Eighty years ago, on August 19, 1939, a commentary on Russian-American relations spelled out issues related to an aggressive Russia that are reminiscent of the situation today. The aim of the 1939 commentary was to argue against the U.S. forces joining some sort of an alliance with the Soviet Union in the event that a second world war erupted.
In the days leading to the start of World War II with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, by Nazi Germany, the commentary noted:
“The much-publicized threat of the Axis powers in Europe to worldwide peace and stability, and the aggression of Japan and its apparent menace to American interests in China, and finally the hope that the Soviet Union will join the rising coalition against these so-called aggressor nations, has affected American public opinion to the extent that some portions of it are becoming color-blind to the hue of Soviet economic, social and political ideology, and to the gory results of that ideology in practice. …In fact, a tendency seems to be growing in some quarters here to look upon Communism, especially its hotbed, Soviet Russia, with kindly eyes.”
“…Everyone should be made to realize that America and Soviet Russia (proper) have very little or nothing in common, for America has always been a democracy while Russia an autocracy. Consequently, no real neighborly feeling, least of all any friendship, is possible between the two, especially since what the former cultivates – i.e., democratic principles – the latter does its best to destroy.”
The commentary continued: “There has never been any traditional friendship between America and Russia, for which America is entirely blameless. During the American Revolution, for example, Russian sympathy was entirely on the side of the British. The most autocratic government in the world could scarcely have helped sympathizing with autocracy in its attempt to suppress democracy, especially when only a year before (1775) that government had crushed for a long time to come the last vestige of democracy within its own borders, by destroying the [Ukrainian] Zaporizhian Sich, the last stronghold of Ukrainian liberties.”
Russia also refused to recognize the independence of the United States of America until long after it had been recognized elsewhere. The U.S., the commentary added, had through its adopted policies warned Russia that it has no claim to California to prevent Russia’s seizure of it.
In the first world war, the U.S. was reluctant to engage militarily on the side of imperial Russia, but when a democratic provisional government was formed, hope was rekindled for relations, but there were dashed again when the Reds instituted Bolshevism and its associated terror soured relations between the U.S. and Russia.
The commentary highlighted the plight of Ukrainians in the Soviet Union, “millions of whom have been killed simply because they aspired to enjoy the freedom that their emigrant kinsmen have here in America.”
The commentary underscored that it was the duty of every American citizen to expose Russia in its true bloody colors, and that traditional American democracy “can never have anything in common with traditional Russian autocracy and despotism…”
Source: “Russo-American relations,” The Ukrainian Weekly, August 19, 1939.