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22 THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA seizes opportunities arising from real or imagined threats to leftist aspirations, rightwing activities, dangers of economic regression, etc., to Propose @ common siruggie in unison with the parties of the left. { the leftists fall into trap, the integrated committees formed are immediately beleaguered by Communist activiste and auxiliaries, whose apparatus, discipline, and amorality enormously exceed those of the non-Communist partners. Allies are then systematically bullied by demagogic exceeses, bluffed, by “leftist” attitudes, deceived by a thousand in es, cheated in a thousand ways, and should th rebel, slandered and even physically liquidated. During the Spani Civil War there were few days in which the Communists failed to stab some republican associates in the back. Many French resistance fighters fell under the blows of Moscow's agents, who used maquis activity against the Nazis as a front, behind which they liquidated their democratic opponents. . If a popular front is successful in taking over the machinery of government, the Communists then methodically eliminate their erstwhile allies with Machiavellian cunning. As the Communist Matyas Rakosi cynically described the operation, they ‘‘slice them to eat like « salami.” Popular fronts have notoriously augmented the strength of the Communist Party as in the wartime French resistance movement, and after the war in Italy, Ceylon, Indonesia, and Iraq. There are many instances of their responsibility for bringing the Communist Party io power, in Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Czecho- slovakia where the countries were satellitized, and the democrats who cooperated with the populat fronts were then slaughtered. A popular front brought Ho Chi-minb to power in North Vietnam; those into which the Kuomintang entered in 1924 and 1937 lost mainland China to Mao Tse-tung; and Guatemala was delivered to Communist hench- men by the same instrumentality. Socialist Parties have been a particular target for these tactics. Many of them, including the French organizations, have, therefore, had sufficient bitter experiences to build an immunity. Unfortunately the popular-front mirage stil! attracts other circles: radical and Cath- olic in Europe, nationalist in Asia, and anticolonialist in Africa, De- spite many tragic precedents, the tribe of Benes is not extinct; the tribe consisting of those democratic leaders who blindly enter into political alliances with Communists which lead to the three now stand- ard stages: (1) supplying their treacherous ally with @ cover, (2) delivering to them the power, and (3) disappearing into the grave. UTILIZATION OF DIPLOMACY, CULTURE AND ECONOMIC EXCHANGES Soviet diplomacy is not diplomacy, in the usual sense of the term. Tt is used by the Soviets as simply another, and one of the principal, implements for propaganda. Every form of exchange between Communist countries and the outside world, whether diplomatic, cultural, commercial, technical, or athletic, is conceived and eveloped over a framework of propaganda. Not, of course, open propaganda for communism; but pather an indirect, clandestine, and multiform advocacy of pro-Soviet attitudes. All members of Soviet foreign missions are trained intensively to charm and tranquilize top political and financial personages in the