Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1948-08-18
A State or q Penitentiury?

| Soviet Consul General Lomakin's latest
statement on Mrs Oksana Kosenkina is
an almost unbelievably crude and obvious
fabrication like the story wayward little
boy might invent in an effort to prove to
| his knowing elders that some mischievous
incident involving him never really hap
| pened.
Mrs. Kosenkina, according to Mr.. Iona
kin, was being tenderly cared for In the
consulate after her Liberation" from the
horrors" imposed upon her by "kidnapers"
from the white Guard anti-Communist
Tolstoy Foundation. But then she heard
our radio broadcasts and read our news
stories about threats of the United States
police and court" against her, and she saw
a crowd of Americans on the street out
side. This gave her nervous breakdown.
She figured that the "fends" were coming
to get her again and Illustrate her dearest
wish by preventing her from returning to
her beloved Russia. So, driven Gin her
despair to the attempt of suicide" she
jumped from her third-floor window.
The facts of the case are, of course, too
we'll known in this country, and in all
other free countries, to need reviewing.
Mr.. Lomakins lurid version is such self
evident and puerile butchery of the truth
that it will be openly laughed to scorn in
every land this side the Iron Curtain.
But let us not single him out for ridicule
or angry attack as an individual Actually,
as is shown by our official records of recent
Russian radio broadcasts and press re-
ports, his story is precisely in line with
the propaganda barrage let loose by the
Kremlin ever since Mrs KoSenkina and
her fellow Russian teacher, Mihail Sama-
rine, embarrassed the Stain tyranny by
choosing liberty and refusing to go back
home.
The barrage-as addressed to the Rus
sian people and the peoples of the satellite
states-has been nothing less than high
fevered, half-hysterical and near-desper-
ate effort to black out the true story of
what happened, to suppress the slightest
impression that anybody would ever want
to escape from the Marx-Lenin- Stain
utopia" and to make it appear as in a
recent Moscow broadcast, that white
Guard gangster" groups, encouraged by
the American authorities, endanger the
interests, security and very life of Soviet
citizens residing in the United States" In
other words, the great mass of humanity
behind the Iron Curtain is being fed a
diet of falsehoods whose nature serves as
the best possible argument in favor of the
new and more militant policy being de-
veloped by our communicating "Voice of
America"
But the significance of all this runs much
deeper than mere propaganda and counter
propaganda. What we see here is the
clear suggestion of great basic weakness
in the Soviet system. The Kremlin dicta-
torship is afraid of truth Hence the
distortions, the Misrepresentation the
colossal lies the secret police, the terror
ism, the censorship, the wall against free
dom of travel and information the fear
of light coming in to play upon the dark
ness, the ridiculous cavortings of the
Lomakins to make black seem white and
white black and the overall, never-ending,
almost pSychopathic drive of the Polit-
buro's members to glorify themselves and
their tyranny while viciously libeling
America and the whole democratic West.
Yet there are still the Kosenkinas and
Victor Kravchenko's II Chose Freedom"
or seen Behind the Iron Curtain" the
movie telling the story of Igor Gouzenko
and the Canadian spy ring (both book
and movie are now receiving wide atten-
ton in non-Soviet Europe) will under
stand why it is that these people have
acted as they have. Only few of them
like Mrs. KoSenkina or the Olympic stars
from such satellite lands as Hungary or
the Russian girl given refuge in Sweden
make the headlines, but there are great
numbers of them, thousands and thou
sands of them, who have emulated Krav-
chenko's example, and there must be
millions more who would do the same
thing If they had the chance. For the
taste of freedom is sweet. Having once
experienced it, the oppressed begin to
regard the Soviet Empire more as peni-
Tertiary than a native land, and they do
not want to go back.
1t is not surprising therefore that the
Kremlin's home-front propaganda is what
it is. There is evidence of an uneasy
jailer'S fear in it-fear that the masses
will one day wake up and either break
their. chains or refuse to. defend their
tyrants in a crisis. The situation makes
one wonder whether the Politburo is quite
sane when it pursues policies provocative
enough to raise the possibility of war
with the free West.
The trade reports shortage of won-
ems dresses in the larger sizes" You
| mean those numbers worn by the chic