Russia's New Nationalism
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
By William Henry Chamberlin Where the News Ends Russia's New Nationalism POR one who ha* lived in Russia for many * years during earlier phases of the Revolution it is an enlightening...
...Miss Buck is correct in saying that "we will have to fight another war to save freedom...
...Individual deeds of heroism by Soviet soldiers are reported...
...It is wrong to put it in the future tense...
...The isolationists had full opportunity to present their casoi They lost both before the legislators and in the mind of the people...
...She understands that nut for many centuries bus the world been threatened by Asiatic conquerors...
...I heard several comments to the effect that it was too warm...
...The war is not won and cannot be won unless democracy wins against fascism, here on our own soil as well as in Europe, until people are free in Asia as well as in France...
...One things we are fighting for is freedom from great voices...
...Perhaps I didn't run up against this fellow, or perhaps the so called selectee who tells the story was a little upset, but in any case I certainly experienced a different attitude...
...It would be well if Miss Buck would utilise her immense prestige to bring this fact home to the millions over yonder...
...From January to December, 1941, were fought the legislative battles which led the nation in its psychological preparation for the actual conflict...
...If Miss Buck had kept sharply before her mind the picture of what would happen if Hitler and Hirohito win, she would have put her thoughts in different form...
...Judging from the most recent Soviet newspapers, the Red Army soldier today is never told that he is fighting for international revolution, or for the victory of the working class of the world...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Enlistee Scores Daily News On 'Army Induction Gripes' From RICHARD CANTOR To the Editor: The editorial page of the New York Daily New recently ran an editorial on the complaints of some "anonymous selectees" on induction...
...We hare had too much of them...
...How could lion and lamb sit together at the same table...
...These are mere illustrations of Congressman Eliot's remark that during such a time the lead in foreign affairs must be taken by the executive...
...Toward the end of -the session the chairmen of five committees got together and suggested ways of inaugurating approaches to unified thinking...
...Miss Buck thinks that "we will harve to fight another war to save freedom...
...If action with regard to all Other war measures has been equally uncritical, there will be few to complain...
...They contain deep truths, but these truths are stated too baldly—with too little relation to the complex world situation...
...grandizeraent, toward setsure, after the dafaft of the Axis, of territory to which Rus«to» h«a no reasonable claim on the basis of nstfcesrW or the desires of the peoples who live thee* The future, of course, remains specula****-But one prediction seems justified both by thf coarse of Russian history and by the exuaulsuss of other countries under the impact ef we...
...It is to be feared that Mr...
...The Soviet press remains rigidly state controlled, primarily an agency of government propaganda...
...The News also tells of a soldier who "had the bearing of an unpleasant prisoo guard" who kept shouting to the selectees who he must have thought "were a collection of stupid sheep...
...critical scrutiny which it is a pert of their duty to bring to bear...
...A by-product uf *J Russo-Japanese War was the establishment « the Duma...
...Berlin broadcasts quoted M." Doriot as declaring himself for an Axis victory saying alto.that there were millions of Frenchmen ready to fight alongside Germany...
...Maurois is for an Allied Victory...
...There will be sweeping changes in Russia aftsr the end of the war...
...Now the strictest formal discipline is required asd constantly emphasised...
...And a wisecracker might still repeat the anecdote which gained currency in the early days of the Revolution: there ii no truth in the "News" and no news in the "truth...
...In fact, one cannot but wonder why a democrat should cry out for a great voice, for a leader...
...T«me and various tests passed, and after a while the men found themselves in a cold room with nothing on...
...many of the boys carried newspapers, and so did I. , In regard to this "Army man" who "barked" and the rest of our soldiers whom the Daily News chooses to call "the old World War I Army monkey business— M.P.'s of the Hardboilcd Smith school . . .," I might add that these "old" M.P.'s are kids of from 20 to 30 at the most and are made up mainly of those boys who for some reason or another are unable to meet the physical standards required of the fighting soldier...
...Since December, 1941, the picture has been changed...
...During the first fifteen years of the Soviet regime the Russian intelligentsia, men and women of high cultural achievement, of whom the great majority were in the liberal and Ysftssjl camp before the Revolution, were treated us an alien, suspect, inferior class...
...As to Mr...
...When it first met two years ago, the armament program was six months old, the President was ready to go full-steam ahead on aid to Britain, and the people of the country were honestly divided about participation in the war...
...The fight goes on...
...The change lies in the infusion of an element of heady Russian nationalism, in the virtual scrapping of all reference to the "proletarian" character of the Soviet state or to the war as part of a process of world revolution...
...At some future date the guns will cease to soar...
...PEARL BUCK AND THE REALITIES DEARL BUCK is a great citizen of the world...
...Now the appeals to the Red Army fairly brim over with the approval of General Denikin or any other conservative nationalist military leader in the civil war...
...We have looked and listened and "heard no great voice...
...Our political failures in connection with military victories and defeats must have been precisely the elements in the situation which led to Miss Buck's pessimism...
...With the war danger removed, western imperialism in the Orient will die just as fast as the people of India and China organize themselves to put an end to it...
...The fact of the matter is that there is a toilet on every floor and that everyone must go to the toilet at least once during the examination when they must pass water for the urinal test...
...The leading editorial is almost always a pep talk, urging greater effort in some branch of industry and agriculture, carefully avoiding, as a rule, concrete facts and figures...
...Recently the Red Army instituted three new medals of military distinction...
...But the basic note—and the most ambiguous one—in this presentation has to do with the meaning of this war: "We must refuse to be deceived by military (victories...
...The people of Asia "must find their salvation in "themselves...
...By William Henry Chamberlin Where the News Ends Russia's New Nationalism POR one who ha* lived in Russia for many * years during earlier phases of the Revolution it is an enlightening experience to read through a batch of Soviet newspapers published since the outbreak of the war with Germany...
...The Russian words for motherland and fatherland...
...Most of the members seem to be bent on making personal reputations rather than on serving a" natwthrl purpose...
...Nothing remains of the free-and-easy camaraderie between officers and man, the semi-partisan character of the original Red Army...
...If as a result of this war and some display of wisdom after the war we can stamp out the European danger, the Orient will be one of the greatest beneficiaries...
...But it was, after all, the discussions of Lend-Lease and the Neutrality Law in Congress which opened the door to general realistic thinking about our part in the war...
...But this other war will be fought with ideas, with peaceful deeds, with democratic national and international organization...
...Freedom can not be handed by anyone to anyone else...
...The fact that in such a situation the people look to the President and the federal administrators for protection as well as for effective action has an ominous look...
...If Hitler wins, we shall certainly suffer all evil...
...The greater good for the common men everywhere will not be won...
...In spite of fine work done by the Tolas Committee and the Truman Committee, the legislators have, in general, failed to subject the executive departments to the...
...They would not plan, and they were bent on keeping anyone else from planning...
...If the new emphsttf on Russian nationalism means a retreat frow the Utopia of world revolution on the BUUUUS Bolshevik model, to be achieved by a eomaeuss of violence and intrigue in other countries, thu is certainly all to the good and offers pseudsc of smoother relations between post-war lands and the outside world...
...They were named not after any Russian or foreign revolutionaries, but after Suvorov, Kutuzov, Alexander Nevsky...
...It we win, we shall'have opportunity to achieve great good...
...Where, the News claims, the men were told they could not "slip on their shoes...
...But the narrowed margin of Democratic control will offer enlarged opportunities for jockeying and trading...
...Freedom, democracy, happier human relation cannot possibly be ushered in by mere physical conflict...
...The basic fault in both houses of Congress is individualistic irresponsibility...
...There is the looming possibility of a reactionary bloc of southern Democrats and northern Republicans...
...Do you ex-ray one who saves a life to ascertain the motive...
...Miss Buck is asking for results the like of which were attained in no war in the history of mankind...
...And it has long been a commonplace that people everywhere—not only the people of China and of India—"must find their salvation in themselves...
...TN my days in Russia the world "patriot" was never used in a complimentary sense...
...Most of the eighty committees are run to gain publicity for their chairmen/ There is no general steering-committee, no group which has the duty of seeing the function of Congress as a whole...
...The acceptance of the war status with only one dissenting voice and the passage of the appropriation bills without reading them were actions which truly represented the psychology of the country...
...Now in this revival of Russian nationalism there are both healthy and dangerous elements...
...Anyone with an inkling of history understands that the attainment of freedom cannot depend on any great voice...
...It will continue forever...
...I went through the Palace last week as an enlistee (enlistees go through the same routine at the same time and intermingled with selectees) and I can categorically deny first, that the examination takes "nine or ten hours...
...The planning so far carried on has remained exclusively in the executive departments...
...In print and in speech she has performed unique services...
...and the A. F. of L. ? Did you actually convince ^yourself that it is a sober statement to link the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers among the leftist group...
...The Crimean War was the prelude to tj* liberation of the serfs...
...The -very term "ttrtsV lectual" was made a term of Fsr those of the intelligentsia who did net fell hue the numerous traps and wide nets of th* political police there was the more subtle torture ef seeing Russian history distorted and Rusiise classical literature, musk, art and thought vilified by a youngyr generation whose cocksure-ness was only equalled by its ignorance...
...Willkie, while you cite his manful recent speech in a laudable manner, you seem to be searching for a guarantee on his motives...
...Newsrk, N. J. ( Objects to Emphasis on Labor Disunity From MORRIS KURINSKY To the Editor: Assuming that T. R. Greene, your labor Reporter, is really-such a renowned psychological labor observer as to be immune from having his opinions tempered, is it really tactful on your part to devote such a prominent place on the first page of The New Leader which emphasizes the hopeless outlook for labor unity between the C.I.O...
...And in Russia there is not a trickle of the flood of discussion of war strategy that comes to Americans in newspapers and magazines and over the radio...
...Secondly, the examination is in no way "misery...
...On the other hand, a dictatorship atsnT swings from one undesirable extreme to anew*** It is conceivable that the former extravagant historically unwarranted deprecation of lusswri pre-revolutionary contribution to wend efHb-zation may give way to an equally a' travagant, chauvinistic oner-valuation ?¦ Russia's place among the nations of tie world...
...She must know that in our democracy, she—and all of us on the liberal side—have the opportunity to continue our war for the right ideas...
...rodina and otechestvo would have been outlawed as "petty-bourgeois counterrevolution...
...Its tardiness in passing price control and tax legislation is surely responsible in part for the degree ,of inflation from which we suffer...
...After the Napetoonk War* Russia experienced its first constitutional sss**" merit, the unsuccessful uprising of the P*** bristi...
...The hearings were dignified and informative...
...the two leading Soviet newspapers, "Izvestiya" ("News") and "Pravda" ("Truth") run to four large pages with print so poorly executed that it is a strain on the eyes to read it...
...The editorial opens by telling of the "nine or ten hours of misery inflicted . . ." on the selectees by the army at the induction center in New York's Grand Central Palace...
...Are you so holy as to assume that there are no persons with political ambitions in your most cherished organisations...
...Yet in one respect there is such a great and fundamental change in the phraseology of the Soviet press that it was sometimes difficult for me to realize that I was reading the same newspapers which I had gone through regularly in Moscow from 1922 until 1934...
...Shall not these be saved...
...But the struggle for it will be intensified...
...At,thesame,time in Paris, Jacques Doriot's Party held a convention...
...In foreign affairs," be wrote, "the lead has always been taken, and must be taken, by the executive branch of the government Why cannot the elected representative of the people begin now to plan an aggressive defense against the civilian disasters which loom up already in the wake of the armament program...
...It can, at best, give us the opportunity to achieve them...
...Asia tno threat to us, but Europe is a threat to ia...
...The fact that we lose r.ow and then is no cause for despair...
...But politically she is among the innocents, and the great address which she delivered last week contained sentences which can all too easily be turned to a defeatist purpose...
...Right now there is no prospect of their taking the matter seriously or doing anything effective about it...
...For we of the West haw* ueuar...
...She is calling, moreover, for a happy ending which is irrevalent to the means employed...
...Retreat from the harmful fantasy of world revolution may be accompanied bjr tbr growth of a disposition toward natfonaHst sg...
...The service has been of a different sort and, on the whole, less satisfactory...
...This IS disunity...
...The only purpose the News could have in printing an article like this on two successive days with both a full page spread and an editorial is to cause discontent with and resentment against both the U. S. Army and our boys in its A Question to Maurois on French Unity From LOUIS REISS To the Editor: What price Unity ? Andre Maurois (The March of Time-WEAF) made an appeal for Unity, and for an Allied Victory . . . Maurois recommended an oath of allegiance for Frenchmen: "I swear, as long as there is one single German soldier in France, not to consider one singe Frenchman as an enemy...
...We are willing to die for the difference...
...It also is a fact, for the information of the Daily News, that we wore our shoes and stockings throughout all the examinations with the exception of perhaps one minute during which time we were being weighed with only our shorts and socks on...
...In furnishing a sort of filter, to the national thought through those months of 1941, this Congress served the country well...
...In relation to this matter, the sole distinction of House members goes to those who violently attempted to choke off the National Resources Planning Board by means of an amendment to an appropriation bill...
...It is under and around and all through it...
...To the uninitiated it would appear that The New Leader gloats in the prospective doom of a labor peace...
...henh, amis to matins that in the East there are civilizations far older and as great, if nut greater, thus Europe's civilizations...
...I went through the examination with the selectees and I found that whereas the News speaks of "cold room" there were steam pipes and radiators all over and the temperature was quite warm...
...about the destiny of Russia after the winT* recent apparently final abolition of the P0"1^" commissars is an omen pointing to the *u anyone' ening of the Army officers at the expense ef wR party bureaucracy...
...By sacrificing to win this war we are saving our lhes...
...But twice in one generation the peoples of the world have been shocked and shattered by conflicts arising in Europe...
...It is up to us to prove—now and later—that they are worth saving...
...The Daily News continues by quoting their anonymous selectee who claims, "The 'first Army man to greet us was a private who barked, 'No papers!' He meant that it was not permissible to carry newspapers upstairs...
...Some scholars or writers like Maurois are sometimes guilty of such mental sloth...
...Far from grasping an evident opportunity, these legislators could think of no function more dignified than that of the dog in the manger...
...The fact that it cannot be won with tanks and planes is no cause for pessimism...
...That is much more than the Title Guarantee Co...
...If the Seventy-eighth Congress gave promise of better things, our thoughts on this occasion might have an edge of cheer...
...This sounds like a demand from certain groups in the past who asked for a future, guarantee of democracy before they would condescend to assent to effective aid to England against the Nazi and Fascist degenerates...
...Eliot's colleagues in the House tailed to give due heed to the clear-headed young man from Massachusetts...
...He is given the straightest type of nationalist propaganda, reinforced by apyuals to the memory of medieval princes like Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy and of Tsarist Generals, such as Suvorow and Kutuzov...
...This statement is not true...
...It is, of course, well known to all thoughtful persons that the struggle for freedom is an endless one...
...Newspapers are allowed...
...These developments are only the consummation of a process that has been going on for some years in Russian social life and education...
...The First World War sfUtee *» death warrant of the Romanov dynasty.___ In a country where no free political sw*W is permitted it is impossible to discern W*W** ' cision and certainty the shape of things to *•¦•* But it is a sound assumption that the largs of young Red Army officers who art bewf trained in an atmosphere and tradition •J** tense nationalism will have a good deal to in...
...Deat and Laval are for a German Victory...
...EDITORIAL COMMENT THE OLD CONGRESS—AND THE HEW IUST a year ago Congressman Thomas H. Eliot—soon to be ex-Congressman—had an interesting idea...
...Whereas the original "party line" was to represent pre-war Russia as a political, economic and cultural howling wilderness, to convey the Impression that there was no creative progress whatever before the Revolution, the recent treed has been to exalt the old Russian cultural heritage, to hold up Pushkin and Tschaikoviky ss figures for emulation, instead of sneering st them as "petty bourgeois" (to use the word abused by every half- or quarter-educated Young Communist during the twenties...
...The "payoff" of the episode is the tale that there Were "no toilet facilities" claims the News, which quotes the mysterious selectee as saying that he "was in agony for hours,' and that he "wasn't the only one...
...I found them to be regular fellows...
...Miss Buck, pretussmbiy, knows Asiatic history...
...The central part of Miss Buck's discontent is based on our concentration on Europe, on our comparative disregard of Asia: "It is only a war to save European civilization...
...But there is no promise of a continuation of this effort...
...it takes four hours at the longest...
...And why is Phil Pearl to be glorified as a capable labor spokesman though he glosses over the labor racketeers who hamper the Kaiser Company from hiring the most wronged citizens in the country, while Murray should mainly be pictured as a leftist tool and not primarily as a .vigorous and non-compromising champion of the rights of the common people on every important issue — whether labor rights or poll-tax brigands are involved...
...The President was always a step ahead— with his ideas of Lend-Lease, with his Four Freedoms...
...This is NOT Unity...
...gave to the.;, investors for "guaranteed bonds" in the past...
...A SWING of the pendulum in the direction of s reasonable appreciation of the RfSSUU past is highly desirable, as is the apparent diminution in the output of shoddy propagssds trash which formerly went by the ssuUs at "proletarian literature...
...In the nature of things what we call democracy is a matter of growth, of understanding, of mutual adjustments...
...And yet this seventy-seventh federal legislature—judged on the basis of its history-making actions rather than on the basis of the irresponsible mouthings of its most scurrilous members—has a record "which brings it up at least to the level of its wartime predecessors...
...The question as to whether Congress will win back the place it once occupied in our government is entirely up to the legislators...
...The outer format is the same...
...But in the whole great field of domestic legislation during this year of war, the Congress has made a pitiful failure...
...The political war is simultaneous with the military struggle...
...This war cannot give us the deep human goods...
...but there is never a whisper of speculation as to what the near and ultimate aims of Soviet strategy may be...
...Doriot...
Vol. 25 • December 1942 • No. 51
