The Naked Communist

In spite of public indignation, however, American feelings were somewhat compromised at this particular moment by a rapidly growing desire on the part of many citizens to forget the whole foreign "mess" and get on with home-front developments which promised to provide an all-time record of American free enterprise prosperity.

  Mao Tse-tung accurately diagnosed this national feeling as an anti-war sentiment, and he therefore accelerated his campaign of propaganda throughout Asia by representing the United States as a "paper tiger." He taunted the United States with additional disclosures of illegally-held American prisoners of war and by open implication boastfully defied the United States Government to try and do something about it.

  He became so enthusiastic in his campaign that he finally decided to prove the impotency of American influence to the entire world by acting on Khrushchev's fighting orders and strike at Formosa. In a matter of weeks the offshore islands in the hands of the Nationalists began to be bombed from the Chinese mainland. It was the preliminary phase of an all-out attack on Chiang Kai-shek's last outpost.

  This was a highly critical hour for the United States since she had committed herself to defend Formosa. If she wavered, the light of freedom could very easily go out in Southeast Asia. One-half billion "neutral" Asians also watched keenly as U.S. leaders measured the risk and fathomed the depths of their own moral convictions.

  Early in February, 1955, the Chinese Reds and the other World Communists got their answer. It was a U.S. Congressional resolution supported by both parties which confirmed the authority of the President of the United States to throw the Seventh Fleet into the Formosa Straits and give orders to wage an all-out war if attacked. This would obviously include the use of nuclear weapons.

  The "little nations" of South East Asia stood up and cheered. It was apparent that the U.S. not only had the will to talk "massive retaliation" but the will to wage it. At the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung several of the little nations boldly showed their colors. They badgered the Chinese Communist delegates with cries of "Communist colonialism" and "Communist aggression." It was a severe blow to the prestige and propaganda of Mao Tse-tung and his Communist backers in Moscow.

  Within a matter of weeks the "stand firm" policy of the U.S. and her Pacific Allies began bearing miraculous fruit. Orders went out from Moscow that coexistence was once more the sweet theme of the hour. The Chinese began releasing U.S. prisoners they had held illegally. The issue of Formosa was allowed to slip quietly into the background. Khrushchev extended an invitation to the United States to exchange visitors -- editors, congressmen, farmers -- he even said he might come himself sometime. All over the world the hard-knuckled tension of the ten post-war years began to subside. There seemed to be general satisfaction with the new and unexpected turn of events throughout the world and the democracies settled back once more to the pursuit of their own normal domestic affairs.

  But in the midst of it all came a sinister warning from military intelligence. Reports indicated that while the emphasis of "soft" policies toward the democracies was being promoted abroad a tough, imperialistic policy was being fed to the troops at home. Soviet troops were being taught that the "importance of the surprise factor in contemporary war has increased enormously," and "the Communist Party demands that the whole personnel of our Army and Navy should be imbued with the spirit of maximum vigilance and constant and high military preparedness, so as to be able to wrest the initiative from the hands of the enemy, and, having delivered smashing blows against him, finally defeat him completely."7

  All this had a familiar spirit. It reminded alert Americans of a significant statement made by Dimitry Z. Manuilsky who represented the USSR in presiding over the Security Council of the United Nations in 1949. At the Lenin School of Political Warfare in Moscow he had taught:

  "War to the hilt between communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack.... To win we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. So we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movements on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist!"8

  ____________________

  1. James F. Byrnes, "Speaking Frankly," Harpers, New York, 1947.

  2. For a rather full report by this official who saw the fall of China see Fifty Years In China, by John Leighton Stuart, Random House, New York, 1955.

  3. See Report of the McCarren Committee To the Senate, p. 1049 and also Report of the Hearings on Philip Jessup's Nomination, pp. 714-721. For Budenz's testimony, see Report of the McCarren Committee To the Senate, p. 148.

  4. A full article on this theme appeared in the New York Daily Compass, July 17, 1949.

  5. The role of the FBI is well presented in The FBI Story, by Don Whitehead, Random House, 1956.

  6. U.S. News & World Report, "Socialists Sour on Socialism," July 8, 1955, p. 48.

  7. Article in Pravda, May 5, 1955, by Major General D. Korniyenko.

  8. Quoted by Joseph Z. Kornfeder who was a student at the school. In a letter to Dr. J.D. Bales of Harding College dated March 7, 1961, Mr. Kornfeder said: "Enclosed is a copy of the quote you asked for. It is part of what he (Manuilsky) said to a group of senior Lenin School students at a conference held in Moscow, March, 1930, at which I, as one of the students, was present."

  Chapter Ten

  Communism Under Khrushchev

  By 1955 it was vividly apparent that the most vicious kind of political in-fighting was being waged in Moscow by the Communist contestants for Stalin's throne. Already Beria and his aides had been shot. There were signs of vast power shifts behind the scenes and out of the rancor and roar of the secret battle in the Kremlin the personality which seemed to be emerging on top of the conspiratorial heap was Nikita Khrushchev.

  Of all the contenders for power in Russia, Khrushchev was probably the least well known in the West. Therefore, a U.S. Congressional committee decided to get the Khrushchev story. They invited anyone who had known Khrushchev to come in and testify. A stream of witnesses responded, but the story they told was gruesome and ugly. The hopes of many Western diplomats for improved Russian relations collapsed as they heard the record of the Red leader with whom free men would now have to deal. Here was no ordinary Communist politician or party hack. Khrushchev was revealed to be a creature of criminal cunning with an all-consuming passion for power.

  Khrushchev as the Dictator of the Ukraine

  Many of the witnesses told of the early days when Khrushchev was first grasping for power and recognition. They revealed that his loyalty to Communism was the blind, senseless kind. Having been raised almost an illiterate; Khrushchev did not get his elementary education until after he had become a full-grown adult. As a boy he had been a shepherd, later learning the trade of blacksmith and locksmith.

  At 17 he ran away from the obscure Ukrainian village of Kalinovka where he had been born April 17, 1894. For several years Khrushchev was a roaming itinerant worker but in 1918 he joined the Communist Party and fought with the Red Army during the Russian civil war. In 1922 he commenced his first formal education which lasted three years. By 1929 his dogged party loyalty had won him a berth in the Joseph Stalin Industrial Academy, and by 1931 he had become a local party official in Moscow.

  Khrushchev soon won favor with Stalin by joining in a drive to purge Stalin's enemies from the local party machinery. More than 500 men and women were turned over to the secret police for execution. Later Stalin said that while Khrushchev was repulsive to him, he was impressed with the Ukrainian's capacity to kill or turn on old friends when party policy demanded it. Stalin therefore assigned Khrushchev the task of going back to the Ukraine and forcing his own people to live under the lash of total Communist suppression. The Red leaders had been using wholesale execu
tions to stifle resistance. Khrushchev said he had a better way. He would use mass starvation! Witnesses to this man-made famine told of the suffering and death:

  Nicholas Prychodoko: I observed covered wagons moving along the street on which I lived and also on other streets in Kiev. They were hauling corpses for disposal.... These were peasants who flocked to the cities for some crust of bread.... My personal friend ... was a surgeon at a hospital in the Ukraine.... He put a white frock on me, just as he was in a white frock, and we went outside to a very large garage in the hospital area. He and I entered it. When he switched on the light, I saw 2,000 to 3,000 corpses laid along the walls.

  Mr. Arens: What caused the death of these people?

  Mr. Prychodoko: Starvation.

  Mr. Arens: What caused the starvation?

  Mr. Prychodoko: ... We found some statistics in hiding places in the cellar of the Academy of Sciences. They revealed that the food in 1932 was sufficient to feed all Ukrainians for 2 years and 4 months. But except for about 10 percent, the crop was immediately dispatched from the threshing machines for export to parts outside of Ukraine. That was the cause of the hunger.

  Mr. Arens: Why did the Communist regime seize the crops in Ukraine during this period?

  Mr. Prychodoko: Because at all times there was ... various kinds of resistance to the Communist government in Ukraine and the collectivization drive in Moscow....

  Mr. Arens: How many people were starved to death by this man-made famine in Ukraine in the thirties?

  Mr. Prychodoko: It is estimated to be 6 to 7 million, most of them peasants.1

  Witnesses testified that after millions of lives had been destroyed under Khrushchev's administration, the collectivized farms were finally set up. Khrushchev was rewarded in 1934 when Stalin appointed him to the powerful Central Committee of the Communist hierarchy in Moscow.

  However, because of continued unrest and resistance to Communism, Khrushchev was sent back to the Ukraine as its political dictator in 1938. Once again the people were subjected to a vast purge. So violently did they react to this new barbarity that when World War II broke out and the Nazis moved in the Germans were welcomed by the Ukrainians as liberators. Nikita Khrushchev never forgave them for that. Before fleeing toward Moscow, he poured out his vengeance against them. Official reports show that when the Nazis arrived, they found numerous mass graves. In one area alone there were over 90 mammoth burial plots containing approximately 10,000 bodies of "peasants, workers and priests," each with hands tied behind the back and a bullet in the head.

  After the Germans were driven out in 1944, Khrushchev once more returned to the Ukraine grimly determined to annihilate "all collaborationists." Whole segments of the population were deported, a complete liquidation of the principal Christian churches was launched, "people's leaders" were arrested and executed, and the NKVD was turned loose on the populace with a terrible ferocity intended to terrorize the people and eliminate all resistance to the Communist reoccupation. "Hangman of the Ukraine" became the people's title for Nikita Khrushchev.

  By 1949 Khrushchev had so completely demonstrated his total dedication to Stalin that he was returned to Moscow as the secretary of the powerful Central Committee. He was then given the assignment of trying to make the sluggish centralized farms produce more food. Khrushchev used terror tactics to get more work and more produce, but he failed. Khrushchev could raise only enough food to keep the people at a bare-subsistence level. This was the status of Khrushchev at the time of Stalin's death.

  How Khrushchev Seized Power

  When Stalin died March 5, 1953, he left a bristling nest of problems for his quarreling Communist comrades. Each Red leader carefully eyed his competitors, weighing the possibility of seizing power. Khrushchev immediately went to work maneuvering for a position of strategic strength. Compared to the other Red leaders, Khrushchev was described both inside and outside of Russia as "low man on the totem pole."

  The first in terms of strength was Malenkov, secretary of Stalin, who had charge of all secret Communist files. It was said he had collected so much damning evidence on the others that they tried to curry his favor by pushing him forward as the temporary head of the government.

  The second in line was Beria, hated leader of the secret police and an administrator of the nuclear development program, all of which gave him a hard core force of 2,000,000 armed men.

  The third in line was Molotov, intimate Bolshevik associate of Stalin himself and the most shrewd, deceptive diplomat Soviet Russia had ever produced.

  The fourth in line was Bulganin, official representative of the Communist Party in the Red Army and therefore the Army's principal politician.

  The fifth in line was Khrushchev, head of the State collectivized farms.

  Many people did not take Khrushchev seriously. They thought of him merely as the paunchy, bullet-headed hatchet man of Stalin. But Khrushchev took himself seriously. Doggedly and desperately he pushed for every possible personal advantage. His method was to use an old Communist trick which is the very opposite of "divide and conquer." His technique was to "unite and conquer."

  First he united with Premier Malenkov. He convinced Malenkov that Beria was his greatest threat, his greatest enemy. In December, 1954, Beria and his associates were arrested and shot.

  Now Khrushchev united with Bulganin to get rid of Malenkov. Khrushchev told the bearded political army leader that he (Bulganin) should be premier instead of Malenkov. Bulganin heartily agreed. Immediately there was a shift of power behind the scenes which permitted Bulganin to replace Malenkov by the spring of 1955.

  Molotov was the next to fall. He had no machine in back of him but had depended upon his prestige as Stalin's partner. Suddenly he found himself exiled to the Mongolian border.

  Now the partnership of Bulganin and Khrushchev began running the entire Communist complex. But Khrushchev was not through. His next step was to persuade Bulganin to force Marshal Zhukov of World War II fame into retirement and to demote other key officials in the government. Some of these officials were the very ones who had originally sponsored Khrushchev's promotions in previous years. Suddenly they found themselves politically emasculated. By destroying his friends as well as his enemies, Khrushchev felt he was preventing them from regrouping and ousting him the way he was ousting them.

  Finally Khrushchev was prepared for the big step -- to oust Bulganin. By forcing Bulganin to get rid of Marshal Zhukov, Khrushchev created a rift between Bulganin and his main source of support, the Red Army. This allowed Khrushchev to move into the breach and fill powerful key positions with his own followers. By 1956 Bulganin found himself the captive puppet of Khrushchev. For two more years Khrushchev ran the government through Bulganin, but there was no question whatever as to who was in line for Stalin's throne.

  Such was Nikita Khrushchev's slippery and dangerous ascent to the summit.

  But all of these battles in the Kremlin and the resulting shift of power had not solved the terrifying economic problems which continued to plague Soviet socialism. Nowhere -- in China, Russia or the satellites -- was Communism proving successful. Uprisings had been occurring for over three years in the Communist-controlled countries. Heavy Soviet armament had to be maintained in all of them.

  Just as Khrushchev was consolidating his power in 1956, a major satellite cut loose and struck for freedom.

  The Hungarian Revolution -- 1956

  While bargaining for American lend-lease during World War II, Stalin had promised that any nation coming under the domination of the Red Army during the war would be allowed free elections and self-determination after the war. Hungary was the first nation to demand self-government and the overthrow of the Communist regime.

  Perhaps no better historical example exists to illustrate the extreme treachery to which Khrushchev would extend himself than the Hungarian Revolution.

  On the 23rd of October, 1956, a massive but peaceful demonstration took place in Budapest with thousands of people participati
ng. The people said they wanted to end Soviet colonial rule and set up a democratic government with free elections. When the crowds refused to disband, the Russian secret police were ordered to fire on them. Thus the revolution began. The first major action of the revolution was toppling down the huge statue of Stalin, the symbol of Soviet domination. The freedom fighters then hoisted the Hungarian flag on the stump. Soviet occupation troops were immediately ordered in to smash the revolution, but they were resisted by Communist trained Hungarian troops who defected and joined the Freedom Fighters. Many of the Soviet occupation troops also defected. As a result, the remaining Soviet troops were beaten in five days. Then General Bela Kiraly describes what happened:

  "To avoid annihilation of the Soviet units, Khrushchev himself carried out one of his most sinister actions. He sent to Budapest his first deputy, Mikoyan; and he sent Mr. Suslov from the party leadership. These two Soviet men sat down with the revolutionary government. They found out they were defeated. After talking with Khrushchev by means of the telephone -- and by the approval of Khrushchev they concluded an armistice.... Diplomatic actions were further developed.... It was positively declared that the aim of further diplomatic negotiations (would be) how to withdraw the Soviet troops from Hungary and how to allow Hungary to regain her national independence."2