Peaceniks: 50 Years After Stalin’s Death
Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff

“The rebirth of the peace movement.” This is how sections of the Western media describe the marches that attracted 30 million people in some 600 cities, in 25 countries, across the globe last month.

On March 5, a group of “peaceniks” gathered in London to discuss ways of nursing the “reborn” child into adulthood. By coincidence, that date also marked the 50th anniversary of Josef Stalin’s death. The Soviet dictator was the father of the first “peace movement” which for years served as an instrument of the Kremlin’s global policy.

Stalin’s “peace movement” was launched in 1946 at a time he had not yet developed a nuclear arsenal and was thus vulnerable to an American nuclear attack. Stalin also needed time to consolidate his hold on his newly conquered empire in Eastern and Central Europe while snatching chunks of territory in Iran.

The “peaceniks” of the time were told to wear white shirts, release white doves during their demonstrations, and shake their clenched fists against “imperialists and revanchists.” Soon it became clear that the “peace movement” was not opposed to all wars, but only to those that threatened the USSR, its allies and its satellites.

For example, the peaceniks did not object to Stalin’s decision to keep the entire Chechen nation in exile in Siberia. The peaceniks did not march to ask Stalin to withdraw his forces from Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. When Stalin annexed 15 percent of Finland’s territory, none of the peaceniks protested. Neither did they march when the Soviets annexed the three Baltic republics. Nor did the peaceniks grumble when Soviet tanks rolled into Warsaw and Budapest, and a decade later also into Prague, to crush popular uprisings against Communist tyranny.

But when the Americans led a coalition, under the United Nations mandate, to prevent North Korean Communists from conquering the South, the peaceniks were on the march everywhere.

The peace movement targeted the Western democracies, and sought to weaken their resolve to protect their freedom against the Soviet threat. Over the years nobody marched against any of the client regimes of the Soviet Union that engaged in numerous wars, including against their own people. The wars that China’s Communist regime waged against the peoples of Manchuria, Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia, lands that were eventually annexed and subjected to “ethnic cleansing”, provoked no protest marches. Even when China attacked India and grabbed Indian territories the size of England, the peace movement did not budge.

In the 1960s, the peace movement transformed itself into a campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Here, unilateral meant that only the Western powers had to give up their arsenal, thus giving the Soviet Union a monopoly on nuclear weapons. The peace movement spent a good part of the 1960s opposing American intervention in Vietnam.

The 1980s gave the movement a new lease of life as it focused on opposing the establishment of American Pershing missiles in West Germany and the Benelux countries. The Pershings represented a response to Soviet SS-20 missiles that had already been stationed in Central Europe and aimed at all Western European capitals. But the peaceniks never asked for both the Pershings and the SS-20s to be withdrawn. They just wanted the American missiles to go.

President Ronald Reagan’s proposal to the Soviets that both the SS-20s and the Pershings be withdrawn was attacked and ridiculed by the peaceniks as “ an American imperialist trick.” Francois Mitterrand, then France’s Socialist president, put it this way: “The missiles are in the East but the peaceniks are in the West!”

Last week the British daily The Guardian asked a number of peaceniks to explain why they opposed the use of force to liberate Iraq? The main reason they felt they had to support Saddam was that he was disliked by the United States. What about a peace march in support of the Chechen people? Oh, no, that wouldn’t do: the US is not involved.

The peace movement would merit the label only if it opposed all wars, including those waged by tyrants against their own people, not just those in which the US is involved. Did it march when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran? Not at all. Did it march when Saddam invaded Kuwait? Again: nix! Later, they marched, with the slogan: “No Blood for Oil”, when the US-led coalition came to liberate Kuwait. Did it march when Saddam was gassing the Kurds to death? Oh, no.

If Stalin were around today he would have a chuckle: His peace movement remains as alive in the Western democracies as it was half-a-century ago. The spirit that inspires these marches remains the same: anti-democratic, anti-West, anti-American, and fascinated by “strongmen”, like Stalin or Saddam Hussein, who are supposed to have the magic power of bending history to their will.

Arab News 7 March 2003 7 March 2003