CRACKS IN THE RED ARMOR
Smith, Howard K.
Cracks in the Red Armor By Howard K. Smith To help readers interpret the fast-breaking developments behind the Iron Curtain, The Progressive this month presents two articles evaluating both...
...There, the past year has brought increasingly vigorous revolt against the West— in Iran and Egypt against Britain, in North Africa against France...
...Next to resentment against the West, the strongest passion in that Arab area today is animosity towards the state of Israel...
...Some Jews, aged ones, were let out by the Communists to go to Israel...
...Russia, and the Communist countries in her orbit, are all primitive countries, backward and underdeveloped...
...they are removed by arrest and liquidation...
...These two anxieties—over Stalin and Eisenhower—added to the economic troubles, could account for a great deal of what is happening...
...But the important point is, if war comes who can .summon the greatest potential to last it out...
...For three decades that has been as true of the Jews in Russia as it has been for other elements of the population...
...There are plenty of theories to explain that too...
...First, it is certainly as apparent to the Russian leaders as it is to us that Joseph Stalin is an old man...
...Both involve approaching changes in the leadership of nations that may bring changes of policies with them...
...Policies change only by the removal of personalities...
...the purpose was no doubt to let prices rise and force workers to work more to sustain life...
...All the news from Eastern Germany indicates a similar strain...
...But what we tend to overlook is that what we fear here, is exactly what the Russians are doing in their own camp...
...As a result, recent years have seen the Jews become restive and from the Soviet point of view, difficult and untrustworthy...
...In Asia, where the Chinese Red revolution was at first an exciting possibility to Asians, there has been much evidence that the Communists have entered a period of diminishing returns...
...the number of Yiddish books was reduced and more closely supervised...
...Of the eleven international Red leaders who met then—the cream of Communist guidance—seven are now, four years later, dead, and none of them died natural deaths...
...London ALL THE levels of ignorance that constitute expertness on Russian affairs have been called into play to explain the many recent plots within the Communist fold...
...There is a fatal flaw there...
...One is that the Jews are the greatest source of fear and trouble to the Communists at present...
...We produce three times as much military hardware, with still a tremendous margin left for turning out consumers' goods as incentives to our peoples...
...He is 74...
...We tend to overlook this vast disparity, but an endless list of Communist speeches could be cited to show that they are eternally haunted by it...
...they need only obey the urge of self-preservation to maneuver now, before the dreadful event, for favorable positions...
...To cite but one key statistic, Russia and all her dominions produce, at a generous estimate, 50 million tons of steel a year...
...The basic reason people are submissive to Communist rule is that there is no alternative to it, no other place to flee where common people, speaking strange languages, with no .financial resources, can "hope to find a better life...
...Here the London Economist advances a persuasive theory...
...The answer is not even debatable...
...President Gott-wald of Czechoslovakia spoke of rebellion—that was the word he used —in Czech industries due to the strain...
...Since the war in Korea, and the beginning of a full-scale arms race, evidence has accumulated that the strain has been greatly increased...
...The second theory that aims to explain this feature is implicit in the world situation...
...There is reason to think that the very crisis we have feared in the West has broken out in the East...
...Those personalities, even the highest, do not retire or get dismissed...
...This cannot be without meaning...
...In a struggle for world dominion, they have challenged the most advanced and highly developed bloc of nations on' earth, a civilization that has had a 200-years headstart over them in amassing industrial power and cultivating the skills to sustain it...
...In Poland food rationing was stopped...
...The other lines of industrial production that make for power are in roughly the same proportions...
...So great has the Russian menace loomed in Western eyes, that we are inclined to forget a fundamental disparity in power between the two worlds...
...Membership has been flooding away...
...It may be true that the Communists have more armed men on foot at present than we have...
...They point out rightly that winning the Cold War against Russia begins at home with a healthy internal economy...
...nations more than 150 million tons...
...We can imagine others demanding an increase of pressure, possibly even war now, before deterioration becomes serious or Western power grows further...
...Neither conflicts with but rather supplements the theory just stated...
...The question, then, is: what has given rise to dispute and dissension over the course to follow...
...Cracks in the Red Armor By Howard K. Smith To help readers interpret the fast-breaking developments behind the Iron Curtain, The Progressive this month presents two articles evaluating both current headlines and the new long-run theory and strategy of the Soviets...
...Last month, the figure averaged one thousand a day every day...
...In recent months, proof has been plentiful of productive effort cracking under the strain...
...One of the most important meetings of Communist policy-makers since the war was that held in Bucharest in 1948, when the decision was made to throw Tito out of the Cominform...
...The ugliest aspect of the Moscow plot, like that in Prague in December and the more recent one in East Germany, is its anti-Jewish phase...
...One more, Anna Pauker of Rumania, is in disgrace...
...In the West, in Europe, the great native Communist parties in France, Italy, and elsewhere lost their force as instruments of Soviet policy...
...that new balance of personal power must be struck in high councils—some must rise, some must fall...
...dissension wracks the ranks...
...From other sources here come two other theories of what is happening behind the curtain...
...In many more the hope was born that by one means or another they might follow...
...Moreover, the Communist nations produce one-third what we do only by tremendous strain of every human and material resource, leaving little for consumers' production and a decent life for their peoples...
...The resources of modern tyranny for maintaining itself are infinite...
...The theory is, then, that one reason for the anti-Jewish trend of events in Russia is to create one more bond of sympathy with Araby, the only hope left on the Russian periphery of adding to the West's embarrassment...
...Now chief European correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System, stationed in London, he has studied developments first-hand in Russia, Germany, France, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Britain, and the United States...
...They need not be especially ambitious...
...We^can imagine some leaders believing their people are over-strained and calling for a letup, and consequently for taking fewer risks in the foreign field...
...For instance, for seven years now, refugees from Eastern (Communist) Germany have been coming to the West in fifties and hundreds daily...
...In the long run, we shall prevail...
...The foundation of the state of Israel, however, has changed that...
...Given the Communist method of settling debates by purge and extinction, recent events cease to be surprising...
...Many more escaped and went...
...Observers in the West, particularly here in Europe, repeatedly warn us again rearming too much too fast...
...Second, after 20 years, American leadership has now definitely changed...
...What is suggested is that these developments are bound to have excited qualms among the policy-makers...
...There too Russia sees diminished hope...
...The Yiddish theater in Moscow was closed...
...His two books are "The State of Europe" and "Last Train from Berlin...
...Eisenhower and Dulles, both called "arch-imperialists and war-mongers" by the Russians, now guide American, and Western, policy...
...n Thus, every aspect of life behind the curtain is subordinated to narrowing the tremendous gap...
...We can imagine that this event, too, casts uncertainty and intensifies the debate—whether to shrink from the verge or push forward before the new Administration can articulate policies...
...As said at the outset, this is all speculation...
...A Western diplomat who was there at the time told me that the day the Israeli legation opened in Moscow, the Soviet capital saw its first spontaneous demonstration in thirty years—by Russian Jews, cheering outside the legation...
...The populations of Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia have turned more strongly anti-Communist...
...If we overdo it, we will weaken ourselves rather than strengthen ourselves by building big armies...
...Actions by the Chinese government have disillusioned other Asians...
...Ill I do not mean to suggest that all this indicates anything so happy as an approaching disintegration in the Communist world...
...A few of the most convincing theories being advanced by the most reputable observers here may interest readers of The Progressive: First, as a basic thought, the Manchester Guardian suggests we keep in mind the fact that the Communist revolution was born in violence and has never lost its birth-marks...
...the Western HOWARD K. SMITH has had a front-row seat at most of the decisive world events during the past decade and a half...
...The new allegations of treachery in high places thus indicates turmoil in the councils of Communist policy —the Red equivalent of the kind of "Great Debate" America underwent after General Douglas MacArthur was fired...
...His fellow Communists are bound to reckon on the possibility that he may soon die...
...Though no one outside the Kremlin can know exactly what is up, there are grounds for thinking President Truman spoke with prophecy in his farewell broadcast in January when he said, "Whether the Communist rulers shift their policies of their own free will, or whether shift comes about in some other way, I have not a doubt in the world that a shift will come...
...IV There remains, however, a broad belt between Europe and the Far East—the Moslem belt, stretching from Pakistan and the borders of India across Africa to the Moroccan coast of the Atlantic...
...The past year has not been a good one for Communist expansion to new areas...
...This article by Howard K. Smith deals with today's crop of plots and purges, while Otto Leichter's "The New Stalinism," which follows, spells out the meaning of the basic theory of world politics recently proclaimed by the Soviet dictator.—The Editors...
...One day recently, a record was set when over 1,500 fled to West Berlin in a single day...
...Without incentives, farmers are simply not producing or delivering food at low government prices, and workers are working less...
...That warning is a valid one...
Vol. 17 • March 1953 • No. 3
