Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin The Kremlin's Gold Brick Salesman BEFORE THE OUTBREAK of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler had worked out a well-defined strategy of terror, a...
...In general, the official part of his trip was handled pretty realistically and reasonably, with one exception: John Foster Dulles's remark that free elections are not indispensable to German reunification...
...It was the exuberant private reception of Mikoyan, however, that was most discouraging and most potentially harmful...
...There is some reason to fear that the sugary Mikoyan was more effective in undermining the American will to stand firm on Berlin, and on Germany, than the blustering Khrushchev...
...Discrimination against Jews (made easier by the passport requirement) in admission to officers' training schools and diplomatic institutes is notorious...
...Khrushchev's ultimatum to the Western powers to quit Berlin within six months, contained in his note of November 27...
...Speaking at United Nations headquarters (and his very presence there, in view of the Soviet record of contemptuous defiance of all United Nations resolutions on Hungary was an insult) Mikoyan blandly asserted: "There is order in Hungary...
...But it could easily be construed abroad as a lefthanded endorsement of the preposterous Soviet scheme for "confederation" of their puppet administration with the freely chosen and representative Government of the Federal Republic...
...Soviet official statements are a queer amalgam of professions of devotion to peace in the abstract with violent threats designed to enforce specific aims of aggression...
...They are happy...
...It is a matter of record that Jewish theaters, newspapers and publishing houses were wiped out under Stalin and have not been re-established...
...It gave the salesman of gold bricks the impression that the American people know and care little about Hungary and the true situation in Germany and the other issues in the cold war...
...with no quavering reservations from Bonn, Washington...
...Mikoyan did his best (and his best was pretty good, from a technical standpoint) to rub his American hosts the right way...
...One day der Fuehrer would sound off in a tempest of raging denunciation and threats...
...I recently spoke with leaders in Hungary and with Hungarian people...
...He repeated, on a larger scale, the familiar method of the present Soviet Ambassador, "Smiling Mike" Menshikov...
...that Jews are not permitted to leave the Soviet Union...
...Recently elections took place...
...Nikita Khrushchev, following in Stalin's footsteps, is not unlike Hitler in his foreign policy methods...
...was about as irresponsible a piece of warmongering as could be imagined...
...What soothing consolation for Hungary's tens of thousands of dead and imprisoned fighters for freedom, for the 200.000 Hungarian political fugitives...
...But what he had to sell was nothing but verbal gold bricks...
...There may have been legalistic or technical grounds for this press conference statement...
...Some kind of medal should be awarded to Richard Cardinal Cushing, to Representative Walter Judd, and to others who refused to have anything to do with entertainments in honor of a man identified with the brutal outrage of Hungary...
...Mikoyan poured out an equally liberal dose of soothing syrup in connection with the position of Jews in the Soviet Union...
...When pressed with hard questions he either sidestepped or resorted to most blatant falsehoods...
...London and Paris, the characteristic next step was to dispatch the cunning and agile Anastas Mikoyan to the United States on a good-will tour...
...aimed at the Czechs, the Poles or whoever might be the immediate object of his aggressive policy...
...When the response to this piece of flagrant blackmail was an emphatic no...
...The next he would coo like a dove, telling a visiting delegation of foreign war veterans that, as an old soldier, he abhorred the very thought of war...
...there is culture, production and happiness...
...that every Soviet Jew must carry a passport marked Yevrei (the Russian word for Jew...
...As one heard Cyrus Eaton lead a braying chorus of adulation and read of standing ovations to this representative of a hostile regime, one was sadly reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville's diagnosis of the weakness of a democracy in foreign policy: "It cannot combine its measures with secrecy and it will not await their consequences with patience...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin The Kremlin's Gold Brick Salesman BEFORE THE OUTBREAK of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler had worked out a well-defined strategy of terror, a method of imposing his will by alternating violent intimidation with pretenses of sweet reasonableness...
...But Mikoyan, with a straight face, assured his listeners that Jews have their theaters and literature and, crowning argument, that he himself has many Jewish friends...
...He exposed himself to free and sometimes sharp questioning...
...He praised American gadgets and industrial achievements, investigated such typically American installations as supermarkets and motels, gave a stick of Russian candy to a receptive baby...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 6
