REMEMBERING THOSE AMERICANS WHO EMBRACED STALIN—-AND EMBRACE PUTIN TODAY
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
—————————————————————————————————————————+-
There
is a history in American politics of support for tyrannical regimes
abroad and that history, sadly, seems to be repeating itself at the
present time.
Consider
those Americans who embraced Stalin. Lillian Hellman, the famous
playwright, visited Russia in 1937, when Stalin’s purge trials were at
their height. On her return, she said she knew nothing about them. In
1938, she was among the signatories of an ad in the Communist
publication New Masses, which approved the trials.
She
supported the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland, stating: “I don’t
believe in that fine, lovable little Republic of Finland that everyone
gets so weepy about. I’ve been there and it looks like a pro-Nazi
little republic to me.” There is absolutely no evidence that Hellman
ever visited Finland—-and her biographer says it is highly improbable.
A
leading novelist who did his best to promote tyranny was Ernest
Hemingway. Discussing Hemingway’s role in promoting the Soviet view of
the Spanish civil war, Paul Johnson, in his book “Intellectuals,” writes
that, “Hemingway accepted the Communist party line on the war in all
its crudity. He paid four visits to the front, but even before he left
New York he had decided what the civil war was all about and was already
signed up for the propaganda film ‘Spain in Flames’…”. Hemingway said
that the Spanish Communists were “the best people in the war.”
The
unfortunate fact is that the blindness of many intellectuals and
journalists to the real nature of communism was widespread. Western
newspapers at the height of what later became known as the terror of the
Stalin years , printed an idyllic picture of the Soviet Union.
Walter
Duranty, the New York Times correspondent in Moscow, hailed the advent
of “democracy” under the Stalin constitution. Writing in the Times of
July 19, 1936, he reported that the document “is an outward and visible
sign of an inward and spiritual change in the Russian people and its
leaders…In this nineteenth year of the Soviet State , there is
introduced a new Constitution, under which the Russian masses emerge
from their tutelage and are called upon to receive their rights and
undertake their duties as a free and democratic people…External enemies
are no longer feared and internal enemies have been defeated and
scotched , if not totally eliminated…”
This
was written on the eve of one of the bloodiest periods in Russia’s
history. In the midst of the enforced famine in the Ukraine in the
1930s, Walter Duranty visited the region and denied that starvation and
death was rampant. In November 1932, Duranty reported that “there is no
famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be.” When the
famine became widely known in the West, and reported in his own paper
and by his own colleagues, playing down rather than denial became his
method. Still denying famine, he spoke of “malnutrition,” “food
shortages,” and “lowered resistance.”
In
the Times of August 23, 1933, Duranty wrote: “Any report of famine in
Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda, and went on to
declare: “The food shortage which has affected almost the whole
population last year, and particularly in the grain producing
provinces—-that is, the Ukraine, the North Caucuses, the Lower Volga
region—-has, however, caused heavy loss of life.” He estimated the
deaths at nearly four times the usual rate…”
In
his landmark study of Soviet collectivism and the terror-famine of the
1930s, “The Harvest of Sorrow,” Robert Conquest declared that Duranty’s
“admission of two million extra deaths was made to appear regrettable ,
but not overwhelmingly important and not amounting to ‘famine.’
Moreover, he blamed it in part on the ‘flight of some peasants and the
passive resistance of others’…Duranty blamed famine stories on emigres ,
encouraged by the rise of Hitler…where elements hostile to the Soviet
Union were making an eleventh-hour attempt to avert American recognition
by depicting the Soviet Union as a land of ruin and despair.”
What
Americans got was not the truth, but false reporting. Its influence
was widespread. What Walter Duranty got was the highest honor in
journalism, the Pulitzer Prize of 1932, complimenting him for
“dispassionate, interpretive reporting reporting of the news from
Russia.” The citation declared that Duranty’s dispatches—-which the
world now knows to have been false—-were “marked by scholarship,
profundity, impartiality, sound judgment, and exceptional clarity.”
Such
blindness to the reality of Communism and its barbarous rule was found
not only among intellectuals and journalists but in the highest reaches
of government as well. In 1944, Vice President Henry Wallace visited
Magadan in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Far East, one of the most
notorious places of detention and forced labor. Throughout his visit he
remained unaware of having been in the midst of a complex of prisons
and labor camps.
Wallace
wrote: “At Magadan, I met Ivan Feodorovich Nikishev, a Russian,
director of Dalstroi (the Far Northern Construction Trust), which is a
combination of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Hudson Bay Company.
On display in his office were samples of ore-bearing rocks in this
region…Nikishev waxed enthusiastic and Coglidze (an aide) commented
jestingly, ‘He runs everything around here. With Dalstroi’s resources
at his command, he is a millionaire.’ ‘We had to dig hard to get this
place going,’ said Nikishev. ‘Twelve years ago the first settlers
arrived and put up eight prefabricated houses. Today Magadan has 40,000
inhabitants and are all well housed.” (Henry Wallace, Soviet Asia
Mission)
As to the NKVD
troops assigned to his party: “In traveling through Siberia we were
accompanied by ‘old soldiers’ with blue tops on their caps. Everybody
treated them with great respect. They are members of the NKVD…I became
very fond of their leader, Mikhail Cheremisenov, who had also been with
the Willkie party.”
Mao,
the Chinese Communist leader, was as popular among many Americans as was
Stalin. After Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the American
media flooded the country with extravagant praise of the achievements of
the Communists. We were told that they had solved all of the ancient
problems of hunger, floods, erosion, inequality of wealth, laziness, and
even dishonesty.
Visiting
China, James Reston of the New York Times reported that he thought
Chinese Communist doctrines and the Protestant ethic had much in common
and was generally impressed by “the atmosphere of intelligent and
purposeful work.” (New York Times, July 30, 1971). He wrote: “China’s
most visible characteristics are the characteristics of youth…a kind of
lean, muscular grace, relentless hard work, and an optimistic and even
amiable outlook on the future…The people seem not only young but
enthusiastic about their changing lives.” Reston also believed that
young people from the city who were forced to work as manual laborers in
rural areas “were treating it like an escape from the city and an
outing in the countryside.” (New York Times, July 28, 1971)
When
he died in 1976, Mao was discussed in glowing terms. It has been
estimated that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 30 to 60 million
people. The New York Times referred to the execution of “a million to
three million people, including landlords, nationalist agents and others
suspected of being class enemies.” The Washington Post declared: “Mao
the warrior, philosopher and ruler was the closest the modern world has
been to the god-heroes of antiquity.” The Post referred to only three
million people who lost their lives in the 1950 “reign of terror.” But
the only victims mentioned were “counter-revolutionaries.”
In
those days it was commentators and political voices on the left who
embraced Communist dictators——although such voices represented a
minority. Ironically, as we face a brutal dictator in Russia who is
guilty of naked aggression in the heart of Europe and is committing war
crimes against the civilian population of Ukraine, he is being embraced
by a small but vocal group of voices on the right.
Donald
Trump has called Putin “a genius,” and opposes aid to Ukraine. As far
back as 2019, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson said he was for
Moscow. He asked, “Why do I care what is going on in the conflict
between Ukraine and Russia? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which, by
the way I am.” Sen.J.D. Vance (R-OH) says, “I don’t really care what
happens in Ukraine.” Sen.]osh Hawley (R-MO) says the same thing, as
does Rep.Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Steve Bannon says, “Every
Republican who supports this murderous war in Ukraine should be turfed
out.” Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, once a favorite of
Donald Trump, has moved beyond his claim that no children were killed at
the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. In Ukraine, he
strangely said, “You can have the Russians or you can have George Soros
literally going after children.”
Russia,
of course, is not only bombing schools, hospitals and apartment houses
in Ukraine, clearly a war crime. But is in the business of taking
American hostages in Moscow. The latest American taken as a hostage is
Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich. This is the first
such arrest of an accredited Moscow correspondent for a U.S. news
organization in Putin’s 22 years in power and the first since the Cold
War ended.
Those
American conservatives who embrace Putin seem not to recognize the
police state Russia has become. Putin’s critics are regularly faced
with violence and death. The reporter Anna Politkovskaya was murdered
in her apartment hallway, the dissident ex-KGB officer Alexander
Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive material in his teacup, the
opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back near the Kremlin.
The anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was the target of a
serious poisoning attempt and is today unjustly jailed. A movie telling
his story, “Navalny,” won this year’s Academy Award for documentaries.
The
Cold War was successfully concluded because Democrats and Republicans
joined together to resist tyranny. Now, in the face of naked aggression
in Europe, most Americans—-and our NATO partners——are united in
resisting this aggression. Everyone is united in this effort except for
an isolationist fringe on the extreme right-wing. They call themselves
“conservatives,” but they have nothing in common with those they seem
to revere historically, leaders like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
In the face of Russian aggression, one wonders what men like Goldwater
and Reagan would think of those who would surrender to tyranny.