◆ SpookStack

. } . ' THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA a power. In contrast, a sufficiently massive nuclear strike could con- ceivably destroy simultaneously all these channels of command throughout the entire territory submitted to it. Under these conditions, democracy could still survive, as it derives from the agreement. of wills. Since representative government responds in general te the spontaneous tendencies of its social body, it enjoys the adaptive virtue of those organisms which breed peripheral heads when the central oneis severed. Dictatorships, on the contrary, have only one head. More, it is hated. When the head falls, the body rebels. It lives only by organization and coercion. If organi- zation and coercion crumble, the regime falls. Long before the erection of dams, power stations, and factories in the seized empire, the Bolsheviks’ first order of priority was the establish- ment of a tremendous network of party and police outposts and liaisons. On the day the telephone of the secret police cannot ring any more ip all the provinces of the Soviet Union there will be no more communiam. Although the West may be unaware of this, it is an obsessive terror to the Kremlin. That is why it will not initiate nuclear war. It has developed the formidable arsenal for such a war solely to intimidate the world, to support its blackmail behind which advance its authentic legions of conqueet; the activists and auxiliaries who are the legions of the subversive war. For the Soviets, the atom is the umbrella of the committee. As a result, the political front is more decisive than the military front in the present conflict between the free world and the Soviet world. And since propaganda is the principal weapon of political warfare, the study of its techniques is a matter of overriding urgency. It should be the central theme in the free world’s resistance to ite implacable enemy; in iis struggie for survival. POLITICAL WARFARE DEFINED During the first session of the International Conference on Political Warfare, in Paris, Mr. Adam Ciolkosz, former president of the Socialist group of the Polish Diet, got to the heart of the matter: “The essence of Communist political warfare is to control the public actions of men; not to convince men. The act of convincing is a democratic touchstone, while the act of controlling is a conspiratorial mechanism. In all Communist countries, control by communism is total, while belief in communism is nil.” It might be better to use the term “the war of sophistries,” rather than “the war of minds”; and “conspiratorial war” rather than “political war.” However, the expression “political warfare” will be retained because it has achieved wide popular usage, and is defined as ‘ollows: Political warfare is the activity conducted by agencies of Moscow and Peiping, established in the public life of all peoples to destroy free regimes from within and replace them with a system of totalitarian power. Its principal vehicles are propaganda, infiltration, corruption, conspiracy, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare, It uses indigenous per- sonnel, rather than engaging regular Soviet troops in armed conflict. The objective is to capture, or at least subvert to the purposes of the Kremlin or Peiping, the command posts controlling national policy; administration, press, radio, television, universities, parties, unions, 30-802 0--45--—_2