Truth, as Directed

As every Russian schoolboy is taught, the Russian press is really free--not free to speak its mind, but free to speak Russian truth. And Russian truth is always carefully designated as such by the Kremlin. Last week, the Kremlin pointed its finger at the U.S.Obediently, the Russian press huffed & puffed at the U.S. with the same force once directed against Nazi Germany.

The first blast was against President Truman. In Moscow's Literary Gazette, Novelist Boris Garbatov, famed in the U.S.S.R. for his wartime best seller, The Unvanquished, likened Truman to Hitler. A protest from U.S. Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith got nowhere. So last week the State Department released the full text in the U.S. Excerpts:

"Never before was black terror so openly insolent in the U.S. Everything honest and brave is exiled or put in prison. The haberdasher from Jackson vies for the laurels of the little corporal from Munich. . . . Who is this new apostle of imperialism? ... A man who loves bow ties, wears his pants two inches shorter than ordinary, and . . . has no other external marks of distinction. . . ." (After a visit to the U.S. last year, Russian Writer Ilya Ehrenburg had waxed sarcastic over the mysterious interest the U.S. press has in personalities and personal likes: "A reporter [wrote about] the burning problem of why the 'red writer' preferred buttons to zippers . . . on my trousers.")

"Subservience before the boss is a talent of statesmanship which Harry Truman mastered to perfection. Endless readiness to serve his Wall Street master--this is what finally took the small Missourian to the White House. . . . Let Vandenberg, Byrnes, Dulles, Hoover manager him, and let Clark Clifford . . . write his speeches for him. Let Truman only read them tolerably well. Thus Harry Truman has become the clerk of American imperialism. . . . He no longer says, as formerly, that he never takes political decisions without consulting his wife. He knows now with whom to consult! . . . In his squeaky voice already is heard the sound of military wheels."

Shylock Marshall. In the next issue of the Gazette, it was Secretary of State George Marshall's turn. This time the Soviet puffer was Nikolai Pogodin, winner of 1939's Stalin prize for his play The Chimes of the Kremlin. Ambassador Smith did not waste his breath protesting. Excerpts:

". . . There has appeared on the world scene [a] Shakespearean Shylock, revengeful, unmerciful, insatiable in his greed. . . . There never was a Marshall Plan but there was a Shylock Plan. . . . From the moment of his speech, dollars and only dollars have served as the gigantic bait ... for ... the western section of Europe. . . .

"Is not this militaristic old man letting himself be carried away with conceit? . . . Honest people throughout the world did not believe that militant reaction would raise its arm against the U.N. so soon. It is this sinister duty that has been taken on his own shoulders by the Shylock of Wall Street, George C. Marshall."

Pound of Abuse. The Literary Gazette, Pravda and Izvestia all published anti-Marshall cartoons. They all took the party line of previous Izvestia cartoons that Uncle Sam, egged on by Wall Street and the press, was trying to grab the world.

At week's end, the attack was joined by Ehrenburg, the journalistic hatchetman who proved himself Russia's most skilled correspondent-propagandist during the war. Russian newspapermen had been friendly toward the U.S., said Ehrenburg, but now they were reluctantly forced to turn against it. Of course, all the trouble between the U.S. and Russia was America's fault. Added Ehrenburg: "Our people never suffered, nor are they suffering, evil relationships with other people."

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