Editorial Note
On March 23 the Department of State released to the press a 35-page study which summarized the efforts by the United States Government to establish and cultivate cultural and scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union. The study found that these efforts had been met by an unwavering Soviet policy of noncooperation graduating from passive resistance in the immediate postwar period to open obstructionism in 1948. After recounting case after case of Soviet evasion of American efforts in this field, the study concluded:
“The only conclusion that can be drawn … is that the Soviet Government fears a free exchange of ideas because of a realization that thirty years of Communism have failed to provide the patient Soviet people with a living standard anywhere approximating that enjoyed by the workers in the United States; because thirty years of Communism have deprived the Soviet people of freedom of thought and action, freedom which once experienced through contact with American people or American books will make them ill-content with their life in the Soviet Union.”
The Department’s study was circulated as Press Release No. 182, March 23, 1949.