Mr. MANUILSKY said that if the General Assembly had been impatiently awaiting the speech of the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, it was not because Mr. Bevin was an orator likely to electrify his audience but because, at the 226th meeting, the USSR had submitted proposals for the strengthening of international peace and security. For that reason, the Assembly hall had been crowded during Mr. Bevin’s speech.
69. Mr. Bevin’s speech had probably disappointed the Assembly, for it had had the same effect as the devaluation of the pound sterling after the Washington Conference. Mr. Bevin had been unable to give any consistent reply to the questions raised by the delegation of the Soviet Union. The reason was that the accusations against warmongers applied also to the United Kingdom.
70. Mr. Manuilsky would not dwell long on that speech, which would probably be analysed in detail in the First Committee. It might, however, be asked what that speech contained in the way of precise and accurate information or factors corresponding to reality. It was sufficient to take any one of the questions raised by Mr. Bevin to see that he had distorted the truth.
71. "For instance, there was the Greek question, concerning which Mr. Bevin had merely said that Greece was following its own road. That was a ridiculous assertion, for the whole world knew that since 1945 Greece had been occupied by foreign troops.
72. With regard to the question of Korea, the delegation of the Ukrainian SSR would undertake to refute Mr. Bevin’s allegations, in the same way as his unjustified assertions concerning Greece.
73. In regard to the situation in China, Mr. Bevin should consult the White Paper issued by the United States State Department, which refuted his arguments completely.
74. As for the question of disarmament, a mere perusal of the records of the General Assembly and of the Security Council showed that the Soviet Union’s proposals for the reduction by one-third of the armaments of the five permanent members of the Security Council had been systematically sabotaged by the representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States. Whenever the Soviet representatives had proposed the reduction of armaments, they had been asked how that could be done without control and prohibition of the atomic weapon. When the same representatives had suggested prohibition of the atomic weapon and control of the production of atomic energy, the delegations of the United Kingdom and the United States had objected that that could not be done without a reduction of armaments. When the Soviet representatives had proposed a solution to both difficulties, the reply had been a demand for guarantees. First, of all, it had been said, peace treaties must be concluded with Japan and Germany and Article 43 of the Charter, concerning armed forces to be made available to the Security Council, must be implemented. Nevertheless, the representatives of the United States and the United Kingdom had known very well that the artificial structure they proposed to erect depended entirely on the Anglo-American bloc, and that the removal by them of one of those so-called guarantees would be enough to bring down the whole structure. That was what had happened, and the delegation of the Ukrainian SSR would bring forward evidence in the Ad Hoc Political Committee to show the absurdity of Mr. Bevin’s allegations.
75. But that was not what the world expected of the General Assembly. World opinion awaited a reply to the Soviet Union’s proposals. But Mr. Bevin distorted the truth by attributing dark political designs to the USSR and deliberately fomenting differences of opinion.
76. Moreover, it was not the representatives of Soviet Socialist Republics who had invented the existence of an economic crisis in the capitalist countries; that fact appeared in blade and white in the United Nations report on the world economic position. Mr. Bevin need not try to persuade others that there was, and that there would be, no crisis. Mr. Bevin, who was probably less competent in economic affairs than in politics, had only to consult his own specialists to learn that crises were an integral part of the economic system which still prevailed throughout a large, part of the world.
77. Mr. Manuilsky then turned the proposals submitted to the General Assembly by the delegation of the Soviet Union. Those proposals were an important contribution to the cause of the United Nations and should promote progress in establishing a sound and lasting peace. They were the Soviet Union’s reply to the reckless policy of the imperialist reactionary forces that were trying to foment a new war; Mr. Manuilsky was referring to the practical measures in preparation for war that were being taken by ruling circles in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the assistance of certain other Governments which followed them blindly, particularly Yugoslavia.
78. Since the end of the Second World War, the supporters of an aggressive policy in the United States had seen to it that industry in that country continued to work for war. The greatest scientific discoveries of humanity — atomic nuclear fission and the production of nuclear fuel — had immediately been utilized for military purposes and converted into enterprises paying high dividends. The adversaries of peace had prevented prohibition of the dreadful atomic weapon, and had opposed the establishment of strict and effective control of atomic energy.
79. The speech by Mr. Acheson, United States Secretary of State (222nd meeting), showed that the United States Government refused to implement the important General Assembly resolutions 1 (I) and 41 (I) of 24 January and 14 December 1946, which recommended that all States should eliminate the atomic weapon from their national armaments.
80. Unmindful of the lesson taught by the shameful defeat of Germany, which had aspired to world domination, the warmongers had started an armaments race unprecedented in history, setting aside the most substantial part of their budgets for military purposes. Aggressive circles in the United States, motivated by the desire to enslave other peoples, had begun to organize military, naval and air bases throughout the whole world. Their principal aim was the encirclement of the Soviet Union.
81. While adopting economic and military measures in preparation for a new war, the enemies of peace had made every effort to establish political and military groups enabling them to wage war against the USSR with foreign troops on foreign soil. Among those groups were the western European bloc and the North Atlantic bloc. They were of a distinctively aggressive character, but the warmongers had endeavoured to pass them off as defensive alliances, regional arrangements such as those provided for in the Charter.
82. But even a person with the scantiest knowledge of political questions could perceive the fallaciousness of those assertions. The Charter provided for the conclusion of regional arrangements between neighbouring States and for purposes of defence. That was precisely the type of arrangement which the Soviet Union had concluded with its neighbours with a view to preventing an attack by Germany.
83. But the agreements concluded at the instigation of the Anglo-American ruling circles were of quite a different nature. Those agreements grouped together States in various parts of the world, and had been concluded not for purposes of defence but for purposes of aggression. They were directed against the USSR, a nation which had been an ally in the previous world. war. Furthermore, on the pretext of forming a European union, the organizers of aggressive blocs intended to admit a rump State of western Germany, thus sanctioning the partition of Germany and utilizing that country for their aggressive purposes.
84. Even such an outspoken enemy of the Soviet Union as the reactionary United States Senator Taft had had to admit the fact that the North Atlantic Treaty was aggressive in purpose. The blocs directed against the USSR and created at the instigation of the aggressive Anglo-American circles divided the world, made normal economic relations difficult and added to the economic and political chaos in that part of the world where the system of private interests and profit was in force.
85. In addition to those plans which aimed at the establishment of their military domination over the world, the warmongers were developing plans for vast economic expansion designed to facilitate the execution of their military projects.
86. Those projects had found concrete expression in the notorious Marshall Plan, which selfishly exploited the misery which the peoples of Europe had been enduring since the war. Crafty United States politicians, on the pretext of aiding the countries of western Europe to stabilize their economy, had first sent to those countries useless war stocks. They had then flooded European markets with United States products in a deliberate attempt to paralyse the industrial production of those countries. The representatives of the Latin-American countries were perfectly aware of that situation, but had not the courage to state the fact in the forum of the United Nations.
87. The results of the economic impoverishment of the “Marshallized” countries of western Europe were very evident, Mr. Bevin should note the fact that the industrial production of those countries had not yet reached the pre-war level. In the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics of the United Nations it could be seen that, taking 1937 as the basic year, with 100 as the index, the industrial production of a country such as Greece was 83, that of Italy 96, that of Belgium 96, whereas in November 1948 that figure was 171 in Poland and 235 in Bulgaria.
88. In view of the economic stagnation and decadence in which the countries of western Europe were foundering, it was interesting to note the extent of the economic development of the Ukrainian SSR, which had suffered particularly from the enemy invasion. The industrial production of that country in 1946 had been 44 per cent higher than the previous year. There had been an increase of 32 per cent in 1947 and 43 per cent in 1948.
89. The report of the United Nations on the world economic situation contained other facts which Mr. Bevin could not overlook. Thus it stressed the fact that, in the first quarter of 1949, the number of unemployed in the countries of western Europe had increased by 100 per cent in comparison with the corresponding period of 1948. Commercial relations between the countries of western Europe had reached only 70 per cent of the pre-war level. Because United States products had invaded the European market, the foreign trade deficit of the western European countries with the United States had been 3,245 million dollars in 1948. Mr. Manuilsky also requested the members of the General Assembly to read the report in order to see the heavy deficit in the balance of payments weighing on the countries of Latin America.
90. By means of so-called Marshall Plan credits and subsidies, the industrial and financial circles in the United States had succeeded in enslaving western Europe and had forced it to take part in their political and military manoeuvres. The warmongers had set in motion their entire propaganda machine in an effort to persuade the working masses that the policy of expansion and preparation for war was the best means of preventing the economic crisis. They asserted that the production of armaments would guarantee the masses full employment. But — and Mr. Manuilsky hoped the representative of Canada would take particular note of those words — the social regime which forced men to eat bread soaked in their own blood and in the blood of others was doomed to disappear.
91. It was obvious that neither the arms race nor the Marshall Plan had saved the United States from an economic crisis; on the contrary, the United States, which was sinking irretrievably into an economic crisis, had dragged its satellites with it. It sought, as was clear for instance from the notorious currency agreement signed in Washington, to make its satellites bear the consequences of that crisis. The measures taken by the American monopolies were serving to disorganize still further the economy of the capitalist part of the world, to aggravate the disequilibrium in evidence there and to deepen the gulf dividing the rich capitalist countries from the impoverished capitalist countries. The vast accumulation of wealth by a number of monopolies and the ruin of the greater part of the population of the globe were merely diminishing the capacity of the world markets and thereby producing a further contraction in trade.
92. All the evidence went to show that in a society based on private property, with maximum profits as the sole incentive, in a society where anarchy prevailed in production and where the main trends of economic life were determined by the monopolies alone crises were inevitable. In the light of such facts, events in the Soviet Union acquired increasing interest.
93. As was generally known, there neither were nor could be crises in that country. Statistics showed that the Soviet Union and the peoples' democracies were developing rapidly. The representative of the Soviet Union had already informed the General Assembly that gross industrial production in the USSR for the second quarter of 1949 had shown an increase of 20 per cent over the figure for the corresponding period of 1948. In June 1949 production had exceeded the 1940 level by 41 per cent. There had been an increase of 6 million hectares in the area under crops.
94. Such facts could of course be challenged, but it would be as futile as challenging the occurrence of storms at sea. The only difference was that modern meteorologists could forecast storms, whereas the American and British statesmen could forecast nothing and sought to solve the crisis only by preparing for new wars.
95. The United States had not suffered war on its own territory; it had not been invaded or bombarded; it had amassed vast profits during the war, in addition to the world’s gold reserves. It was nevertheless advancing slowly but surely towards economic crisis. The USSR, on the other hand, presented a very different picture. It had suffered devastations unparalleled in history. It had sustained enormous losses in men and materials. It was nevertheless rapidly healing the wounds of war, restoring its economy by its own efforts and consolidating its position despite the bitter hostility of its one-time allies. In the face of the atmosphere of crisis in the capitalist world, it was engaged in expanding production at a rate of which capitalism at the height of its glory had never dreamed. Those facts were food for thought.
96. What Mr. Manuilsky had said surely proved strikingly the vitality of socialism, its invincibility and superiority to the system known as private enterprise. It was irrefutable proof of the power of Lenin’s and Stalin’s creative thought, of their assertion that the imperialist regime was in the process of decay and contained the seeds of its own dissolution, whereas the socialist structure contained a strength against which none of the forces of reaction could avail.
97. Mr. Manuilsky understood the warmongers. The reason they sought armed conflict, was that they were unable to deny glaring facts or to change the course of events; they succeeded only in entangling themselves further in their own contradictions.
98. It was useless for Mr. Bevin to argue that there was no crisis, that there was only a temporary depression; the masses realized through their family budgets that a crisis did exist. Everybody knew what would be the consequences of the devaluation which the American monopolies had forced on the sterling area countries. According to figures furnished by the United Nations, the consumption of meat in most countries of western Europe during the first quarter of 1949 was only 60 to 70 per cent of the pre-war consumption. In all countries, and especially in those still under the colonial yoke, unemployment was increasing, living standards were falling, and ruin, poverty and hunger were spreading. The countries where the so-called private enterprise system prevailed were in a state of crisis and were preparing for a new war.
99. The people asked for peace but were offered war. The people desired international collaboration, but were presented with the North Atlantic Treaty. They wanted prohibition of atomic weapons and a reduction of armaments, but they were offered an arms race and the stockpiling of atomic weapons. They desired the strengthening of the United Nations, but they witnessed systematic efforts to strip that Organization of all real value.
100. In the circumstances, the USSR proposals for the strengthening of international peace and security was bound to be welcomed by all peace-loving people. The practical application of those proposals was the business of all true lovers of peace, regardless of their nationality, race or colour. The delegation of the Ukrainian SSR warmly supported the proposals of the Soviet Union.
101. Those proposals derived quite naturally from the policy pursued by the USSR ever since the inception of the United Nations. It was in order to strengthen peace that the Soviet Union had proposed the prohibition of atomic weapons, the reduction of armaments and the banning of propaganda for another war. The proposals which the USSR had submitted at the current session were likewise designed to serve the cause of peace. Only the sworn enemies of the human race could oppose them. Only those totally devoid of any sense of honour and conscience would try to sabotage them. They must know that they were playing a very dangerous game.
102. The agents of the warmongers had tried to draw the General Assembly’s attention away from the Soviet Union’s proposals. It could only be regretted that a man of the political stature of Mr. Pearson, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, should have joined those who wanted to sabotage the USSR proposals. What was one to say of the statements of Mr. Tsiang, representative of China, of Mr. Santa Cruz, representative of Chile and of Tito’s discredited clique? It would be useless to engage in long arguments with people of that calibre. The representatives of the Soviet Union (226th meeting) the Byelorussian SSR (227th meeting) had already answered Mr. Tsiang and Mr. Santa Cruz. Mr. Manuilsky would simply answer briefly the slanderous and hypocritical statements made by the representative of Yugoslavia at the 228th meeting.
103. It was an old trick used by Governments on the eve of bankruptcy to shift the blame for their failure to some alleged outside force. The Yugoslav representative’s allegation that his Government was placed between two camps was absolutely untrue. Indeed, the Tito Government had for some time been in Mr. Tsiang s and Mr. Santa Cruz’s camp; it had long since joined the camp of the most dismal reaction, the orders of which it was carrying out at the current session of the General Assembly.
104. Like Mr. Tsiang and Mr. Santa Cruz, the Yugoslav representative had libellously accused the Soviet Union of intervening in his country’s domestic affairs. It was the USSR Government’s duty to protect its citizens, who were being persecuted and tortured in Yugoslav prisons, where fascist and Gestapo methods were used in dealing with USSR nationals. The Yugoslav representative could not deny that.
105. The Yugoslav representative had no moral or political right to speak of national sovereignty and independence, because it was well known that the Tito Government had delivered its country into the hands of foreign capitalist monopolies, and that it was at the moment making every effort to obtain loans in exchange for the raw materials of strategic importance which it was supplying to foreign interests.
106. The Yugoslav representative had no right to speak of national independence, as the Government he represented was plotting with fascist Greece against Albania and Bulgaria. He had stated that troop movements were taking place along his country’s frontiers. That was nothing but a simple provocation, started by the agents of foreign intelligence services, in order to justify the aggressive plans of the imperialist Powers in the Balkans. The Yugoslav representative was well aware of that, and the only person who was likely to believe those assertions was possibly Mr. Bevin, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom.
107. The Yugoslav representative had declared to the General Assembly that the trial of the State criminal Rajk, which had just ended in Hungary, was a provocation. That trial had made it possible to uncover the real machinations of the existing Government of Yugoslavia, which, in co-operation with the United States intelligence service, headed by Mr. Allen Dulles, planned to overthrow the existing regime in Hungary and in the other peoples’ democracies in order to create a new anti-Soviet bloc under the aegis of a fascisized Yugoslavia and a so-called Balkan federation. Caught in the act, the Yugoslav Government was trying to justify itself by slandering the Soviet Union.
108. The Yugoslav representative had also stated that there was a discrepancy between the words and deeds of the USSR. That too was absolutely untrue. The Tito Government’s hypocritical attitude towards the Slovene population of Styria and Carinthia had been sufficiently demonstrated to make it unnecessary to dwell on the matter at any great length.
109. The Yugoslav delegation was well aware that the words of the Soviet Union were always followed by deeds in accordance with those words. An end should be put to the Yugoslav Government's vile attempts to sabotage the adoption of the USSR proposals for strengthening peace. Moreover, nobody could be deceived by those manoeuvres.
110. The Yugoslav representative, who had claimed to be speaking for the small Powers, had stated that he would like those Powers to adhere to the peace pact to be concluded among the five great Powers. His real purpose, however, had been to oppose the proposal that a pact should be concluded among the five permanent members of the Security Council.
111. There was already, and had been for a considerable time, a vast association of great and small Powers. That association was the United Nations. The Soviet Union’s proposal was for a peace pact between the five great Powers which bore the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and the establishment of international co-operation. The signing of such a document would strengthen the authority of the United Nations and would thus guarantee a lasting peace to the smaller nations.
112. The delegation of the Ukrainian SSR wholeheartedly supported the proposal of the Soviet Union that all preparations for a new war should be condemned. Moreover, it was convinced that that proposal was in accordance with the most earnest aspirations of the masses.
113. The delegation of the Ukrainian SSR supported the proposal of the Soviet Union that the atomic weapon should be prohibited and that effective control should be established over the production of atomic energy. The conscience of civilized man must revolt against plans for the mass destruction of peaceful populations.
114. The delegation of the Ukrainian SSR supported the Soviet Union’s proposal for a peace pact between the five permanent members of the Security Council; such a pact would serve as a basis for effective and honest collaboration between those Powers which, under the Charter, had assumed the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.