Joseph E. Davies Mission to Moscow Simon and Schuster:1941

Many people went to Russia in the mid 1930's. Lib als and radicals went

in order to see this "new order" which to some extent they either sympatheized

with or were outright partisans of. Many of them came away disappointed, shocked

or saddened. Other, like Joseph Davies, v t diplomatically and came back with

apparently more enthusiasm and attachment to the , not ideologically

but due perhaps to some of the very reasons others were discouraged.

The revolution had lost its impetus, socialism had proved a failure and

the Russian state was increasingly dependent upon the incentives and methods of

pre-revolutionary Russia. The state was totalitarian and tyrannical, yet it was

also increasingly "conservative". "The governing powers have...ben compelled to

9 abandon most of their communistic principles".

Mission to Moscow is tt in th ff f the journal notes, diaries and

diplomatic and personal letters which Davies wrote from the end of 1936 through 1939,

'si also some less complete comments covering the period from 1939 until 1941.

He discusses the economic development in Russia, the political conditions (the

purges, the 1936 Constitution, the "terror", etc), and Russia's foreign relations.

Although the book has a reputation as being "naive" (communistic according to

the McCarthysl) I felt that if one sifts through the material one has all the

data to document a modern liberal's detestation of Soviet domestic and foreign

policy, as well as much of the material unfortunately still ignnred by our State

Department which is of essential propagandistic use to disenchant the millions

of "enchanted" in Europe and Asia.

For Russian foreign , in contrast perhaps to her domestic variety,

is still based on the radical and socialist ideology of the Revolution, which as

Davies points out, has in fact long been actually abandoned in R ssia iteself.

Whether it has been abandoned due to th limits of "human nature" or for other

reasons is to some extent irrelevant here. But there is no doubt, and Davies

observations and conversations make this vividly clear, that the idea of a classlesss" -2- society, the objective of "equality", of democracy, freedom, creativity, internationalism, all these highly appealing slogans and concepts have been abandoned and destroyed

(and within Russia today are, in fact, considered "bourgeois" concepts). Yet these are the cornerstones of Russian propagandistic influence.

Davies presents an excellent analysis of the nature of the new Soviet 61lass system f"the government itself is a bureaucracy with all the indicia of a class").

Likewise his quotes from various statements made by Russian and foreign diplomats on the purpose of foreign CP'S (as an arm of nationalistic foreign and military policy rather than revolutionary independent action) could well be chimed around the world.

Nevertheless Davies does many other services for the USSR, even while doing ~ them ts disservice (~ihe-ay, -n mru.haf di.~u-nice- atig th;b t+ t.4 when Russianpr e was aimedreaimed att rionaryou te zr g u"pil A . He clearly.49 accepts the Russian rp a version of the 1936 as '37 purges, even while he dislikes the trial methods*. ,

Likewise he skips quickly over the German-Russian pact period and the nature of the propaganda which the Soviet Union and their CP tools were spreading (poking A fun at democracy, calling "fascism a matter of taste", etc).

His conclusions seem naive today (in 1942 they were deemed essential in order to pump enthusiasm for Russia into the American people), " hold no serious threat to the ". Of course if he means the "communism" which

Russia has long abandoned the statement is self-evident, but if he means the nationalistic, totalitarian, expansive Soviet state this contention is certainly in retrospect a tragic and naive one.

It is in this confusion between his understanding of the new nonsowialist ideology of the present Soviet state and his inability to grasp the implications of the new ideology that Davies seems most naive. On one hand he claims to prefer

Russia to Germany since communism has ideologically some kinship with Christianity and on the other hand it is this very elemnet of the Communist ideology which has been most thoroughy destroyed. 3 -- -- -3-

Nevertheless I wish to emphasize the fact that despite the perniciousness of many of his conclusions and the questionablness of some of his fatsts, and despite the obvious friendly overtones of the book (with its warm pr4#se of

Stalin and his gentle eyes), much of it is still valuable to the understanding

of Russia today, and all of it is valuable toward understanding American-Russian relations in that transitional and fateful period between 1936 and 1942.