Trade is the answer. The British want to expand their trade with the Soviet Union and with China. Again, as in their diplomatic relations, this does not mean that they approve of Communism in either country. But they live by trade, and they must take it wherever they find it. To British industrialists and British ministers the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe represent a market for industrial products and a possible source of raw materials. However, they are wary of Russian methods of business. The initial approach has been circumspect. The British do not wish to throw everything onto one market; they would infinitely prefer an expansion of trade with the United States. Nor will they sell to the Soviet Union one or two models of each type which the industrious Russians can then mass-produce for themselves. Finally, although Britain and other European nations are restive under embargo restrictions on the sale of certain strategic goods, the Conservative government has no intention of breaking these restrictions under the encouragement of Mr. Khrushchev's smile.
The visits to Britain of a succession of delegations from the Soviet government and of three top-ranking ministers—Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party, Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and Deputy Premier Georgi Malenkov—fanned British interest if not enthusiasm.
Much has been written about the effect of these visits on the British public. Indeed, the faint hearts in Congress seemed to think that they would result in the immediate establishment of a Communist regime in Britain. But it appeared to many who had frequent contacts with "Krush and Bulge," as the British called them, that the greatest effect of the visit was on the Russians themselves. Like Malenkov before them, the Communist boss and the head of the government encountered a prosperous, vigorous democracy. To anyone accustomed to the crudity and ugliness that express Russia's raw strength, industrial Britain was a revelation. Here were huge, new, clean factories set in the midst of comfortable towns enclosed by green fields and parks.
"We'll have all this one day in Russia," Khrushchev said to one of his hosts. "But it takes time."
The British poured out to see the visitors. But it was symptomatic of the maturity of public opinion that in London and the other great cities, the Communists failed to generate any wild enthusiasm for the Soviet leaders. On the contrary, they were met in most cases with stolid, disapproving silence interspersed by volleys of boos.
Yet because the British were never so excited about the possibility of war with the Soviet Union as were the Americans, there is and will be in Britain greater willingness to accept the Russians at their own valuation. Also, the British working class is far more interested in the Soviet Union than American labor is.
To the American workingman there is nothing especially novel in the description of huge enterprises breaking new ground in virgin territory. Americans have been doing that sort of thing for a century. But to the Briton, accustomed to an economy severely circumscribed by the geographical limitations of his island, these Soviet enterprises have the fascination of the unknown. So he marvels over the pictures and the text in the magazines issued by the Russian and satellite governments.
This propaganda is intended, naturally, to divert the reader's mind from the innumerable cruelties that have accompanied the building of the Soviet state by impressing him with a glowing account of the results. Here, as elsewhere, the Russians underestimate their critics, of whom the British workingman is one. People do not easily forget cruelty, even if it has not been practiced on them.
"Certainly, I'm a trades-union man and a good socialist," a printer said to me during the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit. "That's why I 'ate these bleeders. What they've done to the unions in Russia wants talking abaht, chum. Know what I 'ates most about them? It's them arsing around our country with a lot of coppers with them, the bleeders. We don't want none of that 'ere."
Finally, we come to a factor of great importance in molding British attitudes toward the Soviet Union. This is the large group of teachers, writers, editors, movie-directors, and radio and television workers who have been powerfully influenced either by Communism or by the results of a Communist society in the Soviet Union. Proportionately, this group is larger than its counterpart in the United States. It has never been drastically reduced in numbers by the pressure of public opinion. Outside of the "sensitive" departments of government, no great stigma is attached to membership in the Communist Party in Britain.