RUSSIA’S SECLUSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27040, 26 March 1949, Page 7

RUSSIA’S SECLUSION

Proof of Failure of Soviet

System

STATE DEPARTMENT’S CHARGES New Zealand Press Association—Copyright WASHINGTON, Mar. 24. In a report bristling with denunciation of Moscow’s “ evasions, suspicions, and spy phobia,” the United States State Department to-day said that Russia was afraid to let her people get a true idea of American freedoms and living standards. The report said the Russians were thus shut off from outside associations whereby they could draw comparisons with the way of things in Russia. Assailing Russia for its refusal to permit within its borders an International meeting representing a wide range of political views, the report states that the Kremlin must keep the Russians from outside associations to “induce its citizens to tolerate the obvious failure of the Soviet system to provide for their needs, and to accept, at least passively, the oppressive aspects of the Soviet State. It is also necessary to keep gullible Soviet sympathisers beyond the USSR’s borders ignorant of the actual conditions prevailing in the Soviet Union.”

The report told of the failure of post-war American efforts to arrange with Moscow an exchange of students, scientists and publications. It said: “ The Soviet Government fears a free interchange of ideas because of the realisation that 30 years of Communism have failed to provide the patient Soviet people with a living standard anywhere aproximating that enjoyed by workers in the United States.” It added: “ Notable Communist propagandists ” had been granted visas to enter the United States, because of the American policy of a free exchange of ideas. Manufacturers’ Offer The National Association of Manufacturers. which embraces America’s leading industrialists, to-day invited the Russian delegates to the World Peace Congress, which opens in New York to-morrow, to inspect the country’s major factories. The invitation said it was hoped the Russians would be able to take advantage of the opportunity to see American men and women at work and prospering under the country’s system of free individual enterprise. The association offered to pay all the expenses of the proposed tour. The association expressed the belief that such tours would further world peace as the peoples of the world came to know how one another worked and lived. “Peace Congress” Attacked A London message says: Referring to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for Peace and the cancellation of the visas of three of the British delegates who were to have attended the meeting, Mr T. S. Eliot, who was described by the Russian delegate attending th,e Wroclaw conference as a “literary jackal,” said this New York conference is an attempt to demoralise intellectual and moral integrity everywhere. It is a new Stalinist peace conference.” Mr J. B. Priestley, who said he had been invited to go to the New York conference, but had refused, said: “I feel that this Communist versus Capitalist argument is taking up a great deal of time and money which could be better used in, say, improving the world’s food supply.” Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell), who has also recently been attacked by the Russians, said of the meeting: “The enslavement of the intellect is one of the worst features of Soviet Russia. The subjection of philosophers, scientists and economists to the authority of uneducated politicians is utterly intolerable and fatal to all mortal progress.