Report on the Russian Service

By PETER WILES FROM June 21 to September 6, 1957, the BBC's' Russian service was attacked in the correspondence and other columns of the Spectator. My request for permission to read their files and publish extracts from them was granted by the BBC. This article is now submitted as substantiation of most but not all of the charges originally made by the correspondents. Thanks are due to the Spectator for generously making so much space available on this subject, and to the BBC for their courageous and correct decision and the courtesy with which they implemented it.

First, a few disclaimers. No one ever sug- gested there were Communists, crypto-Com- munists or fellow-travellers in charge of the service, and I am able emphatically to confirm that there are not. What there is, I hope to show, is a,too pro-Soviet attitude for the job in hand; an attitude which it would be the grossest McCarthyism even to mention in ordinary cir- cumstances, but nevertheless unacceptable in the BBC's Russian service. Secondly, no one de- manded a professionally anti-Communist service, which would operate on a vulgar Agit-Prop level, deny Communist achievements, admit no faults in the West or offend natural Russian pride. There is a great deal of room to manoeuvre be- tween that and what the BBC actually puts out. Thirdly, I am not connected with any émigré political movement, and usually disagree with what such people want to broadcast. I am, for instance, not in the least afraid of Ukrainian nationalism, and favour an independent Ukraine; but cannot see how this end could be achieved and would not actively forward it as things are. Nevertheless, I favour. broadcasting in the Ukrainian language, simply to broaden the BBC's audience and to remind the Ukrainians they are not forgotten. .

Finally, I strongly disapprove of the Govern- ment's interference with the BBC's Arabic and Greek services and do not feel that a single- party government is better qualified than the BBC to conduct foreign broadcasts. I hope that this correspondence will lead the BBC to reform itself. What I do feel is that no concessions must be made to Communist doctrines where they are false, that speech must be frank and incontest- ably Weitern in tone and basic presuppositions, and that Communist as opposed to Russian feelings must, however politely, not be spared. In all these ways the Russian service offends.

In general the service presents an accurate but selective view of the British domestic scene. Very wisely this is all presented straight : the Russian listener is left to draw his own conclusions. Of particular interest, no doubt, are the excellent accounts of strikes and party conferences— events which we manage so very differently from the Communists—but one must regret that there is so very little else. The news about the rest of the non-Communist world is similarly pre- sented. It is when we approach Communism that things go really wrong. Take, first, foreign policy. The broadcasts read like British Government Notes. They are stiff and formal and actually take the diplomatic professions of the Soviet State seriously. About the behaviour of the party, about the basic dogma, scarcely a word. Now it may be diplomatic manners for the British Government, writing to the Soviet Gov- ernment; not to mention Lenin on co-existence, or Khrushchev on the possibilities of peaceful revolution, or Khrushchev on the likely after- math of an H-bomb war, to name only three basic dogmas that prove the fundamentally. belli- cose views of the Soviet ,leaders. But the BBC is not talking to the Soviet Government : its audience is the Russian population. (It will be ob- served that I use the words 'Russian' and 'Soviet' deliberately. We must never forget that the BBC broadcasts in only one language to the USSR out of many that are suitable. Of course, many minority peoples speak Russian.) It cannot pos- sibly be in British interests, or morally right,, that this population should believe the diplomatic pro- fessions of its own government, or should think that we do.

Thus :

There 'existed [at the end of the war] truly unlimited good will towards the Soviet Union. But the result of Stalin's foreign policy was that in the course of two years after the end of the war not a trace remained either of the Soviet Union's international prestige or of this good will abroad towards the Soviet Union. Very soon, the opinion became current in Britain and other Western countries that friendly relations with the Soviet Union were impossible, and when later the Soviet Union, with the formation of the Cominformburo, de- clared a cold war against the Western Powers, she began to be regarded as an enemy. Experienced political observers were simply un- able to understand how the leader of a great Power which had suffered all the horrors of war could so lightheartedly sacrifice the inter- national prestige of the Soviet Union, which had been won in the struggle against the common enemy.

(June 10, 1956: all italics mine unless other- wise stated.)

But, on the contrary, there was nothing `experi- enced political observers' could and indeed did More easily understand than the beginning of the cold war. What else would Stalin have wanted? What else is consonant with basic Leninist dogma? Until that is officially changed by some new Pope, what else can you expect?

Nevertheless, Khrushchev has apparently not referred to the mistakenness of this [Stalin's] policy, which led to the complete loss of Soviet prestige in the international arena, to a worsen- ing of relations, to a tense situation and to a threat of new war. At any rate, there is no reference to it in the text [of the secret speech] which we have at 'our disposal. It is possible that there is a simple explanation : Khrushchev did not intend to speak about foreign policy in general, since the internal political events with which he dealt in detail were themselves so important that they deserved to be the main theme of his speech. He dealt with the Yugo- slav question shortly and evidently mentioned it as an example of a particularly stupid mistake made by Stalin. It was therefore natural enough that Khrushchev should not deal with Stalin's policy towards the West, which would have re- quired a detailed analysis. But we must hope that the absence of any reference to this in his speech does not mean that the pre3ent Soviet leaders have not yet freed themselves from the mis- taken policy pursued by Stalin in the post-war period or -that they still link themselves with the main theses of this policy. (Ibid.)

But Khrushchev was already notorious by mid- 1956 as the supporter of a hard foreign policy, differing only froth; Stalin's in its superior elas- ticity. Compare his celebrated `bomb speech' of June 15, 1954, in which he threatened the West in so many words with the atom bomb, appar- ently seeking to torpedo the Geneva negotiations of Malenkov and Molotov over Korea and Indo- China, going on even as he spoke over Prague radio. He has also denied Malenkov's doctrine that H-bomb warfare would destroy all civilisa- tion : no, he has said, only capitalism. His omis- sion of Stalin's policy vis-d-vis the West was thus obviously deliberate and enough to kill in any intelligent person the hope of a détente. He thought the Yugoslav schism a mistake, but not the cold war.

Or take the relations between Communist countries. Naturally, we cannot take broadcasts made since the Hungarian Revolution of Octo- ber, 1956, as evidence, since that event itself and later the Spectator controversy have put the Russian service under heavy pressure to pur- sue a more reasonable line (though I sense no change of heart, and it is precisely for that reason that these pages are written). On July 19, 1956, the service broadcast four pages on the dismissal of Rakosi in Hungary. F6ur pages : yet the incident is treated entirely as Hungary's internal affair, and the whole long tale of Soviet domination is not alluded to by a single sentence.

On July 22, 1956, Rakosi's disinissal was again dealt with at length in the same way. The same broadcast covers the democratisation of Poland, recently shaken by the Poznan riots. Soviet domination is referred to as follows, and only as follows : The Soviet Government's desire to maintain close 'ties with Poland is understandable. But the concern over the democratisation in Poland creates a strange impression. Bulganin spoke of the Soviet Union and the East European coun- tries as of a Commonwealth. This term may have several meanings, but it originated, of course, in Britain. And the fact that Bulganin and the Soviet press now make increasing use of this term means that the idea of a Common- wealth—not block or group alliance but Commonwealth [italics in original] is also ap- preciated in the Soviet Union. And in the Commonwealth of Nations which includes Britain, India, Pakistan, Canada and others the British Prime Minister would never criticise the Indian press for discussing some internal politi- cal measure. The principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, made so much of by the Soviet Union, is rigidly observed in the Commonwealth of Nations; and the national peculiarities of each of the member States are treated with the utmost respect.

Who would guess from this that 'Down with the Russians' had been one of the slogans chalked ,up on the trams of Poznan? Or that in the West Poland was referred to as a 'satellite'? I have not found this term in the broadcasts, and indeed it would be wrong for the BBC itself to use it; but surely the Russian listener should know others use it.

Just before the Hungarian Revolution, which, to repeat, the service had to report properly, comes the Polish coup d'etat, Here was an awkward event for the service : suppressio veri and suggestio foist reached new heights. By October 21, 1956, the news of troop movements, an intended Soviet coup, etc. etc., was in every British paper, and it came from serious corre- spondents freely moving about in Warsaw. This is what the Russian listener was told : There is practically nothing definite known to us about the Soviet leaders' stay in Poland. All one knows is that they arrived in Warsaw just in time for the session of the Polish Com- munist Party Central Committee, on the very day when the Central Committee returned Wladislaw Gomulka as one of its members. It is also known that talks took place between Polish and Soviet leaders, but these only lasted a few hours and are to be continued in Moscow. According to the official statement, the Warsaw talks proceeded in an atmosphere of cordial frankness. That is about all one knows. The absence of concrete information at a time when clearly important political events were taking place led to the most divers rumours spread- ing through Warsaw being picked up with alacrity by correspondents and appearing even- tually in papers abroad. Some of these rumours were clearly quite absurd—such as the one that the premises.of Warsaw Radio had been occu- pied by troops—Polish troops. Firstly, it is hard to understand why Government troops should seize a Government Radio Station; —obviously such troops would have been either protecting the station for the Polish Government or seizing it for the Russians and the Polish Stalinists; nothing more natural in such days than troops at a radio station, and no sentence better guaranteed to make the BBC ridiculous to Rus- sian ears— secondly, the BBC correspondent in Warsaw who each day transmits from the Polish Radio studio an account of the situation, at once con- firmed that there had been no troops on Warsaw Radio premises.

Evidently the service thought the circumstan- tial reports of observers on the spot insufficient.

Certainly much more detail came out in the next month, in Po Prosttt, over Stettin radio and through a thousand conversations with Western visitors. It merely confirmed and amplified the original picture. The service has never given any consecutive account—indeed, any further account at all—of the course of events in the Polish Octo- ber to its listeners; not even in late November when the Hungarian Revolution was over and it would still have been news.

In Soviet internal affairs I notice most the ab- sence of any serious analysis of what is actually happening. The Sovietologist really can help his listeners by explaining what has happened, as the evidence becomes available; by exposing the fabrications of the Soviet press about Soviet history; and above all by telling him what this or that policy shift or pronouncement really means—the listener's life may depend On it. And it is for this, perhaps above all else, that the Russian listener risks his career by tuning in— this and knowledge of the West. Almost none of this service is provided.

There is also a staggering and disgraceful cal- lousness in face of human suffering, surely utterly out of tune with British opinion, which the BBC is by charter supposed to represent. Thus the obituary of Stalin begins : 'A great revolutionary despot': this is how one of his most serious and most objective biographers in England has described Stalin, adding that 'it is only right to place equal em- phasis on each part of this description.' (I. Deutschcr.) He was great, if his stature was measured by the scope of his endeavours, the sweep of his actions and, I may add,' owing to

the greatness of the country and the people he dominated. He was revolutionary, although he did not remain true to the ideals of the revo- lution, but he did build his house on a new foundation, he introducgd a new principle, that of economic plans, and made it the basis of the State. And, finally, he was a despot, who did not stop at using any, frequently inhuman, means. No historian, however friendly, will be able to ignore it. Stalin's despotism has vitiated much of his achievement.

What was his greatest achievement? Under his leadership Russia once again became a Great Power, which proved capable of withstanding unprecedented enemy pressure during the war. What was his greatest mistake? In my opinion, it was his failure to make proper use of his greatest achievement for the benefit of his people and of the whole mankind. After Russia became a Great Power and a victorious Power under his leadership, he did not use these assets in order to establish normal conditions' in his own country and normal relations with the rest of the world, although both would have been possible.

There was his struggle for power after Lenin's death. It was natural in the circumstances, and history will not blame him for it.

—i.e., he is not to be blamed for exiling Trotsky, the victor of the civil war; not to be blamed for the medical murder of his Minister of Defence Frunze; not to be blamed for turning the security police against his party opponents as well as the rest of the population; not to be blamed for his unprincipled zigzags to Right and to Left as he knocked off his opponents. In a word, before Stalin went in for large-scale massacre, in his `mild' period up to 1930, he had been as treacher- ous and murdercius a ruler as King John. Does history not blame King John?

There was the industrialisation of the country

carried out at breakneck speed and by any means. Impartial historians, in my view, will have to make an effort to justify this: had the

country not been industrialised, it would hardly have been able to resist the highly mechanised and magnificently equipped armies of Hitler.

I consider that this and the previous passage italicised amply justify my charge of 'esoteric Right-wing Marxism.' Only a Marxist view of history could account for such unprincipled suc- cess-worship. Though I have found no Marxist tendencies in other fields, this slavish submission to 'History,' which permeates so many broad- casts, is a very serious concession to Communist thinking and an intolerable blemish. Incidentally this argument for Stalin has not even a factual, let alone a moral, basis. For without Stalin not only would there have been less industrialisation, but also no Hitler : a Kremlin full of Jews like Zinoviev and Trotsky would have driven the Ger- man Communist Party into a united front with the Socialists in 1931. And without Stalin's de- moralising domestic policies millions of Soviet soldiers would not have surrendered without a fight in 1941. Nor would another leader have re- fused to believe the intelligence reports of a coming Nazi attack, and retarded defensive pre- parations. All this, too, is what 'impartial historians' would put in their obituaries of Stalin, once they had begun to chase might-have-beens.

There was the collectivisation of agriculture.

That was a mistake.

I reckon ten million people were deported from their land, having committed no crime; and Under conditions which directly and immediately caused the death of about one million. Two years kilo' the whole country suffered a serious famine, from which very approximately two million more died; the famine had no other cause than col- lectivisation.

As subsequent developments have shown, the collective farm system has not solved the problem of relations between the Soviet State and the millions of peasants. We know that the bulk of the peasantry remained (why the past tense?) opposed to collective farming; thus the end not having been achieved, it could not possibly justify the inhuman means employed. There was the great purge of the 1930s. Some people later tried to justify these, terrifying events, but they will remain an indelible blot on the Stalin era. It has been pointed out that the Great Purge de- stroyed the fifth column that would have helped Hitler during the war. This may be so, but, in addition, it destroyed numberless people who did not come under that heading and who were liquidated 'just in case' merely because the security officials lost their head. It is impossible to justify these terrible happenings. What public opinion abroad later tried to do was to forget them.

But this choice of words implies there really was a fifth column; while the whole voluminous litera- ture of the great purge reveals no such group. Just the contrary : the purge created a fifth column—the millions of defectors, the Vlassov army.

Then there is scarcely any economics or sociology. Are there classes in the Soviet Union? Why don't Western economists believe in the Marxian theory of value? What is the Managerial Revolution? How do rates of economic growth compare? How do present standards of living compare? These questions are always being asked by intelligent Soviet citizens; they thirst for answers, and the service gives them a stone. In- deed, there is a striking lack of Third Programme content in its treatment of the British scene, too : very little on literature and the arts.

Next I bring in evidence the use of Mr. Zil- liacus. On September 29, 1955, Mr. Zilliacus was permitted to broadcast the following : Yugoslavia, on the other hand, has an ancient tradition of friendship with Russia. After the Second World War Yugoslavia was one of the victors, her territory was increased, and a revo- lutionary democratic regime was introduced under the leadership of the Yugoslav Com- munist Party, which was second in importance only to the Soviet Communist Party.

The statement italicised is not softened in the slightest degree by what follows or precedes this paragraph. Mr. Zilliacus continued later in the same broadcast : As regards the Western Powers, I think they can draw the following conclusion from the cases of Finland and Yugoslavia : the aim of present-day Soviet policy is not to impose a Communist regime upon the rest of the world by force of arms, but to safeguard the Soviet Union's security and its economic interests.

May I add that very much of what Mr. Zilliacus said on that and other occasions was wise and true? Nevertheless, I find it utterly inadmissible that an ex-sympathiser with Stalin and a current sympathiser with Tito should be permitted to broadcast to Russia at all. I attach the BBC's list of the Members of Parliament it has used in a certain period.

In the period under review eleven instalments of Sir Winston Churchill's Triumph and Tragedy were given in serial readings between September 26, 1954, and December 11, 1954. On special occasions (e.g., the beginning of the revision of the Polish Communist official version of the His- tory of the Warsaw Rising) the relevant parts of Sir Winston's History were read again.

October 2, 1954: 'Visit to Poland'—Captain Hugh Delargy, MP.

October 18, 1954: 'The Worker in Poland'— The Rt. Hon. G. Brown, MP.

November 3, 1954: 'Russian Journey'—Stan- ley Evans, MP.

November 30, 1954: 'Churchill the States- man'—Lord Samuel.

June 22, 1955: 'The Belgrade Declaration— What Next?'—K. Zilliacus, MP.

September 29, 1955: 'Finland and Yugo- slavia'—K. Zilliacus, MP.

May 11, 1956: 'Speech at Aachen'—Sir Win- ston Churchill, MP.

June 18, 1956: 'Tito's Visit to Moscow'—K. Zilliacus, MP.

June 21, 1956: 'Personal Freedom'—R. H. S. Crossman, MP.

July 3, 1956: 'Poznan Reflections'—D. Don- nelly, MP.

January 26, 1957: 'East-West Cultural Rela- tions'—P. C. Gordon Walker, MP.

February 9, 1957: Letter from five Labour MPs (Fenner Brockway, Mrs. Barbara Castle, George Wigg, R. Crossman, Anthony Wedg- wood Benn) addressed to Pravda several weeks before, but not printed. The letter was then printed in Pravda the day after the BBC broad- cast.

February 12, 1957: 'You never can tell in the House of Commons'—P. C. Gordon Walker, MP.

July 21, 1957: Text of broadcast on Moscow Radio—English Service only—Cyril Osborne, MP.

July 26, 1957: 'Reply to Viktorov's Reply' —Cyril Osborne, MP.

In all this, then, there are just four current statements of a non-Labour point of view (Osborne, Churchill at Aachen, Samuel). Myself, I am a Liberal. I have no love at all for Conser- vatives and above all no love for their attitude to the objectivity of the BBC's other overseas services. Also it must be recognised that fewer Conservative MPs travel behind the Iron Cur- tain, and that the best are busy governing the country; also that most of the Labour MPs' talks are not on party politics. Nevertheless, here is an unbalance that should be corrected.

Finally, a few miscellaneous points : (i) I can find no recent trace of anti-Americanism. (ii) Lenin's Testament, those explosive documents in which Lenin condemned Stalin, that rocked the USSR when finally published in Komi:mist, June, 1956, was indeed broadcast in 1949—once and never again. Thus the BBC may have been disingenuous in saying (Spectator, August 2, 1957) it was 'first' broadcast in 1949. What an oppor- tunity was lost here, to anticipate Khrushchev's secret speech! Especially after Stalin's death, when there can have been no possible diplomatic objection. (iii) It was indeed only the BBC's Rus- sian service that was not jammed between the Bulganin-Khrushchev visit to Britain and October, 1956, out of all foreign broadcasts to all Com- munist countries—a fact which can only mean that Khrushchev shared my opinion of the service. (iv) The Russian service is more independent than I said in its compilation of news bulletins. I have not examined these as closely as the talks. (v) Since the Hungarian Revolution, Professor Seton- Watson has, under severe external pressure, been allowed to make a couple of admirable broad- casts, frankly and movingly addressing the Rus- sian people in terms close to their hearts. In stark contrast to the Zilliacus broadcasts these received an implied disavowal in the lead-in and lead-out, thus (November 8, 1956):

Professor Seton-Watson, who is the Professor of Russian History at London University, has asked us to give him the opportunity to broad- cast about the events in Hungary. . . . We have broadcast a talk about the events in Hungary by Professor Seton-Watson, the Professor of Rus- sian History at London University. Professor Seton-Watson asked us to give him the oppor- tunity to speak personally about these events.

If one talk could epitomise fairly the good and the bad in the BBC's Russian service, it is that of November 4, 1956. The first and last paragraphs are as follows : On Sunday, 4th November, 1956, a bitter blow was dealt to all that has been accomplished over the last three and a half years, to all that had gladdened the hearts of peace-loving people everywhere, shattering their high hopes of the future. In these last three and a half years, despite all the difficulties and complexities, rela- tions between the Soviet Union and the West had developed in the right direction because there seemed to be a pronounced desire on the part of the Soviet Union to remedy the mistakes and errors of the past. Not everyone in the West had believed in these changes and there were those who had their doubts. But when, at the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev had fully repudiated the entire Stalin policy, it had seemed to evidence the wish to break completely with the past; and there were grounds for hope that a new era had indeed dawned in international relations. . . .

Soon after the war Stalin sacrificed the cherished achievements of the Soviet Union and the enormous prestige he had gained in the struggle against Hitler. After his death the Soviet Government began, step by step, to retrieve its waned prestige, and a sigh of relief went up over the world. Now, at one stroke, in the night of 3rd to 4th November, the Soviet Government has once more thrown all this overboard.

In between are five admirable pages, showing that there had at last been true democracy in Hungary, that there was no Fascism there, that in Suez Britain had called in the United Nations, that anyway there was deep and vocal opposition to Britain's Suez policy, etc. etc. Every current question a Soviet listener might wish to have answered is well answered in the necessarily short compass of a broadcast talk. Now consider the sentence in italics above.

Both Khrushchev's secret and his open speech at the conference were chock-full of Stalinism. He at no point repudiated anti-Semitism—how could he, since he is a notorious anti-Semite him- self? (A fact well known in November, 1956, already owing to the testimony of Seweryn Bigler, available since at least a month.) His account of the anti-Semitic Doctors' Plot, in which he was deeply implicated, is as dishonest as possible. Every mention of Malenkov in the secret speech is designed to discredit him, to make him out as more responsible than the others; an ominous presentiment of a forthcoming purge. The refer- ences to Stalin's crimes against the population as opposed to the Communists—the de-kulakisation, the 1933, famine, the genocide of small nations, etc. etc.—are minimal and perfunctory. Even his murder of Trotsky and Bukharin is not repudiated —some of their supporters who had returned to the fold should not have been shot, that is all; so that the secret speech leaves no room at all for opposition within the party. Moreover, within four months of delivering his speech Khrushchev had had a very senior Communist executed—as a 'Beria man,' of course (Bagirov : cf. Times, May 30, 1956). So much for 'repudiating the entire Stalin policy.'

What possible excuse, then, could there be for the sentence italicised? But if that sentence is false the whole spirit of the first and last paragraphs is subtly wrong. It professes an optimism no sensible person ever felt, it hints at the possibility, now closed, of a permanent accommodation which was in fact never open. It hopes and hopes that one day some Communist Bismarck will arise who will say 'Russia is a satisfied power.' If the Russian service only keeps plugging, it seems to• say, one day we in Britain will no longer be threatened : they will settle down to a division of spheres of influence. And since, in that case, their internal system is no concern of ours why should we criticise it radically now? It will only annoy them and hinder their development into a satisfied power. So we shall criticise it just so much as we cannot avoid, just so much as any Soviet listener will expect of us and no more.

Fundamentally there are two mutually exclu- sive policies the BBC can pursue with honour and good sense. The first is to provide a complete service with serious Sovietological analysis and all; and accept being jammed. It would still be heard—there is cast-iron evidence for that—but by a rather small audience. Or it can provide a British-travelogue service; just present Britain to Russia as did Britansky Soyuznik, the war-time journal published by our embassy in Moscow. Then it may not be jammed, and every Russian listener may be able to form his own conclusions at least about Britain. This, too, would be extremely valuable, and it is evidently the choice of Mr. Victor Frank, once of the BBC, now of Radio Liberation (Spectator, August 9, 1957). It is also the view of a critical private correspondent who wrote to me : I came to the conclusion while in Eastern Europe that the essential thing was somehow to get through, and that it was desirable to do this even at the cost of sacrificing a great deal of the content of • the programme, provided this achieved the ending of jamming. I don't think that the only broadcasts which have a disturb- ing effect are those which are critical of the Soviet Union. In fact, Russian nationalism is so strong that a critical broadcast might not have the intended effect. I am all for simply talking about your own 'country or about other apparently harmless subjects, and the Russian listener will draw all sorts of information from them which will cause him to think critically about the domestic situation. The degree of ignorance, as you well know, in the Soviet Union about the West, is enormous, and I am convinced that knowledge is the most dangerous thing which we can broadcast to the USSR.

Pure travelogue is not, of course, what the BBC is providing, nor is this the means whereby it obtained its brief freedom from jamming in 1956. Moral compromise and appeasement have been its line. There is, in fact, no decent intermediate position. Either we try to charm away the jam- ming or we don't. What is the point of ideological compromises and hemi-demi-semi pro-Soviet hedging? To get the Soviet leaders themselves to listen, and persuade them to change their views? Much of the material in the files really does look as if it had been directed to this end—an end that only ignorance and vanity could suggest to a sane man. But if this third position is impossible there are great dangers in being both serious and in- offensive. The effort not to be jammed corrupts. Either say what you think or provide a simple travelogue. Why step into the ring and then pull your punches?