DEAN’S MOSCOW SPEECH

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26512, 29 August 1951, Page 10

DEAN’S MOSCOW SPEECH

“Editing” For Soviet , Readers CHANGES FROM ORIGINAL VERSION LONDON, July 7. Some very curious differences appear between the English and Russian version of the Dean of Canterbury’s speech in Moscow on June 26, when he received the Stalin Peace Prize. The full text given in the “Manchester Guardian” on Wednesday was transscribed from a recording of the original in English given over the Moscow radio. The “Pravda” translation into Russian, which has now reached London, gives; whether designedly or not, a rather different impression. Dr. Johnson, who certainly cannot be accused of lack of appreciation of Soviet achievements, said that the Soviet Republics "have most speedily recovered from war’s destruction.” This statement ta unexceptionable, in the Soviet view, when designed to impress foreigners, but Soviet readers, upon seeing it, would merely conclude that Dr. Johnson was not very well acquainted with actual conditions in Russia. "Pravda” therefore made him say that the Soviet Union “is now repairing with exceptional speed the ravages wrought by war.” Dr. Johnson's qualified statement that “workers for peace (are) often persecuted and penalised in their heroic efforts in my country” was not, in “Pravda’s” view, sufficiently damning. The “Pravda” version therefore made him omit the qualification implicit in the word “often,” and attributed to him the bold statement that “peace partisans are persecuted and penalised for their heroic efforts to save the world from a new war.” Dr. Johnson’s pious hope that the Sace partisans' efforts "will meet with creasing success” became an affirmation that “these efforts have already yielded great successes.” His statement that the peaceful preoccupations of the Soviet Union “leave no thought, no energies for war” in that country was omitted altogether in “Pravda’s” allegedly full text of the speech. The space thus saved is filled in with the more harmless sentence, which did not occur in the original speech, that “your country does not want war.” The list of "Pravda’s” omissions and distortions could be continued, but it M hardly worth it. In the adjoining column of the same issue "Pravda” publishes its reply to Mr Herbert Morrison’s challenge, in which it accused the British press of suppressing and distorting Soviet statements, and claimed that speeches calling for friendship between Britain and the Soviet Union are published fully and accurately in the Soviet press. Yesterday, it may be added, the Soviet press published a report of the London ceremony commemorating the war dead of the United States, saying that a march through J the streets of London by the United States forces of occupation in Britain (not in inverted commas) formed an Integral part of the ceremony.