PROPAGANDA METHODS 187
and unofficial policy can proceed in conformity with these two
principles. Hitherto this has consistently been done. While
Communism and class war were being organized abroad, no
toil and trouble were spared to achieve propagandist successes
and to win over public opinion to support the Soviet Union
and to ensure friendly co-operation with it.
Before dealing with the methods employed by Moscow to
this end, I must recall a fact which is generally neglected
but which is of prime importance for the success of Soviet
propaganda. Russia is a vast country and is unique in its
geography, its ethnography and in the backward state of its
communications. The distances in Russia, and the remoteness
of certain regions from the centres, are unparalleled in Europe.
I myself, in the years immediately preceding the war, travelled
through the most distant parts of the Russian Empire, partly in
connection with my studies, and later in the execution of a
special economic task in the interest of my own homeland. I was
struck even then by the remoteness of the provinces from the
capitals and by the ignorance prevalent in the great centres
about conditions in the countryside. Beyond the Volga, a few
miles from Kazan or Ufa, there was already a different world
Opened up by no railways, it could be reached in winter only
by sleigh routes.
Even before the war foreigners could admire the cream of
Russian culture and art in Moscow and St. Petersburg and
remain wholly ignorant of the everyday life in the provinces.
Visitors coming to Petrograd and Moscow, Kharkov and Kiev,
have naturally but vague notions about conditions in the rural
districts. It is this peculiar nature of Russian geography and
of Russian communications which forms the foundation of the
propaganda exerted to influence foreign public opinion. Foreign
guests of honour, and journalists and "Intourist" travellers in
general, are practically confined to the two capitals and a few
provincial centres. Other districts are inaccessible because of
transport difficulties, lack of accommodation and other reasons.