The basic question upon which, in the opinion of the delegation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the attention of the General Assembly and of the United Nations as a whole should be concentrated, is the implementing of the resolution of the General Assembly of 14 December 1946 that all States Members of the United Nations should reduce their armaments and eliminate the atomic weapon from them. Furthermore, they should be supplementing these decisive and vital recommendations with prompt action to restrain warmongers, as proposed by the delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 18 September last. Simultaneously, the United Nations should take steps to see that the United Nations Charter and the decisions and recommendations adopted by the United Nations are strictly observed and not violated by certain Powers so unceremoniously as has been the case hitherto. The entire international situation in which warmongers are operating, thus far with impunity, demands such action.
Although the war against the fascist aggressors has long since ended, military operations are still going on in various parts of the world; in the Far East, in the South Seas area, in Greece and in Palestine.
In some countries, certain States callously violate the United Nations Charter and attack peoples striving to secure their independence and to rebuild their existence on democratic principles; in other countries, they intervene in domestic affaire, supporting reactionary forces there in every way and arming them to fight against the democratic forces backed by the broad masses of the people.
There is not the slightest doubt that the support given by the United States of America to the Kuomintang in its civil war against the democratic forces of China is in blatant contradiction to the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another country, which, as we all know, is at the very root of the United Nations Charter.
Equally incompatible with the basic principles of the Charter is the open intervention in the domestic affairs of Greece conducted by the United Kingdom, which maintains a part of its armed forces on Greek territory in order to support and maintain the anti-popular, monarchist and fascist regime which has brought Greece to a state of permanent civil war and which threatens to develop into a war against the peace-loving Balkan States.
This aimed intervention by the United Kingdom has upset the peace and tranquillity of Greece after its liberation from the German aggresors, and has led to civil war, the outcome
of which is the political bankruptcy of the monarchist and fascist regime and the collapse of British policy. This collapse is not accidental; for those who imagined they could suppress the Greek people with the aid of foreign intervention overlooked the fact that nations, even the smallest of them, are not the same after a war as when they entered it, and that it is now impossible to govern peoples by terror since terror merely evokes still greater popular resistance, drawing into the struggle people who were previously nonpolitical and passive.
If the Germans failed, despite their savage terror, to bring the virile, freedom-loving Greek people to its knees, it is still more unlikely that anyone will succeed now that this people has been steeled in long years of struggle for its freedom and independence.
Today, as could well be expected, the United States authorities are preparing to come forward as the executors of the unsuccessful British policy and to undertake to carry out the functions which the United Kingdom was unable to discharge.
These instances of violation of the United Nations Charter are all the more striking if one observes how conscientiously it has been obeyed by the USSR, which, of course, withdrew its troops from China, Norway, the island of Bornholm and Iran.
A regular war is also being waged by the United Kingdom on the soil of Palestine, which is most rightfully striving for its independence.
Nor can we fail to notice the sanguinary events which have been going on in Indonesia for nearly two years. Despite the Security Council’s “cease-fire” order in Indonesia, Netherlands troops continue their offensive.
It is abundantly clear that each of these so-called local wars is a breach of the peace, and that each of them, as the experience of the last war has shown, beam within itself the threat of transformation into an armed conflict on a far vaster scale.
But it is even more disquieting to all friends of peace and international co-operation to realize that the warmongers are more and more brazenly drumming for a new war, and that Mr. Molotov’s proposal made at the General Assembly last year for the reduction of armaments has not been implemented in spite of the Assembly recommendation. The fault of such non-implementation rests with those States which consider that the USSR proposal for the reduction of armaments — a matter of vital concern to the peoples of all countries — can be pigeon-holed just as the USSR disarmament proposals were pigeon-holed at the League of Nations.
The same States are also to blame for the fact that the work of the Atomic Energy Commission, set up by the United Nations on 24 January 1946, has reached a deadlock as a result of the persistent, but completely unfounded, United States claims to keep as its exclusive and monopolistic preserve such means of mass destruction as the atomic weapon and to, place the sources of atomic energy as well under its control. There can be no disarmament unless atomic bomb stock piles are destroyed and their manufacture stopped.
Sabotage of the proposal for the reduction of armaments is the only way one can describe the attempts of the United States representatives to separate the question of the atomic weapon from the general question of the reduction of armaments and to evade reduction of armaments by an artificial formula about “guaranteeing” peace and security. The reduction of armaments and their control by the Security Council provide precisely this vital guarantee which will serve to strengthen confidence and international cooperation.
The delegation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic will never agree to the armed forces of the United Nations being organized in such a way that only one particular Power occupies a dominant position, or to these armed forces being a tool for expansionist policies cloaked by the authority of the United Nations.
Matters have reached such a pitch that even here, in the General Assembly, the United States delegation described a bare reference to implementing the Assembly’s recommendation on disarmament as “irresponsible propaganda”. Yet the United States delegation has not uttered a syllable in condemnation of the unbridled propaganda for a new war which is being conducted in the country where the United Nations has its seat.
The USSR representative quoted a wealth of factual material in his speech to confirm the existence of this war propaganda. Millions of people heard the statement made by the head of the USSR delegation, and his proposal for muzzling the warmongers. The facts quoted in this statement cannot be evaded or ignored.
The statement made by Mr. Austin at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, when he called Mr. Vyshinsky’s speech a “falsification”, cannot be considered an answer, for Mr. Austin could not prove, and no one can prove, that the warmongers’ statements were incorrectly quoted by Mr. Vyshinsky, that the figures of the profits earned during the war by American trusts were untrue or that the facts cited by him were inaccurate. Where, then, was the falsification in Mr. Vyshinsky’s speech? Mr. Austin was also wrong when he said that Mr. Vyshinsky’s speech might injure the prestige of the United States of America. If anyone is damaging the honour of the United States it is those warmongers who were named by the USSR representative. To substantiate what I am saying, I will quote a statement by Mr. George Earle, former special envoy to the Balkans, published in the American Press:
“I am delighted and highly honoured to be called a warmonger by Mr. Vyshinsky. If by ‘warmonger’ he means that I advocate using atom bombs on Russia, he, that is, Mr. Vyshinsky is absolutely right.”
Is this the raving of a madman or the hysteria of a warmonger caught in the act? No, this is simply the voice of a Hitlerite surpassing his teacher in cynicism. Even at the very worst period of the Nurnberg Congresses, the German fascists did not dare throw out a challenge to the world so blatantly as Mr. Earle is doing now.
I am not interested in Mr. Earle’s personality, but I call the attention of the General Assembly to the fact that the United States Press was prepared to reproduce this cannibalistic statement by Mr. Earle. There is no doubt that Mr. Earle would never have dared to use such language, or the United States Press to print such statements, if there were not behind Earle’s back sinister forces supporting him and convinced that no punishment would befall them. I feel sure that such shameless statements as Mr. Earle’s do not represent the feelings of the American people, who, no less than other peoples, want to see warmongers muzzled, for people like Mr. Earle are more dangerous than criminals behind bars.
The remarks made by the head of the USSR delegation evoked a reply also from Mr. Harwood, Vice-President of the Cutler-Hammer concern, who had deplored the fact that no atomic bomb was yet available which could destroy people only, without destroying property. We know what Mr. Harwood is hinting at. Mr. Harwood says that his words wore spoken in jest. Anyone, of course, is free to make a joke, but there are jokes which smack of powder and blood, and which threaten to multiply the number of graveyards in the world and bring suffering to mothers and wives who have not yet lost their nearest and dearest on the battlefields.
Several organs of the United States Press also referred in unfriendly tones to the USSR delegation’s statement, a fact most significant in itself. If a statement in support of peace, made from the rostrum of the General Assembly in the country which is the seat of the United Nations is accorded a hostile reception by a section of the Press of that country, it gives all friends of peace and international co-operation grounds for
thought and for drawing certain inferences.
Does it not seem strange that, while warmongers move about freely, write articles, speak at public meetings, give interviews to the Press, and enjoy the tokens of outward esteem, the supporters of peace and security are persecuted, driven from their jobs, imprisoned; are killed in Greece and Spain, to the accompaniment of applause in Argentina? Their status is worse than that of the German nazis and their accomplices, while individuals who collaborated with the enemy during the war now enjoy honour and esteem, sit in governments, occupy leading administrative posts, pass judgment and mete out punishment to those who, weapon in hand, fought against the enemy during the war. This occurs not only in such a fascist and monarchist country as Greece, but in other countries too, which falsely call themselves democratic.
Under the guise of being displaced persons there are hiding, in the United States and British zones of occupation in Germany, war criminals whose hands are stained with the blood of thousands of innocent people, patriots of their own country. For example, in the western zones of Germany there is in hiding the notorious, criminal Bandera, that consummate spy and secret agent who, during the war, acting on the instructions of the Germans, formed bandit detachments which massacred the peaceful inhabitants of my country who were supporting the armies of the USSR and shot in the back its troops who were fighting against the aggressors. This man’s name is accursed in the Ukraine by the entire Ukrainian people.
In England, under the guise of sheltering displaced persons, comfortable billets have been round m Lincoln, Sheffield and Essex for the “Galichina” SS Division, which formed part of the German forces and fought in their ranks against the army of the USSR, the army which, by its brave fight, saved not only its own country, hut other States which had succumbed to or been weakened by the enemy’s onslaught.
In the displaced persons’ camps in the United States and British occupation zones in Germany arc traitors to their fatherland, former Gestapo agents. They are maintained not in haphazard fashion, but as armed formations which are being trained by the warmongers and are obviously being prepared for future military operations both against the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the peoples of the whole Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Both in the United States and British zones of occupation, and on the very soil of the United States of America and of Great Britain, underground organizations operate, carrying out their disruptive work against both the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the other Republics of the USSR, They operate not only freely, but in many cases with the support of the British and United States authorities.
How can one believe, after this, in the pacific statements made from this rostrum? All this activity, which is contrary to the Charter and the decisions of the United Nations, cannot be dismissed as mere chance: it is an integral part of the crazy plan hatched by the warmongers.
Here I should like to pause and reply to the speech of Mr. NcNeil which the General Assembly heard this morning.
Apparently Mr. McNeil was unable to deny the facts characterizing the activity of the warmongers which were quoted by the head of the USSR delegation in his statement on 18 September. Instead of condemning the warmongers, Mr. McNeil took a different line, that of attacking the policy of the USSR, which was, is and always will be a policy of peace.
In order to cast a slur on this policy and also I defend the notorious speech made by Mr. Churchill in Fulton, Mr. McNeil did not shrink from direct insinuations. Mr. McNeil chose to appeal to history. Permit the representative of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic likewise to refer to history, and let us see in whose favour history will speak.
We have not forgotten, as those present in this hall have not forgotten, the advent to power of the German fascists. When, after the burning of the Reichstag, they seized the reins of government in Germany, they were still weak. Carrying out the agreed international action envisaged in Article 16 of the League of Nations Covenant would have sufficed to hurl Hitler’s Government from the saddle in a very short space of time. But the governing circles in Great Britain who took the lead in the League of Nations did not lift a finger to prevent the fascists from consolidating themselves in Germany. These circles believed that a Hitlerite government come to power would serve as a weapon for a future war by Germany against the Soviet Union. Speeches made by the Hitlerite fanatics at Nurnberg Congresses about the future campaign against the East received a sympathetic hearing from the warmongers of that time in Great Britain. Czechoslovakia was surrendered to Hitler. The Munich Pact was concluded — and I think it necessary to remind Great Britain of this — an agreement which freed Hitler’s hands for his Eastern campaign, a campaign which cost the Ukrainian people and the other peoples of the USSR millions of dead and devastation of tens of thousands of towns and villages.
Mr. McNeil knows, of course that there is not a grain of truth in his gibe about Russian gasoline. Would it not be better to recall how British reactionaries, fully supported by the British Government of the day, in which the Labour Party, of course, also participated, hindered and sabotaged the opening of a second front? They preferred to see their Russian allies bled white in the East, bearing the brunt of the wild onslaught and almost the whole weight of the war machine of Hitlerite Germany in single combat with Hitlerite fascism. That is history’s reply to the British delegation,
Mr. McNeil uttered another untruth in his speech here when he implied that the USSR did not find itself in agreement with any other country. This is not the case; we even agree with Great Britain that the overseas loan which it is about to conclude is very disadvantageous for the British people. Mr. McNeil also forgot that China, with whom the USSR is supposed to be at enmity, has now adopted the USSR’s position after the latter’s refusal to attend the conference of eleven States to conclude a treaty with Japan. We agree, for example, with Egypt about the withdrawal of British troops from that country. We agree with the countries of Latin America that the prices fixed by the American trusts for their agricultural produce are ruinous, and that steps should be taken to do away with or remedy such an abnormal state of affairs. And to what do we not agree? We do not agree to the United Nations Charter being violated.
Unfortunately, violation of the Charter and disregard of the decisions and recommendations of the United Nations, and of the United Nations itself, has become the rule. We must discuss, not what Articles of the Charter and decisions of the United Nations have been violated, but what articles and decisions are still being observed by those States which take a conscientious view of their relations with tike United Nations.
The efforts of reactionary circles in the United States to achieve world hegemony and to transform the United Nations into an instrument for that purpose cannot likewise serve to strengthen the authority of the United Nations. World domination by a great Power and the national Sovereignty of lesser States and nations, especially the small and medium ones, are two things that are mutually incompatible.
Mr. McNeil did not mention it, but questions such as that of the nationalization of the steel industry in Great Britain, and the participation of representatives of workers’ parties in the Governments, let us say, of France and Italy, are matters of domestic concern of the respective countries, and not of international agreements, as the British representative imagines. When world domination is being fought for, the national dignity and sovereignty of other countries will necessarily be jeopardized and the most glaring inequalities will be engendered — whether by armed or economic force or by political, pressure — between States (and this is sensed by many of those present in this hall) which are fighting on the basis of the United Nations Charter for the equal rights of all nations and peoples. When world domination is being sought, the principle of trusteeship embodied in the United Nations Charter cannot but be transformed into a system of re-partitioning colonies and continuing the enslavement of colonial peoples, as in pre-war days. When efforts are being made to secure world domination a particular and of trusteeship will inevitably be introduced over States which have hitherto considered themselves sovereign and independent. Take, for instance, the attempts now being made to establish a special kind of trusteeship over the war-stricken countries of Europe by hanging around their necks a series of foreign loans for which the peoples of these countries will have to pay dearly.
It is perfectly clear that the drive for world domination engenders in some people a quite unjustified assurance of their own superiority, and in others a bitter feeling that they have been deprived of their rights. On the whole, it surrounds the United Nations with an atmosphere of arbitrary lawlessness, of triumph of the principle innate in every aspirant to world domination: “I do as I please.” One can hardly maintain that such a policy serves the cause of peace and international co-operation.
The systematic high-handedness thus displayed by particular States which are increasingly seeking to bring us back to the practices of the late lamented League of Nations, is the basic and deep-seated cause of the ineffectiveness of United Nations activity.
Here, in this Assembly, we are now being asked to violate the Charter and to create a kind of third interim organ, a sort of second Security Council, a second Assembly, or, as many fear, a branch of the State Department of the United States.
Let me point out only that, according to Article 109, amendments to the Charter must be ratified by the States Members of the United Nations in accordance with their constitutional processes.
It is very significant that they who talk most loudly about the inoperativeness of the United Nations are precisely those who, by their arbitrary actions, most paralyse the activity of the United Nations and help to undermine its authority. The representatives of those countries which daily violate the Charter, circumvent the recommendations of the General Assembly and contravene the decisions of the United Nations, are attempting, in order to escape blame, to throw the blame on others; in fact, on the very countries which conscientiously, day in and day out, defend the Charter and the decisions of the United Nations.
They spread the myth that the blame for the ineffectiveness of the United Nations rests on our colleague, Mr. Gromyko, the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, who, by voting in the Security Council against the proposals of the United States and Great Britain, “blocked” if you please, the Security Council’s adoption of resolutions on the Greek question.
Which Greek question are they talking about — the falsified Greek question winch has just been brought before the General Assembly, and which is nothing but a crude revival of Bismarck’s Ems telegram, or the genuine Greek question which the USSR delegation raised in January 1946 and the Ukrainian SSR delegation on 25 August 1946?
The essence of the Greek question is not that someone or other is threatening the integrity and independence of Greece, and that the United States must protect the Greece of Tsaldaris and Zervas from this “danger”, but that the warmongers wish to turn Greece into a centre of unrest and acute conflict in the Balkans, and that plans are being laid to draw Greece into a military alliance with Turkey and perhaps even with Italy, and to provoke a clash in the Balkans; that someone, after occupying Greece with its troops, wishes to take a firm stand in the Mediterranean area with a view to penetrating into Palestine and the Arab countries of the Near East, and to approach nearer to the Suez Canal and simultaneously take up a strategic position which would threaten the Soviet Union.
“We have selected Turkey and Greece,” wrote the journalist Walter Lippmann, “not because they are specially in need of relief . . . but because they are the strategic gateway to the Black Sea and the heart of the Soviet Union.”
It was in order to realize these expansionist plans that, as Tsaldaris declared, the Security Council set up a Commission to investigate frontier incidents. The majority of this Commission presented a confused and contradictory report of which it can only be said that, in it, fantasy took the place of facts, partiality of logic, and perjury of truth.
With the same aims in view, this question has been submitted in its “Tsaldaris” version to the General Assembly, with whose authority it is hoped to cloak a new intervention in Greece. The real essence of the Greek question lies in this intervention, which is designed to duplicate or replace the intervention of Great Britain.
What would you have said, gentlemen, if your country, which suffered fewer casualties than Greece in the war against fascist Aggression, had to accept intervention by foreign troops? Why cap this be done to Greece? Why is the Greek people refused the right which the Yalta Conference gave all the liberated peoples of Europe “to destroy the last vestiges of nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice”? On what grounds are the Greek people being deprived of the-right to solve their internal conflicts by themselves and to be the masters in their own country?
What right had Great Britain to dictate to the Greek people the dates of the parliamentary elections, to fix the date of the plebiscite, and to form — as it is forming even now, with the co-operation of the United States Government — Greek governments acceptable to itself? What right had Great Britain to form the Tsaldaris Government, of which one may say that its longevity depends on how long it takes to conclude the discussion of
the Greek question? It is the prerogative of the sovereign Greek people to make decisions on such matters.
What article of the Charter put Greece at the mercy of Zervas, Gonatas, Turkovassilis and all those who helped the German occupants to crush the Greek patriots who fought against them for the salvation of their homeland and for the Allied cause?
There is obviously only one basis for these illegal acts, the desire to compel the Greek people to surrender its country to those who require it as a base for realizing their expansionist plans.
The real essence of the Greek question lies here and not in that monstrous political diversion, that downright international fraud under cover of which some people want to accuse Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia of threatening the integrity and independence of Greece.
The representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the Security Council would not have done his duty to the sixteen Republics comprising the Soviet Union, nor his duty to the United Nations, if he had voted for the proposal to set up a High Commissioner or a permanent Commission, for such a proposal is a preliminary step towards a new intervention in Greece and is designed to extend the intervention in Greece's internal affairs to other Balkan countries also.
It is under these conditions, when the warmongers are raising their heads ever more boldly, when they not only artificially create and foster war psychosis, but take practical steps which cannot but evoke disquiet among the nations, that the protagonists of respect for the Charter and the decisions of the United Nations are asked to agree to call a special conference to abolish the principle of the unanimity of the five permanent members of the Security Council in decisions concerning peace and security, or at least to annul Chapter VI.
Apparently some people find the framework of the United Nations so restricting and the Charter adopted at San Francisco so cumbersome that they wish to deprive the minority of the weapon of self-defence provided for it by the Charter. But try as they may to divert attention, by their clamour about the so-called veto, from the fundamental questions raised by the USSR delegation, the agents of imperialism will fail, for all honest men realize that the attacks on the unanimity rule are an integral part of war propaganda, a smokescreen concealing preparations of war, a mask for illegal actions organized under the eyes of the United Nations.
If at the present time, when Article 27 of the Charter is still in force, we are witnesses of the ever-greater disruption caused by the warmongers and violators of the Charter, what will it be like tomorrow if this bastion, Article 27, is removed and the elemental forces of lawlessness surge unchecked around the United Nations? Whether the actual initiators of the proposal for the revision of Article 27 want this or not, whether they foresee it or not, it would be the beginning of the end of the United Nations.
Perhaps this accords with the plans of the warmongers, but it does not accord with the aims of the champions of peace and international security. It is exactly because the friends of peace believe in the wisdom and the power of the peoples that they want to believe also that the United Nations will find the internal strength to overcome the difficulties which the planners of aggression are trying to place in its path.
What is necessary to overcome these difficulties?
First of all, it is necessary to adopt the USSR delegation’s proposal of 18 September last, which has the full and unqualified support of the delegation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, for the speedier implementation of the General Assembly’s recommendation of 14 September 1946 for the reduction of armaments and the elimination of the atomic weapon from the Rational armaments of all States Members of fee United Nations, The urgent measures for the muzzling of warmongers provided in the USSR proposal should also be adopted.
Secondly, strict and punctilious observance of fee United Nations Charter by all Members, without exception, is essential.
Thirdly, it is essential that the co-operation of the five great Powers, which ensured the victory of the United Nations in the greatest war in the history of mankind, should form, as well, the basis of concerted action for the maintenance of peace and security in the post-war period. The matter rests wife you, gentlemen.
Fourthly, it is essential to respect the sovereignty, independence and national dimity of peoples and countries, however small. The concept of equality of rights and self-determination of peoples, occluding all claims for the domination by some Powers over others, must become the law of international life in relations between States.
May I recall, in this connexion, the wise words of fee great Generalissimo Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin, spoken by him on 23 March 1946, on the subject of fee United Nations:
“The strength of this international Organization lies in the fact that it is based on fee principle of the equal rights of States, and not on principle of the domination of some States over others. If the United Nations succeeds in maintaining the principle of equal rights in the future, it will, undoubtedly, play a great positive role in fee cause of guaranteeing international peace and security.”
All supporters of peace and international cooperation will never forget these words. They will work tirelessly on behalf of peace, and win strive for peace against the dark forces of evil, the prenicious forces of reaction and aggression.