Contents

In Memory of John Barron
by William Schultz

The Passion and Mrs. Wong
by Steven W. Mosher

Navigating the Left
by Robert S. McCain

Dispelling the Myths of Yalta
by John Radzilowski

In Memory of John Barron
by William Schultz

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest, Eugene Lyons, Issac Don Levine, Whittaker Chambers. All chronicled, in excruciating detail, perhaps the most monstrous tyranny the world has ever known—the Soviet Union of Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and the brutal hacks who followed.

Add to that list of heroes John Barron, the courageous and indefatigable investigative reporter, who died Feb. 24 and will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Chambers, Louis Budenz, Hede Massing, Elizabeth Bentley and others wrote firsthand reports of their role in the Soviet conspiracies that penetrated the highest echelons of the West.

But it was Barron who traveled the world to write definitive, contemporaneous exposes of the KGB, from KGB: The Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents in 1974 to Operation Solo: The FBI’s Man in the Kremlin (published by Regnery, a Human Events sister company) in 1996. In between, Barron wrote four other books and more than 100 Reader’s Digest exclusives on topics ranging from Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge to the Soviet subjugation of Afghanistan.

Barron, who was 75 when he died, was born in Texas, son of a Methodist minister who moved from small town to small town.

Barron got his master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri and became a spy. After studying Russian at the Naval Postgraduate School, he was assigned to Berlin, where he spent two years running anti-Soviet agents in the most frigid days of the Cold War.

After leaving the Navy in 1957, Barron went to work for the Washington Star, where he quickly became the paper’s chief investigative reporter. With Paul Hope, he won the George Polk Award for uncovering the corruption of Lyndon Johnson’s bagman, Bobby Baker. Other honors included the Raymond Clapper Award for most distinguished Washington correspondent of 1964, the Washington Newspaper Guild Award for journalistic excellence and the American Political Science Association Award for “distinguished reporting of public affairs.”

In the midst of the 1964 presidential campaign, Barron wrote a sensational story on the arrest on sex charges in a YMCA bathroom of top White House aide Walter Jenkins. When Star management bowed to White House pressure from Abe Fortas and Clark Clifford and suppressed the story, Barron decided it was time to move on.

In 1965, he joined the Reader’s Digest Washington bureau and immediately began breaking more stories. A series on IRS abuse of taxpayers led to headline-making Senate hearings.

His 1980 devastation of Ted Kennedy’s version of Chappaquiddick was cited privately by Kennedy as the single most damaging blow to his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But it was his coverage of international communism and the KGB that assured Barron his lasting reputation. His first book, KGB, was four years in the making, during which Barron crisscrossed the globe, talking with every KGB defector except two and the intelligence services of every major Western nation. A key source was Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, a KGB major who escaped to the United States via Switzerland in 1964 and had never been interviewed by the press. In May 1970, Nosenko walked into the Digest’s Washington office and offered his assistance to Barron.

Because Nosenko had been marked for assassination by the KGB, his contact with Barron, less than four blocks from the Soviet Embassy, caused consternation among U.S. authorities responsible for his safety. Nevertheless, Barron was able to call on Nosenko throughout his research.

Barron’s book, which named more than 1,500 KGB agents around the world, was an international bestseller. “A masterpiece of investigative reporting,” CBS called it. Newsweek minced no words: “In terms of hard geological importance, this book outranks and helps illuminate Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.”

Three years later, Barron wrote (with Digest colleague Anthony Paul) Murder of a Gentle Land, the first documented report on the slaughter of millions by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. In 1980, he authored his third best-seller, MiG Pilot, the dramatic story of the daring escape from the Soviet Union of a young Russian lieutenant who delivered an ultrasecret aircraft to Japan, landing with only seconds of fuel left.

In 1983, Barron’s KGB Today created international headlines with its accounts of Soviet penetration and even control of the nuclear freeze and peace movement. A fifth bestseller, Breaking the Ring, told the inside story of the Walker-Whitman spy ring. Barron’s sixth book, Solo, also a bestseller, told the incredible story of Morris Childs, a top American communist, who, for 35 years, spied for the FBI at the highest levels of the Kremlin.

Barron was more than an intrepid journalist. He testified as an expert witness for the government in 10 major espionage trials and was honored by the Justice Department with its Award for Meritorious Public Service, its highest civilian honor.

Among those trials was the 1987 court-martial of Marine Sgt. Clayton Longtree, a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Longtree—who, ironically, had read all of Barron’s books—fell for the wiles of a KGB seductress and turned over critical information to the enemy.

“As Barron told of KGB use of sexual entrapment,” The Washington Post reported, “Longtree was seen to wipe his eyes. Defense counsel William Kunstler said later that Longtree had wept and whispered, ‘I thought she loved me.’”

In its obituary, The Post’s Matt Schudel described Mr. Barron as an “investigative reporter whose meticulously researched articles and best-seller books helped unravel the mysteries of Soviet espionage and the Khmer Rouge’s mass killings in Cambodia.…He was sued, and Soviet agents carried out measures around the world to discredit Mr. Barron and his anticommunist message, but he never had to retract a single fact in his writings.”

That pretty much sums up John Barron, one of the truly great reporters of the 20th century and one who helped change the course of history.

—The Washington Times, March 20, 2005, p. B4

The Passion and Mrs. Wong
by Steven W. Mosher

Summer had come to China, but Ailin Wong was troubled. She had somehow—and in violation of the one-child policy—become pregnant. The thought of the new life growing within her made her smile. But this was invariably succeeded by a frown. For as much as she wanted another child, she knew that she and her family would be punished if she broke the rules.

Ailin had always shared everything with her husband, but now she hesitated. The consequences for violating the family planning policy were severe. There would be threats, fines, and worse. Would he stand with her and fight to save their unborn child, or would he react badly and urge her to abort. He was a good man, she reminded herself, and had been a good father to their only child. Not all men would be as kind to a daughter as he had been. She would, after all, trust him with her secret, she decided.

That night, as they lay in bed together, she told him of the new life growing within her. He had pulled back. “You must have an abortion,” he told her bluntly. And rather than keep her secret, he had told his parents, and they, too, told Ailin to abort.

Even her daughter, Jing Jing, frightened by the sudden upheaval in her family, chimed in. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she gently chided her daughter. But the truth is, she was being pressured to have an abortion from all sides.

In her isolation and fear, she had turned to God. She had become a Christian six years before when an aunt who had married into the family had told her the Good News. Her husband and in-laws regarded her baptism as sheer foolishness and only grudgingly allowed it. Ailin was often criticized, especially for taking her little girl, Jing Jing, along with her to Church.

But God’s grace began to work in her, and her commitment to Christ grew. She was always kind to her husband and in-laws, even when they were being critical. She began to experience the sense of inner peace that comes from strong faith.

As their common faith deepened, Jing Jing, too, was baptized and brought into the Church. Both for Jing Jing and her mother, Church was a joyful occasion, where one learned about the life-giving savior, Jesus Christ. Ailin could see her daughter grow in holiness, and despite her tender age she seemed bound for sainthood. But now even her daughter had turned on her.

The pressure grew, and at times threatened to overwhelm her. Her husband and her in-laws became increasingly insistent in their demands. Ailin had to fight off despair over her condition. Perhaps I should abort, she thought to herself one day after a particularly bitter exchange with her mother-in-law.

She decided to go for a walk. Passing by a street stall, she happened to see a copy of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ for sale. She bought it, took it home, and watched it that same afternoon. As she watched Our Lord suffer through the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the crucifixion, she was struck not only by the intensity of his sufferings, but his reason for submitting to such a painful and humiliating death in the first place. When Jesus said to his mother, “Behold I make all things new,” she felt her eyes fill with tears. If Jesus suffered all that so that I might be saved, she thought, I must, for my part, do everything in my power to save my unborn child’s life.

That very night, the family planning control police came knocking on her door. There were two of them, and they were all business. Her mother-in-law had reported her illegal pregnancy to them, they told her. They were there to end it.

“Is it true you are pregnant?” the one in charge asked bluntly.

There was no way to deny the obvious bulge at her waistband. “Yes,” Ailin answered.

“Then you must report to the clinic tomorrow morning for an abortion.”

Ailin bowed ever so slightly. They smiled at one another, satisfied that she, like so many other women they had bullied over the years, would do exactly as they ordered.

Thank you, Lord, she thought as she watched their retreating backs. Your timing is always perfect. For they came on this day—of all days—when watching your Passion has given me the courage to resist them. And they came in the evening, after the clinic was closed for the day. Had they come earlier in the day, they would be marching me off to the clinic for an abortion right now.

After the family planning police left, Ailin began to gather her things together. She would have to leave home this very night. It’s the only way to keep you safe, she thought, patting her noticeable belly. But what would she do about her daughter? She needed to travel fast and light, and could not be slowed down by a child.

She pulled Jing Jing into their tiny bedroom, and closed the door. “I have to go away for a while,” she said softly, pulling the child close to her. “But Nana and Tata will take care of you. They want me to have an abortion.…”

“No, mama,” Jing Jing began to cry. “Don’t leave me.”

“It’s the only way that I can protect your…little brother, Jing Jing. Try and understand.”

“Oh, mama,” Jing Jing wailed. “Just have the abortion.” Her cries grew louder, and soon her neighbors would hear, and demand to know what was going on.”

“Alright,” she said as soothingly as she was able, pulling her little girl close to her. “I’ll take care of the problem. Just stop crying.”

In the comfort of her mother’s arms, Jing Jing’s sobs quieted. Ailin knew that, despite what she had said to calm her daughter, an abortion was no longer an option. For at the exact moment that her daughter’s pleas had rung in her ears, she had also heard the cry of her unborn child in her mind: “Mama, please don’t kill me.”

Those who are born can speak out and make themselves heard, she thought, but my little unborn child cannot even cry out on his own behalf. I must be his voice, until he is strong enough to take care of himself.

The next morning, to make sure that she missed the family planning police, she took her daughter to school early. She told her daughter that she would go that morning to the clinic, but that the operation would leave her weak. “You must go to your grandparents’ house after school and remain there for a few days.” Her daughter agreed.

Ailin left her bicycle near the school gate, got on a bus and went to the local church. There she spoke with a Sister who was initially unsympathetic.

“Obey the law and be obedient to your husband,” she told Ailin.

“I must obey God’s law, not man’s,” Ailin responded. “I am going to do everything in my power to save this baby.”

The Sister, seeing that there was no way to convince Ailin to change her mind, decided to help her. She introduced her to the local priest, who was immediately sympathetic.

“There is a nice Catholic village not far from here,” he first suggested, but then ruled out going there because the living conditions would have been a bit harsh.

Then the priest remembered the PRI Safe House, which he had heard about some time before. “I know just the place,” he told her. She left for the city of XXX the following day. And just in time. Several hours later, her husband called the church looking for her. He was trying to track her down. She had found a safe haven just in time.

In XXX she was able to help care for the other women in the Safe House, some of whom had difficult pregnancies, and to cook for them. Although she missed her daughter terribly, she never complained about her situation. Nor did she say anything bad about her family members, even though they had betrayed her.

Then she, too, began to have problems. During the first week of November she started bleeding. She was taken to the hospital where the doctors discovered that the placenta had partially detached from the uterine wall. She was released and went back to the Safe House, but was ordered to remain on complete bed rest.

For the next month and a half she spent her days in bed praying, reading the Bible, and knitting little booties. She remained at peace through the whole ordeal, constantly thanking God for taking care of everything. He had taken care of them both thus far, she knew, and He would see things through to the end.

On December 23, in the wee hours of a chilly morning, her water broke. She was still six weeks away from her due date. She was rushed to the hospital and admitted at 3 am.

Her husband, who had not heard from his wife in four months, and had no idea where she was, was contacted the next day. Mr. Wong was so angry the first time the director of the Safe House called that he hung up on the director—before the director could tell him the details of his wife’s condition. By the time the director called him back five minutes later, he had calmed down. This changed to grave concern when he learned that both mother and baby were in danger.

He immediately set out for XXX, arriving on Christmas morning. There was no more talk of an abortion. Rather, he was grateful for his wife’s wisdom in keeping the baby. “I am sorry for pressuring you,” he told Ailin. “I want to make sure the you and the baby are safe from now on. I was just afraid of losing my job. I was afraid…”

The doctors decided that Mrs. Wong should remain in the hospital until she delivered, as her situation was now very serious. The very next day, they discovered that the baby’s heart rate was very slow.

“If we are going to save this baby, we need to do a c-section now!” they said to the father. “Will you sign the papers giving permission for this surgery?”

Mr. Wong hesitated, exhausted from the trip and from staying up all night with his wife. Ailin, who had been sleeping, woke up when she heard “save the baby.” “Sign it!!” she shouted.

She was rushed into surgery, where the doctors performed an emergency c-section. They discovered that the placenta had completely detached itself from the uterine wall. Again, God’s timing was perfect. If they had waited even a few minutes longer they might have lost both the baby and the mother. Instead, they were able to save them both. Because he was premature, Ailin’s baby boy weighed only four pounds, but he was perfect. She was able to kiss his forehead before they sent him off to the neonatal intensive care unit.

Mr. Wong was deliriously happy. Not only were mother and baby safe, but he now had a son. When Ailin proposed naming their son Tianxi, or “Gift of Heaven,” her husband could only nod happily. No protests about religious “foolishness” now.

One week later Ailin’s mother-in-law called. She was crying on the phone and kept repeating how very sorry she was for trying to force Ailin to abort the baby. Ailin was very forgiving. When her mother-in-law said, “Thank you for having the baby,” Ailin responded, “Thank you for taking care of my daughter while I was away.”

Tianxi was in the hospital for 10 days. He was still not very strong when he was released, but Ailin took such good care of him that he gained weight rapidly. The Safe House continued to be their refuge and it was here, a few days later, that little Tianxi was baptized.

As Spring Festial approached, Mrs. Wong’s desire to return home got stronger and stronger. She was ready to rejoin the rest of her family. “I will return home on the Chinese New Year,” she announced.

The director of the Safe House tried to talk her out of it, saying that it would be better to wait just a little longer to allow Tianxi to get stronger. Finally, on the day of her planned departure, she reluctantly agreed to wait.

That very day her husband called, frantic. “Don’t come home!” he told her. “The population control police expect you to come home for the Spring Festival. They are waiting at the door to arrest you.”

Once again, Ailin felt the hand of God protecting her and her baby. And she was still able to see her beloved daughter, Jing Jing, thanks to another family member who brought her to XXX for the Spring Festival.

After Spring Festival ended, Ailin and her two children finally bade farewell to their friends at the Safe House. Still afraid of the population control police, they did not return to Ailin’s home. Instead they went to another city not far away where she and her children will stay for a few more weeks until it is safe to return home. According to the latest report, everyone is doing very well and is quite happy!

This is a miracle of God’s intervention, accomplished by the Passion of the Christ, through the instrument of PRI’s Safe house program.

NOTE: Population Research Institute, directed by Steven W. Mosher, runs a Safe House program in China. These are places of refuge where women pregnant with “illegal” children can take sanctuary until their babies arrive. The Safe House provides not only shelter, but also food and medical assistance during delivery.

Navigating the Left
by Robert S. McCain

David Horowitz, a radical turned conservative author and activist, has created a Web site, DiscoverTheNetwork.org, which he describes as “a navigation tool for identifying, mapping and defining the left and its elaborate and extensive political network.”

In a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home, Mr. Horowitz discussed the idea for the site:

Question: You distinguish between liberalism and “the left.” Why is that distinction important?

Answer: Historically, its very important.…In the early ’70s, Norman Podhoretz, who really qualifies as a liberal, was upset at the way his party under [1972 presidential candidate Sen. George] McGovern was opting out of the Cold War—much as the Democratic Party today has opted out of the war for freedom in Iraq.

When Podhoretz began saying that Democrats had betrayed the tradition of John Kennedy and Harry Truman, a Marxist named Michael Harrington labeled Podhoretz and those who supported him “neoconservatives”—that’s the origin of the term. The New York Times, The Washington Post and the network news followed suit.

Soon, pro-communist leftists like Angela Davis and Tom Hayden were being referred to as “liberals” by the media, and liberals like Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick were being referred to as “neoconservatives.” …So, to understand our present situation, I felt you have to try to restore accurate political labels. And that’s partly what my new Web site, DiscoverTheNetwork.org, is about.

You can’t really call people who are for redistribution of income, who are AWOL in the war for freedom, who are for racial preferences and unlimited government, liberals. But that’s what too many people do.

Q: What made you feel that there was a need for a site like this?

A: I was first inspired by these leftist sites, because every one of them has smeared me, along with other conservatives, one way or another. I was aware of how frequently these left-wing Web sites, for instance People for the American Way’s “Right Wing Watch,” are the sources for the attacks on anybody on the conservative side.

For 20 years, I dreamed of writing a book about the left, based on the reality I carry around in my head, as somebody who spent decades on the left or studying it. …The Web provides a wonderful format, because you can put up hundreds of tables of contents, indexes and links, and you can even provide visual maps, which will show you the network on one screen. …

What I’ve shown is that there are only a couple of degrees of separation between anybody on the left and the terrorists—and that includes people in the Democratic Party, even those who are anti-terrorist.

For example, the coalition of civil liberties groups that attacked the USA Patriot Act are thoroughly penetrated by pro-terrorist radicals based in organizations like the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. This doesn’t mean that every Democrat or every Republican who opposes that USA Patriot Act is a “useful idiot.” …But it does mean that they need to be more mindful of the arguments they are being presented with and supporting.

Q: You have documented the Marxist backgrounds of several leading anti-war groups and individuals. Why do you think the media have routinely ignored these connections?

A: This is the beauty of the site: On one page, you get a list of every major anti-war organization and each listing is a link to a profile of the individual group, and each group is connected to a map icon, which, if you click on it, opens up a diagram that shows all the other groups with radical agendas…that they are connected to.

The fact that the two major peace organizations, International ANSWER and the Coalition for Peace and Justice, are headed by easily identifiable communists, was known to the mainstream media, specifically the New York Times. Because the New York Times is essentially a fellow-traveling institution of the left, it chose not to mention this fact. …

Q: How do you think people can make use of your new site?

A: I am sure that journalists, radio talk-show producers and political activists who are aware of the site have already bookmarked it. A quarter of a million people from 50 countries went onto the site in the first two weeks.

Ordinary citizens can learn from it why the Democratic Party, for example, has taken such a leftward turn, by clicking on the “politics” icon and clicking on “The Shadow Party.” This will open a page that lists all the [George] Soros-funded and Soros-connected organizations that now control the fund-raising and get-out-the-vote activities of the Democratic Party.

Virtually no Democrat can be elected without the support or approbation of the shadow party. …

Q: Some critics have accused you of implying connections or comparisons between say, Katie Couric and al Qaeda. What do you make of such charges?

A: This comes from people who are incapable of reading, who are uninterested in dealing with serious intellectual arguments.

Katie Couric is listed [on the Web site] as an “affective leftist”—someone who leans left because in the media culture she inhabits, that’s the “decent” thing to do. There is no link between Katie Couric and al Qaeda stated or implied in this database.

If you were to make a database of communism, you’d put Trotsky in there with Stalin, even though Stalin ordered Trotsky’s murder.

—The Washington Times, March 24, 2005, p. A2

Dispelling the Myths of Yalta
by John Radzilowski

“Outrage” … “cause for shame” … “incendiary.” This was the mainstream media’s reaction to President Bush’s speech in Riga, Latvia, wherein he strongly denounced the injustice perpetrated on half of Europe 60 years ago at the Yalta Conference. It was at Yalta that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to the Soviet takeover of half of Europe. What followed was nearly 50 years of repression, killing, and, of course, the Cold War.

This week Bush recognized that shameful history. He called Yalta “one of the greatest wrongs of history” and compared it to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. “We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability,” the president vowed. “We have learned our lesson; no one’s liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of others.”

But stirring statements in support of freedom for small countries like Latvia don’t go down well in the mainstream media or in the halls of academe. There FDR is considered a virtual saint, the Soviet Union a misunderstood ally, and the crimes of Stalin and other communist dictators are often passed over in silence or calmly rationalized.

Leading the charge was the Los Angeles Times. Editorial writer Jacob Heilbrunn breathlessly accused the president of perpetrating “an old right-wing canard… belonging to the Ann Coulter school of history” and parroting Joseph McCarthy. Heilbrunn went on to defend the Yalta treaty, noting its “Declaration on Liberated Europe” and its call for free elections in Poland. Besides, he claimed, Eastern Europe was already in Soviet hands, so there was nothing that could be done. Moreover, irritating Stalin might have caused Russia to drop out of the war against Hitler.

The Myth of “Uncle Joe”

During World War II, the myth of crusty old “Uncle Joe” Stalin as our trusty ally was born and carefully tended by the American left. It has never really been dispelled. In reality, Stalin was one of the major culprits of the horror of World War II and the Holocaust. Although first place in that category will always go to Hitler and the Third Reich, Stalin and the communist state played a major role in Hitler’s grab for control of Europe.

The Soviets and Germans had been in secret contact since the early 1920s, and Hitler’s rise to power was only a temporary interruption. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland and the Soviet attack on that country in 1939 broke Poland’s southeastern redoubt, shortening the war by weeks and saving the lives of many Nazi soldiers. Then, Stalin gave Germany a secure eastern border and provided the Nazi dictator with huge quantities of strategic raw materials, including food and badly needed oil. Without Stalin’s help, the rapid Nazi conquest of Scandinavia and Western Europe would not have been possible. The terrible fate of these countries and of their Jewish communities under Nazi occupation must be laid, in part, at Stalin’s door. The Soviet navy even provided direct help to Nazi commerce raiders preying on British shipping during Britain’s darkest hours. All the while, Stalin was busy enjoying the territory he had gained by allying with Hitler, murdering hundreds of thousands of his new subjects and deporting millions more to the living hell of the gulags.

During this era, compliant communist parties in the west supported Stalin and opposed efforts to stop Hitler as “capitalist warmongering.” While many on the left had misgivings about the Hitler-Stalin pact, most kept silent or rationalized Stalin’s actions as clever political moves designed to fool communism’s enemies. These internal contradictions were only relieved by Hitler’s attack on his erstwhile ally in 1941.

Yet many in academia are still parroting the old propaganda. Stalin, they claim, was “forced” into the Nazi-Soviet alliance. They further contend that Stalin’s assault on Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland in 1939–40 was simply an effort to “regain” territory unjustly lost during the Russian civil war! Implicit is the assumption that Stalin had a “right” to impose Soviet terror on sovereign states beyond his border.

The Mistake of Yalta

The LA Times may wish to believe otherwise, but Yalta was the result of an American policy based on wishful thinking combined with starry-eyed visions of dividing the world into “peaceful” spheres of influence that have long afflicted so-called realists. This tendency was furthered by the strong chorus of Soviet sympathizers both inside and outside government.

While some were actual agents of the Soviet Union, many were simply ignorant and foolish. Communism, they believed, did indeed represent the wave of the future. They wanted to be on the “right side of history” in its inevitable march toward utopia. This meant support for the Soviet Union. Thus did those who opposed the Soviets become “reactionaries” and “fascists.” Likewise, the people of Eastern Europe who would be most affected by the Yalta agreement were viewed as “reactionaries” for opposing Soviet wishes. This spiteful notion originated in 1920, after the Red Army’s crushing defeat at the battle of Warsaw temporarily halted efforts to spark “worldwide conflagration” at the point of a bayonet.

By 1943, Roosevelt had come to the view that the independence of small states was an obstruction on the road to peace, and that the Great Powers had the right to impose governments on states without the consent of their populations. Roosevelt was entranced with a vision of a world peacefully directed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This vision was fueled by pro-Soviet propaganda and hopelessly naïve reports sent from Moscow by American officials such as Ambassador W. Averell Harriman. Harriman’s papers show a man who had little knowledge of the region he was in and whose information frequently came from Soviet agents posing as neutral “progressives.” Thus, both Roosevelt and then Truman were led to believe that, while Stalin was a little rough at times, he was a democrat at heart who simply ran a political machine in the mode of Tammany Hall. Truman compared Stalin to Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast. Roosevelt had earlier informed Boston Archbishop Francis Spellman that Russian rule over parts of Europe would eventually help civilize Russia and, in fact, that most people in eastern Europe really wanted to be Russianized.

By feeding the Americans a picture of central and Eastern Europe that was at variance with reality, the Soviets were able to dictate the key terms of the Yalta accord and later agreements—even to the point of determining the future makeup of the Polish government. Ironically, Roosevelt measured this a success: He felt he got Stalin to “compromise.” Only Churchill raised a protest at the proceedings. He was roundly ignored. Soviet leaders meanwhile were surprised and pleased with the ease at which they had achieved their goals. They had gotten everything they wanted.

This history notwithstanding, Yalta supporters have long maintained that, had Americans failed to appease Stalin, the Soviets might have concluded a separate peace with the Nazis. This is so far-fetched that it is hard to believe anyone would take it seriously. Stalin’s goal was to control as much of Europe as possible. There was no reason to stop pushing until the Red Army had reached the heart of Germany. This had been a Soviet goal since 1920. Why should Stalin have stopped when this prize was within reach?

Soviet intentions were plainly obvious long before Yalta or Tehran. While Soviet forces played a major role in fighting the Nazi scourge after June 1941—and suffered horrific losses due to German barbarity and the incompetence of their own leaders—Stalin’s behavior until 1941 should have been a clue. As soon as the tide turned against Hitler, Stalin gave orders for Soviet agents to begin a campaign to secretly destroy non-communist, anti-Nazi partisans in eastern Europe that were actively engaged in fighting against Hitler’s force. In 1944, Stalin’s armies stood aside while the citizens of Warsaw fought Hitler’s armies for two months and were massacred by the SS. The Soviets even refused to allow allied planes to drop supplies to the resistance and shot at American planes that strayed into Soviet airspace.

Supporters of Yalta are outraged at the notion that Yalta was a “betrayal” of Eastern Europe. Yet consider the fate of Poland. Polish forces had fought the Nazis longer than any country; they fought alongside the U.S. and British in every major campaign in Europe and made up the 4th largest army in the fight against Hitler; the Polish government in London was an official ally of the U.S. and Britain. This did not prevent Roosevelt from acquiescing in the dismantlement of this allied government and its replacement with a group of Stalin’s henchmen. Even as the men of the Polish 1st Armored Division, determined to link up with the American 90th Division under Gen. George S. Patton and to close the trap on Nazi armies in Normandy, were battling the SS, Adolf Hitler and SS Hitlerjugend divisions, Roosevelt was planning to hand them over to another sort of dictator. If that isn’t betrayal, what is?

Undoing the Yalta Mentality

The democratic revolutions in central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s ended the worst results of Yalta but, as the LA Times has shown, the Yalta mentality lives on. The American left and its acolytes in the media and academia are compelled to defend not only the Yalta agreement itself but the underlying ideas on which it was based. After all, if Yalta was merely confirming the inevitable fact of Soviet control in Eastern Europe, why get so worked up about it?

To question Yalta, then, is to question the foreign policy legacy of FDR. While much can be said in favor of FDR, Yalta was a mistake: It greatly augmented Soviet power in Europe and gave America’s foe in the Cold War an improved strategic position. America got nothing in return.

To question Yalta is also to question the role of the Soviet Union and Stalin. Although many will acknowledge (when pressed) that Stalin perhaps wasn’t a kindly Uncle Joe, the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazism is the only intellectual fig leaf remaining from the collapse of leftist ideology. Communism may have been an economic and cultural failure that murdered millions, but at least in that brief, shining moment, it defeated Hitler.

Unfortunately, while many Soviet soldiers were brave, their lives were squandered by a regime that saw them as expendable cannon fodder. In addition, the Soviet regime continued to war on its own people, expending valuable resources to murder alleged internal enemies as Nazi forces drove deep into the heart of Russia. Many Soviet soldiers were so brutalized by their own leaders that they committed mass rape, theft, and murder as they marched across Europe. While they freed the inmates of infamous Nazi death and concentration camps, in many cases they raped the female survivors, regardless of whether they were German, Russian, or Jewish. The Soviet victory over Hitler was the result of one evil and murderous regime defeating another. There is no redeeming grace for communism in the victory over Nazi Germany.

Nor did Yalta lead to the peace and security that Roosevelt had imagined. Instead, it ushered in decades of tension and low-level conflict. Trading away the freedom of others proved no bargain. Because America received nothing in return, Yalta has to be recorded as one of the worst failures of “realist” foreign policy in history.

But the history of Yalta also offers lessons for the present. Just as Roosevelt and his advisors, having absorbed the propaganda of the political left, were convinced that the people of Eastern Europe were reactionaries incapable of real democracy, so too do today’s skeptics doubt that democracy can find purchase in Middle Eastern soil. Indeed, the tenor of some public debate prior to elections in Afghanistan and Iraq was eerily reminiscent of the commentary that attended the Yalta conference.

Only last week, many commentators were outraged that a U.S. president would support the freedom of such “insignificant” countries such as Latvia and Georgia over the interests of Russia. Why not bow to the inevitable and let Russia have its way with Latvia (which many Russians consider a major threat)? What would America lose? Similarly, many in the EU are fully in sync with the Yalta mindset. They seem ready to throw the Baltic States over the side to appease Putin.

This was the attitude that prevailed at Yalta. Bewitched by the prospect of stability, American leaders in fact sowed the seeds of the Cold War. President Bush does not intend to repeat their mistake. He clearly rejects the notion that big countries have some right to dominate smaller neighbors, which is why Bush was correct to reject the “realism” inherent in Yalta and support the freedom of small countries like Latvia and Georgia. This week, Bush showed that American leaders can both break with the Yalta mindset and craft a foreign policy that is not only good for the U.S., but one that also lives up to our noblest ideals.

—FrontPageMagazine.com, May 13, 2005