Labor paper raps Wallace’s Russian talks
Ignorance of state of affairs charged
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace’s Russian speeches were as inept as some he has made here, contends David J. Dallin, writing in the New Leader, liberal-labor weekly.
Mr. Dallin said:
Mr. Wallace’s speeches, although delivered in Russian, sounded like Wallace-English all the same. He not only promoted the American cause; what he said sounded perhaps a bit strange to his audience. After visiting industrial plants in Magadan, Komsomolsk and elsewhere in eastern Siberia, again and again he said, “I can bear witness to the willingness with which your citizens give their utmost efforts in mines, aircraft factories, metallurgical works.”
It so happens that the recently-emerged industry of this region has been built and is being operated largely by the manpower of the labor camps of eastern Siberia.
These camps, consisting of deportees, convicts, and “socially dangerous” elements, are among the saddest features of our sad times. Mr. Wallace, speaking of the inmates’ “willingness” to work, was unwittingly ironical.
Smuggled report cited
A report allegedly smuggled from Magadan forced labor camps, giving details of the wretched conditions there, is then cited by the writer. It says:
Half-decayed wooden barracks inside a ruin of wooden bunks, dilapidated fireplaces in which things could hardly be warmed up. No lighting after sundown. Food less than scanty.
One of the women’s camps in Magadan is being run by two young women leaders from the NKVD [formerly GPU], both very pretty, energetic but hellishly bad and hard. This camp is surrounded by barbed wire. During the summer, prisoners live in tents, men and women together. Women who keep to themselves are teased by the men.
People are extremely weakened, exhausted by the heavy labor. Most suffer from kidney trouble, from swelling of legs, from open wounds, from scurvy. Men often go blind. There are many cases of frostbite. Illnesses are spread because of the lack of recreation and of any signs of civilized life. Many die from diarrhea and general exhaustion…
‘Was it necessary?’
Mr. Dallin then concludes with this advice:
It certainly was no part of Mr. Wallace’s task, especially in wartime, to take up these problems with Russia, either publicly or privately. But he ought to be acquainted with the state of affairs, just as was Wendell Willkie who, after his visit to Russia in 1942, mentioned the problem in his reports.
Was it really necessary for Mr. Wallace to exclaim in Irkutsk that “men born in wide free spaces will not brook injustice” and that “they will not even temporarily live in slavery”?
Collaboration with Russia hardly requires statements of this kind before a well-informed audience in the Russian Far East.
