighting in 1956-1957 and Khrushchev brought Marshal Zhukov into
the Presidium. Zhukov was certainly putting himself forward as a
political figure based on the Army, and getting the Army to some ex-
tent out of political control. That was an exceptional case. Above a11, he
was a nian of enormous repute in the country as well as the Army. But
he failed. He was crushed after a few months of this. I would say that
the impression I think almost all students form, is that the military
now will give advice on strategic issues-which naturally has certain
political implications-but nevertheless when it comes to decisions the
leading Party men are totally in control.
Their man at the head of the Political Department of the Army,
Yepishev, was Deputy Minister for State Security under Stalin, Dep-
uty Head of the Secret Police, and they have now brought in one or
two of Stalin's old incompetent but Stalinist generals.
My strong feeling would be that political decisions are the ones
which count and the military plays a very little role, except to the ex-
tent that a few of the marshals are members of the Central Committee
and are allowed to speak as Communists-but they are also by the same
token under Party discipline.
Senator GURNEY. Let's go back to the Czechoslovakian case. In terms
of Soviet European policy, and perhaps even in terms of Soviet world
policy, that was the epitome of this present regime. We ought to be able
to learn a lesson from that.
My question is really two-fold : I take it that you think this was a po-
litical disaster on the part of the Russian leadership because it alien-
ated the Czechoslovakian nation. I suppose the Russians now are really
a sort of occupying force rather than a cooperative force in Czecho-
slovakia.
If that is the case, what effect does this have on other European
satellite countries, and how can we exploit it?
Mr. CONQUEST. That is a very good question.
The how to exploit it is a thing I have been wondering about for
10 years. I think we can certainly take it that there is a continuous and
permanent force at work, all the vital forces in the populations, and
even in the Communist Parties in Eastern Europe tend away from
the Soviet Union. This has been happening since Stalin's death, since
the absolute, total control went. There are bound to be further crises.
I don't know what advice I could think of giving to the West in a
case like the recent Czechoslovak one.
Senator GURNEY. What do you think the Czechoslovakian invasion
and what has happened since meant to other satellite countries? How
do they feel about the Russian leadership ?
Mr. CONQUEST. Some of their leaderships clearly prefer the Rus-
sians to losing power. Others, like in Bulgaria, for example, are vir-
tually agencies of the Russians, a small clique even within the Party,
supported by the Russians.
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Senator GURNEY. In other words, in that nation the Czechoslovakian
invasion has not really affected the relationships between the Bulgar-
ian Government and the Soviet Government; is that correct?
Mr. CONQUEST. I would say it has affected them in the sense that it
is a very severe warning to anybody who is attempting to move away.
You are doomed before you start, unless you can think of another way
of doing it. On the other hand, in Rumania, the lesson they seem to
have learned, rightly or wrongly, is, if you fight you have a better
chance, In effect, the Rumanian signals seem to me to be, "Don't try
anything or we will resist", which ,may not be a super-deterrent but
it is some deterrent. At the same time, they have cooled down quite
a bit some of the tendencies to liberalism.
Senator GURNEY. What about Poland?
Mr. CONQUEST. The Polish Government is the strongest accomplice
of the Russians at the present time. It again raises all these questions
about what to do in foreign policy because we rightly gave important
loans and so on to them in 1956-57, and this appeared to be a reason-
able and correct policy. But, in fact, the regime simply evolved into
being one of the strongest accomplices of the Soviet Union.
Senator GURNEY. What about the peoples, themselves? We get the
impression, I think, in this country, so far as Czechoslovakia is con-
cerned,, that the general population has had it with the Russians and
are doing everything they can to indicate resistance, without being
liquidated, by slowing up in their work activity, and so on. Is this
correct?
Mr. CONQUEST. Certainly it is correct.
Senator ,GURNEY. What about peoples in other satellite countries? Do
they show this kind of resistance openly-a repugnance to the Soviet
leadership?
Mr. CONQUEST. Not openly in the same sense. They haven't had a
recent provocation in quite the same way. But in principle, given the
-chance, I would say this is the :basic feeling. 'Of course, it is more than
that. There is a great degree of national feeling within the Soviet
Union in certain areas, in the Ukraine, in the Baltic States. When one
says that the intellectuals in Russia 'have had very little effect, just a
few hundred writers and scientists, this is not quite the same in the
Ukraine. People who are being arrested, who have been arrested, in the
last year or two, have included actual members of the Party machine,
not important ones but still people within the local establishment.
'The Soviet leaders have nothandled their nationality problem. They
have not coped with it. And, of course, you have all of these things like
the Crimean Tartars, where they don't seem to know what to -do about
them.
Senator 'GURNEY. With reference again to the satellite countries and
the :problem of the West exploiting the unrest, what can we do about
that? Have you any ideas at all?
Mr. "CONQUEST. This is sort of a major policy 'decision, isn't it?
We talk in terms of rollback, containment and so on. Iwould say cer-
tainly containment in a general sense, even if it is an unfashionable
word, is a sound policy and 'has worked. This is part of 'drawing the
line as best you can and making your position clear. The line in Europe
is clear and I think is accepted by people representing the full spec-
trum--left, right and center. You don't have much discussion about the
NATO frontier in Europe, anyway.
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Senator GURNEY. Of course, that opens a whole can of worms because
our own country is getting a little restive about our role in sharing the
containment, and also about the role and share of the NATO countries.
Mr. CONQUEST. I know. This is a problem. But that is really not from
my side.
Senator GURNEY. No.
Mr. CONQUEST. If you say how do we exploit it, this already contains
an answer, that we want to exploit it. That raises the question of what
does one do in the Czech situation.
'Senator GURNEY. I was going to say, let's start with Czechoslovakia
first.
What Should we do, and I mean now, to exploit this?
Mr. 'CONQUEST. I would say it is more a question of having some
contingency planning of some sort :for hitherto nonexistent events in
Eastern Europe.
After all, when one says peace can be maintained on the basis of
drawing the line, if there is a major collapse in Eastern Europe, or if
the Soviet Union itself collapses, which some commentators think is
quite possible, some policy different from more watching seems un-
avoidable. If we think in terms of the 1956 Hungarian situation, even,
without trying to lay down policy, I do feel that we should have had a
diplomatic initiative ready, say an offer of neutralizing part of Cen-
tral Europe, something like that-any diplomatic initiative would
have been better than none-even if it had merely confused the Rus-
sian leadership long enough for the Hungarian Revolution to jell, as it
were. But no diplomatic initiative of any sort carne. I know that was
largely the fault of the simultaneous British involvement at Suez. But
some diplomatic initiative might have been undertaken.
Senator RIBICOFF. Wouldn't that be a cruel thing to do, to give the
people the idea that we were going to do something, when Hungary
and Czechoslovakia indicate that, in fact, we can't do anything and
won't do anything?
Basically, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Eastern Europe are within
the immediate sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, just like Cuba
was in the immediate sphere of United States influence. Khrushche:v
backed down when lie came to the confrontation.
Wouldn't the United States back down in a confrontation over
Eastern Europe? It would become very obvious that the United States
was not going to send troops to Hungary. If we misled those people by
saying, "Yes; we would be with you", the slaughter would be fan-
tastic. Have we a right to do that to people?
Mr. CONQUEST. What I am saying is we could have had a contin-
gency plan, a diplomatic one in this case, which would not have been
published beforehand. It would not in any way have been "We will
come to your aid if you arise." The hypothetical case I was giving was
the equivalent of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
If we had had any totally nonmilitary, nonthreatening offer to the
Russians, why one thinks something might have come of it is precisely
that even then the Politburo seems to have been divided on whether to
attack the country or not. They were severely shaken. They didn't
know whether, in fact, to let Hungary go or not.
Our information is not totally solid on 'this, but it does appear that
at one point the Politburo was more or less just being hustled by
events.
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If, for example, we had seized the diplomatic initiative with an offer
to demilitarize all Central Europe, it might just possibly have shifted
the Politburo. But (whether that particular suggestion is the right
one or not) we were simply unready.
What I mean is, we ought to have something planned for every
possible circumstance in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
THE QUESTION OF CHINA
Senator STEVENS. To what extent do you think the role of China is
today affecting our relationships with Russia? And what should we
do, if anything, to assist this development of an influence of a third
party in our relationships?
Mr. CONQUEST. This is asking me to give answers on high policy
rather than saying what are the elements involved.
Senator STEVENS. I am not asking really for advice as to what the
Government should do= but what relationship does this third party,
China, have in your opinion to our present relationships with Russia?
Mr. 'CONQUEST. I think it is of major importance in that the Russian
leadership is now far more concerned with China and, I think, is try-
ing to clear its western flank, to some extent. 'Obviously, advantage
can be taken of that. Your subcommittee's pamphlet of selected writ-
ings on "The Soviet Approach to Negotiation" makes it clear how you
can ,do that in principle. If the Russians behave with moderate sense,
they should want a detente with the West at the moment.
The difficulty is that the Russians have been showing, or implying
strongly, that they are not prepared to take this logical step, unless
compelled to. For example, they have been putting out propaganda
saying that China and Israel are accomplices.
If this sort of thing really means that they are not prepared to make
some sort of a detente arrangement in the most sensitive area, the
Middle East, clearly that is bad. If they are simply prepared to do no
more than a largely formal thing at the arms control talks initiated
at Helsinki, then they are showing their general incapacity to make
the big move when it is necessary.
But on the other question, I think China does come in. The anti-
Chinese line is extremely popular in Russia, much more so than the
anti-Western line. The Russian people (and this again is the general
impression of all observers), has never had much antagonism toward
the West, but has a terrific fear and horror of China at present.
There is that political side of it.
On policy, I have read intelligent commentators who urge that it
is contrary to the rules of international politics for the West to think in
terms of allying itself with Russia against China. This argument
would run that they are both inherently hostile, and you ally yourself
with the weaker of your opponents against the stronger.
Theoretically speaking, a detente with China is more to our interest
than one with Russia. But I would have thought that that ignored
the whole difficulties of democratic policymaking. You can't switch.
Senator RIBIcoFF. Why not?
Recently, a critique of American foreign policy by John Paton
Davies; was printed in the New York Times Magazine (December 7,
1969). He described how, over the last 20 or 30 years, we were always
playing with the stronger power instead of playing with the weaker,
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when we should have played with the weaker to achieve a balance of
power that we could manipulate. John Davies has had his bumps, but I
think he is a brilliant man. It was it very fascinating critique of Amer-
ican foreign policy in the last 20 or 30 years.
We have missed opportunity after opportunity to carry out it true
balance of power policy to strengthen the United States position. Con-
sequently, by failing to do it, we have gotten into one stew after
another and we have weakened ourselves instead of strengthening
ourselves.
Mr. CONQUEST. I wouldn't deny the policy. In fact, I was saying it
sounded it sound policy. I was thinking of the difficulties of changing
the whole opinion within the democratic society. Stalin could just
change from one side to the other. You have to get your public sup-
port.
The other thing, of course, which you get in it democracy, and per-
haps particularly in America, is a tendency to feel all one's allies must
be frightfully nice, so might it not be the case that you could only
get your swing to support for China by persuading everybody that
China is marvelous?
Senator Riaicovv. I don't think it is that. We know Vietnam isn't
nice; China isn't nice; the Soviet Union isn't nice. But, basically, the
purpose of it nation is to preserve its own position in the world, to
make sure that it is not weakened vis-a-vis its potential enemies.
Because you are a democracy, do you have to be it bungler? Do
democracies have to be fooled? Can't de-mocracies be in a position where
they look out for their best interests?
Suppose it President told the American people the truth about what
the United States best interests were and pointed out to the Ameri-
can people what the facts were, what the conditions were, and why
it was being done. Do we have to kid the American people along to do
what is for the basic interests of the United States?
Mr. CONQUEST. I am glad to say that is your problem, not mine.
Senator RIBICOFF. The English have the same problem.
If the Soviet Union leadership is third-rate, what is the leadership
of the West? You said second-rate. Basically, this is what bothers me.
In other words, is it it question of second and third-rate people con-
stantly stumbling into situations that lead to holocaust or can lead to
a weakening of one's own country and its involvement?
Mr. CONQUEST. I think all statesmen make mistakes, even the first-
rate. You can probably think of an exception, but in this century I
can't think of it single country that has not made major mistakes every
two or three years. There is it difference, though, in the quality of the
mistakes and the ability to see how to get out of them at the other
end. I wouldn't want to dispute with you at all about the essence of the
theoretical possibilities involved.
To take an example, when we were allied with Russia againstthe
Germans, we couldn't say, "It just happens to be to our interest to ally
ourselves with these people." The whole emotional commitment had to
be to the Russian people fighting the Germans, and to that splendid
Uncle JoeStalin with his pipe and his democratic principles.
That was fine. But it led to about five or ten years of misunderstand-
1111 afterwards. Assuming an alliance withChina for now was sound
policy and possible policy, could you say to the American people,
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INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION 19
"They are our enemies in principle and if Russia is blocked they will
turn on us. Nevertheless, we are going to ally ourselves with them"?
It is a'difficult problem.
Senator RiBZcoFr. In other words, you doubt that the people of any
country are intelligent enough to realize that any nation's foreign pol-
icy has as its basic precept a nation's own interests, and you think that
no people are intelligent enough to be able to be told the truth as to
what a nation's policy must be for its own preservation-even if you
have to play with a bastard once in a while.
Do we always have to paint our allies -as angels and our enemies as
devils? 'Can't we ever just recognize the realities of the world?
Mr. CONQUEST. I think we can,' but I think it automatically goes that
wa once you are allied with people.
Senator RIBICOFF. -Germany and Japan were not so many years ago
our bitter antagonists, and the future existence of the United States
depended on defeating Germany and Japan. Today, Germany and
Japan are the bastions of American policy in the West and in the Far
East. It wasn't very difficult to shift American attitudes and provide
the assistance to Japan and Germany to build up these two countries.
Today, the worst thing that could happen to the United States would
be for Russia and China to combine at any given time on a coordinate,
consistent policy against the United States. This would really put the
crunch on us.
We now have a situation in which it is to the interest of the United
States to keep Russia and China separated or antagonistic, because it
makes our position a lot easier. If we are going to have a foreign policy
that provides for the preservation of our own country for posterity-
which is the basic obligation of a President, Secretary of State and
Secretary of Defense-we have to make the determination as to where
our own nation comes out best.
In doing this, I wonder whether we always have to paint the scoun-
drel as a good guy?
Mr. CONQUEST. The long-term interests of the United States, of the
West-the short-term interest is clearly avoiding an atomic war or
anything like that-the long-term interest, as I would put it, is bring-
ing the Communist states, bringing them back to civilization, leading
them to end their siege policy and siege economy, particularly on
thought-without, in principle, their abandoning their particular so-
cial attitudes.
But behind that again is the question of the totally different cultures
now involved. There is a great deal of talk, for example, from Profes-
sor John Kenneth Galbraith and others about convergence-because
they have factories and we have factories and that sort of thing. It
strikes me this is extraordinarily superficial. It is not based on any-
thing going on in Russia. It has no bearing on what the Russian civic-
political-cultural reality is. These theorists are rather like those people
in Europe who used to say before 1933 that you could not have fascism
in highly industrialized countries. You found it in the underdeveloped
areas--in Italy, in the Balkans. But they said it couldn't happen in
Germany because the Germans had such industry and education. But
it happened.
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20 INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
This semi-economic determinism, it seems to me, is pure nonsense.
Such views incidentally, are, to some extent, coordinate with the
views of some American or Western scientists who think that Russian
scientists they know are also critical of the Soviets, so that scientists
there and scientists here can all pull together and produce a detente that
way. But their scientists have no political effect whatever. The whole
situation is different.
If I may, I would like to quote not a political scientist or ordinary
scientist but a poet-an extraordinarily, perceptive remark by T. S.
Eliot. He introduced a book of labor camp memoirs in 1946, The Dark
Side of the Hoof. He said, "We are in fact in a period of conflict be-
tween cultures-a conflict which finds the older cultures in a position
of disadvantage : from lack of confidence in themselves, from divisions
both internal and between each other, from the inheritance of old
abuses from the past aggravated babuses due to the hasty intro-
duction of novelties ... The Liberal'. .. assumes ... that the cultural
conflict is one which can, like political conflict, be adjusted by com-
promise,, or like the religious conflict, be resolved by tolerance."
But, Eliot adds, "The . . . attempt ... to find a political solution to
what is not merely a political problem can ... only lead to tempo-
rary . . ? benefits unless the deeper problem is faced and pondered... .
A politician or an economist who can appreciate this problem is a very
exceptional man, possessed of a wisdom springing from another source
than his political acumen and experience, or his scientific learning and
ingenuity."
I think Eliot has stated the basic problem here. Although I was
speaking in terms of the long range, it does also affect our short-range
thinking, to recognize that these are the representatives of a totally
different culture.
DON'TS ON DEALING WITH RUSSIA
Senator RimcovF. Along that line, back in the winter of 1946 George
Kerman proposed some rules to govern our dealings with the Russians.
His short piece is reprinted in the subcommittee's print, "The Soviet
Approach to Negotiation : Selected Writings." Many of George Ken-
nan's rules are "don'ts".
What basic suggestions to govern our dealings with Moscow would
you make? In other words, what would you put on a list of "don'ts"?
Mr. CONQUEST. I agree with George Kennan s suggestions in that
paper virtually entirely. As I said, not blurring our basic intentions-
Senator RIBICOrr. You would agree with Senator Baker that be-
cause you are dealing with third-rate minds you should be very simple
and clear in what your intentions are?
Mr. CONQUEST. Within the possibilities.
Another point I think that Keenan makes, if not in quite this form,
is not to give in on little things. A small example that occurs to me is
when Professor Barghoorn was arrested in Moscow and President
Kennedy simply refused to discuss the matter and threatened an im-
mediate break on cultural relations unless they let him out. They let
him out.
Senator Ranlco1r. In other words, the shape of a, table becomes an
important thing in dealing with the Soviet Union.
Mr. CONQUEST. Yes ; and absolute firmness.
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There are other cases. We in Britain mishandled in an opposite way
the Gerald Brooke case (when a young British lecturer was arrested
there for taking in anti-Soviet propaganda), by maintaining friendly
contacts, welcoming Kosygin to London, and so forth.
Senator RIBICOrr. In other words, you recommend a policy of .firm-
ness, as opposed to a policy of conciliation?
Mr. CONQUEST. Well, these are small things. They don't resent it.
The question of resenting hardly arises. From their point of view,
everything is political. If you give them something, they take it, but
they are not grateful for it.
A recent case was that of Anatole Shub of the Washington Post. I
thought that was handled right. When he was expelled from Moscow,
you quietly expelled a Soviet correspondent. As a result, they let back
the next Washington Post man immediately.
This is only small stuff, but I am convinced that the English han-
dling of the Brooke case had a permanent bad effect on their feeling
of wiliat they could get away with with the British. A small case, but
with quite significant results, in fact.
This is simply a development of George Kennan's points, in fact.
Senator GURNEY. It seems to me that over the years we have taken
quite a. pummeling from world opinion as a result of our situation in
Vietnam.
What has been the reaction of opinion makers in Western Europe-
news media, newspaper editors, other people who have an effect on pub-
lic opinion-to the Russian-Czechoslovak venture? Have the Soviets
been criticized periodically since, or only at the time of the invasion?
Mr. CONQUEST. I think the effect in Britain, and I think in all other
Western Europe, was far greater than the United States. I was here
some months after the invasion and I was astonished at the compara-
tive American apathy, on all political wings. A similar complaint was
made by a very left-wing English professor at Berkeley.
It was very astonishing. I think if you shad been following the Brit-
ish press on this issue, it was a terrific thing, again right out to the
extreme left. Even the Communist Party strongly attacked the Rus-
sians. It was a very, very heavy issue, far more important than
Vietnam.
Senator GURNEY. Has that criticism continued in European papers
periodically or daily ?
Mr. CONQUEST. Whenever anything comes up, and things are always
coming up. 'There is always a new purging from the Czechoslovak
Central Committee, for example, and the criticism comes up every time.
It is partly, I suppose, because we are nearer.
Senator GURNEY. I am glad to 'hear that. I agree with you that our
own reaction has been minimal, to say the least. I am glad to have heard
what you had to say.
Mr. CONQUEST. The British Communist Party just had a Congress
and voted by about two to one in supporting their Executive in con-
tinuing to call for the withdrawal of Russian troops. The Italian Com-
munists too. The French Communist poet Louis Aragon has just had a
long article saying that a recent instruction by the Minister of Educa-
tion in Prague, which virtually calls for all professors to denounce
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their students and everybody else, was actually worse than the invasion
itself. These ;do keep the pot at the boiling point continually.
Senator GURNEY. Thank you.
UNDERSTANDING TIIE NATURE OF SOVIET LEADERSHIP
Senator :STEVENS. Given your analysis of the third-rate Soviet leader-
ship, wouldn't the eye-for-an-eye concept reduce our diplomatic poli-
cies and actions to their level? If we are to expel one of their people
because they expel one of ours, if we are to send our fleet to the Black
Sea !because they bring theirs out there, or to the Indian Ocean because
they put theirs there, aren't we in effect saying American diplomacy
can't rise above their level?
Mr. CONQUEST. I suppose yes, in a sense, but it is amatter of doing the
things they understand. If you are talking with people who only talk
in monosyllables, you talk in 'monosyllables.
Senator BAKER. May I put a question at this point?
This is not meant as a criticism of the witness or his testimony, which
has been most stimulating. Isn't the underlying basis of these ques-
tions and these answers descriptive of the parent-child relationship
or the adult-juvenile relationship? We assume that the United States
and the Western World is superior, chronologically or otherwise, to
the Russians or the non-Western powers. (I classify Russia in this
sense as a non-Western power.) Therefore, we take almost it patroniz-
ing attitude in our foreign policy formulation-speak in words of one
syllable, transmit our intentions so that they will be understood by
a third-rate leadership, and so on.
I am wondering if that isn't the basic flaw in the relationships be-
tween the East and the West, regardless of the fact that the intellec-
tual level of Soviet leadership may be inferior by our standards.
The leadership of a nation is a broth consisting of intellectualism,
emotionalism and animal instincts. When these three elements are
combined, I am not really sure that the Russian leadership is inferior
to Western leadership, and I am not really sure that the results of that
leadership in terms of material gains or in terms of the fullfillment of
the first requirement of nationalism, that is, self-preservation, as Sen-
ator Ribicoff pointed out, has been less successful than Western lead-
ership.
I wonder if this whole theory doesn't end tip in a self-critical pos-
ture, and if we don't have to re-examine the prospect of the proposi-
tion that Russian leadership is, in fact, third-rate, or at least one order
of magnitude inferior to Western leadership.
Mr. CONQUEST. In one sense it is a more basic thing than the de-
generation of the Soviet leadership to the present level.
Even under Stalin, Litvinov, when he was removed from the For-
eign Ministry, went around=at great risk to himself-telling Western
diplomats and journalists that the Politburo knew nothing about the
West. I would have thought there was a basic answer about the whole
polity: and that is that it is a completely closed polity. They do not
admit other ideas.
The leadership does see summaries of the West's views in the West-
ern press, and their secret or semi-secret circulars. But clearly, by
their actions, they are unable to understand or to try and grasp the
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meaning of not simply non-Communist countries but even of Commu-
nist countries which aren't precisely their type.
They were on record last year in an editorial in the Party journal
Pravda that there can be no "other socialism", just the type developed
in the Soviet Union and certain subordinate countries. They are not
like ourselves. The notion that we are strictly parallel seems to be a
false one. We do not have dogmas in the same sense.
America does not regard not merely all Communist countries but all
other democratic countries or other capitalist economies as illegitimate
if not precisely on the American model. You don't think England is
no good because we are a monarchy or because we have some socialized
industries.
I don't think the parallel is a sound one. One doesn't have to claim
that we are Utopias to take the view that, we are on the higher level of
politica L civilization, not only in the present situation but in the pre-
vious situations.
I would go along if you say there is a potential for evolution in
Communist countries in general. Czechoslovakia might have evolved a
civilized Communism-that is to say maintaining the essentials of the
economy, and even Party control, but allowing the free flow of ideas
and thought.
Senator BAKER. I think, then, the distinction you are making is a
different one. That is the distinction between first, second or third-rate
civilized leadership versus first, second or third-rate leadership in
terms of its effectiveness to preserve a position or the integrity of a
nation as such. There is a difference between the two.
I would agree with you that you could make a much stronger case
that Soviet leadership is much less civilized than Western leadership,
but I want to emphasize that I don't know that Soviet leadership has
been less effective in maintaining Soviet integrity as a nation than
Western leadership. It really goes to the question of what we are de-
scribing, civilization or capacity to maintain the national entity.
I am not sure that you can postulate an American foreign policy on
the assumption that soviet leadership is at least one order of magni-
tude less civilized or less effective or less intelligent than American or
British leadership.
Mr. CONQUEST. The essential., I would agree with you, is not in any
comparing or scoring we do, so much as in getting a sound view of
their level of leadership-not so much saying that they are stupid or
less clever than us, but seeing what is their operational level of short-
sightedness and capacity to blunder and so forth-and we can
improve our own intellectual and political grasp by knowing what they
are like. We an create in our minds a clear notion of what this group of
leaders is like.
Perhaps it is diff=icult anyhow to develop exactly, to characterize
them in too precise terms. But I would repeat, as an important and
widely held and substantiated view that they are a narrow-minded
lot, brought up in very traditional, narrow thinking and shortsighted
within that tradition.
George Orwell remarked about the early Bolsheviks-I think Ber-
nard Shaw was saying that Winston 'Churchill didn't really believe
they were demons ; they were really Just, rational men building a new
system- Orwell comments, "The early Bolsheviks may have been an-
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gels or demons according as one chooses to regard them, but, at any
rate, they were not sensible men."
They are still not sensible men, even though they are no longer
angels or demons. They are trolls, if you like. Heavy, lumbering; types,
without being sensible men, having lost their angelic or demonic urge.
There is this fantastic narrowness about them.
Senator BAKER. That reminds me of Lincoln's commentary on
Grant's drinking. If anybody commented 'that General Grant drank a
great deal and should be reprimanded, Lincoln said, "If this is the
secret of his success, I intend to convert all of my Generals into
drunkards."
So, any way you look at it, whether narrow, third-rate, intellectual-
ly inferior, clever, stupid, whatever, the fact remains that they have
had an astonishing growth in material wealth and accomplishments.
I don't think anyone would argue that the Soviet Union is less secure
as a national entity now than it was at the time of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
On that basis, I once again challenge the underlying assumption that
we should deal with the Russians as inferior leaders from an intellec-
tual standpoint.
Mr. !CONQUEST. We are speaking of the present leadership-1964-
1969-and their triumphs have not really been great. As you have
said, they have preserved their position inCzechoslovakia at a cost of
great political defeats in certain ways. They got themselves involved
in China. They have enemies on both fronts. They have lost the entire
equipment of an army in the Sinai Desert. And so on.
Senator RIBicoFF. It may just be proof if a nation has basic strength
and power they can survive and go ahead no matter how stupid their
leaders may be. In other words, stupid leadership can't destroy, basic-
ally, in the short run, a powerful nation.
Where does Russian leadership go from this present level? These
men will not stay forever. Who is waiting to come up? What kind
of man?
Mr. CONQUEST. This is the other unfortunate thing. As far as one can
see, there is no one at the level below of a different or superior type.
I think you would agree since the Russian Revolution the standard
of leadership has gone down rapidly : Lenin, Stalin, Malenkov, Khrush-
chev, Brezhnev. This is the great difficulty.
There are several possible views of the potential evolution. M. Michel
Tatu is one of the most interesting and best-informed men in the world
on the subject. He thinks there are possibilities of almost anything in
the next five years, military coups, disintegration, things of that sort.
On the other hand, I would say as part of the answer that the ma-
chine Stalin built, the Party apparatus and the state machine, is im-
mensely strong. It is inappropriate to the intellectual forces in the
country, but holds them in because it is so tough.
Marx's view was that every political and social system is appropriate
to a certain level of production and thought, and then becomes inap-
propriate, and then bursts in revolutionary fashion. But Marx never
really dealt with a state, a political system, so strong. After all, what
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Stalin did in the '30s was he created a machine capable of taking on and
defeating the economic forces. This is what collectivization of the land
amounted to. It is an immensely powerful machine, built by a man of
horrible genius. They do have these levers. Internal power is more
important to them than anything else, the maintenance of their power.
They do have those advantages. You can be a bad driver of a 90-ton
tank and if you hit a small car you will not do yourself much harm.
So, t].iough the potential for radical change is present in Russian
society, there is a very tough obstacle before it.
Senator RTBicOFF. Who do you consider the most perceptive present
analysts in open literature of Russian political history and Soviet
political leadership and methods?
Mr. CONQUEST. I would mention two or three useful contributions.
The best book on recent politics is Michel Tatu's Power in the Kremlin.
Anatole Shub's book when it comes out, which is based on his recent
articles? will certainly show a great deal about the leadership and the
People.
There are commentators who have not produced books, like Tibor
Szamuely of the London Spectator, whose comments almost invariably
are very shrewd. And one must not forget the pieces by Professor
Richard Lowenthal.
On the more general background Leonard Schapiro's The Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union, and Adam Ulam's Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, occur to me.
And to get the feeling of the Party apparatus' mental background,
there is striking stuff in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's splendid novel The
First Circle, for example.
Senator BAKER. Do you foresee the prospect that any part of the
scientific community, especially the younger group, is likely to emerge
in leadership positions?
Mr. CONQUEST. Well, in effect, they can't, politically, through the
present machinery. If you mean- do I think it possible that big upsets
may take place, I would take the view that Tatu is right, that any-
thing is at least possible. The present situation in principle is un-
stable. But it has this immense built-in strength unless one of two
things happens : One, that there is a more or less accidental political
crisis at the top, one of these faction fights that splits the whole thing
up and gives the opportunity for new forces to emerge, not from with-
in the Party machine but from the non-machine membership. Or some
big crisis in foreign affairs or the economy which would again produce
the tensions necessary to disrupt that machine. These disruptions have
taken place in other Communist countries-Hungary and Czecho-
slovakia. It was much easier in those countries : Their machines were
never entirely staffed by the traditionalists. But, nevertheless, without
such a disruption I can't see the possibility of any scientists playing
any role-even assuming that all scientists are true progressive
activists.
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Senator RIBICOFF. Generally, scientists, world-wide are apolitical.
The scientist is interested in his work. Most scientists could care less
about a political system or a political philosophy.
Senator BAKER. As long as they are left alone.
THE NEXT GENERATION OF SOVIET LEADERSHIP?
Senator GURNEY. One question on the next generation of leadership.
I certainly understand it is a rigid, conformist group. But what
about their intellectual capacities? Are we perhaps faced in coming
generations with more clever and more capable leaders than the present
ones?
Mr. CONQUEST. There is always this cleverness in getting on. A man
who gets to the top must at least be capable of the in-fighting. He is
adept at some things. Ile may be a pug, but lie is good at his pugging.
Senator GURNEY. But I mean, are they pretty good intellectually?
Mr. CONQUEST. I would say they are going to be probably better
educated in a technical sense.
Senator GURNEY. Would they be top students in their universities?
That is what I am asking.
Mr. CONQUEST. They would have a better education. You have prob-
ably met some of the Russians in the diplomatic or foreign press cir-
cles-that is very peripheral, but still, in the establishment. They seem
a bit skeptical, they have a certain air of feeling that something should
be done to change the Soviet situation. After all, Khrushchev had this.
He didn't know what should be done, and he changed all sorts of
things. And what he did change has mostly changed back again.
So far in Russia, all reform, virtually speaking, even under the
Czars, has been put through by a strong man at the top against the
will of his apparatus. The liberation for serfs by Alexander II, for
example. Or Peter the Great's reforms.
Senator RIBICOFF. How did they topple Khrushchev and why wasn't
he liquidated, but allowed to live? This always fascinated me. This
seems to be contrary to precedent in the Soviet Union.
Mr. CONQUEST. He didn't liquidate the previous lot, the Malenkov-
Molotov lot.
Senator RIBIcoFF. But what were the immediate circumstances sur-
rounding his removal from leadership, while still keeping him alive?
Mr. CONQUEST. It is a long story. In effect, it was a matter of get-
ting together a majority behind his back.
Senator RIBICOrr. With their equivalent of the Secret Service, which
he must, have controlled, wasn't he aware of what was going on? How
could they do this without him being aware?
Mr. CONQUEST. This is a mystery.
Senator RIBIGOFF. How could they get away with that type of con-
spiracy in a dictatorship ?
Mr. CONQUEST. He wasn't ever totally in control. He never threw
all the men not devoted to him or dependent on him out of the Presid-
ium, though I think he was planning to do so at about this point.
Senator RIBICOrF. Is that why they did it to him before he did it to
them?
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Mr. CONQUEST. Yes. They also objected to most of his policies. But
how it happened, how the people who were against him, who were
known to be against him, got on to the others and sounded them out,
whether they struck when they had just a majority or recruited the
whole Presidium, this we don't know.
Senator RIBICOPT. That story has never come out. If it has, I have
never come across it.
Mr. 'CONQUEST. What is known about it has been written up. There
are books, though perhaps not totally sound ones. We don't really
know the details.
Senator GURNEY. Did Khrushchev try to de-Stalinize the country
to build himself up as a political leader?
Mr. CONQUEST. Partly, because it was a splendid weapon against all
the other competitors immediately after Stalin's death. But he is on
record as saying he wished to destroy Stalin before he died-before
he "croaked," was his expression. He took the view that Russia needed
a major change and the true story of the Stalin era. I regard this in
some ways as perhaps the basic test of these present people. Until they
tell the truth about their own history, they are blocked into an intellec-
tual impasse.
Khrushchev was beginning to tell the truth a great deal was being
told, but not all. They have never, for example, repudiated the great
trials. They rehabilitated six or seven of those accused, but have never
said the trials were fixed.
Stalin had a story-a false one, but at least a coherent one. Now
they don't have a story at all, true or false.
Senator GURNEY. As you say, Khrushchev started to debunk Stalin,
but didn't quite succeed. Why did the new leaders seem to return to
Stalin as the Soviet hero? Why didn't they move on and create their
own political heroes? Most politicians would try to do that.
Mr. CONQUEST. I think Khrushchev's initiative against Stalin was
very much himself and a few of his own people, and he imposed it on
the Party. At that time, you got all sorts of people writing against
Stalin who nowadays are writing his praises. This is one weakness of
the machine. If the man at the top decides something, there are also a
lot of second rankers who will go along with whatever it is. This gave
him his leverage. They depended on him for their jobs. They don't
really have convictions, you might say.
On the other hand, to overthrow Khrushchev they relied on the peo-
ple who never got along with anti-Stalinism, never liked it. It was a
rallying around, to some extent, on a pro-Stalin basis.
To reform Russia, to open their minds, they must repudiate the past.
This, I am sure, applies to things like collectivization. How can they
stop it? They killed five million peasants. They have their own records
and the records of the Party, like a moral albatross around their necks.
It is not only an intellectual but a moral effort 'beyond almost any-
body's capacity to say that this was just a mistake. Until they do, they
are faced with this totally inefficient agriculture. And this is a typical
blockage.
Senator RIBICOrr. We could stay with you all day, Mr. Conquest,
but we have action on the Senate floor and now we must go there.
In behalf of Senator Jackson, I want to thank you for giving of your
time to come here and share your thoughts with us.
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28 INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION
You have been very generous and stimulating. I want to thank you
on behalf of the entire committee.
Mr. CONQUEST. Thank you,. Senator. I hope I have been of some use.
Senator RrniCOFF. The committee will recess, subject to the call of
the Chair.
(Whereupon, at 12 :20 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene
at the call of the Chair.)
BIOOB. PHY
ROBERT CONQUEST
Poet, novelist, editor and scholar, Robert Conquest is perhaps best known for
his extensive writings on Soviet affairs. His works have included the following:
Common Sense About Russia (1960) ; The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities
(1960) ; Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R. (1961) ; Courage of Genius: The Pas-
ternak Affair (1961) ; The Last Empire (1962) ; The Future of Communism
(1963) ; Marxism Today ('1964) ; The Soviet Succession Problem (1964) ; and
Russia After Khrushchev (1965). A New York Times book review described Mr.
Conquest's most recent book, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties
(1968), as "the most complete, responsible and -generally accessible account, out-
side the Kremlin archives, of one of the most ruthless campaigns of slaughter in
history."
'Since 1967, Mr. Conquest has also been the editor of The Contemporary Soviet
Union Series: Institutions and Policies, published by Frederick A. Praeger, New
York. Each volume examines in detail an important aspect of Soviet rule in the
years since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The completed volumes of the series
include: The Politics of Ideas in the USSR; Industrial Workers in the USSR;
Soviet Nationalities Policy in Practice; Agricultural Workers in the USSR; The
Soviet Political System; Religion in the USSR; The Soviet Police System; and
Justice and the Legal System in the USSR.
Mr. Conquest was born in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, on July 15, 1917.
After studying at Winchester College (1931-35) and the University of Grenoble,
France (1935-36), he attended Magdalen College, Oxford, and received a B.A.
degree in 1939. During World War II he served with the Oxfordshire and Buck-
inghamshire Light Infantry, attaining the rank of captain. In 1950 he was a
member of the British Delegation to the UN General Assembly.
Mr. Conquest was a research fellow on Soviet affairs at the London School of
Economies and Political Science (1956-58). During 1959-60 he was a visiting
professor in the English Department of the State University of New York at Buf-
falo. After -serving for two years as the literary editor of The Spectator in London
(1962--63), Mr. Conquest returned to the United States as a senior fellow of Col-
umbia University's Research Institute on Communist Affairs (1964-65).
Mr. Conquest has also written two novels, A World of Difference (1955) and
The Egyptologists (co-authored with Kingsley Amis in 1965). In addition to pro-
ducing at least two books of poetry, Poems (1955) and Between Mars and Venus
(1962), Mr. Conquest has edited a number of literary anthologies, including: New
Poems: A P.E.N. Anthology (1953) ; New Lines (1956) Back to Life: Poems From
Behind the Iron Curtain (1958) ; New Lines 2 (1963) ; and, with Kingsley Amis,
Spectrum: A Science Fiction Anthology ('annual since 1961).
Mr. Conquest's 11-terary awards include a P.E.N. (an international writers'
club) prize for a long poem (1949) 'and the Festival of Britain verse prize (1951).
He is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire ('O.B.E.).
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