Postscripts to Berlin

...After thirty-six years of Soviet rule, there is no reason to be disappointed or surprised by anything...

...While any estimate now must be subject to revision in the light of further developments, including what happens on EDC, it is worthwhile to attempt a balance-sheet while firsthand impressions are still fresh...

...Molotov's refusal to budge on Germany and Austria antagonized most people in both those countries, where close daily contact with the Soviets has long since rubbed the varnish off Communist reality...

...Winston Churchill has not yet found time to read the works of either Stalin or Lenin...

...The first item on his shopping list was getting the West to agree to a Far Eastern conference with Red China included...

...However, it is not speeches, sermons, smiles and banquets that will convince the cynical realists who today occupy the Kremlin...

...No doubt Dulles's trenchant analysis and skilful rebuttals forced Molotov to overexpose his hand...

...Ministerial shake-ups have been under way, since the death of Stalin, in every one of the Union republics...

...At the time, he was giving a lesson in realism to doctrinaire Marxists who were incapable of flexibility in maneuver, but the leaders of the free world can profit from his words today...

...There is, then, no reason to listen to these lying pronouncements, or to comment on them as though they were worthy of admiring attention...

...They view "coexistence" and "detentes" only in terms of their own advantage and, hence, to be granted only in return for Western concessions...

...As it turned out, the decision to hold a Far Eastern conference in Geneva next April was the only outcome of the Berlin meeting...

...They accepted his agenda only in order to avoid endless wrangling on procedure, intending to sidetrack the "irrelevant" item so as to get on with "the main business...

...Certainly it was considerably more than the strictly limited Korean political conference which the United States had offered at the outset...

...are going to say...

...Just recently, an editorial in Figaro cited a celebrated passage by Lenin which everyone concerned with politics should know by heart...

...It is incomprehensible that some statesmen and most political commentators in the West should find the outcome of the Berlin conference "disappointing...

...Most of them indicated they would wait and see whether the French Assembly approved EDC before shouting "Victory...

...may find it essential to seek a breathing spell in the present arduous and expensive arms race...

...Boris Souvarine, author of a monumental biography of Stalin, began his analysis of Berlin in last week's issue...

...In order to say "No," we have no need for spectacular conferences, supposedly designed for talks among a few top leaders, but actually attended by over a hundred assorted delegates, with thousands of journalists, celebrity-hounds and other busybodies swarming about...

...We would do better to abandon all this and leave matters to the chancelleries, allow the ambassadors to perform their functions without fanfare and show...

...If Sir Winston Churchill, the man most responsible for these useless four- and five-power talkfests, now finds the whole thing "disappointing," that merely proves that he labors under tenacious illusions and that his information lacks consistency...

...If words have meaning, this is certainly a form of de facto, if not de jure, recognition...

...Secretary Dulles himself expressed his disapproval of conferences which set up other conferences...

...These are the writings dating back to the period when Communist theoreticians were completely frank about their aims and methods...

...It is therefore possible that the U.S.S.R...

...Only the Communists have something to gain from these forensic exercises, which serve to deceive one part of world public opinion and demoralize the other...

...And if Moscow, under the pressure of domestic needs, should decide to make concessions, it would do so without elaborate staging, movie cameras or microphones...

...The Soviet negotiators only pretend to negotiate...

...Otherwise, he might not have been so eager to anticipate Moscow's desire for a four-power conference, "at the highest level," as a prelude to a subsequent five-power conference including China...

...But such concessions affect the Geneva conference's form rather than its content...

...The rest depends upon a process of evolution which the West cannot influence so long as it remains paralyzed by conscientious scruples in a cold war which is waged in only one direction...

...One meeting after another is held in Moscow to discuss agricultural problems, and the ruling Presidium deems it necessary to make the gesture of attending in a body...

...The Western delegates did have some hopes of settling the Austrian Treaty, but Molotov disabused them...

...And the Western press is equally guilty of promoting Soviet propaganda by giving it so much space in its columns and spinning out its commentaries ad infinitum...

...The abandonment of the grandiose projects for "Stalinist transformation of nature," the substantial concessions to collective farmers, and the huge importation of foreign goods point in this direction...

...At the same time, I found members of other Western delegations cautious about sharing American optimism...

...Once Molotov had indicated this possibility at his proposed Far Eastern conference, French Foreign Minister Bidault could ill afford to pass it by...

...Some observers have since wryly remarked that, if the conference called on the German and Austrian questions could decide a Far Eastern matter, perhaps the best way to get agreement on Germany and Austria would be to place them on the agenda of the forthcoming Far Eastern parley...

...Edmund Stevens, who covered the conference for the Christian Science Monitor, is a Pulitzer Prize correspondent now stationed in Rome...

...Dulles's prime purpose in coming to Berlin was to record publicly the futility of trying to reach agreement with the Russians on Germany and European security, and thus to clear the way for the speedy adoption of EDC, especially in France...

...However, knowledge of certain writings is essential to an understanding of the strategy and tactics of the "world revolution...

...It is not necessary to wade through the complete works of Lenin and Stalin, or Communist literature, with its cliches, catch-all formulas and tedious repetition, or the Soviet press, where the same endless banalities are retailed day after day ad nauseam...

...Admittedly...

...At the Berlin tournament, the Soviet Foreign Minister appears to have defended his title successfully...

...In the course of the bargaining, Molotov had made some concessions, such as agreeing that the agenda be limited to two items (Korea and Indo-China) and accepting the stipulation that the decision to confer with Peking did not constitute diplomatic recognition of the Red regime by those countries which had previously not recognized it...

...Secretary Dulles once described Molotov as the ablest diplomat of the century...

...Signs are multiplying of a permanent domestic crisis in the U.S.S.R., as much in the political as in the economic sphere...

...His achievement was all the more striking because the Western powers had never intended to consider such a subject at Berlin...

...By the mere fact of taking the Kremlin's spokesmen seriously, the leaders of the West lend weight to their lies...

...He was primarily talking over the heads of the delegates to certain susceptible sections of French opinion...

...Next, with his European security proposal, he hoped to sell the French the notion that their best protection against German militarism was to look to the Soviet Union instead of the United States...

...By Edmund Stevens Berlin The question of who outsmarted whom at the Berlin Conference will be argued for months to come...

...The two articles together give a rounded picture of the conference's results...

...Dulles and Molotov dominated the Berlin proceedings...

...A fundamental, organic incompatibility exists between the Soviet regime and those of the free world...

...Why Berlin Failed By Boris Souvarine (Second of two articles) Paris Whenever a conference is held among representatives of the great powers, one knows in advance what the spokesmen of the U.S.S.R...

...On the contrary, we should completely ignore them, and should not lend ourselves to sham conferences which resemble conclaves of the deaf...

...And, regardless of the express reservation on non-recognition, the salient fact remains that the Western powers have agreed to sit at the same table and negotiate with Red China at the highest diplomatic level...

...Coldly brief mention, accompanied by curt, dry refutation, would produce a completely different effect on the reader and foil the enemy's designs...

...The United States delegation, in turn, was induced to make concessions for Bidault's sake, and could hardly have done otherwise without running the risk of a break in Western unity...

...strikingly different from today's hypocritical resort to phrases about "freedom" and "democracy," they have been borne out by deeds many times over...

...Though both Eden and Bidault made valuable contributions, theirs were essentially supporting roles, with Secretary Dulles as the senior Western spokesman...

...For, once the conference gets under way, almost any Far Eastern issue probably can, and will, be brought up with the excuse that it bears on either Korea or Indo-China...

...Last year, John Foster Dulles disclosed that he had finally read Stalin's Problems of Leninism, a book originally published in 1926, over a quarter of a century earlier...

...The entire Soviet press, as well as the Communist press in other parts of the world, feeds from the same sources: the special sections of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party...

...Though the main official object of the conference was to discuss German unification, neither side had any serious expectations of agreement on this question...

...When Molotov included this Far Eastern proposal in his agenda as Item 1, his Western colleagues were taken by complete surprise...

...In Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Lenin wrote that his party was engaged in a war "a hundred times more difficult, longer and more complex than the most desperate of the ordinary wars between states" and that this war involved shifts, temporary agreements and compromises, and utilization of conflicts of interest in the enemy's camp...

...In this he succeeded...

...The Vietminh offensive was carefully timed to put the bite on him in this connection...

...What Molotov got was somewhat less than his initial demand for a full-dress five-power conference with Red China an inviting power on the same footing as the others and a general agenda on Far Eastern matters...

...But it was probably more than the crafty old trader had hoped for...

...Austria and the rest of Western Europe, observers pointed out that Molotov had nevertheless managed to elicit from all three Western delegates the admission that a unified Germany would not be bound to accept EDC...

...Molotov at Berlin and Vishinsky at New York do no more than recite the latest articles from Pravda (or Izvestia or Literaturnaya Gazeta)—articles which are always the same, whatever the variation in form or detail...

...Who Outsmarted Whom...

...We should take this as an established fact and not constantly question such a vital truth...

...In this war of nerves waged in only one direction, it is contrary to our interests to treat the Kremlin as if it were a government "like any other," that is, one that has certain principles in common with Western governments in spite of divergent viewpoints and clashes of interest...

...The American delegation claims that Molotov failed in this, that his various proposals were so obviously booby-trapped, so patently designed to get American troops out and leave Western Europe undefended against Soviet expansionism, that he built up the case for EDC and Western unity...

...Moreover, his obvious attempts to upset the military balance by getting the Americans out of Europe must have shocked the neutralists...

...To achieve his objective, Molotov fully exploited French eagerness to negotiate an end to the war in Indo-China...

...Molotov, on the other hand, sought to use the debate on German unification to block EDC, by playing on French fear of German rearmament...

...One can also do "readings" in Moscow's actual foreign and domestic policies, provided one keeps firmly in mind their unchanging guiding lines and is not fooled by temporary diplomatic stratagems and the interviews periodically granted for the exclusive benefit of certain gullible souls...

...But blocking EDC and undermining NATO defenses was only one of Molotov's reasons for coming to Berlin...

...Without underrating Dulles's achievement in forcing Molotov out into the open on Soviet intentions toward Germany...

...They insisted that many people would conclude from this that, while approval of EDC now would mean an immediate green light to German rearmament, a rearmed and unified Germany would be free to repudiate the restrictions and obligations which EDC imposed...

...The Soviet regime is taking tons of gold from its cellars to buy meat in France, sugar in Britain, and butter in Australia and Denmark in order to provide its miserable subjects with a minimum subsistence...

...it exists by very definition—a definition formulated many times by Lenin and Stalin...

...Some observers describe this as a political time-fuse which, in due course, as the implications sink in, may well blow the props out from under EDC...

...since there had been no hope to begin with, there can be no disappointment...