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rs a I er a SRT ore . - a ee THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA 1 e bearing the recommendation of a reapectad general. Young Gure- vicius was timid, modest, kind, and « bit sickly. No one suspected that he was an agent, although his writings were curiously slanted in such a way that the Soviets never appeared in a bad light. This peculiarity was ascribed to the not unusual sin of youthful radicalism. en the Soviets occupied Lithuania in June 1940, Guzevicius ap- peared before the director of his newspaper with the Communist demands: Immediate discharge of all anti-Communist employees and complete control of all activities by the Sovieta, Thus it was revealed that the likeable and conscientious Guzevicius secretly occupied so elevated a position in the hierarchy that he was named Minister of the Interior, the police agency of anvietized Lithuania. One of the more explosive revelations of the Communist underworld was provided by the testimony of Janus Kowalewski,’ who told of his entire life as 8 conspirator in Poland after World War I, acting under orders from the Kremlin. Kowalewski disclosed that he was carefully taught the art of journalistic distortion. He learned how to exagger- ate the news of crises in capitalistic countries, to blur that which re- vealed the deficiencies of the U.S.S.R., to safely slander anti-Com- munists, to promote the advancement of sympathizers to higher posi- tions, and to recommend or condemn in literary criticism according to the service to, or opposition of the Kremlin exhibited by the work reviewed. The use of underground journalists, in otherwise “normal” news- papers is only the first stage of this technique. More eudacious is the concept of a newspaper created to be secretly controlled in all of ite elements. Newspapers financed by Moscow deliberately developed a non-Communist posture, although their columns were laced with fabrications to which subsequent references could be made, advantageous to Communist propaganda, such as: “Even the bour- geois newspaper (name deleted’ recognized that there are no concep- tration camps in Soviet Russia.” Thus, with funds provided by the apparatus, Kowalewski was entrusted with the task of creating a periodical, for which ha chose the inconspicuous title Illustrated Bimonthly Magazine. Kowalewski testified that, from the beginning, some of the articles published were completely written by the “Agit- prop”? department of the Communist Party, but signed by obliging writers, among which was Brenkowski, now Minister of Education of Communist Poland. “Today,” declared Kowalewski, “I have attained such a consum- mate in detecting the manipulation of minds by the Soviet apparatus that [ can sniff in 10 spots, in 10 lines, the specific odor of a mmunist fabrication in a non-Communist newspaper. For ex- ample, when I read the following sentence: _ Fe aavled he bettne te ersten andbhinas = ntoad thn perescutions of the church in Poland, because that would harm the church © ‘es “me . I know, without the slightest doubt, that this sauce was cooked in the Communist casserole.’’ Passing to Chine, employees of the Koumintang newspaper Ta King Pao included underground agents such as Mrs. Peng Tsu Kang, who concealed her Communist affiliation for 20 years. Another 41 Communist Penetration and Exploitation of the Free Press, 1002, denate Interna] Security Buboom- malities, pp. 73-47. 3 Agitation and propeganda. See: Constitution, CPUSA, published in Daily Worker, Feb. 71, 1929. 30-602 O-465——-8 | | | :