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14 THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA slanting courses to expound “the spirit of historic progress,” which is to say—Communist propaganda. For example, teachers are en- couraged to modify classic arithmetic problems to deal with the speed of Siberian trains, the number of orbits of Soviet sputnike, tonsa of steel produced in Chinese blast furnaces, etc. Karl Marx, although himeelf an intellectual, assigned to the urban proletariat the principal role in the overthrow of the existing order. © nin, although he paid lip service to this theory, rejected it in practice. He wrote that the proletariat, if it should follow its natural inclination, would decline rapidly into vulgar reformism, and that it could not become the leaven of the revolution unless guided by intellectuals. The Bolsheviks have consequently never slackened in their efforts to win this decisive stratum, with infiltration employed as the essential method. . {d) Churches Strange asit may seem, churches are also highly infiltrated. Nearly 50 percent of the French Catholic press, including Temoignage Chretien (Christian Witness), the weekly with the widest circulation, have be- come outlets for pro-Soviet views. These publications oppose the MRP, the political party with Catholic leanings; in particular, ite policy favoring a European union. In the United States, one of the strongest recommendations favoring recognition of the Communist Peiping government and its admission to the United Nations was issued by the 1958 Cleveland Study Conference, sponsored by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States (NCCC) an organization which has the support of thousands of ministers, and claims to speak for 40 million Protes- tants. The NCCC shelters numerous auxiliaries, and has organized many a trip to Moscow and Peiping for its dignitaries. Albert Vassart, a former member of the French Communist Party, revealed in 1955 that Moscow has issued a 1936 order that carefully selected, reliable members of the Communist Youth enter seminaries and after training, receive ordination as priests. Others infiltrated the religious orders, particularly the Dominicans. In the Buriat-Mongolian Republic the Soviets have established a seminary to train Buddhist lamas who then spread throughout Asia. Many are sent to Tibet where, racially identified with the native opulation, they are more welcome than Jamas trained in Peiping. n Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma, many Communists don the yellow robe in order to indoctrinate the thousands of youn people who frequent the monasteries and pagodas. Infiltration of a churches is one of the important tasks of the Soviet propaganda apparatus. (e) Other organs There is much infiltration in publishing houses, especially amon manuscript readers;* in radio and television, a forum often decri as subject to government censorship, but which is frequently far more pervaded by crypto-Communist propaganda; the stage and screen, which contribute extensively to the shaping of sensibilities, and are " Gee testimony of Angus Cameron and Aibert &. Kahu before the Senate Interna] Security aubcommittee pts. 4, 8, aid 12; “Strategy and Tactics of World Communism,” and pt. 2, “Communist Activity in Mass Communications,” also published by the Internal Security Subcommittee.