If you asked the average American “Do you favor educational and cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union?” the majority would probably answer Yes. But what would the answer be to the question, “Do you favor U.S.-Soviet exchanges so that the Russian visitors can study courses like ‘Correction of Space Flight Trajectories in Target Planes’ while Americans studying in Russia are limited to topics like ‘The Heroine in the Russian Fairy Tale'”?
Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) thinks that the answer should be No. Such a grievous double standard threatens American national security. It means we share our technological secrets with the Russians, while they share only fairy tales with us.
Findley says that the typical Russian “student” who comes to the United States is a 40-year-old scientist who goes directly to a top American university and studies advanced physics, including specialties such as laser technology. The typical American who goes to Russia, on the other hand, is a graduate student studying social science, history, music, or culture, such as “Performance Practices in Russian Choral Music of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries.”
Findley has offered an amendment to the State Department authorization bill which would limit exchange programs to humanities, social sciences, and cultural aspects of the two countries. His bill is designed to eliminate the national security risk and put some mutuality and reciprocity in these programs which do not now exist.
Findley’s bill specifies a list of requirements that must be fulfilled prior to any renewal of the General Agreement on Contacts, Exchanges and Cooperation between the United States and the U.S.S.R., and even prior to resumption of high-level meetings or planning for future exchange activities. We now have eleven agreements for U.S.-U.S.S.R. cooperation in specialized fields.
The bill would require the Secretary of State to submit to the Speaker of the House and to the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a report containing an assessment of the risk of the transfer to the Soviet Union of militarily significant technology through research and exchanges, plus a detailed description of the exchanges during 1979, 1980 and 1981. The description must be specific, including the areas of cooperation, the specific research and projects involved, the man-hours spent in the exchanges, the level of funding from both countries, and an assessment of the equality or inequality in value of the information exchanged.
The bill also provides that no funds appropriated for the State Department or the International Communication Agency may be spent after June 30, 1982 to finance any long- term scientific or technological study in the United States by Russians under the exchange programs.
In 1958 the American Bar Association Special Committee on Communist Tactics, Stratggy and Objectives listed the eleven major Communist tactics. One was “cultural exchanges.” The report concluded that “cultural interchange with Soviet Russia is a one-way street.”
You can’t say that the Soviets didn’t warn us. On June 2, 1957 Khrushchey appeared on American television screens and called for a wider exchange of cultural delegations.
On Dec. 22, 1957, the Daily Worker declared that the best Christmas present Santa Claus could bring America would be widespread cultural exchange between America and Russia.
The American Bar Report included strong statements against U.S.-U.S.S.R. exchanges from such disparate authorities as (the late AFL-CIO head) George Meany, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, (the late former Vice President) Henry A. Wallace, the British espionage authority E. H. Cookridge, and Elinor Lipper, author of “Eleven Years in Soviet Prison Camps. Cookridge stated his opposition Tike this: “Every Soviet football team, every athlete competing at an international sport event, Soviet scientists attending a congress abroad, the Moscow Ballet performing in a Western capital or a group of Soviet artists at a film festival are invariably accompanied by special agents of the Soviet secret police.”
Despite such warnings from a wide variety of sources, the exchange programs were initiated and grew from year to year. It has probably been years since anyone questioned them. Congressman Findley is to be commended for uncovering the nonsense, the double standard, and the dangers of our “educational” exchanges with the Soviet Union.
