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THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA 5 I. Diexct Prosr.rtisu STRENGTH OF COMMUNIST ORGANIZATIONS France and Italy, alone song the NATO members, have mass Communist Parties. Outside NATO, the principal mass CP’s are those of Indonesia, India, and Finland. The CP’s have a substantial membership in some 20 other nations, including Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Greece, tina, Us ay, Chile, British Guiana, an several in the Middle and Far East. Throughout the rest of the world, as in England and the United States, they are so weak as to constitute little more than sects, Total CP membership in the free world amounts to 6 million, of which 334 million adhere to the five mass parties; 2 million constitute the membership of the 20 “sturdy little parties,” and o half million are scattered in the hundred remain- ing tiny groups. But regardless of size, no country in the world is without an underground Communist Party, whether or not its overt counterpart exists. oot Weak or strong, overt or covert, ever Communist Party is univer- sally characterized by certain specific features: . : 1. They are under disciplined control of Moscow or Peiping, whose orders are followed blindly, regardless of zigs, zags, or reversals. 2. They are not organized as political parties but as totalitarian external detachments of totalitarian states. ‘They are fanatical, monolithic, and intolerant. The chairman rules and manipulates the rank and file, who serve only as a striking force. Even the Fascist parties were clubs of amateurs, compared to these autocracies. 3. In proportion to its membership, its apparatus is 50 to 100 times larger and better equipped with propaganda facilities than is any normal political party. The Communist Party averages 1 anent professional activist for each 25 or 50 members, while other parties ave 1 for each 1,000 to 5,000 members. Its output of printed ma- terial; books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and bulletins, also averages 100 times greater per capita than any other party, no matter how affluent. Thesame proportion applies to office space and equipment, while the ratio is even higher in party schools, study groups, political meetings, protection services, etc. ¢ apparatus charged with the world wide task of ‘‘direct ly: tising” commands the services of 150,000 full-time ‘professional activists and disposes of an annual budget of $500 million. FULL-TIME PROFESSIONAL ACTIVISTS The strength of the Communist Parties is determined by the system of full-time professional activista, evolved from Lenin’s famous “professional revolutionaries,” far more than by the number of members or voters. For these paid agitetors fhe party preferably selects the obscure and footloose who will owe their advancement to it, and will feel insecure if separated from it. It trains them inten- sively in special schools, of which it has a wide variety, each adapted for training in a different sphere of activity. There are elementary academies of Leninism and advanced institutes of political studies, training schools for activists in rural areas, others for urban activists, and still others for activists in colonial territories.