Are Reds planning to fight? (1946)

1

The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1946)

Are Reds planning to fight?
Russia lacks strength for first class war, Paris diplomats say

Belligerent blustering at peace conference covers up grave weaknesses at home
By Ludwell Denny, Scripps-Howard staff writer

At the Paris conference two questions are uppermost: Is Russia forcing a war? Is she strong enough now to fight a major war? The following dispatch is the first of a series on what these informed diplomats and their experts are saying among themselves.

PARIS – Russia’s belligerent blustering at the Paris conference and at the United Nations Security Council covers up grave weaknesses at home. She is not strong enough to fight a major offensive war successfully now or in the near future.

This is the judgment of representative American and European authorities here who have access to the best official reports on the subject.

They do not say there will be no war. They do not know. But the danger is sufficiently acute for them to investigate and evaluate Russia’s strength nest carefully. Their conclusion is that Russia is not adequately prepared to fight and know it but at the same time she continues to use provocative methods for aggressive ends which usually cause war.

Russia is in worse shape economically than is generally supposed. The devastation left to the war is still widespread, especially in White Russia and the Ukraine. Reconstruction and recovery is slow in all three basic elements for a war economy – agriculture, heavy industry and transportation.

The government promised an end to the unpopular bread rationing by July. Then the date was postponed until October. Recently Moscow announced it would be continued through next year. The failure of the Ukraine crops from drought was one cause. No government tantalizes its people with unfilled promises of lifting rationing for fun. The political consequences are too risky.

Nevertheless, the food shortage is not as extreme as some exaggerated reports have indicated. Good crops in some other regions partly have offset the western losses. So, net, the harvest is believed to be fair. But the point is that the reserves are low and the harvest is reported to be insufficient to build up the essential supplies.

War requires reserves of food

Those reserves are required by Moscow for two purposes: One is for relief next spring in the satellite countries after UNRRA withdraws food is essential as a Soviet political weapon in her sphere of influence. Second, for storage to bulk up a war reserve.

This shortage of food reserves is said to explain in part Moscow’s policy of keeping large occupation armies in other countries, where they can live off the land. More red troops are stationed in Eastern Germany and Austria than are required for immediate military purposes. Their training, reorganization and reindoctrination, so important to Moscow, could be carried out better inside Russia. Moreover, their continued presence in such excessive numbers is a political liability to the German and Austrian Communist parties which are trying to win over the natives.

But Russian home conditions being what they are, the Kremlin cannot afford to feed those Red Armies so long as they can find their own food abroad.

Slow industrial recovery is admitted officially by Moscow. Since June the Ministry for State Control has been purging many factory managers and others, charging them with inefficiency and corruption. The current five-year plan announced by Premier Josef Stalin last February to triple pre-war production has been running up against additional troubles other than national fatigue after the long, heroic effort and the shortage of industrial technicians.

The most striking evidence of this is the virtual collapse, for the time being at least, of the original Kremlin plan to rehabilitate and industrialize the country by moving German, Austrian and other conquered plants bodily to Russia. Today much of that machinery is lying scattered and rusting because of inability of the Russians to assemble and use it.

Transport weakest link in Russia

This failure, plus the time factor in the present war danger, has forced Stalin to reverse his plan. He now is leaving the factories in Germany and Austria and running them full blast with native technicians and labor to produce armaments and all type of goods for the Red Army.

The transportation situation is the worst of all. Traditionally a weak link in the Russian economy it suffered terrible war destruction. Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners still are held in Russia to repair rail lines, build bridges and highways.

Locomotives and railway equipment generally are problems. For example, on the Moscow-Leningrad main line the trip now takes from twice to three times the pre-war schedule.

It is not suggested here that these many evidences of Russia’s economic troubles will prevent her eventual recovery and growth as a leading industrial power. But for the present and near future Russia’s economic base is too narrow and too shaky, according to many international experts gathered here, to sustain the kind of war apparently threatened by the Soviet Union and its satellites.

NEXT: Political factors in the Soviet war threat

2

The Pittsburgh Press (September 17, 1946)

Are Reds planning to fight?
Rank and file in Russia desperately long for peace

But Kremlin takes action to eliminate unrest evident as post-war trend
By Ludwell Denny, Scripps-Howard staff writer

PARIS – Conference delegates and experts here who know the internal situation as well as any foreigner can know it, report increasing political strain in Russia. They agree that the rank and file of the Russian people desperately want peace.

Nevertheless, officials here dismiss as nonsense reports that internal Soviet political dissension has reached serious proportions that the Kremlin’s control is jeopardized, or that the Russian people would fail to fight zealously if ordered.

Living so long behind the iron curtain, knowing only what the government radio and press report to be true, and thinking only what they are told to think, the Russian people doubtless can be made to believe – if and when Stalin desires – that any Soviet war of aggression is actually the defense of Mother Russia against “satanic capitalist conspiracy.”

Graft fought

Present internal political weaknesses in Russia seem less significant to international experts here than the Kremlin’s fast and vigorous measures to eliminate them. The extent of current political purges indicates the Kremlin thinks the chances of war are too big to risk even the mildest sort of intellectual freedom, which could be an asset in a peaceful period of national reconstruction.

It is not surprising that Moscow reports widespread inefficiency and graft among factory managers and others, and it is getting rid of them. Such laxity is a characteristic heritage of war, to some degree, in all countries. And the post-war period is time for exposes and tightening up efforts everywhere.

But what concerned the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party at its important meeting four weeks ago was “the state of the ideological front.” Hence the dispatch of top party officials to the four corners of the country to clean house – especially Party Secretary Zhdanov to Leningrad and Ukrainian Premier Khrushchev to his bailiwick.

According to the Soviet Press, Khrushchev said he found a dangerous revival of capitalist nationalist ideals. From 50 to 90 percent of party officials there were purged.

Griping may be wide

That percentage is so large even in purge-minded Russia as to suggest to foreign observers that the Kremlin considers the international emergency too grave to risk the time required to salvage so many key men, upon whom the burden of the home front would rest in war.

If local party leaders and functionaries have been getting dangerous ideas obviously lesser party members and large sections of the population outside privileged precincts of the Communist Party must be affected even more.

But deviation from the party line which would seem serious to the Kremlin might appear mild to foreigners – as, for instance. The post-war grumbling over lack of consumer goods and the idea that the Soviet state is less than perfect.

See how others live

In this connection millions of returning Red soldiers create a political problem. They have been beyond Russian borders and have seen that even backward countries such as Poland and Romania were further advanced in many ways than Russia – contrary to what they had been taught at home.

Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin were revelations of material progress of which they never dreamed. So “insidious western capitalist contact” which long has forced Stalin to purges, is now a problem involving millions rather than scores of Soviet citizens who have been outside the country.

But the main effects of this will be gradual rather than climactic, and it is probably something that the Soviet police can handle – now, at any rate. Reorientation camps to which many returning Soviet soldiers are subjected apparently are fairly successful. It is possible that the net effect of the Red Army’s contact with the outer world – if properly handled by political commissars and propaganda agencies – could be to stir the soldier’s appetite for more foreign crusades. That has happened to victorious armies before.

What’s Zhukov doing

As to the related question whether there is a serious internal fight for power in Moscow between the Politburo and rising military heroes, there is no agreement here. Some still think such a conflict explains the demotion of Marshal Gregory Zhukov, Others think Zhukov actually was promoted to the job of revamping the new army, and that he is in Odessa area because the Middle East and the Balkans are potentially the hottest war areas.

Likewise, there is no general agreement on whether V. M. Molotov – or which of his competitors – has the inside track as eventual successor to Stalin. While internal conflict is known to exist, there is no disposition here to assume any fatal disunity in the Kremlin now. It is believed that Stalin is still master.

Therefore, responsible officials here are much more impressed by Russia’s present economic weakness in relation to war danger than any major political barrier. The consensus is that the Russian people would fight anywhere and anytime Stalin gave the order.

NEXT: Are Soviet satellites war assets or liabilities?