NARRATION: In the Soviet Union
and in America
the Cold War was fought by fear.
The Soviet Union raised fences against the outside world.
The gulag - the secret universe of labor camps,
swallowed the lives of millions.
Both sides turned their fear inwards
against their own people.
They hunted the enemy within.
Communism in reality is not a political party.
It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life.
It reveals a condition akin to a disease,
that spreads like an epidemic, and like an epidemic,
a quarantine is necessary to keep it
from infecting this nation.
NARRATION: The Cold War made America renew its values,
invent new images for American virtue.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: Men and women in all walks of life,
we are shareholders in the greatest enterprise on earth:
The United States of America Unlimited.
Our strength lies in the character of our people,
young in heart, independent in thought and nature,
skilled of hand.
American enterprise has harnessed fire and water, wind,
sun and soil to produce an abundance of everything.
NARRATION: Was communism out to destroy all this?
American propaganda said it was.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: Stalin said 'The whole world is aware that the Soviet Union
demobilized its forces after the war.'
Beware the big lie.
NARRATION: At home, Americans feared Red subversion.
Congress revived the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
In 1947 the committee investigated Hollywood,
factory of America's imagination.
Have you ever observed any communistic
information in any scripts?
Well I've turned down quite a few scripts
because I thought they were tinged with communistic ideas.
They haven't attempted to use me
I don't think because apparently they know that
I am not very sympathetic to communism.
There has been a small group
within the Screen Actors Guild
that has consistently opposed the policy of the guild
board of officers
or the guild itself as evidenced
by the vote on various issues.
That small clique has been referred to,
has been discussed as more or
less following the tactics that we associate
with the communist party.
If I had my way about it
they'd all be sent back to Russia
or some other unpleasant place.
[crowd clapping ]
NARRATION: Ten witnesses, the Hollywood Ten,
defied the Committee's right to ask about their beliefs.
INTERROGATOR: Are you a member of the Communist Party
or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach
this committee the basic principles of Americanism.
INTERROGATOR: That's not the question. That's not the question.
The question is - have you ever been a member of the
Communist Party?
I am framing my answer in the only way in
which any American citizen can frame...
INTERROGATOR: Then you deny it?
You refuse to answer that question, is that correct?
I have told you that I will offer my beliefs,
my affiliations and everything else to the
American public and they will know where I stand as they
do from what I have written
INTERROGATOR: Stand away from the stand. Stand away from the stand.
Officer, take this man away from the stand.
NARRATION: Others from the film industry demonstrated their
support for the constitutional rights of the Ten.
INTERROGATOR: Are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party?
I believe I have the right to be
confronted with any evidence that supports this question.
I should like to see what you have.
INTERROGATOR: Oh well, you would?
Yes. [laughter in court]
INTERROGATOR: Well you will pretty soon.
The witness is excused.
Either you completely cooperated with the committee,
which meant saying yes or no
to the question about whether you were
a Communist or ever had been,
and W the answer was yes as 'K was 'm my case,
we knew the next question was, who else was?
We certainly didn't want to go into that.
NARRATION: The Ten were imprisoned.
With hundreds more they were blacklisted -
their livelihoods taken away.
People generally in Hollywood
were pretty scared to have anything to do with us.
Whereas before we went to prison they had not
been nearly as scared and there were plenty of undercover
arrangements that were made to write scripts
under pseudonyms for a good deal less money than you
were accustomed to being paid.
There were a couple of possible suicides as a result of it.
There were, er,
a good deal of, er, misery.
NARRATION: Americans feared that the enemy would take
advantage of their freedoms;
that agents of communism were undermining America.
A Soviet spy ring unearthed in 1946
led investigators to Alger Hiss,
who had been a wartime foreign policy adviser.
He was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union
by a former communist, Whittaker Chambers.
INTERROGATOR: Have you ever seen this individual who is standing?
HISS: I have.
INTERROGATOR: Do you know him?
HISS: I identify him.
INTERROGATOR: In 1935 was the last time that you saw him?
HISS: According to my best recollection not having
checked the records.
INTERROGATOR: Now would you remain standing a moment Mr. Hiss?
NARRATION: Hiss firmly denied
that he had betrayed his country.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: New evidence of communist
activities in government circles is promised by the
House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Microfilm reportedly found in a pumpkin on a Maryland farm
is examined by investigator Stripling
and Congressman Nixon.
NARRATION: Richard Nixon,
an ambitious young Republican,
was convinced that Hiss was lying.
ARCHIVE- RICHARD NIXON: It is the intention
of the Committee on Un-American Activities
to pursue this investigation
until we put the spotlight on those high officials
in the State Department who are responsible
for selling this country down the river.
NARRATION: Hiss was jailed for perjury.
Nixon's name was made;
he turned his crusade against communism
into a weapon for Republicans.
RALPH DE TOLEDANO: It was what made him.
It paved the way for his whole career afterwards.
Anti-communist was a gut issue with Nixon.
I mean it was something
he believed sincerely and deeply but of course
he was a politician too and he was a Republican politician
and the soft on Communism issue was hurting the Democrats
and of course he used it.
He would have been a fool not to.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: In America,
patriotic enthusiasm for the democratic way of life
reveals itself in a monster loyalty parade in New York.
Everyone from vets to youngsters reveals
his inborn dislike of communism.
NARRATION: Anti-Communism
became the language for a new, more defiant vision of America.
♫ For this is my country,
to have and to hold. ♫
NARRATION: Singer Paul Robeson
was open about his communist sympathies.
In Moscow he was welcome.
♫ Tote that barge, lift that bail. ♫
♫ You show a little grit and you land in jail. ♫
♫ But I keeps laughing, instead of crying, ♫
♫ I must keep fighting until I'm dying, ♫
♫ and ol' man river he'll just keep rolling along ♫
NARRATION: In America people were less friendly.
Veterans of the American Legion turned out
to demonstrate in 1949 when Robeson was due to
sing in a concert at Peekskill, New York.
The police expected trouble.
The slogans of the demonstrators.
It went 'go back to Russia you white niggers
for instance over and over.
'Commies, niggers, Jews.
You got in but you're not going to get out alive.
Hitler didn't finish the job, we will. '
NARRATION: The concert turned into a riot.
PAUL ROBESON JNR: But the demonstrators have piles of rocks.
What the State police did is make the cars go out
and go ten miles an hour through that gauntlet.
So the road, I mean, cars were smashed,
the windows were smashed.
The road was actually slick with human blood.
An inter-racial couple
just driving through happened to arrive at that moment.
And of course they pulled the car over.
They yanked the two of them out and they said
'That's Robeson Junior. We got him.'
and they were going to bash the black guy's head in -
a guy was standing over him with a baseball bat-
and a veteran, a man in uniform, army uniform,
said, 'Wait a minute. That's not Robeson.
I know the pictures.
That's not Robeson. That's not him.'
So the guy said
'Well the blankety-blanks with a white woman.
Kill him anyway.'
And the soldier said, held the bat and said,
'No, no, that's not the American way.
You don't lynch the wrong nigger'.
And it saved his life.
NARRATION: Race hatred and the politics of fear
had begun to merge.
At home the nation was angry and insecure.
Abroad communism was gaining force.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: The Atom bomb explodes
again in the headlines of the world.
President Truman announces an atomic explosion detected
somewhere in Russia,
three years ahead of the schedule expected by the West.
NARRATION: America's nuclear monopoly was over.
Then came China.
NEWSREEL NARRATION: Tragedy overtook China.
Armed and equipped by Russia,
red hordes brought ancient Cathay to its knees.
At the end of '49 all China sags under the red yoke.
NARRATION: Communist leader Mao Tse Tung took over.
America's Chinese allies,
the defeated Chiang Kai Shek regime,
fled with their followers into exile.
JOHN SERVICE: Americans have always had,
most Americans, a special feeling,
a special attachment, special interest in China.
So it seemed incredible to most Americans,
uninformed Americans,
that this country which we had lavished so much care and
affection on and we thought was so friendly,
so many of their people had studied in America and so on,
should turn communist,
turn over to the other side.
Many people felt that that there had to be some explanation,
there had to be some sort of a conspiracy, some sort of a plot.
NARRATION: Republican Senator Joe McCarthy
blamed traitors in the State Department
for the loss of China.
He launched his own witch hunt.
Today the most dangerous enemy agent is not so much concerned
with the secret information about weapons
as he is with infiltrating the necessary departments
of the government and shaping and controlling the actions
of our nation so that the enemy is progressively winning,
winning without even firing a single shot.
Now I intend to name names-
John S Service- and remember that name if you will.
I have never knowingly transmitted any information
which was a secret military plan.
NARRATION: Service was hounded out of the State Dept.
I had trouble renting a home,
renting an apartment in New York and the companies,
well what'll their stockholders say, you know.
So the companies that I had known
and had dealings with abroad,
export companies and so on, they said,
sorry we think you're a fine guy but we don't dare touch you.
One communist,
[ crowd cheers ]
One communist in the faculty
of one university is one communist too many.
[ Crowd cheers ]
One communist among the American advisors at Yalta
was one communist too many.
[ Crowd cheers ]
And even... even if there were only one communist
in the State Department, even if there were only
one communist in the State Department that would
still be one communist too many.
NARRATION: President Truman
tried to dismiss McCarthy's attacks.
Not a single person who has been adjudged to be a communist
or otherwise disloyal remains on the
government payroll today.
[crowd applaud ]
We are not going to turn the United States into a right wing,
totalitarian country in order to deal with a left wing
totalitarian threat.
[crowd applaud ]
NARRATION: But leaders of the American Communist Party
were jailed and the persecution spread.
Left wing labor organizations were banned,
radical groups indicted, demonstrations broken up.
And if they put the word commie
oh someone that meant that that person
was an agent to the Soviets.
That meant that that person was dangerous
and had to be done away with.
NARRATION: The FBI under Edgar Hoover
uncovered several Soviet spy rings.
They used the national interest to justify
any method of locating subversives.
We were using the same methods that Hoover
accused the Communist Party of using
and that's getting people
to spy on their friends and this was one of the criticisms
that he had of the Communist Party.
I felt guiltless.
What had I ever done wrong?
I'd never even gotten a traffic ticket and here I was
called before in public a state senate investigating committee
about my beliefs.
I felt very very wronged and I felt that I had to not only
uphold myself, my reputation,
but that of my fellow teachers,
my fellow union members, my fellow citizens.
We would talk to children,
if they were in college about their parents,
and we talked to parents about their children and
we'd talk to the neighbors about those people and
if someone did seem halfway sympathetic in the communist
party we'd talk to them.
It was totally damaging
to what we deeply believed America
was supposed to stand for.
NARRATION: in the 1952 Presidential election,
General Eisenhower, the Republican candidate,
chose the red-baiting Richard Nixon
as his running mate.
Eisenhower mocked the Democrats for being soft on Communism.
The future of this country belongs to more courageous men.
It belongs to men,
[crowd applaud ]
It belongs to men who know that freedom's fight must be forever,
relentless, uncompromising and fair.
It belongs to men who today are ready
to bear spiritual and intellectual arms against
an alien army of communist ideas.
[crowd applaud ]
NARRATION: To get elected
Ike needed the support of Joe McCarthy
and his right wing followers.
I spent about half ah hour with the General last night.
While I can't report that we agreed entirely on everything,
[ laughs 1
I can, I can report that when I left that meeting with the
General I had the same feeling as when I went in and that is,
that he's a great American, will make a great President,
an outstanding President.
[crowd applaud ]
Right from the beginning he detested,
er, Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy was the first class demagogue
and Eisenhower just couldn't stand that type of person.
NARRATION: Eisenhower's old wartime commander,
General Marshall, was accused by McCarthy of treachery.
Intimidated,
Ike dropped words praising Marshall from an election speech
he made in McCarthy's home state.
He was roundly criticized for that
because it seemed to indicate that he was
influenced by McCarthy.
NARRATION: In 1953 two Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
They were sentenced to death.
They had young children
and their fate roused
protests in America and across the world.
For some young lawyers,
the sentence breached the Constitution.
They sought judges to get a stay of execution.
Judge Frank looked at us
and he said something that we have never never forgotten.
He said, 'If I were as young as you are
I would be sitting there saying the same things you're saying,
arguing the same points you're arguing,
making the same argument that these planned executions
are invalid but when you are as old as I am,
you will understand why I cannot do it.'
And he stands up,
turns his back to us and walks away
and we were devastated.
We began to sense something which in later years
we understood so clearly.
And that was that Jerome Frank,
as the leading liberal judge,
was terrorized himself and frightened by the atmosphere
of fear in the country.
That if he as a liberal would do something to save
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's life,
he would be charged as a commie.
NARRATION: The Rosenbergs were executed.
He died quickly,
there didn't seem to be too much life left in him when
he entered behind the Rabbi.
He seemed to be walking in a cadence of steps as if
keeping in time with the muttering of the 23rd Psalm.
She died a lot harder.
When it appeared that she had received enough electricity
to kill an ordinary person and had received the exact amount
that had killed her husband,
the doctors went over and pulled down the cheap prison dress,
a little dark green printed job, and placed the
steto ...stetho can't say it...
placed the stethoscopes to her and
then looked around and looked at each other rather
dumb founded and seemed surprised that she was not dead.
And she was given more electricity
which started again and
a kind of a ghastly plume of smoke rose from her head and
went up against the skylight overhead.
After two more of those jolts
Ethel Rosenberg had met her maker she'll have a,
lot of explaining to do to.
Thank you.
NARRATION: McCarthy now denounced leading Republicans
and even senior Army officers as communist sympathizers.
But he had gone too far.
Political opinion swung away from him,
and his enemies gained courage.
Would give you the names of communists,
you said in the Army.
You've done enough.
Have you no sense of decency sir at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?
It all sort of came to pieces
and then there was this move to censure him
and he fought that very badly.
Now a number of us were advising him on how to handle that
and he agreed to everything we said
and then he did just the opposite.
You have been here trying to smear
the staff of this committee,
the young men who have been working to uncover communists.
Do you jump up and run away, without answering
NARRATION: McCarthy's power collapsed as the politicians
walked away from him.
But the spirit of McCarthyism, the smearing of dissent
as communist treason,
stained American democracy for decades.
In the Soviet Union,
all dissent was suppressed.
The Cold War heightened tensions and reinforced fears,
not just of internal subversion but of another world war.
Obsessively Stalin spoke of the danger to world peace,
the need for vigilance against internal enemies.
Conformity was enforced by police terror,
and by a slavish cult of Stalin's personality.
He became God-like, his icon worshipped everywhere.
For those who did not conform,
there was silence and death behind the barbed wire.
The gulag -
the secret empire of concentration camps -
stretched over four thousand miles from
the Baltic to the Pacific.
In the Cold War years, the camps continued to
devour the lives of millions.
Stalin's control now extended beyond the Soviet Union.
This was a new empire,
run by local communists trained to obey Moscow.
American propaganda targeted the fate of these satellite nations.
The battleground of peace today is that strip of
strategically located countries stretching
from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
They are not big countries geographically
but they contain seventy million freedom loving people,
our kind of people,
who share our culture and who have sent millions of their sons
and daughters to become part of these United States.
Some call these countries the satellite nations.
More accurately they're the captive nations of Europe.
My name is Ronald Reagan.
Last year the contributions of sixteen million Americans
to the Crusade For Freedom
made possible the World Freedom Bell-
symbol of hope and freedom
to the Communist dominated peoples of Eastern Europe.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: In western Berlin
great crowds turned out to see it raised to the tower
of the West Berlin city hall.
NARRATION: The campaign was secretly funded by the CIA.
As well as fine words Americans sent armed exiles
back into the Soviet empire.
This was the effort of the CIA and the young
refugees were recruited.
They were trained in haste
in all kinds of subversion, sabotage,
intelligence, they were given cameras, the short radio
stations codes and were simply sent there.
But the regime did penetrate it.
All these training camps and the reception committee
was waiting for these people and arresting them.
NARRATION: For the Polish authorities,
these intrusions justified even harsher repression.
The Party called for vigilance against
spies and saboteurs.
In 1948,
Stalin began to tighten the Soviet grip on eastern Europe.
In Yugoslavia, Marshall Tito had defied Stalin
and broken away from the Soviet bloc.
Moscow abused him as a traitor,
a deserter to the camp of American imperialism.
Stalin moved fast to prevent
Tito's mutiny spreading to other satellite states,
like Czechoslovakia.
At first,
the satellites were allowed to find their
own paths to communism.
Now Stalin forced the Soviet model on them all.
Everyone must march, shout, obey.
[ Applause ]
NARRATION: To subdue protest, Moscow ordered show trials of
leading East European communists.
In Czechoslovakia,
Rudolf Slansky, Party Secretary,
was among those chosen for sacrifice.
Stalin needed to discipline his new camp,
his new empire,
and he disciplined it to such an extent that people living in
those countries should not develop any idea of being
able to do anything except what he orders them to do.
And one of the methods of disciplining was terror.
NARRATION: Slansky was charged with Titoism,
spying and sabotage.
His confession was fiction, drafted by Soviet advisers.
[speaking Russian ]
The initial investigation
results were prepared and checked.
If the evidence in these cases didn't meet the aims
of the Security Services, then it was altered.
Really it was a fabrication,
to prove what otherwise couldn't be proved.
The key was the confession of the indicted person.
And then there was no need of any proofs.
As soon as the confession was obtained that was enough
for the trial and the sentence.
So we were put at the disposal of the Secret Police,
with almost unlimited powers over us,
to bring us into a state where
we prepared to make that confession.
[Speaking Czech ]
It was torture.
They were shouting and swearing at me.
I had to look into their eyes.
At the beginning I avoided this but
then I had to repeat their Obscenities.
Then I started to make up fairy tales for my son.
I got into the imaginary world of castles
and princes and animals so when they shouted at me
I didn't have to answer them.
I only looked into their eyes while
I was making up these fairy tales.
It's not easy.
I don't feel sorry for myself.
Everything was rehearsed.
The final text prepared for the trial,
consisting of questions which were put
to one by the General Attorney and
the president of the court and so on,
were listed and your answers were listed.
NARRATION: Slansky and ten others were hanged in December 1952,
their ashes scattered over the ice on an unknown country road.
Stalin had shown his power.
While he survived, it meant death to disobey him.
In the Soviet Union itself,
culture and science were kept insulated from the
infection of all Western influence.
The arts - painting, literature, music -
were regimented by the doctrine of Socialist Realism.
[ Applause ]
[speaking Russian ]
Stalin's interference with the work of the Bolshoi Theater
was done with love and good taste.
But the fear that it created and the fact that people
were under his spell,
this produced a lot of negative effects.
It not only made people nervous but
destroyed the principles of art.
NARRATION: Fear of Stalin's disapproval paralyzed
the creative arts.
Dmitri Shostakovich was reprimanded by
the party for departing from the
principles of Socialist Realism.
Official art showed the Soviet Union as a
promised land of plenty and of opportunity,
guided by wise and selfless leaders.
But those who discussed real change,
even in private,
like Susanna Pechuro and her student friends,
risked punishment.
[speaking Russian ]
We discussed a lot and we came to the conclusion
that what was happening then was completely different
from what we were taught to believe.
It wasn't socialism.
NARRATION: Susanna joined the secret discussion group.
Aged seventeen she was arrested, charged with treason
and terrorism.
Three of her friends were executed.
[speaking Russian ]
They said, 'Get ready.
You come with us'.
I went to get dressed behind the screen in the room
and I clearly realized then
that I would not be coming back.
At that moment I could see myself in the prison cell.
Later, when I really was in the prison cell
I kept thinking back to that moment.
NARRATION: Over the years, millions shared Susanna's fate.
They vanished, often without trace.
Even to ask about them was to risk arrest.
[speaking Russian ]
There are some things that are so awful
I don't let myself remember them,
because if I do I can't sleep for weeks.
They pulled children out of the arms
of their screaming mothers,
and then beat the mothers.
The children just disappeared,
they never knew what happened to them afterwards.
There was nothing more awful than that,
even though I saw them killing people,
and anything else they felt like doing.
NARRATION: In 1952, Stalin presided over the 19th Congress
of the Soviet Communist party.
The hall was packed with foreign delegations
gathered to honor him.
Stalin was old now,
but still the unchallenged leader of world communism.
Cold War - military competition with America -
was already putting a heavy load on Soviet society.
In public, Stalin's analysis of the world class
struggle was hopeful.
NARRATION: But Stalin still feared the enemy within.
He saw treachery everywhere.
Above all, he suspected so-called cosmopolitans,
mostly Jewish intellectuals and professionals,
who had already been persecuted for their Western contacts.
[speaking Russian ]
Stalin needed an internal enemy,
a fifth column that could be
blamed for the difficult situation in the country.
And the Jews fitted that role very well.
Because many Jewish families in the post war years had
someone in the United States - relatives or acquaintances.
So to present Jews as the fifth column,
agents of American imperialism, was very convenient.
NARRATION: In January 1953,
nine Kremlin doctors were accused
of plotting with Western intelligence
to kill Soviet leaders.
[speaking Russian ]
The doctor's plot was instigated with Stalin's approval.
Stalin had been suspicious of doctors
for a long time before that.
This was all due to his illness made worse
by his old age and by his life-long ideology
that the enemies who always surround you should be
constantly eliminated.
NARRATION: One of the doctors Yakov Etinger,
died under torture.
His son was arrested and interrogated.
[speaking Russian ]
They wanted me to make a confession,
to make a statement that I was in the know,
that I was familiar with certain facts which showed
that my father and other doctors
were wrongly treating certain patients.
They wanted me to make this kind of statement but
they didn't get it from me,
even though twice I was sent to the punishment cell.
NARRATION: Five of the nine doctors were Jewish.
The affair inflamed Russian anti-semitism.
Jews were denounced and purged throughout
the medical profession and beyond.
Suddenly, one winter night
Stalin collapsed with a brain hemorrhage.
No-one dared to treat him as he lay,
half-conscious, on the floor.
Eventually, on the 5th of March 1953,
he died.
VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV: [speaking Russian ]
Like the majority of people we saw it as a tragic event.
It caused a lot of anxiety:
how were we going to live now
when the foundations of our lives were shattered?
The image of Stalin created by propaganda
was of someone who was irreplaceable.
NARRATION: Stalin had towered over the Soviet Union,
in peace and war,
for more than twenty years.
Even those who hated him could not imagine
a future without him.
Subtitles ripped and converted by Juan Claudio Epsteyn
E-mail: epsteyn@hotmail.com