A Red Victory?

Since the start of the cold war, the U.S. has had only two direct ways of spreading its ideas in Russia: through the Voice of America and a handsome, LIFE-sized, slick-paper magazine called Amerika. The Russians can often jam out the Voice, but they have never been able to down Amerika, published by the State Department. Nobody knows how effective the magazine really is, but from the amount of space devoted to attacking it in the Russian press, State concludes that it is being read and discussed. Another measure of Amerika's strength is that the Russians, who are bound to admit the magazine under a 1944 agreement, have been trying to kill it off by cutting down its permitted circulation from the 50,000 agreed on.

Last week the State Department faced up to the fact that Amerika is down to 15,000 or perhaps less. With the Reds still, whittling away at Amerika's distribution, State had to decide about Amerika's future. It could either 1) keep publishing the magazine on a reduced circulation, or 2) try to induce the Russians to live up to their agreement.

"Colossal Stupidity." The State Department is apparently in no mood to fight for its magazine. Even before it knew what the Reds would say to a renewed demand that 50,000 copies of Amerika be distributed, it was slowly killing off its magazine branch by what one U.S. propaganda specialist called a "piece of colossal stupidity." In March, it ordered Amerika's editor, Mrs. Marion Sanders, to move her staff from New York to Washington to give the State Department closer control of the magazine and save money.

Actually, Editor Sanders, 46, had run the branch so thriftily that she not only kept the staff at 75 (authorized: 96), but the cost of Amerika ($150,000 last year) was well below the magazine's authorized budget of $500,000. She also launched other projects, including Yugoslav and Arabic editions of Amerika and a new magazine, Free World, now published in eleven languages in southeast Asia, plus propaganda comic books and numerous pamphlets.

Mass Resignations. Editor Sanders resisted the move to the capital. She argued that the magazines could not be published as well or as cheaply in Washington, since Manhattan is the national publishing center. Furthermore, most of the publication's experienced staff did not want to move. When State insisted, Editor Sanders and 64 others turned in their resignations. Said her resignation: "We note with particular misgiving the tendency to eliminate publications of proven worth." She asked for a hearing before the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information to point out that the move would mean the end of a program the Government had spent millions developing, and which had a proven propaganda worth. But it looks as if Amerika will die, thus accomplishing by State's bumbling what the Russians have failed to do.

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