No Double Cross by Russia, Says Sorokin

If the rudest blunders are not committed by the governments of the United States and Russia, the chances for their future cooperation are greater, and those for their armed conflict are smaller than between either of them and any other nation. The reasons for such a statement are much more basic than those for many prognostications on post-war alliances.

To begin with, there is the decisive fact of an unbroken peace between these two nations throughout the whole history of the United States. Russia is practically the only great power with which this country has not had a single war, even any serious conflict, for some 150 years or even 400 years, beginning with the establishment of English colonies on this continent.

The unbroken peace has also been facilitated by the essential similarities of both countries in geo-political, social, cultural, and mental fields. Prevalent opinion is that Russia and the United States are as contrastingly dissimilar as two countries can be. Like many other prevalent opinions this conception is rather wrong.

Since 1906 Russia became legally and tactually a constitutional monarchy; and after 1917 a Federative republic. Thus, even in the regime of the central government of Russia there was nothing specifically despotic or "oriental" in comparison with the regimes in Europe; main transformations of the political regimes were similar in Europe and Russia.

If from the central government we turn to other basic institutions, they were as democratic as in any other country. Russian family, in the relationship between husband and wife, was, even before the Revolution of 1917, more democratic than the family of most of European countries. After 1861 local and municipal government of Russia (zemstov) was one of the very best self-governmental institutions in the whole world. Peasants also had their own self-government (direct village meetings) for arrangement of their own affairs. After the reforms of 1861, Russian codes of law and Russian courts were again one of the very best in the whole world.

Russia never enslaved any foreign race or nationality. If it know serfdom, the Russian nationality was in that serfdom as much as any other nationality in Russia. About the same time when slavery was eliminated in this country serfdom was abolished in Russia.

If the war had not destroyed a great part of Russia, the Russian nation would have occupied at the present time the second place in the world of economic and technological nations, the first place be onging to this country. In brief, the unfolding of the creative potentialities of these two countries for the period mentioned has been greater than of any other great nation. There is not a slightest doubt that it will continue in the future. There is no room to continue these similarities. But what about Communism, Atheism, Red Imperialism, enigmatic Stalin and so on? Are they not bound to clash with the "American way of life?" Hardly.

First, Russian revolution, in contradistinction to the German, Great French, Cromwellian and others, did not turn to external conquests, but remained a strictly Russian, internal affair. Second, since the middle of the nineteen thirties Communism, Atheism, and generally the destructive phase of the Revolution was over. All these became practically dead. Like many other revolutions, when their destructive phase is ended, Russian revolution revived and continued the living trends that existed before the revolution.

It has made a face-about and at the present time, through Stalin and so called Communist party, it is doing something opposite to what Stalin and the Communist party did in the first phase of the revolution.

Then they destroyed the family; now they restored it and made it super-Victorian. Then they debunked and denied, in the name of Marxianism, almost all the cultural values of Russia; now all these values--science literature, great Czars, generals, great saints, even the Russian religion are re-enthroned, glorified, and promoted.

Marxian texts of history, on the contrary, are forbidden. Greater part of the Communist leaders have been purged by Stalin. This process is not ended yet, but it is progressing every day. The political regime of Stalin of today is not the Communist but National regime of Russia of the time of great war. And the policies of Stalin's regime are essentially the national policies of Russia. The regime itself is not much different from today's political regime of this country: in both nations the government regiments and manages most of the social relationships of their citizens.

Finally, how about a possibility of double-crossing on the part of Russia? So far, instead of double-crossing, Russia has saved and continues to save all the United Nations and sacrificed human lives of her children as well as her cities, factories, wealth many times more than all the United Nations taken together. This answers the non-sense question.

The Author

Pitirim A. Sorokin, noted world-wide authority on sociology and professor in that department here, was born in the village of Touria in Russia and received his education in St. Petershurg.

Condemned to death and finally banished from Russia by the Communist Government in 1922, Sorokin made his appearance on the American scene in the following year, teaching at the University of Minnesota before coming to Harvard.