People under communism; Strange behavior of the Soviet diplomats, part one

This is people under communism a series of documentaries interviews and talks based upon documented evidence and expert knowledge about the power and intentions of the Soviet Union. The series is presented transcribed by the National Association of educational broadcasters in consultation with scholars from the Russian Research Center Harvard University. The Russian Institute of Columbia University and the Hoover Institute and library at Stanford University. The program you're about to hear is an analysis of the strange behavior of the Soviet diplomats. The analysis is by Dr. Philip emotionally director of the Russian Institute at Columbia University. During World War Two Dr. Mosley was advisor to the Department of State and expert at the Moscow conference in 1983. The Potsdam conference in 1945 and the meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers at London and Paris in one thousand forty five and one thousand forty

six. He has spent some 2000 hours as a United States representative in face to face negotiations with Russians on international commissions. Dr. mostly. In these years since the end of World War Two people in this country have been increasingly puzzled and amazed by the strange behavior of the Soviet diplomats when they come to this country as representatives or when they come to the United Nations. They persist in making absurd charges throwing wild accusations about and they always take such a wooden attitude. They seem to be completely isolated from the American environment even when they have stayed here for many months or several years in order to understand the role of a Soviet diplomat we must remember that he is a mechanical mouthpiece for views which are formulated in

Moscow and which are transmitted to him simply to be reported to the American government or delivered in a meeting of the United Nations. He receives these views formulated down to the last word. He canit add or subtract. It would be extremely dangerous to him politically and even personally if he began to ad lib on his own. The orders are formulated in Moscow and whether or not they fit the situation he has to carry them out. I think it is very likely that Soviet diplomatic representatives make no effort to report adequately the views of foreign peoples and governments. If they were to report these views fully or in any degree sympathetically they would be accused of falling prey to Cosmopolitan influences of the West to deserving the strict standard of ideology

demanded by Must go of its responsible servants. A further reality of the Soviet diplomat is that he has practically no for informal contacts with foreigners. What contacts he has are informal speeches press interviews or delivery of notes according to a line laid down from above. He does not have this kind of facility which an American diplomat has in most parts of the world for informal conversations sharing of views understanding and reporting and other viewpoints. It is probable that the Soviet government does not rely very much on its diplomats for information from abroad either factual or opinion. Probably they rely primarily on newspapers and newspaper clippings. It is surprising in fact how little they seem to rely upon radio and radio commentators

which it is clear from studies of American public opinion have a much wider formative effect than a newspaper editorials appear to have today. When Mr ski gets up in the United Nations and quotes from some local newspaper in an out-of-the-way part of the United States as a proof of an American conspiracy to attack the Soviet Union we are left aghast for we know that there is wide freedom of opinion on the part of individual editors and even editorial writers and that all this is often determined by local and personal feelings and is certainly not part of a general conspiracy such as Mr ski or other Soviet representatives are inclined to see everywhere. It is it is only occasionally that foreign views are taken into account in the making of Soviet decisions and then they are taken into account

as a fact which has to be accepted rather than as something which is understood in the slightest degree sympathetically. I remember one very striking moment at the Potsdam conference in 1905. There was a discussion among the big three concerning the division of the German submarines which had been captured at the end of the war. The Soviet government represented by Marshal Stalin was demanding a three way division between the United States Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The two Western leaders at this time. Atlee and Truman were urging that the submarines be destroyed except for a few which might be studied and then destroyed. For a long time Stalin and Molotov kept demanding an

equal share of the submarines which had been captured. Finally Mr Bevan attending his first international conference as the new foreign minister of the Labor government lost patience and turning his great bulk of body toward Stalin and moment off he said with great earnestness and even grimace How can I explain to the British workers and especially to the seamen 50000 of whom have been sunk by the German submarines. Why any of these submarines should be left in being or given even to friends after this forceful outburst by Mr Bevan. There was a consultation between TOF and Stalin and then Molotov turned and with considerable nervousness. I said to Bevan very well we accept your position.

In this instance the fact that most of the submarines were in British and American hands undoubtedly facilitated this solution but it did show that when pressed face to face by a sharp feeling and sense of concern on the other side the Soviet leaders did accept it as a fact even though it ran counter to their own direct interests. One difficulty that Soviet diplomats have is that they are afraid to offer informal suggestions to their own government or to their foreign counterparts. They are unable to explore a problem or to study a compromise. Almost always they feel obliged to press for the full Soviet demands right down to the last minute. There have been many

cases in which at a time when negotiation was being carried on with some hope of success that they could have gained more in the long run by informal discussions by a study of compromise but instead they felt they had to press to the very last minute for the full position often hardening the position of the foreign government in the process. Another device which the Soviet diplomats use continually is to build up a whole array of grievances and to play upon these in the beginning of a negotiation. For example at the time of the Potsdam conference the Soviet leaders insisted on discussing at great length the presence of British troops in Greece and in Syria. Although they themselves had far larger forces in Boag area and in Romania. But

having raised issues having brought forward charges of bad will having provided propaganda material. To be used on their side in many parts of the world they had also been able to shorten the amount of time left for dealing with the real issues which were there to be negotiated. Sometimes and this is not peculiar only to Soviet diplomacy the Soviet leadership has entered negotiation only after establishing a firm position from which it could not be budged. For example as soon as the arrangements were made for holding the Yalta Conference in February 1945 the Soviet government violated its informal agreement with England and America by extending recognition to the temporary government in Poland as the genuine government of Poland. In doing so they knew

well that they were establishing a point of bitter dispute with the Western countries which continued to recognize the government in exile in London. But they also knew that negotiation at the altar on Poland would start from the fact that they had already recognized the loop government as the legitimate government of Poland and that this would work in favor of their position since they were also in military occupation of all of Poland. Sometimes the Soviet position although presented with great force can be turned back by vigorous and immediate counter pressure. I remember the case which occurred to me in September 1944 in London when we were negotiating on the terms for the armistice for bug area. And at this time

Soviet troops were already in vogue area and the government involved area was gradually being modified to suit the Soviet government under the direct Soviet pressure. There was not very much that we could bring to bear and we could not rely upon a Soviet desire to spare American interests or American feelings about freedom of choice of governments freedom of elections and principles of that kind which means something very concrete to us. I mean something very different to them. At that time in September 1944 about Garion troops were in occupation of part of Greece they had come in after the Nazi troops and they had helped the Nazis by occupying some of the richest parts of Greece. Areas which Bulgaria had also claimed frequently during the past 30 years.

In London the Soviet diplomats now demanded that the boat carrying troops be left in occupation of these areas of Greece and they pressed this point for several hours of very bitter negotiation. Finally realizing that it would be fatal to refer this question back to Washington because the delay would convince the Soviet government that there was hesitation that perhaps we would give in and that they therefore should hang on to this demand which would result eventually in large in Bogue area and in depriving Greece of territory which had been almost entirely Greek for two decades before the war of 1901. So without waiting to consult my government I decided to take a strong position then and there and I pushed myself back from the

table got rather red in the face and said This is an outrageous demand to leave the territory of Greece a member of the United Nations which has been invaded. By the Germans. Under the control of the government which is still an enemy government and I cannot even report this proposal to my government. After a few minutes of consultation while this was being translated into Russian the Soviet negotiator then turned and said that he withdrew the proposal and by that step the right of the Greeks to recover the occupation of their entire prewar territory was established and we went on to other matters which also took many weeks of discussion. Some of it very sharp. I felt sure at the time that if I had hesitated if I had waited to consult my government we would have lost a part or

all of the position which we felt we owed to Greece. Another great difficulty in dealing with the Soviet diplomats is their lack of real knowledge of western institutions and politics. Sometimes a special problem arises from the difference in the meanings of words between English and Russian. This difficulty in regard to the meaning of words was brought home to me in the spring of 1945 when we were negotiating an agreement among the Soviet Union Great Britain France and the United States concerning the status of correspondence. Newspaper and radio correspondence in post-war Germany. This proposed agreement was to come into force after the end of hostilities and after Germany had come under the occupation and administration

of the four powers. Naturally it was important from the point of view of the American interest that there be the maximum freedom of movement and reporting for all responsible correspondents at that time. I discussed this matter with a number of leading American correspondents in London and they approved a draft which which I had drawn up and which would have given the full freedom of reporting in all zones of Germany for all correspondence accredited by any one of the four commanders in chief of the four governments. As this is a proposed agreement came back to me in London however it had been considerably reworded to correspond more with the habits of military authority during a period of active military operations. And there was one particular joker which had crept into it. This said that each correspondent would be under the complete authority of the

commander in the zone in which he was working as a correspondent. Now the word authority in English is a relatively harmless word. It is one which can be light or heavy flexible or rigid and certainly Americans are not inclined to a rigid authority. But the word authority is translated into Russian and by the word of lust and blessed means absolute authority such as for example the right to try a person by administrative procedures and sentence him to five years of hard labor in Siberia without informing him of the charges without giving him the benefit of counsel. And of course without even hearing a whisper about ABS corpus or any such guarantees to the accused person. This is this paragraph in the proposed agreement as it came back from Washington to be

negotiated in London. I would therefore have placed under the authority of the Soviet commander any American correspondent who set foot in his zone and would have entitled The soul of the Soviet commander to treat him as he would any Soviet citizen and we would have had no real recourse. It was easy to imagine how the American people and the American newspapers would feel if this came about. I want to make this story short and so I will simply say that I tried twice to have this reworded so that this dangerous proposal would not be left in. In this particular wording but I was finally directed to present the proposed agreement and to negotiate it as soon as possible. So with a heavy heart I circulated the agreement. Now I want to explain that up until this time the Soviet negotiators had never been ready to move in less than

three months on any new proposal put before them. And there were at that time more than 18 proposals before them to which they had given no reply at all. Over a period of some six months. But after receiving this draft proposal concerning the status of correspondents in Germany the Soviet representative reported two days later that he was ready to negotiate this agreement. And I asked for a meeting the next day. Well this put me in a really serious predicament. And but but on the on the date before the negotiation actually began I figured out a way to get around it. I wired Washington that the negotiation was about to begin and that if I did not receive word to the contrary on the following day at 1 o'clock London time I was going to state that in this proposed agreement the word authority did not mean the Soviet meaning

but that it simply meant authority to credit or discredit correspondents in other words the right to issue credentials or to withdraw those credentials and nothing more than that. Well no country instructions came back fortunately and so on the following day we had our negotiation on the draft agreement about the status of newspaper correspondents in post war Germany. As soon as we came to this particular clause which the Soviet authority for Matt said that he would accept it once I explained that this must be understood to mean the authority to a credit or discredit correspondence. At that he lost interest and after another hour or two of discussing the proposed agreement nothing more was heard of it. The whole subject was dropped and the Soviet diplomats lost all interest in concluding this agreement. This of course was I think in the end

much better than trying to get an agreement which could have been interpreted in one way by them and in quite a different way by us. And this is the problem of finding a common language a common means of expression it can be done but it takes careful thought and it is wrong to assume that a word. Translated into another language will mean the same as it does in our own language or to us. This is not always true even between ourselves and the British and so why should it be true between ourselves and people who have grown up under an entirely different system. The Soviet system which places all power in the hands of the government and gives the individual No print no protection and no recourse against that absolute authority. The difficulty of the Soviet negotiators is also illustrated by the very fact that the word compromise has a bad meaning. In

Russian It is always linked with the word putrid and it is something that a Bolshevik is not supposed to do. It is very difficult to expect a Soviet diplomat to propose or even to study a compromise he regards an offer of a compromise as a retreat. On the other side and then that encourages him to keep on demanding the rest of what he wants until he is absolutely convinced and has convinced his own government that no further yielding is going to come through. There is no Soviet expression for goodwill. And yet in negotiations among friends we regard goodwill as an important byproduct. We do not want merely to gain a particular point. If in gaining it we cause lasting resentment and raise further difficulties with the people with whom we feel a partnership as we do with

the other nations of the free world to assure a Soviet diplomat of goodwill of peaceful intentions does little good. He feels that this is a trick that the more assurances of peaceful desires are given the more danger there is of a sudden attack. The Soviet diplomat reads into the western mind his own habits of promising peace. On the one hand while strengthening his country for war on the other this problem of words and the misuse of words is something that we need to think about too. When we present our case to the Soviet people and to peoples under Soviet domination for example I have noticed that many Americans use the word aggressive very frequently and demand an aggressive policy toward the Soviet Union.

Now in our common or colloquial meaning this means energetic strong. But in the dictionary it means preparing to commit aggression or engaged in committing aggression. You can be sure that every time the word aggressive is used by an American politician or a military man it is simply translated in its literal meaning into Russian and serves to confirm both the Soviet leaders and a good many of the Soviet people in the belief that the United States is engaged as Soviet propaganda maintains in an aggressive policy. If we would simply say firm strong energetic this it would be avoided in dealing with Soviet diplomats. We also have to display a great deal of patience. It is particularly helpful to state that the particular demand or interest in terms of basic

traditions and interests of our nation. Because as I mentioned above regarding Mr. Bevan and the division of the German submarines at Potsdam the Russian leaders do accept this statement of position as a fact even though they do not agree with it.