One of the General Assembly’s tasks at its seventh session is to review the work done by the Organization during the past year and to determine the course of its future activities.
96. The Ukrainian delegation attaches great importance to the Assembly’s present session, as it is being held at a time when the imperialist groups united in the Atlantic bloc have intensified their activities against peace, and when the evidence of the American imperialists feverish preparations for a war of aggression in Europe has become plainer than ever.
97. The United States, now the leading country in the imperialist camp, has recently taken further steps to undermine international co-operation and to aggravate international relations. The separate agreements entered into at Bonn and Paris in order to complete the division of Germany and to create a new centre of imperialist aggression in the heart of Europe, the revival of Japanese militarism, on the basis of the illegal separate agreement of San Francisco, and, lastly, the open refusal of the United States to stop the war in Korea and the acts of provocation committed by the American invaders against China, show the present United States policy to be one of aggression and encroachment directed against international peace and security.
98. In the seven years since the end of the war, the United States ruling circles have not based their relations with the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies on the principle of the friendly settlement of international disputes and differences, but have been trying to attain their ends by means of pressure and dictation. The concept of force has become the determining factor in United States foreign policy. On the basis of this vicious concept, the United States intends, by 1954, to make is armed forces and military resources so superior that the American imperialists would be able to dictate their own conditions to any country without fear of rebuff. We are told by representatives of the United States ruling circles that this aggressive force must be capable of striking a decisive blow at will against objectives of its own choice and at a time of its own choosing.
99. Disclosing the true meaning of the United States proposals in the United Nations Disarmament Commission on so-called balanced armaments, Mr. Baruch, the well-known expert on atomic affairs, openly declared in an article in the US. News & World Report of 6 June 1952: “We simply cannot make peace unless we are militarily stronger” than other countries. “... To negotiate safely over Germany, we must be certain that an adequate military force is in being (not on paper) in France, the Low Countries and Britain, which is capable of being thrust into action without delay.”
100. Mr. Acheson, the United States Secretary of State, tried to divert attention from the aggressive policy of the United States by asserting at the present session of the General Assembly [380th meeting] that the United States Government was refraining from the threat of force and would not use force to violate the territorial integrity or political independence of other States. After two and a half years of bloody aggression by the United States in Korea, and in the light of recent events, such a false declaration about the United States desire for the pacific settlement of disputes between peoples can no longer deceive anyone.
101. The reactionary American Press openly calls on the United States Government to use force in international politics, demanding that the principle of force should also be predominant in the United Nations. According to the United Nations World, the policy of force is not necessarily contrary to the United Nations, and it is important to have rules governing its use, Governments, it says, provide these rules on the national level, and the United Nations should establish rules to govern relations among States.
102. Openly proclaiming a policy of force, the aggressive American imperialists are anxious to draw a veil over Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, where the foundations of a lasting and Just peace were laid and where agreements were entered into which, if properly carried out, would have guaranteed true international security. The ruling circles of the United States, in preparation for the implementation of their plans of aggression, now say — as did Mr. Acheson — that these agreements were a “tragic mistake” and demand their formal repudiation, thus further complicating their relations With the USSR and the peoples’ democracies and increasing the danger of a new world war.
103. The effect of this United States policy has been to intensify the armaments race among the countries, of the aggressive Atlantic bloc. The past year has been marked by the continuing increase in the armaments of those countries, and especially by the expansion of the armed forces of the United States. The United States Army and Navy are being re-equipped with feverish haste, a European army is being knocked together, a mercenary Japanese army is being created, the military contingents of the junior partners of the United States are being strengthened, and American, military production is being further expanded.
104. The sixth quarterly report of the United States so-called Office of Defense Mobilization states that, in 1952, the value of military deliveries in the United States was more than six times as great as at the beginning of the war in Korea. In the present year, the report shows, capital investment in the war industry of the United States is at a record level. The military budget of the United States has increased to astronomical proportions. According to the American Press, the daily expenditure of the United States for military purposes is more than two-and-a-half times the cost of maintaining New York’s Columbia University, which is the fourth largest in the United States. It is officially admitted that, in the financial year 1952-1953, the total military expenditure of the United States will account for some 90 per cent of the whole national budget. The militarization of the United States economy, on a scale hitherto unknown in peace-time conditions, has placed an enormous burden of expenditure on the American people. Military expenditure per capita in the United States rose from $8.3 in 1939 to $396 in 1951-1952, and in the financial year 1952-1953 it will exceed $500,
105. The American financial and industrial magnates have turned the war which has been unleashed in Korea and the preparations of a new world war into an enormous undertaking which has become a major permanent factor in the United States economy. Under the pretext of supplying the needs of the Korean war, the United States Government has placed military orders to the colossal amount of $100,000 million. The lion’s share of this money has already fallen into the hands of the American monopolies engaged in executing government orders. Since the beginning of the Korean war, the profits of these monopolies have rocketed and are continuing to rise steadily, thanks to the further expansion of the armaments programme.
106. By intensifying the armaments race and expanding military production, the United States ruling circles wish to lure the American people with the bait of wartime business and dazzle them with the prospect of participating in the share out of war-time profits, so as to make the American people accomplices in the new world war now being prepared by the American multi-millionaires. In his pamphlet, War or Peace?, Mr. Nearing, one of the confirmed ideologists of Wall Street, cynically declares that “the drift toward another general war ... is accompanied by a well organized campaign, much of it conducted at public expense, to sell the American people the idea that while war may be temporarily unpleasant, on the whole it is a paying proposition” Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the ruling circles of the United States to conceal the fact that militarization is giving the American economy an unhealthy, one-sided character fraught with dangerous consequences. By the unwilling admission of the leaders of present-day American policy, the industrial boom is devaluating the dollar to such an extent that savings, pensions and social security funds have lost their value. The real value of wages is also falling rapidly in consequence of the continuous rise in market prices.
107. The armaments race is accompanied by the further seizure of foreign territories by the United States and the conversion of the countries of Western Europe and the Near East into jumping-off grounds for armed aggression against the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies. Whole areas of these countries dependent on the United States are being converted into American “military zones”. It is a matter of common knowledge that the United Kingdom has become a military and naval base of the United States. Naval vessels, and even whole squadrons of the United States Navy, are constantly to be found in the sea ports of France and Italy.
108. Seeking to strengthen its special position in these countries, a position comparable to occupation, the United States is demanding that the parliaments of the United Kingdom and others of its junior partners should adopt humiliating legislation whereby United States forces would be immune from the jurisdiction of those countries, thus forcing them to renounce their national sovereignty. Such a policy, which is making those States which, willingly or unwillingly, have placed their territories at the disposal of the American imperialists, completely dependent on the United States, increases the dangerous divergencies among the supporters of war. Under the pretext of the need to set up arrangements for joint defence against alleged aggression by the Soviet Union, the United States is lording it over the countries of Western Europe and forcing the governments of those countries to agree to a continuous increase in their military expenditure. This year the swollen military budgets of the European countries participating in the Atlantic bloc have reached the colossal figure of $14,000 million.
109. The armaments race forced upon them by the American imperialists is ruining the economy of the countries of Western Europe, completing its degradation and converting the countries themselves into an apanage of the United States Economy. Significant in this connexion is the present economic situation of France, which was one of the first European countries to place itself in a position of complete dependence on the United States, By subordinating its national policy to the interests of the American monopolists, France, that old capitalist Power which for decades exploited the resources of many countries, including the national wealth of the Ukraine, has lost its commanding position in the world economy and has now been reduced to the status of a junior partner of the United States. The economic decline of France is especially striking if it is compared with the rapid development of the economy of the Ukraine, a country which, before the October Revolution, was almost a colony of the French, British and Belgian capitalists. This comparison was made in a recent speech by Mr. Beria, one of the most eminent leaders in the USSR Government,
110. The Soviet Ukraine, ruined by the enemy occupation, could not have restored its economy without aid from outside. Such aid was given the Ukraine by all the republics of the Soviet Union. But how different this friendly aid has been from the American “aid” to France after the Second World War! The flood of millions of United States dollars has not brought about any recovery of the French economy. American “aid”, as even the reactionary French Press has said, has been of a military character and has helped to ensure France’s enslavement to American imperialism. The disinterested aid rendered to the Ukraine, on the other hand, has enabled that country in a short space of time to restore its ruined national economy, and, as early as 1951, to exceed its pre-war level of industrial production by more than 35 per cent.
111. The industry of the Ukraine has developed particularly rapidly in the last three years. During this period, industrial production in the Ukrainian SSR has increased annually by 23.7 per cent. In these same three years, industrial production in France, a country whose economy suffered incomparably less from the war than that of the Ukraine, has increased by only 6.3 per cent per year. The Ukraine now smelts more pig iron than France and Italy combined, it produces more steel and sheet metal than France, it extracts, one-and-a-half times as much coal as France and Italy combined, and the total horsepower of the tractors it manufactures is greater than that of the tractors produced by France and Italy combined. The Ukraine produces considerably more grain, potatoes, sugar beet and sugar than France and Italy combined. It should be observed, in this connexion, that in 1951, as a result of the United States policy of strangling the French economy, the production of sugar in France fell by 142,000 tons, whereas the production of sugar in the Ukraine has been increasing steadily and has now reached 138 per cent of the pre-war level.
112. It is scarcely surprising that, under the pressure of public opinion, the governments of the countries which have received the “benefactions” of the United States are demanding the immediate cessation of American “aid” and are making very effort to brush aside attempts to foist this “aid” upon them. Such efforts are now being made, for example, by the Government of Syria. On 27 October this year, The New York Times wrote as follows: “European governments are awfully tired of feeling dependent on the United States, of having to justify to their peoples various actions that acceptance of this aid entails,”
113. The comparisons we have made speak for themselves and need no explanation. They reflect two trends in the development of world economy: the progressive decline of the capitalist countries subordinated to the United States, and the rapid economic growth of the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies.
114. By far the greater proportion of the resources of the USSR are used, not in preparation for war, but for the development of peaceful industries serving the needs of the people. Evidence of this is provided by the fifth five-year plan for the development of the Soviet Union. Even the reactionary, anti-Soviet Press of the capitalist countries has been unable to find any signs of preparation for war in this plan and has been compelled to recognize its obviously peaceful nature.
115. In spite of the fact that the United States has increased its pressure on its partners in the Atlantic bloc, compelling them to produce still more armaments, there has recently been an obvious effort on the part of the Western European Powers to reduce their armaments, and for the first time so far, attempts are being made to evade carrying out American plans for a new world war. Illusions about American “aid”, in which the European governments at first saw an easy means of solving all their post-war problems, have now been completely dispelled. This return to sobriety on the part of the ruling circles of the countries of Western Europe, in reaction against the insolently aggressive policy of the United States, is connected with the increased strength of the Powers, headed by the Soviet Union, which have consistently pursued a policy of peace. It is the direct result of the growing resistance on the part of the peoples of the world to preparation for war. Fewer and fewer people in the countries of the Anglo-American bloc believe the lies and slander against the USSR.
116. It is precisely for this reason that the ruling, circles of those countries have intensified their propaganda against the Soviet Union. They are concealing from the people the fact that the USSR stands for peace and supports the reduction of armaments. The so-called freedom of the Press in the United Kingdom and other bourgeois countries which has been so lauded here by Mr. Eden is actually used for the most shameless dissemination of false information about the USSR. The Press, the cinema, the radio and responsible officiate allege every day that the Soviet Union is planning war. The bourgeois Press features all kinds of slanderous anti-Soviet articles which give a distorted picture of the situation of the Soviet people. How can serious-minded people allow themselves to follow the example of the gutter Press by talking nonsense about the “iron curtain”, when every year the USSR is visited by thousands of people from abroad — workers, peasants, members of the intelligentsia and public figures? The gates of the Soviet Union are closed, of course, and firmly closed, to slanderers, spies and hostile agents.
117. To divert attention from the anti-Soviet activity which-the amateurs of high-sounding catch-phrases have called “psychological warfare”, Mr. Eden attempted to accuse the Soviet Press of deliberately presenting a false picture of the situation in bourgeois countries, in order, as he said, to discredit those countries and arouse the Soviet people’s hatred of them. What evidence did Mr. Eden adduce in support of this slander? As is usual with British diplomats, none. He merely said that in the Soviet Union references are made to the “pitiful slums ... in London, Paris and New York”, and so forth,
118. Free from the influence of the capitalist monopolists, the Soviet Press accurately informs the Soviet reader about the facts of his country’s domestic and international activities and acquaints him with the mode of life, economic affairs, culture and policy of foreign countries. It is easy to convince oneself of this by examining without prejudice the contents of the numerous periodicals and newspapers published in the USSR and by listening to the radio broadcasts for Soviet listeners. It is not, of course, the fault of the Soviet information organs and Press if the present situation in the capitalist countries, including the United Kingdom, does not provide material for reports of the kind which Mr. Eden might perhaps like to see in the pages of our Press.
119. The Soviet Press reports on the wretched situation of the masses of the people in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, which Mr. Eden cited as an example of Soviet anti-British propaganda, are based exclusively on facts obtained from the actual conditions of life in England. These facts can be found without difficulty even in official publications issued by various government institutions in the United Kingdom and in British parliamentary records. In the House of Lords, for example, on 21 June 1950, Lord Selkirk, speaking in the debate on the housing situation in the United Kingdom, said: “. . . future historians will look with dismay on this generation . . . who are not only moving from radio to television, who are on the very verge of the atomic age, but who cannot provide themselves with reasonable houses”. That, he said, was a disgrace to this generation.
120, At the same meeting of the House of Lords, Dr. Garbett, the Archbishop of York, referred to the frightful living conditions of homeless people and slum-dwellers in England. He said that as a result of the Government’s present policy, the number of slum-dwellers was not declining but increasing every year and their living conditions were becoming more and more dreadful. The present position, he said, was extremely serious. Scarcely had there been a time during the last hundred years when over-population had been so great or conditions in the slums so catastrophic. The Archbishop of York quoted many facts to illustrate the housing situation in the United Kingdom. Of 19,000 dwellings in West Hartlepool, Durham, 2,700 had become completely unfit for use and 5,300 were completely unsatisfactory for habitation. In Salford, Lancashire, according to information provided by the sanitary inspection services, there were 20,000 slum dwellings which should be demolished. In Portsmouth, in 1948, there were 7,513 families on the list of applicants for housing. By 1950, the number had risen to 10,445 families. These statements are not made by the Soviet Press, which Mr. Eden is unwilling to believe. They are not propaganda, as the ruling circles of the countries of the American-British camp call any accurate piece of information or publicly expressed private opinion. They are the words of a high dignitary of the Church of England.
121. Official sources, and especially the House of Lords, are of course anxious to cover up all these festering sores of modern British life. The speeches in the House of Lords concerned only one of the questions affecting the situation of the masses of the people in the United Kingdom. In actual fact, the position of the workers is far more serious. The militarization of the United States economy has led to a decline in consumption as a result of the general impoverishment of the people. The consumption of basic commodities has been frozen in England at the level of 1947, when an extensive rationing system was in force, Appropriations for health services and social welfare have been reduced to an extremely low level. The armaments race is leading to enormously increased exploitation. As official British statistics show, employers, in their search for cheap labour, have engaged tens of thousands of children in production. During the last five years, the exhausting sweat-shop system has enabled British industry to achieve an average increase in the productivity of labour of more than 35 per cent.
122. Such is the “reliability” of Mr. Eden’s statement, as revealed by the facts of modern British life. From such speeches, as the Ukrainian proverb says, will come “neither fire nor flame — only foul-smelling smoke”. Instead of these useless verbal exercises, it would have been more to the purpose to hear what the United Kingdom Government’s intentions were with regard to the really important problems which are the cause of the present international tension, and above all, of course, the Korean question.
123. The appeal addressed to the peoples of the world by Mr. Stalin, the head of the USSR Government, urging them to take into their own hands the cause of peace and to champion it to the end, has met with a warm response on the part of millions of ordinary people all over the earth. They are becoming more and more conscious of the idea of fighting for peace, and that idea is already bearing fruit. The best proof of this is the growth of the Partisans of Peace movement, which the rulers of the aggressive Atlantic bloc are now unable either to suppress or to ignore. More and more people in Europe, the Near East and Asia are beginning to understand that war is not inevitable and unpreventable; consequently the United States policy of preparing for war is encountering increasingly determined and organized resistance.
124. Everywhere hatred is increasing for the chief instigators of this policy — the American imperialists. Perhaps it would be relevant to recall what even such ingrained reactionaries as Mr. John Foster Dulles say about this. In his article in Life magazine, published on 19 May 1952, he could not conceal the fact that the United States was rapidly losing its influence. “Increasing numbers”, he wrote, “turn away from our policies as toe militaristic, too costly ... for them to follow. Our . . . military projects are frightening many who feel that we are conducting a private feud with Russia, which may endanger them, rather than performing a public service for peace.”
125. A sober assessment of the post-war foreign policy of the United States will readily show that this policy of aggression, based on the idea of achieving mastery of the world by force, has not justified the hopes of the ruling circles of the United States and has not brought them the desired results. Mr. John Vorys, well-known United States Congressman, recently said in this connexion that, having spent more than $30,000 million on aid to other countries, the United. States was waging war and bearing a burden of taxation which was unprecedentedly heavy for peace-time, while its economy was subjected to measures of control which were ineffective and beyond its strength to bear. The United Kingdom, its so-called ally, was isolating itself from United States efforts to achieve unity in Europe and protesting against its policy in Asia. United States prestige in Asia and the Middle East had again fallen. Anyone who said that the seven post-war years had promoted the development of United States national interests would certainly have to answer the following question: what kind of development had they promoted? Mr. Vorys does not answer this question, but no answer is needed. The United States is now just as far from mastery of the world as it was seven years ago, with this difference, that the militarism of the ruling circles of the United States has now been fully revealed. Only a few people still believe the chatter about the “love for peace” of the United States and the “high” ideals of its foreign policy.
126. In contrast to the United States, the USSR has conducted its foreign policy since the, Second World War in accordance with the same unchanging principles of peaceful and friendly collaboration and the development of business relations with all States as they were proclaimed in the early days of the Soviet State. In its relations with the States of the capitalist world, the Soviet Union acts -on the principle that the prolonged peaceful coexistence of communism and capitalism is certainly possible. The Government of the USSR is struggling resolutely and consistently to develop its external political and economic relations with all countries which express the inclination to do likewise. The Government of the Soviet-Union is doing all it can to achieve the solution of international disputes by peaceful means, by negotiation and by the conclusion of agreements and treaties removing the threat of military conflicts. The USSR recognizes this as the only correct and proper policy, which is equally advantageous for all truly peace-loving countries.
127. Contrary to the assertions of Mr. Eden, who ! sought to blame the USSR for the breakdown in the negotiations on the question of the unification of Germany and on the Austrian and Korean questions, the Government of the Soviet Union has shown by its conduct throughout that it is ready to conduct negotiations on all problems on which there is disagreement between the countries of the American-British bloc and the USSR, whereas the ruling circles of the United States and the United t Kingdom ref use to negotiate and are bent on war with the USSR and the peoples’ democracies.
128. Could a better example be found to demonstrate the opposition of the American-British bloc to concerted decisions than the refusal of those countries to conclude a peace pact among the five great Powers? The USSR has repeatedly proposed such a pact in the United Nations, but it has invariably been resisted and opposed by a number of countries which have banded together with the United States and are bound to it by their common participation in the aggressive Atlantic bloc.
129. At the present session of the General Assembly, the spokesman of this group of countries against the Polish draft resolution [A/2229] for a peace pact has been the representative of Canada [382nd meeting], who repeated the previous arguments against such a pact. In present circumstances, however, such an agreement, concluded among the permanent members of the Security Council, to which all Members of the United Nations might freely accede, would open the way to a new era in international relations. The conclusion of a peace pact would mean the cessation of the period of dangerous tension between, on the one hand, the American-British camp and, on the other, the peoples' democracies and the USSR. The peace pact would remind the Western Powers of their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations _ with respect to the maintenance of peace and security. It would be an important step towards the practical realization of the conditions for peaceful coexistence and would signify a renunciation of aggression and intervention as a means of settling international disputes. We are now told that the proposal for a peace pact was rejected at previous sessions of the General Assembly. Such an argument is not convincing. The fact that the question of the pact has been brought forward again at the present session only testifies to its enormous importance. At the present time, several years after the proposal for the conclusion of the pact was first submitted by the USSR delegation, the importance of such a pact for the purposes of strengthening peace has become particularly evident. If that proposal had been adopted earlier, many disputes and obstacles to friendly collaboration would undoubtedly have been avoided,
130. Serious divergencies of view exist between the USSR, which heads the camp of peace, and the aggressive States which have joined together in the North Atlantic bloc. These divergencies concern all or nearly all the most important problems in international relations today. They have emerged at the present session of the General Assembly, as on previous occasions.
131. The representative of Liberia, expressing the anxiety of the peoples of the world, who observe with alarm the feverish armaments race conducted by the aggressor countries, asked in this Assembly [382nd meeting] whether there was a way to put an end to the present tension in international relations, whether it was possible to strengthen friendship among the great Powers,
132. There is such a way. It is the way suggested by the USSR and the peoples’ democracies. At the present session of the General Assembly, the delegation of the People’s Republic of Poland has submitted proposals for the removal of the threat of a new world war and the strengthening of peace and friendly co-operation among nations. The Polish proposals provide an acceptable basis for an agreement on ending the war in Korea and may serve as a basis for the practical application of measures to put an end to the armaments race, reduce armaments and armed forces and prohibit atomic weapons. They therefore open up a prospect of strengthening peace and removing the threat of a new world war.
133. The delegation of the Ukrainian SSR unreservedly and whole-heartedly associates itself with and supports the proposals for peace submitted by the Polish delegation at the seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly. We call upon the delegations of all countries taking part in the present session of the Assembly, and, through them, on the governments of those countries, on all who hold dear the cause of peace, who sincerely strive to strengthen the United Nations as an instrument of peace, to support those proposals. For its part, the Government of the Ukrainian SSR will do all that is necessary to facilitate the implementation of the proposals for peace submitted by the Polish delegation.