800.00B International Red Day/246: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 27—12:13 p.m.]
352. The Soviet press for April 25 published 53 slogans for May Day. The usual word “lozung” was not used being replaced by the word “[prizyv]”, a call or summons. The leading editorial in Pravda for April 26 commented on these slogans.
The slogans in the main constitute appeals to the Red army and the civilian population to bend every effort to defeat the “German-Fascist” forces and expel them from the territories of the Soviet Union. The guard units of the army, the border forces, and the partisans were among the fighting forces specifically mentioned. That solicitude for families of military service personnel is “our concern for” was reiterated. Only four slogans are primarily international. These are as follows:
- 1.
- An appeal to the conquered peoples of Europe to rise in struggle against the Hitler tyranny.
- 2.
- A summons to “oppressed brother Slavs” to broaden their fight against “the Hitlerite imperialists the deadly enemies of Slavdom” and hailing the “militant unity of the Slavic peoples.”
- 3.
- A salute to the victory of the Anglo-Soviet-American “fighting union” over the German Fascist enslavers.
- 4.
- A tribute to the “valiant Anglo-American troops, destroying the German-Italian Fascists in North Africa.”
Indications of Soviet frontier conceptions are supplied by slogan number 27 which refers to the Baltic peoples, the Moldavians, the Karelians as “brothers” who have “temporarily fallen under the yoke of the German Fascist scoundrels”. As in February the list of slogans closes with the command “forward to the destruction of the German occupiers and their expulsion from the borders of our Fatherland”.
Pravda’s comments on the slogans went slightly further than usual in the Soviet press in acknowledging the joint character of the struggle against Hitlerism. Stating that “the struggle of progressive humanity against Hitlerite tyranny is being conducted by the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition” the editorial referred to the fact that the Allies have expelled the Axis from Libya and are now driving it from Tunisia, the last strong point of the Italian-German coalition on the African Continent.
At the same time the editorial declared that the Soviet resistance to the Germans had given the Allies time to marshal their forces and that this winter’s Soviet campaign had marked the turning point of the war.
[Page 518]The slogans are nationalistic in character and made relatively slight concession to the revolutionary tradition. Thus the term “toilers” was usual and May Day was referred to as the “day of inspection of the toilers fighting forces” but the appeal to toilers of the world to unite against the “German Fascist usurpers” as well as the absence of appeals to oppressed classes in other countries including Germany may be significant.
Moreover the great majority of toilers [slogans?] were local in interest and constituted appeals for promoting efficiency in military operations and in war production.