The Otago Daily Times Tuesday, February 22, 1944. RUSSIAN POLICY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25466, 22 February 1944, Page 2

The Otago Daily Times Tuesday, February 22, 1944. RUSSIAN POLICY

lii an article in the December issue of the Contemporary Review it is persuasively argued by Mr M. Phillips Price, a Labour member of the House of Commons, who was correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in Moscow during the critical years 1914-18 and of the Daily Herald in Berlin from 1919 to 1923, that the twenty years’ treaty concluded by Russia with Great Britain is visible proof that Russia needs the friendly help of the West to reconstitute her devastated areas. No invasion experience of the past, Mr Price insists, left Russia in a condition comparable with that which now confronts her, with the whole agricultural and industrial economy of the south-west lying in ruins and requiring to be rebuilt once more—the second time in twenty years. Mr Price takes the view that history for the past 150 years shows clearly that when Britain and Russia fail to co-operate, advantage always accrues to a Continental dictator, and he remarks that the two countries are together in this war because of their failure to co-operate in peace. The views thus expressed are of interest for the reason that Marshal Stalin is again credited with a posi-' tive denial that Russia has any intention of expanding into Central or Western Europe. If this assurance is read, as it may reasonably be, together with the implied intention of the Russian Government to collaborate in the tasks of post-war settlement and reconstruction in Europe in terms of the Moscow agreement and the more recent decisions reached by the three great Allied leaders, its good faith need not be questioned. It is true that Marshal Stalin adheres without equivocation to the policy of frontier adjustment. This policy, he is reported to have said, is dictated by Russia’s strategic needs, which require territorial and political adjustment in Eastern Europe. Russia, he adds, is firmly resolved to insist on such readjustments, but has no claims “beyond the sphere of her immediate strategic interest.” The immediate test case, it must be supposed, is that of Poland. Mr Price submits that the real cause of friction between. Russia and Poland today is the presence in the Polish Government in London, and in the High Command, of persons with the mentality of the old Polish landlord class and of the military Chauvinists who dream about Poland's eastern frontiers. Mr Price goes on:

If this continues, no real peace is possible between Poland and Russia. The Polish-Russian frontier dispute is not merely a national or territorial problem. It involves social issues which rouse deep feelings among the Russians and affect the principles of the October revolution. The old Curzon Line by which the Powers in Paris attempted to settle the dispute was the right one. East of this line the peasants are Ukrainian and White Russian and, though not speaking Muscovite Russian, they are not Polish-speak-ing. The Poles are the landlords and merchants of the towns. Thus the national, religious, and social division is complete, and the children of the October revolution are not prepared to see their co-religionists and fellow-peasants put back under the heel of the Polish landlords. As Russia has renounced the Communist revolution in Poland, so the Poles had better give up their claims to these territories, to which they have no right except that of ancient .conquest and class domination.

This is blunt speaking, but it accords with recent developments in the dispute between the two Governments and goes far to explain the significance of the attempt by Russia to set the so-called Union of Polish Patriots in Russia against the legallyrecognised Polish Government in London. It also -may explain, in part at least, the crisis which has just resulted in the resignation of the Polish Prime Minister from the Cabinet-in-exile, ostensibly because of the refusal of the Cabinet to support his request for the dismissal of military elements unacceptable to the Russian Government. Marshal Stalin is quite obviously insistent that he will have no dealings with the Polish Government as at present constituted, although he has repeated his readiness to come to terms and to hand over to Poles the administration of Polish territories west of the Curzon Line as soon as they are freed. We have said before that inherent in this situation is the first test of Allied statesmanship and the first challenge to the Atlantic Charter, to which Russia is a party. Mr Price, in the article from which we have quoted, records his belief that Russian policy in Europe is concerned solely with, problems of security. Marshal Stalin’s reported statement is to the same effect. The problem posed would seem to relate to the extent to which the points enunciated in the Atlantic Charter —especially that which lays down that the parties to that instrument “ desire to see no territorial changes which do not accord with the freelyexpressed wishes of the people concerned ” are capable of flexibility, or are adaptable to special circumstances, according to the principle of self-determination.