KEYS TO THE KREMLIN
Gordey, Michel
Keys to the Kremlin By Michel Gordey A Distinguished European Correspondent Examines the Hopes and Fears Generated by Post-Stalin Russia Paris SINCE Stalin's death momentous events have taken...
...It seems to me to be much more than just a temporary propaganda campaign...
...They will not be pushed into submission by any "get tough" policy...
...Eyewash," many people say...
...among the engineers, the scientists, and the high and not-so-mighty "civil servants...
...His find' ings appeared in "Visa to Moscow," which has been published throughout most of the world...
...There was a period of panic and confusion, clearly referred to in the official communiques published in the first days of March 1953...
...A new atmosphere has been created in Russia...
...We do not know whether the Soviet rulers really intend to sit down and talk seriously, in order to find, together with our own statesmen, a modus vivendi which could lead the world into a long period of peace...
...Then came a most important decrease in retail prices...
...It is risky to attempt to patch together and find definite meaning in the scraps of news from Russia...
...reports by travelers who have recently been in Moscow and who on their way back to the West, stop in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, or London to tell their stories...
...Nearly every day brings reports from the Soviet capital...
...All this cannot be lightly dismissed as just the usual propaganda...
...Five—The internal conflicts and the economic weaknesses have been aggravated since Stalin's death...
...We must not naively give in to their blandishments, nor think that the time has arrived when lamb and lion can lie down next to each other...
...for Harold Wilson, former President of the British Board of Trade and one of the top Labor politicians...
...There are many theories to account for the curious developments in the Kremlin in recent weeks, but mostly they are just that—unproved theories...
...secret or semi-secret reports going out through the various diplomatic channels...
...During World War 11, Mr...
...They have most definitely gone out of their way to win popularity with their own people...
...For three months now, Europe has been watching Moscow, looking for clues to the "big puzzle...
...Soviet artists, chessplayers, sportsmen are taking trips to the West...
...At the same time, in Berlin, in Vienna, and even in Yugoslavia, the tense atmosphere of recent years has been relaxed...
...In the fields of Soviet foreign and home politics, the information we have is still not of a decisive nature...
...This program is currently called in America the "Soviet peace offensive...
...In recent years he has traveled widely in America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, and two years ago made a first-hand study of conditions within the Soviet Union...
...Soviet officials, in Moscow as well as in Paris, Berlin, London, and Rome, are making appearances at official and private parties...
...Every totalitarian regime knows that it is dangerous to lift the hopes of its people and to loosen the screws of dictatorship...
...Let's not be fooled...
...Watchfulness is always a virtue...
...Since Stalin's death nearly every day brings small and not-so-small gestures from the Soviet rulers...
...How does the future look from all we hear from Russia: What are Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov up to...
...The visa barrier is being slowly lifted...
...In the last three months more Westerners have received visas to Moscow than in all the years since V-E Day...
...But now that some time has passed, a pattern of Soviet policies is emerging and it becomes possible to look for sensible solutions of the "Kremlin puzzle...
...That is the question that Europe wonders about in this momentous summer of 1953...
...between the proponents of a more aggressive foreign policy on the one hand, and the men who would prefer to steer a more careful course, would withdraw into the Russian shell, and would even be ready to MICHEL GORDEY, one of Europe's best-known writers on the Soviet Union, is the special roving correspondent for the-middle-of-the-road France-Soir, largest daily in France...
...It is interesting to read the Soviet newspapers these days...
...For the group of U. S. newspaper executives and Mrs...
...It seems that we are now witnessing the start of a new trend...
...But we must try to find out whether the Kremlin means what it says today...
...Ridge-way and Gruenther have warned the Western countries not to relinquish their military effort, but both were obliged to admit recently that there is not the slightest indication of war-like preparations, or military moves on the Russian side...
...Civilian prisoners-—British, French, and American—have been released through the Kremlin's "good offices...
...They are out for real business and they mean to get commercial intercourse, exports as well as imports...
...there is a great emphasis on the improvement of living conditions, better housing, better and cheaper products, better entertainment, more education, etc...
...Let's not be fooled, but let's not overlook new facts of life...
...They will stop talking peace and strengthen even more their defense potential...
...conflicts between the Army and the MVD...
...Three—There are internal conflicts in the Soviet Union...
...between the "party apparatus" and the "technocrats", i.e...
...has undertaken a vast program of lessening world tension...
...There are, however, certain elements of the "puzzle" which are still lacking...
...make concessions in a deal with the West...
...In all those sensitive areas, the Russians "behave...
...Keys to the Kremlin By Michel Gordey A Distinguished European Correspondent Examines the Hopes and Fears Generated by Post-Stalin Russia Paris SINCE Stalin's death momentous events have taken place in Russia, in the foreign policy of the Kremlin as well as in the realm of Soviet domestic politics...
...Domestic Politics Great changes have also occurred within Russia in the first months of the new rulers...
...Who is the new Number One in the Soviet hierarchy...
...But definite changes have also taken place in Russia about which there is sufficiently sound information...
...They are probably ready right now to deal, to compromise, to "give and take...
...The only way to find out is to talk to them...
...or the question, "Who is arrayed against whom...
...Soviet sailors have been given shore leave to visit the Western "corrupt, capitalist" cities...
...They have even tacitly accepted the American-made list of forbidden and so-called strategic goods...
...But one thing is sure, and the whole history of the Soviet regime gives us many proofs of it: The men of the Kremlin cannot afford to surrender nor to accept humiliating defeat in the diplomatic field...
...What will happen from now on...
...Faced with unfulfillable requests, faced with demands which would go against the traditional interests of Imperial Russia (be it Czarist or Soviet Empire), they will react as Russians always have...
...Perle Mesta, the former American Minister to Luxembourg...
...Foreign Policy The U.S.S.R...
...censored reports written by the six Western correspondents who reside permanently in Moscow...
...Four—There are also, without any doubt, great weaknesses in the economic field, great strains and disappointments in key industries, serious crises in the economies of the satellite countries and of Red China...
...Let's be even more watchful than before...
...It is now likely that the Moscow Ballets of the Grand Opera will appear this summer in Paris...
...they are amiable, talkative, cordial...
...the managers of the big plants...
...The unsolved mystery in Moscow is the question: Who is actually ruling...
...A false evaluation of what is happening in Moscow might mean the difference between atomic disaster and a possibility for peaceful co-existence...
...These five points may sound vague and unclear...
...The wide amnesty proclaimed a few weeks after Stalin's death was the first step...
...II And then there are small facts, turning up here and there...
...For the time being, it is only possible to say: One—Beria, as the head of the Secret Police and the MVD troops, has emerged as probably the most powerful man in Russia after Stalin's death...
...for the businessmen from Britain, Sweden, and Belgium, and the French and Belgian non-Communist correspondents, the Iron Curtain is in the process of being lifted, slowly and noisily...
...It is too early to say whether all this is of a temporary nature, designed to carry the regime over a period of internal stress and conflict...
...Two—Malenkov, who seemed to be the late dictator's successor, is being kept out of the limelight and could well be more a figurehead than a real power in the Kremlin...
...But who could be more watchful than the American generals who command the NATO forces in Europe...
...We also might think and believe that there will never be a real peace with the Soviets, because of their belief in the final collapse of the capitalist world...
...Then with the reversal of the transcript in the doctor's plot came assurances that the arbitrary and ruthless power held up to now by the secret police would be checked and controlled by the courts and by new penal laws to be issued promptly...
...Facts without tremendous significance, but which, after eight years of complete breakdown of any kind of civilized relationship between Russia and the rest of the world, are interesting to watch...
...Gordey was chief editor of the French broadcasts of the Voice of America...
...Could we possibly be possessed by such an inferiority complex that we don't even dare have such talks...
...At the same time, Soviet trade officials recently showed in Geneva (at the meeting of the UN's Economic Commission for Europe) and in several European capitals, that they are genuinely interested in promoting trade, without raising impossible demands...
...And these facts are actually more important than the endless speculation, "W^ho is the boss...
...At the same time the tiny blossoms of good will and of relative liberalization inside Russia will wither away...
...Moscow brought pressure on the Red Chinese and North Koreans to start new armistice negotiations in Korea...
...Let us examine them first, so as to have a clearer picture of the trends that appear to be less doubtful...
...It is a well-designed, carefully timed plan to achieve a pacification of Soviet-Western relations...
...Both Gens...
...For the overwhelming number of Europeans who realize that in case of war they would be in the first line of destruction, there is no doubt that we must face the Russians at the table of diplomatic negotiation, as well as in the endeavor of creating more normal international and cultural relations...
...But we in the West must take careful notice...
...They have obviously received instructions...
...Propaganda...
...Molotov—smiling, amiable, and eloquent—day after day receives Western diplomats in his Foreign Ministry office...
...They have taken guided tours in Paris, Glasgow, Johannesburg, and Istanbul...
...Day after day, the Soviet press has been drumming away at this new slogan of "Socialist Soviet legality...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
