In this chapter we have traced various threads of the Soviet trading activities, and have suggested reasons why they engaged in each kind of activity.
Now it is necessary to look more deeply into the whole complex of Soviet foreign trade policy and sum up what’s behind it all.
[CHAPTER IV]
What’s Behind It All
From the Kremlin comes a continual flow of propaganda, spread to the ends of the earth by the international Communist movement, to the effect that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the Champion of Peace.
Stalin’s death afforded the Communists a convenient opportunity to portray a new regime zealous for a peaceful, normal world. They did not say out loud that Stalin had been less zealous, but they were not reluctant to play upon the world’s fervent wish that the new management would turn over a bright new leaf. And they were willing, even eager, for the world to believe that one part of the pursuit of peace was the promotion of East-West trade.
The Kremlin and Peace
Can the so-called Soviet “trade offensive” of 1953-54 really be explained as an effort to establish a just and lasting peace, as the West understands the word? If we could believe that, the world might suddenly seem a more comfortable place to live in. We must always keep the door ajar for any genuine steps to abandon the Soviet brand of imperialism, to abandon the basic unfriendliness of purpose toward everything not under Moscow’s control. The free world was looking for such a movement at the Berlin Conference in the early part of 1954, but it did not show up.