Why the Communists are Winning as of 1976...

Author: William D. Pawley & Richard R. Tryon

Chapter Twenty-six
LESSONS THE COMMUNISTS HAVE TAUGHT US
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Fortunately, we do not have to rely alone upon the history of our Vietnam experience to discover the nature of our Communist enemies and the lessons they have taught the free world. These stand out clearly in every dealing we have had with Communist rulers since they seized power under Lenin and Trotsky in Russia in November, 1917.
The most important lesson that must be studied and mastered by our nation, and by all peoples willing to face the facts of international life as they exist today and probably will exist in the future, is this:
“The aim, the purpose, the objective of all leaders of Communism are to subject all governments and peoples to its ultimate control.”
The leaders of a Communist regime must change as the old ones are replaced by the new. The faces, the persons in control, will change. But the aim and purpose of the Communist conspiracy never change. Lenin gave way to Stalin, and Stalin to later leaders in the Kremlin; but, with only a modification in tactics by way of changed conditions, the purpose of the Communist regime remained the same.
Millions of people have learned this lesson already - the hard way. In the Russian homeland and in the nations held captive by Russian tyranny; in mainland China, in Cuba, in North Korea and now in Indochina, the people have learned what it means to surrender their cherished freedoms. Millions more people in free lands refuse to believe the clear lesson, due to ignorance of the nature of Communism and the wishful thinking that maybe the Communist tyrants have changed or perhaps they will change, and become law-abiding, democratic members of the international community.
“The stark fact is that Communist leaders do not change their purpose,” says former Congressman Walter H. Judd. And he adds: “If they did, they would not be Communists.”
I am aware of the sorrow it will cause some “liberals” to acknowledge the truth of this most important lesson concerning the challenge that now confronts the democratic nations of the world. But liberals profess to stand staunchly for human freedom under self-government, and that ideal is squarely opposite from that which communism forces upon its subjects. Liberals profess to believe in the principle that all citizens stand equal before the law; yet that principle is denied by the stifling, bureaucratic injustices of the Red commissars, whatever language they speak. Liberals profess to believe in the honor of a person or a government to abide by its pledges and agreements, while Communist pledges and agreements, as Lenin so aptly said, “are like pie crusts - made only to be broken”, which they have consistently done.
“But now we are in a different age and time,” say those to trust the Communists to change and become good. “Look at detente! Here is proof that the ‘socialist’ governments and the ‘capitalist’ governments can co-exist in peace.”
We shall scrutinize detente later. Meantime, let us hear from Alexander I Solzhenitsyn, Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago, that vivid and detailed expose of the barbarous cruelty given the political prisoners in the Soviet Union’s slave-labor camps. In a memorable speech in Washington on June 30, 1975, he referred to an incident that occurred soon after Lenin and his Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia:
“In the difficult moments of a party meeting in Moscow, Lenin said: ‘Comrades, don’t worry when things are hard for us. When things are difficult, we will give a rope to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie will hang itself with this rope.’
“Then, Karl Radek said, ‘Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), but where are we going to get enough rope to hand to the whole bourgeoisie?’ Lenin replied immediately, ‘They’ll supply us with it’.”
Solzhenitsyn, that articulate advocate of human freedom who was released from the physical and mental prisons of the Soviet Union, went on to declare to his American audience:
“I am not going to give you sweet words. The situation in the world is not merely dangerous. It isn’t merely threatening. It is catastrophic. Something that is incomprehensible to the ordinary human mind has taken place. We over there, the powerless, average Soviet people, could not understand, year after year and decade after decade, what was happening.
“England, France and the United States were victorious in the Second World War. Victorious states are obliged to dictate peace. They have to establish good conditions, firm conditions, and create an existence that accords with their philosophy - with their concept of liberty and their concept of national interest.
“Instead of this, beginning at Yalta, your statesmen of the West, for some inexplicable reason, signed one capitulation after another. For thirty years there has been the constant retreat, the surrender of one country after another. During these thirty years, more was surrendered to totalitarianism than ever in world history any defeated country surrendered after any war.”
All honest, thoughtful students of the events of the past three decades must acknowledge that Solzhenitsyn is correct in his judgment of the leaders of the free world in general and those of the United States in particular. We failed to grasp the magnificent opportunity to establish, on the ruins of the greatest and most destructive war in history, a just and lasting peace based upon a world of self-governing peoples. We helped to create a United Nations dedicated to the security of all countries and peoples, but with a built-in veto advantage to the communist block in the Security Council that has allowed the Soviet Union to prevent the representatives of the free world from establishing a world of order under enforceable law. We have watched helplessly as the prestige of the United Nations has eroded under the growing power of so-called “third world” countries - many of them newly independent and with no experience in self-government and democratic procedures.
Many of our statesmen and molders of public opinion have assumed that in time the Communist rulers would “soften” and “become more like us”; that some day they would see the benefits of private enterprise and human freedoms; that since we in America are becoming more of a welfare state, some day our path and that of the Reds would join. Such ideas are false, futile, and dangerous. They are a part of the “rope” which Lenin predicted we would supply to the Reds, and with which we have been slowly strangling ourselves.
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Having stated the most important lesson we have learned from the record of Communist rulers during the six decades of iron control in Russia and the many years of Red tyranny in other areas of the world, we now list five other lessons. They are all vital to an understanding of the nature of Communism and its menace to human liberties and free institutions. They have been demonstrated time and again. They are so well known that they can be forecast in any situation in the world, today or in the future.
2. Differences between the United States and Communist regimes are irreconcilable.
There could be peaceful co-existence between our countries, even if the differences in economic and social systems cannot be reconciled, provided the Red regimes gave up their plans for aggression against their neighbors. But the history of Communism, wherever its poisonous roots have crowded out the growth of human freedom, prove the Red rulers will never give up their goal of world domination. Especially is that fact true today, when the Communists are winning over the free world without a shooting war.
I have nothing but admiration for the brilliance of those intellectuals who expound their positions from a sound premise, the test of the premise being results. But I deplore the influence of intellectuals like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and John Kenneth Galbraith, who argue from the false premise that U.S. - Soviet differences are reconcilable. They continue to cling to this fallacy with the tenacity of an abalone glued to its rock, even after the hard, proven facts of life as it is, not as they dream it should be, have refuted them.
Our liberals have ignored the evidence that the Soviets don’t want to get along with us, except as a temporary expedient in the long-range strategy for world domination. We see proof of this in the negotiations on arms limitations, trade agreements and other facets of detente. The Communists make it crystal clear, if we would only listen, that they want, on the contrary, to enslave us under their system, or in the last extremity, to destroy us. They have been telling their own people, and broadcasting to the world, precisely that.
3. Communists never negotiate except to make agreements favorable to their cause.
To that provable rule there should be added these words: Communists never make agreements they feel obligated to keep, if breaking them would benefit their purpose.
Traditionally, among civilized people, “to negotiate” means that the representatives of two or more countries discuss their problems and differences, and reach an understanding which all parties will consider just and binding. That is the way of diplomatic honor and honesty. But among Communist spokesmen there is no honor, diplomatic or otherwise. In Marxist thinking, such ideals as “good faith”, “solemn covenants”, and the like are only bourgeois claptrap, to be ignored with contempt and derision.
The whole history of Communism is strewn with the wrecks of dishonored treaties, promises, and agreements. We have noted the promise the Russians made to President Roosevelt in 1933, that if they were given diplomatic recognition, they would not carry on subversion against the United States. Yet, recognition brought into existence in the United States a network of spies and subversive agents.
A most tragic example of broken agreements developed from the treaties of “friendship and mutual security” imposed in 1939 upon the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The treaties were callously discarded the following year. Russian soldiers illustrated the contempt of their government for such pledges when they obeyed orders to transfer whole blocs of Baltic populations to Siberia.
The agreements on the four-power control of Germany, and particularly Berlin, are among scores of examples of how this rule operates. In the agreements, the divisions were specifically described as postwar temporary devices “for administration of the occupied areas” until peace treaties could be signed. Repeatedly the American people were assured that such was the case. But the Soviet Union never considered those agreements as anything other than tactics to give the Reds a free hand in their spheres of control until they could make the temporary arrangements permanent, as they now in effect have done.
Sot it has been, and will be, with all the “understandings” made by our diplomats with the Red regime. Not one is worth the paper it is written on, unless the United States and our Allies have the power and the will to enforce it.
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4. Peaceful co-existence, or detente, is merely an extension of armed warfare.
All Soviet leaders, from Lenin to Stalin and on to Khrushchev and Brezhnev, have recognized this truth, and have acted upon it without deviation. Lenin announced this rule in a speech to the Active Party Workers of the Moscow Organization of the Russian Communist Party, on December 6, 1920:
“So long as Capitalism and Socialism remain, they cannot live at peace; in the long run either one or the other will be victorious; the funeral dirge will be sounded either over the Soviet Republic or over world Capitalism....From the point of view of the danger of a clash between Capitalism and Bolshevism, it must be said that concessions are a continuation of war in another field. Concessions are not peace with Capitalism, but war in a new sphere.”
The World Marxist Review for October, 1962, expressed the rule in these words:
“Peaceful coexistence is in no way a retreat in the face of imperialism and does not signify any weakening of the anti-imperialist movement. It is unthinkable there can be no determined day-to-day struggle against the aggressive imperialist forces in the political, economic and ideological spheres.”
According to the dictionary, Detente means a “lessening of tensions and of hostility”. That is our understanding of it. A statement in the August 22, 1975, issue of Pravda, when detente was being pushed earnestly by our government as a means to relieve tensions with the Reds, clearly defines the Russian position:
“Peaceful coexistence does not mean the end of the struggle of the two world social systems. The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between world Socialism and Imperialism, will be waged right up to the complete and final victory of communism on a world scale.”
Right up to his death, President Franklin D. Roosevelt persisted in his illusion that he, personally, was endowed with the gifts and the wisdom to build a foundation for world peace through friendly relations with Moscow. President Truman mistakenly clung to the same obsession in the quest for the same admirable goal.
President Eisenhower insisted on maintaining a four-to-one superiority over Russia in all military categories. However, his successor, John Kennedy, surrendered Cuba and involved us in a ground war in Vietnam. The Nixon Administration became the advocate of “detente”, and now President Gerald Ford has promised continuity of Nixon’s policy of detente.
But what does the record show? Detente has consistently taken the form of conciliation by us, with none from the other side. As Senator Thomas J. Dodd told Congress in 1968:3
“If our efforts at appeasement and conciliation had scored even a single conditional victory, it might be more difficult to argue against those pundits who have been talking about detente and the need for abandoning our rigid and antiquated attitude toward the Cold War. But the fact is that the approach has failed, and failed miserably, in ever single instance in which it has been tried.”
Whether it be called “detente” or something else, peaceful coexistence is a colossal fraud upon free peoples. It is a device to lull democratic governments into believing they can live permanently at peace with Red regimes.
The whole theory of “coalition governments” is based upon the fallacy of peaceful coexistence. The coalitions formed in the countries of Eastern Europe, now behind the iron curtain of Russian tyranny, were based upon the false promise that “free elections” would be held in those countries. In areas where elections were held, in no instance did the Communist parties receive a majority. In Czechoslovakia in 1948, for example, the Reds got only seventeen percent of the votes. Yet they were accorded a coalition government, making their own selection of the ministries they knew they would need to take over the entire government later. And take over they did, by the usual subversion and the guns of the Red Army.
Thus, as we have seen, by agreeing to coalition governments, a free world lost China. The rule was demonstrated again by a short-lived coalition for Laos in Indochina, worked out by W. Averell Harriman, under the false hope that the Communist faction would co-exist peacefully with the democratic elements. And so it will be in the future, if the United States and our Allies fail to heed the lesson that co-existence is merely a device for a holding operation in the continuing war, whether “cold” or “hot”, for Communist control.
5. Propaganda is an essential Communist weapon.
To the Red tyrants, propaganda for their cause is as necessary as military weapons are to armed conflict. It is a companion device to aid all efforts for infiltration and subversion.
All agreements signed by the representatives of Red dictatorships, with the United States from the time of our recognition of the Soviet Union to the present, have been accompanied by propaganda statements extolling the high purposes of the Marxist governments.
Invariably, Red propaganda seeks to raise the Communist regime to a level of parity with the “imperialist” government and especially if that government is that of the United States of America. The whole dismal two years spent in “negotiating” a peace treaty with the Vietnam Reds in Paris was a propaganda device to show that a small Asiatic country was able to stand on a position of equality with the big paper-tiger nation, the hated Uncle Sam.
The truth of any statement, pronouncement or news leak is entirely incidental to the use of Communist propaganda. If what is used to further a Communist purpose is the truth, then it is justified; but it is never justified merely because it is true. If the propaganda is not true, that fact has no bearing on the case. In most Communist propaganda, the Big Lie is much more valuable than the truth.
Examples of this less that all free peoples must learn could be cited by the scores. Three will suffice to illustrate:
Near the close of World War II, the Russian Red Army was invading Eastern Poland, in an area that Hitler had agreed with Stalin the Russians would be allowed to annex. With the Germans in full retreat, the Polish troops were surrendering to the Russians in large numbers. Close by the town of Katyn, some two thousand Polish officers and non-coms were separated from their commands by the Reds and marched to a nearby wooded area called Katyn Forest.
There the Poles were forced to dig long trenches for their graves. With their hands tied behind their backs, many of the Polish soldiers were made to kneel. They were brutally murdered by shots in the back of the head - Russian style. They were buried in the common graves. Many, when the mass graveyard was uncovered, were found to have been buried alive and smothered to death.
The Red leaders, military and civilian, put on a huge propaganda campaign, blaming the Nazi forces for the atrocity. Even after clear proof was offered by Polish people who witnessed the massacre that it was the work of the Russians, the false propaganda persisted. It is still the official Russian line.
When Czechoslovakia was seized by the Reds, the outstanding patriot, Prime Minister Jan Masaryk was held prisoner. He was moved to a second-story room of a hospital clinic in Prague. One day his body was picked up by Russian soldiers beneath a window of the apartment where he had been held, and carried to the hospital ward. The Russian authorities began a vigorous propaganda campaign to the effect that Masaryk, realizing his guilt of “plotting against the Soviet Union”, had jumped from the window to his death.
An American medical officer assigned to work at that Prague clinic with two Czech internees, quietly examined the body and found that Masaryk had been killed by a bullet through the back of his head, obviously before he was dumped from the window.
Our government permits the publication and distribution of a colorful magazine, “Soviet Life”. It is perhaps the best example on earth of total propaganda in behalf of Red Russia. It extols every facet of life in Russian and the captive nations, and downgrades everything in benighted America. The November, 1975, issue of Soviet Life devoted many pages to what it called the glorious victory of the Army and Navy of the Soviet Union over the Japanese in World War II. The entire purpose was to give all the credit to the Reds in defeating the Japanese, and not one word of recognition or praise to the thousands of the forces of the United States and our allies. Of course, no mention was made that the war had ended before Stalin’s troops got across the Pacific and into the fighting.
It is a sad fact of American life that many of our “intellectuals” among editors, teachers, and others susceptible to leftist influence have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, so much of the bait of Communist propaganda, such as: “Communists are only agrarian reformers.” “Communism is merely another political party system.” And the most deadly of all: What else can we do? Start a war over Communism?” All must learn the lesson that the conflict between the Red tyranny and human freedom will go on until one side wins.
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6. The Soviet Union will use its military power for blackmail against the United States and the free world.
During this two hundredth year of the independence of the United States of America, there is still time for our side to learn this truth. But time may soon run out.
“In February, 1976, a report of a study was issued that shows the comparative military strengths of the Soviet Union and the U.S. The study, made by experts in the Library of Congress at the request of Senator John Culver of Iowa, declares:
“The numerical balance of military power has shifted toward the Soviet Union, and the U.S. technological superiority is slowly slipping away.”
As to ground forces: the report reveals that Red Russia’s personnel strength is two and one-half times that of the U.S., and that our approximately 9,000 battle tanks are outnumbered by 34,500 Soviet tanks. In the he February 16, 1976, issue of the U.S. News and World Report is this item:
“The Soviet Union has nearly a million more men - 4.4 million - in its regular armed forces, up from past estimates of 3.5 million. Intelligence analysis, after a year-long study, concludes the increase took place gradually and secretly over the last five to ten years.”
After the demobilization of the more than half a million ground troops sent needlessly to Vietnam, the U.S. still has 1,600,000 troops under arms. Of this number, about 300,000 are on duty in West Germany. About 42,000 are stationed in South Korea, as result of our failure to win the war that began a long generation ago in that divided land.
In view of this comparative strength in ground forces, surely no American military planner in his sane mind would contemplate a conventional war against Soviet land forces, in NATO countries or anywhere else.
As to air power: In 1945 Red Russia had no air force worthy of the name. It was limited to a tactical role in support of ground troops. Now the picture has changed drastically. While we find ourselves with an aging bomber fleet and an anemic fighter-intercepter defense, and wile we are still squabbling about final development of the Boeing B-1 bomber, the Soviets are mass-producing their own answer to the B-1, the swingwing “Backfire”. While the United States Air Force is awaiting the development of the long overdue modern fighter plane, the Soviets already have six major new fighters in production, several of which can operate as long-range fighter-bombers.
As to missiles and atomic weapons: Since 1945, when we held a complete monopoly on atomic weapons, the Soviets, starting from scratch and the plans smuggled to them by our own subversives, were able after just one generation to manufacture enough atomic bombs to devastate all areas of the United States. This they will gladly do if we do not meet their challenge with superior strength. We have mounting evidence that the Soviets will introduce at least half a dozen major new offensive ballistic missile systems before 1978.
Further, the Soviets have developed and tested a mobile, transportable, Model III anti-ballistic missile (ABM), which can be erected anywhere in the Soviet Union, or within Eastern Europe or Cuba, within a matter of weeks.
As to naval power: Since 1945, the Soviet navy has grown in quantity and quality to the point where, according to Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1974-75 edition, the Soviet navy has 1,062 vessels against our 514; a numerical edge of more than three to one in submarines; more than five times as many cruisers, and is now challenging American supremacy in aircraft carriers.
Even more ominous than these figures are new-technology naval weapons, among which I need cite only one, the X-13 missile. It is launched under water with a range of 300 miles and retargetable during flight. It carries a nuclear warhead, for example, toward a speeding aircraft carrier. An authoritative source informs me that we have no defense against this missile.
What had previously been reported to Congress as a three per cent growth rate in annual defense expenditures by the Soviets has now been revised upward to five to seven percent. Because of missile and aircraft priorities, this means that their expenditures for strategic weapons tripled in 1975 and will triple again in 1976.
Powerful forces in our Congress, by sniping at military appropriations year after year, seem bent on destroying our national defense, the last obstacle we muster against our eventual submission to Soviet wishes.
A distinguished Air Force commander of World War II, Lieutenant-General Ira C. Eaker (ret), has well expressed the situation of our country as it confronts the Red Russian challenge:
“Russia and the United States have been eyeball to eyeball twice in little more than a decade. Both times the Soviets blinked (gave way) first. That earlier confrontation between the nuclear superpowers occurred in Cuba in 1962; the second in the Middle East in 1973.
“In the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy ordered Premier Khrushchev to remove the nuclear missiles he had impudently planted ninety miles from our shores, and the Russian dictator complied. He had no alternative, since the U.S. then possessed a 5 to 1 superiority in strategic nuclear power. Any war at that time would only involve general purpose forces....
“The result boiled down, then, to a clash of wills between two heads of state. Khrushchev had badly miscalculated the decisiveness and determination of the U.S. President. That error cost him his job.
“An analysis of the second eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation reveals some significant changes in the decisive factors. When Brezhnev and company served notice on President Nixon, in the third week of the Yom Kippur War, that Russia proposed to introduce combat forces into the Middle East, the decision was not so easy for Richard Nixon as it had been for John Kennedy.
“Since the Cuban humiliation, Russia had taken some decisive steps. Evidently assessing accurately the reasons for Khrushchev’s folly, Russia had in the meantime gained nuclear and naval parity. Soviet leaders also realized that the all-important logistic factors now favored them. With these advantages, why did Brezhnev, like Khrushchev, blink?
“He was not ready. The Kremlin had decided that a nation without clear superiority in nuclear forces should not chance the possibility of nuclear war. Another important factor was the will and determination of the heads of state. Unlike Khrushchev, Brezhnev did not misjudge the qualities of the then U.S. President. He also reckoned that there would soon be a more favorable time.
“While devoting her major effort to nuclear and naval forces in the last decade, Russia has been experimenting extensively with air and space weapons. She is now ready to deploy advanced systems in both areas. Well before 1980, the Soviet Union can have clear superiority in air and space.
“There is one other factor which may well be decisive - the euphoria of detente in the United States. All the present evidence suggests that neither the people nor Congress realize the peril in allowing Russia to gain preponderant military capability. If Russia can delay U.S. rearmaments by dangling the hope of SALT II and mutually balanced force reductions she will have decisive superiority on land and sea, and in air and space, both nuclear and conventional.
“The United States, then, must blink next time and Russia can choose the time and place for the confrontation.”