U.S. GENERAL LOOKS AT RUSSIA

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5318, 3 February 1947, Page 7

U.S. GENERAL LOOKS AT RUSSIA

FORMER MILITARY ATTACHE " RECOUNTS EXPERIENCES , . - * . .u-l

In my time in Moscow the American Military Attache was Mike Michela, an agreeable fellow who spent most of his time at chess, a game he played under the illusion that he was directing military manoeuvres so that even I could beat him, writes Godfrey Blunden, New York staff "eorrespondeiit of the Sydney Morping Herald, who spent the war years in Moscow.

He preferred ehess to walking the streets of Moscow because wherever he went he was constantly shadowed ■by N.K.V.D. operatives. . Mike had one official contact in Moscow, Major-General Estigneev, of the N.K.V.D. section of the Army, who refased all Mike's requests. This, even though America and .Russia vere allies, and even though at that time lhillions of tons of American supplies vvere eoming into_ Russia. j Mike never once tal'ked with Russian staif generals, never visited the Russian front, never =saw or handled a Russian weapon, not even the Sherman tanlcs and Kittyhawk tighters which the Red' Army was >using. There was nothing personal about this, nor was it entirely a matter of Russian sus- . picion of Mike's motives. ; There was another American military representative in Moscow, a certain General Faymonville, who" spoke Russian well and who had fought against the Russians when America, after the First World War, sent a column into Siberia to help quell the re'volution. Faymonville was in charge of the Lend-Lease supplies and had been told by President Roosevelt to pro-mise the Russians anything they wanted, "with no strings attached." It had occurred to Mike, as to anyone else who had ben in Russia more than six months, that the only way to get anything out of the Russians was by hard bargaining and that the incoming Lend-Lease supplies provided an excellent barjgaining basis in ebcchange for a few simple facts he wanted. But General Faymonville would have none of it; This conditions went on through 1942 and into 1943, .until the oneoming American campaigns in Africa, Italy and the Pacific made more tangible reciprocity on the part of the Russians desirable. New Ministry Mission. " About the middle of 1943 both Michela and Faymonville were withdrawn and a Military Mission, combining all American military liaison services in Russia, was set up. Major-Gen. John R. Dean, who had been secretary to the Combined Allied Chiefs of Staff, went to Moscow to head the mission. Deane was energetic, young and determined. He had General Marshall's confidence and was fully authorised to deal directly with Stalin or his subordinates^ Major-General Deane went irf and stayed in there two years, slugging hard all the time. His hook, ,lThe Strange Alliance," ' is his recoixl of the frustration, bad faith, animosity, suspicion, lying procrastination, delays and difficulties he experieneed at the hands of Russian lmreaucracy. Like many of us, he went to Moscow believing that even though the Russians had no real cause to love us they would be co-operative in mattrs serving their own interests and, like many of us, what he met with was disillusioning and puzzling. Deane had orders to ideal with the Russians frankly and to conceal no--thing. He started by asking several small concessions; he wanted weather information which would help the Allied bombing operations; he wanted an exchange of intelligence which would help the Allies to locate German divisions, air strength, etc. The Russians began by being cooperative, then delayed -and delayed, and finally only a small trickle of weather information and military intelligence came out of Russia, whereas on the other hand a vast amount of information v/ent in. Deane organised the shuttle bombing operations by which American bombers would fly on to a base in Russia after dropping bombs in Germany and fly bacfc to Italy or Britain after refuelling, and bombing up again, only to see the base and bombers destroyed because the Russians failed to provide the promised fighter protection after refusing the Americans the right to instal their

own fighter squadron. Even on the subjeet of incoming Lend-Lease the Russians were resentful and demanded hundreds of fourengined bombers, oil refineries and other items diffioult to deliver. ' Fine Packard engines were left rusting in the snow while commissariats insisted that more .be delivered. Major-General Deane gives chapter and verse of all these negotiations without bitterness. When American prisoners of war were being released by the advancing Red Army, he describes how neither he nor his officers were alloVed to make contact with them, even when the prisoners were in- need of medical aid. One of his missions *was to make effeetive Stalin's promise at Teheran that Russia would come into the Pacific War provided America supplied the " Far Eastem Russian armies, and he records how all efforts to organise the 'strategic bombing of Japan from the Russian mainland failed, and Russia entered the Japanese war only three days before the end. All this is history, and while MajorGeneral Deane's book is a valuable eontribution to the total war picture nOw gradually emerging out of the works of men who were in high official positions, and will be properly hailed as such in the American Press, it has another quite different quality. It gives a picture of contemporary Russian bureaucracy from a new angle.

His caxeful unprejudiced documentation of his dealings with Russian bureaucrats, from Stalin down, shows how difficult and nmteliable are f oreign countries' relations with Russia. Deane appears to realise this, for at the e'nd of his book there are a couple of chapters in which he lays down advice to those having any dealings withRussia in futur-e, and an estimate of the aims of the Russian leaders. His; advice is that of a practieal negotiator; he calls for hard bargaining and no softness with Russia. • During his two years in Moscow he was never able to^-make contact with any Russian people, except his servants-, but he found- his maid, 'housekeeper and chauffeur so likeahle and friendly that he shrewdly concludes i that there is a big gap between tbe Russian people and the Russian bureaucrats. He is amused when N.K.V.D. officers jstage 4n elahorate dilnner to him, the purpose of which finally is to inform him that a Russian N.K.V.D. operative at Baku overheard an American engineer helping the oil installation there say that the President was a son of a bitch and should he shot, and that Russians apparentlyexpected Deane to have the man exe-, cuted. Sporadic Friendliness. He observes taht Russian chilliness or friendliness, as the case may be, comes and goes in waves, and when Stalin shows displeasure it is reflected doAvn through the bureaucracy even to the door guards. Deane was also able to see that the bureaucracy system, dependent upon the complete and absolute autocracy of Stalin, works more often than not against the interest of the State. He noted that whenever by chance Americans had t0 deal with Russians away from the influenee of .the police or bureaucracy, the results were good. For example, his contact with field officers during his one and -only trip to the front enabled him to suggest certain changes in American LendLease material, such as an alteration in the last of American boots, which helped the Russians. Again, when the Russian Army was moving in. the area of American air bombing in Rumania, both parties set up a field liaison unit which f unctioned efficiently until Moscow. found out about it and ordered it to be disbanded. In these observations, Major-Gene-ral Deane shows some appreciation of the fact that not only foreigners, but. the Russians themselves, suffered tremendous handicaps beneath the crushingjveight of the bureaucracy. If he had seen more of the Russian efforts on the battlefield, as a few others did, he might have had an even greater respect and admiration for those Russians who were able to go on fighting the Germans- despite such handicaps. Deane saw and records many things about Russia, but he fails to draw the proper conclusions. He was too busy and his position was too official for him ever to steal a leisurely look behind the scenes-. His view of Russia is the conventional one of the American Democrat ;or Republican. Russian is Comm'unism. He is able to see that the regime is insecure and he is able to draw the conclusion that the mass of the Russian people hate the regime and may yet- outstay it, but he does not see the reason for that division between Stalin and the masses. If he had any conception of the nature of Bolshevism in its revolutionary form he could not confuse Communism with what he saw in Moscow in the shape of Russian staff officers' ultra-consciousness about rank, the party's flag-waving, goose-stepping, hymn-singing, and hate compaigns, and N.K.V.D. suppression of all forms of natural expression. Major-General Deane went to Russia with an open mind, but in ignorance. He seems to have forgotten or failed to count as a reality, the Stalin-Hitler Pact, which brought on the very war in which he was engaged.