861.918/7–2145: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 22—12:05 a.m.]
2654. According to AP (Associated Press) report received by Embassy press office, Wilbur Forrest27 stated in public address to Chicago Rotary Club that Russia was going to relax its strict press regulations, that this did not mean it would completely abolish censorship in our time but there was distinct possibility Russia would allow foreign correspondents to travel freely in Russia and to report what they might see and learn.
Am not aware of anything Forrest saw or learned on his recent visit here which would justify this optimism. It would, of course, be surprising if facilities for travel were not to improve with the final overcoming of war conditions in Russia but ability to travel freely in Russia can be, and always has been, subject to many restrictions other than direct Government prohibitions. Similarly there are many means besides direct censorship whereby Government can influence not only what foreign correspondents learn and see but also what they choose to write about it. To suppose that Russian officials will essentially alter their general views and policies on extent to which Soviet reality should be revealed to outside world is something for which no one in this Mission has seen any substantiation. Present Russian foreign press policies, which are only slightly stricter today than they were before war, have justified themselves from Soviet standpoint. They have generally succeeded in concealing from broad mass of foreign public many Russian conditions which could hardly fail to arouse distaste and criticism abroad and in giving foreign public, in our country at least, a relatively favorable and reassuring picture of Russian reality. Mr. Forrest’s own words (which are exactly those which Moscow would have wished him to utter) are a good proof of ultimate efficacy of Moscow’s methods, in which assiduous cultivation of distinguished visitors is balanced by consistent undercutting of regularly assigned correspondents and diplomats. Few Russians will see any reason to abandon a policy which is producing such results.
- Assistant editor, New York Herald Tribune.↩