A Better World: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals 0671436104, 9780671436100

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O t h e r books by W illia m L. O ’N e i l l

Divorce in the Progressive Era Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s The Last Romantic: A Life of Max Eastman

B etter

W orld THE GREAT SCHISM: STALINISM AND THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS

WILLIAM L. O’NEILL SIMON AND SCHUSTER NEW YORK

Copyright © 1982 hy William L. O’Neill A ll rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Published by Simon and Schuster A Division of Gulf & Western Corporation Simon &. Schuster Building Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York , New York 10020 simón and s c h u s te r and colophon are trademarks of Simon /

* They included John Hersey, Quentin Reynolds, Richard Lauterbach, Edgar Snow, Raymond Arthur Davies, Jerome Davis, John Fisher, Alexander Kendrick, Alexander Werth and Ella Winter.

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it by America. He exaggerated the number of people in labor camps. He showed no regard for Russian feelings, and so on. White’s real sin was prematurity. His book was remarkably accurate, considering his short visit and lack of special knowl­ edge. But White’s truths were something that few liberals and fewer progressives wished to hear. They suggested what was actually the case, that Stalin’s Russia would not be easy to get along with after the war. Between the pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet camps there was a middle ground that few intellectuals chose to occupy. Even so, it was more popular than a reading of journals of opinion might lead one to believe. The best evidence for this was the success of Walter Lippmann’s United States Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943). Though short, it was a very important, or potentially important, work that was adopted by the Book-ofthe-Month Club and sold to hundreds of thousands of readers. After writing about foreign affairs for thirty years Lippmann had come to realize that he was frequently criticizing past deci­ sions that he had approved at the time, and views he had once shared. The reason was that too often he had not been thinking of foreign policy in terms of the national interest. Lipp­ mann was not contemptuous of morality and ideology. It was simply that he no longer believed them to be reliable guides either to the behavior of other nations or to decision-making by the United States. American policy toward Japan was, he ar­ gued, a classic example of how a nation should not act. The United States had provoked Japan while at the same time it failed to strengthen its bases in the Pacific. The delusion that you could have a policy while lacking the means to implement it reached a pinnacle of sorts in the summer of 1939, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did two things: it advised the State Department to launch a program of economic warfare against Japan, and at the same time it refused to lift the 'arms embargo which kept Britain and France from buying weapons to resist Japan’s German ally. For the sake of what were always called “ideals,” in this case peace and disarmament, the nation worked at cross purposes. What did experience suggest was the right line to take after the war? The alliance with Britain should continue. Russia was

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problematical. On the one hand, although Russia and America always had antagonistic political ideologies and were always suspicious of each other, in the past each had wished the other to be strong. “They have never had a collision which made them . enemies. Each has regarded the other as a potential friend in the rear of its potential enemies.”61 But this historic principle no longer held. After the war there would remain only two great powers, Russia and the United States. Instead of being a poten­ tial friend behind potential enemies Russia would become the threat behind our friends in both Europe and Asia. Neither Britain nor the United States would be able to influence the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Russia was going to occupy them, and the best to be hoped for was that it would allow them to remain neutral. Any effort to make these states outposts of the West was doomed tb fail, and would actually guarantee their domination by Russia. In Asia the situation was less clear owing to the weakness of China. Lippmann believed that regional power blocs were going to form. No League of Nations could be expected to keep peace among them. That would depend on continuing present ties. “The will of the most powerful states to remain allied is the only possible creator of a general international order.”62 As did most people, Lippmann underestimated the strength of both Communism and nationalism in Asia. But he had grasped the central points. The destruction of German and Japanese power was creating vacuums that someone would fill, and a situ­ ation in which the interests of Russia and the United States might, for the first time, be in conflict. This was too much realism so far as progressives were concerned, though some attempted to have it both ways. Max Lerner praised Lippmann’s book for its enlightened nationalism and common sense, but thought it too conservative. He preferred Wendell Willkie’s One World (1943), a typical outburst of progressive wishful thinking that to Lerner was more “humanist.” Lippmann’s hope for the future rested on America’s role as a co-belligerent of what in the future would be the main powers—Great Britain, Russia, and possibly China. ' Lerner put his faith not in present ties but in what he still thought of as shared beliefs held by “the progressive and anti­ fascist powers of the world.” Lippmann was preoccupied with

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tangible things about the Allies to the neglect of “their creative place in the world.” Lerner did not mind hearing about the national interest, but beyond it the United States has values to defend as well as land. And those values of a feeling [ric] for ordinary people everywhere, a desire to fight along with them for a better world, higher living standards, a freer moral atmosphere, a richer world culture. What allies you will choose in this fight must be determined by the things you and they care for.63 So it was back to the people’s war again and the “creative place” of nations, as against unpleasant facts, the contemplation of which led only to a “morass,” Lerner wrote. Alfred Bingham of Common Sense was disgusted with Lippmann’s “thoroughly reactionary book,” so foreign to the spirit in which Bingham was waging war. “The ordering of the world by preponderant force, in accordance ‘with vital national inter­ ests,’ is what many people have thought we were fighting against.” Nor did Lippmann take account of such vital matters as “social revolution, communism, imperialism, racial con­ sciousness, and the incalculable forces that are rousing Asia to action.”64 This was true, actually, a blind spot Lippmann shared with most nonprogressives. As shall be seen, the progres­ sive canon, even though spelled out unthinkingly, was not entirely wrong. The problem always was that the answers came out automatically regardless of circumstances. Those outside the fold knew this, so even when progressives were right, as to a considerable degree they were about Asia, few were persuaded owning to the cant regarding Soviet democracy and the people’s war. British progressives, though often wittier than the American variety, generally ended up in the same place. Thus, Kingsley Martin compared Lippmann to Machiavelli. “In exactly the same way Mr. Lippmann, avoiding every idealistic phrase and accepting international gangsterism as the norm of behaviour, explains to Americans how they should behave if they are not again to risk losing their share of the loot.” Martin was unjust and meant to be. He was annoyed with Lippmann for writing such a successful book without reference to progressive cliches.

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The very excellence of Mr. Lippmann’s picture as a simple account of “the behaviour of States only serves to heighten the unrealistic character of any account of world politics today which omits the economic and ideological causes of war, and which attempts to found peace on the supposed interests of Governments to the exclusion of the common sympathies and interests of people.”65 In a less dimwitted and obvious fashion than PM, Martin had traveled a similar route. It was a long way from Machiavelli to the people’s war, but he got there just the same. Lippmann’s book, despite its large sale, had no visible effect upon the progressive mind. This was too bad, not because Lippmann was always right on the issues, but because he was think­ ing in the right way, trying hard to judge issues on their merits rather than out of established prejudice. In a few years progres­ sives would be agreeing with Lippmann without having learned anything from him. Lippmann’s view of Russia, so conservative in light of the people’s war, would become more appealing to progressives as the Cold War deepened. They would, however, continue to misunderstand the reasoning behind it. The noted historian Carl Becker took an approach similar to Lippmann’s. His shrewd little book How New Will the Better World Be? (1944) showed that common sense and a general knowledge of history (he was not writing as an expert) could take one far, even in a time of high feelings. Becker held that war psychology was deluding people into thinking that this awe­ some experience had generated the wisdom to make a better world. Progressives had gone overboard, he wrote, in assuming that nationalism and the sovereign state could be drastically limited. He reviewed Western history to demonstrate that na­ tionalism was “the principal political force of our time; and the historically created nation-state is the form which political power takes in the modem world.”66 Nor was this necessarily evil, since it was nationalism that was saving America in the world crisis. “Can We Abolish Power Politics and End Imperialism?” he asked rhetorically. All politics involved power, and so diatribes against power politics made no sense. People who talked about ending imperialism seemed to have only the British Empire in mind. They forgot that the United States and Russia, and China

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too, had incorporated alien parts and were empires also, though the parts were consolidated and not spread all over as were Britain’s. A narrow anti-imperialism obscured the vital fact that America had more in common with Britain and the Englishspeaking dominions than with other nations. Our future was tied to theirs. And, as empires went, Britain’s was a good one. Let us leave to the British the job of setting their house in order, Becker urged. Progressives were trying to have their cake and eat it too, he believed. On the one hand, the white powers must get out of Asia. On the other, they must help China keep the peace. In the same vein, progressives were calling on the great powers to design a lasting peace, while also insisting on the right of all peoples to self-determination. Yet one could not ask the white powers to fight desperately to stay in the Far East if immedi­ ately afterward they had to get out. And one could not demand a great-power settlement that also involved the right of all na­ tions to choose their own governments. Whatever the terms for peace might be in Eastern Europe, many peoples would remain dissatisfied. Becker chopped through thickets of progressive rhetoric to arrive at essential facts. Contrary to liberal opinion, most Amer­ icans were not fighting for the freedom of mankind but to pre­ serve American life, hardly a shameful thing since that life was beneficial even if imperfect. He hoped that in the future there would be more social democracy and national planning, though not at the expense of private profit or individual liberty. Inter­ nationally he thought that a Federation of Europe similar to the United States of America was impossible. A new League of Nations, with or without a police force, seemed to him, as to Lippmann, unlikely to keep the peace. That would require con­ tinued agreement among Britain, Russia and America. This should be possible, Becker argued, because the different security requirements were compatible. Britain and America saw tontrol of the Atlantic as vital; Russia was mainly concerned^with East­ ern Europe. So there was no great conflict of interest among the great powers. Becker did not touch all bases. He overestimated the force of reason in human affairs, perhaps deliberately. It was an emo­ tional time when coolness and common sense were in short

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supply. He underestimated, like nearly everyone, the strength of nationalism in Africa and Asia. The book was important any­ way, or would have been if progressives had taken it seriously.* In their eagerness to have a better world, progressives were, as Becker said, making things worse. Despite lack of evidence, they declared the world conflict to be a people’s war. They attributed virtues to Russia that the Soviets did not possess. They were unable to distinguish between morality and selfinterest, or between what was and what they knew in their hearts ought to be. Thoroughly confused themselves, they mis­ led as well everyone who looked to them for guidance. Little wonder that books such as those by Becker and Lippmann had no effect. Progressives were going to have to learn their lesson the hard way.

* Becker's book was praised, even if not heeded, by most reviewers. An exception was Malcolm Cowley, who attacked Becker for believing in the permanence of nation-states and the national interest, though he added kindly that elsewhere Becker’s work was “not so utterly hopeless.”67

IV

The “People’s War” Falters: 1943-1945

r e v iv a l o f anti-Communist sentiment in the last years of the war made life difficult for progressives, but the actions of Soviet Russia were more troublesome still. At first progressives had only to deal with the negative image of Russia built up by decades of anti-Soviet propaganda. From 1943 on they were faced with a bad press arising from Soviet misconduct in the liberated territories of Eastern Europe. One tactic was to make light of Communist offenses. Thus, early in 1943 when two Polish (and Jewish) democratic leaders were executed by the Soviets, Max Lemer rebuked them while also insisting that small mistakes like this were no obstacle to good relations.1 The New Republic took a harder line. Yes, Ehrlich and Alter were innocent and the Soviets ought not to have killed them. On the other hand, the Allies did not have clean hands themselves. What about British outrages in India? What about Sacco and Vanzetti?2 The reasoning seemed to be that as the Allied na­ tions had committed evüs in the past, fresh ones by Russia made no difference. When they could, progressives liked to deny Soviet wrong­ doing entirely, as in the Katyn Forest. During 1943 Germany revealed the burial site of thousands of Polish officers captured and executed by Russia after it occupied eastern Polahd in 1939. Though the German charge was true, Max Lemer recog­ nized it instantly as a Nazi lie, owing to his profound knowledge of Soviet psychology. “The Russians can be hard and cruel when there is a political point to it. But when they are, they mhke no pretense of concealing what they have done.”8 Too bad the Polish government was taken in by this German trick

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and suspended relations with the Soviet Union, Leraer contin­ ued. He knew that Polish folly was a function of Polish reac­ tion. “We must find a Polish government that can lead the Polish people to a new Europe,” wrote Lerner, as if Russia had not already done so. Though he still contributed to the New Republic, Lerner now worked for PM, the progressive daily newspaper in New York. Its most distinctive feature was that at first it accepted no ad­ vertising, on the theory that a press could not be truly free that had to satisfy commercial interests. Having little money, it printed little news, making up the difference with editorials and personal columns. As newspaper readers wanted ads and news, few subscribed to PM except those who agreed with its politics. This was fine with Lerner, who told his old friend Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court that writing editorials for it was “more rewarding work than any I have thus far done.”4 In his editorials and frequent columns Lerner wrote about everything, bringing to each subject the insights he en­ joyed by virtue, as he told Frankfurter, of belonging to the tradition of Jefferson, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Debs, Veblen and other great American radicals. The New Republic too was disgusted with the reactionary Polish govemment-in-exile for using Katyn as a pretext not to discuss boundary questions with Russia. “Even its opposition to Hitler was nationalist rather than anti-fascist,” the editors wrote of Poland’s government, establishing a test of fitness that Russia could not have passed either. Still, it was healthy to get this conflict out into the open, they said. Everyone could see how bad many of the governments-in-exile were. The task now was to get behind the democratic and progressive Polish leaders (most of them Communists), so as to head off problems after the war.5 The Nation also despised the Polish govemment-in-exile, which was solely to blame for its troubles with Russia. It per­ sisted in the foolish hope that Poland could become indepen­ dent again. It refused to sign away former Polish territories demanded by Russia, even though they were inhabited mostly by Ukrainians and White Russians. The government-in-exile was wrong in practice, since defying Stalin would only make him more greedy, and wrong in principle too for not ac-

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knowledging the right of self-determination. The exiles were out of touch with the Polish masses, who would have the last word. “At the moment of victory they will perceive the paths open to them and make their choice. This choice will decide the future of Poland.”6 Of course the Poles were not going to decide their fate, as The Nation in saner moments' knew. But progressive journals were always trying to square circles. They wanted to believe that what Russia did out of self-interest was morally right, and that the most brutal war in history was a people’s struggle in which all things tended toward ultimate good. After the Red Army crossed into Poland, Max Leraer counseled PM readers once more to ignore the Polish govern­ ment. Poland would have to shed its old ruling class in order to get along with Russia. This should not be difficult, the long tradition of rancor between Poland and Russia notwithstanding, on account of the Poles themselves—whose collective heart Lemer had plumbed as deeply as he had the Russians’. Thus he could say that “the mass of the Polish people are more con­ cerned about peace and economic reconstruction than they are in the question of territorial irredentism.”7 Anyway, they had to know that only in alignment with Russia could they move toward economic and social democracy. This movement did not, however, include plebiscites or any of the self-determina­ tive apparatus of the old League of Nations. The principles of Versailles were dead. The future world order was to be a “Great Powers world federation,” in which, naturally, great powers like Russia must feel secure. For the sake of the right kind of de­ mocracy the wrong kind, which allowed people to make their own choices, must be put aside. In 1944 the Warsaw underground revolted. It took German forces sixty-two days to suppress the, uprising, during most of which time Stalin would not allow his allies the use of Russian bases to airlift supplies to Warsaw. Nor did Russia try very hard to reach the city in time. Warsaw was therefore de­ stroyed in a way that did not seem quite consistent witji the idea of a people’s war. The Nation was upset, but stopped short of blaming Russia.8 The New Republic went further, charging Russia with acting in a “dictatorial” manner.9 This was a change from the week before, when an American fellow traveler

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had assured readers that the Soviet Union was so far removed from any wish to dominate that it “would even prefer not to have communist governments in border states.”10 Its betrayal of the Warsaw uprising threw cold water, if only briefly, on such fantasies. Some two dozen books dealing with Russian-Polish relations came out in 1943-44, all of them asserting Russia’s willingness to see a strong and independent Poland emerge from the war. After Warsaw this argument could not honestly be maintained. In Poland, according to the historian of American opinion, Russia lost the goodwill earned by its resistance to Hitler.11 Having nothing else, progressives clung to their faith just the same. On May 6, 1945, Max Leraer gave a radio talk, which ran in PM the next day, on sixteen Polish underground leaders who were in a Soviet jail. They were linked with the Polish government-in-exile and had been lured into Russia by promises of immunity, supposedly to discuss the future of Poland, actually to be seized on charges of killing Russian sol­ diers. On the face of it, Leraer admitted, this seemed hard to justify. Having been invited to Moscow the Poles ought to have enjoyed something like diplomatic immunity. But maybe the Soviets had a good reason. None had yet been given, so Leraer thought up a few. These made him feel better. It remained an apparent fact that the Yalta Agreement, which called for the inclusion of non-Communists in the new Polish government, had been used to entrap the sixteen. There was some ground for bitterness in London and Wash­ ington, Leraer admitted. But the big picture had to be kept in mind. The Russians were tough and cynical. Still, if “they had been a different sort of nation, they would never have held out against almost the full force of Hitler’s strength for four years.”12 Then, too, the United States had been cynical also, over getting Argentina into the UN and by attempting to isolate Russia diplomatically. Leraer forthrightly condemned Russia’s methods in Poland, concluding, however, that these must not be allowed to hurt Russo-American relations or compromise the more important negotiations over Germany to come. And we would need Russian help against Japan, or else the war might go on for six more months and cost another half-million lives.

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So much for the sixteen Poles, who had gotten lost in a tangle of larger considerations. Yet this was not the end. There was a trial, and, as Soviet trials had a way of doing, it resolved Lemer’s doubts. Evidence was brought forward to prove that the sixteen had committed anti-Soviet acts. The defendants confessed. Who could ask for more? Certainly not Lemer, who declared the Poles to be guilty not just in a Moscow court of law “but in the court of world opinion,” over which he seemed to preside.18 The Polish gov­ ernment, which had insisted on their innocence, was finished, Lerner happily reported. It turned out that even the claim that the Poles had been duped into going to Moscow was false, as they themselves admitted. This settled matters for Lemer, who found nothing so reliable as the word of a prisoner of the NKVD. Russia was being generous, in any case. Though the Poles had confessed to acts of terrorism and other crimes, the Soviet court gave them mild sentences.* This proved to Lemer that the Russians were sensitive to “liberal world opinion.” It made British and American diplomats look foolish for having tried to depict the Soviets as barbaric and ruthless. Now the way was clear to build in Poland “far greater security, a far less feudal economy, a far juster social system than Poland has had.” Lucky Poland to have such protectors, and fortunate America to have a Lemer to make things plain. Fellow travelers were even more shameless. I. F. Stone told Nation readers almost immediately after the Poles were arrested that he knew enough “to advise American progressives to keep their shirts on.” Stone had obtained the truth from Moscow radio, which was that the sixteen “had been arrested for the installation and maintenance of illegal transmitters in the rear of Soviet troops and for acts which had cost the lives of more than one hundred Red Army officers and men.”15 Secretary of State Stettinius had released a false story about the Poles as part of an anti-Soviet conspiracy. The entrapment of the Poles wàs, to * Even this was deceitful. Stalin promised Harry Hopkins, who was putting pressure on him, that the sixteen Poles would receive light sentences. But as it happened, “many of them died in prison. Of the six or so' released, some were rearrested in Poland, some fled to the West.”14

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Stone, a mere legalism. The key point was that the Poles were not democrats as Stettinius claimed. At least two were antiSemites and fascists. Stone had this straight from an agent of the (Communist) Lublin government, an even better source than Moscow radio. During the war progressives generally held that the main bar­ rier to a lasting peace was not Russia but the United States. In their gloomiest moments it seemed to them that just as the excellence of Soviet foreign policy was a function of the health of Soviet society, American failures abroad resulted from sick­ ness at home. In 1943, noting the end of domestic reform and the replacement of New Dealers by conservatives, Malcolm Cowley wrote that “it is possible that a fascist state could be instituted here without many changes in government personnel, and some of those changes have been made already.”16 As usual, Max Lemer took a cheerier view. When Arthur Koestler, a former Comintern agent, wrote a grim article on the world situation in The New York Times Magazine, Lerner had a perky rejoinder. Given that most people are inherently con­ servative, what amazed Lerner was not the defeats but the vic­ tories of liberalism. The antifascist coalition was not a defeat, nor were trade unionism, collective bargaining, the minimum wage and other reforms. This was a revolutionary era full of exciting changes. Beyond the New Deal there was the greatest fact, unmentioned by Koestler, the Soviet Union. “Russia has broken what used to be the last bastion of the primitives—the myth that socialism is against human nature and that no col­ lectivist society will work.”17 Lemer had no peer when it came to knowing less and writing more about the Soviets. Early in his tenure with PM he did six editorials under the heading “Russia and America,” based, he said, on the premise that these were “the creative and powerful nations of the future.”18 In them he gave voice to the usual progressive clichés. Russia was led by realists interested mainly in security. Neighbors had nothing to fear from this state, be­ cause Russia’s aims were nationalistic, not imperialistic. The postwar situation depended chiefly on America. “What it all amounts to is that, in default of a line of action on our part to

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help build a genuine structure of European security on progres­ sive principles, Stalin intends to seek Russian security in Europe itself.” But if the United States gave up dealing with Euro­ pean reactionaries “we can build a structure of security to­ gether.”19 Lemer anticipated the stand taken later by revisionist historians, who would blame the United States for its poor relations with Russia. Before an important meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow the New Republic assigned Heinz H. F. Eulau, who had a doc­ torate in political science and once worked in the Justice De­ partment, to explain how far America lagged behind the Soviets. Readers learned once again that the USSR was chiefly interested in security, which had been its motive for the StalinHitler Pact. At the same time Moscow saw the inevitability of revolution in Europe and aimed to ride with it. While Britain and the United States backed reactionaries, “Stalin is busy win­ ning the friendship of Europe’s revolutionary masses.” Yet hope remained. Launching a second front would show that AngloAmericans sincerely wished to help Russia. The dissolution of the Comintern was “an invitation to unity of all progressive forces outside of the Soviet Union.” While Russia’s formation of its own Polish govemment-in-exile showed that it would not tolerate reaction in Eastern Europe, its mutual-assistance treaty with the Czech exiles “suggests that the Soviet Union is ready to support such governments as are deemed genuinely demo­ cratic.” Russia had a better German policy too, offering a free Germany peace and prosperity instead of unconditional sur­ render. Thus, Russia had a “positive” foreign policy, in contrast to the “unimaginative wait-and-see policy of Washington and London.” Russia was “stealing the show in Europe” on account of being in tune with the people’s war and the century of the common man.20 The success, as progressives thought it to be, of the Moscow Conference inspired jubilation. I. F. Stone wrote that Roosevelt had led America out of isolation, brought abôut an “entente between capitalist America and Communist Russia,” and taken “the first step toward preventing World War III.”21 This justi­ fied everything Roosevelt had done that Stone disapproved of, which was plenty, including most recently the forcing out of Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, a favorite of progrès-

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sives. The New Republic cheered also. For their work in Mos­ cow the Big Four powers had earned the gratitude of the free people of the world. But it is clear that if primacy in this gratitude belongs to anyone, it is to President Roosevelt. His was the shaping conception, his the initiative that brought the men together, his the genius for compromise that kept them in the channel of the main chance while avoiding the shoals and rocks of their differences.22 To the New Leader their joy was further evidence of the progressives’ double standard. William Henry Chamberlin pointed out that the New Republic had said of the Moscow Agreement that Secretary Hull “wisely” accepted Russia’s ab­ sorption of the Baltic States as a fait accompli. But the maga­ zine never accepted Japanese absorption of Manchuria on that basis, though it was equally an accomplished fact. The New Republic had said of the agreement that “the only losers are the enemies of humanity.” Chamberlin asked what the Poles, the Finns, the Letts, the Estonians and the Lithuanians had done that made them enemies of mankind. Max Leraer had written in PM that nothing in the agreement suggested that the Atlantic Charter would be betrayed. This was sophistry to Chamberlin, who observed that nothing guaranteed that Russia’s neighbors would regain self-determination and their old borders as the Charter stipulated. Chamberlin saw that there was no practical alternative to accepting what could not be denied Stalin, but that was no reason to crow. “When an injustice has been ac­ quiesced in, it is far more sensible and realistic to acknowledge the fact than to commit the hypocrisy of representing an un­ scrupulous piece of power politics as an expression of the high­ est ideals of freedom and self-determination.”28 Progressives welcomed 1944. “Throughout the world the swing is not to the Right, but toward the democratic left,” announced the New Republicß4 Even Malcolm Cowley was less glum than usual. He attacked the false optimism of the Communist New Masses, while admitting there were signs of hope. “The forces on our side are more powerful in the end,

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being the kindness and devotion and good sense of ordinary people in all nations, including our own.”25 Unfortunately, the United States was still failing to prove itself a worthy ally of Russia. The task at hand, according to New Republic editors, was to establish “genuine political cooperation of a sort that would convince Russia she can safely entrust her future to col­ lective security underwritten by the two great Western powers.”26 Further impediments to peace and freedom were the anti-Stalinists at home, called the “Hang-Back Boys” by Bruce Bliven in one editorial.27 They seemed to him less in­ terested in winning the war than in scoring points against Stalin. Bliven had in mind particularly the New Leader, which was locally famous for hanging back. It answered him with a sharp article by Daniel Bell. Bliven had praised the “democratic lead­ ership” of Stalin, adding that people in Eastern Europe who didn’t like the new territorial arrangements should be allowed to emigrate. Bell wondered if this meant Polish reservations simi­ lar to those for American Indians. Here was another example, Bell said, of the “totalitarian liberalism” practiced by the New Republic.2* It seemed a popular line nonetheless, for the New Republic was enjoying record sales. Its circulation in the first half of 1944 was forty-two percent greater than the year before, an all-time high.29 Progressive spirits rose again after the Big Three conference at Teheran, where a meeting of minds between Roosevelt and Stalin was said to have taken place. The normally restrained Atlantic magazine reported that the Americans had returned “with the impression that Stalin is both a military genius and a man of his word.80 The Atlantic believed American suspicion of Russia to have been a result of Soviet secrecy, which was now, it hoped, at an end. Heinz Eulau took a sterner view. Revolutionary partisans who meant to keep the old regimes out of Eastern Europe had to be supported. “Frank recognition of the preponderance of Soviet interest in this area is clearly the most promising feature of Russo-Anglo-American political col­ laboration.” Soviet dominance was not imperialistic but derived from the “tremendous popularity which the USSR enjoys among large sections of the Balkan peoples, especially peasants and workers.”81 This arose, Eulau explained with habitual pro­ gressive confidence, from admiration for the Red Army, racial

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affinity, and Soviet leadership in “the liquidation of the old ruling classes and the federal solution of the nationality prob­ lem.” East Europeans would be happy to take a leaf from Rus­ sia’s book. “Those who raise the cry of ‘Soviet Imperialism' fail to understand that the overwhelming majority of the common people in the Balkans do not fear Soviet influence,” wrote Eulau from the safety of America.32 Anna Louise Strong was even more reassuring. So far were the Russians from wanting to impose their will that any non­ fascist system was fine with them. She knew this from talking with a Russian newspaper editor as follows: “I asked, ‘Would the Soviet Union and the Red Army support the extension of the American form of capitalist democracy in Europe for a long period?’ He nodded, ‘If this is the form the people in Europe choose, then Europe would be better than before.' ”83 That was on a par with Max Lemer’s discovery of the lesson of Russia’s military victories. In a column giving thanks for them he re­ called a drive through rural Wisconsin. Seeing the prosperous farms, he was struck by “the sharp contrast between a people who organize the use of their rich resources by greed and hap­ hazard planning, and people who had learned to plan produc­ tion for the use of the whole people.” It was thus that “I learned something about the meaning of Russian victories.”34 As luck would have it, Wisconsin farmers, not previously known for their avarice, seldom read PM. The New Republic remained complacent for a time. In June 1944 it remembered with satisfaction how people used to say that we need not concern ourselves with Europe's future, be­ cause the Soviet Union would decide things. “According to one version she would revert to Tzarist imperialism, absorbing everything in sight. At the very least she would demand Fin­ land, the Baltic States, and Poland, thus making a mockery of conscientious war aims.” These and other fears had been laid to rest by the recent Anglo-Soviet treaty. The New Republic understood that some Communists would not easily give up their hopes for world revolution. Not to worry. “If the British and Americans believe that wittf their principles a new order for the common man can be created, they need not fear that Com­ munist hope of revolution will ever be realized. After all, nei­ ther Moscow nor London but man himself, will in the end

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everywhere decide what sort of regime he will live in.”85 As outside of Britain and the neutral states Europeans did not have the slightest say in how they were governed, this showed a marvelous faith. The Nation too was optimistic, especially J. Alvarez del Vayo. He was a journalist and politician who had been the Spanish Republic’s ambassador to Mexico, representative to the League of Nations and, during most of the Spanish Civil War, foreign minister. After the republic’s fall he made his livelihood by writing and lecturing, serving also as an editor of The Nation. Freda Kirchwey supported him loyally despite repeated charges, which were true, that he fellow-traveled. Vayo would admit that Soviet Russia sometimes made errors. These were never serious enough to shake his confidence.86 His specialty was combining soft soap with radical enthusiasm. Thus he often wrote that Russia had said goodbye to revolution, so there was no cause for alarm. On the other hand, Europe was going to move left anyhow, thanks to Russia’s example. Capitalists liked to distinguish between the Soviet state and the Russian people, giving all credit to the latter. But the “common man, whose century Henry Wallace has announced,” knew that Russian victories were a function of the Soviet state. “To the peoples of Europe, that Socialist Russia which has so ably organized production, which has created the best army in the world, which has drawn its factory foremen, its engineers, its generals, from the working class, remains an inspiration.”87 The common man might not want the proletarian dictatorship, Vayo conceded, but he was positive that because of Russia the masses yearned for socialism. Soon the war had to end and British and American troops would depart, leaving “the settle­ ment of European problems to the European peoples.”88 Backward capitalists would naturally attempt to block the spread of socialism, but in vain. “Not even war weariness or disillusionment can head off a change which is p$rt of the whole historical process of our time.” He did not mention