The Journals of Ayn Rand (72 page)

The Chairman:
We will have more order, please.

Miss Rand:
Am I speaking too fast?

The Chairman:
Go ahead.

Miss Rand:
Then—

Mr. Stripling:
Miss Rand, may I bring up one point there?

Miss Rand:
Surely.

Mr. Stripling:
I saw the picture. At this peasant’s village or home, was there a priest or several priests in evidence?

Miss Rand:
Oh yes; I am coming to that, too. The priest was in the village scenes, having a position as sort of a constant companion and friend of the peasants, as if religion was a natural and accepted part of that life. Well, now, as a matter of fact, the [policy on] religion in Russia in my time was, and I understand it still is, that for a Communist Party member to have anything to do with religion means expulsion from the Party. He is not allowed to enter a church or take part in any religious ceremony. For a non-Party member it was permitted, but it was so frowned upon that people had to keep it secret if they went to church. If they wanted a church wedding they usually had it privately in their homes, with only a few friends present, in order not to let it be known at their place of employment because, even though it was not forbidden, the chances were that they would be thrown out of a job if it was known that they practiced any kind of religion.

Now, then, to continue with the story, Robert Taylor proposes to the heroine. She accepts him. They have a wedding, which, of course, is a church wedding. It takes place with all the religious pomp. They have a banquet. They have dancers, in something like satin skirts and performing ballets such as you never could possibly see in any village and certainly not in Russia. Later they show a peasants’ meeting place, which is a kind of marble palace with crystal chandeliers. Where they got it or who built it for them I would like to be told. Then later you see that the peasants all have radios. When the heroine plays as a soloist with Robert Taylor’s orchestra, after she marries him, you see a scene where all the peasants are listening on radios, and one of them says, “There are many millions listening to the concert.”

I don’t know whether there are a hundred private individuals in Russia who own radios. And I remember reading in the newspaper at the beginning of the war that every radio was seized by the Government and people were not allowed to own them. The idea that every poor peasant has a radio is certainly preposterous. You also see that they have long-distance telephones. Later in the picture, Taylor has to call his wife in the village by long-distance telephone. Where they got this long-distance phone, I don’t know.

Now, here comes the crucial point of the picture. In the midst of this concert, when the heroine is playing, you see a scene on the border of the U.S.S.R. You have a very lovely modernistic sign saying “U.S.S.R.” I would just like to remind you that that is the border where probably thousands of people have died trying to escape out of this lovely paradise. It shows the U.S.S.R. sign, and there is a border guard standing. He is listening to the concert. Then there is a scene inside a guardhouse where the guards are listening to the same concert, the beautiful Tschaikovsky music, and they are playing chess. Suddenly there is a Nazi attack on them. The poor, sweet Russians were unprepared. Now, realize—and that was a great shock to me—that the border that was being shown was the border of Poland. That was the border of an occupied, enslaved country which Hitler and Stalin destroyed together. That was the border that was being shown to us—just a happy place with people listening to music.

Also realize that when all this sweetness and light was going on in the first part of the picture, with all these happy, free people, there was not a G.P.U. agent among them, with no food lines, no persecution—complete freedom and happiness, with everybody smiling. Incidentally, I have never seen so much smiling in my life, except on the murals of the world’s fair pavilion of the Soviets. If any one of you have seen it, you can appreciate it. It is one of the stock propaganda tricks of the Communists, to show these people smiling. That is all they can show. You have all this, plus the fact that an American conductor had accepted an invitation to come there and conduct a concert, and this took place in 1941 when Stalin was the ally of Hitler. That an American would accept an invitation to that country was shocking to me, with everything being shown as proper and good and all those happy people going around dancing, when Stalin was an ally of Hitler.

Now, then, the heroine decides that she wants to stay in Russia. Taylor would like to take her out of the country, but she says no, her place is here, she has to fight the war. Here is the line, as nearly exact as I could mark it while watching the picture: “I have a great responsibility to my family, to my village, and to the way I have lived.” What way had she lived? This is just a polite way of saying the Communist way of life. She goes on to say that she wants to stay in the country because otherwise “How can I help to build a better and better life for my country?” What is meant by “better and better”? That means she has already helped to build a good way. That is the Soviet Communist way. But now she wants to make it even better.

Taylor’s manager, an American, tells her that she should leave the country, but when she refuses and wants to stay, here is the line he uses: he tells her in an admiring, friendly way that “You are a fool, but a lot of fools like you died on the village green at Lexington.”

Now, I submit that this is blasphemy, because the men at Lexington were not fighting just a foreign invader. They were fighting for freedom and what I mean—and I intend to be exact—is they were fighting for political freedom and individual freedom. They were fighting for the rights of man. To compare them to someone fighting for a slave state, I think is dreadful.

Then, later, the girl or one of the other characters says that “the culture we have been building here will never die.” What culture? The culture of concentration camps.

At the end of the picture one of the Russians asks Taylor and the girl to go back to America, because they can help them there. How? Here is what he says, “You can go back to your country and tell them what you have seen and you will see the truth both in speech and in music.” Now, that is plainly saying that what you have seen is the truth about Russia. That is what is in the picture.

Now, here is what I cannot understand: if the excuse that has been given here is that we had to produce the picture in wartime, just how can it help the war effort? If [the goal] is to deceive the American people, if it is to present to the American people a picture of Russia that is better than it really is, then that sort of an attitude is nothing but the theory of the Nazi elite—that a choice group of intellectual or other leaders will tell the people lies for their own good. I don’t think that is the American way of giving people information. We do not have to deceive the people at any time, in war or peace.

If it was to please the Russians, I don’t see how you can please the Russians by telling them that we are fools. To what extent we have done it, you can see right now. You can see the results right now. If we present a picture like that as our version of what goes on in Russia, what will they think of it? We don’t win anybody’s friendship. We will only win their contempt, and as you know the Russians have been [treating us with contempt].

My whole point about the picture is this: I fully believe Mr. Mayer when he says that he did not make a Communist picture. To do him justice, I can tell you I noticed that there was an effort to cut propaganda out. I believe he tried to cut propaganda out of the picture, but the terrible thing is the carelessness with ideas, not realizing that the mere presentation of that kind of happy existence in a country of slavery and horror is terrible propaganda. You are telling people that it is all right to live in a totalitarian state.

Now, I would like to say that nothing on earth will justify slavery. In war or peace or at any time you cannot justify slavery. You cannot tell people that it is all right to live under it and that everybody there is happy.

If you doubt this, I will just ask you one question. Visualize a picture [set] in Nazi Germany. If anybody laid a plot just based on a pleasant little romance in Germany and played Wagner’s music and said that people are happy there, would you say that that was propaganda or not, when you know what life in Germany was and what kind of concentration camps they had there. You would not dare to put just a happy love story into Germany, and for every one of the same reasons you should not do it about Russia.

Mr. Stripling:
That is all I have, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman:
Mr. Wood.
[John Stephens Wood was a Democratic congressman from Georgia
.]

Mr. Wood:
I gather, then, from your analysis of this picture your personal criticism of it is that it overplayed the conditions that existed in Russia at the time the picture was made; is that correct?

Miss Rand:
Did you say overplayed?

Mr. Wood:
Yes.

Miss Rand:
Well, the story portrayed the people—

Mr. Wood:
It portrayed the people of Russia in a better economic and social position than they occupied?

Miss Rand:
That is right.

Mr. Wood:
And it would also leave the impression in the average mind that they were better able to resist the aggression of the German Army than they were in fact able to resist?

Miss Rand:
Well, that was not in the picture. So far as the Russian war was concerned, not very much was shown about it.

Mr. Wood:
Well, you recall, I presume—it is a matter of history—going back to the middle of the First World War when Russia was also our ally against the same enemy that we were fighting at this time and they were knocked out of the war. When the remnants of their forces turned against us, it prolonged the First World War a considerable time, didn’t it?

Miss Rand:
I don’t believe so.

Mr. Wood:
You don’t?

Miss Rand:
No.

Mr. Wood:
Do you think, then, that it was to our advantage or to our disadvantage to keep Russia in this war, at the time this picture was made?
Miss Rand:
That has absolutely nothing to do with what we are discussing.

Mr. Wood:
Well—

Miss Rand:
But if you want me to answer, I can answer, but it will take me a long time to say what I think, as to whether we should or should not have had Russia on our side in the war. I can, but how much time will you give me?

Mr. Wood:
Well, do you say that it would have prolonged the war, so far as we were concerned, if they had been knocked out of it at that time?

Miss Rand:
I can’t answer that yes or no, unless you give me time for a long speech on it.

Mr. Wood:
Well, there is a pretty strong probability that we wouldn’t have won at all, isn’t there?

Miss Rand:
I don’t know, because on the other hand I think we could have used the lend-lease supplies that we sent there to much better advantage ourselves.

Mr. Wood:
Well, at that time—

Miss Rand:
I don’t know. It is a question.

Mr. Wood:
We were furnishing Russia with all the lend-lease equipment that our industry would stand, weren’t we?

Miss Rand:
That is right.

Mr. Wood:
And continued to do it?

Miss Rand:
I am not sure it was at all wise. Now, if you want to discuss my military views—I am not an authority, but I will try.

Mr. Wood:
What do you interpret, then, the picture as having been made for?

Miss Rand:
I ask you: what relation could a lie about Russia have with the war effort? I would like to have somebody explain that to me, because I really don’t understand it, why a lie would help anybody or why it would keep Russia in or out of the war. How?

Mr. Wood:
You don’t think it would have been of benefit to the American people to have kept them in?

Miss Rand:
I don’t believe the American people should ever be told any lies, publicly or privately. I don’t believe that lies are practical. I think the international situation now rather supports me. I don’t think it was necessary to deceive the American people about the nature of Russia.

I could add this: if those who saw it say it was quite all right, and perhaps there are reasons why it was all right to be an ally of Russia, then why weren’t the American people told the real reasons and told that Russia is a dictatorship but there are reasons why we should cooperate with them to destroy Hitler and other dictators? All right, there may be some argument to that. Let us hear it. But of what help can it be to the war effort to tell people that we should associate with Russia and that she is not a dictatorship?

Mr. Wood:
Let me see if I understand your position. I understand, from what you say, that because they were a dictatorship we shouldn’t have accepted their help in undertaking to win a war against another dictatorship.

Miss Rand:
That is not what I said. I was not in a position to make that decision. If I were, I would tell you what I would do. That is not what we are discussing. We are discussing the fact that our country was an ally of Russia, and the question is: what should we tell the American people about it—the truth or a lie? If we had good reason, if that is what you believe, all right, then why not tell the truth? Say it is a dictatorship, but we want to be associated with it. Say it is worthwhile being associated with the devil, as Churchill said, in order to defeat another devil which is Hitler. There might be some good argument made for that. But why pretend that Russia was not what it was?

Mr. Wood:
Well—