Office of the Historian

861.00/10–246

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Durbrow) to the Secretary of State

restricted
No. 445
Moscow, October 2, 1946.
[Received October 15.]

The Chargé d’Affaires ad interim has the honor to enclose a full summary prepared by the Joint Press Reading Service of an article entitled “On the Dictatorship of the Working Class in Our Country-’ published in Komsomol[skaya] Pravda for September 28.48 This article is interesting in the following respects.

1)
It asserts the necessity for a continuation of the “dictatorship of the working class” until two conditions are fulfilled. These are the achievement of “full communism” within the USSR and the liquidation of “capitalist encirclement” without.
2)
It emphasizes that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be continued because of the existence of “capitalist encirclement” of the USSR. It will be recalled that three days before this article appeared Stalin, in reply to one of Werth’s questions, had expressed doubt that the British and American “ruling circles” could create “capitalist encirclement” even if they wished to.
3)
It links the concepts of “survivals of capitalism” and “capitalist encirclement”, stating that the former are “nourished” by the latter. This formulation, to the Embassy’s knowledge, goes further than any other Soviet press statement since before the war in suggesting a system of thought which might rationalize the continued existence in the USSR of attitudes considered harmful or dangerous by the Soviet leaders. These two concepts, usually implied but here bluntly enunciated, are the basis of present Soviet propaganda regarding both domestic and foreign politics.
The concept of “survivals of capitalism” bears a certain resemblance to the doctrine of original sin. The present article suggests this comparison, using the metaphor “the birthmarks of capitalism”. Like sin, capitalism appears to be full of temptation since it is capable of “nourishing” from outside its “survivals” inside the USSR, despite the Party’s careful ideological insulation and disinfection measures.
4)
The connecting of “survivals of capitalism” and “capitalist encirclement” in this article is one of many recent manifestations of traditional hostility to capitalism in the Soviet press. Gradually a pattern is being recreated which can be and doubtless is already being used to justify accusations of disloyalty to the USSR on the part of persons whom the authorities consider are under influences emanating from the “capitalist encirclement”.
  1. Not printed.↩