WHAT'S IN IT FOR US?
Our Stake in Peaceful Relations with the Soviet Union
ERIC JOHNSTON told Soviet trade officials at a banquet given by Mikoyan, "We in America have a proverb which says that your only true friend is the one who knows the worst about you and still likes you." Then he went on to emphasize the basic differences betwen the U. S. and the U.S.S.R. In fact, he said that in economics we were more different from Russia than any other country. But he wound up by saying that this difference need not be a barrier to good relations.
The Russians liked this speech. They printed the most important sections of it. I think they did more than that. They studied it, and made sure that others read and studied it. Wherever I traveled in the U.S.S.R. I found that the local inhabitants had a surprising familiarity with Johnston's ideas. The Soviet officials found things in this speech which they have been wanting to say—and Johnston said it for them.
No country in the world is envied as much as America. The Russians know that the U. S. provided the blueprint for their own industrial development; we sept them engineers and technicians, too. They envy our culture—our fountain pens and our shoe stores, our cans of fruit and our cigaret lighters; these things, to them, are American culture. They love our movies. They think we live like Rockefellers. They think we fight well, almost as well as Russians. They are exceedingly grateful for our material aid during the war; for millions of Russian families American supplies may have been the difference between getting by and starving.
More and more Russian citizens have have things they only dream about. But most Russians are living for the better day that's coming, and a few years more or less doesn't matter so much. been going abroad—as diplomats, as businessmen, as students, as soldiers. The capitalist world has dazzled them. It's a great tribute to their own idealism and love of country that more of them haven't decided to stay in England or U. S. or Mexico. We
Yet I found many Russians who hoped that after the war the Soviet Government would become more like England and America. They hoped this because thev want peace and security and they know it depends on being friendly with England and America, especially America. They admired our planes and our shoes when they saw them and marveled how we could fight a war and still have supplies to send across the seas to allies. Perhaps some of them even wished they had such an economic system.
So that when Johnston underlined the fact that our two systems were very different—and yet we could cooperate, that made Soviet officials happy. It made the Russian people happy, too. Because—and let's not kid ourselves—the vast majority of them like their own way of doing things pretty well, and maybe they wouldn't care to change it just to please certain elements in the United States.
We like our way of running things, and I think the Russians understand pretty well that we won't tolerate outside inter- ference. The average Russian is not interested in world revolution, and as I've already said, I don't think Stalin is going to "export" revolution, either. He'd much rather export fur and import our heavy machinery.
I have written my impressions of the Russians. When I came back to the U. S. I met a Russian girl who has been here since 1941. She has traveled all over our country. She has met the same kind of people here that I met in her country. Naturally she was terribly anxious to hear my impressions of Russia. Then I asked her what she thought of the U. S. The question surprised her. Americans always asked her about the Soviet Union and never bothered to find out what she thought of things here. We just naturally take it for granted that a Russian would be bowled over.
And so the girl had to think for a few minutes. She had no ready answer. She told me she was thrilled at first. It seemed more wonderful than she could have imagined. Her impulse was to stay here forever. She liked Americans, they liked her.
But after three years, she wanted to go home. Not alone for sentimental or patriotic reasons, she said. I took some notes as she tried to express herself about why she preferred her own country and her own people even if it meant a harder way of life. She began by talking about how we were different. "Americans are naive. About everything," she said. "They are the most generous people in the world. Bjit this generosity is superficial, it is on the surface. Because living is so easy. When tlicy give, they give from largesse. When we in give, we give a piece of the heart, part of the blood of life.
"The Russian is more of an individual. That is because life is very hard. He is on his own. Every day he is faced with important decisions about what to eat, whether to eat, how to work, whether to sleep or whether to keep fighting. He must, in the last analysis, make these decisions himself.
"I lived my whole life under the Soviets. Many times there have been things I wanted to say but I could not say them and I did not understand why. Freedom of speech you call it. But is that the main barometer of happiness? Here you can say anything. You can say anything you want about your President. Does that really make you happier?"
She paused, not really expecting me to answer. Then continued in her uncertain English, "We have something I do not find, I cannot find here, not anywhere. A sense of achievement made from our own strength. The sense that we did it together. The sense that no one is going to make a profit from our labor except ourselves. The sense that when Mrs. Ostrovsky in Moscow gets a gold compact a Mrs. Os trovsky in Sverdlovsk or Komsomolsk or Erivan is going to get one too, if she has earned it."
This talk surprised me. The girl is not a Soviet official. She is not a Communist. She is the wife of an American, and she could undoubtedly stay in the U. S. if she wanted to do so. Maybe she will, eventually. But I had just returned from Russia, feeling that I certainly wanted to live here and not there. So it was surprising to meet a Russian with my feeling, in reverse.
Despite the chasm between our two political and economic systems, I think Russians are more like Americans in character and temperament than any other foreigners. This comparison has been frequently repeated, but it bears repetition in any discussion of future relations between our two countries. We both talk big, plan big. We live in lands of opportunity. In the U. S. every laborer thinks of his future as a "middle-class" future; in the U.S.S.R. every laborer looks to the day when he will study and become an engineer and get better food, housing, and other privileges. We are both multi-n? tional countries. We are machine-minded and city-minded. The urban population of Russia more than doubled between 193141, and in one generation 25,000,000 Soviet peasants became mechanics, welders, pilots, chauffeurs, gunners.
We are pioneer peoples. We love to explore. We are hospitable, friendly. We are self-reliant and proud and we have our own sense of humor. We are versatile, energetic, self-sacrificing—although perhaps the Russians have more experience at that. We like sports. We like to watch them, and to compete in them. We have great fondness for gadgets, for speed, for progress.
Despite the sharp difference in our economic methodology, most Americans and most Russians are united in their belief that everyone is born with the right of equal opportunity. There is much more equal opportunity in the Soviet Union than most Americans realize—and no discrimination because of race or color. Conversely Russians do not always know about the checks and balance of our system which tend to equalize opportunity—inheritance taxes, for example.
In both countries there's no kick coming when another man lives better and has more privileges and comforts—if he earns it. And nowhere else in the world have women been given so much independence as in the U. S. and the U.S.S.R.
Love of family cannot be left off the list of similarities. For the family in Russia has weathered the early Bolshevik storm, and its roots are still firm and deep among the people.
As nations we have common paths to follow. A girl reporter for Tass asked Eric Johnston one day in Omsk, "What is in common between the U. S. and the U.S.S.R.?"
"Many things," he answered. "Desire of long term peace, improvement of living standards, further development of our own countries, no conflicting territorial interests—that is, land which one country wants from another." He added that he believed, too, that the volume of trade between us would increase after the war "undoubtedly several times."
Last summer Foreign Trade Commissar Mikoyan said that Russia wished to purchase "many billions of dollars" worth of goods from the U. S. after the war. Stalin asked Eric Johnston how much the Soviet Union would have to buy from us to keep our men fully employed.
The Russians cannot buy billions from us unless they get long-term credits and unless we increase our imports from them. Before the war we never bought more than 30 million dollars worth from the U.S.S.R. in any given year. The Russians believe that we can easily triple or even quadruple <;his figure. They hope we will make it ten or twenty times greater. They point out that they have things to sell which we need —furs, manganese, flax, tungsten, copper, chrome, platinum, wood pulp, oil, novelties and handicrafts.
The credits which Russia needs for largescale orders that will speed her rehabilitation are for ten to 25 years. I have travelled 20,000 miles in the Soviet Union. I have seen what they have done, and I think the country and the people are a good, sound investment. They have proved that they can produce in war. They will do even more in peace.
Soviet purchasing agents are in America negotiating for equipment to rebuild the Donbas coal mines, the docks of the Black Sea, the grain elevators of the Ukraine. They are ordering electrical equipment, refinery machinery, radio tube manufacturing facilities, steel rails and heavy locomotives, some non-ferrous metal mining machinery and crushing equipment, heavy tractors, as well as whole steel and chemical plants.
The Russians want to buy equipment to make things, not the things themselves. In the case of construction materials, they are not ordering prefabricated houses but equipment to make the houses.
A Soviet Vice-Commissar of Foreign Trade told me that his office was planning a giant exhibition in Moscow which would enable Russian citizens to see displays of the latest in American machine tools, oildrillers, bulldozers, kitchen and plumbing equipment, prefabricated houses, and the most modern plastic consumer goods.
Some observers foresee a clash between Russia and ourselves over markets. But Russia has a big enough market of its own to satisfy. In many fields their techniques are still very far behind ours—food processing and canning, pharmaceuticals, steel mill equipment and precision tools to name just a few.
U. S. manufacturers lose nothing, they figure, by selling complete steel or chemical or rubber plants to the Russians. By the time the Russians set them up and get them going, the U. S. will have new factories that will make the ones we sold outmoded. They know they are losing some of their potential market by selling a complete plant, but they are shrewd enough to compensate for part of this loss by boosting the sale price.
Stalin reiterated recently that the Soviet Union "has never engaged in the fight for foreign markets. We have a policy of exporting only those goods which have a direct bearing on imports. For instance, raw materials to pay for heavy machinery.
"Soviet production of raw materials for export to the U. 5.," he asserted, "will adapt itself .to what the U. S. requires. We can furnish any quantity you wish, if we can get the equipment to produce it. That is the reason we are interested in long term credits. We can get along without them, but it will be slower."
No matter how much we import from Russia or export to them it is obvious that the Russian market will not be the panacea for our own postwar trade problems. In Moscow and in Washington I have heard 5 billion dollars as an estimate of our annual postwar market in Russia. This will serve as a very handy cushion for the first three to five years after the war, particularly in heavy machine tools.
The important part about our postwar trade is that we must have peace with England and Russia or our business will be 100% in supplying the "merchants of death." If America and the Soviet Union begin a race for military supremacy, there will be no market anywhere for anything but cannon and cannon fodder. If there is no sound peace between Russia and America, Europe will not want to rebuild. If we are making fists at Moscow while Moscow is readying a haymaker against Washington, the Balkans won't want American credits or American engineers.
American business fondly dreams of China as a vast potential market after Japan's defeat. But even China will be a shaky investment if there are war clouds over the Kremlin and the White House.
For the next generation, and perhaps much longer, the bulk of the world's military and industrial power will be possessed by two nations, the U. S. A. and the U.S.S.R. This concentration of power can lead to good or evil; it can be used to keep the peace, to build up a world-wide standard of living beyond our current dreams; or it can lead to war, to tearing down once again everything so many have died to preserve.
I am convinced that the last thing in the world that the Russians want, any of them, is a war with the United States. I am also convinced that we can no longer af- ford the drawing room or editorial room pleasure of asking ourselves, "Can we get along with Russia?" or "Should we try to get along with Russia?" The hope of the world is peace. Without effective collaboration between the U. S. A. and the U.S.S.R. a peace of long duration is just another giddy word on a politician's tongue, just a monosyllable that Tin Pan Alley rhymes with fleece
We must and can get along with the Soviet Union.
There are plenty of things the Russians will have to learn about us before the gears grind smoothly. They are sometimes brash, sometimes too brusque, sometimes downright uncooperative in the business of getting along or of international politics or anything else you want to call it. But we can be equally irritating to them. We have a way of reacting to their crude methods not only with disapproval but with unrestrained horror, with name-calling, with dire predictions. We have got to realize that there are going to be plenty of mistakes made and that Russia is going to make her share. We can help our relations with Russia by not having a public temper tantrum everytime the Soviets do something which we consider wrong. And we would like more restraint in Pravda when the Russians disagree with us.
We are sure to have plenty of personal problems with returned soldiers who have been at war too long. Sometimes they will be over-shy and cautious, non-talkative; other times they will assert themselves out of all proportion to the occasion. The Soviets have been at war too long; they've been fighting for more than a quarter of ; century against all kinds of odds, against all kinds of enemies. Gradually, I think, they are feeling their own strength, and with it a measure of security.
What's required of us as a people and a government is succinctly expressed by Sumner Welles, former Under Secretary of State, in his book The Time for Decision: ... it's no exaggeration to say that Russia's future course depends very largely on whether the U. S. can persuade the Russian people and their government that their permanent and truest interest lies in cooperating with us in the creation and maintenance of a democratic and effective world organization."
This persuasion process does not mean appeasement. It means more patience, more understanding, more thought and a more consistently above-board policy of our own so that Russia will know where we are heading and why. They have a right to know our policy on Franco; we know theirs on Poland, even if we don't like it.
I think, too, they have earned much more trust than many Americans have been prepared to give them. They have earned it on the battlefield withstanding four-fifths of the Germany army; they earned it with their lives and their blood more surely than Finland ever earned it by paying regular cash installments on a debt.
Before I left Moscow I had a long talk with one of the men in the Soviet Foreign Office who knows as much about England and America and about Russia's postwar security plans as any one in Moscow. I told him that in Poland the Germans had been pushing the propaganda line that the next world war would be between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Germans claimed that the Atlantic Charter was evidence of this since it pledged to exterminate the dictatorships and the Soviet Union was admittedly a dictatorship. I asked him what he thought about this.
He smiled at me in a kindly, almost fatherly fashion. "I am not worried about German propaganda. But this is not a new thought. We have heard that many high ranking American officers think the same thing and say it, off-the-record."
"Do you think this will be?" "Not in my lifetime," he said, "and I hope not in yours."
Later in our conversation he indicated that the Soviet Union would like a 25year alliance with the U. S. somewhat like the ones it now has with Britain and France. At one point I asked if Russia would favor staff cooperation and inter change of military information with the Allies after the war, and I was reminded: "We have a military pact with Great Britain. In peace we will naturally maintain our mutual security. Conferences for the interchange of information would come within that framework."
There is no easy formula for getting along with Russia. It's something that has to be worked on hard by both parties all the time, like a successful marriage. We must look beyond labels; we must reexamine old prejudices. The Russians must do the same thing.
We are going to have to put as much united effort, thought and fight into building a peace machine as we did into building a war machine. The only alternative is a certain third World War.
More than a year before he died, Wendell Willkie had a conversation about world affairs with Samuel Grafton, columnist for the New York Post. Grafton quoted Willkie as follows: "I tell you that if a man is not, deep in his. belly, in favor of closest possible relations with Britain and Russia, then it does not matter what else he is. Such a man will be anti-Labor, even if he praises labor twenty-four flours a day. He will be anti Labor because he will be working for a constricted America, a less prosperous America. For the very same reason the very same man will also be anti-business, in the deepest sense, even though he may consider himself a servant of business, even though he falls on his knees before business. He will be anti-business because he will be working for a smaller America, a less important America. This is the touchstone to a man's entire position in politics today. Only occasionally does it happen that one issue arises which is so controlling that every other issue is subsidiary to it, and this is it. But it is not enough for a man merely to repeat the right words about world collaboration. He has to be on fire with it. He has to feel, in his belly, that this is the door which will open outward to an expansion of American activity and prosperity. You cannot be wrong on this issue and right on any other."
This statement is, I think, the final answer to the question in the title of this article, "What's In It For Us?" In a word, everything.
A PLEDGE OF FRIENDSHIP is sealed with fraternal handclasps by U. S. War Correspondent Dick Layterbach '35 (center) and two Red Army officers while Lauterbach and the Eric Johnston party he was accompanying were guests on a boat sailing on the Ob River near Novosibirsk, Siberia.
ANY AMERICAN WOULD FEEI AT HOME IN THIS SETTING. Judging from the pleased expressions of these Russian football spectators, their side is winning. The game was between the Dynamo and Red Army teams.
LISTENING CAREFULLY TO A BROADCAST, Russian farmers gather close to their radio so as to concentrate on every word of a British agreement read to them over the air. They seem happy over what they hear.
MOSCOW CORRESPONDENT FOR "TIME" AND "LIFE"
The editors feel privileged to present this final chapter from Mr. Lauterbach's forthcoming book, These Are the Russians, to be published by Harper Brothers on May 23. The author returned to the United States last fall after ten months in the Soviet Union and is awaiting possible reassignment to the European or Pacific theatre of war. While in Russia he visited many Red Army fronts and was at Smolensk, Leningrad, Odessa, Sevastapol, Yalta, and Kharkov. Last summer he traveled throughout Russia with the Eric Johnston party. Before returning to New York he was one of the first group of foreign correspondents to enter liberated Poland and to inspect the murder camp near Lublin. Since his return to this country Mr. Lauterbach has been writing Foreign News for Life, including close-ups of Stalin and Marshal Zhukov. In addition to his own These Are the Russians, he is a contributor to another forthcoming book, History in the Writing, which Duell, Sloan and Pearce are publishing in June. He is married, has two children, and lives in New York City.
