The Election-Two Articles Russia Reports the Vote
JACOBS, DAN N.
The American elections are seen through Marxist bifocals and in terms of the needs of current Soviet policy RUSSIA REPORTS THE VOTE By Dan N. Jacobs ANY ONE WHO obtained his information on the...
...Millions of working men and women, claimed Soviet newspapers, cried, "We've had enough...
...In Khrushchev's phrases, Nixon and Kennedy were like "two boots of a pair," "two peas in a pod...
...It is true that Kennedy attempted to make an issue of America's waning prestige—and he was quite correct when he stated that the position of the United States in the world had suffered, noted the Soviet press...
...The closeness of the vote has thus far been largely passed over in the Soviet accounts of the election, although the figures themselves have been given...
...However, insisted Izvestia, he raised the matter solely as a vote-getting device, since his only solution to the problem was the expenditure of huge sums to augment America's armed might...
...The American elections are seen through Marxist bifocals and in terms of the needs of current Soviet policy RUSSIA REPORTS THE VOTE By Dan N. Jacobs ANY ONE WHO obtained his information on the recent U.S...
...In the communication Khrushchev voiced the hope that relations between the U.S...
...Having decided early in the campaign that peace was the principal issue of the Presidential contest, the Kremlin surveyed the American political scene attempting to determine which of the many candidates for the nominations had the most "realistic" view of the international situation and was most opposed to further adventures by the Pentagon...
...He was also informed that Kennedy popped a "big surprise" on the Republicans the last two weeks of the campaign (which fell like "shrapnel" among them) when he announced that he was a "direct follower" of Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...The real question is why Kennedy didn't win with a huge majority, and the answer is that Kennedy failed to provide "the peace-loving program, which corresponded to the interests and longings of the American people...
...DAN N. JACOBS, a specialist in Soviet affairs, is an assistant professor of government at Miami University...
...The Kremlin seemed somewhat more optimistic concerning Kennedy by the end of the first week after the election, but it maintained reservations...
...If Kennedy had offered a policy proposing to allow West Berlin to become an open city and to turn Quemoy and Matsu over to the Chinese Communists, then he would have won in a walk—so implies Moscow...
...The big decisions are made not by the people or their delegates, but by the boys in "the smoke-filled rooms...
...Its gaze lighted on Adlai Stevenson...
...The statement, plus the stir it supposedly created abroad, became front-page news in all Soviet newspapers...
...When election day came, many voters showed their dislike of both candidates, by, "as the Americans say—voting their legs," i.e., remaining at home...
...And he was also apprised that the farmers of America were very instrumental in the defeat of the Nixon-Lodge ticket, voting against them "in the overwhelming number of farm regions...
...This was an election, said Pravda, "without a choice," and consequently the campaign was devoid of "content...
...One had to look hard in the Soviet press to find any reference at all to John Kennedy's Catholicism...
...and the USSR would return to the more favorable situation of Franklin Roosevelt's time...
...but the Eisenhower Administration flouted this yearning and it was therefore ousted from office...
...However, Izvestia also noted that while Kennedy did come from the same political party as Roosevelt, so did the hated Harry Truman...
...Correspondents N. Karev and N. Polyanov telephoned from New York that the man in the street there considered Kennedy to be the new FDR...
...And a discussion of the implications involved in the fact that the United States was considering the election of, and did indeed elect, a member of a minority group as its chief executive was completely lacking...
...Immediately, Izvestia picked up the line...
...In making his point, Sturua conceded that Kennedy did not receive "a significant majority of the votes...
...Page one, column one headline: "America Demands: Return to Roosevelt...
...We want a change...
...The American people turned Nixon down...
...Is this an example of the information and thinking the Kremlin uses in making its intelligence estimates of the United States...
...Immediately after the election the Moscow press indicated that little good, from its point of view, was to be expected from the new President...
...Instead of Stevenson, the Democratic leadership selected John F. Kennedy, "the son of a multi-millionaire...
...But all elections in the United States, Izvestia's editorialist contended, revolve around the issue of change and the fact that Nixon was defeated clearly indicates that the American people want a change...
...The American voters were convinced, according to Pravda and Izvestia, that in 1960 there was one issue that held precedence over all others, namely: Peace...
...As Pravdas correspondent heard it, "Nixon sang the same old tunes...
...According to the Moscow press, Kennedy received the Democratic accolade because of his father's great capital, because of the spoils he promised those who would support him and because of his unprincipled demagoguery in opposing the Eisenhower-Nixon policies without stating how he would alter them if elected...
...Soviet press coverage of the American 1960 campaign and election was one of the most fascinating grandmothers' tales I have come across in a long time...
...Things can change, wrote M. Sturua in Izvestia, but already reactionary circles in the United States are working to forestall any shift...
...But those who—despite the indistinguishableness of the two candidates—did go to the polls on November 8 administered an overwhelming rebuff to the policies of the Eisenhower Administration...
...From time to time the probably unpaid-for columns of such capitalist pundits as Walter Lippmann and Art Buchwald were used as well...
...political campaign and election through the Soviet press was the recipient of some very interesting tidbits...
...No other issue could compare to it in importance...
...American political parties are viewed as increasingly controlled by the rapacious forces of monopoly capitalism and their hirelings...
...The candidates of both parties represented Wall Street "as never before...
...But the Government and Party newspapers did not rely upon native talent alone...
...The Republican party, wrote Pravda's "Observer," had sought a vote of confidence, but instead "the American people voted against the entire political course of Eisenhower-Nixon, against all their acts, which led to the worsening of the international situation...
...The American people voted against the U-2 and against the adventures in which the Eisenhower Administration had engaged and in which the Nixon Administration would engage if elected...
...It comes as no major disclosure of Sovietology that the American elections are seen in Moscow through the bifocals of Marxism-Leninism and the tactical requirements of current Soviet policy...
...Kennedy was elected to the Presidency, as Moscow saw it, not because he gave clear answers for our times, but simply out of protest against the direction in which Washington had been pulling the United States...
...and he, undoubtedly, during the first six months of 1960, was Moscow's candidate for the Presidency...
...In retrospect, the Soviet press concluded that the "experience" argument did Nixon no good, because his experience was in the cold war and Americans want peace, not war...
...For months after the Democratic and Republican conventions, Pravda and Izvestia maintained the line that there was little to choose between Nixon and Kennedy, and that was the reason Americans were having such a difficult time in deciding for whom to vote...
...By arguing that Kennedy received no mandate from the electorate to embark upon a "new course...
...When Governor Stevenson was rejected by the Democratic convention in July, Izvestia attributed this to the unwillingness of the party "bosses" to accept a "new course" in international affairs...
...Let Kennedy beware...
...Kennedy's Republican opponent was Richard M. Nixon, protege of Eisenhower and proponent and designer of the militaristic and adventurous scheming that characterized the past eight years...
...York, Pennsylvania, Gazette and Daily is one of America's most important newspapers, and that Norman Vincent Peale is "a well-known American Catholic minister...
...Under the chief editorship of A. Adzhubei, Premier Khrushchev's son-in-law, Izvestia has been attempting to popularize its format and style, and in Karev and Polyanov it has come up with two reporters who can tell some particularly beguiling tales of American politics...
...Whereas Nixon was a "second Hoover," Kennedy awakened the image of Roosevelt...
...The American people have a deep-seated desire for peace...
...Under the circumstances there was nothing Nixon could have done to have improved his chances...
...Both parties had the same programs dictated by large-scale capital...
...For example, the reader of Pravda learned that the New (sic...
...Both Izvestia and Pravda had their own correspondents in New York during the election, the former represented by Karev and Polyanov and the latter by E. Litoshko and B. Strel'nikov...
...But then one of the really big stories of the election broke: Khrushchev's message of congratulations to the victorious Democratic candidate...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 48
