by I. F. Stone
In the past, certain terrible weapons have been held in reserve by both sides, and neither have used them; poison gas is an example. It is one thing to have the bomb in reserve. It is quite another to equip whole armies with atomic weapons so that they are no longer able to fight any other kind of war. That is what we are doing. We are thus deciding in advance that a new war shall be a war without mercy and limit. The notion that atomic war can be limited; that atomic weapons can be used, as Eisenhower once said, like “pistols,” fosters the most dangerous misconceptions. Once such a war begins, neither side dares hold back its worst and biggest bombs, though this may mean total mutual destruction.
Atomic war means national suicide. The ultimate delusion of the atomic era is the notion that national suicide is a feasible means of defense; how apparently sensible and sane men could drift into such beliefs will astound future historians, if there are any. All this has been underscored by the Sagebrush maneuvers. They have shown how easily radar defenses can be jammed by an attacking air fleet; we can wreck Russia’s cities but Russia can wreck ours. And the whole human race may be ruined by the aftereffects. Is it not irrational, then, to decide for atomic warfare when atomic warfare means mutual suicide? Should such a decision be made without the fullest national and world debate? How much security is there in plans for defense which could do no more than assure our dying people that the enemy was dying, too? The Strategic Air Command can destroy the enemy, but it cannot defend us.
To set off on the path of atomic warfare is to set off on a path from which there is no return, toward a goal where there can be no victory, into a hell where none could survive. Until now the worst wars have been, to some extent, limited—if not by human intention and hatred, then at least by human capacity to destroy. But this war, the war we have been trying out in Operation Sagebrush, the atomic war must become unlimited war, against Us as well as Them. On those whom the bombs spare the radioactive dusts will fall, gently and impartially as the rain.
Natasha’s Ready Answers
In May 1956, I. F. Stone traveled behind the Iron Curtain for six days in Moscow and three in Warsaw. During this brief trip, he visited a collective farm, took in the usual tourist spots such as St. Basil’s Cathedral and the tombs of Lenin and Stalin, interviewed Soviet journalists, and spoke with as many ordinary Russian citizens as possible. This article is the second of four dispatches Stone sent back from the visit in which he tried to offer an objective picture of America’s great Cold War rival and the subject of so many demonizing fantasies in the American press.
. . .
May 14, 1956
ON OUR WAY BACK FROM our visit to the Kremlin, I asked Natasha, my tourist guide, whether she had any questions to ask about America. She wanted first to know why Paul Robeson could not get a passport. I said I had criticized the government’s action in refusing him a passport. She then wanted to know what I thought of the condemnation of the Communists in the United States. I said I had criticized that in public speeches and in my paper. She asked whether many people agreed with me and I said unfortunately not many did. When she looked triumphant, I asked her a question. “How many people in this country,” I asked, “would be willing to defend the right of oppositionists to speak against the government?” To this she had a ready answer.
“We have no oppositionists,” replied Natasha.
“But suppose you did?” I insisted.
“How could we have oppositionists?” she said. “A man cannot be an oppositionist for himself alone.”
“Tolstoy was an oppositionist on his own,” I countered.
“No,” Natasha replied, “he spoke for the people.”
“But the people were voiceless,” I replied, “until a few such men had the courage to speak for them.”
“Well,” Natasha said, “if we had oppositionists, someone would defend their rights.”
To illustrate she began to tell me about her trade union.
“In our union,” she said, “some people are timid but most of us speak up. Why the other day we even got the reinstatement of a fellow worker who had been fired.”
“We have unions in America, too,” I said, “and they often get workers reinstated.”
“Yes,” she said, “but in America unions cannot strike.”
“That’s not true,” I said, “there are lots of strikes in America.”
“No,” she said, “under the Taft law, workers cannot strike.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. “The effect of the Taft-Hartley Act has been very much exaggerated. We have strikes all the time.”
“But union leaders are afraid to call strikes,” Natasha insisted, “because they may be heavily fined.”
“There have been fines,” I said. “But that has not stopped strikes.”
By this time we were back to the Metropol and the conversation was over. Natasha looked at me with condescension as a benighted heathen. The idea that something she had read in her party press might possibly be wrong obviously never occurred to her.
I got a different sort of question about America and a different reaction from a Red Army officer. I saw him sitting by himself in a café. I walked over and asked, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” He answered in German, “A little.” He spoke no English or French and communication was difficult. He was a friendly man, with clear intelligent eyes, and the face of a kindly person. He wanted to know—after I told him I was an American journalist on my first visit to Moscow—how many rooms the ordinary worker has in the United States. This was his first question. I said in a city like New York even well-to-do people might have small apartments but that in many cities like Philadelphia workers owned their own homes, and that these were five- or six-room homes. He did not look at me with pity as a victim of capitalist propaganda. He looked pleased, as if I had told him something which buttressed his own convictions. I asked him why there were still so many pictures of Stalin around and he said this would soon pass away. He said Russia was “going back to Lenin,” and that many bad things had happened under Stalin. He looked incredulous when I said I liked Moscow. Trying hard to express his feelings in his inadequate German, he said—as if in a few words he was distilling the product of long thought—“the peasant here has a hard life.” He said, “I am a soldier but I believe in peace.” Then he pointed to his uniform and said, “I cannot speak freely.” He paid for his drink and left.
I visited two government buildings, the offices of Tass, for copies of speeches made at the Twentieth Congress, and a Ministry of Culture office on Zhdanova Street where the Soviet Information Bureau publishes its Daily Review of the Soviet Press. In both there were uniformed police guards inside the door and no one could get by the guards without showing a pass with a photograph on it. Workers coming down the elevator on errands in the lobby showed their passes each time they passed the policeman. It reminded one of the Pentagon in wartime Washington.
I went to the Ministry of Culture because I wanted a translation of the full text of a long editorial which Pravda published on April 5. The fragmentary reports I had seen of it in the foreign press on my way to Russia were disturbing. What was most disturbing was the vagueness of the editorial. I talked to the official in charge of translations at the Ministry of Culture. I told him after reading the text that I could not make head or tail of it. “Suppose,” I said, “I were a Soviet citizen, honestly trying to understand what was permissible free speech and what was slanderous and antiparty and therefore impermissible, how could I find out from this editorial? It would only leave me confused and afraid.” His answer was that all these matters referred to in the editorial had already been explained at party meetings. “Anyone who attended these meetings will know what the article means,” he said. “But,” I insisted, “what is the use of a newspaper article which can only be understood if the reader attends a private meeting to hear the explanation?” His reply was that this was an internal party matter. “In your country,” he said, “there is free discussion—no,” he interrupt
ed himself, “that is not a good word—in your country problems are first discussed in the press but in our country they are first discussed in party meetings and in factory meetings and then we decide how much should go into the press.” The talk was held in the English translation bureau, and some of his fellow workers had a hard time trying to keep a straight face during this conversation.
The Russians like their contacts to be organizational. They like visits by delegations rather than individuals. Organization contacts relieve the individual of responsibility. If a visit turns out badly, the fault lies with the organization. In addition, contacts between delegations facilitate that exchange of slogans, safe generalities and non-political pleasantries which the Russians prefer to real talk, which may become dangerous. If you reach a man directly in his office, he will call in a colleague to take part in the conversation, and provide a witness to the talk.
I succeeded in starting impromptu discussions with Russians everywhere. I was not rebuffed once, and this—other foreigners told me—was a complete change from a few years ago when it was simply impossible to talk with Russians at all except on strictly official business. But I never succeeded in making a date with a Russian for a further talk alone. One man I met through an official organization for a group talk seemed most intelligent and most eager for real discussion. I asked him if he would come to my hotel for tea next day and continue our talk. He said he would like to and that he would call me up and let me know. A half-hour before the appointed time he telephoned to say he couldn’t come because his wife had a bad cold but he would call me within the next day or so and make another date. I never heard from him again.
I had a talk with two journalists on a well-known Soviet publication which circulates widely abroad. One man, a top editor, was well-tailored, slick, and intelligent but not an attractive type; he seemed very much like the Hollywood intellectuals in the film industry, a born yes-man, with a sharp nose for any change in the wind. One felt that he would never stick his neck out for any man or any principle. He was well-stocked with glib answers for the freedom of the press questions he expected from foreign journalists; what these glib answers boiled down to was that the “capitalist” press faithfully echoed the line of its government, too. The existence of some independent voices and of some independence even in the conservative and conventional press was conveniently passed over. The other man, a subordinate, was more independent-minded. I asked whether Soviet writers and journalists in the future would have more freedom but I never did get a clear answer.
“It would be wrong,” said the first journalist, “to say that writers felt restricted. The young people were a new Soviet generation which expressed what it sincerely had been feeling. Now that the party thinks it necessary for writers to be more independent and to write more naturally and from within, they will do so. But it would be wrong to say they were restricted.”
“So,” I suggested, “it is a question of changing the habits of writers?”
“Yes,” was the answer, “and of revising some conceptions.”
Then he added what I thought was a most appalling commentary. “Our writers,” he said, “thought that to criticize our life was not their affair. They thought only to be happy and not to criticize.”
When I asked whether there would be more freedom of speech, the first man said there had always been free speech in Russia. But when I asked whether any Soviet journalist had criticized the earlier attitude toward Tito or the “doctors’ plot” he shifted his ground and said that the press in America or England on a subject like the German problem all followed the same line, too. “Our newspapers,” he said, “defend our line, too.”
I said this was not entirely true in the West. I said the New York Times had criticized the padlocking of the Daily Worker just before I left. I said I had criticized the “doctors’ plot” in my own paper because I felt there was something fishy about it. I asked whether in the future, if there were a similar frame-up, some Soviet journalist would criticize it, too.
“If you ask us about the ‘doctors’ plot,’” the journalist explained, “now we know. The facts were distorted and invented by the Beria gang. Now that the facts have been made known, we have attacked the ‘doctors’ plot.’ But you have to know the facts.”
He never did answer my question about the future. When I cited the fact that one man, like Zola, could force open the Dreyfus case in France, I struck no response. The idea of getting the facts on one’s own and of opposing the government in a political or criminal prosecution was completely foreign to his mentality. I felt not merely opportunism but genuine submissiveness in his attitude.
The other journalist seemed to feel that something more was needed to satisfy my questions. “We lived in a besieged fortress,” he said. “I am now forty-two. All of my generation were accustomed to believe in the security agencies because these were our shield against real enemies. When we heard of measures taken by these agencies, we were sure they must be true. No revolution ever had so many enemies as ours.
“Now,” he continued, “we know that these revolutionary bodies like the security police can also make mistakes. The result is a new atmosphere. Our party and the government have hardened their control over these agencies and put new and good people into them to improve them.”
I suggested that one way to “improve” the secret police was to give the individual citizen more rights against them, to establish safeguards like our habeas corpus against the police.
“In the West,” the second journalist explained, “it was different. You had a very long experience and got used to defending yourselves against the bourgeois state. But here from the beginning it was a people’s state and there was no practical need for such protective procedures. The last few years, however,” he conceded, “have showed the need for some such safeguards.”
On the question of Tito, the second journalist also had something interesting to add. He said, “Only a small number of our people ever went abroad. We had no way to judge for ourselves. Now that thousands are beginning to go abroad and see for themselves, it will help to prevent such mistakes in the future.”
Everywhere I found Russians went out of their way to be helpful as soon as they learned I was a foreigner, and there seemed to be no prejudice against me when I said I was an American. I got to the Bolshoi Theatre just as the performance was starting and the ushers were closing the doors. I didn’t know where to go or what to do and was on the verge of being shut out when I told an usher, “Ne panamayou parusski” (Don’t understand Russian). He at once caught on that I was a foreigner, found me a vacant seat in the darkness and then after the first scene came back and took me to my proper place.
I went to two performances in Moscow. The first was at the huge Bolshoi Theatre where a ballet named Laurenciana was being played that night. I liked the enormous, brightly-colored theatre, the gay sets, the music and the audience, which was enjoying itself. But I found the ballet itself conventional, and the story corny; peasant boy saves peasant girl from advances of arrogant knight in medieval village. I was so bored I left after the first act. I didn’t think it half as much fun as just walking the streets and looking at the people.
The other performance was a sheer joy. I saw The Girl with the Fluttering Eyelids, a satire on Hollywood, done at the puppet theatre of Abrasov. It had been on a triumphant tour in England, and someone should bring it to America. I had never seen anything like it before—a full-length play written for puppets, and the puppets specially designed for the play. The satire was terribly clever—I heard later that our Ambassador Bohlen had enjoyed it immensely. In one scene there are three puppet stenographers taking dictation at once from three collaborating writers in the best frenetic Hollywood manner. An elderly usher who spoke English kindly explained the plot to me before the play began; it was a take-off on Carmen. But after the second act, when I saw the smugglers being executed with a flame gun and I asked her to explain, she suddenly went dead on me. She hadn’t seen
that act, she didn’t know what had happened, she practically couldn’t speak English any more. I gathered later that Abrasov was satirizing the Marshall Plan and American military policy in that scene. The usher was afraid of offending me if she explained.
I BELIEVE THAT subconsciously or unconsciously every American in Moscow must feel a slight uneasiness, even a little anxiety. These are our rivals and imitators; the subway and the skyscrapers and even more so the booster spirit reflect their desire to imitate, to overtake and to surpass our own country. It is easy to see on the surface how far they yet have to go, and to sneer at their nouveau riche vulgarity as the nineteenth-century English visitor sneered (in much the same worried spirit) at the new brash giant growing up in America. But to see the building going on and the beautiful new department stores, to read the speeches of the Twentieth Congress and the stupendous figures of the new Five Year Plan, is to feel that this new rival is a giant, a gauche and slovenly giant whose manners it is easy to ridicule, but whose capacity for huge strides is not to be discounted.
The Legacy of Stalin
In this, the fourth dispatch from Stone’s trip to Eastern Europe, he offers his summation of what he sees as the essentially repressive and dishonest nature of the Soviet system. Feeling personally sympathetic with the goals of socialism and strongly averse to giving support to the jingoist anti-Soviet element in American society, Stone found it painful to have to offer such a diagnosis, but his commitment to journalistic honesty—as well as his love of freedom as the single deepest human value—left him no alternative. Angry reactions by “fellow traveling” sympathizers with the Soviet regime are said to have cost Stone 400 subscriptions to the Weekly.