EXPANSION BY SOVIET

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27738, 16 August 1955, Page 13

EXPANSION BY SOVIET

BEVAN “SEES NO EVIDENCE” (Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, August 14. Mr Aneurin Bevan, leader of the British Labour Party’s Left-wing, says there is no tangible evidence that the Soviet Union is attempting to establish its own political system in other countries of the world. In a filmed interview broadcast tonight, Mr Bevan compared Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe with what he called United States intervention in Guatemala in the autumn of 1954. He said United States interference in the Guatemalan civil war, during which the pro-Communist regime of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was overthrown, was “most unfortunate, to say the least of it.” Of Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and Moscow domination of other Eastern European nations, Mr Bevan said: “Of course, the U.S.S.R. decided it was not going to have unfriendly States on its borders.” He admitted that the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and the Soviet blockade of Berlin in the same year were “unforgiveable offences.” Saying “I’m not a defender of Soviet policies,” Mr Bevan repeated that he saw no evidence of any Soviet expansion.