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Show KEPOKT ON THE RUSSIANS far ' White INSTALLMENT NINE To understand why the Baltic States and later Poland's eastern provinces voted by such staggering majorities (or union with the Soviet government. It is necessary to know the meaning of the term "social engineering," en-gineering," practiced by the Communist Com-munist Party. Communists recognize that In newly occupied areas many individuals individ-uals cannot adapt themselves to the Soviet system. The Soviets conclude that these leaders under the old order will make them, at the least, undepend-able undepend-able citizens of the new. Consequently, Conse-quently, the leaders are arrested for deportation Immediately, the smaller small-er fry being rounded up at a more leisurely rate. Meanwhile plans for elections proceed. pro-ceed. With all such "enemies of the people" disposed of, the Soviet propaganda apparatus moves in, the Red Army taking a prominent part The Communist Party organizes local lo-cal workers' and peasants' committees, commit-tees, which nominate candidates for delegates to- the regional Popular Assembly. Shortly after the Soviet occupation occupa-tion of Eastern Poland, such elec- O Baeee Acquired by Russia When truce ended Finnish-Russian . conflict demands were made. tlons were held In Polish Ruthenia and in the Polish Ukraine. Only one candidate runs for each office and he Is Communist-approved. Communist-approved. A tremendous effort Is made to get out the vote, with party workers from Moscow and Red Army soldieri touring the country aide In trucks. Banners, parades, and speeches Imply that anyone who fails to go to the polls thereby declares himself an enemy of the new state. Most curious of all, from our Western standpoint, is the fact that soldiers of the occupying Red Army are permitted to vote in these elec tions. At the polls, the voter's identification iden-tification card Is checked and he is handed a ballot He is told that he may either drop this in the ballot box or retire behind a screen and make changes in it. He does not need to be told that if he does step behind the icrecn, this fact will be remembered. Few changes are made. The assembly, made up of delegates dele-gates so elected, meets a few days later. In occupied Poland such assemblies as-semblies passed standardized resolutions res-olutions taking over the authority of the old government requesting admission to the Soviet Union, confiscating con-fiscating large estates, and praising "our great leader, Stalin." On economy, social engineering makes rapid changes. In Poland's eastern provinces the old Polish zloty was pegged to the Soviet rouble at a figure most advantageous to the hundreds of thousands of Soviet visitors visi-tors with the result that the shops were quickly stripped both of luxury items end of staples. After a short period, the iloty wss declared worthless. State-owned stores were substituted substitut-ed for private shops taxed out of existence, snd each farmer was notified what share of his produce must be sold to the state at the low official price. In place of the old Polish Po-lish system of free labor unions, a new system was Installed under which a worker who is constantly late or quits his Job faced several years in a prison labor camp. In addition to the 180,000 war prisoners, pris-oners, sn estimated 1,500.000 civilians civil-ians were removed from Poland in the early part of 1940, as a part of the social engineering program. A Soviet transport is an ordinary boxcar with two small, high, barred windows, stove with its pipe protruding pro-truding through the roof, end hole chopped in the floor for toilet Between thirty and forty deportees are locked in each car. Most deportation round-ups were conducted by the .'KVD late at night The people are told whatever what-ever story will make them most amenable to the order. For exam pie, the wife of a Polish officer killed at Katyn Forest (although she did not then know it) was wakened, told that special arrangements had been made for her to Join her husband if she would be ready to leave in an hour. Alter dressing herself, her small son and packing her bag, she arrived on her front step-where she found all the other women on her street also waiting with packed bags and realized that the journey ahead was not a special dispensation dispensa-tion to her. It is also an axiom of social engineering en-gineering to separate families, not as an act of needless cruelty, but because men are suited for stronger, strong-er, more rugged work than are their wives and daughters. But if they are told this at the outset, the emotional emo-tional scenes which follow cause needless delay. Consequently, the only instruction given by the NKVD in the home is that the head of the family is to pack his toilet articles separately since men will go to another an-other place for sanitary Inspection. Not until the family is on the station platform do they discover that the head of the family Is locked with other men in a car separate from those into which they are locked with women and children. It may be several days before they learn that the men are en route to an unknown un-known labor camp. It was the practice prac-tice to send men to lumber and mining min-ing camps in northern Siberia, while women and children did better in the brick yards and co-operative farms in southern Kazakstan. There was much unavoidable confusion. con-fusion. Although the cars were supposed sup-posed to be opened dally, sometimes through neglect they stood for days on sidings, and when finally opened it was nearly always necessary to remove a number of bodies of those who had died from general weakness weak-ness Induced by thirst or cold. But none of this was deliberate, and in such large mass population movements, move-ments, oversights are inevitable. It is unlikely that Russian armies, occupying other neighboring states, will practice social engineering to anything like the degree that it was applied to Poland and the Baltic States. These things were done In the honeymoon period of the Stalin-Hitler Stalin-Hitler pact, when Molotov was proudly proclaiming that Poland had forever vanished from the map, and a Russian alliance with the "war-mongering capitalist democracies" democra-cies" was unthinkable. It Is trite to say that today the Kremlin's thinking has greatly changed. The science of social engineering cannot be deflected by personal tragedies, since its objectives are the building of a strong, loyal state. And It should be said in defense of the Soviet government that under similar circumstances it has treated its own poeple exactly as it did the Poles. Soviet social engineering as applied ap-plied to Poland and the Baltic States has a purpose which we can understand under-stand even' though we do not approve; ap-prove; and it should not be mentioned men-tioned in the same breath with the savage and senseless butcheries which the Germans were perpetrating perpetrat-ing at Lublin on their side of the partition line. It is easy to see why Soviet censorship cen-sorship is severe in matters that involve in-volve social engineering. A less harmful manifestation is its sensitiveness sensi-tiveness to any hint that Russia might be radical. A reporter, describing de-scribing an abrupt alteration in certain cer-tain Soviet methods, referred to "revolutionary changes," but the timid censor struck out "revolutionary." "revolution-ary." They also don't like reference to the Communist Party, feeling it Is unpopular in the outside world. If, in the course of a news story, a prominent Russian is identified as a "member of the Communist Party" Par-ty" this fact is almost always stricken out by the censor. Ordinarily, however, the Soviet blue pencil is not a "consultative censorship" you cannot argue with the censors or give them your reason, rea-son, nor will they give you theirs, when they hand back a mutilated cable. Their reply is always, "We can't discuss this with you. It's been decided." de-cided." The censorship, of course, excludes ex-cludes everything which might give the outside world an unfavorable Impression of conditions within Russia. Rus-sia. One explanation is that Russians are a proud people, ashamed to have such facts proclaimed to the world. But the result is that the world has only a meager idea of the sacrifices the Russian people are making. Likewise, Like-wise, they conceal exactly how many hundreds of thousands of Lcn lngraders starved during the siege. Correspondents who resent the censorship most say that fully half their troubles come not from the rules but from the censors' stupidity, stupid-ity, or their limited knowledge of languages. lan-guages. One censor handling a story sto-ry which described Ilya Ehrenburg, Russia's famous wsr writer, as a "Francophile," struck out this word and reproved the correspondent When he finally understood that "Francophile" means one who loves not the Spanish dictator but the French Republic, he let It pass. Censorship In the Soviet Union is In charge of Apollon Petrov, a former for-mer professor of Chinese history at the University of Leningrad and also a former Soviet Consul at Chungking. Chung-king. Moscow correspondents say that the avowed function of the Petrov Bureau is not to help them but to prevent them from getting news. Petrov, in particular, and his assistant as-sistant censors in general are despised de-spised by the Anglo-American Press with an intensity which goes far beyond be-yond the bounds of reason. The correspondents can truthfully say that nowhere else In the world does such provocation for it exist They would not mind the vitamin-starved vitamin-starved diet or the bleak living conditions con-ditions of wartime Russia if they were not treated as tolerated spies cut off from any real human contact con-tact with a people they admire. Russians, owing to their enforced isolation, are almost as bad linguists as Americans. Only a few have more than a smattering of any European Euro-pean language other than their own. One day we inspected the Moscow exhibit of captured enemy war equipment. It was a beautifully arranged ar-ranged display open to the public, and included everything from Italian Ital-ian uniforms to the newest and biggest big-gest in German Tiger tanks. New, only to the Soviet Union for they had been Introduced in Africa to match comparable British and American equipment, and after the fall of Tunis they were brought to Russia. I asked Jennie, an unusually intelligent in-telligent and well-educated Soviet girl, if they had any captured German Ger-man radar. She had never heard the word. Thinking the Russians used another, I described it as an electric device which detected airplanes air-planes at night or through fog without with-out the use of sound. She went off to consult the general in charge. Returning, she said he knew what I was talking about; such devices were used by the Germans and had even been captured but they were kept in another place for study and were not on view. In the Western world, every bright fifteen-year-old knows the general principles of radar. ra-dar. But two hundred million people peo-ple in the Soviet Union will probably prob-ably never hear of it until It can be manufactured there. America's most vital contribution to Russia was not planes but trucks. This huge agricultural nation Is incapable in-capable of producing enough to fit the size of its army or its sprawling geography. It was for want of modern transport that when fast-moving fast-moving German columns punched their 1041 lines in a dozen places, the Russians had to fall back in disorder, dis-order, leaving thousands of precious heavy artillery pieces and hundreds of thousands of prisoners in German Ger-man hands. By 1942 American trucks began flowing Into Russia in volume. Without With-out these it would have been impossible impos-sible for the Russians to have followed fol-lowed up their major victory at Stalingrad. Without these trucks, the Red Army would still be stuck Its own bottomless Ukrainian mud. With them it was able to pursue, and when the Germans made a stand at a river or a provincial city, to deal the next sledge hammer artillery-infantry smash which knocked loose the Wehrmacht and kept it continually off balance and retreating. retreat-ing. Stalin could have voted In Baltio state elections. Top Russians do not underestimate underesti-mate the value of American aid. It the lesser ones seem unapprecla tive, it Is only because, In spite of vigorous protests such as that of Admiral Standley, they have not been told the extent of it The correspondents tell of a front trip through reconquered territory with a Red Army lieutenant They saw a Jeep in a ditch. Russia makes no comparable car, but quantities of Jeeps have arrived through Lend-Lease Lend-Lease with instructions in Russian stenciled In Detroit and are now all over the Soviet Union. "Is that German Jeep or an American Jeep?" the correspondent asked. "Neither one," said the lieutenant, "it's a Russian Jeep. Your Amer lean Jeeps are too flimsy to use on these roads at the front Five thou sand kilometers and they fall to pieces. Here we use only Russian Jeeps." (TO BE CONTINUED) |