The Cultural Exchange Gamble
KALB, MARVIN L.
The Cultural Exchange Gamble By Marvin L. Kalb Aware of both risks and gains, Washington and Moscow are 'willing to play the game' GEORGI A. Zhukov, Chairman of the Soviet State Committee for...
...Moreover, Khrushchev is a supremely confident man who has given every appearance of believing in the inherent superiority of his system...
...both nations have excellent reasons for cultivating exchanges...
...Second, the U.S...
...They may have preferred an extra tractor —or even a towering "scientific" rocket—but they were delighted with the hi-fi recordings, the pictorial display of The Family of Man and the beautifully bound art books that had a curious habit of vanishing in thick Russian crowds...
...which they otherwise might never have known...
...Moscow realizes that grandiose projects in exchangemanship, such as the American Exhibit, can have unhappy consequences...
...The delegates were reported as "indignant," but Zhukov calmed their fears...
...In effect, Washington seems to be saying that America can hold its own in any economic competition with the Soviet Union— Moscow's rapid rates of economic growth notwithstanding...
...he now feels the Russian people can take on My Fair Lady...
...Soviet propaganda portrays an America of cigar-smoking, secretary-pinching capitalists and of hungry, unemployed workers...
...and both nations have agreed to undertake joint research to conquer the scourges of cancer and heart disease...
...In his second cultural exchange agreement with the U.S., he has given Zhukov the green light to accept an increase in the flow of books, magazines, art and theater into the Soviet Union, which is what Washington wants, if the U.S...
...Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is getting the better of the exchanges...
...Since both sides are willing to gamble, both sides will continue to play the game...
...Yet the U.S...
...Washington does regard cultural exchanges as a kind of Trojan Horse...
...Even Khrushchev and Eisenhower are being exchanged...
...If exchanges offer a greater opportunity for swapping ideas about Mao Tse-tung—however indirectly— then exchanges are heralded as a good thing...
...Yet the Soviet system remains totalitarian, and Moscow realizes that lifting the Curtain involves fundamental risks...
...Like his superior, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, Zhukov has MARVIN L. KALB, a CBS-News specialist on Soviet affairs, is author of the recent book, Eastern Exposure...
...They see a vibrant nation with a booming economy...
...a handful of our scholarly specialists on Soviet affairs is studying in Soviet universities...
...Hardly a day passes that an American educator or diplomat does not applaud Russia's Gross National Product or gawk at its rockets...
...For the first time, the Russian people see that capitalism can satisfy the wildest wants of its consumers while simultaneously pursuing a mammoth armaments program...
...They see a healthy people, who are fairly well dressed and who even laugh in public...
...For example, some of the main props of the Soviet propaganda system have been removed...
...The American Exhibit also provided the Russians with new information about the U.S...
...He never defined "anti-Soviet materials," but later he did speak about "corrupted films and art . . . and decadent, bourgeois ideas...
...Khrushchev openly concedes that Russia still wants to learn from Western technology and wants a marked increase in trade with the U.S...
...The Iron Curtain had to be raised— partially...
...In his two weeks of negotiations with Ambassador Thompson, Zhukov tried to include a provision that would permit his Government to select the American artists who would perform in the USSR, to screen the ideas contained in the American journals that would debut on Moscow kiosks, and to censor the contents of the American books that would be sent on exhibit...
...inexhaustible energy...
...Here, then, is still another value of exchanges, for they frequently have a way of allaying old suspicions and spreading good will...
...Washington appreciates the dangers and benefits of cultural exchange every bit as much as does Moscow...
...The State Department, of course, realizes that the destruction of these misconceptions could eventually lead to the ideological subversion of the entire Soviet system...
...In this sense, exchange-manship is regarded as a subtle, gentle pressure in this direction...
...Third, like Moscow, Washington too has a profound confidence in its "way of life...
...The exhibition was brutally attacked in the Soviet press, but the Russian people read these attacks with the usual balance of skepticism and sophistication...
...Last summer, during Sokolniki Park's glittering exhibition of Americana—abstract art, shiny Chevrolets and gorgeous gadgetry—the Russians were wide-eyed in admiration...
...is motivated in most of its foreign policy by a naive faith in the goodness of man...
...Moscow feels it can run the risk of losing the allegiance of its people...
...Washington feels it can run the risk of losing its economic and technological superiority...
...signs a new agreement with Moscow that could give Soviet scientists more chances to pick up valuable information that can later be applied in the manufacture of destructive missiles...
...Many Russians have even dared to demand a greater share of the national production...
...He is also the busiest...
...Two successful lunar probes have enhanced his confidence...
...a dismal score on successful rocket launchings—despite all these major, negative considerations, there is the feeling that in the clutch America will come through as it always has...
...Finally, the U.S...
...The image of a brooding, broken people, living under a black dictatorship, has been replaced by a fresh image of an advanced, literate and proud nation...
...Moscow is undoubtedly aware of these pitfalls, but it appears to be convinced—at least for the present —that the advantages are considerably more impressive...
...The Cultural Exchange Gamble By Marvin L. Kalb Aware of both risks and gains, Washington and Moscow are 'willing to play the game' GEORGI A. Zhukov, Chairman of the Soviet State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, is the world's biggest practitioner of exchangemanship—a diplomatic euphemism for the legal swapping of ideas, people and exhibitions between Moscow and Washington, Peking, London, Paris, Bonn, New Delhi, Jakarta and even Addis Ababa...
...Even as America's vaunted Titan ICBM explodes a minute after its launching, Russia's luniks and sputniks continue to circle the earth and the moon with irritating regularity...
...A new picture of Russia had to be painted, and the diplomacy of exchangemanship was one of the broad strokes on this new canvas...
...This reason is rarely mentioned, but it has become increasingly valid as Peking continues to behave like "a bull in a China shop...
...In fact, it has become downright unfashionable not to have visited Moscow during a swing through Europe...
...now Russia has pinned its colors to the moon...
...We shall not accept spoiled goods," he said...
...And he has the highest respect for America...
...Washington would like to feed the Russians sugar-coated doses of art, books, films, magazines, tourists, exhibits and ideas that can possibly give birth to more realistic assessments of this country...
...No longer is the Russian peasant portrayed as a "slovenly, vodka-drinking muzhik...
...is deeply colored by what it has been told for as long as it can remember...
...They realize that Russia must build sputniks, but they want more consumer goods too...
...Despite a record-shattering steel strike that may resume early next year...
...a continuing rumble of economic discontent...
...We would like to destroy many of the misconceptions about the U.S...
...In addition, Washington is pleased that under the terms of exchange-manship American doctors now have an opportunity to visit Russian hospitals...
...The police terror had to be eased...
...The average fellow (prostoi Ivan) loves your exhibit, and everything in it— even if he doesn't understand everything...
...Early the following morning, Zhukov, neatly shaven and nattily dressed, arrived in London where he hoped to convince Her Majesty's Government that the current program of British-Soviet exchanges, which terminates in March 1960, should be extended for at least another year...
...we know our newspapers...
...Zhukov's effort was unsuccessful, but it clearly indicated the Kremlin's concern that "unhealthy," "capitalistic" notions were being imported into the Soviet Union as the almost inevitable by-products of exchanges...
...And it is axiomatic in current diplomatic parlance that war is unlikely between two belligerents so long as their leaders are talking...
...wants peace so much that on occasion it is even willing to ignore the lessons of history...
...that if Khrushchev says exchanges ease world tensions, then indeed they do...
...The Kremlin's leaders had to be seen...
...that if Khrushchev obviously wants to come to the U.S., then indeed he should...
...and 10,000 are expected in 1960...
...It was difficult for Russia to project this new image to the rest of the world, especially the U.S...
...Both nations have good reasons for fearing exchanges...
...No one was surprised when he succeeded and promptly set off for Paris, his next stop on a kind of personal crusade to substitute exchangemanship for diplomacy...
...There is an almost religious feeling that if Khrushchev says he has abandoned visions of world conquest, then indeed he has...
...The Russian people does not believe all the propaganda, but its image of the U.S...
...Thus, a compromise was reached...
...So Khrushchev has been willing to gamble...
...Nothing, it seems, would please policy planners more than the disaffection of the Russian people from the goal of Communism...
...These tourists can hardly find their stereotype of the Iron Curtain...
...That concern was legitimate, for the Russian people has been consistently drawn toward Western "decadence...
...for regarding exchanges as a "Trojan Horse" whose stomach could be filled with "anti-Soviet materials...
...Recently, in Moscow, Zhukov, an attractive Soviet politician who once earned his livelihood editing Pravda, signed an agreement with United States Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, pledging his Government to a two-year extension of the cultural exchange protocol with the U.S...
...The Russian people used the exhibition grounds as a legal forum for asking questions about the U.S., one of their favorite topics...
...A few hours later, he initialed a similar agreement with the United Arab Republic...
...It is easier in a nation of plenty and comfort to believe in good intentions than in bad ones...
...that have been tenderly nurtured for more than four decades...
...The U.S...
...wants to keep the channels of communication wide open with Moscow to help mediate any possible rumpus that might erupt between Communist China and the West...
...In a remarkably short period of time, he has managed to weave a network of exchanges that has won almost global respect for Soviet economic and technological progress...
...During the recent session of the Supreme Soviet, Zhukov bitterly attacked the U.S...
...an unhappiness about certain aspects of foreign policy...
...that was to expire next month...
...They are permitted to see factories, farms, schools and the theater...
...Exchangemanship, they know, has not only altered the popular image of the Soviet Union in the U.S...
...Washington knows that some exchanges have helped to make Russia a stronger challenge than ever before...
...it has also brought Khrushchev the respectability that almost 40 years of Soviet propaganda have failed to cultivate, and it has produced a definite easing of international tension...
...Seventy-five American guides, speaking excellent Russian, answered their questions with refreshing candor...
...7,000 in 1959...
...This is especially true in the U.S., where a Republican Administration has reached a level of rapprochement with the Soviet Union that would have been unthinkable when President Eisenhower first assumed office...
...He apparently knows that he is much more apt to get his trade and his technology if the "Spirit of Camp David" can be more successfully diffused throughout Russia and America...
...As one Russian told this reporter: "Don't worry...
...There seem to be four reasons, and, interestingly, Zhukov has already alluded to the first...
...They are now aware of unemployment benefits, of progressive education techniques, of modern art forms— in short, of the knowledge of many aspects of American life that had previously been denied them...
...Four thousand Americans toured Russia in 1958...
...will accept an increase in the number of technical and industrial delegations from the Soviet Union, which is what Moscow wants...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 47
