The Press: Drawing the Iron Curtain

As Russian expert for the anti-Communist weekly New Leader, Contributing Editor David J. Dallin gets his information chiefly from Russian newspapers and magazines. Like Russian specialists on other U.S. newspapers and magazines, Dallin gets his view of things behind the Iron Curtain by piecing together bits of news and information in Soviet periodicals. Recently, Dallin reported an alarming discovery; Federal Government bureaus had seized such magazines as Bolshevik (which changed its name this month to Kommunist) and Ogonek, thus depriving Dallin and others of an “important source of knowledge and weapon in the cold war.”

Last week the American Civil Liberties Union formally protested against such censorship. Some of the Russian magazines were held up or destroyed by U.S. Customs under the law which bans subversive or obscene literature. Since most of the magazines and newspapers come into the U.S. by bulk mail, the customs men have been destroying some of them on the spot. Some of those passed by customs have been held up, or destroyed, by the Post Office under the law that bans mailing of publications that advocate “treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to the laws of the U.S.” Acting Postal Solicitor Louis Doyle said that by law his department is responsible for deciding what to ban. Customs officials reported 2% or 3% of the 10,000 to 15,000 shipped to the Port of New York from the Soviet bloc every month are seized.

The ban was news to many Russian scholars who were never told why certain Russian publications stopped coming. In trying to protect the U.S. from Red propaganda, the Government was actually destroying one of the most important sources of counter-propaganda. Said a New Leader editorial: “Information about Soviet affairs [is] sorely needed by Americans and put to good use by responsible anti-Communist scholars.”