Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V

811.42700 (R)/6–749: Airgram

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

confidential

Moscow, June 7, 1949.

A–586. The Department’s A–51, March 5, 1949, stated a policy of using VOA Russian broadcasts to counter the falsehoods of Soviet propaganda, but disapproved the Embassy’s recommendation that direct reference to Soviet sources be included. The Embassy believes, that the latter point should be reconsidered, and offers the following reasons:

1. The basic reasons for citing chapter and verse when correcting false impressions are psychological.

a. The human mind, and particularly the Russian variety, occasionally perceives a connection between what it hears and what it has heard or read before, but usually it fails to do so unless, the connection is specifically pointed out. To omit direct references to what we are refuting is therefore for the most part like shooting random instead of aiming at a target. We can be sure that most of it simply fails to register in the desired context.

b. Among the factors tending to evoke belief, one of the most potent is concreteness. Most people have little interest in abstract generalities and little capacity for understanding them or dealing with them; consequently such material tends not to attract attention or, if noticed at all, to be dismissed with a shrug. Conversely, every link with specific names, times and places tends to attract attention and carry conviction. This is probably the principal reason for the propaganda success of the Bucar book for example: here was a concrete person telling specific stories about actual people—quite a different thing from the monotonous impersonal] vituperations of Pravda editorials.

2. The argument, used by A–51, that citing sources is a mistake because it “gives additional currency and prominence to falsehood” is a commonplace of public relations, but in the Embassy’s opinion it has only limited validity which does not extend to the case under discussion. The problem is one of proportion: if the total volume of misinformation is very small in comparison to the volume of true information, then as a rule it is a mistake to give the former free advertising by mentioning it at all. But inside the Soviet Union the situation is reversed. Even if VOA were not jammed, the flow of U.S. information into the USSR could not conceivably be more than a tiny stream in comparison to the huge output of Soviet media. This output is so full of anti-American lies that no direct refutation of them on our part could give them appreciably greater currency than they already have. The actual practice of the Department in its own press statements seems to be that of at least issuing a denial when a dangerously false view of some action or policy threatens to attain considerable currency, despite the fact that the denial may draw further public attention to the view that is denied. The Embassy believes that a similarly flexible approach should govern our information policy toward the USSR.

3. The danger of being lured into devoting too much of our output to the defensive, also cited by A–51, seems to imply mistrust of the Department’s ability to continue making its own decisions, to rest on a misunderstanding of the Embassy’s original recommendation, and to contradict the subsequent statement of A–51 that it is desirable to disseminate material “selected specifically to correct distortions … in Soviet propaganda.” The Embassy’s original recommendation (A–1105, November 1, 1948¹) was only that “representative samples” of prevailing falsehoods be refuted, by no means that every instance be so treated, which would be physically impossible. The Embassy’s proposal thus fits the Department’s policy of seeking to discover and attack the underlying pattern of Soviet falsification, a policy with which the Embassy fully concurs.

For the foregoing reasons, the Embassy submits that vagueness of reference is not as a rule a virtue in that portion of our output which is designed to counter Soviet falsehoods, and recommends that specific illustrations be cited. The citations need not be lengthy. In keeping with the current necessity of making each item on VOA programs quite short, the citations should be brief in proportion. But the principle seems clearly supported by the balance of available evidence, and if put into practice it should contribute markedly to the agreed objective of discrediting Soviet media.

Kohler

1. Not printed; but see telegram 1366 from Moscow on July 20 and telegram 2547 from Moscow on November 4, Foreign Relations, 1948, vol. iv, pp. 902 and 930.