A Minimum Program for Moscow
LUNDBERG, FERDINAND
The Future of Communism A MINIMUM PROGRAM FOR MOSCOW By Ferdinand Lundberg Are the rulers of the Kremlin becoming more friendly toward the free world, auguring a period of international good...
...These two questions have been pushed to the fore by the recent behavior of the impresarios of the Iron Curtain...
...On the correct answer to them depends the future well-being of the free world...
...Ever since the revolution of 1917, the Soviet Government has denied Russian citizens the right to travel freely abroad...
...It has offered many excuses for this denial but one of its effects has been that rank-and-file Russians have not been able to see for themselves that, most of the time, the Soviet Government has been systematically lying about conditions abroad...
...The series began in our June 18 issue with an article by George F. Kennan...
...Again, if the Russian Government is as friendly as it now professes to be, it will cease the jamming of foreign radio broadcasts in Russia and will permit full and free radio speech...
...It would restore Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia to genuine independence...
...Everything I have suggested is wholly intangible...
...If it is argued that Russia, in the present stage of its development, cannot afford to allow foreign tourism, then the free world should be happy to finance such travel...
...If the Kremlin is truly turning friendly, there is a minimum program to which it will adhere...
...It is my purpose here to suggest what, in general, such a program would involve...
...The free world has nothing to fear from the outcome of such discussion...
...For the general point of view that has guided the Kremlin for nearly forty years has wrought more havoc in human affairs than any previous political viewpoint in history...
...Ferdinand Lundberg, author of America's Sixty Families, The Treason of the People and other books, now lectures at New York University...
...Preventing rank-and-file Russians, as distinct from top Soviet officials, from traveling abroad is not friendly, either to Russians or to the other peoples of the world...
...If it were extremely friendly, as Khrushchev and Bulganin seem to be attempting to suggest, it would set about relinquishing the fruits of its aggression, particularly aggression against non-offending peoples during World War II...
...No holds need be barred, on either side, in pro and con argument...
...Not only should free travel abroad be permitted Russian citizens but a beginning might be made by permitting tree travel within Russia, without the necessity for carrying internal passports...
...The Future of Communism A MINIMUM PROGRAM FOR MOSCOW By Ferdinand Lundberg Are the rulers of the Kremlin becoming more friendly toward the free world, auguring a period of international good feeling...
...If that government is not friendly to its own people, why should one assume it might be friendly to others...
...The careful cultural censorship exercised over its people by the Soviet Government is itself a bad omen for the future peace of the world...
...If the Soviet Government were in the least friendly, it would make changes along the lines here suggested...
...The Kremlin, first, if it intends to enter into friendly relations with the human race, will terminate restrictions on external travel by rank-and-file Russians...
...But as long as the Kremlin does little more than say pleasant things, with a few token gestures here and there, it would be well to maintain intelligent skepticism...
...And, if they are, just how friendly are they becoming...
...If anything is said over the radio to which the Russian Government takes exception, it should make its rebutting argument via radio to the Russian people, allowing them to decide who is right...
...Were the Kremlin to initiate such changes, I for one would begin to feel that there was something substantial about the friendly professions of Khrushchev and Bulganin...
...I would conclude that they were trying seriously to come to grips with the world of the atomic age, forswearing Stalinist medievalism...
...This is the ninth article in our current symposium on the post-Stalin evolution of Communist society...
...A government intending peace would not go to such great lengths to stunt and deprive the minds of its own citizens...
...Though the answers now being heard appear to express every possible nuance in the spectrum of opinion, there are many concrete tests that can be applied, thus dispensing with indecisive argument...
...Nothing I have so far suggested would cost the Russian Government anything concrete or material...
...A friendly Russian government, then, will lift such travel restrictions...
...To the intangibles I have already suggested might be added those of free circulation in Russia of all literature, Russian and non-Russian, contemporary and past...
...The police-state surveillance exercised over its own people inspires doubt about the essential friendliness of the Soviet Government toward the peoples of the world...
...subsequent contributors were Adolf A. Berle Jr., Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Louis J. Halle, Norman Thomas, Dwight Macdonald, Franz Borkenau, R. H. S. Crossman and Donald Harrington...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 35
