A RUSSIAN RIDE - the roots of the Cold War propaganda

Michael Kuznetsov · **Posted:** Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:39 pm

Hi Folks,

Many would think the Cold War anti-Russian (anti-Soviet) propaganda in the West to be originated from the Stalin's "wrong behaviour" towards his recent Allies, soon after the Second World War ended in 1945.

It has appeared, however, that anti-Russian propaganda existed long before the Stalin's rule at all.
It held sway long before even the 1917 Revolution in the Russian Empire.

In this regard, I offer you here an excerpt from an interesting and very rare book I have obtained recently.
Enjoy:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A RUSSIAN RIDE

From the book I Write As I Please, ed. 1935, by Walter Duranty (1884-1957)
Chapter One: Baptism of Blood (pages 3 - 5)

I first became aware of Russia at the age of four. Perhaps it was symbolic that what I heard, or rather saw, was strange and bloody, and untrue.

My nurse took me to a show entitled Herr Parizer’s Penny Novelties at an English country fair. There were three principal items. First, a stout woman in a white night-gown wore a golden crown slightly askew and sang Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, while the screen bore a colored picture of another woman – or was it, I wonder, the same woman – clinging to a black rock surmounted by a white cross in the midst of raging waters.

The second scene was acted. We saw the Squire and his Lady at dinner, attended by a minion in a red waistcoat. Its climax was the hasty consumption by the minion of a mass of broken bread behind his master’s back. The Squire turned and caught him, whereupon, in confusion, he regurgitated everything upon a silver tray. This repulsive playlet roused the audience to roars of enthusiasm, fully shared by me.

Having thus purged our souls, as Aristotle said, by religion and laughter, the Parizer genius next produced tragedy, a grim picture – or rather a series of colored “stills,” entitled, with appalling subtlety, A Russian Ride. One of the cleverest officers in the Intelligence Department at French headquarters told me in 1918 that what really brought America into the War and saved the Allies from disaster was Alphonse Daudet’s story, The Last Lesson, about the French schoolmaster in Alsace on the eve of its cession to Germany in 1871. “The best piece of propaganda ever written,” he said. “They used it in the First Reader in America, and it left its mark upon their minds.” Looking backwards, I believe that Herr Parizer’s Russian Ride was an expression, conscious or not, of Anglo-Russian rivalry, parallel to and contemporary with the:

We do not want to fight, but by jingo if we do
We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the money too;
And the Russians shall not have Constantinople.

The first picture showed the Russian family – father, mother and five babies of tender years – going off for a sleigh ride across the snowbound steppe.
In the second appeared a wolf-pack, hundreds of hungry beasts with slavering jaws and fiery eyes.
In the third picture, captioned “Pursuit,” the wolves were gaining.
The fourth picture was shocking. The wolf-pack leaders were abreast of the foam-flecked horses, which the driver, erect, was lashing with all his strength.
In the fifth, which froze our blood, the father tossed a baby to the wolves.
Sixth, ditto.
Seventh, ditto.
Eighth, ditto.
In each the driver stood erect and flogged his foaming horses, while the wolf-pack surged around them.
The ninth and last picture let us breathe again. “Saved” was the title in large black letters. The sleigh was at rest before a wooden building, and the breath of the panting team smoked in the frosty air. The driver sat huddled on his seat, and behind him the distracted parents embraced their surviving child. In the background a squad of soldiers fired a volley at the wolf-pack.

The implications of this story, which, be it noted, also found its way into the First Readers of Great Britain, are obvious enough: Russia was a wild and barbarous country where savage animals still could menace Man; Russians, through callousness or necessity, do not hesitate to sacrifice lives of others, however dear to them, to save their own; in short, good advance propaganda for the decisive struggle between Lion and Bear which seemed imminent in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

It makes little difference that Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who knows more about the North than any living man, will stake his reputation on the two facts: (a) that wolves do not run in packs – never more than sire and dam and four or five growing pups; (b) that wolves never dare to attack an adult human being unless the human is wounded or prostrate from cold or hunger. Stefansson’s contention is supported by everyone who knows the ways of wolves. He makes it his business to follow up all stories that are published about trappers or miners or postal couriers being devoured by wolves, and has never yet found one that stood the test of investigation. But the wolf-pack legend persists, and for all that I know the Russian Ride is still being handed out to British children, to mark their minds, as it marked mine, with error and prejudice about Russia.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Regards,

Michael

A RUSSIAN RIDE - the roots of the Cold War propaganda

A RUSSIAN RIDE - the roots of the Cold War propaganda

A RUSSIAN RIDE - the roots of the Cold War propaganda

Who is online