BEFORE WE ACTUALLY GET INTO THE QUESTIONS, COULD YOU JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WERE DOING DURING THE WAR YEARS?

I started at the outbreak of the war, which for us, in Berlin, was the first of September, 1939. I was working for the United Press. Subsequently the United Press International, but those days, United Press. And I remained in Berlin working for the UP until the...until the middle of July, 1941. I had been arrested by the...by the Nazis on the charge of espionage which is the usual sort of occupational hazard. And exchanged and expelled in the middle of July. Came home still working for the UP. Covered the maneuvers, the big first big maneuvers and in the South in Loui...Arkansas and Louisiana in December of.... of '41. With Pearl Harbor, I was asked to join the office of war information and to work on propaganda to Germany and to German occupied Europe. Stayed with the OWI in Washington, New York, then London and travelled out of London to North Africa and Italy until in the end of '43, beginning of '44 I left the government and joined CBS. And from the beginning of January, 1944 until October 1945. I worked for CBS during the war. In London, I first worked with the airforce, the 9th airforce, flew with them. And then after the invasion went ashore with the first army and stayed with the first army more or less continuously until the...until the meeting on the Elbe. And to actually, until we went into Berlin. Until the Potsdam Conference. After the Potsdam Conference, I came back to London and worked and then came home for so at the end of 1945 until I went I was assigned to Moscow and left for Europe en route to Moscow in sort of March of '46. Arrived in Moscow at the beginning of May,'46. Stayed there until December of '46, although it was a two year term. Because in October the Soviet Union called off all foreign radio broadcasting. That is to say, broadcasting by foreign correspondents from Moscow.

OK. SO WHEN YOU WERE WITH CBS, YOU WERE A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVE IN MOSCOW IN THE SPRING OF '46, WHAT IMPRESSED YOU MOST? IN THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE YOU WROTE, WHY SHOULD THIS PEACE WON AT SUCH A COST LESS THAN A YEAR AGO NOW BE SO UNCERTAIN?

My first impression on arriving in the Soviet Union from Finland by train to Leningrad was the open conduct of paramilitary, what they called also aviareme, the sort of the air defense system. People carrying...I forgot whether they were carrying guns or were carrying shovels or pitchforks, but the air defense system was being kept going. Was being kept active. And this was May, end of Mar...end of April, beginning of May, of 1946. And the atmosphere was slightly strained. The looking around Leningrad which is a beautiful city and arriving as a tourist and arriving with every expectation of being able to work normally and....and fruitfully, in....after the success of the great war time alliance. Found odd things and odd answers and people very, very reluctant to give information about such things as our guide... What is that strange uniform? What is that....the color I've never seen in a military uniform with a cap with a blue top before, a pale blue top. And she said, Oh, I don't know. Well, as it turned out, it was...it was the ministry of interior....the sort of the border troops and the NKVD there's the whole security system. But that...it was a strange slightly stand offish atmosphere. We walked into where we had been expecting a little more let us say acceptance a little more understanding.

YOU SAY THE ATMOSPHERE WAS STRAINED WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVED. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT A LITTLE MORE? WHAT WERE YOUR PERCEPTIONS? HOW DID WHAT YOU PERCEIVED AND FELT WHEN YOU ARRIVED THERE DIFFER FROM YOUR EXPECTATIONS?

Well, I had no physical expectations. That is to say I was open to whatever impressions I would get. But psychologically I had really expected that things would have changed for the Soviet Union--to the extent that I understood what they had been before--after the great victory. After the victory of the alliance, the founding of the United Nations, aware of the enormous help that was still coming to the Soviet Union through UNRRA, the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. And obviously, as I had lived abroad for years, so I did not expect the Russians or anyone else to be like the Americans. Making full allowances for cultural differences. It was the...it was reinforced at once. I mean, my first impression in Leningrad with people reluctant to provide what seemed to me to be routine replies about what this was and what that was. Passing the Smolny Institute I asked what was...you know, what is there now. And The woman...the guide said she didn't know. And why did it have a big wrought iron fence around it still when all the other iron fences in Leningrad had been dismantled for the war and she said, Well, because the people wanted it that way. That's the kind of thing you ran into. When, in Moscow, of course, settling down with the foreign office and the press department and the official bureau, BUROBIN it was, with the helping... to help foreigners. We then ran into the red tape. And even making allowances for red tape there were mysteries about getting hold of people, and then and establishing the kinds of contacts that a reporter in any...in any normal of semi-normal circumstances expects to find.

SO THOSE CONDITIONS SURPRISED YOU SOMEWHAT? YOU EXPECTED THAT THE RUSSIANS WOULD BE MORE FRIENDLY AFTER THE...

Well, more relaxed. I would have expected the Russian people to be somewhat more relaxed about things that I thought routine. I mean, you know, I didn't expect to be able to walk into the foreign office and interview whoever was there--I think Molotov was still foreign minister. But in normal contact there was a sort of a standoffishness. There was a perception of uneasiness in relationship with the foreigners.

COULD YOU EXPLAIN HOW YOU ENDED UP HAVING THE INTERVIEW WITH LITVINOV AND YOUR IMPRESSIONS WHEN YOU FIRST CAME TO VISIT HIM?

When I arrived in Moscow, and I'm sure that everyone who arrives in Moscow, or certainly in that period, thought to himself, Well, I am approaching this assignment in a professional way and I am unbiased. I am ready to take things and on their own terms. And I'm not trying to prove anything and therefore I will...I may expect to make those contacts, which will help me in my work. And the way I would work if I were assigned to Paris or Rome I'd called around to start meeting people. And needless to say, you start where you first plug in, which always the sort of the foreign office press department. And since my mandate was my own I wasn't confined to purely political stories. I felt the need after the war to explain what was happening to the Russian people and in Russian life as best I could to the American audience. And so I wanted to see people in the academic world. I wanted to see people in the... in the world of culture. And I got nowhere. I got nowhere at all. And after a while it became apparent to me that I had one solitary channel to information and that was the official channel, through the foreign office in person or through the Soviet press or Tass and that If I wanted to do more than just rewrite Tass or Pravda or Izvestia I would have to find some way around this bottleneck. And I made some calls on my own. I got hold of telephone numbers from either colleagues or friendly diplomats or the rest and called people and got no reply at all. But one of the people I called, and it was just in the normal course of events was Litvinov

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE FOR A SECOND. LET'S GET IN TO THAT MEDIUM SHOT. IF YOU CAN JUST BACK UP AND SAY ONE OF THE PEOPLE...

One of the people I telephoned for possible appointment and interview or background talk, whatever, was Maxim Litvinov. In part because his name was known and in the United States a chat with him would be with someone whom they knew and recognized and respected. And lo and behold it was the first and the only telephone solicitation that got a reply. And we set up an app...set up an appointment with his secretary for one day in June, mid-June it must have been. And when the day dawned I walked over. It was a hot day. Moscow has a continental climate and it was a...it was a sunny hot day. And I remember hot enough for the asphalt in the street to sort of give under my heels as I walked. I walked. It wasn't far from the...from the .. hotel where we stayed, the Metropol Hotel which was the sort of the bird house for practically all the few foreigners who were in Moscow. It was up towards Zhnski Square but to the left and it was an old, sort of pre-revolutionary apartment house. And I walked in and there was one of these little cage elevators right at the entrance and a man in those little porter's uniform who got me into the elevator and took me up. It must have been the second or third floor, third or fourth floor. And showed me into Litvinov's outer office. And it had obviously been a big living room and it was subdivided into an outer office and his inner office. And secretary seated at the desk. If I remember correctly a bare floor and she had a desk farther down with sort of a corner window. And she expected me and that was reassuring because earlier secretary's you never knew whether.... you could get in to where you had been summoned or asked to go and whether once you were in they knew what you were there for or who you were. Well, this was a perfectly normal reception. And she said, Yes, the minister, He was deputy minister, I think, of foreign affairs at the time, will see you in a moment. And sure enough, a minute or so later she went in. The double doors padded double doors, that is to say double doors not only in the sense of opening out from the center, but two doors. Hinged so that they swung together and obviously sound proof. She came out again and said, Please go in. And I entered the room. It was sort of the other three quarters of what had been a single sort of liv...obviously big living room in the original apartment. And I faced as I came in...I faced a large sort of large fireplace. A sort of a baronial fireplace. And I looked to the right and there was Litvinov at the window at his desk, which was at right angles to the window. Bending over the desk and shuffling papers. And he looked up at me, although he had just told his secretary to show me in. He seemed slightly surprised and a bit preoccupied. And then really in an instant pulled himself together and came over and...we shook hands. As I had entered and looked at that fireplace I was astonished on 'This hot day to see that there was a fire in it. I didn't say anything about it. We shook hands. And he showed me over to the left end of the room. The left side of the room where there was a long sort of refectory table, a heavy wooden table sort of the Spanish style, renaissance, whatever, with big heavy chairs. And he seated me at the end of the table. Took his place on my right . . .facing the. . . the. . . other... the wall. And with his back to his desk and to the window and he was a bit so that his back and his right side was the fireplace. And I expressed my pleasure at being there and meeting him, who was a legendary figure. I had never met him. And wondered how to get into the conversation appropriately and of course the peg was the foreign minister's conference is sort of the peace conference that was in progress in Paris still. I had passed through Paris on my way to Moscow and that was in April. And he it was still going on. It wasn't getting anywhere. The peace conference for the...for the Nazi allies, Bulgaria, Rumania, that sort of thing. They...ultimately those peace treaties were signed. Of course, the German peace treaty came up for discussion. It was never signed. There never was a German peace treaty. I asked him how things were going. And he, I don't know how we got into it, but I said I've just been...I've been in Paris and they don't seem to be going very well. And he said, No, in fact they're not going very well. And I said, Well, why is that so? And he said, Well, I could say why it is so and I would have something to say about how to...how to...what should be done there, but I'm...I'm out of it now. And they don't ask me what they should do. And I don't offer advice. If they were to ask me, I would certainly tell them. They and them, of course, being the Soviet government. And I, of course somewhat perplexed at this. So I said, Well, but I understand that there's... there's simply no agreement on major issues there in... They were discussing in Paris sort of the internationalization or the noninternationalization which was what the Russians wanted of the...of the Danube river and the future of Trieste which was very much in contention between the allies of...the western allies in the name of Italy really and in Italian interest then and Tito's Yugoslavia. And affairs... so I said, Now look, here we've had this war and we've... we've won it together and the UN is starting in I think it was then at Hunter College in New York and Why should there be these difficulties? There must "be some great misunderstanding. He said, Well, no, not really any misunderstanding. It's really a matter of policy. And I said, Well, suppose Molotov were to...suppose Burns and I think it was Nest Bevin and the... th... the western foreign ministers were to go to Molotov one day and to say, Now, look Mr. Molotov, here all this business about the Danube and Trieste and the rest of it. Let's... we'll... we'll take...we'll take your suggestion. We'll...we'll agree to your proposal on all these things which are after all matters of detail and at the end of the day, who knows, peace is much more important and future cooperation. We accept your proposition. What would happen then. And he, Litvinov sat there and he breathed somewhat heavily, he was...slightly asthmatic. He smoked and that was possibly it. He breathed for a moment and reflected a moment. And he said, Well, he said, Then if you were to do that, after a period of time, you would be faced with the next series of demands. And I said, Well that sounds pretty grim. That sounds as though there were absolutely no hope...no hope of getting anywhere. And he said, Well, the people of... that's the way they want to play it and that's just...that's reality. And he said, But in any case, I'm out of it now and I've got nothing more to say. And I touched various other bases. Well, the... of course... the atom bomb was old hat and I said, well now... but Baruch... Bernard Baruch, was at that time busy in New York trying to get some international agreement on the control of atomic weapons. It was the first... the first real item that was up before the gen... the first general assembly...

The secretary took me into the office as she said she would and... The secretary opened the doors, double doors, soundproof double doors and led me into the office in a very short time as she had said she would and the first thing that caught my eyes, directly opposite the doors was a large baronial fireplace of what had been this pre-revolutionary living room and obviously a first class apartment house. And there was a fire in the fireplace on this very hot day in June. And I turned to the right. Litvinov was standing at his desk at a window, desk at right angles to the window, his right shoulder to the window and seemed, slightly surprised it struck me. Although he had just asked me...had his secretary ask me to come in. And .. but recovered himself in a moment. He came over and shook my hand and led me to a large refectory table at the other end of the room where we sat down and started to talk.

CAN YOU TELL ME THE GIST OF WHAT HE CONVEYED TO YOU?

I...started to ask him about the...what was really the deadlock at the time at the foreign ministers' conference in Paris where Molotov and the foreign ministers had been working for weeks and really had gotten nowhere in the solution of pure central European problems. And I asked him what was wrong. And he said, Well, he thought he knew what was wrong., but he wasn't going to say and he wasn't going to offer any advice because he was out of it now and was not being asked for advice. If they were to ask him, he said he would be willing to proffer advice. They and them being, of course, the Soviet government and this...I was of course nonplussed at this wondering what was going on. His attitude was one of resignation. He was a man who breathed heavily, perhaps slightly asthmatic, perhaps a bit of emphysema. But he seemed somewhat depressed, resigned, and philosophical. And as the...as the conversation went on, I grew more and more mystified at .. what he was saying. Because what he told me at the end of the day was to sum it up was that . . . he was...he was out He didn't say he had been removed. I came to that conclusion myself somewhat later. He...but he was out of the picture. The people who were running the show were running it their way. They were people with old views who still thought of security in terms of rivers and territory and mountain ranges who were not impressed by the atomic bomb and the whole nuclear...new nuclear dimension of warfare and security. Who would not change in themselves and who had so...were so educating the younger generation that even when they, the older ones were gone we could expect nothing different in the way of policy from the younger people. And as far as the war time alliance and a...and a revival of the spirit of unanimity, of unity which had won the war He said, when I asked if what would happen to this deadlock in Paris if the Western foreign ministers were to go to Molotov one day and say, Yes, we agree to all your demands. Now let us move ahead from there. He paused, reflectively, and b... breathed heavily as he...as he did and said, Well, then after a while you would be faced with the next series of demands.

DID THIS SURPRISE YOU?

It astonished myself...

I'M SORRY. I'LL JUST LET YOU GO.

The whole thing astonished me. I couldn't imagine what was going on. He didn't know me from Adam. He had never met me or heard of me. Yet hear I come in and hear from him things which I had been in Moscow by then for a month or two, I knew what were suicidal. And there he spun on. He...I asked him at one point, Well, you know, wouldn't public opinion which wants to recover from the war, which doesn't want an endless series of five year plans and continued poverty and continued oppression. Wouldn't public opinion force some change in the policy of the Soviet leaders? And he said, Well, no. He said, In other countries it might be possible for public opinion to have its effect, but in dictatorships Franco for instance in Spain, the people just can't rise. They don't have the organization. They don't have the weapons. They don't they don't have the means of public appeal which would be necessary to make the public view, the public demand felt. Franco of course, he was talking about Stalin. And I simply couldn't understand it. In all this time we were together, I don't know, perhaps a half an hour, forty minutes, I don't really remember on that order. In all that time he never once asked me to be discreet or say that he was... that he was talking off the record. He just left it at that. And I said, well I'd like very much indeed, one day, to come and see you again. He said, Yes, by all means. And I left and I was a bit frightened. I couldn't imagine that his office wasn't bugged. After all, my hotel room was bugged. And I.. I... What ran through my mind was, they will deal with him as they'll deal with him. How will they deal with me? And the thought crossed my mind, well, I could conveniently be hit by an automobile. I could conveniently some how, meet with some fatal accident. And my first problem, I knew of course that I couldn't possibly broadcast this. It would never get past...the censor. And it not only wouldn't ever get past the censor, but if there were some miraculous chance that he had not compromised himself that my telling about this would do so. And it crossed my mind that the best thing for me to do was to get this on the record somewhere. And I went to the American embassy, I think if it was not that afternoon it was the next morning.

LET'S CHANGE NOW TO A MEDIUM SHOT AND IF YOU COULD JUST START AGAIN WITH THE AMERICAN EMBASSY.

I felt I had to get this on the record some how for my own protection so that if something did happen to me, there might be some explanation of what mysterious event had put an end to me. I went to the American embassy and I knew John Davies, the first secretary, very well. And told him what had happened. And I didn't want, because I was a reporter and I had never worked for the United States government formally or informally except when I... during the war at the OWI I was a member of the government. I didn't want to put this in the form of a...of a report to the State Department. What I did, and it came down to the same thing as of course I knew it would, I asked them to send a message through State Department channels to Edward R. Murrow who was my boss in New York. He was at that time Vice President of news at CBS. And I dictated to one of the secretaries there what had happened to me and to...and to...my conversation with Litvinov and the circumstances. And that indeed went to Washington, as I knew it would. And it was passed on to Murrow, but of course it was noted rather forcefully in the State Department. And when I returned a couple of years later and saw the man who had received the message on the other end, I got .. an indication of what use it had been put to. But when I left it, I left at least feeling that I wouldn't simply disappear mysteriously for no reason that people would note. In fact, nothing ever happened. There was never any suggestion that anybody knew what had happened. It was... it was quite remarkable. The mystery in my mind remained. I saw Litvinov again not long thereafter in the street. And I felt it just wiser not to approach him. I telephoned for another interview and they said that he was on vacation. When I next saw him in action, it was at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, the big Russian republic which covers most of the Soviet Union...He was a member...

I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OFF. ETC.

Sometime in July and August, or August one of those tiny important notices appeared in Pravda or Izvestia to the effect that the deputy foreign minister, Maximov...Maximovich Litvinov had retired or been...or moved to other duties. He would remain a member of the collegium of the foreign ministry. And .. what I had suspected was, I think, born out by that. And it's the only logical explanation I've ever found. I must have come upon him on that day in June, immediately after he had the word that he was out. Not only out of the picture as he had been on the shelf even as deputy foreign minister, but that he was gone for good. And that everything that he stood for, had stood for in his previous career, diplomatic career in Washington and elsewhere, the notion of cooperation with the West. The notion of serving Soviet interests best in a framework of friendship or mutual tolerance with the Western world, that had been put on the shelf with him. And that the Soviet Union had embarked deliberately on a... on a policy of if you wish, selfish pursuit of its own interests in the narrowest form without any regard for what could be had from a continuation in political postwar terms of the...of the war time military alliance.

WELL DIDN'T WHAT LITVINOV WAS SAYING GO ALONG WITH WHAT YOU HAD ALREADY HEARD FROM THE FEBRUARY BOLSHOI SPEECH OF STALIN? HADN'T THAT ALREADY MADE THIS ATTITUDE FAIRLY CLEAR? COULD YOU EXPLAIN A LITTLE ABOUT THE BOLSHOI SPEECH AND ITS EFFECT IN EUROPE?

The remarkable thing about the Litvinov interview was not that the material, what he had to say was astonishing because it fit in very well to a... to a development of Soviet life and policy that I had experienced since I had been in Moscow and not been not unfamiliar with before I ever arrived. The astonishing thing about it was simply the circumstance that this man should be speaking so freely and unguardedly to a man he didn't know. But the notion that the Soviet Union was embarking in effect, on the Cold War. That it was pulling back from any pretense of the war time alliance or their great co...you know, grand peace time coalition. This had become apparent over the previous year. It had become apparent in the announcement in the previous summer of a new five year plan. Serving notice to the Soviet people that there was going to be no relaxation of effort. That there was going to be no diversion of the sort of industrial...great industrial capacity of the Soviet Union to consumer goods or to a better life. They were to remain chained to a five year plan. For heavy industry and as they pointed out, quite openly, to war industry. That the defense of the Soviet Union had to be maintained and had to be improved. The...this was put together in...[INTERRUPTION AND CHANGE IN CAMERA SHOT]... The attitude...the sort of...the retrogression from the...at least even the pretense of an open war time alliance relationship with the west which had been signaled in specific statements and actions like the re-imposition of the five year plan system was formalized and put into a sort of a conceptual framework by Stalin in the...at the beginning of February .,.1946. In that speech, he told the Soviet people that the world had not changed from prewar. That it was still divided into socialist...he great socialist motherland and its friends and the capitalist world. And that collisions were inevitable and the Uni... the Soviet Union had to...had to prepare itself for — it was if, I remember correctly, he wasn't accusing the United States of starting a war --but the enemies whom he paraded in that speech were of course the former allies. And from then on it was...it was cold war in the Soviet Union.

AND THIS PROMPTED GEORGE KENNAN'S LONG TELEGRAM TO WASHINGTON? DID YOU KNOW KENNAN?

I...no...I had known George Kennan in Germany. He was first secretary or counselor at the embassy in Berlin until I forget, 1940 and into '41. He was...he was not in Moscow when I was there. I think he had just...he had just left.

HOW DID THE SOVIET UNION VIEW THE ATOMIC BOMB AT THE END OF '45 AND IN 1946 BEFORE THEY HAD THEIR OWN? WHAT DID STALIN THINK IT WAS?

The first intimation that I had, that perhaps that we had of the Soviet attitude, Stalin's attitude toward the...toward the...atomic bomb came at the Moscow conference when President Truman told him, informed him that...I think it was...the conference was in session or perhaps the day before...or two before the conference convened that the United States had indeed exploded a an atom bomb...

LET'S STOP FOR A SECOND. YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT POTSDAM...

I'm talking about Potsdam in 1945. The first intimation I had, perhaps the first intimation anyone had of Stalin's attitude to the atom bomb and the implications of this bomb came in Potsdam, at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. The first peace time, post war, post European big 4 conference, summit conference, where President Truman told him of the explosion of the Alamogordo bomb. And found Stalin totally uninterested, apparently totally uninterested, unim... unimpressed by this. And willing at once to go onto some other subject. There was no...there was no surprise, no surge of visible surge of interest- There was no questioning as to what this was and how and why and the rest. It was taken as just as another weapon, another big weapon. And when I asked Litvinov, in my interview the following year, June of '46 what difference the existence of this weapon which subsequently had been tested and used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what difference this would make in strategic thinking of the...of the Soviet leaders. Whether it might not persuade them that they weren't more secure because they had gobbled up another hundred miles of territory or moved to a river line or absorbed a mountain range or the rest. He said that...he indicated that the atom bomb to them was simply another weapon and that given the rules of war...the Clausewitz rules of war, of policy, as war is an extension of policy by other means. It would be factored into their normal strategic thinking without making any qualitative change.

ONE THING THE ARTICLE SAYS THAT HE SAID WAS THAT THE SOVIETS HAD A BASIC UNDERESTIMATE OF THE BOMBS CAPACITY...

Litvinov said that the Soviet leadership did not appear to attach any particular importance to the atom bomb. There was no sense of this being a qualitative a leap in warfare. That it would not affect their strategic thinking nor their ideas of security that their ideas of security continued to be in terms of additional territory, more glassy, more belts. He said, I think, directly that they saw no reason to feel that the atomic bomb would make any difference in warfare so they were not especially worried about atomic war. And this was actually reflected in Soviet propaganda for the rest of the time that I was in the Soviet Union. And beyond that the argumentation that it was the...it was the nature of a state... that nature of the infrastructure which would determine who would survive any kind of war, atomic or otherwise. And the third point that.... that Litvinov made quite explicitly was that he did not think that the Soviet Union was prepared...the Soviet leadership would join in any effective inspection system. In any effective international control of the atomic weapon which Bernard Baruch was at that time seeking sort of international acceptance of at the UN in New York. Litvinov made it quite clear and in several points said it explicitly that the Soviet leadership did not consider the atomic bomb to be anything more than another weapon. He said they'd found no reason to think that this was a qualitative change in the nature of warfare which would require an alteration in strategic thinking. That a war with atomic weapons was winnable. Was not really qualitatively different from a conventional war. And the third point he made was that the Soviet Union would not join in any effective inspection. Any international control of atomic weapons of the sort that Bernard Baruch was trying to get United Nations acceptance of in New York at just about that time.

THEY MAY HAVE NOT ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE ATOMIC BOMB WAS DIFFERENT IN ANY QUALITATIVE WAY YET AT THE SAME TIME THEY WERE FRANTICALLY MAKING ONE. THEY WERE...

The Soviet leadership, was of course all that while using the espionage material that it had got from Klaus Fuchs and Pontecorvo and the Rosenbergs to make an atomic bomb. But he said, and one saw no reason to doubt what he said, even in subsequent Soviet propaganda that for them it was just another weapon. A bigger weapon. A bigger bomb. But just another bomb. And that it did not in any way impel them to rethink their strategy. It did not make them in any way more likely to accept security in terms other than the traditional terms of Russian security which was control of more territory, control of more people, control of terrain features like rivers and mountains.

TALK JUST A BIT MORE ABOUT THE BARUCH PLAN SITUATION. WHEN YOU WERE WITH LITVINOV IN JUNE THAT WAS ABOUT THE TIME THAT THE BARUCH PLAN WAS BEING INTRODUCED AT HUNTER COLLEGE. IT BECAME CLEAR TO YOU THAT THE BARUCH PLAN WAS NOT GOING TO BE ACCEPTED BY THE SOVIETS...

It seemed perfectly clear that Litvinov while he was out, while he was on the shelf, after all it was still pretty much I think he was Let me start again. I think it was pretty clear that Litvinov, although he's no longer in the apparat or was in touch with the feelings that dominated Soviet political thinking in the Kremlin, in the foreign office and he made it quite clear that the Soviet Union would not join in any international inspection system or control system even though they were offered through the Baruch Plan, they were offered jointly with everyone else, access to this power.

SO WHAT WAS THE STUMBLING BLOCK? WHY WOULDN'T THEY ACCEPT?

It I think it came out in what Litvinov said. It was also reinforced by what was going on in Soviet propaganda at the same time the Soviet Union, Stalin had chosen to... between either continuing with the war time alliance and an open policy towards the west which would then benefit his people in terms of better living, in terms of the diversion or the reorientation of productive capacity to consumer goods. He had chosen against that. He had chosen the...to return to the earlier course of the Soviet Union relying only on itself surrounded by a sea of enemies and the fact that these enemies were primarily the war time allies made no difference. There was constant there were constant suggestions in the Soviet press and propaganda that the United States and the others were plotting military pressures or adventures and the rest. The whole orientation which Litvinov, as I say, though on the shelf, could still feel, was back to Soviet, monolithic, unilateral, Soviet security and the pursuit of Soviet interests in the...in the traditional terms of expansion, territorial expansion and....and military strength that had marked Stalin's policy before.

THE WAR WAS OVER. THE WAR WAS WON. 20 MILLION SOVIETS DIED BUT NOTHING CHANGED?

It seemed to me, when I...when I came to the Soviet Union that I...that I would find a changed outlook simply because the two great enemies of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, each on opposite ends, encircling, if you wish, the Soviet Union, had been defeated. They had been defeated by a western alliance, which might very easily, when Hitler first invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 have sat back and allowed those two to devour each other. Instead, Churchill and then the United States, subsequently, six months later, came to Russian help in the most massive way. We saw the evidence of this help. The people of the Soviet Union saw it. The Soviet army in the field saw it in terms of trucks and transport and food and help coming through more months coming up through.... through the... through Iran It was plain that we were the allies, but that door was shut. He just turned around and eliminated from Soviet thinking from Soviet publicity any suggestion of alliance, of friendship, of gratitude, of association with the western world.

CAN YOU REPEAT THAT LAST STATEMENT YOU MADE?

Let me say something else. What I would like to say is that even during the war, at the height of the...of the alliance there was always restraint. There were always reservations on the Russians part. There was never...we, you know, lionized the ladies snipers and the one man guerilla bands who came to the United States. You know...they were...they were feted across the country. We sang the Soviet cavalry anthem and on and on and on. And an enormous outpouring of sympathy and respect for Stalin and the Russians. That was never requited. There was never any publicity about that. Whenever any suggestion that there was suffering in the West, that the people were dying in the field of battle, that .. we were making a monumental effort which was... which was helping to destroy the mutual enemy. There was — The only reference always was to well they're... they're not invading. They're holding back. They're letting us fight the war. This was always Soviet propaganda. But what was...what was different was that the Russians who had been...The Russians had been sort of motivated. They had been...the appeal had been made. The government had appealed to public opinion to fight for...fight for Russia and fight for, you know, not for Communism and that was turned around to. So I wouldn't want to suggest that there had been...that Stalin had previously in any way publicly espoused or tolerated a policy of open recognition of the...of the effort of the other members of the alliance. It was just that when it was a switch not from positive to negative, but from suspicious negative to open and... to active hostility. Active political hostility. That would be it. Let me perhaps say it that way. And to say it economically. During the war, at the height of the alliance, Stalin had never allowed any open displays of gratitude by the Soviet people, let alone made any expressions, public expression of appreciation of the tremendous effort that was being made by Britain and the United States in helping him to win the war. It was, if you wish, a rather negative restraint on his part. That changed not in...not really qualitatively, but quantitatively after the war, after...openly after the speech of February 1946. From negative restraint to open political suspicion and hostility in which the Soviet people simply could not afford to express any open sympathy for the United States or for Americans. Even though privately, as individuals in Moscow, we never had the slightest difficulty with Russians who understood how much they owed the United States and the Western Alliance.

AT THE ELBE RIVER, THOUGH, SOLDIERS MEETING SOLDIERS, MORE COMMON PEOPLE MEETING EACH OTHER… WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? WAS THERE SOME SENSE OF REAL CAMARADERIE BETWEEN THE NATIONS AT THAT POINT OR HAD THINGS ALREADY GONE SOUR?

The atmosphere which Stalin encouraged and imposed was something that colored Soviet life after the war, even during the war and after the war. But when we met the Russians on the Elbe river, in April of 1945, there was no suggestion of strain. It was...that was really euphoria. And the circumstances were dramatic not to say melodramatic. You know, when you think of after years of combat, people who had crossed thous...who fought their way over thousands of miles from we...from east and west to meet at the Elbe River. When they met there was instant understanding, instant appreciation. There wasn't one sour note. The Russians welcomed us. They cheered us for...they complimented us. They thanked us for the...for the villios was the great the Soviet vehicle. It was the Willi's jeep, the villios. They knew what we had done. They knew how much they had been helped in their own monumental effort. And it was a meeting of equals and of fraternization of really, without any...without any mental reservations. But this was not permitted in terms of...in terms of policy. And it soon closed down in the...even in Germany. We crossed the Elbe to attend parties at Kornieff's headquarters and I travelled around. We sneaked into Berlin. I travelled around on my own with a few colleagues. We put up at Soviet battalion headquarters in Berlin. Berlin was still...was still burning. Uh.. we...when we went to cross back across the river we were picked up and held perfectly properly until they could establish who we were. We were given the best of treatment, but The Elbe river remained the line of demarcation months longer than it should have done under the Yalta agreement. Yalta had agreed I...if I remember correctly it was Yalta, that Germany would be divided into four occupation zones. And that...but that Germany should be dealt with as a whole.

I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OFF...

I was one of the...one of the first correspondents there. The first meeting of course was with troop and patrols from, I think the 69th division and the Russians who climbed across a destroyed bridge the Torau. But we arrived very shortly after that. And mad our way across. And didn't see any... correspondents that I can recall, but lots of soldiers and staff officers and people who spoke German, I spoke German and some fragments of English. But it was when we went to Berlin from one of the...one of the parties on the Russian side of the Elbe River that in Berlin at the site of chancellery, Hitler's chancellery, the ruins of the chancellery ran into to a famous Soviet combat photographer who was Roman. Well I've forgotten the name and... one of the big on of the big reporters whose name I've also slipped my mind. But there was in our reception by them nothing that was at all hostile or grudging or suspicious. We were received as we felt we should have been received as we would have received them. As colleagues, as allies, as professional colleagues But it was always us on their side. None of them were allowed to come to our side.

CAN YOU JUST SAY THAT LAST STATEMENT AGAIN AND CLARIFY WHO DIDN'T ALLOW THEM TO COME?

We were received by the Russians on their side of the Elbe River as friends and as allies. There was nothing in the way, nothing visible at all in the way of suspicion, nothing grudging. They recognized our help. They expressed gratitude for the help that they knew we had given them. And even when we went off, a few of us from the...from the immediate headquarters to Berlin and moved around in Berlin staying with Russian tactical battalion headquarters the climate was one of absolute equality, of friendship and acceptance. And there was no suggestion of what was to follow and what was in Stalin's mind. But it was we who went to the Russian side. And expressed our happiness at meeting them and satisfaction at the outcome of the war and hopes for future cooperation. The transfer of the war time alliance in...into a peace time coalition. Their...whoever it was security people, their military people, did not allow any of them to cross. After the very first meeting did not allow...individuals...did not allow any of them to come to us except staff officers on missions. There was none of their swarming across to us as we swarmed in a small way across to them.

DID YOU PERSONALLY, BEING THERE AT THE ELBE, HAVE A FEELING OF OPTIMISM ABOUT THE PEACE, THAT THERE WOULD BE COOPERATION?

All of us, I think, who were at the Elbe, at the time of the meeting, made the first contact with these Russians who had come from...as many thousand miles from their part of the world, practically as we had from ours. All of us had a sense of history. We were all a lot younger than we are now, but it was sort of the successful climax, the great conclusion of a historic enterprise. And there we were and that...these individuals were the symptom of it. The signal that was given. And my contacts with the Russians in those...in those days were more than reassuring, They were decent people, clean. Tactical soldiers are always decent people and when they can clean themselves up, they clean themselves up. So it was... The scene on the other side was as it would have been on the American side. Soldiers shaving, si...lying in the sun talking to people. And a lot of talk about peace and about friendship and about how they hoped the friendship would continue and how we hoped the friendship would continue. There was not an ideological cloud on the horizon in this meeting of individuals. The only, if we had...if it had occurred to us, which I don't think it did .. we might have noticed that the traffic was all from us to them. The reception was fine when we got there. But there was no comparable traffic from them to us. They obviously were prevented. They were ordered not to...not to come across.

DO YOU RECALL ANY EXAMPLES OF PRO-SOVIET SENTIMENT EITHER IN ENGLAND WHEN YOU WERE THERE OR IN THE US DURING THE EARLY PART OF THE WAR?

When...Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The fact that Stalin had helped Hitler start World War II was set aside completely. And there was a sense, a general sense. In Britain, of course, great relief, because it came after the blitz and the second blitz. Great relief that there should be this opportunity. That at last, Hitler was being taken on by Stalin in addition to us. And even in the United States in the months that I spent after the '41, early '42, there was a...an almost euphoric appreciation of the Russians. And there was an enormous and sometimes melodramatic wave of sympathy in the United States for everything Russian. And the Russians were deified. And things that were...that might now embarrass those who did them were performed. Motion pictures were made in which Stalin appeared as a benevolent old gentlemen who strong and the great expression of well, wonderful friend and the rest. Everything that had been negative about Stalin and the Soviet system and... was forgotten. And when Russian individuals, I remember some lady of apparently a very successful guerilla fighter came across the country from San Francisco to the...to New York. She was celebrated. She was lionized and … people and one of the great hit tunes of the period was the Russian cavalry march. There was no restraining the admiration and the relief and the satisfaction that the American people felt at having the Russians, the Soviet Union, the Russians, on our side at last. And this was of course doubly felt in Britain which was very, very much more vulnerable than the United States was. And I might point out that this was never requited on the other side. There was never any acknowledgement by Stalin of the in... remotely the degree of help that the United States and the western alliance had given them. There was never any public acknowledgement that there were people fighting and dying and suffering in the western armies and,.. and in the west as people were in the Soviet Union. It was a one way... one way street... the term, the cultural term... was specifically denounced. It was a monumental it was sort of a watershed decree of the central committee in the middle of August. And it was the execution of the So... It was a cultural purge in effect. A cultural revolution to bring everybody, all expressions, circus clowns, newspapers, operas, ballets magazines, books,...of lecturers. Bring them all back strictly to the party line. A party line, which the Soviet Union was surrounded by enemies working for Communism, were on the defensive, you know, had to build up. And the people...the cultural elements which had been given nearly free play during the war to mobilize Russian popular support for the war effort. Not in terms of Stalin or.... or...communism or the party. But in terms of Mother Russia. These writers and their vehicles, literary magazines were shoved aside. Were put on the shelf. People, as I say, like Pasternak and Zoshchenko, and Akhmatova and this was... that was part of the descent into the Cold War. It was really a cultural revolution.

IF YOU COULD...

...really, the...publicly openly officially, the year of transition from the war time a ... 1946, when I was in the Soviet Union was really the watershed year. It was the transition from war time alliance and pretense of cooperation and mutual enjoyment of peace to the Cold War. To the officially when Stalin's speech of February 9th to the proposition that the Soviet Union was back where it was before the war. Isolated, surrounded by enemies, having to defend itself. Having to use all its resources to improve it defenses and to hold off these enemies who were plotting from with out. The enemies of course being the war time allies. That was... that was amplified in what was really a cultural revolution later that year in August. The central committee decreed that all cultural output, from circus clowns to symphony orchestras, from ballet dancers to painters and authors and lecturers and the rest had to be brought back to a party line which reflected the premises of Stalin's speech. The Soviet Union, embattled, alone, threatened from the outside. Having to defend itself. Having to insure its existence through internal discipline. Through the sacrifice of successive five year plans. Through concentration on building up its defenses. This was decreed and from then on the party line was dictated everything that was said in public. The appeal to patriotism that was allowed during the war, when the Russian people were fighting the war, the Great Patriotic War it was called which was the name of the war with France with Napoleon a hundred fifty years earlier. When the Russian people were encouraged to fight the war in the name of Russia. In the name of the father land, not Stalin, or the Communist party. That was all changed. The people who were the great authors, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, literary journals that had been allowed to spring up, they were all swept from the scene. And from then on it was official propaganda in every form of human contact.

DO YOU REMEMBER SOME EXPERIENCE THAT COULD HELP AMPLIFY THE NOTION OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION? YOU SAID EARLIER YOU WERE TALKING TO A COMPOSER.

I tried to find out what practical effect this decree of the central committee which commanded this cultural purge or cultural reorientation would have in terms of writing, painting, music, dancing and the rest. I went to see various people. One man, the director of the Bolshoi theater explained, and it was a log...the only logical explanation I ever got was that Well, yes, that for instance they were going to sort of reconsider the staging of Boris Godunov. And I said, Well how? Are you going to follow the theme of the...of the of the directive, the central committee directive to get away from art for arts sake into art as a vehicle of the will of the Soviet Union and the needs of the Soviet people, And inspire them to greater effort and greater sacrifice for all these things. And he said, Well, one thing we'll do. We will enhance the crowd scenes. There will be much more emphasis placed on the people. And I don't know I, They were preparing a new...a new a staging of Boris when I was there. They didn't.... they didn't put it on until after I left. I didn't know, I had seen Boris, I think, and I never saw any difference in the... in the crowd scene. But I asked I asked Shostakovich, the composer what difference this new cause or this decree would make in his composing. And he said, Well, he said Music would have to be more optimistic. It would have to inspire people. He was terribly ill at ease in the... in the time that I spent with him. In the half hour or 45 minutes I spent with him. Obviously he didn't want to answer the questions. Obviously there was no way of answering the question. But he was at that point writing his tenth symphony. And I said, Well, I had heard that... I didn't say Stalin, but that it was expected of him to produce a great monumental victory symphony. The gossip in Moscow at the time was that Stalin liked music that he could whistle and that what he wanted from Shostakovich was some elaboration of some new 1812 Overture, complete with church bells and cannon shots and the rest. And Shostakovich said, Well, he was going to be writing. He thought he'd have three or four symphonies, which together would be, a victory symphony. But he what he thought... the music that would inspire people to optimism and to greater solidarity. And I said, well what sort of Music will inspire people in that way. Well he said it's difficult to explain, but, you know, when you hear it you know it. And I said Well, now, would you say optimistic. Well he did...it doesn't mean sort of tuneful cheerful music, dance music, but music that will really inspire people. And I said, well what about Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony. He said, Well Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony is a great work. Is a masterpiece of Russian music. And it's not...doesn't seem cheerful, but when you listen to it you get something from it. A man named Gerasimov who was a court painter. Very successful. Terrible...uh....was going to fulfill his obligation under this new directive by making bigger pictures. He said, Yes, bigger pictures. He raised and held out his arms. Lepeshinskaya, the ballet dancer, waffled on the question. She didn't really know how to answer it. The man who did the big motion picture producer said, "Well, we will find themes that appeal to the people. That inspire the people." So he was responding to the directive in the terms of the directive which were at any rate, was safe. But it was...the pressure was on. And the pressure of censorship and the pressure of...

IF YOU COULD JUST PICK THAT UP FROM PRESSURE...

From the time of the central dire...central committee directive the pressure was on and anyone who was allowed to engage in writing, in dancing, in singing, in music and being a circus clown knew that he had to follow directives. He could not vary. He would have to improvise in his own way to meet what he knew the party was demanding of him. It had to be optimistic. Everything had to be good. Socialist realism no dealing with the problems of life. Dealing only with the great goals of socialism. Dealing with what the...what the Russian people would get at the end at some...at some later time if they behaved in this way. If they re asserted the great solidarity of the period of collectivization and the rest. But...there was to be no such thing, and this was made quite explicit, There was to be no. Well maybe we'd better go to another shot. There was to be no art for art's sake. This was quite specifically and it was a terrific thing. All these people, in every field of culture were told and told explicitly that there was... could be no art for art's sake. That the purpose of art in the Soviet Union was to serve the interests of the state and to make the people serve the interests of the state.

SO FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE AS A CORRESPONDENT IN THOSE DAYS, WHAT DID THAT MEAN IN TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED STATES? THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION...

What these two great events of 1946, Stalin's speech which set the political premise of the divorce from the war time alliance and the cultural revolution which was called the Zhdanovshchina because it was put into the hand of a very forceful man, the secretary of the party in Leningrad to enforce and he did it. These two events marked the change from any kind war time cooperation to a renewal of the suspicion, of the antagonism, of the hostility that had marked Soviet relations to the Western world before World War II. In my experience after the Zhdanovshchina, the cultural revolution, if you wish we felt a greater isolation from the Russians. What...we had had little enough contact before, but things just began quite clearly to freeze. And for me personally, and for my broadcast colleagues At the beginning of October we were told that we would no longer be allowed to broadcast from the Soviet Union. I was told explicitly I could stay. They had nothing against me personally, but there would simply be no further broadcasting. And I stayed on negotiating with the Russian authorities for a couple of months. And my experience of negotiating with the Soviet system parallels those of many who have tried since then. It was a dead end. They were embarked on their course and that course led straight to the Cold War.

SO YOU LEFT A YEAR BEFORE YOU HAD PLANNED TO?

I had to leave because at the end of the day there was no point in my being a broadcast correspondent and filing cables from the Soviet Union. And with great regret we...I called it off in December of that year I went to Germany, and from Germany, came home to the United States.