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- <text id=93HT1362>
- <link 93XV0066>
- <link 93XP0503>
- <link 93XP0387>
- <link 93XP0385>
- <title>
- Stalin: Stalin Takes The Stump
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Stalin Portrait
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- March 25, 1946
- Stalin Takes the Stump
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> At first Russia scarcely seemed to notice Winston
- Churchill's historic challenge to Soviet expansion. Then
- suddenly, eight days later, the Moscow radio blared forth. Joseph
- Stalin, in an interview with Pravda, made one of the bitterest
- peacetime attacks by one statesman upon another.
- </p>
- <p> Though Churchill was the target, the words hit all the West.
- Stalin knew that the Churchill speech, even though it was far too
- strong for many, would crystallize confused opinion in the
- democracies.
- </p>
- <p> In his counterattack Stalin had two purposes: 1) to play
- upon every nation's dread of war; and 2) to promote the Soviet
- hierarchy's current theme song to the Russians: that they must
- work all the harder to meet the renewed threat of capitalistic
- encirclement. He said that Churchill had sounded "a call to war
- with the Soviet Union," and bitterly pointed out that this
- "firebrand" had "raised the alarm and organized" the 1918-20
- Allied invasion of the fledgling Soviet state, "with the aim of
- turning back the wheel of history." But "history turned out to be
- stronger than Churchill's intervention," and his "quixotic
- antics" had resulted in "complete defeat." If he tried it again,
- said Stalin, he would be beaten again.
- </p>
- <p> "New Slavery." As an undoubted authority, Stalin linked
- Churchill with dictatorship. The war, he rumbled, had not been
- fought "for the sake of exchanging the lordship of Hitler for the
- lordship of Churchill." He conjured up a dire future for those
- who (like himself) could not speak English. Churchill, with his
- "racial theory" that "only nations speaking the English language
- are...called upon to decide the destinies of the entire
- world" (a very free Russian interpretation of Churchill), was as
- bad as Hitler with his theories of German supremacy. "...Nations
- not speaking English," Stalin discovered, "make up an
- enormous majority of the world's population [and] will not
- consent to go into a new slavery."
- </p>
- <p> In the best backhanded Soviet fashion, Stalin gave Russians
- their first news of the offer Ernie Bevin announced Feb. 21: to
- turn the 20-year Anglo-Russian friendship pact into a 50-year
- treaty. Stalin said that Churchill's warmongering speech made the
- present pact "an empty scrap of paper." He implied that he no
- longer considered it valid himself: "Problems of the duration of
- a treaty have no sense if one of the parties violates the
- treaty...."
- </p>
- <p> "Shameless Libel." To Churchill's charge that Russia
- dominated her neighbors, Stalin had the unreassuring answer that
- Soviet security required neighboring governments to be "loyal."
- In any case, said Stalin, Churchill "rudely and shamelessly
- libels not only Moscow" but her neighbors, in making such a
- statement. Germany had been able to overrun all these countries
- while they were "inimical to the Soviet Union." Russia wanted to
- protect them and herself by bringing them into her own safe
- sphere, and "how can one, without having lost one's reason,
- qualify these peaceful aspirations...as 'expansionist
- tendencies?'"
- </p>
- <p> "Why," asked Stalin further, "did Mr. Churchill have to
- delude people" and "wander around the truth" in speaking of the
- growth of Communism in Europe? Churchill had made it sound like
- the result of Communist police-government tactics. It was really
- that Europe's "common people, having tried the communists in the
- fire of struggle," had given Communists their confidence. Stalin
- added pointedly: "It is they, millions of these common people,
- who voted Mr. Churchill and his party out in England."
- </p>
- <p> "Ridiculous Position." The dictator of the world's largest
- one-party state said that Churchill had assumed a "ridiculous
- position" by decrying the lack of "true democracy" in eastern
- Europe. According to Stalin, such nations as Yugoslavia, Bulgaria
- and Poland were far more democratic than Britain, because each of
- them was ruled by a bloc of several parties, while the British
- Government was run by one party, with the opposition--including
- Churchill--barred from membership.
- </p>
- <p> Few Russians under 50 knew enough about the world outside
- Russia to see the wild nonsense of Stalin's comparison. Stalin,
- who is 66 and had a political education before the night closed
- on Russia 29 years ago, knew that no Soviet citizen would
- contradict him.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-