Visit to the USSR

...If the Eisenhower-Khrushchev talks fix a few targets for agreement in multilateral negotiation over the next few months, a momentum can be created which will much increase the chances that Soviet diplomacy will take the forward path...

...In my opinion...

...And you cannot help wondering when you tour the monuments of Leningrad and Petrovarets whether Khrushchev will prove to be the political heir of Peter the Great—whom he so much resembles in personal character...

...The city of Kazan is burning like a torch in the background...

...Every country, of course, has its own prejudices, and is unduly influenced by its own experience...

...Beneath her are two wells...

...The concept of political (hange as one of the revolution under Communist party leadership is still so deeply rooted in the Soviet mentality that the utmost precision is required of any agreement between the West and Russia which involves either spheres of influence or neutral zones...

...Russia has now reached a point in its diplomacy, as in its internal development, where it must either go forward or go back...

...Russia is genuinely worried about the political, economic and technical dangers of continuing the arms race with the U.S...

...Thus in fact the current trend of Soviet policy is calculated to produce precisely the situation Russia fears most...

...But I saw not a single statue of Khrushchev and only a few pictures—usually accompanied by pictures of Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov or Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan or Marshal Rodion Malinovsky...

...Are the ubiquitous Chinese students and apprentices now in all the Russian cities the precursors of another "Golden Horde...

...One sees pictures and statues of Lenin everywhere, of Stalin only a little less often...

...But the Byzantine ancestry of Joseph Stalin becomes immediate reality when you stand under the barbaric arches of the 15th century Grano-vitaya Palace in the Kremlin...

...But it is still reluctant to embark on the type of positive cooperation with the West which would be needed to establish real collective security...

...Already they are visibly embarrassed by Chinese behavior in Tibet and on the Indian frontier...

...The essential "otherness" of Russia, as of the United States, can be fully grasped only after a personal visit...

...Indeed, Khrushchev himself has sometimes expressed such views...

...but the plot was from a novel by a young English writer who is not a Communist...

...There are more television sets in the cities than in most cities of Western Europe—and a familiar stock of television jokes is emerging...

...To put it concretely, it will prove much easier to negotiate a European settlement if the West European countries remain militarily interdependent with the U.S...

...It is a platitude to talk of the continuity of Russian history...

...World War II is still close in memory—every apartment I went into had a photograph of a dead son or father on the wall...

...It is true that there was an anti-colonial ballet, "Paths of Thunder," in which South African whites were caricatured...

...But I can sum up the general impression they left with me...

...It is surprising that they have not learned the one great truth behind Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's foreign policy: So long as Germany is divided, the West will be compelled to give West Germany increasing military power and political influence...

...Peaceful coexistence must turn to positive cooperation...

...British Labor MP finds Soviet Union's views distorted by 'ignorance even at the highest levels' VISIT TO THE USSR By Denis Healey LONDON AMONG the superb collection of ikons in Moscow's Tretiakoff Gallery there is a fascinating painting called "The Church Militant...

...The nearest thing to political satire we saw was at the Moscow Circus, where the greatest living clown, Oleg Popov, painted a picture with his feet and called it "Abstract Figure"—but this might have been aimed as much at Polish as at American painting...

...No one would blame the Russians for their feelings about Germany...

...The other is the source of a mighty river—it is the Russian Orthodox Church...

...Moreover, Moscow quite misunderstands the function in atomic-age diplomacy of alliances such as NATO...

...Besides the ever-present sense of Russia's past, the visitor is most impressed by the ways in which the rising living standard is bringing Russian popular culture closer to that of the West...

...To a large extent, the persistence of these old Leninist concepts is based on ignorance of conditions in the capitalist world...

...The Mother of God has sent forth a swarm of angels to welcome the host...

...than if half a dozen of them have their own hydrogen bombs...

...and if America ever did decide to leave a divided Europe, it would first build up West Germany to take its place along the Iron Curtain...

...Moreover, the Russians cannot be unconscious of the danger that the Chinese may one day repeat the Tartar precedent...

...Hugh Gaitskell, Aneurin Bevan and I had a series of conversations with the Soviet leaders, including three-and-a-half hours' intensive discussion with Khrushchev...

...Indeed, the situation is such that one is tempted to feel that any contact whatever between Soviet citizens and the West is pure gain for the West...

...The obstacle to settlement on the Western side at present is not the existence of NATO, but the failure of its members to agree with one another...

...into hemispheric isolation...

...Nine hundred days of siege have given Leningrad a trauma which will last for generations...

...Moreover, they seem to think that this process can take place simultaneously with the withdrawal of the U.S...

...There are signs that some opinion in Russia is beginning to recognize that atomic power is, to use the Marxist jargon, producing a qualitative change in international relations which will require some agonizing reappraisals of Leninist doctrine...

...The advance in living standards over the last six years has been rapid and continuous—and is expected to go on...

...One cannot hope in 10 crowded days under official escort to form a balanced picture of the Russian people or of Soviet society...

...For example, since for the Russians a Communist coup d'etat is the natural, "democratic"' means of changing a social system, an agreement to let the West Berliners choose their own way of life would not be worth the paper it was written on unless it included provisions for defending that way of life, by force if necessary—in other words, by having Western troops inside the city...

...Now that a small nation can imagine that atomic weapons will give it immunity against direct attack even by a great power, it may believe that it can also veto a regional settlement of which it does not approve...

...Humanite and Unita gives a terrifying idea of the darkness within which the average Russian has to live...

...Moreover, the type of peaceful competition Moscow envisages at present includes forms of political subversion which the West might well treat as a casus belli...

...Moreover, one feels that the form and content of Khrushchev's attack on Stalin in 1956 have made it impossible for him, at least, ever to assume a similar position...

...But however much you have read of the works of experts on the Soviet Union, unless you have physical knowledge of the country you are liable to interpret the findings in categories which are appropriate only to societies with which you are familiar...

...And they are ready to make another deal with Germany, as Stalin did with Hitler, once the point of no return is reached...

...There are no visible signs that Khrushchev is drifting toward a new personality cult...

...But the recovery from a war in which Russia lost 20 million lives is no less remarkable...

...There is scarcely any propaganda in popular entertainment...

...But they are hopelessly unrealistic in believing that they can solve the German problem by keeping Germany divided, persuading the West to keep West Germany in an inferior position, and then winning over the West Germans to Communism...

...A week's stay in a Moscow hotel with no newspapers to read except the Daily Worker...

...Since they were all private, I cannot describe their content...

...This type of insight is the real reward for visitors to Russia...

...they are hagridden by the fear that the West is arming Germany in order to launch it against the Soviet Union—as they believe the West did in the 1930s...

...It is easier to study Soviet diplomacy from abroad—although a personal discussion with Premier Nikita Khrushchev has a unique value...

...The whole painting could serve as a parable of the Communism of Lenin and Stalin...

...It shows the army of Ivan the Terrible returning from its great victory over the Tartars...

...the extent of this ignorance even at the highest levels was continually shocking us...

...One of them is dry—it represents the Church of Rome...

...Moscow is now full of cars, although only a minority are owned by individuals...

...Much, perhaps everything, will depend on the reaction of Western diplomacy to the first fumbling approaches now made by Russia to common action on a few of the more obvious common dangers...

...We watched Russia's first ice-show in Leningrad—most of the acts could have been taken from Birmingham or Pittsburgh...