ATTITUDES TOWARD SOVIET POLICIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00423R001800490007-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 4, 2000
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: April 27, 1955
• Content Type: REPORT

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COUNTRY 25X1 X6 REP
Austria/USSR 25X1 A2
SUBJECT DATE DISTRIBUTED
Apr 55
ANIN4941ft Attitudes oward Soviet
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1. Observing Communism at close range, as it is possible in Austria,
leads, I believe, to a somewhat different appraisal of the most im-
portant factors and policies of Communism than is generally made in
countries remote from the Soviet orbit....
2. There is a significant difference of attitude towards the Soviet
problem between people in the US and Europeans. The uncertainties
and dangers emanating from the vast areas and countries that today
bear the name of Soviet Union have been with the Europeans intermit-
tently since the dawn of their history. To the new world, on the
other hand, the collision with the political phenomenon of the USSR
was a sudden and recent experience, an "agonizing re-appraisal".
From this difference of experience,. quite naturally, comes a differ-
ence of approach that often eludes definition and creates misunder-
standings.
3. Anti-Communism is a very real force on both sides of the Atlantic
but even the same words that are being used in journalism and the
cold war carry sometimes different implications and connotations
here and there. Whenever a person in the US speaks of Communism,
he is likely to mean just that: an ideology, a creed. The European,
on the other hand, is probably really more concerned about the So-
viet people, even though he may also use the word Communism within
the saw context. There can be no doubt that the Communist ideology
is a serious matter, but to those who live over here fin Europe)
aside, with or in spite of the Sovriets, Communism as an ideology is
just one facet of a still more formidable and more concrete problem:
the Soviets and their ways.
4. Since the Middle Ages the Europeans have gradually and perhaps
tragically unlearned to think in creeds and crusades. Instead, they
tend to think in terms of nations, culture patterns, empires. Thus,
the USSR today L as of March 19551 is, like its former neighbors,
the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empire, a multinational and
multicultural empire. Nationalism, which has destroyed these em-
pires, now also threatens to destroy the Moscow empire. The primary
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function of Communism, in the eyes of the Kremlin today, is to save
the USSR from the fate of its former competitors and provide a com-
mon denominator, a binding force for all the conquered peoples and
lands.
5. It is hardly by accident that Stalin was a specialist in nationality
problems, a renovator of tsarist traditions and a supporter of Com-
munism in one country first, as against Trotsky's conception of
world revolution. To be sure, Soviet Russian imperialism and Commu-
nist world revolution are wedded together. It is a marriage of two
complementary phenomena that cannot dissolve itself; but it is a con-
tradictory and uneasy marriage all the same. It can maintain itself
as a going concern only because imperialism is the practical proposi-
tion, whereas world revolution is a matter of the clouds, a part of
Communist eschatology. If the gigantic objective of world revolu-
tion in the Communist sense of the word were put on the level of an
immediate and practical target, it would mean the abandonment or col-
lapse of Soviet Russian imperialism. Consequently, in Moscow polit-
ics today L -march 1955)--as seen from Europe--world revolution is a
means, a promise, not an actual policy or aim. As a promise, how-
ever, a worldly heaven, it is an essential part of the Communist
pseudo-religion and can never be abandoned because the "heresy" of
Communism is as unthinkable without world revolution as is the Chris-
tian religion without a heaven, or an emperor without a throne and
crown. To abandon the dogma of world revolution would be to abandon
the throne, to dissolve the empire, to abdicate by renouncing the
symbol. Again it is the character of the Soviet people and the im-
perial and orthodox traditions which make symbols and dogmas all-
important as a means of holding the Soviet Union together.
The unifying function of Communism on the home front, however, is
changed into its opposite abroad. This miracle of oriental magic
is of course the meaning of the Iron Curtain. While Communism
serves as a common denominator and as a means to suppress national-
ism inside the Soviet orbit, it becomes a disruptive force in sup-
port of nationalism outside of it. Thus, instinctively, it is not
the ideology of Communism and the world revolution which the peoples
on the rim of the Soviet empire fear, but the dangers that come from
the fact that the Soviets are the powerful and accomplished covert
instigators or open advocates or sometimes even champions of nation-
alism everywhere in the world. In this scheme they are successful
in Germany, France, Italy, the Middle East, India, Indo-China and--
from a Central European vantage point of observation--sometimes even
in the US, the head and heart of the grand alliance against Moscow
Communism.
7. Of course, it is not the patriotism of self-sacrifice for the common
good which the Communists try to provoke, but the kind of national-
ism that will bear heavily down on international relations, that
will cause mutual distrust and rivalry among allies and will in-
crease the inevitable strain of alliance by fanning the feelings
of impatience, frustration and deception. Thus, Communist strategy
on the global, atomic age is plotting incessantly to drive its ene-
mies up the blind alley of ill-advised, excessive self-reliance.
In this sense, "Communist activities" and "world revolution" have
been only too often a dummy setup of the crafty Muscovites to de-
tract from their real and immediate objective: the triumph of na-
tionalism and blind emotionalism that will prevent the consolida-
tion of the Western Alliance--otherwise a natural consequence of the
expanding industrial and technological civilization under US leader-
ship--and that will at the same time insure a further deepening of
prejudices prevailing between the white peoples and the colored
races and nations.
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In this manner, undiscriminating emotionalism in general and the
dupes of nationalism in particular become the chief allies of Soviet
imperialism. Of all the devices of Soviet strategy the most fatal
one is to turn the traditional patriotic virtues of the free nations
into the deadly vice of uncooperative, uncompromising nationalism.
Communism itself is an emotional policy only in the sense that it
uses emotions of others to its advantage, but not in the sense that
the leaders of Communism themselves are moved by emotions similar
to those which might grip and direct a popular movement. The emo-
tional structure and character of a Communist leader can never be a
simple one. Whatever makes such a man "tick," it will never be the
same motive or emotion which he is causing others, outside the inner
initiated circle, to have. Though it is known, it is certainly not
heeded that Communist devices and methods are never direct, spontane-
ous or naive. They are always the result of calculation and plan-
ning within the framework of an elaborate tradition and method: of
operation.
9.
Communists do not attack the bastions but rather the weak links of
the enemy defenses. Barring an exceptional situation,, a modern gov-
ernment of even a small state represents a bastion anda firmly en-
trenched position which is extremely difficult or impossible to over-
throw from within. Communists rarely waste their time with impossible
jobs, even if they appear to do so. The Slavs have always been mas-
ter spies and Communism has perfected a natural talent, but actual
subversion of a government is a different matter altogether. If
military intervention is not advisable, subversion from within is
not a practical proposition or a serious danger to the free world.
Instead Communism concentrates all its resourcefulness, its endless
array of scheming devices and screen provocations to the time-
honored objective of weakening or disrupting the enemy alliance.
Not subversion, infiltration and espionage are the gravest dangers
of Communism; they can be dealt with by an effectively operating
branch of government; the real danger comes from the fact that the
Soviet Communist leaders, operating behind a screen of confusion,
false issues and side shows, are themselves fully and soberly aware
of the lesson of imperial history: that all vital politics concern
international relations rather than home politics and of necessity
center around the problem of alliance, which inevitably defies
simplification. It is this very lesson which causes them again and
again to make a supreme political effort towards drawing the atten-
tion of every free nation and government away from this decisive is-
sue of alliance by creating other worries without end on a world
scale. There can be little doubt that among all such worries and
devices the various forms of provoking the wrong kind of nationalism
are the most effective and the most applied. They are serving a dou-
ble purpose; they throw continually sand into the machinery of the
alliance and imperil the common cause of all nations who with to be
free; and they detract from the decisive Issue of improving and
stabilizing the existing alliances against a dictatorship that is
irrevocably set on further conquest because it can suffer no retreat
or setback which peaceful competition would inevitably bring to the
Soviet slave state .
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