◆ SpookStack

24 THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA when the greatest names of the Weat produced euphoric accounts of an autocracy which by the very words of Khrushchev is now identified as one of the most horrible tyrannies of history. Joseph E. Davies, the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, defended the Moscow trials and certified te the charge of treason against Tukhachevski which Khrushchev’s report to the 20th Party Con acknowledged as a gross fabrication. Edouard Herriot was shown a prosperous population in Kiev, the very year that famine caused 6 million deaths in the surrounding Ukraine. Despite these deplorable precedents, there are always prestigious names willing to take these illusory tours, which continue to dupe millions of people, to the advantage of Moscow. DESTRUCTION OF ANTI-COMMUNIBTS: SLANDER, INTIMIDATION, KIDNAPPING, AND MURDER In addition to the deception of the gullible, an important task of Soviet propaganda is the reduction to impotence of those who clearly recognize, and zealously proclaim the danger, and against whom are launched campaigns unlimited in intensity and ignominy. The Communists strive to make social outcasts of these Cassandras; to develop veritable Pavlovian reflexes associating an instinctive aura of hatred with their names. Communist and crypto-Communist apparati devote all their ammunition to this task, shrinking from neither slander nor provocation, forgery nor blackmail. Here auxii- iaries take the lead as scandalmongers. The Soviet apparatus may denounce an anti-Communist as an underground party member; the police may be led to believe he is & terrorist or a loathsome criminal. be anti-Communist writer Victor Serge was so viciously slandered that even the sympathetic police services were confused and uncertain. The Moscow apparatus asserted that Leon Blum was a_police auxiliary and procurer for convicts; it charged Charles de Gaulle with having vorked for German intelligence, that Jacques Soustelle was a Nazi spy, and Syngman Rhee with the delivery of Korea to Japan. These charges may be found in the Soviet Encyclopedia, or signed by such leaders as Maurice Thorez. One of its worst calumnies has been leveled at Guy Mollet: no less an accusation than that he had de- nounced fellow internees to the Gestapo. These, and similar attacks were essentially fabrications from whole cloth; devoid of any founda- tion and made in the full knowledge that they were unmitigated lies. In the tolerant atmosphere of the free world, the endless repetition of these abusive attacks has a devastating effect. Indeed, it is not too much to say that there are few who, having become the object of a Communist attack, did not eventually either lose heart or become themselves suspect in the eyes of world opinion. The campaign against dedicated anti-Communists proceeds from simple premises. Its effectiveness results from the nature of its execution: relentlessly and in practically every key. It is distin- guished by the use of a vocabulary of abuse, including such terms as “radical rightist,” “Fascist stooge,” ‘negative element,” ‘police stool pigeon,” and “systematic anti-Communist.” The last of these expletives is the acme of abuse, yet. there are a considerable number of “liberals,” convinced of the iniquity of systematic anticommunism, but who pride themselves on being systematic anti-Fascists. Further- more, they see nothing incongruous in the Communists being sys-