There are, or course, no miraculous solutions, no panaceas. All you can say is that anyone who believes that man shapes his destiny must believe that in a place where the majority of the people are against a regime, eventually, under favorable circumstances, the majority will succeed in getting rid of the minority which oppresses it. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I will say amen to that. Mr. MONAGAN. Mr. Barry?

Mr. BARRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't want to take further time, Mr. Coste.

You have made an excellent witness and called attention to several things. I do hope you will leave with some feeling of greater firmness that we have toward the cause that you espouse than perhaps you had when you came in.

We have no intention in Congress, and the President has no intention, of sacrificing Berlin.

We have no intention as a Congress, and I am sure it is so of the President, of ever giving up our hope of liberation of the captive nations which you so well represent.

Sometimes a great nation is misunderstood. To the extent it is misunderstood, there is suffering abroad.

I do believe that through our expenditures in military aid, our alliances, our statements at the United Nations, our foreign aid program, our two voices that reach through to your people, that if we aren't hitting on solid ground, with regard to the message, if you could from time to time inform us so that we don't repeat the mistake, you will be making a very valuable assistance-you will be of valuable assistance to our effort, because there is no relaxation here.

It is a deplorable situation, but we have already said to the world, and Russia knows it, "We won't go to war over Hungary," and since they know that, there is very little that we can offer except to Poland. I don't believe that it would be fair for you or your people or your organization to say that this country is not doing all in its power, short of war, to bring about the freedom which we all hope for all peoples of the world, including the captive nations.

Mr. MONAGAN. Have you any questions?
Mr. BARRY. No; I don't think I do.

I just greatly appreciate the information that has been given us and I am hopeful you will leave with a little better feeling.

Mr. COSTE. I would like to make one further point. It has often been said that it is dangerous to make too intense an effort to revive hope or keep hope alive in Eastern Europe, because this may lead to a repetition of the events in Hungary, in 1956.

We in our assembly-and we have representatives from nine nations-we keep our ears on the ground and our eyes on events. We keep in close touch with developments in our homelands. Many people come out these days, so we know quite well what the mood is. We believe that this is a fear which is not well founded. Nobody can stir Eastern Europe into a premature revolution any more in 1962.

In 1956 the situation was entirely different and hope was very strong. People in Eastern Europe sensed very strongly that there was trouble in the Kremlin, that the decisionmaking capacity of the Kremlin was diminished.

They had a very keen sense of the balance of power being very favorable to the West. So they thought that the West will not go to war, but will work on Moscow, and that is enough.

That wasn't true today. In 1956, if the President of the United States had gone on the radio and told the people of Eastern Europe, "This is your opportunity," there would have been a revolution all over Eastern Europe, and probably a successful one.

But today, nobody in this whole world could start a revolution in Eastern Europe. Only a situation would do it.

If, for instance, the capacity of the Soviet Union to intervene in Eastern Europe would be diminished by some event, it could be war or internal revolution within the Soviet Union, some event that would neutralize the Soviet Union, then people in Eastern Europe might take advantage of it.

I don't believe they would start trouble in other circumstances. They are biding their time now. They have learned how to last, how to lie low so as to be able to win in the long run.

They talk very little. They try to solve their everyday problems and bide their time. But they are not won over. So far, we can say with certainty that not even the young people have been won over. Their schools have not succeeded. Again the most important thing, the peasants and the workers who read the least, who follow the least the day-to-day developments on the international scene, are the most optimistic.

They have a sort of irrational hope that something will happen. They couldn't tell you what, but they keep on hoping. Their hope is much stronger than the hope of the educated people.

Mr. MONAGAN. You used the expression in your statement "the process of disintegration" was "going on."

Just what did you mean by that? Is it the sort of thing you have been describing now?

Mr. COSTE. I would say that the Communists like to speak in terms of contradictions. This is one of their favorite words, that is, conflicts which are built in a society. In their society, conflict is built in all over, because you have, first of all, the most stratified society you have ever seen anywhere.

You have a privileged class and you have slaves. It is very much like the Egyptian society or Roman society at its worst. You have the men who work with their hands, who do office work, and then the privileged people in the party apparatus who control the whole thing, who have unlimited power and also unlimited wealth, which is not understood here very well.

For every one Communist in the leadership level, the top thousand who live sort of a frugal life, there are 999 who live more lavishly than any privileged of the past. And people see and they don't like it. You see, the phenomena which happens in Eastern Europe all over the place; in the working class, every man ambitious man and the unscrupulous man-among the workers wants to escape the condition of the worker, and how? To join the party and became a bureau

crat.

In the so-called homeland of the proletariat in the countries where the worker is supposed to be king, the worker has only one dream, to get out of the condition of the working class and get into the party bureaucracy-so he joins the party to get promoted into the bureauc

racy.

Mr. MONAGAN. Do you have any feeling that a similar deterioration is taking place within Russia itself?

Mr. COSTE. I believe very much what is well known, and I believe Allen Dulles called attention to it, that when you give to tens of thousands a scientific education, and as long as people read the classics of Russian literature, you cannot say that people are ignorant, and don't know what freedom is.

Too often we make our judgments on a report by journalists who have been on hasty junkets who have been talking with Russians who don't say what is in their mind and heart.

You know, in Eastern Europe the safest thing when you are with a foreigner is to repeat what you read in the morning official Communist paper. That is the kind of information you get from people. What is in the depth of their soul, you won't get out so easily. Mr. MONAGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Coste.

We appreciate your coming. Your testimony and that of Mr. Nagy has been extremely helpful to the committee.

Mr. CosTE. May I present for the record a number of publications of the Assembly?

Mr. Nagy has referred to them. They are on satellite trade.

Mr. MONAGAN. We will have the staff go over them. We don't want to have too much in the record unless it is essential. I myself, and I imagine other members of the committee have received these publications that you are holding.

You may leave anything with us that you think would be helpful. We will be very happy to have it. Such material as may be essential may be placed in the record, without objection. The remainder may be placed in the committee files.

The committee stands adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.)

CAPTIVE EUROPEAN NATIONS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1962

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, in room P-58, U.S. Capitol,

at 2 p.m., Hon. John S. Monagan presiding.

Mr. MONAGAN. We call the hearing to order.

This is another in the series of hearings on the captive nations which are being held by the Subcommittee on Europe of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

We have already heard testimony from the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, from representatives of Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America, and also from representatives of, and people who have lived in, many of the European captive nations. We have compiled a rather substantial record.

We are happy to have with us today Mr. George Dimitrov of the Bulgarian National Committee and Mr. Aleksander Kutt of the Committee for a Free Estonia.

Gentlemen, we would be glad to have such testimony as you may care to give to the committee.

Doctor, would you like to begin? Would you come up here and sit down.

Dr. DIMITROV. Yes, sir.

Mr. MONAGAN. Do you have a prepared statement, Doctor?

Dr. DIMITROV. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and honorable members.

Mr. MONAGAN. Do you have several copies of it?

Dr. DIMITROV. I have several copies of it. I could provide some of

them, as many as you would need.

Mr. MONAGAN. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE M. DIMITROV, PRESIDENT OF THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL PEASANT UNION

Dr. DIMITROV. Mr. Chairman, honorable members of this committee, in order

Mr. MONAGAN. Doctor, would you just give us a brief biography before you begin with your statement?

Dr. DIMITROV. My name is Dr. George M. Dimitrov. I was born on May 26, 1903, in Turkish Thrace, being a Bulgarian, and then I have grown up in north Bulgaria in a village. I studied medicine, I am a medical doctor; I studied law and political science.

87355-62-17

In 1931 I was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament, and later on I was already in the leadership of the Bulgarian National Agrarian Union, the so-called Peasant Party in Bulgaria, which represents the great majority of the population because Bulgaria is an agricultural country with predominantly agricultural population, even now after all the industrialization and so on about which the Communists insist.

I was very active in the political life and was anti-Nazi No. 1. Therefore I was arrested for liquidation but managed somehow to escape.

Then I was forced to go underground, and I have led the underground in Bulgaria for 10 years.

Mr. MONAGAN. What years were those?

Dr. DIMITROV. From 1934 when was first introduced the totalitarian regime, the personal regime of the King, until 1944 when Hitler's forces were forced out of Bulgaria, and I was able to go back from my first exile.

I was forced later on into exile because I couldn't go back from Yugoslavia where I went for common action, and I stayed in exile during the Second World War from March 1941 up to September of 1944, mainly in the Middle East, keeping, however, in touch with the internal resistance, and therefore I was moving in different countries, mainly in Turkey, and I was operating a radio station in Palestine, in Jerusalem, which was waging, so to say, the political war against Hitler's occupation of Bulgaria.

Then I went back in 1944, September, when the Soviet troops were already in my country. They occupied completely the country, and finished the occupation September 10. I arrived September 23.

So I took, again, my place as leader of the Agrarian Union, which was already participating in the coalition government, and from then on I had to deal, every day, with the occupation authorities and with the Communist Party, which was one of the parties in the coalition, and for many months we had to clash and fight over our differences on the way Bulgaria should be ruled.

And finally, as you will see from the declaration which I have prepared, I was arrested, again for liquidation, this time by the Communists, but by a miracle I escaped, and again went underground, but I was given asylum by the U.S. political representative, Minister Barnes in Sofia.

So I stayed with him a little bit more than 3 months and then, with his help, together with him I left Bulgaria for a second exile.

So I was altogether about 1 year in my country under Soviet оссиpation, and I could say complete Communist domination.

Mr. MONAGAN. Thank you, Doctor.

You may proceed with your prepared statement.

Dr. DIMITROV. Mr. Chairman, honorable members of the committee, my country, Bulgaria, was not at war with the Soviet Union during World War II and the Soviet Government maintained its diplomatic mission in our capital during the entire war. This was done in spite of the fact that Bulgaria was occupied by Nazi troops on March 1, 1941, with the secret consent of King Boris and his pro-Hitler totalitarian government.