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American Friends Service Committee — Part 7
Page 36
36 / 94
’ THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA 8
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
reaponds in general to the spontaneous tendencies of its social body, it
enjoys the adaptive virtue of those organisms which breed peripheral
heads when the central one is 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 e tremendous network of party and police outposts and
liaisons. On the day the telephone of the secret police cannot ring
any more in all the provinces of the Soviet Union there will be no more
communism. Although the West may be unaware of this, it is en
obsessive terror to the Kremlin, That js 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 conquest; the activists and auxiliaries
who are the legions of the subversive war. For the Soviets, the atom
ig the umbrella of the committes.
Asa 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 » matter of overriding urgency. It should
be the central theme in the free world’s resistance to its implacable
enemy; in its 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 Dict, got to the heart of the matter:
“The easence 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 communiem 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
OMOWS +
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 prop anda, infiltration, corruption,
conspiracy, sabotage, and _guer! warfare, It uses indigenous per-
sonnel, rather than engaging regular Soviet troops in armed conflict.
The objective is to capture, or at ieast subvert 10 the purposes of the
Kremlin or Peiping, the command posts controlling national policy;
administration, press, radio, television, universities, parties, unions,
30-602 0-652
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