MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N1COLSON
THE more I consider Soviet propaganda the less do I understand either its intentions or its methods. Take the strange story of the Bevin broadcast of December 22nd. The Foreign Secretary was
replying to those critics in his own party who had accused him of linking our policy too closely with that of the United States. " Great
Britain," he said, " does not tie herself to anybody except in regard
to her obligations under the Charter." On January loth, in conversa- tion with Lord Montgomery, Marshal Stalin expressed the fear that
this statement might be interpreted as implying that the British Government considered that the Anglo-Soviet Alliance of 1942 had been superseded by U.N.O. Marshal Stalin was fully justified in demanding an explanation. It was certainly inadvertent on Mr. Bevin's part to have omitted in his broadcast all mention of the Anglo- Soviet Affiance. And Article IV of the Treaty of Alliance of May 26th, 1942, does certainly contain an implication that the offensive and defensive clauses will cease to be applicable once the two Govern- ments, " by mutual agreement," recognise that U.N.O. has been suffi- ciently established to preserve world peace. Up to that point, there- fore, the Russian procedure was perfectly correct. But what happened? Instead of demanding an elucidation through the proper channels, instead of reminding the British Government that the recognition of the United Nations as an operative organisation must be a " mutual " recognition, the Soviet Government abandon diplomacy for propa- ganda and turn on Pravda to publish their article of January 15th in which they accused Mr. Bevin of " disavowing " the Anglo-Soviet Alliance. Mr. Bevin's reaction was immediate. On January 18th he addressed a personal message to Marshal Stalin denying the implica- tions of the Pravda article, and two days later he issued a statement that Pravda had taken his remark out of its context and published it in an obviously misleading form. Pravda, on January 23rd, replied denying these charges and stating that it had been its " duty " to publish the Bevin broadcast for the information of the Soviet public.
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On the very same day, however, the Soviet Ambassador in London had handed to Mr. Bevin the reply of Marshal Stalin to his personal message of January 18th. In this reply Marshal Stalin was so good as to assure Mr. Bevin that his message had " completely explained the affair and left no room for misunderstandings." He added that if, as Mr. Bevin had proposed, the treaty was to be extended from twenty to fifty years, it would be necessary to change its text and to free it from the " reservations " which weakened its application. What are the changes and reservations which the Soviet Government have in mind? It may be that they wish the offensive and defensive clauses of the treaty to remain operative even when U.N.O. has been firmly established. That is a reasonable request and one which is fully in accordance with Article LII of the Charter. It may be also that Article IV of the 1942 treaty, under which the two Governments bound themselves not to seek territorial aggrandisement and not to interfere in the internal affairs of other States, should be redrafted in such a manner as to render it less inapplicable to present conditions and policies. If we ask for an extension.of the treaty, then the Soviet Government are fully justified in demanding in return that its terms should be altered. All this is wholly appropriate. But what remains inexplicable is why the Soviet Government should distort, distract, and perhaps envenom a perfectly normal diplomatic negotia- tion by concurrently indulging in Press propaganda.
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There are those, of course, who contend that all totalitarian systems are bound to maintain their public in a state of nervous apprehension and to invent menaces even when such menaces do not exist. People are more inclined to acquiesce in internal rigidities if they are con- vinced that the country is threatened from outside. The classic text-book of all demagogic propagandists, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, contains, it is true, many precepts of this nature. " Above all," he writes, " the art of any truly great demagogue consists in being con- tinuously able to avoid dispersing public attention and to concentrate it upon a single adversary. The genius of a great leader consists in being able to represent the adversaries of the country (even when in fact these adversaries are mutually opposed) as belonging to one and the same category." " There must be," he writes again, " no fine shades of difference, but only the positive or the negative, love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lies ; never half this and half that." " Hatred," he adds, " is a more durable emotion than mere dislike ; and the driving force in any great movement has always been, not an intellectual appreciation of facts, but some fanatical or even hysterical emotion which can inspire the masses and drive them onwards " (eine vorwartsfagende Hysterie). Such principles of mass propaganda may well have been applicable to Hitler's policy, since he wished to make war. But the Soviet Goveinment do not wish to make war ; stability and security are essential to their hard task of reconstruction. And it remains a mystery for me why they should complicate a difficult diplomatic operation by deliberately arousing popular resent- ments. I can conclude only that their curious conduct must be due to incompetence, lack of co-ordination, or the force of habit.
But bewildered as I am by the purposes and intentions of Soviet propaganda, I am even more bewildered by their methods. I hope I may be forgiven if I illustrate my bewilderment by a tiny personal example. The other day I wrote for the B.B.C. Quarterly a short, and I trust pungent, article upon "Broadcasting upon International Affkirs." On January 18th the Soviet wireless service in Persian broadcast what purported to be a summary of this article. I was represented as having written to the effect that such phrases as " international security " and " national independence " were no more than " a sham and a monotonous political or literary formula." Since receiving the monitoring report of this broadcast I have reread the article from which it purports to quote. It contains no single sentence which could, even by the most ingenious mistranslation or misinterpretation, bear any such meaning. Nothing approximating to the phrases " international security " or " national independence " occurs in my article. So far from regarding these phrases as meaningless, I in fact regard them as the hope of half the world. What possible purpose can the Soviet wireless have had in telling the Persian public that I had employed expressions, or stated opinions, which I had never employed or stated? This example is in itself wholly unimportant, and it is in fact doubtful whether the B.B.C. Quarterly has any large circulation in Kerman or Hamadan. But the method herein employed is employed in far more important associations ; it is the method of distorting, or even inventing, statements for the purpose of creating distrust. A more recent instance of this system of diplomacy by invective is the curious attack launched against the British, French and American representa- tives on the Control Council at Berlin. Marshal Sokolowsky has publicly accused his colleagues of deliberately delaying and preventing an agreed four-Power report to the conference which is to be held at Moscow on March loth. His aim, I suppose, is to launch a counter-offensive in anticipation of the attack which may be made in Moscow upon Russia's failure to carry out the Potsdam stipulation regarding the economic unity of Germany. By accusing us of taking an undue share of German reparations, it may be hoped to reduce in advance our own expected complaints to the level of a tu-quoque. But such warrior or military diplomacy is seldom effective and often
harmful. *. * To some extent the purpose of these propaganda methods may be to maintain a feeling of emergency at home and to diminish, by the accumulation of small falsehoods, such authority as we still possess abroad. I realise also that to any properly conditioned Soviet citizen the Western world is irredeemably false and wicked, whereas only in the religion of Marx and Lenin can there be found sweetness and light. If we were to take Soviet propaganda too seriously we might come to the conclusion that they wish to convince their people that the Anglo-Saxon world is the " single adversary." I do not take it too seriously. I do not regard it as a reflection of Russian policy so much as the reflection of the Soviet attitude of mind. They have acquired a habit ; and they go round and round in that habit like squirrels in a cage.
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