Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1949-12-20
Worrina for Mems Minds

News from behind the Iron Curtain in
dictates that the Communist puppet re-
gimes are going all-out to control thought
and regiment literature for the greater
honor and glory of the Soviet Union. To
that end, without even attempting to dis
guise the fact, they have undertaken kind
of book-burning or book-suppressing pro-
gram designed to eliminate any inconven-
lent truths, ideas or theories running
counter to the dogmas proclaimed by the
Kremlin.
This enterprise has been going on for
some time past, not merely in the realm OF
literature but in practically every field OF
human endeavor ranging all the way from
astronomy to sports. It Is directed against
what party-liners call "cosmopolitanism I"
In the lexicon Of Stains Russia, "cosmo-
politanism" is the sin an individual COM
mits when he Is too individualistic, too
Observation-Disclosures and too much
friend of objective truth to believe that
the Kremlin can do no wrong, that 1t Is
the fountainhead of goodness, that 1t Is
incomparably the wisest and most virtuous
of governments and that therefore peoples
and nations throughout the world should
bow down to it and have sense enough to
do what it says
AS far as fictional and non -hctional
literature is concerned, the effort to Grad
icate this sin apparently is being made as
intensively in the satellite lands as in Rus
STA itself. The latest examples of it have
just been reported by The New York Times
in dispatch limited to summary Of how
the thing has been working in Czechoslo-
vakia and Hungary. Thus, under the
Czech tyranny, which operates on the
simple principle that any sort Of writing
is harmful and ban-worthy If it does not
help to promote the Red totalitarian way
of life, the Mountaineering comrades, hav-
ing already nationalized the publication Of
all books are now rigidly controlling their
distribution to the citizenry. As for the
Hungarians, their puppet government is
seeing to 1t that the works Of Fascist,
semiFascist and destructive bourgeois"
writer's (like Louis Bromheld and Upton
Sinclair) are being removed from libraries
throughout the country In addition, in
order to increase "love" for the Soviet
Union and hatred" for the Anglo-Amer-
lean "imperialists," a special" program is
being carried out to make fairy tales ideo-
logically sound and to apply the party line
even to advertising billboards by cleansing
them of such cosmopolitan" business
words as "nylon," "jeep," and New York"
Realities of that type, It would seem, are
to be regarded as nonresident; at any rate,
they are being censored away, presumably
because they might distract people behind
fho f1,rt oir fr4v
reading of Generalissimo Stalin's books,
than which probably nothing duller or
more turgid has ever been written.
All of which adds up to just one more
Illustration of what thorough job the
Red totalitarians are doing in an effort
to de-educate mems minds-to dehumanize
them, really-until nobody in the Soviet
world has any thoughts whatever beyond
those ladled out by the propaganda
machine. This sort Of thing-the dis
tortion or suppression of truth and the
indoctrination of les-has been tried be-
fore by other tyrants in other ages, and
1t has always failed. But today, with the
Russian Communists in full control of
tremendously powerful new techniques and
instruments Of mass communication, 1t
conceivably can be made to work.
That is possibility SOLDERING enough to
suggest that countermeasures like the
"Voice of America"-though helpful may
be only small part Of the job that actually
needs to be done If truth and justice are
not to be BACKED out altogether in the
world dominated by the Kremlin. This
unremitting war on "cosmopolitanism" is
potentially too serious to be minimized The
free West cannot laugh it off, or deal with
it in an Indifferent, too-little- too-late