For years, the West believed in propaganda about the USSR as a country of happiness. Out of stupidity and ... calculation of people Lenin called "useful idiots".
Despite millions of victims of the Gulag, hunger in Ukraine, purges and genocides in Russia itself and in the conquered countries, for decades the West believed in false propaganda. It was created by ... Western intellectuals, artists and journalists. Soviet agents took care of its dissemination in Europe and the USA. At the same time, she despised foreigners who were doing the "dirty work" for her. Lenin himself called them "useful idiots" .
Where did educated and intelligent people get such a naive approach to one of the most criminal regimes in history? This was due in part to ignorance of the history of Russia and the realities of life behind the Iron Curtain. Partly, however, from the sentiment and - equally false - myth of the French Revolution as an unfinished work of breaking with the ancient regime and building a paradise on earth. Believing in such a picture of the revolution - as eagerly as later in the case of the USSR - they ignored crimes and mere absurdities perpetrated by the destroyers of the Bastille. Dariusz Tołczyk in the book "The Gulag in the Eyes of the West" wrote:
Thanks to Lenin and his party myth of revolution - cultivated in numerous intellectual circles since the fall of the Bastille - was reborn in the minds and hearts of many Western writers, journalists, artists, scientists, that is, people who talk often and willingly about the future of the world.
Paradise beyond living
One of the first American journalists to observe the October Revolution with his own eyes was John Reed. Under the influence of those experiences, he wrote the book "Ten days that shook the world" . It was based largely on the lies served to him by the communist tops . After returning to the United States, Reed founded the Communist Labor Party. Perceived by the US services as a Soviet agent, he returned to the USSR, where he died of typhus at the age of only 33. He was buried - as the first American - by the Kremlin wall.
The Bolsheviks will build a paradise on earth. But one that is not habitable…
Another overseas journalist, Lincoln Steffens, reported:" I saw the future and it works ". At that time, a brutal civil war between the Reds and the Whites was raging in Russia, and the Red Army was pushing towards the West, intent - on the corpse of "Your Poland" ... Stephens was still working in the US for the New York Evening Post. He was an engaged journalist. He belonged to the so-called whistleblowers, revealing the flaws and degenerations of the social system. He wrote about corruption in power circles in the US. He initiated welfare reform in the United States.
Perhaps the belief in the "degeneration" of the state apparatus in his own country contributed to such a highly naive view of the Bolshevik giant. Over time, however, began to admit that "revolutionary reality" was not all roses. In 1926 he wrote to his wife:“ I am a Russian patriot, the future is there; Russia will win and save the world. This is my faith. But I don't want to live there ". The absurdity of this passage is a good reflection of the way of thinking of Western intellectuals fascinated by Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks will build a paradise on earth. But one that is not habitable…
Happy Ukraine
When information about the terror began to reach Western public opinion, intellectuals, seduced by communist ideology, moved to rationalize crimes - as a way to the longed-for world peace. Louise Bryant, widow of John Reed, wrote about the activities of Feliks Dzerzhinsky: "Dzerzhinsky's duty was to get rid of prisoners quickly and humanely. He carried out this strict duty quickly and efficiently, for which even the convicts themselves had to be grateful to him, for there is nothing more terrible than an executioner whose hands are trembling and his heart is full of hesitations ”.
In the 1930s - already in Stalin's time - another American journalist fed the local public with Soviet propaganda. We are talking about Walter Durantym, correspondent for the "New York Times" from Moscow in the years 1922–36. Duranty has made a series of reports in which he praised the progress of communism. He even won the Pulitzer Prize. Today his name functions as a synonym for anti-journalism.
Victims of the great famine in Ukraine
Duranty did his best to ensure that the pro-Bolshevik laurels did not lose any of their colors. When Stalin brutally dealt with Ukraine, the American correspondent denied the crime. He argued that the so-called there is no great hunger. He delivered such theses from behind the desk. He also discredited Gareth Jones, one of the few Westerners who saw Ukrainian villages and people dying of hunger with his own eyes. Jones left for the USSR for private money. Ignoring the prohibition on movement, he set off with a backpack of food on a journey through the Ukrainian countryside. His account revealed the truth about the starvation genocide. Thus, Durante's career ended. Today his texts are regarded as simply part of Soviet propaganda.
Uncle Joe
During the war, the West naturally entered into an alliance with Soviet Russia. This partly explains the warm tone with which Stalin was described in the Anglo-Saxon press. Newspapers in the US and Great Britain began affectionately calling the Soviet dictator "Uncle Joe." The term came from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who created this nickname during the Tehran conference. It was there that the "Big Three" (along with the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) negotiated the division of the world after winning the war. It was also there that the Allies agreed for the first time to assign post-war Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence.
Newspapers in the US and UK began affectionately calling the Soviet dictator "Uncle Joe."
The hilarious term has caught on in the Western media. Uncle Joe was portrayed as a kind man, brilliant analyst and efficient politician. There was no more room to report what was really going on in the Soviet Union. The newspapers were silent about the omnipotence of the services and political militia, the Gulag, purges and genocides. Hollywood followed suit. As if on cue, instead of production with an anti-communist overtone, it began to create images praising the American-Soviet friendship, including "Mission in Moscow" or "Song about Russia".
No shame
The myth of a revolution that must take its toll, but for the good of mankind, resonated particularly strongly in France. And not only among journalists, but also philosophers, sociologists and artists. Peany in honor of the Soviet Union was delivered, among others, by a leading representative of the so-called existentialism, writer and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Besides, he is not the only one. Among the sympathizers of the USSR there were such figures as the writers Simone do Beauvoir and Albert Camus, the poet Louis Aragon and the art critic Andre Breton.
photo:刘东 鳌 (Liu Dong'ao) - Xinhua News Agency / public domain Peany in honor of the Soviet Union was delivered, among others, by writer and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre.
All these people, considered to be outstanding authors to this day, repeatedly publicly denied the crimes of Stalinism, belittled or justified them. They were doing the work of "useful idiots" - as Lenin called it at the dawn of the revolution. They supported the Soviet propaganda despite the increasingly common signals of bestiality and terror in the USSR. When in 1946 the fugitive Viktor Kravchenko (escaped from the Soviet delegation that visited the USA in 1944) published his unmasking autobiography "I Chose Freedom", accusations began to flow from the circle of French communists that the publication was the work of ... American intelligence.
Kravchenko took the authors of the article to court. At the same time, he exhorted other refugees from the USSR to write letters - testimonies of their fate behind the Iron Curtain. The trial ended in embarrassment of the communists in France. It turned out that in their counterarticle they were based on reports from arranged tours around the Soviet Union for Western journalists, organized by the NKVD in the 1930s. These were obviously shows, presentations of false reality. Nevertheless, left-wing intellectuals fiercely defended and justified the Soviet regime almost to the end. Jean Paul Sartre, in reaction to the conditions of life in the labor camps described by Kravchenko, stated:" We may be outraged or shocked by the existence of these camps (...), but should they embarrass us?".
The dialectic of crime
The same Sartre, after a trip to the USSR (at the invitation of the local authorities) in the 1950s, in an interview for the Liberation daily, claimed that there is complete freedom of expression in the "Kraj of the Soviets". Russians do not travel the world not because they cannot, but because they do not want to. Because they live so well… Some of the leftist intellectuals created complicated theoretical constructions. Only to justify the crimes of the Soviet regime. Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed that behind the labor camps and terror there was "historical necessity." On the other hand, the USSR ranks morally higher than the Western countries, because it uses violence overtly and not in a hidden way, as European countries were supposed to do.
Sartre argued that there was complete freedom of expression in the "Land of the Soviets". The Russians do not travel the world not because they cannot, but because they do not want to.
The state of consciousness of the intellectual elite on the Seine did not change even after Stalin's death, when Stalin's crimes were officially criticized in the Soviet Union itself. After Nikita Khrushchev delivered his speech on the cult of the individual, which directly hit Stalin and portrayed him as a criminal, Jean Paul Sartre accused him of… acting to the detriment of the communist revolution. “ We shouldn't take hope away from the Billancourt workers” - he said.
Back in the 1970s, French "Le Monde" regularly criticized Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of the "Gulag Archipelago", calling him, inter alia, a Nazi. In turn, in "Le Figaro" it was stated that:" The inclusion of Poland into the political system of the Soviet Union is neither an occupation nor a protectorate, nor a form of vassalism - it is a kind of broad and lasting cooperation ”.
The Mitochin Archive
In 1992, the world got to know the so-called Mitochin Archive. It was a collection of over 300 thousand. secret KGB documents taken to the West by a fugitive, former KGB archivist, Vasily Mitokhin. It was also then that the truth about the infiltration of Western media, including French, by the Soviet agency was revealed . Journalists recruited by the KGB worked in high positions at the AFP (Agence France Presse) and "Le Monde" press agency. They were the ones who gave direction and tone to the articles and influenced the pro-Soviet editorial line.
Light criminals
The blindness and naivety of Western opinion-forming circles towards the USSR still arouses surprise and bitterness. Especially in our part of the world - so "familiar" with Soviet barbarism. As an excuse for Westerners, one can say that communism and the Soviet management model were never their reality. Hence to a large extent used ready-made cliches given to them by the agents.
The image created on the inspiration of the Soviets themselves, to a large extent, functions in the consciousness of the West to this day.
It is sad, however, that the image created on the inspiration of the Soviets themselves, to a large extent, functions in the consciousness of the West to this day. Stalinist crimes are not equal to the crimes of the Third Reich. There is no equality sign between the two totalitarianisms. And after all, they not only cooperated with each other (which resulted in the destruction and division of Poland), but also used similar methods and led to the death of millions of people. The same naivety now applies to the perception of Russia, which has never renounced its Stalinist past . Russian troll farms and agents in European countries are ruthlessly creating confusion and chaos and distorting reality.