Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume IV

761.00/6–2448

Memorandum Prepared in the American Embassy in the Soviet Union¹

Moscow, June 24, 1948

Soviet Xenophobia—1937 and 1948

At the height of the purge in 1937, foreigners in Moscow, who even then were referred to in the Soviet press as spies, complained about the increasing isolation they found themselves in and even questioned if the situation could get any worse. Today in retrospect, however, the restrictions on foreigners of the 1937 period look like the golden age of freedom.

For centuries, foreigners in Russia have complained about the official xenophobic atmosphere, but it is doubtful if, in modern times, the anti-foreign policy has ever been carried to the point it has reached today. It should be pointed out, in this connection, that never since the recognition of the USSR by the United States has it been possible to make acquaintances or maintain social relations with Russians on a scale remotely comparable to those considered normal for foreigners residing in most other countries.

Until recently, however, the Soviet authorities have always tolerated at least a limited amount of informal contact between foreigners and a certain group of Soviet citizens (persons not closely connected with important economic, military or political matters). But since the passage of the State Secrets Act in June, 1947,² which classified almost all information as secret, and particularly after the publication in January, 1948 of the decree forbidding direct contact between foreigners and Soviet organizations except through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade,³ or with shopkeepers, news vendors and similar indispensable services, practically all informal relationships between Soviet citizens and foreigners have ceased. In order to reinforce these decrees and make it absolutely clear to Soviet citizens that they should not talk with or see foreigners (unless they now have a special assignment), a considerable number of “tame Russians”, those who had permission from and were encouraged by the Soviet secret police to see foreigners and report on their activities to the secret police, have recently been arrested, or given strong warnings not to have any further contacts with foreigners. Even at the height of the 1937 purge, it was still possible to maintain contacts with those “tame Russians” who themselves had not been caught in the far-flung secret police dragnet. Also during and shortly after the war one had little difficulty in making and maintaining contacts with Russians, particularly those with police permission to see foreigners. While a considerable number of Soviet citizens who have had contacts with foreigners have been arrested in recent months, these are special cases and not part of a general purge as was the case in 1937.

The extent to which this high level directive has been brought home to the man in the street is best exemplified by the experience of several American officials who recently made the twelve day train trip between Moscow and Vladivostok. Until most recently it was the experience of foreigners traveling in the Soviet Union that Russians of all classes talked freely with fellow passengers, and the farther one travelled from Moscow, the freer were the contacts and discussions with Soviet citizens. On three recent trips to Vladivostok, however, Embassy officials found that their fellow passengers not only would not discuss any question, but some went so far as to refuse to return good morning greetings. Only on one recent trip did the American official find his traveling companions to be somewhat sociable. However, the last official to make the trip reported that while during the first 36 hours he found it possible to carry on a conversation with Russians, his acquaintances were severely reprimanded by the uniformed Interior Police guards for talking to foreigners. The conversations ceased.

Despite the all-out campaign to isolate foreigners, one still finds isolated cases of chance acquaintances who will enter into conversation. If, however, an effort is made to continue the relationship, it almost invariably turns out that the secret police get word to the Russian to discontinue seeing the foreigner. Unless, of course, the Soviet “friend” is a secret police plant.

The campaign to cut off contacts with foreigners has gone to such lengths that Soviet citizens who are close relatives of persons married to or working for foreigners have been dismissed from their jobs. In this connection, it will be recalled that a little over a year ago a decree was promulgated forbidding marriages with foreigners and those Soviet citizens already married to foreigners are not granted permission to leave the country, except in one or two rare cases involving satellite marriages. Moreover, many Soviet wives of foreigners have been called in by the secret police and “advised” that if they get a divorce from their husbands they will find it advantageous and will avoid “difficulties” for themselves. Several have complied.

Apart from the methods of isolation outlined above, the authorities have for the past year quite effectively succeeded in limiting travel in the Soviet Union, except in a few cases, to the bare minimum necessary for travel in and out of the country. In contrast, during the 1937 purge, foreigners could travel more or less freely in most parts of European Russia and Western Siberia. This restriction is perhaps one of the most effective in preventing the foreigner from learning anything about the country except what he can see in and around Moscow, and what he reads in the papers.

In this connection, public sources of information, particularly the press, are now very limited as compared with the situation in 1937. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get subscriptions to newspapers and journals, particularly those published in the provinces and on technical subjects.

The campaign has, in fact, gone so far that it is increasingly difficult to hire Soviet citizens as servants, chauffeurs, language teachers, translators and laborers. Pressure has also been brought on many persons working in these capacities to leave their jobs with Embassies and many have actually been arrested. Some workers and servants who have worked for foreigners for years are refused registration by the authorities when they try to work for other foreigners. In other words, if these persons are not considered good enough agents by the secret police, they are forbidden to work for foreigners.

The Soviet authorities have, of course, always made use of agents provocateurs, “plants” and frame-ups to obtain information and take gullible foreigners into camp, and the employment of such methods continues to a certain extent. On the other hand, members of foreign missions, particularly military men, are being followed, on an increasing scale, by secret police agents in a further effort to minimize chance contacts between the local population and foreigners.

As a corollary to the isolation of foreigners, the authorities are making every effort not only to reduce the number of foreigners here, but to keep to a minimum the arrival of newcomers. This is achieved by making life as difficult as possible for diplomatic missions, limiting the housing available (thirteen diplomatic missions are housed in hotels), and by limiting the issuance of visas of all sorts. A further method of limiting the number of foreigners was the establishment of an artificially disadvantageous rate of exchange which makes foodstuffs cost three or four times as much as they do in the United States, and makes rents out of all proportion to the value received. In contrast, in 1937 retail prices were much lower and the ruble rate available to foreigners was about 25 to the dollar, compared to the 8 to the dollar rate inaugurated last December.

No effort has been made to revive tourist traffic since the war, and there are no prospects for its revival. Furthermore, despite many efforts and offers, cultural, scientific and academic exchanges have been limited to a few with the satellite countries.

Except for the period during the war when millions of troops, of necessity, had to go abroad, the Russian people since the revolution have been almost hermetically sealed from the outside world. Before the revolution, emigration was possible, as was travel abroad. Today it is practically impossible for a Russian to leave the country, except for the few who must leave on official business. Since the revolution, no foreign newspapers or periodicals have been permitted to enter the country for public sale or use, except in recent years the Russian language publications of the British and American governments. Both these, the “British Ally” and “Amerika”, effective as they are as sparks in the Soviet blackout, have very limited circulation and are subject to censorship and other restrictions. The sole reason for permitting publication of this magazine and newspaper appears to be the fear of the Soviet authorities that if they did not permit their publication, the extensive Soviet propaganda publications issued in the United States and Great Britain would be closed down.

That the authorities are not pleased with the type of material appearing in these magazines, as well as on the “Voice of America” Russian language broadcast and those of the BBC, and are apprehensive of the effect they may be having, is clearly shown by the continuing attacks appearing in the press against these media of information. Furthermore, in recent weeks a serious effort is being made to jam the “Voice of America” broadcasts.

The logical question to ask is why, after the conclusion of a successful war which brought greatly added prestige, power and influence to the Soviet Union, have the authorities made these extraordinary efforts to prevent foreigners from obtaining information about the country, and Russian citizens from obtaining information about the outside world?

The first reason is, as indicated ‘above, that the Russian authorities for centuries, because they realized the unprogressive nature of their methods of government, have felt it necessary to deprive the Russian people of any yardstick with which they could measure their plight against that of other peoples. This time-honored characteristic of Russian governments must always be borne in mind in trying to evaluate the actions of Russian rulers, whether they be Romanoffs or Bolsheviks. The fundamental difference between the methods used by the Tzars and the Bolsheviks to attain these ends is that the methods used by the latter are more effective.

The basic tenets of the Soviet system, moreover, make it almost impossible for the regime to continue in existence unless its appeal is based upon the antagonism of the outside world, the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism, and the victory of “socialism” (Stalinism). In other words, the eventual conquest of the world by Stalinism.

This being the case, it was inevitable that the authorities would have to bend every effort to retrieve the serious loss of ideological ground which occurred during the war and try to induce the people to place blind faith in Soviet ideology as the only one which will eventually bring paradise on earth. Thus it became more essential than ever to prevent the Soviet people from having any further contacts with foreigners which would tend to perpetuate the ideas and comparisons they gained during the war, and thereby cause them further to doubt the attainment of a “better life” under Stalinism. Furthermore, based upon the fundamental tenet of the inevitability of a conflict between the capitalist and “socialist” world, it became essential to prevent foreigners from being in a position, through contacts with Soviet citizens, better to evaluate either the strengths or weaknesses of the Soviet regime. The recent action taken against even the “tame Russian” operatives seems to indicate that the secret police fear that their decoys give more information than they gather from the “wily foreign spy”.

There seems to be little doubt but that the appeals of Stalinist ideology are wearing very thin after thirty years of glowing but unfulfilled promises of a fuller and better life. This doubting attitude was brought about in part by the necessity of concentrating all energy and effort on the prosecution of the war, which made it essential for the Soviet authorities temporarily to abandon many of the ideological tenets upon which the regime is based. They were also forced to make promises of a fuller and better life after the war, in order to induce the Russian people to put up with the extreme hardships and sacrifices necessitated by the war. The fact that the Soviet Union was fighting side by side with capitalist countries against a common and powerful enemy also made it necessary to relax the attacks against the “evils of capitalism” and the outside world in general. Furthermore, millions of Russian troops pursuing the Germans to the west saw for themselves that most Rumanian, Austrian, Czech and German peasants and workers, even in wartime, lived under better conditions that Soviet workers and peasants had ever lived under the Tzars or Bolsheviks. These Russians, by their own experience, gained a yardstick with which to compare the achievements of the Soviet regime with “dreaded capitalism”, which undoubtedly caused many to question the veracity of Stalinist ideology.

The mere fact that millions of Russians had acquired a yardstick of comparison constituted an actual threat to the regime, which the authorities were quick to realize as soon as the war was over.

The net effect of the steps outlined above to isolate foreigners, to which could be added many minor irritants and “road blocks”, means that in 1948 it is most difficult for a foreigner to obtain more than a superficial knowledge of what goes on in the country, and why. Even to obtain what in any other country would be considered more or less general information requires a sound background of Russian history, Soviet ideology and basic economic and political policies. To this must be added astute observation, objective deduction and the full exploitation of the few sources of information still available. Fortunately, in order to control their own people, the Soviet government has to use various methods such as general reprimands in the press, self criticism and basic discussion of fundamentals, which make it possible, despite the strenuous efforts to hide the realities of Soviet life, to construct a fairly objective picture of these realities, as well as the fundamental policies and goals set by the authorities.

The fact that the Kremlin has been obliged further to intensify its efforts to insulate the Soviet population against foreigners, carry on an intensified campaign in an effort to whip up patriotism, rekindle belief in the wavering ideology, and attack almost everything foreign from sports to philosophy, is not a good advertisement for a system which has used every trick, ruse, bit of cunning and propaganda for over 30 years to convince the Soviet people and the outside world of the advantages of the regime. In 1937 it was triumphantly claimed that “Socialism” had been attained and the path to “Communism” lay ahead, that bourgeois nationalism and the remnants of capitalism had been completely stamped out. Today Socialism has again been attained but bourgeois nationalism and remnants of capitalism still are raising their ugly heads. Perhaps the authorities have cried “wolf” too many times.

In any event, despite the apparent lack of enthusiasm for the proclaimed advantages of the system, the situation is well in hand and the ideological as well as anti-foreign campaign is having considerable effect. The Russian people have been suppressed for centuries and have proven no exception to the P. T. Barnum rule that you can fool most of the people most of the time. The majority, however, may some day find their yardstick and become more fully aware of the fact that there is more to life outside than five year plans and unfulfilled promises.

Whether ten years hence the present period will, in retrospect, also seem like the golden age of freedom for foreigners in Moscow, remains to be seen. Any dictatorship which must continue the stick and carrot method of progress must of necessity use bigger and better sticks, and the Marxian carrot is becoming more and more withered. The Muzhik donkey may finally balk and compel his master to change his fundamental policies, or give way to others, particularly if the master is also faced with equal stubbornness, resolution and firmness abroad.

1. Transmitted as an enclosure in despatch No. 505 from Moscow on June 24, 1948. The Counselor of Embassy, Elbridge Durbrow, appears to have been the principal author.
2. For documentation about the State Secrets decree of June 8, 1947, see Foreign Relations, 1947, vol. iv, pp. 569–572, and p. 622.
3. See telegram 155, January 29, p. 798.