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Show ;p(;jL,:y Ciipi ink i; fbb y i i i' I NSTALLMENT mne 'understand why the Baltic L and later Poland's eastern voted by such staggering ,iei (or union with the Soviet Cmmt, it is necessary to know Kaning of the term "social en-Uinj," en-Uinj," practiced by the Com- Ht Party- ., , Imimists recognize that in occupied areas many individ- annot adapt themselves to the A system. Soviets conclude that these I-s under the old order will ,,,, at the least, undepend-1 undepend-1 citizens of the new. Conse-jy Conse-jy the leaders are arrested for Ita'tion immediately, the small- being rounded up at a more cly rate, owhile plans for elections pro-With pro-With all such "enemies of the ,, disposed of, the Soviet ' (janda apparatus moves in, the irmy taking a prominent part '. lommunist Party organizes lo-jrkers' lo-jrkers' and peasants' commit-:k commit-:k yhich nominate candidates for ... ites to the regional Popular lbly. 5i rtly after the Soviet occupa-l occupa-l Eastern Poland, such elec- 'a. i lipases Acquired by Russia qpusi IALAND . HOGLAND ISL. jr'yt truce ended Finnish-Russian ot demands were made. Hwere held in Polish Ruthenia Sthe Polish Ukraine, one candidate runs for each and he is Communist- ved. A tremendous effort is -y to get out the vote, with party fra from Moscow and Red ! soldiers touring the country-in country-in trucks. Banners, parades, speeches imply that anyone ails to go to the polls thereby ":es himself an enemy of the itate. !t curious of all, from our rn standpoint, is the fact that -- rs of the occupying Red Army Jrmitted to vote in these elec-- elec-- I At the polls, the voter's iden-fon iden-fon card is checked and he is d a ballot He is told that he either drop this in the ballot &t retire behind a screen and V changes in it. He does not 1 to be told that if he does step the screen, this fact will be .nberei Few changes are assembly, made up of dele-'-so elected, meets a few days 'y( In occupied Poland such assies as-sies passed standardized res-' res-' is taking over the authority old government, requesting 'sion to the Soviet Union, con-p(ng con-p(ng large estates, and praising ireat leader, Stalin." "economy, social engineering J rapid changes. In Poland's n provinces the old Polish zloty 6gged to the Soviet rouble at a most advantageous to the sds of thousands of Soviet visi- nth the result that the shops .(Hackly stripped both of luxury land of staples. After a short i the zloty was declared ess. s-owned stores were substitut-' substitut-' Private shops taxed out of JCe and each farmer was 1 what share of his produce sold to the state at the low 1 Price. In place 0I the old Po-tem Po-tem of free labor unions, a 'J'stera was installed under , worker who is constantly ' quits his Job faced several j; a prison labor camp. on to the 180,000 war prison pris-on estimated 1,500,000' civU-'er civU-'er removed from Poland In lly Part of 1940, as a part of al engineering program. !vlet transport Is an ordinary W1h two small, high, barred -'W. a stove with Its pipe pro-, pro-, 2 through the roof, and a hole il' " the floor for a toilet. thirty and forty deportees s-Ked In each car. . deportation round-ups were mil b? the NKVT) late at me people are told what-"orj what-"orj will make them most D'e to the order. For exam-5 exam-5 wife of a Polish officer killed ,yn Forest (although she did n know it) was wakened, told w 'ecia' arrangements had been .-.lor her to Join her husband if she would be ready to leave in an hour. After dressing herself, her small son nnd packing her bag, she arrived on her front step where she found nil 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 daily, 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 Len-ingraders Len-ingraders 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 Hya Ehrenburg, Russia's famous war 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 Petroy 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 1941 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. f, - " - 4 x, $ v " - i Stalin could have voted In Baltic state elections. Top Russians do not underestimate underesti-mate the value of American aid. If the lesser ones seem unapprecia-tive, unapprecia-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 tha Soviet Union. "Is that a German Jeep or an American Jeep?" the correspondent asked. "Neither one," said the lieutenant, "it's a Russian Jeep. Your American Amer-ican jeeps are too flimsy to use on these roads at the front. Five thousand thou-sand kilometers and they fall to pieces. Here we use only Russian jeeps." (TO BE CONTINUED) |