[This issue of Peking Review is from massline.org. Massline.org has kindly given us permission to to place these documents on the MIA. We made only some formatting changes to make them congruent with our style sheets.]
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 11, #44, Nov. 1, 1968, pp. 25-26 & 28.]
SO-CALLED “Western culture” is nothing but imperialist culture, which is most reactionary, decadent and vicious. With the imperialist system heading for total collapse, its culture, like the sun setting beyond the western hills, resembles a dying person who is sinking fast. Since Khrushchov and his successors came to power, they have gone all out to carry out “cultural co-operation” with U.S. imperialism and thrown the door wide open to “Western culture,” which has thus found a new market in the Soviet Union. Amid the fanfare of their all-round counter-revolutionary collaboration, a new sinister deal was made between the Soviet Union and the United States in July — the Soviet-U.S. cultural exchange agreement for 1968-69 signed in Moscow.
This agreement covers many fields, ranging from science, technology, literature, art, education, medicine and physical culture to the exchange of “artists,” “experts,” periodicals, exhibitions and films, and so on. More than 20 departments are involved in the exchange of visits by “experts” alone.
If the United States only “made a breach” in 1958 when the arch-renegade Khrushchov signed the first “cultural agreement” with it, then today, ten years later, when the sixth “cultural agreement” has been signed, the world’s most reactionary, decadent and vicious “Western culture” has flooded the Soviet Union like the muddy water rushing through a breached dike. The Soviet revisionist renegade clique’s efforts to go in for “wholesale Westernization” have earned it the plaudits of its master. U.S. imperialist chief Johnson gleefully declared in a speech that no other period in history has been “more productive in promoting co-operation between our two countries.”
Let us see how “productive” Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation” is at present.
Not only has Soviet revisionist literature become increasingly decadent under the impact of Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation,” but the most reactionary and rottenest American literature has been translated and published in large quantities in the Soviet Union. The chief editor of the Soviet revisionist Literaturnaya Gazeta confessed in a statement that American novels were the best sellers in the foreign book market in the Soviet Union.
Disguised as “cultural co-operation,” degenerate Western music, commercialized jazz, has become the rage in the Soviet revisionist musical, dancing and theatrical world. Rock-’n’-roll, the twist and other similar vulgar dances are performed more madly than before. The Soviet revisionist renegade clique has not only spent big sums of money to invite night club jazz bands from the West to perform in different parts of the Soviet Union, it has also sent its own musicians to take part in “international contests” so as to learn from Western jazz bands. As a result, various weird-named American and British jazz bands have performed in the Soviet Union. Last December 12, the Soviet revisionist Central Television Station started a monthly series of lectures on “Jazz Music, Yesterday and Today” in its fourth programme. In these lectures, American commercialized jazz was unctuously described as “real music” and “sacred music” and was lauded as helping to “understand the world.” Disgusting “jazz music festivals” have been held in Moscow and six other Soviet cities this year to give such vulgar music a big boost. And as before, the Soviet revisionist clique has given the green light to performances of many vulgar American plays on the Soviet stage.
As a result of Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation,” Soviet revisionist screens have been turned into an instrument for publicizing “Western culture.” As it did previously, this clique has spared no efforts to lavish praise on American films through its newspapers and magazines, and it has printed many books to publicize these reactionary American films. Moreover, in January this year, the Soviet revisionist Central Television Station began obsequiously introducing American film stars to its viewers. The Soviet revisionists, in effect, have handed over a large part of the Soviet screen to Hollywood. S.K. Romanovsky, Chairman of the Soviet Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, admitted that often “there are several hundred copies of American films being shown in our country.” Even this cannot satisfy the Soviet revisionist clique. The new “cultural agreement” explicitly provides for “the widest possible distribution” of American films.
Under the signboard of “cultural co-operation,” the Soviet revisionist clique has thrown the door wide open to the Voice of America, an instrument of U.S. imperialism for opposing communism, China, the people and revolution. The notorious V.O.A., as former U.S. President Kennedy said, is an “arm” of the U.S. Government. But the Soviet revisionist clique loves it as dearly as flies love muck. As far back as soon after the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U., the clique began to intermittently stop jamming V.O.A. broadcasts to the Soviet Union. Later, an agreement was reached between the Soviet Union and the United States under which the former formally and completely stopped jamming and provided facilities for V.O.A. transcription programmes to be broadcast in the Soviet Union. After Brezhnev and Kosygin came to power, they gave the V.O.A. the go-ahead signal, allowing it to be heard all over the country. With great exultation, the U.S. press said that in content, form and technique, the Soviet revisionist radio and television programmes had been “radically reformed” after the fashion of the West.
Soviet revisionism’s television is the same as its radio. Last year, the Soviet revisionist clique racked its brains making a television newsreel called “Chronicle of Half Century” in the name of “celebrating” the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution and “reviewing” the history of the Soviet Union over the past half century. On the one hand, the newsreel frantically attacks China; on the other hand, it nauseatingly advocates “Soviet-U.S. friendship” to curry favour with its master. A good number of shots of Soviet revisionists embracing and kissing Americans were produced to show Soviet-U.S. “friendship” and “co-operation.” The coming to power and the death of the U.S. imperialist chief Kennedy were shamelessly played up as a “big event” in the Soviet Union and brought into this television film. The commentary flatters Kennedy as a “clear-headed” and “practical” man and sadly “mourns” his death.
It is also under the camouflage of Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation” that the decadent way of life of the Western bourgeoisie penetrates the Soviet Union everywhere. Not long after the latest agreement, a so-called “Soviet fashion design show” was held in Washington. On display were “outstanding fashions” by Soviet revisionism’s “top contemporary designers,” including so-called “space age” fashions and “revolutionized” clothing designed by “the Soviet Union’s best-known avant-garde designer” who copied the cowboy pants and mini-skirts of the West. Characteristic of the fashion show were the marked trends of “Westernization” which won praise and applause from the revisionist clique’s U.S. master and which were cheered as “inspiring.” The Soviet revisionists also put on dog shows in Moscow similar to those in New York and london and went so far as to make this thing fashionable. All this is the height of rottenness.
To speed up the “Westernization” of the Soviet Union, the Soviet revisionist clique is becoming more and more open in utilizing “international tourism” to attract by all possible means “tourists” of all descriptions from the Western capitalist countries, allowing them to spread the dissipated Western way of life in the Soviet Union. The Soviet revisionists also announced that more than one hundred cities in all fifteen union republics would be opened to up to a million pleasure-seeking foreign bourgeois gentlemen and ladies coming to the Soviet Union. In addition, the Soviet revisionists are developing “cultural co-operation” with U.S imperialism in a big way so as to surrender completely to the latter and bring on a wholesale “Westernization” of the Soviet Union through such channels as setting up “night clubs,” free “distribution” of the U.S. magazine America, holding rotating U.S. exhibitions, introducing American experience, exchanging students, commendation of scholars, sponsoring pen clubs and reprinting the articles of the reactionary U.S. press, etc.
The above-mentioned facts are but a few examples of this “co-operation.” All these “fruits” fully show that since the confidential Glassboro talks by the chieftains of Soviet revisionism and U.S. imperialism in June 1967, U.S.-Soviet counter-revolutionary collaboration has shown striking development. It has developed from the earth and under the sea to the sky, from the “hot line” contact between the White House and Kremlin to the opening of the New York-Moscow direct airline, and from political, economic and military fields to the cultural realm. Soviet revisionism and U.S. imperialism have entered into an out-and-out counter-revolutionary holy alliance.
Our great leader Chairman Mao teaches us: “In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines.” The large-scale importation of “Western culture” by the Soviet revisionist clique today is utterly to serve the all-round restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and the comprehensive Soviet-U.S. counter-revolutionary collaboration, in other words, to serve its counter-revolutionary revisionist political line. So-called Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation,” like their collaboration in the political, economic and military fields, is the product of the capitulationist line of “peaceful coexistence” carried out by the Soviet revisionist clique of renegades, and it is a big betrayal of the people of the Soviet Union and of the world.
Why is Soviet-U.S. “cultural co-operation” carried out so unscrupulously and so feverishly in this period? The U.S. magazine Newsweek in its July 15, 1968, issue admits outright that Soviet revisionism and U.S. imperialism “have often found themselves undergoing many of the same internal and external stresses and strains in the rapidly changing world of the 1960s.” What are these “internal and external stresses and strains”? First of all, in this period, under the leadership of our great leader Chairman Mao himself, China has victoriously unfolded the great proletarian cultural revolution which deals a heavy blow to imperialism, revisionism and reaction. The announcement of victories in the hills of the Truong Son Range, the war drum sounded on the Equator, the red flag fluttering in the Pu Pan Mountains, the roar of the raging tide along the Mississippi River, and the revolutionary storm in West Europe and North America … all these converged into an irresistible revolutionary torrent which has rapidly breached the dam of Soviet-U.S. global counter-revolutionary collaboration. The drastically deepening political and economic crises in imperialist countries headed by the United States have become an incurable disease. Modern revisionism with the Soviet revisionist clique as its centre, which is disintegrating daily, is in a shaky state. Such an excellent revolutionary situation naturally means “stresses and strains” for U.S. imperialism and the Soviet revisionist clique. It is in these days that they have to depend on each other to bolster up their tottering bourgeois dictatorships and use decadent “Western culture” as a talisman in a vain effort to stem the surging tide of the world revolution and save them from being drowned in it.
Our great leader Chairman Mao wisely points out: “The Soviet Union was the first socialist state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was created by Lenin. Although the leadership of the Soviet Party and state has now been usurped by revisionists, I would advise comrades to remain firm in the conviction that the masses of the Soviet people and of Party members and cadres are good, that they desire revolution and that revisionist rule will not last long.” It can be asserted that the Soviet people who have a glorious revolutionary tradition will by no means tolerate their country being ruined by the Soviet revisionist renegades in such a way. No matter how reckless and unbridled their outrageous acts, the U.S. imperialists and Soviet revisionists can never change the law of historical development, nor can they hold back the victory of socialism in the Soviet Union and the world over. U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism together with their treasured decadent “Western culture” will eventually be buried by the people of the Soviet Union, the United States and the whole world.
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