MYSTERY OF KREMLIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27505, 27 September 1950, Page 7

MYSTERY OF KREMLIN

Attitude Of Russian People To Their Rulers By Lieutenant-general W. Bedell Smith [World Copyright Reserved] 111.

In this, his third article of the series entitled the Mystery of the Kremlin, Lieutenant-general Bedell Smith examines the attitude of the Russian people, their reaction to radio and press propaganda from outside, and the possibility of opposition to the present regime. His considered view is that there is no likelihood of a revolution directed against the present masters of Russia. “To overturn an established Government which exercises complete and iron-handed control is,” he says, “ almost beyond the realm of possibility."

XTOW FAR is the West’s information penetrating the Iroffl Curtain?

TS THERE any Russian opposiA tion to the Kremlin?

There is no opposition in the sense that we visualise political opposition. There is, as there has always been, a latent discontent in Russia which increases and diminishes as the civil economy of the Soviet Union deteriorate or improves. Again I must quote Lenin—who said that any regime which remains in power over a long period of time becomes unpopular. But this is of relatively little importance to a political regime which is riveted in place by the bayonets of hundreds of thousands of uniformed secret police, organised as a military corps d’elite. When I say “ relatively,” I mean in the sense in which we in the West would assess political discontent. There is only one party in the Soviet Union, and only one party line. Elections are staged as a mass demonstration of public solidarity in support of the Government and any deviation from the approved political line results in punitive action by the agencies of State security.

As a distinguished Russian statesman said to me on one unguarded occasion: “Time was when a people could express its discontent by making a revolution, as did the people of France in 1789, wheq they stormed arsenals, built barricades and effected a change in Government by force. Nowadays, to make' a revolution it is necessary to have tanks and aeroplanes and artillery, and all the means of propaganda and communications, such as the press and the radio. And all these things are held tightly under the control of an authoritarian Government.”

I cannot take seriously statements which I hear from time to time that there is a seething mass of discontent below the comparatively calm surface of Soviet life. '

THE Russians content with their low living standard?

The vast mass of the Russian people do not realise that their living standard is low by comparison with that of Western nations. They have no means of comparison. They are told daily, hourly, by all the media of Soviet propaganda, that they are living in a workers’ paradise, and that they are better off than any other people in the world. They can only compare conditions today with those which existed before the war or—in the case of a small and shrinking minority of the population —before the revolution. By such standards their lot in life has materially improved during the past three or four years, and so long as this improvement continues, even though it be slow, the peoples of the Soviet Union will become increasingly contented.

Those -few who have an opportunity to see how much greener the grass is outside the Iron Curtain are generally representatives of a highly privi-

leged political aristocracy, who ar® themselves well taken care of, and who in addition have usually left hostages behind them to guarantee th« Soviet Government against any defection.

While I was in Moscow both the BBC and the “ Voice of America ” had large and increasing audiences. The British Russian-language newspaper. British Ally, was in avid demand, and its somewhat more elaborate and expensive American companion, the magazine Amerika, was also becoming widely known. The massive jamming programme by which the Soviet Government has undertaken to silence the BBC and “Voice of America” has so far been about 90 per cent, effective in the Soviet Union proper, but less than 50 per cent, effective among the satellites. It is among the satellites, I think, that there lies the most fertile field, not for propaganda (I do not like the term), but for telling the truth about our common British-American aims, objectives and ideals. The acute French observer de Custine, who wrote so accurately about Russia in the middle 1800’s, said: “ Ono grain of truth dropped into Russia is like a spark landing in a barrel of powder.” There is very little possibility of an actual conflagration in Russia now, no matter how hot the spark, because the Government-controlled fire brigade—the MVD—is so omnipresent and so effective. But the fact remains , that truth still has a habit of prevailing, and in the satellite countries, particularly, there are millions who still remember the meaning of the word# “personal liberty” and “personal dignity” and “democracy.” Possibly we have overworked these words at home. But they still convey a great deal to listeners in some of ’the areas behind the Iron Curtain. At one time, I am sure, our radio audience in the Soviet Union proper ran into several millions, and singla pages of English and American Rus-sian-language periodicals sold for high prices. I believe that in spite of the jamming we still have h relatively large listener audience in Russia, and, of course,, in the satellite areas .it is very large. The project is terrifically, worth while, and one day may pay enormous dividends. WHAT ARE the possibilities ’’ of a revolution directed against the present masters of Russia? I will answer that in one word—none. I have already given reasons why I believe this to be true. To attack successfully from inside—to overturn —an established Government which exercises complete and iron-handed control is almost beyond the realm of possibility. The Communist Party gamed power because there existed at the time what Lenin called a “revolutionary situation ’’—that is, a condition of economic and governmental chaos, the result of a terrible military catastrophe, with its attendant misery and suffering. It is only as the result of such a vast catastrophe that “revolutionary situations” can arise. On the other hand, Soviet leaders are acutely conscious of the fact that opposition groups like the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians- and other members of satellite nations who now live in free countries serve as rallying points for opposition.. A Russian diplomat said to me once in Paris, with unusual franknesu, “ That’s the way we got our start.”