Evening star., 1946-04-14
A Vital Document
All Americans
Should Read
I CHOSE FREEDOM

nerS;: $780,
Two years ago Victor Kravchenko
resigned his position with the Soviet
Purchasing Commission in the
United States, publicly giving as his
reason that he disliked Russia S
"two-faced policy" toward her
Allies. The resignation made 'front.'
page news. Mr.. Kravchenko was a
government engineer and specialist
in metals and had a long career
in Russian industry behind him.
The commission subsequently sought
to claim that he was a mere clerk
but the facts of his position stood.
So did the facts of his resignation,
He disavowed Stain and all his
works and warned Americans that
Russia was implacably hostile to
our country's institutions. Now he
amplifies all his specific charges in
q book.
1t is in effect an apology for his
life. His life has been intimately
bound to the wheels of the Soviet
state from his childhood and, in
order to amplify his rejection Of
Stalinism. he has seen no better
method than to tell what he has
experienced in Stains domain.
I confess that I began the book
with pretty high sales resistance.
I am tired of these recanting Euro
peans-recanting for American roy
alties-whether they be of the right
or the left. My feeling is that it
is all right to recant if you made
a mistake, but to make a career of
your recantation is something else.
1t is not all right. Book reviewers,
probably more than any other one
group of the American people, are
aware Of the violent haste and utter
tastelessness with which hordes of
assorted Europeans, in the last few
years, have rushed through our
immigration barriers bent on tell
ing all-for 10 per cent. So I took
up Mr.. Kravchenko's book with a
sour look on my face. I am no
admter of the Stain government
but that did not dispose me fa-
vorably toward some one who had
served it for years and then turned
his coat. On the contrary-pre-
cisely.
But by the time I had gotten
about half way through Il Chose
Freedom I was reading the book
for it's own sake and forgetting the
author. And, in the closing chap
tiers, I realized that, whatever Mr..
Kravchenko's personal motives may
have been, he had presented his
torical document which the Ameri-
can people certainly ought to read.
So I recommend it
&& X +
What makes him convincing is
that he does not tell anything which
has net been told before.
But he tells 1t from the inside,
from the vantage point of one of the
Russian fair-haired boys.
He tells it, not as w. L. White
told it, as it stands out for the
foreign visitor to see, but as it was
planned and done, through the high
Russian government councils. He
tells it with detail and from per-
sonal experience. He was in the
famine districts, which were closed
to foreign visitors-he was not only
in them but helped to wrest the
grain from the starving people. He
was head of factory which won
Red Banner for efficient production
on doctored records. He was tor
tured in his own person during the
purge, having been slated to be
victim and only escaping by fuke
He lived in what in Russia passed
for luxurious apartment - five
rooms and bath-while he ruled a
factory where the workers fire.
quently fell down from hunger. He
put in an order" for political pris-
oners to man one plant and was
told, by the official in charge, that
he would have to wait because there
were many similar demands and I'VE
haven't as yet fulfilled our plans
for imprisonment"
I could go on like this for a long
time. Suffice 1t to say that Mr..
Kravchenko corroborates E m m a
Goldman, Fred Beals, Max Eastman,
Eugene Lyons, Andre Glide, William
H. Chamberlain, Mrs. Louis Fischer,
w. L. White and practically all the
other writer's who have described the
Communistic state without the glow
Of wishful thinking to illuminate the
picture or the dark of personal neu-
rosis to cast a shade over it. But
he goes far beyond most of them in
places and dates and not merely
here and there he names them
consistently over a period of 20
years.
More important than his picture
of Russias misery, however, is his
warning concerning the hatred
which the Stain clique holds for the
democracies. The 1889 pact with
Germany, he says, was a bona flde
alliance. The subsequent interpre-
tation put on it-that it was clever
move made to gain time for rearm-
ament is, in his view, pitifully
naive, so naive indeed that it never
was given circulation in Russia but
was served up only to the demo-
cratic suckers. The best proof of
this. however, he says, is the fact
that the 22-month period of grace
was not used in war preparation.
Germany's attack caught Russia
off guard and Germany's initial vic
tories were caused by Russia's un-
preparedness. Only when American
goods began to pour into Soviet ports