PROPAGANDA METHODS 209
statistics in the United States. Exact'statistical information
was furnished to demonstrate the fearful extent of criminal
activities in the New World. Murder and robbery! Millions
upon millions of dollars stolen! Thousands and thousands
living a life of crime, organized gangs supported by the police!
The sons of millionaires, full of sensual lust, and only waiting
for the time when they can become criminals! It was indeed a
picture of horror and degeneracy which was unfolded before
the Moscow listeners. All this—that is the fundamental idea—
did not exist in Soviet Russia.1
Similar items, long or short, are broadcast in foreign languages
almost daily. There is always the same skilful contrast of light
and shade—of light in Russia and shade in the bourgeois
countries—which has a suggestive effect on the many listeners
all over the world. This method of contrast can therefore be
described as the very essence of Moscow's wireless propaganda.
Almost daily the utterances of foreign statesmen are quoted,
expressing themselves in laudatory or even enthusiastic terms
about conditions in Russia as the result of their personal
observations in Moscow.2
Moscow's wireless methods as here described are typical of
all the Russian programmes which are broadcast in Western
languages. Since the completion of the great Russian trans-
mitting station Moscow has been in a position to address
thousands of persons in the West, in America, and indeed in
the whole world. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other
German-speaking countries many people listen in to the
1 The present state of crime in Russia can be learned from a plain account
by Dr. Basseches in the Neue Freie Presse of April 28, 1935* He says that
the police columns, which had been omitted for years in the Soviet press,
had to be re-introduced. "It is found/* he says, "that even official figures
admit that there is a great deal of crime. There is so much crime that radical
means have to be employed to overcome it."
* Among them are often very prominent politicians, such as M. Pierre
Cot, whose remarks in the (Euvre were broadcast on February 19, 1935.
"The only country," he said, "which knows no ^employment and where
agriculture and industry are making continuous progress is the Soviet
Union, the country of the will to peace."
o