SOTmt'ttiminiinisn^'
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WILLIAM H E N R Y CHAMBERL
$
Born in Brooklyn, 1897.* Educated Penn Charter School,
Philadelphia, a n a Haverford College. Graduated from latter
1
college in 1917. As correspondent for The Christian
Science
Mr, Monitor,
MR. CHAMBERLIN spent 12 years in the Soviet
% Union (1922-1934), 4 years in Japan (1935-1939), and one
:Jk year in France from the spring of 1939 until^ the French
H collapse in June, 1940. Spent most of 1934 in Germany,
completing a two-volume history of the Russian Revolution,
published by Macmillan Company in 1935. For this purpose
^ he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Contributed to Manl&chester
Guardian
and the Observer, in Britain and to &
number of American and British magazines. Devoted war
Myears to freelance writing and lecturing. Visiting lecturer at
'¡|Harvard School of Overseas Administration, Yale University
¿ a n d Haverford College. Holds degree D.Litt. At present,
^associate editor of the New Leader and regular contributor
> to the editorial page of The Wall Streer Journal. Published
'books # include: "The
Russian
Revolution;
1917-1921";
"Russia's Iron Age";
"The Russian Enigma: An
Interpretation" ; "Japan Over Asia"; "The World s Iron Age";
"The
Confessions of An Individualist."
A forthcoming book, " T h e
Eurobean Cockpit,"
based on a recent visit to Europe, is
listed for summer or early autumn publication by the Macmillan Company. M r . Chamberlia's home is in Cambridge,
; Massachusetts.
§
This is No. 7
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S O V I E T
C O M M U N I S M :
THE RECORD OF AGGRESSION
by WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN
"We don't want a single foot of foreign
territory; but we will not surrender an
inch of our territory to anyone. That is
our foreign policy."
Josef Stalin, addressing the Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union on June 27, 1930.
It is a matter of record that Stalin did not
say: "We don't want a foot of foreign territory except Eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania,
Estonia, Finnish Karelia, Petsamo, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, Moldavia, Koenigsberg, Carpatho-Ukrain, South Sakhalin,
the Kurile Islands and Tannu Tuva" — no
less than 273,947 square miles of foreign
soil, inhabited by 24,355,000 people.
Before the war the Soviet Union was the
greatest contiguous land mass in the world,
with the largest predominantly white population under a single sovereignty. As a result
of its war annexations it has added an area
larger than all our New England and Middle
Atlantic states, plus Virginia and North Carolina. It has acquired a new population more
than half that of Great Britain or France.
And the record of Soviet aggression is very
imperfectly summed up in this list of outright
2
annexations. Our previous experience with
the Axis powers shows that domination can
be achieved without formal annexation. Japan
could exploit the manpower and natural resources of Manchuria through its nominally
independent Manchoukuo regime. And satellite local regimes gave Hitler full control of
many countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, etc.) which he did not absorb
into his Third Reich.
The Soviet Union has established the. same
kind of control over ten countries and areas
of eastern and central Europe, with an aggregate population of more than one hundred
million people and an area of over 600,000
square miles, more than two-thirds of the size
of the American states east of the Mississippi
River. These countries and areas are as,,
follows:
Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Albania, Hungary, Finland,
Eastern Germany and Eastern Austria.
Methods and degress of control vary from
country to country. But this very large part
of the European continent has been transformed into a closed Soviet preserve, where
the local administrations can Jtake no important political or economic decision without
sanctjoaWapproval. J f r
fctCyAS
Wi|l
Soviet expansion i n A s i a has also gone
farther than the mere changes on the map
would indicate. Vast, sparsely populated
3
Outer Mongolia, long a Soviet dependency
in fact, has been separated from China and
associated with the Soviet Union, following
what seems to have been the model totalitarian plebiscite of all time. Over 600,000
Mongols, it was reported, voted for association with the Soviet Union. Not even one
voted in the negative.
The Soviet Union has established a tight
control over North Korea and a looser, but
potentially effective domination over Manchuria, China's most developed industrial
region. For under the terms of the SovietChinese Treaty of August, 1945, the Soviet
Government possesses the right of operating
the Manchurian railways jointly with China,
the privilege of maintaining a "naval base in
Port Arthur, at the southern tip of Manchuria, and certain commercial preferences in
Dairen, the most important Manchurian port.
These are powerful opening wedges for Soviet
pressure on whatever Chinese administration
may be set up in Manchuria. And a considerable part of that country is under the
control of Chinese Communists, who were
armed and given transportation facilities by
theSoviqt rp i 1 i tflljU&m man d e rs i n Manchuria.
/ Soviet Communist aggression, like Nazi and
/ Japanese militarist aggression, is not uniform
I but varied. It is not static, but dynamic. OutI side the area which is being forcibly Soviet\ ized, to the familiar accompaniment of
executions and mass deportations, there is a
wider belt of territory which is being made
ripe for ultimate Sovietization. And from
this wider belt of territory which at the
present time is dominated without being
formally annexed, spearheads of further
aggression are pointed toward lands which
are still outside the sphere of Soviet influence.
For example, Tito's Communist Yugoslavia is a constant center of intrigue and
violence, directed against Gerece and against
the Italian city of Trieste. The Soviet Government tries to exploit its grip1 on Eastern Germany and Eastern Austria in order to draw
both those countries entirely into its sphere
of influence. A military occupation of such
countries as Poland, Rumania, Hungary and
Bulgaria has been utilized in order to clamp
down on the unwilling peoples of, these countries Communist-controlled regimes. The
Soviet Union hopes to extend to all Korea the
Communist type of administration which it
has established in the northern party of the
country. Outer Mongolia is being used as a
springboard for the control of more populous
and economically developed inner Mongolia.
Russia, like Japan before it, sees in Manchuria a key for placing pressure on China.
And, unlike Japan, it possesses a reliable and
large fifth column in the shape of the Chinese
Communists.
5
TtU " H i ^ H o ^ a ?
A distinguished British geo-politician, the
late Sir Halford Mackinder, in his book
"Democratic Ideals and Reality," laid down
a formula which is very applicable to the
present world situation:
"Who rules East Europe commands the
Heartland.
Who jules the Heartland commands the
World Island
Who rules the World Island commands
the World."
The World Island, in Mackinder's definition, was the contiguous land mass represented by the continents of Europe, Asia and
Africa. The Soviet Government is unmistakably taking advantage of a favorable strategic
position, straddling Europe and Asia, and
of the chaos and impoverishment which the
war has brought to the world to carry out
a program of aggressive expansion which
recognizes no limits, which is bound by no
treaties and which can only be checked by
a clear mobilization of superior force.
Optimistic commentators saw in the verdicts passed'on the Nazi leaders at Nuernberg
the inauguration of a new kind of universal
law, enforceable against any government
which might wage aggressive war. This interpretation does not survive a fair and realistic
consideration of the record of Soviet expansion. For this expansion has been accomplish6
<,;v
ed by the familiar Nazi methods of aggression,
by force and threat of force.
In no case, have the peoples annexed to
Russia or brought under Soviet domination
been given any opportunity to express their
will freely. In no case is there the slightest
reason to believe that a majority, or even a
substantial minority of the people affected
welcomes the change to Soviet rule. Soviet
annexations were carried out in crudest violation of specific treaties with Poland, Finland,
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were in
effect at the time of the annexations and which
were concluded in 1932 at the initiative of
the Soviet Government itself.
The former Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim
Litvinov, liked to pose as a champion of peace
• and international law and order when he
spoke as the Soviet representative in the
League of Nations. It was ironically appropriate when Litvinov's collected speeches, under the title "Against Aggression" were
published, — just at the time when the Soviet
Union was waging an unprovoked war of
aggression against Finland and was being
very properly expelled from the League of
Nations for its refusal to pay any attention
to League .proposals for mediation.
/ T t has already been pointed out that there
As not the slightest relation between Stalin's
/soothing assurance that the Soviet Union did
1 not want "a single foot of foreign territory"
Y
S t o J U ,
A
—
7
and the proved facts of Soviet territorial expansion and political domination of neighboring countries outside its frontiers. It is also
noteworthy that this process of expansion ana
domination was in violation of numerous
treaties, to which the Soviet Union freely subscribed, and of international agreements such
as the Atlantic Charter and the Yalta Agreement, to which the Soviet Government was1 a
signatory.
A legend grew up during the war years,
when high official circles sponsored uncritical
pro-Soviet propaganda, that Stalin was a kind
of compound of George Washington, of
cherry-tree fame, and Sir Galahad. The Soviet
leader, we were told, might be a little rough
and blunt. But if he gave his word he could
be relied on to keep it.
This was a fantastic misinterpretation of
Stalin's character. The Soviet dictator is one
of the wiliest and most unscrupulous plotters
and schemers in .world history. Machiavelli
would have saluted him. And the legend of
Stalin, the man of his word, withers as one
considers the_known fact of Soviet aggression.
f Take first the case of Poland, a peculiarly
/flagrant case because the Poles were the first
people who took up arms against the Nazi
onslaught. If any nation was especially entitled to an honest application of Atlantic
Charter principles in the peace settlement,
that nation was Poland.
-
On the eve of the outbreak of the Second
World War there were three treaty obliga«
tions between the Soviet Union and Poland.
There was the Treaty of Riga, signed in
March, 1921, which fixed the boundary between the two countries. There was a special
agreement, proposed by the Soviet Union and
accepted by Poland, for bringing the Kellogg
Pact outlawing war into operation as between
the two countries. This was signed on February 9, 1929. There was a treaty of neulrality
and non-aggression, pledging respect for existing frontiers, signed on July 25, 1932 and
extended beyond its original ten-year limit
by ajyrotocol signed on May 5, 1934.
/ T n e w o r l d was thunderstruck when the news
/came out that Nazi Foreign Minister RibbenI trop and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov
I had signed a treaty of non-aggression on
f August 23, 1939. This treaty, because of the
i time and circumstances of its signing, gave
| the green light for the Second World War
I more than any other incident. It assured Hiti ler that he would not have to worry about
| a second front in the East.
But along with the public treaty of non| aggression there was a secret treaty, providing
1 for the partition of Poland and of all eastern
I Europe between the two totalitarian states.
According to the first draft of this treaty
Russia was to acquire Polish territory up to
'ader
9
of Poland falling to the German share. Latvia
and Estonia were recognized as Russia's share
of the loot of aggressive war, and Russian
claims to Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina,
then a part of Rumania, were recognized by
the German government. This secret treaty
underwent a modification after Ribbentrop's
visit to Moscow in September. The Soviet
Union was given a free hand in Lithuania,
while the partition line in Poland was drawn
further to the east, with the Riven San instead
of the Vistula as one of the principal points
of demarcation.
By signing this treaty for the partition of
Poland the Soviet Union not only broke many
treaty obligations, but made itself an accomplice in Hitler's aggressive war. In a world
of genuine international law and even-handed
justice as between peoples the place of the
Soviet representatives at Nuernberg would
have been among the defendants, not among
thejudges.
/"Nazi atrocities in Poland are well known.
/Soviet atrocities were glossed over and hushed
up by wartime propaganda. Yet these were
scarcely less horrible. About a million and
a quarter inhabitants of Eastern Poland were
herded into freight cars under conditions of
appalling filth and lack of food and water
and transported to forced labor in various
parts of Russia. Families were often separated, many children perished in the hard-
ships of the journey. Altogether, according
to the best estimates of the Polish governmentin-exile, which was able to maintain an
embassy in Moscow for almost two years in
1941-43, 270,000 of these unfortunate deportees perished of maltreatment, neglect,
overwork and underfeeding. 115,000 got out
of Russia during the brief period of comparatively friendly Soviet-Polish relations;
and some of them have given valuable first
hard testimony about the Soviet slave-labor
systert}.
For a short time after Hitler's attack on
Russia, in June 1941, it seemed that an accommodation on fair terms,between the Soviet
Union and Poland would be possible. A
treaty of alliance was concluded between the
Soviet regime and the Polish government-inexile, headed by General Waclaw Sikorski. It
was -recognized in this pact that "the SovietGerman treaties of 1939 as to territorial
changes in Poland have lost their validity."
Unfortunately the Soviet Government kept
up an appearance of friendship toward
Poland only until the first rush of the German
offensive into Russia had been checked. What
the Soviet leaders wanted was not a friendly
ally and future neighbor, but a vassal state,
ruled by Communists and unable to take a
steD without approval from Moscow. Foreign
Minister Molotov, who at San Francisco and
elsewhere wept crocodile tears over Poland's
11
sufferings, expressed the true intentions of
his government when he exultantly said to
the Soviet Parliament, at the high point of
Soviet-Nazi collaboration, on Oct. 31, 1939:
"One swift blow to Poland, first by the
German army and then by the Red Army, and
nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the
Versailles Treaty."
I Repeated unfriendly acts, such as stoppage
of Polish relief to destitute Poles in Russia,
I reached their climax on April 26, 1943, when
/the Soviet Government abruptly announced
/ a breach of relations with the Polish Government. Pretext for this step was the Polish demand, following the German discovery of
thousands of corpses of Polish officers, who
had been captured by the Red Army during
the invasion of Poland, in the Katyn Forest,
near Smolensk, for an impartial investigation
of this tragedy by the International Red
Cross. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that these officers were victims of
a Soviet, rather than a Nazi massacre. For
almost two years Soviet officials had been
putting off Polish official inquiries about their
fate with evasive untruthful and self-contradictory answers.
The Soviet authorities then built up a Red
Quisling administration out of a group of
Polish Communists and opportunists who had
taken refuge in Russia and who very inappropriately called themselves the Union of
i— Tta
suua
I Polish Patriots. Aided by the timid appease| ment tactics of the American and British
I Governments, Stalin pressed on with his plans
1 for the complete subjugation of Poland as
i his troops overran the country in the camj p a i g n s of 1944 and 1945^^-— P w ^ T T ^ o T W ^ ^ r w a s settled at the
"Big Three" conference at Yalta in February,
1945. Soviet annexation of more than twofifths of Poland's pre-war territory, including
the historic Polish cities of Vlov and Wilno,
was recognized. The legitimate Polish Government was thrown over. It was agreed that
a Polish Provisional Government, to be
formed out of a coalition of the Soviet puppet
administrators, and representative Poles in
Poland and abroad should be pledged "to
the holding of free and unfettered elections
as soon as possible on the basis of universal
suffrage and secret ballot."
But the election which was actually held
in January 1947, was described by every independent correspondent who observed it
(one excepts Soviet journalists and one
erratic American fellow-traveler) as a fraudulent farce, with wholesale intimidation and
no guarantee against ballot-box stuffing. The
Soviet Government swallowed up one part
of Poland and turned the remainder of that
unfortunate country into a dependency.
When the Finnish Government refused to
13
surrender territory that was ethnically entirely Finnish to Russia the Soviet Government launched an attack on that country on
November 30, 1939. At an officially admitted
cost of almost fifty thousand Soviet lives
(Molotov estimated the Soviet; dead in the
Soviet-Finnish War at 48,745, while the
Finnish Marshal Mannerheim estimated the
figure at 200,000) the Red Army broke
through the Finnish defenses and the Soviet
Union annexed the Isthmus of Karelia, with
Finland's second largest city, Viipuri. It is
significant of the feeling of the people affected
by this transfer of territory that almost all
the 400,000 inhabitants of Finnish Karelia
preferred to live as destitute refugees in Finland, rather than to stay in their homes as
Soviet citizens.
/ " T h e three independent Baltic Republics,
^Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, were swallowed
I in two gulps, instead of one. The Foreign
J Ministers of these three countries were sumj moned to Moscow in the autumn of 1939 and
placed under strong pressure to sign "mutual
assistance pacts," which gave the Soviet
Union the right to establish military, naval
and air bases on their territory. At first there
j was no change in the internal regimes and
I Molotov declared on October 31, 1939, that
"the chatter about the Sovietization of the
I Baltic countries is profitable only to our
mutual enemies and to anti-Soviet provocateurs." However, this "chatter" became reality
in June, 1940, when Soviet troops moved into
the Baltic countries. Handpicked legislative
bodies, chosen under conditions of extreme
intimidation', obediently voted Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. Over
200,000 refugees from these small countries,
the majority in DP camps, a smaller number
in Sweden, prefer death rather than repatria-,
tion to life under Soviet conditions.
Every Soviet annexation may fairly be
characterized as an act of lawless, predatory
aggression. The Soviet Union would not have
expanded by one square mile, or one square
foot, if the decision to join or not to join had
been left to a free and honest vote of the
peoples affected. While it is true that some
of the newly annexed territory formerly belonged to Tsarist Russia (this is not true as
regards Eastern Galicia, Northern Bukovina,
Carpatho-Ukraine and the Koenigsberg district), it must not be forgotten that the Revolution had driven a deep cultural and religious cleavage between the Soviet Union and
the former Russian provinces. And the
number of people in the annexed regions who
are Russian by nationality i s ' negligibly
small..
What is behind this career of Soviet aggresl sion, which looms up as far and away the
^—SiolW Hu Mus
great threat to a world of peace, order and
freedom? Russian nationalist considerations
play some role. But the strongest force which
drives the Soviet rulers from one act of
aggression to another is their fatalistic conviction that communism must conquer the
world or perish. Here is what Lenin said on
this subject, as quoted with approval by
Stalin in his book "Problems of Leninism:"
"It is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long
period side by side with imperialist states —
ultimately one or the other must conquer.
Meanwhile a number of terrible clashes between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois
states are inevitable."
And here is Stalin, in the same book, speaking for himself:
"It is therefore the essential task of the
victorious revolution in one country to develop and support the revolution in others."
So long as there is even one free country
the masters of the Kremlin will not feel secure in their dictatorship. The record of
Soviet aggression up to date, long and formidable as it is, must be considered only a
very small foretaste of what will come,—
unless the people who believe in western
Christian values succeed in building impregnable ramparts against Stalin's attempt to
replace Hitler as the would-be conqueror of
the world.
16
i f t û - 1
DON'T TURN THIS DOWN!
The most fearless and factual
expose
of Communism
ever
published.
A brief biographical sketch of author in each pamphlet. Face
these facts, Mr. America, and act while you are still free.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Everyday Life under the Soviet System. By Eugene Lyons
The Soviet Regime in Practice.
By Eugene Lyons
Mind and Spirit in the Land of Soviets. By Eugene Lyons
The Communist Conspiracy Against the Negroes.
By George S. Schuyler
5. Communism Means Slavery.
By William H.
Chamberlin
6. Stalin's W o r l d - W i d e Fifth Column. By Wm.H.
Chamberlin
7. Soviet Communism: The Record of Aggression.
By William H. Chamberlin
8. Red Tyranny vs. Stepinac.
By Richard
Ginder
9. The Reds in Our Labor_ Unions.
By Richard Ginder
10. The Red Terror and Religion.
By Richard Ginder
11. The Soviet Caste System.
By Dr. Hermann
Borchardt
12. I W a s a Teacher in Soviet Russia. By Dr. Hermann
Borchardt
13. Communism and Fascism: Two of a Kind.
By Dr. Hermann
Borchardt
14. Radio in the Red.
By Oliver Carlson
15. Red-Star Over Hollywood.
By Oliver Carlson
16. Spain and Wishful Thinking.
By Alice-Leone
Moats
17. The Enemy in Our Schools.
By Eugene Lyons
18. Communist Strategy and Tactics.
By Liston M. Oak
19. The Red Drive in the Colonies.
Bv George S. Schuyler
20. " M y Conscience is Clear." By Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac
21. How are Things in Tito-Slavia?
By Richard
Ginder
22. The Jewish Tragedy in Soviet Russia. By Isaac Don Levine
23. Humanity Debased.
By Isaac Don Levine
24. How Communism Demoralizes Youth. By Ralph de Toledano
25. W h y I Ceased to Be a Communist.
By Freda Utley
26. Justice by Assassination.
By Suzanne La FoUette
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224