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46 THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA Even though the fundamentally antidemocratic, warlike, and con- spiratorial nature of Moscow's “ideological struggle” is not com- prehended, any child should at first glance recognize it aa a fake by realizing the systematic asymmetry between the opponents. Compare the opposing forces. The U.S.S.R., barricaded, dicta- torial, and belligerent, allows no slightest element of Western life to penetrate its territory; while the West, open, tolerant, and frivolous, amiably permits the enormous plow of Communist propaganda to furrow and cultivate its ground, almost at will. Thus coexistence actually means that the Soviets exist simultaneously on their land and ours, while we exist only on ours; worse, the biexistence enjoyed by the Soviets is permitted to practice mischief, while the mono- existence to which we restrict ourselves has the self-imposed obligation of virtue. Still worse, this privilege of a mischievous biexistence would be guaranteed to the Soviets by a pact between the Atlantic powers and the puppets of Warsaw. This, as has been demonstrated, is the only significance of such # pact. To achieve an honest coexistence, it would either be necessary for the Kremlin to dissolve the apparatus of political warfare it maintains in our territory, or permit the advocates of our ideology to organize and express themselves freely in its domain. Ia these circumstances we could accept their challenge, even without insisting that Moscow disgorge its wrongfully acquired loot, because Moscow would then obviously lose the contest—possibly in a matter of months. as, where is the Western statesman who will raise the obvious question of the reciprocity of equal rights, without which any compe- tition is a farce? Acceptance of Soviet style coexistence implies concession to communism of all the advantages of an unfair contest, while we retain no possibility of victory. VI. Constructive Proposaus COUNTERPROPAGANDA! KEY TO OUR SURVIVAL The West must develop the means to counter this formidable apparatus of propaganda and conspiracy, arrayed against the free world by the Soviets. It is most important that we realize the urgency of this task. At stake is the very survival of the West. Our only realistic preparedness is on the military front, but due to the balance of terror achieved in nuclear capabilities, this is not the area in which the contest will be decided. It will be decided in the field of propaganda, where the West is sadly deficient, The West does not sufficiently realize the extent to which the seeds of propaganda have yielded the Soviets an extraordinary harvest of advantages, even territorial and strategic, which in former eras could only be obtained by armed. force. Most Communist conquests have been achieved, not at the point of the bayonet, but rather through political warfare waged by a poisoning of minds. The lightning Soviet expansion following the defeat of Nazi Germany resulted from the liberalities of the Allied leaders at Yalta; liberalities which would have been inconceivable, had these leaders correctly discerned that Stalin’s regime was fully as black a despotism as Hitler’s. The very fact that they were able to relate Soviet des-