Page:Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet - 64.djvu/8

 In old Russia, under the Czars, most of the 189 national minorities who lived there were persecuted and oppressed. National languages were forbidden and education was suppressed. It is generally conceded that today, in the Soviet Union, there is no such thing as racial discrimination in theory or in practice. Unlike Nazi law, which enforces discrimination on "racial" grounds, Soviet law punishes the establishment of direct or indirect privilege for citizens on account of their race or nationality as well as the advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness, hatred or contempt:

" 123: Equal rights for citizens of the USSR, irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, shall be an irrevocable law.

"Any direct or indirect limitation of these rights, or conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any propagation of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, shall be punished by law." —[Chapter X—

The Purpose of the State

The political fascist state is based on the "leader principle," under which the people must follow blindly the dictates of a few men. In the Axis countries, the emergence of fascism meant a taking away of self-government. As fascism grows more powerful it permits its people less and less liberty and uses more and more violence.

The Soviets early believed that a dictatorship "of the proletariat" was necessary in order to destroy capitalism and set up socialism; that then the dictatorship should gradually evolve into a democracy, as now provided in their Constitution. Thus, although they now have a secret police and a government controlled press, their ultimate political ideals are directly opposite to the stated ideals of fascist dictatorship, and their hope is to drop the appurtenances of dictatorship in the process of democratic evolution.

Fascism treats women as mere breeders. "Children, kitchen, and church" was the Nazi slogan for women. The Soviet Union granted political and economic equality to women in an unprecedented degree:

" 122: Women in the USSR are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life.

"The realization of these rights of women is ensured by affording women equally with men the right to work, payment for work, rest, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, pregnancy leave with pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens." —[Chapter X—

The German school system, once the pride of the German people, degenerated under fascism to an instrument of ignorance and hate. Between 1932 and 1937, the number of Germans attending universities decreased more than 50 percent. Before World War I, only 33 percent of the Russians could read or write. Today, illiteracy is almost absent in the Soviet Union. Between 1914 and 1937, the number of Soviet men and women in colleges increased 800 per cent:

" 121: Citizens of the USSR have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal compulsory elementary education, by education free of charge including higher education, by a system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in higher schools, by instruction in schools in the native language, and by the organization in factories, state farms, machine-tractor stations and collective farms of free industrial, technical and agricultural education for the working people." —[Chapter X—

Economic

We have seen that, under fascism, the productive energies of Germany, Italy, and Japan were turned to war preparations under the slogan of "guns instead of butter."

The communists believe in state ownership of factories, farms, and all other productive agencies, with distribution of the proceeds among all the workers according to their productivity. The Russians have great confidence in the future improvement of their lot, although the average Russian is poor in comparison to American standards. Russians are now confident that their upward march will be rapidly resumed with the end of the War, the resumption of production for civilian use, and the expansion of their great resources.

Conclusion

Our late ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, wrote before the War: "Their (the Nazi) persecutions are quite as severe as those of the 16th century Treatment of people is more arbitrary than it has been since the Middle Ages." He added prophetically: "What is to come of all this one cannot say—German domination of all Europe or another war."