RUSSIA'S IRON HOOP
DALLIN, DAVID J.
East and West Russia's Iron Hoop By David J. Dallin AFRONT-PAGE EDITORIAL appeared In Pravda, June 26, dealing with the results of the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers. The editorial...
...It returned with the hellish preaching of Jonathan Edwards and again in the 19th century...
...From those days of yore to the present, members of his family have played their part, as duly recorded in The Proper Bostonians...
...In New England attics to this day you will find children's religious books that are positively hair-raising—and remember that these were the only books these children had...
...The editorial disagrees with Mr...
...This is why it appears doubtful whether safeguarding Soviet prestige can reasonably be made a concern of American policy...
...That I cannot answer...
...it broke with all appeasement policies, and it arrived at the conclusion—which today is taken for granjted— that only firmness can "contain" Russia and perhaps make Stalin retreat...
...There always had to be a higher motive...
...Research, no doubt, could discover others...
...And he has spoken without any inhibition...
...It came, in fact, from a New Englander of the New Englanders...
...Using every resource, both inside Russia and in the satellite ' countries, Russia tries to maintain the notion that it never retreats, does not make mistakes, knows no failures, and that consequently no resistance to its policies is possible...
...The Reformation brought new fashions in thought about religious matters and for a while they prevailed mightily...
...vn» Mr...
...But my lists made no impression at all...
...It is a sine qua non of successful dealing with Russia that . . . demands on Russian policy should be put forward In such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Soviet prestige...
...I was merely acknowledging it and making a slight down-payment...
...I tried to stand up to him, to defend his countryside...
...This advice has proved impossible of realization...
...Until well into the last century even young children were exposed Jo the most unmitigated Calvinism...
...Whether inherited or not, there are fashions in human thinking...
...I discovered that there are many like me, hailing from the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, who have been hospitably received in the East and who have an abiding appreciation of the charms of the land which their ancestors left for the westward wandering...
...One of hie two daughters died in a psychopathic hospit...
...These words, Pravda says, "are a mixture of immodest boasting and biased interpretation...
...It had authority and authenticity...
...I certainly think so...
...Desert Island, Maine...
...Four days later Pravda carried an interview With Andrei Vishinsky on its front page...
...Kennan wrote, It la by no means unamenable to considerations of prestige...
...Pleasure, even the most innocent, was intrinsically sinful...
...and Mrs...
...Along with military power, prestige is one of the iron hoops holding together the Soviet powder keg...
...Kennan was right in pointing out that inflated Soviet prestige is a major factor .in international affairs today...
...To many people it has become a kind of joke...
...AH of this formed the substance of a spirited correspondence...
...It was my fate to spend many years in a household where every act became a soul-searching matter of conscience...
...I enumerated the names of the rather exceptionally liberal Senators from New England...
...that it was "stupid" to hope that it could feed two million Berlinera (especially in winter...
...I was not in any sense paying a debt to the old Northeast...
...New Times, on June 29, carried an article in which the statements of President Truman and Secretary Acheson were again refuted...
...This semiofficial article intelligently analyzed the "sources of Soviet conduct...
...I wasn't there during the comparatively short period in the seventeenth century when the Puritans ruled England...
...Actually, they said nothing new...
...The editorial caused something of a sensation...
...This man, then, has a right to speak...
...it is frightening...
...Failure is failure and defeat is defeat...
...Kennan did say some things which, seen in the light of the present situation, are less convincing...
...Take my Great-Uncle X, for example...
...However, Mr...
...The interview was enromously long, but only repeated what the editorial had said a few days before...
...Like almost any ether government It cast be placed by tactless end threatening gestures In a position where it cannot afford to yield...
...IHkVE NEVER RECEIVED so much pleasant patting on the back as followed upon my column in appreciation of New England...
...No multi-millionaire he, but he made enough in business to live and entertain in a fairly opulent manner...
...One of his slsters-ln-law 'went insane' as they used to say—and a brother-in-law married an extreme neurotic...
...Who hasn't heard of the New England conscience...
...Neither the war in Indonesia nor the Communist advance in China have rated such attention...
...All of these I knew or remember being told about...
...To the real New Englander, however, it isn't funny...
...At the Paris Conference, much against Mr...
...Uncle X and his prim little wife were received by most 'proper Bostonians' and have their becoming niche in Cleveland Amory's book...
...When, therefore, Pravda publishes a page one editorial on an international event, you may be sure it is deemed of special significance...
...But Mr...
...The worst cases in their immediate family developed after their death...
...Is it not surprising that the Truman and Acheson pronouncements have aroused such' excitement in Moscow...
...Is it any wonder that in such a mental climate many weaker minds became warped...
...I choose Uncle X because in many ways he is so typical of the best type of New Englander...
...Truman and Mr...
...e e AS A COMMENTARY ON THE TRUMAN Doctrine, George Kennan of the State Department wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs two years ago which he signed as "X...
...While the Kremlin U basically flexible In its reaction to political realiiW Mr...
...The firmness of American policy, and the combined pressure of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Pact, have convinced Moscow that the blockade of Berlin must be lifted, that territorial annexations at the cost of Austria have to be given up, and that normal trade relations between East and West have to be established...
...Vishinsky's liking, a"" special "Berlin" paragraph was inserted in the communique, according to which the four powers undertake "to ensure the normal functioning and utilization of rail, water, and road transport for movement of persons and goods...
...At the height of the blockade, political writers in this country—non-communists, but halfhearted political observers—tried to convince the White House and the public that the airlift could not be maintained "indefinitely...
...Three other female relations of Uncle X were manic depresslves (eae of these a suicide...
...The point I want to make is that Mr...
...You suggest that Puritans who remained In England were not notably psychopathic...
...I made lists of writers, educators, missionaries...
...Soviet policy was defeated in Berlin, and Moscow must bear the consequences...
...Two of his three sons married women wae became Insane—as did one of his grand-daughters...
...and that concessions to Moscow would have to be made...
...The wrath of the Almighty was always in evidence...
...To build a golden bridge to enable Russia to retreat, or let the world believe Soviet claims that its failures are victories— in short, for Washington and Moscow to cooperate ht salvaging Soviet prestige—would be more than public opinion could stomach...
...Significantly, most of the appreciation came from fellow Midwesterners...
...I do know, however, that Puritan modes of thought still control the minds and hearts of thousands of New Englanders...
...But amid this chorus of approval, there was one stern voice of dissent...
...The Home Front Point of Departure By William E. Bohn Ml...
...In New England religion it took the form of Unitarianism, but the old intolerance (or 'orthodoxy') was not dead...
...Truman's statement that the Conference and its decisions have proved the soundness of the American policy...
...Simultaneously, the Wallaceites noisily predicted early failure for the "policy of firmness" toward Moscow...
...My arguments were countered with horrific reports of New England Neuroses...
...and whether refutation of the Soviet We-AlwaysWin legend ought not to become a basic element of American propaganda...
...Front-page editorials in the Soviet press usually deal with internal affairs economic issues, education, "Socialist competition,""and so on...
...X were a normal, successful New England couple quite unaware* of the fact that they were enveloped in a cloud of psychopaths...
...Then came the 18th century, the age of reason...
...Acheson have been proved right: little as the Paris Conference has achieved, it has demonstrated that the so-called Truman Doctrine of 1947—embodying conclusions drawn from two years of postwar softness toward Soviet aggression—was correct and is beginning to bear fruit...
...Parading before the Russian people as the great victor, and ridiculing the "boasting President of the United States," are desperate attempts to save face...
...He is descended, he explains, not from the slightly disreputable common folk who arrived in the crowded Mayflower in 1620, but from the more patrician Puritans who in 1632 founded Boston and, a little later, graciously annexed (for its own good) the struggling community which had been laying down the law of the Lord in the neighborhood of Plymouth Rock...
...This brought down the deluge: * * * "ARE NEUROSES MORE COMMON in old England families than elsewhere...
...Once I wrote innocently, "I don't suppose you Can prove statistically that New Englanders have more neuroses than other folks...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 29
