Mr. MANUILSKY stated that the proposal submitted by the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in his speech at the 143rd plenary meeting of 25 September, providing for a one-third reduction by the five permanent members of the Security Council of their armed forces for the space of one year and for a ban on atomic weapons, had been a valuable contribution to the cause of peace. That proposal could not fail to increase international confidence, strengthen international co-operation, and relax the artificially created tension in international relations. It would help to end the deadlock in the work of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission on Conventional Armaments, a deadlock brought about by the representatives of the Anglo-American bloc.
The USSR proposal met the heartfelt wishes of the peoples who did not want new wars. It would lighten the burdens of taxation and would raise the standard of living of the masses throughout the world. It represented a continuation of the pacific policy of the Soviet Union, a policy which had found expression in the proposals made by that country’s Government at the 42nd plenary meeting of the General Assembly on 29 October 1946 for the general reduction and regulation of armaments.
Mr. Manuilsky remarked that Mr. Bevin’s speech had made clear that the present proposal of the USSR Government would meet with serious opposition on the part of the Anglo-American bloc, which sought to prevent effective control of the production of atomic energy in the United States and of the unchecked growth of armed force in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Ukrainian delegation did not wish to dwell on Mr. Bevin’s attacks upon the peoples of the Soviet Union, attacks which had been intended to divert the attention of the General Assembly from the extremely important proposal submitted by the USSR Government. Mr. Bevin’s inimical attitude towards the Soviet Union was well known. Attacks of that sort could not injure those against whom they were directed; they merely served to lower the dignity of those who made them.
Mr. Bevin had asserted that the British circles which he represented had no hostile intentions towards the USSR. Mr. Bevin, and later Sir. Spaak, had even attempted to deny the hostile attitude towards the USSR of the military and political alliance concluded by the five Western Powers, headed by the United Kingdom. Yet there could be no other explanation for that alliance, which was directed against the Soviet Union, and the countries of the new democracy, and which was designed to correlate measures for the increase of armaments and the preparation for a new war. Mr. Bevin had been forced to recognize that the Western political alliance pursued military purposes, although he had tried to conceal those purposes by references to defence. What Mr. Bevin had failed to say had been said for him by Mr. Spaak, whose frank speech in defence of that political and military alliance left no doubt as regards its true character, aims, purposes and programme.
Mr. Spaak had admitted that the policy of Benelux was to seek security in the framework of regional, rather than international, agreements. Such an attitude could be dictated only by hostility towards other Members of the United Nations, by an outright rejection of the policy of strengthening international co-operation among all the Members of the United Nations, and by the desire to substitute a grouping together of certain States of Western Europe in pursuit of selfish interests for international co-operation.
Mr. Manuilsky regarded as cynical Mr. Bevin’s attempt, after having invoked the threat of atomic war, to lay the responsibility for all the disasters brought about by such a war not on the actual warmongers but on the Power which had been valiantly resisting all the plans of aggression dictated by the atomic policy of the Anglo-American bloc. No statesman, aware of his responsibility both to his own people and to world public opinion, could have made a statement so openly contradictory to the General Assembly resolution 110 (II) against propaganda and the inciters of a new war as Mr. Bevin had done.
A glance at the records of the meetings of the Atomic Energy Commission would show that the deadlock in that Commission had been brought about by the representatives of the Anglo-American bloc, while the representatives of the Soviet delegations had steadily insisted that the work should continue. Moreover, in the interests of co-operation, the USSR Government had made two most important and constructive proposals in the Atomic Energy Commission: the draft convention for the outlawing of atomic weapons, submitted on 19 June 1946, and the proposal to establish control over atomic energy, made on 11 June 1947. Those proposals had been rejected by the representatives of the Anglo-American bloc almost without discussion. Furthermore, the United States delegation, having at the meeting of 14 June 1946 submitted the notorious Baruch Plan, had for two years refused to deviate from that plan in the slightest, and had deliberately wrecked any possible rapprochement between its viewpoint and that of the USSR, in its determination to utilize atomic energy for military purposes only.
Mr. Manuilsky recalled that the representative of the Soviet Union had taken part in the work of the Atomic Energy Commission despite the fact that the Baruch Plan was faulty in its very essence. The purpose of that Plan had been to place in the hands of the United States, behind the screen of an international control organ, the actual control over the production of uranium and thorium ore throughout the world. The Baruch Plan actually gave the United States the right to establish quotas for various States for the production of atomic energy and subjected the economic life of those States to control by that country, thus infringing upon their national sovereignty.
Among other representatives of world public opinion, the Executive Committee of the Association of Scientific Workers in the United Kingdom, the country represented by Mr. Bevin, had spoken against the Baruch Plan. In August 1947 it had published a memorandum criticizing the Plan and agreeing on a number of points with the USSR proposals. Mr. Bevin appeared to have forgotten all that. In his presentation of the matter, the work of the Atomic Energy Commission had been interrupted because of the unyielding attitude of the Soviet Union Government, an attitude which had allegedly prevailed in all the relations of the USSR with the United Kingdom and the United States.
As an example of that unyielding attitude, Mr. Bevin had cited the rejection by the Soviet Union Government of Mr. Byrnes’ proposal to conclude a forty-year agreement between the USSR, the United States, France and the United Kingdom with a view to preventing German aggression. Mr. Manuilsky pointed out, however, that Mr. Bevin had remained silent regarding the true reasons which had made it impossible for the USSR Government to accept Mr. Byrnes’ proposal, although he must be perfectly aware of the fact that the Soviet Union delegation had repeatedly explained why that proposal was unacceptable.
At a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers on 9 July 1946, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR had made the following statement with regard to the United States proposal to which Mr. Bevin had referred:
«A study of the proposal slums the inadequacy of the measures proposed therein for safeguarding security and preventing German aggression in the future. The document merely contains a list of military measures and war economy measures; yet even those measures are set forth in the proposal less completely than was done in the decisions of the Berlin Conference of the leaders of the three Powers, which included other and no less important conditions for the safeguarding of security and lasting peace. Hence the Soviet Government came to the conclusion that if the four-power agreement were to be limited exclusively to what is said in the United States proposal with regard to the disarmament of Germany, it would be impossible for such an agreement to serve as a solid guarantee for the security of Europe and the entire world. On the contrary, the inadequacy of the measures proposed in the proposal might hold in itself the danger of the rebirth of Germany as a power of aggression. »
Mr. Bevin knew very well that the United States proposal overlooked the most important prerequisites for ensuring a solid peace and the security of nations, to say nothing of the fact that that draft went counter to the previous joint decisions of the Allies. And then, after the United Kingdom and the United States had violated the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, Mr. Bevin had cited that proposal as an alleged example of the uncompromising attitude of the Soviet Union Government.
Mr. Bevin’s frank statement regarding the possibility of an atomic war, and his admission of the fact that Great Britain was rearming, were a challenge to the public opinion of the whole world because the conscience of the world could not resign itself either to the utilization of atomic weapons as weapons of aggression and of mass destruction of the peaceful populations, or to the incitement of war propaganda.
A statement such as that made by Mr. Bevin dealt a heavy blow to the United Nations, whose basic task was to strengthen peace and security. If those were the words of the Foreign Minister of one of the principal Members of the United Nations, what could be expected from the journalists of the so-called free Press?
By such statements, Mr. Bevin and his supporters were consciously fomenting discord among the great Powers, they were trying to maintain an artificial war-psychosis, and were sowing doubts regarding the possibility of cooperation among the great Powers. The calculations of such people were misguided and without any foundation, since in all countries there were many more champions of peace than supporters of war; the latter group, having vested interests in an armaments race, represented, numerically speaking, only a small handful of people among the millions of the, world’s population.
Those who were playing lightly with the spectre of a new war were playing with fire. Disregarding the opinion of their own people, they were inclined to extend that disregard to cover other peoples. They were wont to forget that the peoples who had survived the last war were not an apathetic mass which one day could be told about the heroic defenders of Stalingrad, and the following day be informed that those same people were responsible for the strained international relations. It might be possible to stage a few unfriendly or even hostile acts, but it was impossible to uproot from the conscience of the nations what would never be forgotten: the contribution which the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had made for the liberation of humanity from the mortal danger which had loomed over it — enslavement by fascism. No amount of war-propaganda had been able to bring the majority of the people over to the side of a small group of warmongers in their midst. During the hard trials of the war, the people had learned how to think, to evaluate facts and events with their own common-sense, and to draw well-founded conclusions.
The ample factual material about the war-fever prevailing in the United States of America to which Mr. Vyshinsky had referred, proved that the United States was a breeding point of new war-danger which spread out into a war-psychosis; a war-psychosis which was being fomented in the United States and in a number of countries of Western Europe, as well as in other countries in other parts of the world. But the masses of the people realized that that war-psychosis was being brought in from the outside, that it was not compatible with the national interests of their countries, and that the belligerent and chauvinistic policy of reactionary circles of the United States of America boded them no good.
Was it possible for the people of Europe and elsewhere to realize with unconcern that the United States of America possessed 489 military bases in different parts of the world which enabled that country to keep under its control the entire Mediterranean basin, Central Africa, Latin America, and countries of the Far East and of the Pacific Ocean? They could not but feel apprehensive when hearing responsible statesmen of the United States say that the sphere of interest of the United States had spread as far as the shores of the Atlantic, Gibraltar, Greece, Turkey, the Dardanelles, Iraq, the Near and Middle East and the Pacific islands. The people of the countries in those parts of the world could not but realize that their independence and national sovereignty were in jeopardy.
The General Assembly could not ignore that fact if it wished to act in accordance with the Charter. One of the lessons of the war and of the post-war period had been that the little people had learned to judge their Governments and their programmes not by what those Governments thought and said about themselves, but by their actions. And the little people of all countries could judge from their own experience who was defending the peace and who was threatening it. While in one part of the world reaction was raising its head, elsewhere the forces of democracy were growing stronger; while in one art of the world new danger-spots of war were being created and wars were already raging, elsewhere peace prevailed, nations were cooperating with each other, and their friendship was growing.
The territories of Eastern Europe, comprising the USSR and the countries of the new democracies, were inhabited by more than 250 million people, as many people as inhabited the entire American continent. There, in Eastern Europe, the people were busy with peaceful constructive work, rebuilding all that had been destroyed by invasion, and their work of reconstruction, in spite of the economic blockade organized by the reactionary circles of the United States of America, was progressing faster than in countries of Western Europe which were included in the so-called Marshall Plan.
Plans for the general development of the economy which had been mapped out in the States of Eastern Europe, to say nothing of the USSR, were being carried out successfully. There the reconstruction and the general development of the economy were based on a sound foundation which was the self-sacrificing work of the people of every country and the mutual assistance of the States of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union contributing the greatest share. Those countries did not seek dollars and did not doom their national industry to decay for the sake of obtaining unused United States materials and war- surplus goods.
Mr. Bevin, who had spoken before the General Assembly in praise of the Marshall Plan, knew even better than the other representatives what destructive consequences that Plan’s implementation had had for the British shipbuilding industry, the Italian machine-building industry and for many aspects of the economy of Western European countries.
In spite of those obvious facts, there were attempts to make the USSR and the countries of the new democracies appear responsible for existing strained international relations. Mr. Spaak had been particularly zealous to do so. At the instigation of stronger nations than Belgium, he had described the fear of Western Europe before the danger which allegedly was looming from the East. Fear was an evil counsellor, particularly if it was an unreal fear. There was serious reason for calmly-thinking people to believe that the fear which was being evoked from the rostrum of the United Nations might be nothing but a « smoke curtain» to conceal the true plans of the Western bloc. Mr. Spaak, having recovered from that fear and descended from the rostrum, might try to explain to the representatives the reasons why in the countries of Eastern Europe co-operation was growing among nations; the reasons why mutual aid was increasing and faith in a better future was growing stronger; why, in spite of the sacrifices they had had to make during the war, the well-being of the popular masses was improving, whereas in other parts of the world the contrary was taking place — worry, concern, uncertainty, a fall in the standard of living. While the feeling of unity in the struggle for peace was growing stronger among the peoples of Eastern Europe, in Western Europe the dismemberment of Germany was giving birth to the spirit of revenge and to a new outbreak of nationalist feeling, and Europe was being divided for its easier economic and political subjugation.
If anyone could bear the responsibility for the dismemberment of Germany, as well as the dismemberment of Europe, it was those who had been bringing pressure from beyond the ocean to bear upon Western European leading circles. It was, above all, statesmen such as Mr. Spaak and Mr. Bevin who had helped to create the present European crisis, with which they were vainly attempting to scare people whose nerves were strong and who were well able to judge the international situation for themselves.
While the war in Indonesia — a war of foreign occupants against a people struggling for its own interests — had been going on for three years; while experts in the incitement of religious wars and communal slaughter were encouraging conflicts among Asiatic peoples, peace, security and quiet reigned in the countries of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe there were not and could not be events such as, for instance, those in Palestine where, side by side with the struggle between Jews and Arabs, there was also a struggle behind the scenes between two great Powers for military and strategic positions and for the oil wells of the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, victims of that war, presented a new and difficult problem, which its authors were now submitting for settlement to the United Nations, many of whose members bore no responsibility for the conflict in the Middle East.
The policy of interference in the internal affairs of other countries, which was reflected either in open military intervention as in Greece, or as in Italy in pressure upon elections with a view to creating in foreign countries such governments as might be acceptable to foreign Powers if not to the peoples of the countries concerned, did not help the cause of peace and international co-operation.
Under the pressure of those foreign Powers, democratic elements and progressive men who expressed the will of millions of working people were being removed from the governments of certain countries. Such a policy was incompatible with the Charter.
The discussion to which the USSR proposal of 25 September had given rise had showed clearly that the General Assembly was faced with the choice between approving the policy of incitement to war, pursued by reactionary circles in the United States, and taking a stand in favour of the policy of peace, outlined in the three proposals of the Soviet Union Government. Those who opposed the USSR proposals could, hardly reject them outright, because the world was aware of them. For that reason those who were in favour of an armaments race were reviving the thesis that guarantees of security were necessary before armaments could be reduced by one-third. That thesis had already been used to prevent the implementation of the resolutions 41 (I) and 1 (I) of the General Assembly on general reduction of armaments and on atomic energy respectively, and to bring to a standstill the work of the Commissions of the Security Council which dealt with those questions.
It was by the use of that utterly false thesis that the late lamented League of Nations had done its best to defeat the USSR proposal for total disarmament, as well as a later proposal for partial disarmament. Rut those old methods, which were being revived by those who were in favour of preparing for war, would not delude the masses who yearned for peace. The peoples bad fought for peace, rather than for new wars, for a just, stable and durable peace, which would exclude the mastery of one State over others. The masses in all countries grasped the meaning of the armaments race in the United States, the propaganda for an atomic war, and speeches like those made by Mr. Bevin and Mr. Spaak.
The peoples of the world realized that the Soviet Union proposal represented a genuine contribution to the cause of peace and national security; that it provided, in fact, a real guarantee of that security.
The Ukrainian delegation consequently wholly supported the USSR proposal, in the firm conviction that it met the basic interests of all peoples. The adoption of that proposal would strengthen the authority of the United Nations and would aid in the rapid settlement of the controversial questions dividing the great Powers that had been in the same camp during the war.