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a aeamemnmemeanmendtidin ane aiial ee ee we ae () THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA 33 countries they are to undermine. The widely expounded idea that contacts with them may “widen their horizons and humanize their views’ is absurd. These are not men who can give free rein to their inclinations, but docile tools of an ap aratus; they are disciplined, regimented, spied upon, and controlle by concern for family hosta whom they have left behind. To the contrary, the Western circles to be attacked are vulnerable to their machinations through ignorance, unpreparedness, courtesy, infatuation for that which comes “from afar,” and subserviency toward that which comes ‘“‘from the left.” When the West provides a man in an exchange situation, it is for the urpose of implementing exchanges. When the Soviets do so, it is or subversion. Two Chinese industrial missions to Japan held three conferences with industrialists, and arranged 15 politicosocial entertainments. A Vietminh trade mission, which had promised the French Govern- ment to confine its activities te the business community, notified every diplomatic mission in Paris of its arrival, and distributed political leaflets to Viet students at the Sorbonne. Soviet personnel in embassies, consulates, exhibitions, tours, eco- nomic missions, and cultural exchanges, surpass equivalent free world staffs by. a ratio which on occasions has reached 10 to 1. Soviet services in Ethiopia, for example, use more personnel than all other nations combined, Their Mexican establishment has three employees for every one of the United States, and the proportion is equally abnormal in Argentina and Indonesia. Also significant is the relaying and amplification of their propaganda efforts by the diplomatic, economic, and cultural agencies of the satellite countries and Com- munist China. Finally to be noted is the notorious activity of Soviet diplomatic representatives in channeling funds to Communist and erypto-Communist apparati of the countries in which they are stationed. TOURS FOR PROMINENT PERSONAGES Considerable propaganda advantages derive to the Soviets from organized visits of prominent people and delegations invited to the countries they dominate. Hidden under the cloak of information and goodwill tours is an enormous machine of deception and hoax, the operation of which has become a rea! industry, employing tens of thousands of full-time people in the U.S.S.R. and China. Visitors to China are classified in eight categories, with tours and appropriate receptions organized according to the importance of the visitors. Below the fourth category, no flowers are presented at the airport. Schools train combination guides and interpreters, most of whom are attractive young women employed by the secret police. The achieve- ments displayed, the personages produced, the answers given, and the tone of the welcome extended, are all devised and rehearsed with the greatest care. Annual expenditures by the Soviet and Chinese Govérnments in . this field alone, excluding the time wasted by the workers at the institutions visited, exceeds $100 million, but the investment yields returns a hundredfold. Books and articles reporting these visits abound in the West, heralding what has become standard: a rose- colored vision of this somber totalitarian world. Accounts published during Stalin’s regime prove the advertising value of such theatrics,