Davies' book, Mission to Moscow, sets the tone on the adulation
of Soviet Communism for the rest of the war
While noted public figures as diverse as Huxley, Caldwell, and Rev. Coughlin
were ruminating presciently about the likely situation prevailing at war's
end, there took place the first major literary advancement of Stalinist
fortunes in American public consciousness, the publication of ex-Ambassador
to Russia Davies' Mission to Moscow (Simon and Schuster). Out just
two weeks after Pearl, it was the subject of at least three score stentorian
reviews in as many weeks in the nation's largest and most prestigious periodicals
and newspapers. Time led off shortly after Christmas, 1941 with a three
and a half column review but handled as though the book were foreign news.(201)
A few days later came Joseph Barnes's front page treatment in the Herald
Tribune Books and identical placement of that of William Henry Chamberlin
in the Times Book Review the same day, guaranteeing blanketing the Eastern
portion of the country with massive and lengthy attention. A few days after
that came that of Henry C. Wolfe in the Saturday Review, by which time the
publishers had already run a half-page advertisement in the Herald Tribune
Books which was heavily decorated with huzzas from 51 other major United
States publications. Included in this triumphal spread were the following:
"most competent, disinterested study of the Soviet Union" (Boston
Globe); the best book on Russia "since the two-volume study by Sidney
and Beatrice Webb" (Chicago Daily News); "a political document
of the first importance as well as a piece of extraordinary sanity"
(Chicago Sun-Times); "perhaps the most valuable book to be published
on the subject of Russia in the past decade" (Houston Post); "Actually
the first volume on Soviet Russia which will be taken seriously by all students
of Soviet affairs" (Chicago Jewish Daily Courier); "the one book
above all to read on Russia" (New York Times); and the following benediction
from the Daily Worker: "Mr. Davies has supplanted a great deal of current
misinformation about the USSR with realistic, clear-cut and objective reporting."(202)
Barnes's reviewer was as kindly as one might have been led to expect from
him, in view of his substantial pedigree in handling things Soviet with
a gentle touch. Wolfe hailed it as "One of the most significant books
of our time,"(204) but the general shouting approval on all
sides made Joseph Starobin's six-column effulgence in the New Masses almost
an anti-climax.(205) There was little doubt that Davies' book had
replaced among the Party (206) the up-to-then prize diplomatic volume
by an American in the twentieth century, the 1933-1938 Diary of ex-Ambassador
to Germany, William E. Dodd, lovingly edited by his far-leftist children.
One strong asser- tion by Davies was given special attention by the New
Masses, his declaration on page 434, "The bogy that a war would entail
Communism in a defeated Germany and Central Europe is plain bunk."
Another pregnant quotation from Davies was that by Wolfe in Saturday Review,(207)
a reference to an unnamed Polish government figure who boasted prior to
the September 1939 campaign, "within three weeks after the outbreak
of war, Polish troops would be in Berlin." That they were there as
prisoners of war was not the intent, for sure, though these were not days
to call attention to Polish belligerent confidence in victory prior to hostilities;
the total effort of "Allied" propaganda in the time following
Pearl Harbor was to establish firmly the myth of a peaceful and utterly
non-provoking Poland, overrun by a brutish German horde, in a one-sided
act of "aggression."(208)
Few books published in the U.S.A. have been greeted by such an avalanche
of reviewer approval in such a short time as Mission to Moscow. By
the end of March 1942, the list of favorable testimonials was nothing short
of sensational. The amazing thing was that it was criticized by anyone.
Such as it was, unfriendly commentary on Davies' book gathered largely at
one point, his acceptance without any reservation of the Stalinite explanation
of the 1936-1938 massacres and mass jailings as a unified program of cleansing
the USSR of German and Japanese collaborators and agents. Chamberlin had
held back a little on this matter and also questioned Davies' "complete
endorsement of Soviet foreign policy."(209) Even Time realized
the problem here, and in its marathon vote of acclaim had demonstrated a
little difficulty in accepting Davies, while projecting doubt on the earlier
estimate of the Dewey Commission's write-off of the "purge" trials
as frame- ups. The only harsh condemnation of Mission to Moscow was by Margaret
Marshall in the Nation. But to appreciate why she was so appalled at Davies'
defense of the purges, one had to know something of the history of the Nation
in the same period, when it was torn apart into two camps as a result of
conflict over this same matter.(210)
Though barely in the wartime embrace as "allies," Americans had
tendered to the Russians a major propaganda triumph in the shape of a book
written by a millionaire promoted lavishly by a major publisher and boosted
in almost feverish language by nearly every organ of the heretofore scorned
"capitalist" printed communications media. It was a task which
could not have been achieved by a Communist Party machine in the Western
Hemisphere even had it been a thousand times as large. Mission to Moscow
went into five printings its first month, and for a time early in the American
phase of formal participation in the war, it was hard to hear anyone talk
about anything else. As an aid to assist the American young especially in
learning to "love Russia," little compared to it for some time.
Nothing ever approaching it by many light years ever appeared in Communist
Russia, according the U.S.A. a similar favorable and affirmative image.
The one-sided love affair could now be considered to be fairly and fully
launched.
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