761.13/3–1850: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Barbour) to the Secretary of State 1
874. Embtel 822 March 12. We have hesitated to offer our comments, on possible reasons for Stalin’s failure to make election speech because (a) we have not been in possession of any solid facts and (b) we have been of the opinion that flimsily-based speculation on our part would be negative contribution to understanding this question.
It is pertinent to inquire whether Stalin’s non-delivery of address should divert our attentions from speeches actually delivered by Molotov and other Politburo members. The omission of course has more dramatic significance: on sober thought, however, contents these other speeches (Embtel 820 and 821 March 112) seem more deserving of our attention.
Western observers here (including correspondents), many of whom had predicted that Stalin would deliver an address of unusual importance, conjecture following explanations for his failure to speak: (1) He was indisposed at last minute (this, of course, is predicated upon assumption, by no means certain, that he originally had intended to speak); (2) He has been suffering from cancer of the throat, and hence, while able to make public appearances, is physically inhibited from delivering protracted addresses (this is an old rumor); (3) He feels that cold war is still in a stage of such fluidity that it behooves him to keep his silence now (the assumption obviously correct being that any words he might utter would carry much greater weight at home and abroad than speeches of his Politburo associates); (4) He is saving his major pronouncement for nineteenth party congress (this supposition suffers from fact that there is no evidence as yet to show that party is scheduled for near future3).
Without much more information, we are not prepared to hazard a guess as to which, if any, of these possibilities may be correct. We are not even sure that these exhaust all the potentialities. For example, it is increasingly plausible to believe that Stalin has now cast himself in the role of elder statesman; that thenceforth he will appear on the public platform only rarely, leaving to his coadjutors the main burden of carrying party line to domestic and international audiences.
The fact remains that Molotov and other key Politburo figures have provided us with food for thought. They have reemphasized their belief in strength of Soviet Union, and whether with their tongues in their cheeks or not, have expressed conviction that their [Page 1126] main antagonist, capitalist America is in a descending spiral of production, and a corresponding ascending spiral of unemployment and human misery. Expressions of confidence over accession to the cause of China and the satellites likewise do not bring us anything new. Despite these overly optimistic views with respect to future of international Communism, we must not overlook references in these speeches to weak points in economy of USSR, particularly in vastly-important agricultural sector. The admission by Mikoyan that Armenian nationalism is not wholly moribund, combined with other data of an admittedly spotty nature at our disposal, reinforces our belief that, in the non-great Russian areas at least, there is fund of visible and concrete dissatisfaction with the regime.
In our view, chief significance of “campaign” speeches lies in fact they continue main lines of recent Soviet public pronunciamentoes, and shed no new light on vital problem relations USSR with free world.