The delegation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic has come here, as it came to the previous session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, anxious to join representatives of the other peace-loving countries in the fight to strengthen peace and combat the threat of a new world war. That is the task and main purpose of this sixth session.
2. The Ukrainian Government is clearly aware of the serious changes in the international situation since the fifth session, changes which have greatly complicated interstate relations. The international tension, which has become particularly acute of late, is creating misgivings and alarm among the peoples of the world lest a new world war break out. The policy of hostility to the USSR and the people’s democracies pursued by the United States of America has reached the point of threatening the cause of peace. This policy, dictated by the greed of American millionaires and multi-millionaires in their reckless desire for world domination, is poisoning the international atmosphere,
3. By bringing new countries into the North Atlantic bloc, forming new aggressive alliances in the Mediterranean region and the Pacific basin, and reviving military centres in Germany and Japan, the United States is making it patent that its military preparations are directed against the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies.
4. With war in view the United States is feverishly increasing its armed forces and pressing its partners in the North Atlantic bloc to rearm, heedless of the fact that the diversion of vast sums to war preparations exhausts the national resources of the European countries and brings their economies to the brink of catastrophe. Last year, for example, the armed forces of the United States more than doubled. Those of Great Britain came near to a million men. France and other European countries are maintaining several hundred thousand men under arms. Official reports show that the military expenditure of the United States this year, including “military aid”, the creation of military bases in the territory of other countries and the cost of the Korean war, has reached the fabulous figure of $80,000 million.
5. In its preparations for world war the United States has covered the globe with a network of its garrisons and naval and air bases. There is literally not a single corner of the world of strategic importance in the foreign territories of the capitalist countries upon which the United States of America has not tried to set up its aggressive support points. To its four hundred or more existing military bases in over sixty countries and archipelagoes, the United States has recently added new bases in France, Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece, French Morocco, Northern Pakistan and Greenland. In addition, United States military aerodromes have been built in Japan, Cuba, Costa Rica and Thailand. Preparations are being made for the United States to take over British military bases in the Mediterranean and for establishing military support points in Israel. According to the American Press, plans are being made for seventy-seven supplementary American military and air bases in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa.
6. In their numerous statements the American war leaders and representatives of American ruling circles do not conceal their intention to surround the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies with a chain of American war bases, close to our frontiers, in order to make it possible for armies of air pirates simultaneously to invade the territory of the Soviet Republics and that of our friends.
7. To disguise the obviously aggressive character of the preparations of the United States of America and its satellites for war against the Soviet Union, the ruling circles in the United States, Great Britain, France and other countries are alleging that the arms race is due to the fact that the great armed forces of the Soviet Union are a threat to the West. Mr. Acheson and Mr. Eden have adduced this argument at the present session to justify appeals for intensified armament.
8. The Soviet Union has never made a secret of the numbers of its armed forces. It is common knowledge, from a speech made by the head of the Government of the Soviet Union, that several successive demobilizations of the personnel of the USSR armed forces took place after the Second World War. This speech of J.V. Stalin, together with the texts of the laws of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union demobilizing thirty-three age groups, was published at the time in the Soviet Press, thus providing the government of any country with sufficient information on the subject. It is to the interest of Mr. Acheson and Mr. Eden, however, to maintain silence on that point.
9. Mr. Eden must also be aware that in a note to the United Kingdom Government in February 1951 the USSR Government stated inter alia that the armed forces of the Soviet Union, land, sea and air, are now approximately the same as in 1939, that is to say, before the Second World War began. Is it not obvious that this represents the minimum required to defend the vast territories of the Soviet Union and its extensive frontiers? Do these facts give any grounds for what Mr. Acheson says about the alleged superiority of the Soviet Union’s armed forces and the military helplessness of the countries of Europe?
10. Must we not suppose that Mr. Acheson invented the military danger from the Soviet Union in order to whip up the enthusiasm of his European partners in the aggressive North Atlantic bloc, who are afraid of the dangerous economic and social effects of the reckless arms race, and, in spite of the assertions of the President of the United States, are reluctant to allow themselves to be persuaded by General Eisenhower to spend more on armaments?
11. The following passage occurred in a recent report of L.P. Beria, the Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: “In the United States the governmental machinery is being increasingly captured by the capitalist monopolies”. The aggressive foreign policy of the present Government of the United States is the policy of the American millionaires and multimillionaires. The imperialists are careful to conceal the direct connexion between the increase of armaments and the steadily mounting curve of the American monopolies’ war profits. The greater part of the vast sums spent by the United States of America on armaments, which come from the American taxpayers, has gone into the pockets of the big American firms producing tanks, guns, aircraft, motor vehicles and other arms and military equipment.
12. Here are some data showing the fabulous profits made by the American monopolists who are growing rich on war.
13. The average annual profits of the American monopolies, which amounted to $3,400 million in 1936-39, this year even exceeded the high figures for the Second World War and reached the figure of $18,500 million per annum. General Motors, which as everyone knows is controlled by the du Pont and Morgan Companies, in the course of last year alone increased its net profits by 38 per cent; while the 730 largest American monopolies made a net profit in 1950 of some $8,000 million. The profits of companies producing means of transport have increased by 95 per cent, those of oil companies by 50 per cent, and those of mining companies by 45 per cent above the figure for last year.
14. Is it surprising then that the American millionaires and multi-millionaires have no intention of giving up the high monopolist profits they are making out of the arms race, and are reckoning to increase those profits by letting loose a new war? This attitude on the part of American business circles has been expressed with cynical frankness by Mr. Wilson, United States Director of so-called defense mobilization, who, as is well known, is a representative of the House of Morgan. In connexion with the proposal of the USSR representative in the United Nations for a cease-fire in Korea, he declared that any possibility, however slight, of a clearing of the atmosphere in international relations was a threat to the economy of the United States. This policy enriches the capitalist monopolies, but ruins the workers, reduces their standard of living and dooms them to poverty and want.
15. In the present circumstances, when the international situation has grown more difficult thanks to the influence of the United States of America, what is the position of the United Nations, created as an instrument of peace and for the peaceful settlement of international disputes?
16. The past year has been marked by further departures by the United Nations from the principles proclaimed at the San Francisco Conference, as well as by many violations of the Charter. The United Nations has approved and sanctioned the intervention of the United States of America in Korea and, under pressure from that country, is helping to extend that aggression. The United Nations has put itself to shame by adopting a decision declaring the People’s Republic of China the aggressor while, in obvious contradiction of the facts, the real aggressor, the United States of America which has seized the Chinese territory of Taiwan and invaded the territory of Korea, has been proclaimed the defending party. These and many other facts indicate that the aggressive nucleus in the United Nations, headed by the United States of America, has made considerable progress this year in adapting that international Organization to the aims of United States foreign policy.
17. But the great masses refuse to believe that the Soviet Union is responsible for the present international tension and are showing ever greater opposition to the aggressive policy of unleashing a new world war pursued by the United States of America and the other Western States, which have paralysed the United Nations as an instrument of peace and persistently strive to turn it into a weapon of war.
18. Indeed, how can simple people be persuaded that the Soviet Union desires war and has aggressive intentions when it is not engaged in waging warfare anywhere, when it is not participating in any armed skirmishes, when it is not building aerodromes or military bases in foreign, territory and when it has not entered into any of the aggressive blocs? Who will believe the fable that it is possible to spend thousands of millions of roubles on peaceful construction, steadily lower the price of goods, raise the people’s standard of living and at the same time carry on preparation for war? The simple people of the capitalist countries know from their own experience what is the cost of the armaments race and the war preparations going on in their countries.
19. The peoples of the world do not trust their political leaders and refuse to believe in the inevitability of a new war. Faced with the threat to peace, they see only one means of averting war, the means which J. V. Stalin pointed out to them and which consists of taking the cause of peace into their own hands. Hundreds of millions of people have joined the movement in defence of peace, which the bosses of the Atlantic bloc at first ignored and with which they did not wish to reckon, and it has since been transformed into a powerful force, capable of disrupting the plans of the instigators of a new world war.
20. In order to calm public opinion, particularly in European countries, where the public has been alarmed at the scale of the war preparations and the rapid occupation of their countries by the Americans, a three-power “ peace ” sortie has been launched at the sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly, with the aim of concealing the aggressive character of the North Atlantic bloc and of passing off the military preparations of the United States of America and its European partners as “ defence measures ",
21. This spurious manoeuvre is also designed to impart an outwardly peaceable character to the attitude of the delegations of the United States and other Western Powers at the present session of the General Assembly.
22. The plan for the regulation, limitation and reduction of armaments, submitted to the General Assembly in the joint declaration of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France [A/1943], received wide publicity in speeches by the United States President and the Secretary of State, as being a “ fresh approach ” and a “ new programme Mr. Eden wished to assure us of this.
23. Are the proposals in the three-Power declaration genuinely original, and do they pursue the aims attributed to them? A careful study of the plan shows that it in no way envisages the reduction of armaments, at least for the present. This task is replaced by one of more modest scale, the gradual verification and census of armaments. The main features of the proposal are copied bodily from the famous Baruch Plan. Like the Baruch Plan, the present plan is to be implemented gradually and by stages. The perniciousness of this approach has already been unmasked by Soviet delegations on other occasions.
24. In very truth, on the basis of this plan, it is necessary to begin, as Mr. Acheson explained, “with the simplest things Thus, soldiers' billy-cans and knapsacks will be inventoried first, then the work will go on to, let us say, an inventory of penknives and daggers, and afterwards of rifles and machine-guns.
25. As in the Baruch Plan, modern armaments such as jet aircraft, tanks, super-dreadnoughts and, finally, atomic weapons, will be reached only at the very end of the census. How many months, years and even decades will this require? As regards the basic problem to which, indeed, a disarmament plan should be devoted, it appears that in the course of the census certain measures are to be elaborated, about which the declaration speaks very vaguely.
26. The three-power proposal is silent on the problem of who is to lay down criteria for the reduction of armaments and of how the permitted levels for the various types of armaments are to be determined. The declaration makes no provision whatsoever for the prohibition of atomic weapons. If this is mentioned in the proposals, it is merely as an item in the census and verification, and only for the purpose of diverting attention and deceiving public opinion. The declaration is also silent on the subject of chemical and bacteriological weapons. Such an attitude with respect to the most dangerous categories of weapons will surprise no one.
27. The United States of America has always opposed prohibition of the use of means for the mass annihilation and barbaric destruction of human beings, and for the laying of peaceful towns and villages in rums,
28. As long ago as 1899 the United States Government refused to adhere to the convention prohibiting the use of dum-dum bullets. In 1925 it refused to ratify the Geneva protocol prohibiting the use of noxious gases and bacteriological weapons of war. As is well known, in 1945 the United States Government dropped atomic bombs upon the peaceful towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, annihilating thousands of defenceless women and children. The consensus of opinion among experts was that this inhumane act had no military significance whatsoever.
29. Omitting reference in the three-Power proposal to atomic, chemical and bacteriological weapons, the American imperialists and their subordinates, making preparations for a new world war, do not wish to bind themselves with anything that might hinder the realization of their monstrous plans for the annihilation of peoples.
30. Thus, after examining the three-Power declaration, it is possible to find definitive provision only for the collection of secret information on the armaments and armed forces of every country by the representatives of any State. In proposing this census, has not Mr. Acheson the same purpose in view as the one for which that collector of “news”, the American journalist William Oatis, was brought to book in Czechoslovakia?
31. It is worthy of note that, as a preliminary condition for the reduction of armaments, the United States lays down the elimination of the causes of the present tension in international relations, and, above all, a cease-fire in Korea.
32. The war in Korea must indeed be brought to an end immediately. But it is precisely the United States of America, which unleashed this predatory war and has been waging it for approximately two years, that is doing everything to protract a military adventure. American land and air forces are barbarously destroying the peaceful population and towns of Korea by napalm and air bombardment. The American military authorities, acting on orders from Washington, are dragging out the armistice negotiations; they are ever creating new difficulties and are heaping obstacle upon obstacle to hinder the outcome of the negotiations. They provoke conflicts and shamelessly bombard the neutral zone where the negotiations are being carried on, menacing the lives of the Korean and Chinese delegates. This reveals the United States Government’s real intention, which is to secure the breaking-off of the negotiations and then cast the blame on the command of the Korean People's Army and the Chinese volunteers.
33. Although in its statements the United States connects the problem of disarmament with that of the cessation of hostilities in Korea, in actual fact it is not in any way proposing to reduce armaments even after the end of the Korean war. Half way. through this year Wilson, to whom we referred above, stated in his report to the President that the United States must continue its rearmament programme, whether or not fighting stops in Korea.
34. This statement fully reveals the hypocritical character of the first condition the United States lays down as a prerequisite for disarmament. With regard to the second condition for disarmament, the removal of the causes of the present tension in international relations, this repeats the demand made by the United States as long ago as 1947 for so-called “international confidence” as a prerequisite for disarmament. As you will see, therefore, this proposal also is not new. This condition, as we have repeatedly shown, turns the whole problem of disarmament upside down.
35. Everyone must be aware that it is precisely disarmament, an end to further expansion of war industries and of the creation of new military formations which must be the chief means of easing the present tension in international relations; that would be effective as no other measure could. Preparedness to disarm would be an excellent prerequisite for the elimination of differences of opinion between the great Powers. Without this, any “peace plans” and declarations about peace will be empty and useless verbiage, serving only to distract attention from the basic problem of preventing a new war.
36. Mr. Eden’s speech at the present session did little to explain the position of the three Powers on the question of disarmament. If the United States, England and France do in fact genuinely desire disarmament, then why do they simultaneously force the armaments race and expand aggressive blocs? It would appear from a recent statement by Mr. Churchill, who, we are quite sure, is well acquainted with the state of the armed forces of the Atlantic bloc, that the participants in this aggressive union dispose of resources greatly exceeding the armed forces of the USSR and the people’s democracies. Hence the so-called “balance of power with the East” has already been more than attained, although it is the alleged absence of that balance which is said to have terrified the authors of the Atlantic bloc.
37. Spurious “peace” declarations can deceive nobody. The many statements and the appeals of the President and the military and political leaders of the present United States Government for more armament correspond more closely with the actual foreign policy line which the ruling circles of the United States of America are pursuing, as they feverishly prepare for a new world war.
38. That is why we regard the three-Power declaration as a propaganda document, not at all intended for serious study of the problem of disarmament and, therefore, not proposing any concrete measures. We must rather assume that the purpose of the three-Power declaration is to distract attention from the real and urgent problems involved in the strengthening of peace and the security of the peoples.
39. The Ukrainian delegation considers that in the present state of international tension, the United Nations must carry out particularly effective and speedy measures against the war preparations being made under the leadership of the United States of America by countries members of the North Atlantic bloc.
40. The USSR delegation has submitted.to the sixth session of the General Assembly a proposal [A/1944] for “measures to combat the threat of a new world war and to strengthen peace and friendship among the nations”, The Ukrainian delegation unreservedly supports these proposals and fully associates itself with them. It stresses that the proposals, unlike the three-Power declaration, have real substance and constitute a programme of concrete and effective measures for averting the threat of war and for strengthening international security.
41. The USSR proposals clearly define the tasks of the United Nations with regard to aggressive blocs created for the purpose of unleashing war, as well as with regard to States which establish military bases on foreign territory. The establishment of these bases, and participation in the aggressive Atlantic bloc, are proclaimed incompatible with membership of the United Nations. In a similar direct and dear manner conditions are laid down for terminating the war in Korea.
42. Instead of idle talk about a reduction of armaments, the USSR delegation submits a concrete proposal for the convening of a world conference to examine the question of a substantial reduction of armed forces and armaments, and also of practical measures for prohibiting atomic weapons and establishing international control over the implementation of this prohibition. All countries are invited to the discussion of-this important problem, not excluding those which for various reasons have not yet entered the United Nations.
43. Finally, the USSR Government again puts forward the proposal for the conclusion of a peace pact between the five great Powers and calls upon all peace-loving States to adhere to it.
44. This proposal is supported by 562 million men and women throughout the globe, who have clearly declared themselves in favour of the unification of effort by peace-loving Powers for the attainment of peace.
45. In submitting its proposals, the USSR delegation and the delegations supporting the proposals count on the spirit of co-operation and harmony in the solution of international problems triumphing in the United Nations.
46. The Ukrainian delegation calls upon all sound elements in the United Nations to join in the struggle of the peace-loving countries against the threat of a new war and to support the USSR proposal for the defence of peace and against the transformation of the United Nations into an instrument of war.