Soviet terror, American amnesia: there has been a striking asymmetry between the American responses to the two great mass murders of our century, the Nazi and the Soviet. Why? - Cover Story

National Review, May 2, 1994 by Paul Hollander

During World War II, the wartime camaraderie precluded inquiry into the Soviet outrages. During the classic Cold War years there was a greater readiness to criticize the the Soviet system, but the immediacy of the massive, well-documented evil of the Holocaust helped to blot out concern with possible Soviet equivalents.

At the end of the 1940s McCarthyism arose and strongly reinforced the attitudes here examined. Ironically, Senator McCarthy achieved exactly the opposite of what he had intended: he succeeded in discrediting, for decades to come, opposition to Communist movements and systems.

In his book-length critique of anti-communism Parenti linked it to

patriotic hooliganism, collective self-delusion, the propagation

of political orthodoxy, the imprisonment of dissenters,

and the emergence of a gargantuan military establishment

. . . Abroad anti-communism has brought

us armament races, nuclear terror, the strengthening of

oppressive autocracies . . . the death and maiming of

American boys and the slaughter of far-off unoffending

peoples. . . . [it] brought us grief and shame. After McCarthy a vocal anti-communist stand became an embarrassment ("witch hunt," or "Red baiting"), an attitude disdained by self-respecting liberal intellectuals, journalists, and even politicians.

From the 1960s until the rise of Gorbachev in 1985 it was the dread of nuclear war that exerted the major influence on Western perceptions of the Soviet Union. The peace movement successfully promoted the belief that questioning the moral record of the Soviet system would undermine peace. Instead we were urged to focus on matters which our two countries have in common, as for example the love of children and the goodness of ordinary people. Since trust was so ardently sought, it was worse than impolite to seek to unearth Soviet policies of the past (and some of the present) which would have given pause to those in pursuit of good relations.

An 1983 account by a member of an American peace delegation to the Soviet Union was typical: ". . . what we lacked in knowledge we made up in enthusiasm and we shared a . . . faith that women of our two countries were probably more alike than different." It was further argued that "people who cultivate wheat can't possibly want war." Norman Mailer ably summed up these feelings: "We live with the scenario that Russia is an evil force. Now, the world is on the edge of destroying itself. Can we afford abhorrence any longer?" Two prominent peace activists, Drs. Chivian and Mack, even found that Soviet concealment of the Chernobyl disaster was owing to the laudable "tendency on the part of the Soviet leadership to downplay catastrophes and instead offer reassurance to the Soviet people so as to prevent emotional distress." They averred that such practices were beneficial for mental health.

Such attitudes were not limited to peace activists and intellectuals. A Yankelovich survey in 1984 found that younger and better educated Americans were more willing to give the Soviet Union the benefit of the doubt and had more trusting attitudes; their majority believed that "we would be better off if we stopped treating the Soviets as enemies and tried to hammer out our differences in a live-and-let-live spirit."