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previous: Chapter 9 (end) This webpage reproduces part of a chapter of The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union by Roman Smal-Stocki published by The Bruce Publishing Company Milwaukee, 1952 The text is in the public domain. This page has not been proofread. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 10 (end)

 p339  Chapter X

The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union behind an "Iron Curtain" in the U. S. A.

1. The Unexpected Tasks of the DP Professors in the U. S. A.

Only upon arriving in this country did the European DP university professors, scholars, and writers gradually become aware of the open or concealed attitude of a large part of the American intellectual elite regarding the Soviet Union and Russian Communism. None of us anticipated it, and we greeted the Statue of Liberty with enthusiasm, deeply conscious of the privilege of landing on the soil of that great country which gave to the world Jefferson and Washington, a country founded on the principles of the American Declaration of Independence, and these again confirmed by the principles of Wilson and the Atlantic Charter! Later there came the first chilling breezes — painful disappointments, as we discovered behind the Statue of Liberty also some "old friends" from Europe.

We, the professors, were disillusioned by the cold welcome from some American scholars, who looked with cynicism upon the "displaced persons" who asked them to defend the violated academic freedoms behind the Iron Curtain and in the Soviet Union. Gradually the "displaced professors" discovered the sad truth that the Iron Curtain begins not in Europe but here in the U. S. A. Here, in the mother country of free men and free thought, exists a power­ful ideological Iron Curtain concealing the truth about the Soviet Union, which runs even today from coast to coast, from Hollywood to New York, through all spheres of American life: the press, the radio, the intellectual spheres, some Protestant Church groups, and official channels. In spite of the fact that those who erected and maintained that Iron Curtain inside the U. S. A., the open and concealed Communists, fellow travelers, the Soviet termites still are active everywhere, acting as "experts," "specialists," and "advisers." In short, the Iron Curtain in the U. S. A. stands firm as a rock. It is now for us, the displaced professors, to expose the developments and the underlying facts on which that rock is reared.

Who were they who planned and built this Iron Curtain which established in American public life a veritable intellectual "Soviet Zone of Occupation"? This has a positive origin. The planning of this wall can be laid at the feet of the masterminds trained in Moscow.⁠1 But the  p340 builders of this ideological Iron Curtain in the U. S. A. played their part from the professorial seats of American universities and colleges. Many facts have convinced us that the cartoon figures of "Professor Pinko" is no invention of Isaak Don Levin. These "Professor Pinkos" in the great universities and colleges of the East, endowed with millions of dollars by American democrats for the advancement of research, have educated thousands of open and secret Communists, fellow travelers, and misguided "liberals." There "Pinkos" have systematically shaped the uncritical enthusiastic Soviet -Russophile attitude of American youth. They are today the pulley upon which the Iron Curtain moves in the U. S. A. These "Pinkos" are not true scholars, neither are they "seekers of truth,"; they, in fact, are, consciously or unconsciously, the instruments of Soviet Russian propaganda in the U. S. A.⁠2

Thus we DP professors in the U. S. A. are now confronted with a question of conscience. Are we — and many of us are still doing physical labor — are we to try to secure positions as instructors of lecturers from the "Pinkos," subordinating ourselves to these Pink Bosses, dragging their "scholar­ly" achievements in the Soviet field, or are we to put, first, not our "living standards" and the well-being of our families, but the moral duty we owe to science and liberal arts, to the U. S. A. and its people, who have ho hospitably opened to us their gates? We, the disposed university and college teachers, the writers and journalists, see before us in the U. S. A. a clear mission: Tof give the Pinkos everywhere, in every scientific congress and public lecture, an ideological battle, fearlessly stating the truth about the Soviet Union and her nationality problem, its Leninist-Stalinist regime and fearlessly accusing them of falsifying that nationality problem. The Pinkos have systematically hidden in their publications the truth about the devastating consequences of Leninism-Stalinism in the spheres of linguistics, philology, literature, history of all the non‑Russian nations of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. Our duty is to present the facts to unbiased American scholar­ship and public opinion.

2. Have Communists Infiltrated Into American Universities?

How does it happen that Soviet Moscow has managed to infiltrate so deeply into American intellectual life and to establish the Iron Curtain here?

 p341  a) Russian Communism places the conquest of the intelligentsia of a nation in the forefront of its revolutionary work. Anyone who has studied Communist conspiratorial techniques is assured that there was organized for the penetration of the American universities a directing and planning cell.

To those who doubt this, Prof. Sidney Hook of New York University gave proof in the New York Times Magazine, February 27, 1949, in his article "Should Communists Be Permitted to Tc?" He quoted from the official organ of the Communist Party (The Communist, May, 1937):

Sidney Hook writes the following comment:

b) The infiltration was made easy by the peculiar structure of American universities. The American university has not the democratic self-government practiced in Europe, which kept the European universities until 1939 practically free from Pinkos, because the European system allows faculty votes not only upon scientific qualifications but also upon the moral qualifications of the candidate.

In the American universities a dean or the head of the department has the power of a "commissar" and may arbitrarily decide these problems. Consequently the head of a history, political science, or Slavic  p342 department executes in comparison with European traditions nearly dictatorial power in all matters of teaching. Therefore one fellow traveler or Russophile in a key position means usually a whole fellow-traveler or Russophile department, a whole pro‑Soviet school of thought in a university because "the boss" eliminates the ideological opposition. There is no end of the influences of such "commissars." Some scholars of Eastern universities are regarded as "authorities" by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, and by all other organizations of American scholar­ship and learned societies which have means of the support research. Those who influence such open and secret fellow travelers and Russophiles, know well to what "purposes" to direct the means and to reserve scholar­ship for the special Soviet or Russophile brand of students.

The penetration of these institutions with Communistic ideas culminated in the appointment of Alger Hiss to the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment — a unique achievement. A careful analysis of his appropriations of funds from viewpoint of Soviet interests would surely be instructive.

c) The infiltration of American universities was accompanied for nearly two decades by the organization of a network of special schools for the study of Marxism-Leninism from coast to coast.

In short, the result of this systematic penetration was that some important chairs which teach matters connected with the Soviet Union (Slavistic, history languages, literatures, economics, political science) became gradually a monopoly of the Soviet or Russophiles for whom a nationality problem in the Soviet Union did not exist. Their pupils, often honest liberal enthusiasts, but partly Communists, occupied as specialists in course of time mutual key positions in American foreign policy, press, economy. They established eventually this "Intellectual Soviet Occupation Zone" in the U. S. A. These teachers are responsible for this "intellectual climate" which has produced not several, not dozens, but hundreds of fellow travelers, traitors, spies, and agents. Through their glorification of the Soviet ideology these teachers created a complete moral anarchy among the staffs and the youth, which later culminated in the scandalous fact that a leading university of this country whose generosity feeds half of the world accepted money from Stalin's henchmen, Bierut and Gottwald, who have quashed all academic freedom in their own countries.

This is the statement for Mrs. Kuhn of Prof. A. P. Coleman, president of Alliance College.

The plan of Russian Communism in the U. S. A. was clearly this: penetrate the universities and their youth. He who has the youth on his side has the residing generation, a generation destined to occupy the key positions in public life, and finally its subordination directly or indirectly to the orders of the party. Consequently the penetration of universities and colleges has been the paramount aim of Russian long-range strategy for the education of an ideological officers corps in the U. S. A.⁠3

 p344  3. The Ideological Tenets of Soviet and Russian Imperialist Propaganda in the U. S. A.

Let us imagine a conference of the Russian Communist section of propaganda and ideological warfare in the Moscow, with the participation of the necessary advisers of the Red Army and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There can be no doubt that, after all the unpleasant experiences with the Ukrainians, only Russians participate, perhaps some Caucasians, trusted thugs of Stalin.

What is the chief aim of Soviet propaganda? To mislead and misinform "the enemy" about the real problems and dangers inside a State on the one hand and on the one hand to plant in his mind all those principles which will fortify and strengthen the Soviet State's position. The ideological disarmament of "the enemy" is the final goal of a continuous Soviet propaganda, which leads to the result that the highest officials of an "enemy subsist," professors engaged in secret research, a lot of small fry in journalism, radio, and the motion-picture industry regard it as an honor to commit treason on behalf of the ruling Soviet State.

In such a conference of the Russian Communist Party there are certainly no discussions about the chief danger inside the Soviet Union. For all of the participants the paramount importance of the nationality problem is a truism, a life and death problem for Russian Communism. The nationality problem drives toward the dissolution of the U. S. S. R. into national States and imperils Russia's very existence and the power of the Red Army. Together with the systematic fight against the non‑Russian nations and the conduct of planned Russification inside the Soviet Union, Russian Communist interests, from the propaganda point of view, must:

a) Misinform the outside world about the aims and actions of the Russian Communist Government and represent the Russification of the non‑Russian peoples as a fight for "progress," "internationalism," and as a rug against "reaction" and "fascism";

b) Deprive the non‑Russian peoples and the victims of Russian brutality in the concentration camps of any moral sympathy or support  p345 from public opinion, press, broadcasting;

c) To prevent, as the supreme goal any discussion of the nationality problem outside the Soviet Union and especially in the U. S. A. in other words, of the fight of the non‑Russian peoples for independence and the free development of their languages and cultures; d) Hammer into the American mind by all methods of modern propaganda the idea that a nationality problem in the Soviet Union does not exist at all, since the U. S. S. R. is the only State which long ago solved the problem success­fully.

e) Hammer into the American mind a whole row of "scientific" conceptions about the "unity and indivisibility of the Soviet Union." With continuous Big Lies — the barrages of Russian Communism — all Americans must be inoculated with Russian messianism, with the "progressive destination" of Russian Communism, and open their gates enthusiastically to the "avant-garde of progressive humanity."

These are the negative and positive aims of Russian Communist propaganda in the U. S. A., but plainly there looms in the very center of it the nationality problem in the Soviet Union. Consequently the fight against the non‑Russian nations and their demands for self-determination on one hand, the propagation of the "indissoluble unity" of the Soviet Union on the other are, together with the Marxist Leninist dogmas, the content of Russian Communist propaganda in the U. S. A.

Let us pass in review its principles, conceptions, and slogans:

a) Marxism-Leninism, as a world view forms the general background of Russian propaganda, with all its consequences in philosophy, liberal arts, and sciences, especially the relativity of moral standards. The whole hierarchy of Christian values of our Jewish-Greek-Latin-Christian world is undermined to its very foundation. The inalienable rights are considered by the Marxist-Leninist in this country only for their destruction, but at the same time they are denied to all opponents, who are called fascists, red baiters, warmongers," etc. This Marxist-Leninist doctrine of class war and hate have created also intus fanatical robots, who repeat like parrots its principles and, power happy, anticipate the moment when through the streets of New York "blood will flow like borshch"⁠4 (an authentic expression_. Thus in the U. S. A. a Marxist-Stalinist church is also active which by constant adoration of "Soviet Russia" and its leaders has created their necessary halos in the name of "progress" and "humanity."

By calumny and terrorism the Russian propaganda had dictated one requirement in the American definition of a "true liberal" and that is the "resin of the progressive role of the Soviet Union." Some pro‑Communist tinge is the absolutely necessary make‑up of any "liberal" university professor. In the last two years there have been some changes in this, but they are very slight. A "Russian intellectual Salvation Army" in the U. S. A. is still singing hallelujahs to Russia.

b) Eurasianism is a conception which defends the fundamental "unity and indivisibility" of the Soviet Union and is used as a "tank"  p346 against the self-determination of the non‑Russian nationalities; it includes also a "mission" for Muscovy.⁠5

Any scholar knows the place of legitimate geopolitics in history, economy, and current affairs, and anyone knows very well how these legitimate geopolitics were developed by unscrupulous dilettantes into German "geopolitik" and abused for the justification of Nazi imperialism and its crimes. The same thing happened after the 1920's in Russian political thought, not only in Soviet Moscow but also among the chauvinistic Russian émigré-intelligentsia in Western Europe. The Eurasianic school teaches that old Imperial Russia, and, of course, her "continuation," the Soviet Union, are not the result of imperialism, as are the empires of other nations, emerging and vanishing — no, not Russia, the Soviet Union. She is a result of "geopolitical laws." Therefore the Soviet Union, like old imperial Russia, represents a "geopolitical unit," which still has not reached its "natural frontiers." The application of the right of self-determination to the oppressed non‑Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and her dissolution would be a "crime against nature." Also the present imperialistic drive of Russian Communism in Asia or Europe is only the fulfillment of "natural laws" by Soviet Moscow for the some of "natural frontiers," the "urge to the sea," the opposition to which is also a "crime against nature itself." Not only is this imperialistic Russian "geopolitik" applied to modern and recent political developments, but the "Eurasianic" doctrine is placed at the very beginnings of human history, and since ancient times the territories of Siberia, Turkestan, the Caucasus, and of course the Ukraine, Byelo-Ruthenia, the Baltic States, and Poland are included into this "Russian Lebensraum."⁠6

It is regarded as "unprogressive, fascist," even "warmongering," to raise any objections against this "scientific truth," which is repeated by nearly all of the American "specialists" as a basic principle. Thus Hitler's spirit, in Russian garb, haunts the steppes from Siberia to Berlin. It is a waste of time to draw to the attention of the American partisans of "Eurasianism" the fact that this "world outlook" contradicts the very facts (a) of legitimate geopolitics, which recognize in this "Lebensraum" definitely shaped natural units determined by the river basins, different climates, fauna, and flora⁠7 belonging to non‑Russian nations (illustrative map) or (b) history, since the penetration of Siberia started intensively at the beginning of the seventeenth century and  p347 reached the Bering Sea only at the end of the eighteenth, this, moreover being accomplished by men who went there only to escape from all that despotic Moscow-Russia represented, since Ukraine entered into personal union with the Muscovitean dynasty only in the seventeenth century, since the Balticum was annexed in the eighteenth century, since the conquest of Central Asia and the Caucasus was effected at the end of the nineteenth century. The alleged original unity is pure fiction.

This "Eurasianism" is also made a law for the oldest cultural Slavic history, and the Eastern Slavs are immediately put under Asiatic influences and separated from their Teutonic relatives, the ancestors of the present‑day Americans, English, Germans, and Scandinavians. This in spite of the fact that the cultural influences of the Teutons have shaped and molded the oldest Slavic culture.⁠8

 p348  Eurasianism includes a special role for the Russian language. N. Trubetskoy⁠9 since 1926 preached: "The Russian literary language, within the limits of the various languages of the Eurasian world, is playing and will continue to play the part of a center of a very strong literary linguistic tradition. There now exists and will continue to exist henceforth an area of radiation of the Russian literary language, similar to the areas of Greek or of Latin . . . owing to a series of historical circumstances, the Russian language became the center of radiation extending to a whole area of literary languages of Eurasia."

Of course, not only the Russian language, but also the Russian script because: "Owing to its prolonged use, the Russian Cyrillic has closely fitted the Russian language and has entered into the system of the language consciousness of literate Russians" — despite the fact that "it cannot be said that this alphabet is completely adapted to the phonetic system of the Russian language."

Tzetzes there developed in the U. S. A. a most peculiar situation in the sphere of history and current affairs: "Geopolitik" applied by Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini was declared a crime against morality and humanity, and was put on trial in Nuernberg and Tokyo, but these same principles applied by Stalin are respected as "laws of nature."

Eurasianism was applied by R. Jacobson to linguistics, as we mentioned, but it also has its consequences in political science. The wide plains from Siberia to Berlin "determine the form of government" and "require" a different system from the constitutional form of American or Western democracy. "Geopolitik" demands "progressive and centralized democracy" or "progressive" and "democratic centralism with a whip," which only the fascist and reactionaries slander as dictator­ship or tyranny. Ivan the Terrible and Peter I were champions of this "progressive democracy" and forerunners of Lenin and Stalin. Thus Eurasianism is the foundation also of the present Roman progressive Knouto-cracy. It is noteworthy that the Russian Eurasiatic ideology created a similar movement, fantastically blended with the conception of a Slavic-German Empire, among the Germans. Prof. Ernst Niekisch in his book Entscheidung (Decision), Berlin, 1930, wrote:

 p349  In another book Niekisch, today a leading German Communist, wrote:

Niekisch now plays a leading role in the German-Soviet Friendship Society in Berlin and its ideological journal Die Neue Gesellschaft."⁠10

c) American origins of the Russian Communist Revolution. This is another conception, taught the American youth, that the Russians do realize in the Soviet Union genuine Yankee ideas, against which the backward non‑Russian nations rebel. Thus Russian Communism was presented as the "necessary successor" and climax of the American Revolution and its ideas. Of course the "backward" non‑Russian nations, muzhiks, who do not even munch popcorn, cannot appreciate the high aims and ideas of "progressive society"; consequently "you cannot make an omelet, without breaking the eggs"; thus are justified all the terror, slave labor camps, and persecutions. Russian Communism is, in reality, present‑day Americanism. Leninism-Stalinism is progressive Americanism — concluded the students. Who dares to criticize or to oppose the fact of Americanism in the Soviet Union? Thus to the American youth were exposed the worst system of despotism and terror known to history.

That was the professorial approach to the Soviet Union and Russian Communism. The actual practice behind the democratic and liberal phraseology of the Constitution is completely ignored or misrepresented. This terminology is taken by "liberal professors" at its true Western European and American face value, while the upside-down language of Soviet semantics and all the Soviet changes of the meanings of this terminology are totally passed by and thus is held up before the eyes of American youth whole Fata Morgana of a Communist utopia, a paradise for the workingmen of all nationalities. Consequently part of the American youth regards the ultimate aim of Moscow, the World Soviet Union, not as an attack upon their nation, but as the "Americanization" of the world.

d) "The solution of the nationality problem in the Soviet Union is a unique achievement of Russian Communism, which no bourgeois democracy could accomplish" and this is dogma. The non‑Russian nationalities would consider it an "enslavement" if somebody would dare demand for them the right of self-determination; there is in the Soviet Union a happy, peaceful co‑operation of all nationalities with full equality and national liberty. (All this is stated with an immediate addition about racial discrimination in the U. S. A., which has not solved the Negro problem.) The Soviet Union is the paradise of nationalities, prepared for all the nationalities in the future World Soviet Union, also for the U. S. A., when it will be liberated from the oppression of Wall Street, etc.

 p350  How could American public opinion and the scholars be bamboozled into believing this Russian Communist propaganda? This was Soviet Moscow's greatest victory in befuddling American minds. Let us trace the path of this Communist penetration:

(1) The U. S. A. was flooded with booklets dug the "solution of the nationality problem." Among them the pamphlet: "How the Soviet Government oversee the National Question" by L. Perchik, Moscow, 1932, merits special attention, because it was published at the very time that R. Jacobson and H. Kohn spoke oracularly in Europe about these nationality questions. It was especially designed to conceal the forcible enslavement of the political, economic and cultural life of non‑Russian nationalities by Soviet Moscow. The preface of L. Perchik's book is even now an interesting document of Russian propaganda:

Some parts of the pamphlet entitled: "The Correct Solution of the National Question Has Great International Significance" would be even now illustrating for our Department of State.

 p354  Anyone must agree that Communism did not underestimate the decisive importance of the nationality problem. The "solution" was propagandized by the whole American Communist Press, the "liberal" press complimented Soviet Moscow on this "progress." Joseph Stalin's Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (New York: Workers Library Publishers) became in the U. S. A. a bible of the nationality problem for all "liberals" and Pinkos professors together with Kohn's book. From the dozens of Communist propaganda books about the "solution," I should like to mean A. Rysakoff, The National Policy of the Soviet Union (New York: International Publishers, n. d.), and M. Chekalin, The National Question in the Soviet Union (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1941), we offer here some quotations from this booklet published during the war. Under the title: "The International Significance of the Soviet National Policy" the authors states as an "older brother":⁠11

And in order to veil the plight of the non‑Russian nationalities there was aimed at the U. S. A. also the glamorous descriptions of the life of the Jews. In this pamphlet the author wrote:

All this was published in New York after the Stalin-Hitler treaty — unbelievable, but a fact.

(2) The gushing eulogies of American statesmen and professors about the solution of the "nationality problem" could fill volumes. They finally won a segment of American public opinion. We limit ourselves to a few who have spoken without reserve. Wendell Willkie declared:

Professor Owen Lattimore⁠13 is, of course, no less enthusiastic:

Prof. J. H. Bradley's opinion in World Geography (p368), edited 1945, Ginn and Company, Educational Publishers, Boston, refused us the permission to quote.

Corliss Lamont,⁠14 together with H. Kohn, decidedly influenced American foreign policy regarding the nationality problem in the Soviet Union:

In his recent book⁠15 Corliss Lamont did not change his opinion:

Julian Towster⁠16 informs the Americans:

(3) Indoctrination of the American youth with the dogma of the "solution of the nationality problem in the Soviet Union." Was not a great sin committed here against objective teaching, claiming its victims among American youth, who honestly believed in the veracity of their teachers, presenting to them the democratic oppositions in the non‑Russian nationalities as a kind of "fascism or racism"? We limit  p358 ourself to the report: "Intensive Study of Contemporary Russian Civilization," by Ernest J. Simmons, Cornell University, 1943.⁠17a

Could the following members give the American youth true presentation of the nationality problem of the non‑Russian nationalities, which were, as we see, from the very beginning "included" in the "contemporary Russian civilization"?

Professor Ernest J. Simmons. If an American journal printed such an evaluation of his publication, what would the DP scholars have to say about it? We quote: American Mercury, June, 1950 (p760), in the book review on Craig Thompson, The Police State:

But this guide of E. Simmons consists of articles written by the teachers of the afore-mentioned "Intensive Study"⁠17b course in Cornell University, 1943, 1944, which are also the basis of the whole section on Russia and the U. S. S. R. for the Encyclopedia Americana.⁠18 Another quotation from an article of Ralph De Toledano,⁠19 "Grave Diggers of America," American Mercury, August, 1951:

 p359  We only require the reader to study E. Simmons' article on the new Russian literature in the U. S. S. R. handbook or in the Harvard Handbook of Slavic Studies and to compare it for instance with Max Eastman's article, "Plain Talk," April, 1950, and to keep in mind that he intended to apiece the Soviet Union for a grant of $100,000 for the Slavic Department at Colombia Columbia — the same Soviet Government, which abolished all academic freedom. Let the reader also keep in mind that this objective scholar persisted even in 1946 to deny the existence of concentration camps in the Soviet Union, in a public address before a large section of the Modern Language Association. (Cf. the document in the Appendix.) Could or can Prof. E. Simmons approach without prejudice the nationality problem of the Soviet Union? He was the organizer of courses.⁠20

 p360  Among the lectures we find well-known personalities: John Somerville, the author of Soviet Philosophy, Prof. Oscar Lange, as a specialist for the nationality problem, Corliss Lamont (cf. the list of the former attorney general, Francis Biddle, Freeman, July 16, 1951, he ranks immediately below Frederick Vanderbilt Field), Sergius Yakobson, and V. D. Kazakevich.⁠21 Kazakevich was originally a White-Russian émigré. During the past war his attitude toward the Soviets underwent a complete transformation. He became a Communist. He began to lecture in favor of the Soviets on Soviet affairs, becoming one of the editors of Science and Society, a Marxist quarterly, and was a frequent contributor to Russky Golos and Soviet Russia Today, pro‑Communist publications. A few months after Kazakevich was exposed of being a Soviet agent, he returned to Russia and acquired citizen­ship.

The courses included exhibits, film programs, discussions, informal meetings, and among the required reading one can find the whole American Communist and fellow-traveling literature, but not many critical books.

The nationality problem was presented in lectures by S. Yakobson, "Soviet Nationality Policy and Nationalism,"; Dr. Corliss Lamont, "The Different Peoples of the Soviet Union," "The Evolution of Democracy," and in the examination, questions concerning the nationality problem, especially the Ukraine, were regarded as necessary for consideration. "Throw what light you can on the question of the Ukraine." "Contrast briefly the respective policies of the Imperial and Soviet governments toward nationalities other than Russian within their borders." "According to Stalin's definition of antiquarian, why the Jews and the Gypsies not a nation, but a national group>" "Show Socialist Humanism as the Soviet way of life, including some of its historical and contemporary relationships, its philosophical foundations and attitude toward the universe, its interpretation of history, its motives, methods and aims, and its general intellectual and emotional adequacy (full length essay)." "Outline the main difference between Tsarist and Soviet policies toward minority cultures giving concrete illustrations." And inevitably a question about the achievements of Jewish Birobijan was not forgotten.

From the formulation of the questions themselves anyone can conclude in what form of "Socialist humanism" the solution of the nationality problem in the Soviet Union was presented to American students.

 p361  4. Unobjective Information About the National Problem Given to the American Congress

The brother of R. Jacobson, Sergius Yakobson, has the most influential and decisive function as expert in the Slavic field and the Soviet Union in the U. S. A. He is Chief of the Slavic Division of the Library of Congress since 1941, fellow in Slavonic History; in 1946 he served on the Legislative Reference Service, first as Foreign Affairs Analyst, then Chief of the Foreign Affairs Section; since 1950 as Senior Specialist in International Relations (Soviet Union). He now serves as Senior Specialist for the Soviet Union to Members and Committees of Congress ("Information Bulletin," L. of C., January 15, 1951, p12). How the American Congress was informed about the nationality problem in the Soviet Union can be seen from the House Document, Nr. 754, "Communism in Action," 1946, a documented study and analysis of Communism in operation in the Soviet Union, for which information Dr. Sergius Yakobson,⁠22 Library Consultant, "who reviewed the entire study" is virtually responsible (p. VII)

In this study the history of the non‑Russian nationalities after 1917 is suppressed, also the fact that the Soviet Union was built up through aggression and war. On page 94 the following information is given about the nationality problem, about which the Congress is informed that "since the Revolution Stalin himself has been zoology concerned with a solution of the problem."

In reality these nationalities are not represented in the Council of Nationalities, but the Communist renegades appointed by the Russian Communist Party. As the Communist propaganda always does, thus is placed here the Communist policy against the background of the Tsarist policy of "Russification" and exploitation, creating the impression for the reader that Russification and exploitation of the non‑Russian peoples were abolished by the Russian Communists. They were on the contrary intensified. On page 134 under the title "Freedom From Discrimination" this propagandist impression is, of course, strengthened by quotations from Hans Kohn and Corliss Lamont:

Thus the application of collective responsibility and genocide toward nationalities was presented as lawful "punishment for treachery" and the complete extermination as nationalities of the Chechens and Crimean Tatars is trimmed down to a "mass resettlement of large numbers. . . . " The fate of the German Volga Republic three years earlier is also suppressed. All the Communist propaganda concerning "national cultural autonomy," the "fostering of national artistic expression in the theater, dance and music," "national in form, above all in language — Socialist in essence" are here uncritically presented as facts and Marr's linguistic theory, the long struggle of two decades against Russification is not even mend.

5. Purging of the Anti-Communist Articles From the American Historical Body Italy

Americans of Ukrainian descent are publishing already the seventh year The Ukrainian Quarterly, edited by a distinguished historian Prof. N. Chubaty, Ph. D., honoris causa, a contributor to leading American scientific journals. In this review a large number of American scholars and journalists collaborated: C. A. Manning (Columbia), A. P. Coleman, J. Roucek (Bringport University), W. H. Chamberlin, and others. The Ukrainian Quarterly developed into a real encyclopedia of the whole nationality problem in the Soviet Union, with a series of articles entered into the Congressional Record.

Sergius Yakobson became responsible in the American Historical Review for the compilation of the bibliography of articles for the section "Russia and Slavic Countries" beginning with Volume 52 (October 1948), and is entrusted with this section at the present moment.

All articles pertaining to history and current affairs were purged by Sergius Yakobson and Volumes 52, 53, 54 do not include one single article from the journal but, of course, the Communist propagandist's Likholat, Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists as servants of foreign imperialists, Voprosy istorii, 1948, Nr. 12, were not over­looked. Butte a period of four event­ful years the American scholars were put under such a thought control, but the articles from a similar type of journals The Russian Review and Novyi Zhurnal were included in Yakobson's bibliography. In Volume 55 (from October 1949‑150) we found beginning with 1950 three articles mentioned in Yakobson's bibliography from the Ukrainian Quarterly. What happened in the politics of the nation to bring about this change — Korea?

 p364  Yakobson systematically discriminated against all anti-Communist non‑Russian publications, which presented the nationality problem. Besides the Ukrainian Quarterly, the following publications are also purged: the Eastern Quarterly, edited in London by the anti-communist Central-Europeans; the Lithuanian Bulletin (New York), including many photostatic documents; the Byelo-Ruthenian Veda, the English edition of the journal Milij Turkestan; not listed are The Collected Scientific Papers of the Ukrainian Free University, Munich 1948 (with English summaries), etc.⁠26

Misleading the American reader is the bibliography of 500 books about "Russia," published by the Library of Congress and compiled by S. Yakobson. The term "Russia" includes the whole Soviet Union, but the bibliography lists only three books on the "peoples of Russia." Thus, S. Yakobson has decidedly influenced don't selection of books of all university and college libraries in the U. S. A. Any objective bibliography about the Soviet Union for the Americans should in addition include the free voice of the scholars, who emigrated since 1920, and have created a whole literature about all fields of the non‑Russian nationalities and the Russian regime itself.

6. Present Communist propaganda is continuing to repeat the mentioned dogma, a clear proof that this thesis is specially important for Soviet Moscow. Prof. W. Halych⁠27 reviewed in a special article the "Russian Communist Propaganda in American Schools." An examination of the official "USSR Information Bulletin," January 27, 1950, shows the enlightened information given to American teachers:

What paramount importance Soviet propaganda attributes to the nationality problem as a "solved problem" in the present time we may determine from the article of Izvestia, August 30, 1951, "Truth Ant the Soviet Union Overcomes All Barriers."

7. The State Department's opinion about the nationality problem in the Soviet Union, with all the consequences resulting for foreign politics, was certainly influenced by distinguished scholars and advisors. From the publication of the State Department: Post War Foreign Policy  p366 Preparation, 1939‑45, we are learning who is responsible for its planning. On page 726 are listed: Alger Hiss, H. Julian Wadleigh, Harry Dexter White, Laurence Duggan, Henry Wallace (two Russian-born experts: Leo Pasvolsky and Louis Bean — the Russians are usually prejudiced regarding the non‑Russian peoples), so we must question the objectivity of the American experts mend

8. Russian and Communist Propaganda Labels, Semantics and Statistics, Confusing the devise Nationality Problem in the U. S. A.

There is no other point to which Russian Communism has devoted more attention than to the nationality question. Not only is American public opinion constantly bombarded with such positive statements as that "no such problem exists in the Soviet Union," that "no nationality disciplines self-determination," that the Soviet Union is "a voluntary Urbino of equal nations." The Russian Communist propaganda directly or indirectly attempts to confuse American public opinion about the truth in the Soviet Union by such "definitions" as" "self-determination is balkanization" (hiding the fact that the non‑Russian nationalities in Europe aspire to member­ship in the future United States of Europe and wish to contribute to European economic reconstruction instead of being exploited by Soviet Moscow for the Russian imperialistic drive in Asia),self-determination is tribalism" (thus the American act of independence is tribalism for the Russian mentality), "self-determination is fascism, reaction, etc." (concealing the fact that modern freedom is constant self-determination and democracy without self-determination is inconceivable). Of course the "Promethean Movement" is "English Imperialism" or "Fascism" or Wallstreetism," etc. This smearing of the self-determination principle is happening at the very time of the reconstruction of Israel and is surely a part of the new Soviet anti-Semitism.

The Pinkos have scored one great success in this matter. They have falsified the historical facts between the years 1917 and 1924, about the struggle of the non‑Russian nationalities against Communist Russia. The "official Soviet version" of these events was introduced as objective historical truth into American encyclopedias and historical works, that is such "truth" as the "official Soviet version" allows about the present events in Poland, Roumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czecho­slovakia, and Yugoslavia.

The national problem in the Soviet Union is closely connected with the linguistic, philology, literary, and economic fields. What Russian Communism did in these fields of activity in the non‑Russian nationalities is declared taboo in the U. S. A. Critical remarks are permitted only about Russian biology, music, painting, occasionally literature, and general Marxist theories. What occurred among the non‑Russian nationalities is passed over in silence by the Pinkos. In all other countries the specialists in Slavistics feel it a duty to comment publicly on all developments and to discuss them at scholar­ly meetings. Not so  p367 in the U. S. A. The Pinkos suppressed and withheld all information from the American scholars about the linguistic theory of Marr and its practical application to the non‑Russian peoples, about all the persecution and Russification of the non‑Russians, of their languages and literatures, about the ideology of the opposition against Russian Communism, about the real aims of the Russian nationality policy: the annihilation of the non‑Russian languages and nations.

The newest Russian weapon in the way ar against the non‑Russian peoples is the semantic "terminology" trick started by Russian menshevik-imperialists in the U. S. A. They attempt to give the whole nationality problem a new façade in the U. S. A., because the façade of the "voluntary federation of equal nations" is already rather threadbare. The new façade is: Russians are the "majority" but the non‑Russian nationalities, demanding self-determination, are the "minorities" (this "minority" term was introduced, as we mend, by the Communists into American terminology). Consequently the majority has to decide. I always admire the ingenuity of the Russian "democrats" in their "inventions" of new "democratic slogans" for the preservation of the Russian Red Empire and for depriving the non‑Russian nationalities of their legitimate and inalienable rights.

But "Russian bolshevik semantics," like the "Russian menshevik semantics," are a fraud. The Russian mensheviks now propagating the term "minority" over­estimate the naïveté of the Americans. They have learned much the hard way in the last years, and this semantic trick will boomerang:

a) The Russians according to Lenin were a real minority⁠28 in old Tsaristic Russia, but have now become a majority. How did this come about? Did the non‑Russian nationalities stop reprodu­cing themselves in their apparently "equal" national republics in the Soviet Union? Since when have the Russian mensheviks such confidence in the objectivity of the statistics of the Russian bolsheviks? Did they forget how Dallin himself evaluated Soviet Statistics?⁠29

b) But let us accept the fact that the Russians are now a majority. Would their majority not represent an international problem? Because only by genocide could such a majority be achieved. The Russians themselves are accusing by such a terminology Soviet Moscow of genocide of the non‑Russian nationalities. This international crime must be penalized by the UN and the International Tribunal. And a crime demands not only a punishment but a restitution of rights. Or are the Russian mensheviks and democrats already claiming the Russian Communist heritage with the successes of genocide as their future "Russian democratic heritage"? As we see, the Russian mensheviks and democrats already regard the doubtful achievements of Russification conducted  p368 by the Russian Communists as "lawful property of the Russian nation, in the same way as the Russian Communists claimed as their heritage the successes of the Russification by the Tsar in the territories of non‑Russian nationalities.

But we can be grateful to Russian mensheviks, who thus reveal their moral approach to the genocides of their twin brothers, the Russian Communists.

c) But to anyone acquainted with the real facts it is clear that the non‑Russian nationalities in their national republics constitute, in spite of a quarter of a century of Communist Russification, overwhelming majorities in their territories; that all the non‑Russian peoples, until now included against their will in the Russian Federated Socialist Republic, also are majorities in their native territories, and — I am absolutely certain — that millions of "Russians," who are now forced to declare themselves "Russians," or are automatically counted in Siberia as "Russians," will after the downfall of Russian terror, greatly surprise their oppressors, just as did the Jewish Frankists upon whom Christianity was forced in Spain.

The Russian democrats again demonstrate by their semantic tricks a complete absence of moral responsibility. They apparently have not learned, even in the U. S. A., that honesty and respect for the rights of non‑Russians is the best policy.

All points heretofore mentioned contributed to a tremendous victory of Russian Communist propaganda in the U. S. A. At the very time that Soviet Moscow uses nationalism in Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in the U. S. A. (among the Negroes and Slavs) as a weapon against democracy,⁠30 George F. Kennan acts as a fireman against the nationalism of the non‑Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union, and attempts to extinguish with"cold-water articles" the fire inside the Soviet Union — a singular effort in the cold war of ideas and the American struggle for the moral leader­ship of the free world.

d) Pan‑Slavism,⁠31 in fact Pan‑Russianism, camouflaged as idealistic and messianistic Pan‑Slavism, includes the following: Soviet Moscow, "Russia," is the "big brother: recognized and beloved by all Slavic nations, as the "leader" of the Slavic world; Russia has realized "the centuries‑old dream" of all Slavic nations "the Slavic unity," the "Slavic  p369 Empire," which began the "Slavic century, leading all humanity." Consequently Russia is virtually "the Slavic world," her language is "the" Slavic language, some of its teachers therefore automatically accept in the U. S. A. the titles "professors in Slavic."

Thus Comparative Slavic Philology, which is taught by special chairs in European universities, like Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Semitic, Comparative Philology, became in the U. S. A. virtually Russian Philology. All research of the other Slavic languages and literatures is, in comparison with Russian, completely neglected. (Only within the last year or two have there begun, under the influence of the revolutionary fermentation in the non‑Russian countries, some minimal changes.) This Pan‑Russian line in American Slavistics ran parallel with the Communist propaganda in favor of Russian as "the international language of world proletariat," as "the language of socialism" and "the language of the future." It is very characteristic that Russian had to be forced on all satellite countries on their universities and schools, but all the leading U. S. universities voluntarily accepted this line as mandatory.

This line of the great Eastern universities practically eliminated Comparative Slavic Philology and the teaching of other Slavic languages from smaller universities and colleges, and in effect converted the American universities and colleges into Berlitz schools of elementary and advanced Russian.⁠32 Even the Americans of Slavic, non‑Russian descent, who have some knowledge of their non‑Russian Slavic original mother languages and wish during their college studies to use this knowledge for credits, are thus forced to study Russian and to become Russified.

This Pan‑Russian­Pan‑Slavic point of view is also dominant in history and literature. In histories of "Russia," the history of the struggle of the non‑Russian nationalities against Russia, especially of the Slavic nations, Poland, Ukraine, Byelo-Ruthenia, is completely ignored or misrepresented. In literature courses there is systematically fostered an uncritical approach to all Russian writers and their works, and the presentation of Russian literature in the universities is in reality "Russia worship." Russian writers are the only "seers" and "prophets" of humanity, compared with whom the writers of other Slavic and non‑Slavic nations are pygmies. Any professor of Russian literature who would have diplomat courage to mention that Dostoyewsky was a hater of France, of Socialism and Democracy, an adorer of Prussia, of Bismarck's "blood and iron" policy, an intolerant hater of the Catholic Church would be immediately branded as "a Russian hater" or a "politician" and would soon be "liquidated." To present the attitudes of Pushkin, Nekrasov, etc., toward the non‑Russian peoples and the basic problem of human liberty would not be tolerated.

This Communist Pan‑Russianism­Pan‑Slavism is strangely connected with the Eurasian doctrine and these doctrines are used by  p370 Communist propaganda for their mutual strengthening. C. R. Jurgela⁠33 rightly says:

Thus was formed a political Pan‑Russian­Pan‑Slavic ideology, which has many aspects and far‑reaching consequences in the field of the interpretation of history and current affairs. This ideology directly and indirectly penetrated the American universities and is the most effective ideological weapon used by Russian Communism, for the subversive actions in the U. S. A. not only for the undermining of the U. S. A. by Pan‑Russian sympathies among all Americans of Slavic extraction, especially among the working class, but also for the active combating of any moral support which is given by these Americans to the fight for liberty of their native peoples in the Soviet Union.⁠34

The present staffs of American universities, with rather few exceptions, dare to treat Stalin's Pan‑Russianism in Pan‑Slavic form on the same level as Hitler's Pan‑Germanism; never dare to criticize this ideological monstrosity, garnished with the pretended "liberation  p371 of workers and peasants of the world" — "avant-garde of humanity." They fail in their classrooms to exhibit in its true colors this ideology as the blackest and most reactionary movement of modern times. It would create an uproar among the Pinkos, if somebody would write a "History of Modern Russia From the Point of View of the Ideas of the American Declaration of Independence," and discover in the old and new Russian prison of nationalities a continuous fight for these ideas, conducted by the non‑Russian nationalities, against the Russian divine-right absolutism and the Marxist-Leninist-right absolutism. It is "forbidden" in American universities to look at "Russia" or the Soviet Union through American glasses, they must be "Muscovite." The American values of liberty are limited according to the Monroe Doctrine to the American continent, and for the Russian Empire there is established a "Russian­Pan‑Slavic­Eurasianic set of values," which is sold to visionary Americans as "progress towards humanity."

R. Jacobson, when Hitler began his operations toward Eastern Europe by destroying Czecho­slovakia, did not return to the country, where there was in progress the progressive"language-construction program," so mastery propagandized by him in Western Europe. The brothers finally landed in the U. S. A., and R. Jacobson turned his special attention to Pan‑Slavism:

(1) Moudrost Starych Čechu (New York, 1943) is a masterpiece of the then revived Pan‑Slavism in Moscow. This book (with quotations from the Soviet propagandists, Tarle and Erenburg) has contributed much in the U. S. A. to the uncritical exaltation of "Soviet Russia" among the Americans of Czech descent and ideologically paved the way for the swallowing of Czecho­slovakia by her "protector."

(2) Jacobson's program for American Slavistics regarding the "Tasks and Aims of Comparative Slavic Literature"⁠35 is rather peculiar:

Thus we see that "the Pan‑Slavic current" — we stress Pan‑Slavic and not Slavophile — tips a whole program of Pan‑Slavic literary ideology, which is now quite common in Soviet research. Can Jacobson's program constitute a basis for Slavic research in the free world? In what  p372 points does this program differ from the program at present applied in the U. S. S. R.? Why are all the problems which cannot now be discussed in the Soviet Union, such as the questions of the West and East, the literatures of the exterminated peasants and the world outlook of their great writers, the contributions of the Slavic women, the conception of freedom and the manifold other topics, investigated in the comparative literatures of other linguistic groups, excluded from this program? Is this to be the contribution of the free world to free Slavic research? Of is it a subordination of free American research to a Soviet program with a Pan‑Slavic bias?

(1) Pan‑Slavism is at present the favorite instrument of Soviet Moscow in the fight against the "separatist" aspirations of the Slavic nationalities. Jacobson gave it his special attention also in the review of the Harvard Handbook of Slavic Studies (Saturday Review of Literature, June 11, 1949, p40): "A Handbook of Slavic studies cannot be confined to a simple juxtaposition of historic and literary surveys of the se Slavic peoples, but must pay special attention to the inter-Slavic problems, i.e., to the common Slavic patrimony, to the cultural inter-relations of these peoples, and to the history of Pan‑Slavic ideology." We emphasize the fact that in this sentence it is not Slavophile, but Pan‑Slavic that stands out prominently and the difference between the two terms is well known to Jacobson. This present interest in Pan‑Slavism shown by R. Jacobson behind which hides the old Pan‑Russianism is backed by Jacobson's authority in the U. S. A. as a great Russian scholar of the rank of Vinogradoff, Rostovtseff, Vasiliev, Karpovich, Vernadsky, "once peaked and exiled by the Russian Communists." Thus Roman Jacobson, who never was a university professor in old Russia, and we outside the Soviet Union first class as press attaché of the Soviet Mission to Prague, succeeded in getting the following contribution fors biography in Toward a Russian Policy by R. Gordon Wasson (Stanford, Conn.: The Overlook Press, 1951), p13: "The Russian universities were on the highest level of excellence, and here again many distinguished Russian professors driven into exile, men like Vinogradoff, Rostovtzeff, Vasiliev, Karpovich, Vernadsky, Jacobson, have enriched the faculties of Oxford and Cambridge, and Harvard and Yale, and other universities." (Jacobson got his Ph. D. in the German University in Prague and was then teacher of Russian.)

But the truth about Pan‑Russianism cannot be disguised, and the book of Thomas A. Bailey (Stanford University), America Faces Russia, is the first swallow of spring, the first evidence that Americans began to oppose the principles of the old and new Russian political propaganda.

e) "Proto-Russian unity": This political conception of the old Tsarist Russian philology supplements the former tenets but its usefulness is rather limited at present. This conception attempts artificially to establish, within the advice family of languages, a special relation­ship between the Eastern Slavic languages (Byelo-Ruthenian, Russian, Ukrainian) claiming that they developed from a special "Eastern-Slavic proto-language," which the Russians, of course, immediately call"proto-Russian." The political aim of this conception is obvious: The  p373 Russian politicos at least attempt to uphold their cultural imperialism with such doctrine, in order to draw ferit the following consequence: (a) the Eastern Slavic nations have inside the Slavic family a common origin, consequently a common culture, and they should have a common State; (b) therefore the demands of the Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenians for self-determination must be denied; (d) the Russian Tsarist plots also devised a special point of knowledge in order to justify the persecutions of the Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian languages. They taught that Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian are dialects of Russian, and that therefore Russian is to be regarded as their "literary language." Consequently the Russian language is to be enforced, but the free use of Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian must be "verboten." At present the last point, for "democratic" reasons, is not often used, especially in view of the existence of "national republics" in the Soviet Union, but the first two are still propagated by R. Jacobson and the Eurasians. In 1949, the Department of service languages in Columbia University published, under a grant of the Rockefeller Foundation, a translation of the pamphlet of Nikolai Trubetzkoy, "The Common Slavic Element in Russian Culture." Trubetzkoy, when sober, was quite a good linguist, but he was seldom sober. And in his drunkenness he wrote many of his "Eurasiatic sermons" in which the Russian language is the center of his "Eurasia." It is a sad fact that American Slavistics (even without a Grammar of Old Bulgarian published) wastes time and money for the translation of such Pan‑Russian-Eurasian propaganda literature. Here are some quotations from this pamphlet, which will characterize the scientific objectivity and logic of Trubetzkoy:

This is the old dogma of Russian Tsaristic philology in Trubetzkoy's formulation, proclaimed into a dogma since 1928 in Russian Soviet philology.⁠36

Trubetzkoy has a special attitude to the Ukrainian literary language which has "disintegrated" his Russian or Eastern Slavic (note the terminology) unity:

Marr with his linguistic theory inside the Soviet Union and Trubetzkoy with his teachings, merging together Pan‑Russianism with Pan‑Slavism and Eurasianism, outside the Soviet Union were the two ideological pilots of Soviet Moscow in the new Russification after 1928, especially with respect to the Ukrainian language. By the same tricks (Russian — Eastern Slavic, West Russian-Old Ruthenian Church Slavic, Lithuanian-Russian State — Lithuania-Ruthenian State, etc.), Trubetzkoy's opinions are based on a rather superficial knowledge of the Ukrainian language and literature, often on ignorance. Acknowledging the paramount importance of the Ukrainian influences on the partial Europeanization of Muscovy-Russia, Trubetzkoy has not understood the fate of the Church-Slavic language in the Ukrainian, Byelo-Russian, and Muscovite territories, operating with "a fiction of unity" of the Church Slavic, where in reality no unity existed, especially in pronunciation, even in vocabulary. Such a conception of a literary language is always based on some dictatorial power of the State, determining norms and developing a language of the intellectual elite. The worship of this State-literary language is then a part of the respect for the State by the masses. The Ukrainian conception was and is quite democratic. It upholds the idea that the people should create their national language, which will serve the masses who use it as a perfect medium of communication and artistic expression. Its norms are not static, but move with the changes in the language of the masses, because life is change. Consequently, we regard the complete vernacularization of the Ukrainian literary language as a very important achievement of the intellectual development of the mass, which had lost the knowledge of many Church Slavic word and constructions. The vernacularization of old Ukrainian Church Slavic literary language was the only "natural path" for its modernization; and this process, unknown to Trubetzkoy, continued for centuries. Completely false are Trubetzkoy's opinions about the lack of "adequate means for the expression ought to have told" by the vernacular of "the uneducated popular masses"; French, German, English, classic literature is translated into Ukrainian even in the Soviet Ukraine. This contempt for the "uneducated popular masses" is a specific part of Russian megalomania. The uneducated masses of Tibet developed a psychological terminology of such refinement that the translators into English faced insurmountable difficulties.⁠38 On the other hand the works  p377 of Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Shevchenko, Kotsyubynsky are translated into Russian in a way in which the Ukrainian shades of their Western European thoughts were not adequately expressed. Trubetzkoy is completely mistaken, when he accuses the Ukrainians of borrowing from Polish, for he cannot grasp the facts that the Ukraine belonged to the Rus′ Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Western European cultural sphere from the very beginning, the Western Slavic World and Ukraine mutually influenced each another. For a Russian any difference between Ukrainian and Russian is "Polish." Neither is it true that "the literary language of the majority of educated Ukrainians was the Russian literary language."

Trubetzkoy is a good example of how a "true Russian" scholar works and how in his mind apparently scientific conceptions are interconnected with gradually larger conceptions until the "Russian world mission" is "scientifically proven." He is a real vozhd of the Russian cultural imperialism. St. Augustine with the "Proto-Russian unity," he develops alongside it the conception that "the old Church Slavonic language came into being at the end of the epoch of Proto-Slavic unity." Therefore "Old Church Slavonic was potentially a common Slavic literary language" (p34) — which the Russian got through Ukrainian mediation. On this basis he develops the conception:

The Pan‑Slavic role of literary Russian is thus built up by Trubetzkoy and then he presents the final conception, Russian as the Eurasiatic literary language.

But a critical investigation of this pyramid of conceptions proves their true origin to be Russian imperialism.

(1) The facts of objective Slavistics are clear: all the Slavic languages are derived directly from the Proto-Slavic languages. Neither a Western Proto-Slavic, nor a Southern Proto-Slavic or Eastern Proto-Slavic language ever existed. All Slavic languages developed from dialectical differentiations of the Proto-Slavic language or tendencies in that direction. The differences between Ukrainian and Russian are manifest from the very beginning in the use of script and surely go back to the origins. Slavistics has no need (except the need required by Pan‑Russian politics) to construct a dialectless "Eastern Proto-Slavic language" and to call it, as Trubetzkoy does, Russian.

(2) It is surely a mistake of Trubetzkoy to date the end of the "Proto-Slavic unity" with the developing of the Old Church Slavonic language in the ninth century. He dates it so late in order to construct the "potentially common Slavic literary language" which the Russians are to inherit later. In reality the Proto-Slavic unity came to an end in the fifth century with the migrations of nations in Europe, if not earlier.

 p378  (3) Trubetzkoy was the first to construct the conception of the "potentiality" of Old Church Slavonic as "the common literary Slavic language." This theoretical assumption he used later as a real fact to support the claim that "of all modern Slavic literary languages Russian has the longest uninterrupted tradition" — from the end of the Proto-Slavic unity. The it is true Pan‑Slavic Russian literary language is born — with a "Eurasiatic radiation."

Harvard was a shrine of the "Russian unity" and Prof. S. Hazzard Cross⁠39 preached: ". . . These three groups are none the less parts of the same nation, so that either a White Russian [Byelo-Russian] or a Ukrainian [he] is precisely as much as a Russian as the purest Great Russian born in the shadow of the Kremlin."

This conception is supported by R. Jacobson in his quite objectionable method of philology. The book of two leading scholars, the late academician St. Smal-Stocki, of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Kiev, and of the late distinguished scholar of Romance philology, Th. Gartner, University of Innsbruck, Austria, who refuted this conception in their book: Grammatik der Ruthenischen-Ukrainischen Sprache, Vienna, 193, is "purged" from the bibliography of the booklet of R. Jacobson, "Slavic Languages," Columbia University, Department of Slavic Languages, edited under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in the first and second printing, 1950. Compare with this method the fact that the American scholar A. Senn, University of Pennsylvania, an internationally recognized authority in Balto-Slavic linguistics, in the Harvard Handbook of Slavic Studies, gives this book the first place in the list.

R. Jacobson defends this view also in the field of history of literature. After 1941 Soviet Moscow began to exploit the famous Tale of Prince Ihor (which is surely of Ukrainian origin and in its ideas and form a monument of Western European spirit) for the purpose of proving the "unity of the Russian territory." (Characteristic of this kind of philology is the preface of Professor M. K. Hrunsky to the Ukrainian edition by M. Rylsky, Kiev, 1941. Of course it is treated according to the party line as a monument of common "Russian" literature and its author is asked to rise from the grave in order "to sing of the power­ful Red Army, its iron marshal and great vozhd of all workers, our beloved friend and teacher, comrade Stalin.") R. Jacobson treats the monument also directly as a monument of "Russian literature" in his edition. He "purged" every statement about its Ukrainian origin, and included in the edition a translation into Polish by the Communist writer, Tuwim. Let us sum up:

Behind this conception of "Eastern Slavic Unity" — by semantic tricks proclaimed for political aims as the "Russian unity" — is hidden a whole "calculation" of Russian Communism, supported by Russian chauvinism.

The calculation runs thus: If we Russians succeed in enforcing this dogma, then the "Russian group" will dominate the whole Slavic world both in number and extent of territory. But if the Ukrainians and Byelo-Ruthenians are separate nations and they get "permission" to join the  p379 Western Slavic culture — Russian supremacy is doomed. Consequently, Russification of the Ukrainians and Byelo-Ruthenians is the basic demand of Russian Pan‑Slavic imperialism for reaching numerical supremacy over the Western and Southern Slavs on the one hand, and on the other only the formation of this "Eastern Slavic (Russian) unity" and the use of Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian intelligentsia for "Russian aims" in the Soviet Union will make it possible for Soviet Moscow to dominate her Eurasianic Lebensraum and its sphere of influence. The Ukrainians and Byelo-Ruthenians are tempted to become junior partners of Russian imperialism and to that aim Stalin introduced them into the UN.

Thus we see Russian imperialism is advancing in cycles. The first is the attainment of "Eastern-Slavic"-Russian unity, the second that of "Pan‑Slavic unity," which is being enforced also as "Russian Orthodox Church Unity" by the patriarch of Moscow (liquidating gradually the Catholic Slavic Churches); the third has to do with the "Eurasiatic unity" — with elastic frontiers — which finally will embrace all Europe and Asia (with the later addition of Africa). We see here once more how all these stages and their conceptions are interconnected and how any such conception has for its background one single propagandistic aim and that is to strengthen the basic idea of Russian Communist propaganda: the "unity and indivisibility of the Soviet Union."

f) The creation of terminological confusion in the American language. Lenin's advice: "Confuse your enemies," is in the terminological sphere carried out to perfection by the Pinkos in the U. S. A. Usually the university professors are responsible for a clear‑cut terminology for scientific purposes, which then is also accepted by the general public. In the Slavic field quite the opposite happened; the responsible professors not only are not interested in a scientific terminology,⁠40 but they desire a systematic confusion. As an example, here is what happened with the meaning of the term Russian—Russia in the American language. This single word has at this time the following meanings:

(1) Russia — Soviet Union;

(2) Russia — Russian Federated Socialist Republic;

(3) Russia — in the ethnographic sense, exclusive of all the non‑Russian peoples now included in the Russian Federated Socialist Republic.

(4) Russia — a "Russian group" Russia, Byelo-Ruthenia and Ukraine — Eastern Slavic.

(5) Russia — Russian influence Spanish, including Poland, Czecho­slovakia, Roumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Baltic States.

(6) Russia‑Rus′, the old Kievan Empire.⁠41

(7) Ancient Russia — a rather unclear Eurasiatic idea.

Not only the common man, but students in universities must work weeks to get the necessary background in order to understand the substance of his instruct's lecture.

 p380  g) The ai of all conceptions.

Let us now look at the ultimate purpose of all these principles and calculations so vociferously preached by the "liberals," the Pinkos, and the whole Communist press in the U. S. A. The chief aim of these "scientific" conceptions, all of which include political, cultural, and economic superstructures, is to establish in the American universities and public opinion:

(1) The dogmas of the "unity and indivisibility" of the Russian Soviet Lebensraum and of the necessity of a Russian dictator­ship as "natural law";

(2) The dogma of the necessity of refusing self-determination to non‑Russian annexed nationalities;

(3) The dogma of Pan‑Slavic unity including the Soviet Russian domination of Poland, Czecho­slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia.

(4) The dogma of nonresistance to "Russia's advance toward her natural bots";

(5) The dogma that Russian Communism represents the full fruitage of the ideas of the American revolution.

Thus the only weapon that could and can defeat Soviet Moscow's imperialism, the national revolutionary ideas of the oppressed nationalities, is "checkmated" in the U. S. A. by the Soviet propaganda and the Pinkos, and all moral influences emanating from the ideas of the American Declaration of Independence, of Wilson's Principles, of the Atlantic Charter, have been eliminated. Thus was the American foreign policy kept in the dark by Soviet propaganda and by Pinkos in relation to the real facts and aims of Russian Communism, and thus the foreign policy of the cradle of self-determination of nationalities became subordinate to the interests of Russian imperialism and the preservation of the U. S. S. R. prison of nationalities. Thus was American Slavistics and the education of the American youth subjected to a process of intellectual Russification.

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The Author's Notes:

1 Cf. S. Kovalyov, The Communist Education . . . Bolshevik, March, 1947: "A great force in the Communist education of the people is the corps of Soviet intellectuals and above all the staff of the Party and of the Councils, the teaching profession, workers in letters and arts, and the scientists."

2 According to Gottfried Berger, In Tyrannos, "Die Sovietisierung der Hochschulen," 1951, the following teachers returned from the U. S. A. sovietized the University Leipzig: Bloch, Herzfelde, Budzislavski, Lips, Boenheim, Gerhart Eisler.

3 According to Freeman, July 30, 1951, A. Zoll, National Council of American Education, heads a "fascist and subversive organization." Consequently, we, DP professors, wish to be clearly separated from his action. But his data deserve an investigation: Time mag, July 16, 1951, informs that A. Zoll listed as "pro‑Communists" 76 professors in Harvard, 87 in Columbia, 60 in Chicago, and 30 in Yale. The Harvard Crimson (editor in 1915, John Reed, is buried in the Kremlin) according to Newsweek, July 2, 1951, listed for 1949 — 40, for 1950 — 32 cases throughout the U. S. A. "involving academic freedom." Of course, we will defend the academic freedom of all these professors and we ask only the academic freedom for ourselves, the DP professors, by granting to us equal opportunities to teach American youth and publicly to discuss with them their opinions about the Soviet Union, and also the basic problem of academic life whether a professor professing a totalitarian ideology can be permitted by the faculties to teach in free universities dedicated to the search of truth and to independent thought.

It would be really worth while to read our following pages keeping to mind the hypothesis of Robert Morris, counsel of the Senate Committee on International Security, advanced during the investigation of the activities of the Institute of Pacific Relations (cf. Time, September 3, 1951):

"His Hypothesis: 1) I. P. R. had the inside track in the field of academic research on the Orient, and its full-time professionals pumped one‑sided opinion through U. S. schools and universities in hundreds of pamphlets, the quarterly magazine Pacific Affairs, and the fortnightly Far Eastern Survey; 2) the professionals dominated the reviewing of books on the Far East, batted down those books which opposed their line and made booksellers out of those that conformed; 3) they were zzz summoned into Government to give top‑level advice on the Pacific area during World War II, and effectively swung U. S. policy their way.

"Neither Counsel Morris nor the committee was claiming that I. P. R. itself was an espionage network. In fact, with commendable restraint, nobody was claiming much of anything until the committee had heard all of its witnesses. But from the I. P. R. files and the testimony, Morris was obviously trying to show that I. P. R. was an intellectual instrument for inserting Communist policies into the U. S. Government, the U. S. press and U. S. academic life. If he could prove that in the hearings yet to come, he would make tales of espionage sound like child's play."

4 Red beet soup.

5 Based on Mackinder's statement: Who rules Eastern Europe — commands the "heartland"; who rules the heartland — commands the world island (Europe, Asia, Africa); who rules the world island — commands the world.

6 Cf. the large literature published by Izdanie Evraziytzev in Paris with propaganda works of N. Trubetskoy, G. Vernadsky, P. Savicky, N. Toll, Ya. Bromberg, R. Jacobson, and other Russians.

7 Cf. L. S. Berg, Natural Regions of the U. S. S. R., translated by C. Adler Titelbaum. Cf. M. Dolnytsky, "A Geographer Looks at Eastern Europe" (with the reproduced map) Ukrainian Quarterly, Vol. VII, Nr. 1.

8 R. Smal-Stocki, Slavs and Teutons.

9 The Common Slavic Element in Russian Culture, pp47‑48, New York, 1949.

10 The New Leader, April 16, 1951.

11 We call attention to the "evolution" of the Russian big [older] brother" slogan from a "big brother of the non‑Russian peoples" in the Soviet Union before World War II to the big brother of all Slavic peoples" during and after World War II and presently to the "Russian big brother of all peoples of the world." Thus Chinese and Korean Communists now use this expression referring to the Russians; cf. New Leader, October 15, 1951. (Interesting is the reaction of the non‑Russian peoples to this propaganda, they changed the first consonants of the Russian word and converted brat, "brother" into kat, "hangman: "big brother" into "big hangman.")

12 As we see, Russian Communist propaganda introduced this misleading term "minorities" for the non‑Russian majorities to American terminology.

13 Solution in Asia (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1945).

14 The Peoples of the Soviet Union(New York Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1944, 1945, 1946).

15 The Independent Mind, Horizon Press, 1951, pp118‑119.

16 Political Power in the U. S. S. R., 1917‑1947, Oxford University Press, 1948.

17a 17b With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.

18 Cf. our book review, Educational Reviewer, Vol. III, No. 2.

19 Coauthor of the book, Seeds of Treason.

20 According to Times-Herald, Washington, D. C., July 8, 1951:

Cf. with this statement of Columbia the following" the Communist paper in Warsaw, Odrodzenie, August 21, 1949, published: "Our government entrusted the chair [at Columbia] to the excellent scholar Manfred Kridl"; reprinted Dziennik Zwiazkovy, Chicago, November 20, 1949.

Let us compare these acts of Columbia University with the attitude of Harvard toward a proposed grant from a totalitarian regime. According to Harvard Crimson (The New York Times, December 6, 1951): "James Bryant Conant, university president, had in 1934 rejected a gift of money from a ranking German official because it was 'so closely associated with the leader­ship of a political party which have struck at principles believed fundamental to universities throughout the world.' "

21 Ukrainian Bulletin, February 15, 1950.

22 I am informed that S. Yakobson was, during his stay in Russia, in contact with the Soviet Embassy (his brother was press attaché at the Soviet Mission in Prague) and belonged to the circle of Prof. Otto Hoetsch, leader of the German Nationalists, who propagated closer Soviet-German relations in his monthly Ost Europa. Hoetsch was (according to S. N. Harper, The Russia I Believe In, p182) persona gratissima with the Soviet leaders, enjoying even a diplomatic laissez-passer for his travels to Moscow.

23 Corliss Lamont, The Peoples of the Soviet Union (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1946), p8.

24 Hans Kohn, Nationalism in the Soviet Union (London, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1933), p88.

25 Ibid., p104. An extreme illustration of this point may be found in the recent official announcement of the mass resettlement in other parts of the Soviet Union of large numbers of Chechens and Crimean Tatars, inhabitants of two former autonomous Republics of the R. S. F. S. R., as punishment for treachery during the German invasion. The Republics were also deprived of their autonomy. (New York Times, June 27, 1945, p4).

26 Thus the librarian of the "Fortress of Freedom" (cf. L. Salamanca, Fortress of Freedom, The Story of the Library of Congress, 1942) handles the fight for freedom of the non‑Russian peoples. But he is a Mr. are in publicity, and tristram Coffin (in an article in the New Leader, "As the Russians See Us," reprinted in the December issue, 1951, of Readers Digest) calls him a "famous Russian scholar."

27 Ukrainian Quarterly, Vol. VI, Nr. 2, 1950.

28 Cf. M. Chekalin, The National Question in the Soviet Union (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1941), p3: "In Tsarist Russia the Russians constituted 43 per cent of the total population, i.e., a might not get in while the non‑Russian nationalities constituted 57 per cent."

29 The Real Soviet Russia, p129.

30 Cf. the speech of G. M. Malenkov, December 9, 1949, before the Moscow Soviet. "The victory of Chinese democracy opens a new page in the history of not only the Chinese people, but all peoples of Asia oppressed by the imperialists. The national liberation struggle of the peoples of Asia, of the Pacific, of the entire colonial world, has risen to a new and considerably higher stage."

31 From the numerous literature we mention: Lednicki, V., Panslavism in F. Gross's European Ideologies, New York, Clementis, V., "Panslavism" Past and Present, London, 1943. Beneš, E., Uvahy o Slovanstvi, Praha, 1947. Mousset, A., The World of the Slavs, New York, 1950.

32 According to A. P. Coleman, A Report on the Status of Russian . . . in the Educational Institutes of the U. S. A., 1948. 160 colleges and universities taught Russian.

33 History of the Lithuanian Nation, New York, 1949, p359.

34 Cf. Walter Dushnyck, "Stalin's Pan‑Slavism in the U. S. A.," Ukrainian Weekly, No. 30, 1948. Regarding Canada cf. Watson Kirkconnell, A Tale of Seven Cities, Ontario, 1948.

Pan‑Slavism reached through the Communist Pan‑Slavist, Louis Adamic, even the warehouse during the war. Adamic's ideology is presented by Bogdan Raditsa in the December issue, The American Mercury, 1951:

35 Program of the Sixty-Third Annual Meeting of the P. M. L. A., December, 1949.

36 Kalynovych in the preface to the Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary (1947) states: "(Ukrainian) deriving from one, Eastern-Slavic root, expressing and demonstrating the friendship and brotherly connection of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples from primitive times, the languages of which in the course of centuries developed in mutual union and unity."

37 Misleading Russian term for the Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian old Church Slavic language.

38 W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Oxford University Press, 1949.

39 Slavic Civilization through the Ages, 1948, P‑51.

40 Cf. Roman Smal-Stocki, "The Scientific Terminology of the Modern Language Association of America," Ukrainian Bulletin, Vol. III, Nr. 12.

41 Geoffrey Chaucer used for the Kievan Rus′ an excellent term: Ruce which is nearest in sound to the native word.

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Thayer's Notes:

a John Maragon was a low‑level staffer with White House access who was convicted and sent to jail in 1951 for perjury in connection with an influence-peddling scheme involving a number of government officials; freezers and mink coats were among the items received as kickbacks by other White House staffers.

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b The reference is to a massive cheating scandal at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in which ninety cadets were dismissed for having cheated on examinations by passing around test questions and answers, or having known about it and kept quiet. Front-page news in 1951, it shook the United States precisely because the Honor Code was taken, and continues to be taken, so seriously by generations of cadets.

❦

c Taras Chuprynka was the nom de guerre of Roman Shukhevych, who headed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army until his death in combat against paramilitary forces of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1950. See the article at Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

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