The Kravchenko Case

For 22 years, Victor Kravchenko was a loyal Russian minor official. He rose to be a voyentechnik (technician) with rank of captain in the Red Army. Suddenly in Manhattan last week he threw over his job--and his Russian citizenship--and placed himself "under the protection of American opinion." He gave his reasons in a letter that sharply rearoused half-forgotten U.S. suspicions of the Soviet:

"I cannot keep silent any longer. . . . I can no longer support double-faced political maneuvers . . . toward collaboration with the United States and Britain while pursuing aims incompatible with such collaboration.

"The Soviet Government has dissolved the Communist International but only in form. . . . The new democratic terminology is only a maneuver ... to promote the inclusion of Communists, obedient to the Kremlin, in the future Governments ... of Italy, Austria and other countries.

"While professing to seek the establishment of democracy in countries liberated from Fascism, the Soviet Government at home has failed to take a single serious step toward granting elementary liberties to the Russian people.

"The Russian people are subjected to unspeakable oppression and cruelties. . . .

"Being aware of the methods of struggle employed by the Soviet rulers against political opponents, I fully expect that they will now be used against me--the methods of slander, provocation, and possibly worse."

Who was Kravchenko? The New York Times, which had a clear beat on the story, identified him as the 38-year-old chief of the metals section of the Soviet Purchasing Commission in Washington. Timesman Joseph Shaplen, a veteran antiStalinist, knew where Kravchenko was, but would let no other reporters at him. Friends recalled that Kravchenko has a wife and four-year-old son in Moscow, that his mother had recently been freed by the retreating Germans after three years as a prisoner of war. Would something happen to them?

Editorial comment was minimum and cautious. Most U.S. editors, mindful of the delicacy of U.S.-Soviet relations, of the gravity of the war, and of the 26-year-old difficulty in getting at the truth in any item dealing with Russia, did not want to stick out their necks.

First to strike was the Daily Worker, which attacked Kravchenko as a "petty traitor," a "lizard" and a "miserable weakling." Next day the Soviet Embassy itself formally repudiated Kravchenko as only one of the U.S.S.R.'s 3,000 U.S. employes, as a mere "inspector of pipes," and finally as a "deserter" from the Russian Army, who "refused to return to his motherland for military service."

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