The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (62 page)

The peace campaign was launched to remind the people that they must sacrifice and work because, despite Russia’s desire for peace, their great enemy, the United States, is trying to bring about a war against Russia. The dove of peace symbolizes the efforts of the Soviet Union to protect the people from an aggressive war such as our government is alleged to be planning.

We Americans and the people of the free world must never forget or ignore this kind of distorted conditioning of the Russian people, this kind of indoctrination with ideas that are false but that by repetition can be drilled into the minds not only of the Russian people but of peoples in underdeveloped countries whom the Communists seek to turn against the United States.

A totalitarian regime regulates all the news—or almost all—that is available to the great mass of people. None but a Communist newspaper can be bought in the Soviet Union, so the people get only the slanted Communist point of view on what is happening in the world. They have no other interpretation of the position of the United States and little concept of world opinion other than that fed to them by the Kremlin.

For us merely to say that their beliefs are false is not enough, because they have been conditioned to believe that Washington is plotting a war and that Moscow is striving to protect them from our aggression; and they do believe it. Almost the only news about the United States that I saw in Russian newspapers was the story of school integration troubles at Little Rock, Arkansas. When I protested that the Russians were getting a completely distorted view of the United States and of the attitude of the American people, I was usually met with silence or obvious disbelief. Or, if the person I was talking with was educated and intelligent, his reply might be: “Oh, I know nothing about politics.”

It may seem ironic to us that a dove of peace has become the symbol of an American plot to start a world war, but I was convinced that we are going to have to make far greater efforts than we have made in the past if we can hope to avoid the war that the Kremlin has told the people over and over and over again that we might start.

Thirty-eight
    

A Challenge for the West

AS SOON AS
I arrived in Moscow I requested an interview with Nikita S. Khrushchev. I was told to write a letter in which I was to state the questions I would ask Mr. Khrushchev. I did so, saying that I wanted to record his answers.

As the days flew along I became discouraged about the possibility of seeing him, although that had been one of the main purposes of my visit to Russia. I was ready to admit failure. Then, three days before my scheduled departure, my interpreter said: “I forgot to tell you, but we go to Yalta early tomorrow morning.”

The next morning we departed for Yalta. After our arrival we learned that Mr. Khrushchev would send his car for us the following day at nine-thirty.

Exactly at nine-thirty we drove downhill toward the Black Sea and finally came to a gate with a soldier on guard. We passed through the gate and, a few minutes later, through another similarly guarded gate, and then we approached a comfortable but not imposing house on a lovely site looking toward the city of Yalta. We had arrived exactly on the minute set for our appointment.

We were led through the yard and to a garden, where Mr. Khrushchev was talking with another gentleman. He came to greet us and bid us welcome, a short, stocky man with a bald head and a wide smile on his round, mobile face.

Dr. Gurewitsch, who had accompanied me, set up our portable tape recorder, so there would be no misinterpreting what we said, and we settled down to talk.

“I appreciate your coming here,” he said, “and I want to speak of President Franklin Roosevelt. We respect him and remember his activities because he was the first to establish diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Roosevelt understood perfectly well the necessity of such relations. He was a great man, a capable man who understood the interests of his own country and the interests of the Soviet Union. We had a common cause against Hitler and we appreciate very much that Franklin Roosevelt understood this task. I am happy to greet you in our land.”

My first question concerned disarmament. I pointed out that after World War II we reduced our army from twelve million to one million men, but then, because of the Soviet Union’s actions, we were forced to rearm. In such circumstances, I said, the American people wondered how the Soviet Union could expect us to agree on disarmament without inspection.

“We do not agree with your conception,” he replied. “We consider that demobilization took place in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R. In our country men and women were all mobilized. In our country perished roughly the number of persons you mention as making up the army of your country, almost the same number, Mrs. Roosevelt. I do not want to offend you, but if you compare the losses of your country with the losses of ours, your losses just equal our losses in one big campaign. You know what terrible ruins we got. We lost our cities. That is why our country was so eager to establish firm peace. No country wished it so eagerly.”

But, we pointed out, the Soviet army was bigger than ours.

“I do not reject that our army was bigger. Take a map and look at the geographical situation of our country. It is a colossal territory. If you take Germany or France, small countries who keep their army to defend either their east or their west, that is easy; they may have a small army. But if we keep our army in the east it is difficult to reach the west because our territory is so vast.”

I pointed out that after the war the Russians wanted a group of neutral countries between them and Germany, that Germany was no longer a military menace and that Great Britain could not be considered a military threat. Why, then, I asked, was it not possible to do without an offensive army in Russia, since it frightened the rest of the world?

“When we increase our arms,” he said, “it means we are afraid of each other. Until the troops are drawn out of Europe and military bases liquidated, the disarmament will not succeed.”

I told him that after World War II we had not been suspicious of Russia. I knew that my husband had hoped we would be able to come to an understanding. “But then,” I went on, “we found the Russians did not strictly keep agreements made at Yalta and we became more and more suspicious.”

The discussion continued. Mr. Khrushchev appeared to think that the Americans did not really want to liberate the European and Eastern countries. Instead, they had tried to destroy the will of the people. I countered with the suggestion that the acceptance of Communism did not, in our opinion, represent the will of the people. From that point on the discussion grew more heated. Did he, I asked, believe that a Communist world must be brought about?

“Communism will win in the whole world,” he told me. “This is scientifically based on the writings of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin.” He went on to assure me blandly: “We are against any military attempt to introduce Communism or socialism into any country.”

Much of our discussion is irrelevant now as conditions have changed in the world. Basically, there was no possibility of meeting in agreement on a single point. Except one, perhaps, equivocal as it seemed.

“Misunderstandings have grown between our countries,” I said, “and there is fear on both sides. We will have to do things to create confidence. One thing is a broader exchange of people.”

“I fully agree, Mrs. Roosevelt,” he said in a calmer tone.

At the end of two and a half hours of conversation I felt fully convinced that Mr. Khrushchev knew the danger that any new war would bring to civilization. He was, I decided, convinced that war would be a disadvantage to the Soviet Union and to Communism because he believed that the wave of the future was socialism and that his cause would triumph without war. He believed it, I told myself, and he would try to make the future serve his purposes.

As I was leaving, Mr. Khrushchev wished me a pleasant trip and asked, “Can I tell our papers that we have had a friendly conversation?”

“You can say that we had a friendly conversation but that we differ.”

He grinned broadly. “Now!” he exclaimed. “At least we didn’t shoot at each other!”

For three weeks in the Soviet Union I had felt more than at any time in my life that I was cut off from all the outside world. For three weeks I do not believe I had heard anyone really laugh on the streets or in a crowd. I had been among hospitable people but they were people who worked hard, who lived under considerable strain, and who were tired. It was only after I had landed at Copenhagen and heard laughter and gay talk and saw faces that were unafraid that I realized how different were our two worlds. Suddenly I could breathe again!

But I was frightened too, and after I reached home my nagging fear continued. I was—I still am—afraid that Americans and the peoples of the rest of the free world will not understand the nature of the struggle against Communism as exemplified by the Soviet Union. It is urgently important for the sake of our country and people that we get rid of some of our great misunderstandings and that we see clearly the things that must be done.

We are in a great struggle between two vastly different ways of life. While we must have guns, atomic weapons and missiles for retaliation against aggression, they are not going to win this struggle or prevent a catastrophic world war. Nor is belief in the idea of democracy likely to have great effect in areas where democratic institutions are not established. To overemphasize the importance of military power or to propagate merely the abstract idea of democracy is to miss the point. There is much, much more to be done if Western leadership is to be accepted by the masses of the world’s underdeveloped countries, if our way of life and our hard-won freedoms are to survive—or, perhaps, if anything is to survive in the atomic age—and flourish. We must provide leadership for free peoples, but we must never forget that in many countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, the freedom that is uppermost in the minds of the people is freedom to eat.

I think it is time for us Americans to take a good look at ourselves and our shortcomings. We should remember how we achieved the aims of freedom and democracy. We should look back in an effort to gauge how we can best influence the peoples of the world. Perhaps we made the greatest impression on underdeveloped countries in the 1930’s when we ourselves were making a tremendous effort to fight our way out of a great economic depression. In that period we united behind bold ideas and vigorous programs, and, as they watched us, many people in far countries of the world began to realize that a government could be intensely interested in the welfare of the individual. They saw what was happening and it gave them hope that it could happen to them too. That was a generation ago, but again today it seems to me that it is essential for us to examine carefully our actions as a nation and try to develop a program for the welfare of the individual.

In this connection I was sometimes astonished during my visit to Russia to see what the Soviet government had brought about during four decades of Communist dictatorship. Illiteracy, which was once 90 per cent, has been reduced until it is now probably less than 10 per cent. The people have been educated in every field—crafts, arts, professions, sciences—and the government has used the educational system for political purposes, to shape the people to the will of the leadership.

Educators are sent where they are most important for the purposes of the government. Doctors are sent where they can be most useful. Workers are sent to distant areas of Asia because new fields must be plowed and crops planted. This is dictatorship and it is hateful; but the results achieved by the Soviet regime are obvious to anyone visiting Russia. The water is pure; the milk is clean; the food supply is increasing; industry has made mighty strides. The people are not free, but they are better off materially every year. They know little of other countries and they are willing to accept a hard life because of the insidious Communist propaganda that unites them in fear of aggression by the United States. Most of them are sustained by a belief in communistic aims.

The Russians recognize that there are vast masses of people in Asia, Africa and parts of Latin America who are closer to the economic conditions that existed forty years ago in Russia than they are to the conditions that have existed for many years in the United States. The leaders of the Soviets can say to them: “We know your conditions. Our people were once hungry, too; not only for food but for health and education, for knowledge and for hope for the future. Look at what we have done in forty years! Take heart. We can help you.”

This is a challenge to democracy. This is the real challenge, and it cannot be met by mere words. We have to show the world by our actions that we live up to the ideals we profess and demonstrate that we can provide all the people in this country with the basic decencies of life, spiritually as well as materially. In the United States we are the showcase for the possibilities inherent in a free world, in democracy. If the lives of our people are not better in terms of basic satisfactions as well as in material ways than the lives of people anywhere in the world, then the uncommitted peoples we need on our side will look elsewhere for leadership.

We have spent a great deal in grants to our friends abroad but there is more than that to the struggle for the minds of men. For example, we have taken no trouble to invite delegations from other parts of the world to look at our system and see what we are doing under government auspices. If we are to be leaders we must offer needy countries technical know-how to help them achieve the freedom to eat, and practical help in developing, step by step, a democratic way of life. It is not enough to say that we do not like the Communist idea. We have to prove that our own idea is better and can accomplish more.

We
can
accomplish more. There is no reason for us to be frightened by the scientific achievements under direction of the Soviet government, which has concentrated money and manpower on sputniks and rockets for obvious propaganda reasons. We have been complacent and given as little money and as few men as possible for work that we should have pressed vigorously. We were more interested in our comforts, in making money, and in having all the luxuries possible in this comfortable world of ours. We have to change and we
will
change that approach. If we are to lead the free world we must become a mature people—or we may one day wake up to find that fear and laziness have reduced us from a strong, vital nation to a people unable to lead other nations in the only way to win the struggle against Communism, the way of the mind and the heart.