RETURN OF THE SCAPEGOAT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 726, 12 June 1953, Page 5

RETURN OF THE SCAPEGOAT

Sir,-One may. remind Mr. Winchesfer that "one Swallow ddes hot Make a summer," atid that thé ariti-Jew policies both of Tsarist Russia and’of the Soviet Union are unhappily an indelible part of history, ancient and modern. Neither on this point nor on any other is your correspondent susceptible of a change in mind. Presumably historical facts are after all, petty bourgeois, apparently even if true. Is truth itself a petty bourgeois fiction? I note that Mr. Winchester has not answered my challenge to name the authority for his allegation that "there has been since: the Civil War (in America). only. one Jew,in the, Senate." I presume thére is no authority. "When Mr. Winchester speaks of our relations with the Maoris as involving "the most sordid robbery in history," he is not worth an answer, The Maoris were not unrepresented at the Coronation: they were included on the same footing as the pakeha New Zealander in the service units. This practical expression of equality should have rejoiced the heart of your correspondent. But no. Mr. Winchester is a blind devotee of the "Third Rome," the vatican of which is the Kremlin. "The Soviet Union . . a state where men can walk the earth as brothers, etc. . . (which) might well be emulated." Sir David Kelly, British _ Ambassador at Moscow (1949-1951), ought to know something about it. He points out in an article in the Sunday Times for February 15, 1953, that "there has never really been among Russians any ‘colour-bar.’ The Russian, who has Tartar blood, never did feel any ‘Sahib-complex.’" So this is not a virtue peculiar to the Soviet-Russian. But what he doés tell us is of the systematic atid ruthless fashion in which the central Government of the U.S.S.R. has "blotted out the original economic, religious and cultural ideas and ‘institutions of the non-Russian peoples in the interest of a monolithic imperial state. He quotes as typical the Tadjik Republic in ASia. He also mentions the uprooting of whole peoples and the deporting of them to destinations which are not advertised -~ the Chechens from near Tiflis, the Turks ftom the Crimea, Greeks from the Black Sea, and Gertans (descended from the Russian Empress Catherine’s. prize colonists) from the Volga. Not exactly "brotherly," nor examples to be "emulated." The modern Russian appears to differ little from the Russian of Tsarist days. In conclusion, I am unable to accept the pronouncement that what I stand for is "a matter of constant speculation in the daily press." I have not noticed that I have been so honoured. I won’t embarrass Mr, Winchester by asking for proofs; there are none.

W. E.

BARNARD

(Tauranga). .