In relation to its size and the antiquity of its history, the West knows less of Soviet Central Asia than any part of the civilized world. Its size of over one and a half million square miles makes it an area larger than India before partition and bigger than all of Western Europe. Its population of approximately 18 million is larger than the populations of either Canada or Australia. The two cities of Samarkand and Bukhara rival Baghdad and Damascus in cultural and religious history. For a long period of time the city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan was the center of Muslim religious fanaticism, even more so than any place in the Middle East. Yet, despite these facts and this background, we know far more about the cities and countries surrounding Soviet Central Asia than we do about this area itself. Our knowledge of Persia, Afghanistan, and even Tibet is vast compared to the information we have about Kazakhstan or Kirghizia. In fact, I doubt that there are many people in the United States who have even heard of them.

This area which was traveled and established as a main trading route by Marco Polo, overrun and conquered by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, and controlled by Tamerlane has had only a handful of visitors since the turn of the sixteenth century. This was due partially to its remoteness, which became more acute when the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and the route to Asia became a sea route rather than land, and partially to the fact that visitors were just not welcome by the local inhabitants. The first visitors to the city of Bukhara, other than a handful of envoys who came down from Russia, were two Englishmen, Stoddard and Connolly. In 1841 they visited the emir of Bukharat, the local leader of that area, in order to help him train his army to fight against the Russians. The emir, being rather distrustful of foreigners, chained them to the floor of what aptly called the Bug Pit. After two months the emir took them out and asked them to acknowledge the Muslim religion as the only true religion. By that time they had developed a dislike of the emir and refused, whereupon he beheaded them. From personal experience I know the bugs were not the only difficulty with which Stoddard and Connolly had to contend. When Justice Douglas and I visited the Bug Pit in Bukhara last summer, the temperature read 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Russians began their conquest of Central Asia in the 1860s. However, some of the cities such as Bukhara remained under local control until they were taken over by the Soviets during the early 1920s and the local emirs deposed. In fact, some of the members of the harem of the emir of Bukhara are still alive.

During the Russian advance into this whole area, very few outside visitors were allowed. When the Communists took over in the 1920s, the veil of isolation hardened and for a long period it has been specifically closed to Americans. We were visiting an area of the world which, if for no other reason, was made unique by its remoteness…

We were interested in knowing what it was that made this colonialism acceptable to the Russians when the stated Soviet policy is against colonialism of any kind.

An added reason for us wanting to visit that part of the world was that Soviet Central Asia, prior to Communist control, had been an intensely religious area. In Bukhara alone over three hundred mosques and religious schools had flourished. How had the Muslim religion fared in the face of Communist teachings that there is no God and that religion is for the backward people?

I left Washington on the twenty-seventh of July, after stocking up on pills for stomach trouble and infection and others to purify the drinking water…On the first of August we took a ship from Pahlevi in Iran to Baku, the Russian oil city. We were the first Americans to take this trip on the Caspian Sea…

We were told before we left the U.S.A. that we must expect all our hotel rooms in Russia would have listening devices in them and that we should govern our conversations accordingly. When we arrived in Baku we found nobody was prepared for us. No arrangements had been made to procure a guide and interpreter for us on our trip. The representative of the official Soviet tourist agency, Intourist, with whom we talked, said there was nobody available and that if we wanted to leave on our tour we could go ahead and do so but that they could not assist us. They went on to say that only one of the cities in Central Asia that we intended to visit had facilities available for tourists. To no avail did we explain that we had tried for four months to bring a guide and interpreter of our own from the U.S., that we had written four or five letters to the embassy of the Soviet Union, and that they not only refused to allow us to take an interpreter but had not acknowledged our letters; that when we telephoned to the embassy they had said there was nothing to worry about, that the Russian government through its Intourist Agency would provide a guide. With this gloomy news we went to Justice Douglas’s room, but on the way we had a whispered conversation as to our strategy. There, in rather loud voices, we discussed what an obvious mistake these people in Baku were making; that although we hated to do so we would have to telephone Khrushchev to tell him of the very bad treatment we had received, and that certainly Khruschev would be very upset with those people who were treating us in this manner. Within an hour of this private conversation in our room, the Intourist group was knocking on our door and explaining that they had just made arrangements with Moscow to have a special guide furnished to us, and that they were going to do everything possible to facilitate our forthcoming trip, and were we sure that we had everything to make us comfortable. We were convinced from then on that our conversations were always monitored…

I would like to talk for a few minutes on the impressions I received on this six-week trip and what I think should be our attitude toward the present Russian policy of smiles and promises. Before the United States and our allies take steps to reduce our armies in our defense commitments, as has been discussed over the past three weeks; before we liberate for a second time the Battle Act list of strategic goods; before we take any other steps of a similar nature, we had best stop and think whether these actions are warranted, based on what Russia has said and done so far…

I submit history has shown that it is suicidal for the United States or its allies to make major concessions to the Soviet Union without a quid pro quo. The Soviet Union’s history is replete with broken treaties and agreements…

When we negotiate with Soviet Russia, we are dealing with a country in which the basic freedoms and rights, which we believe to be inalienable, are for its citizens, if at all, only on the terms prescribed by those in power in the Kremlin…

In Alma-Ata we had a conference with the Secret Police, the first that the MVD has ever granted to a foreigner. One of the first things that they told us was how much they abhorred wiretapping and the use of listening devices. Two weeks later when Adenauer [chancellor of West Germany] was in Moscow he refused to stay in the hotel suite prepared for him because his attendants had found so many listening devices in the walls. He was finally forced to sleep in a railroad car in the station…In connection with the prison labor battalions in the soviet Union, we had a rather interesting experience. On the way back to Moscow from Alma-Ata we were planning to visit some of the farm areas that had just been opened by the Soviet government under the New Lands Program.

We told our guide that on the way to the new territory we wished to stop at the city of Karaganda in central Kazakhstan, where we wanted to inspect some copper and coal mines. A day or two later our guide told us that everything had been arranged but the new land area we had originally intended to visit was not as interesting as another section. We were told that this second area was about one hour away by plane, and as it made no difference to us and as we were assured we could get to Karaganda from there, we agreed. The morning that we left we were told it was about a four-hour plane trip but that it was too late for us to change our plans. Actually it took us six and a half hours, and when we arrived there we found that we had left Kazakhstan and we were now in Siberia, and furthermore the local officials told us there was no possible way of getting directly back to Karaganda, which was now much farther away than it had been before we started. They advised us, however, to fly a little further north to the large city of Novosibirsk, and from there we certainly could get transportation to Karaganda. When we got there we were told there were no planes and only very bad trains, but by the time we told them we were going to push on anyway. Ultimately, after we had worked our way back to within a reasonable distance of Karaganda, we were told that orders had come down from Moscow that we were not allowed to visit that city. When we arrived in Moscow, we found out that Karaganda is the site of one of the most notorious slave-labor camps within the confines of the Soviet Union.

In more subtle ways, but equally harshly, does the state dominate and control the individual and subject him to its will. For one thing, all means of livelihood and all sources of income emanate from Moscow…

The right of a citizen to criticize the government does not exist in the Soviet Union. The chancellor of the University of Tashkent explained that to us by saying that the government is always right, and the people of the Soviet Union realize this, so there is nothing to criticize. Similarly, the head of the University of Frunze explained that the students had no political debates because there was only one correct position on political matters, and that was the position taken by the government, so there was no purpose in discussing the wrong or other side of the question.

The right of the free press does not exist in the Soviet Union. The control of the press by the government was brought home to me on our visit to Baku, where our guide proudly made the point that there were one hundred different newspapers and magazines published in Baku for the state of Azerbaijan. A few minutes later she pointed to a building and said the publishing of all these periodicals was done in that one building.

The fight to worship God freely does not exist in the Soviet Union. In Bukhara, although there were over three hundred mosques and religious schools forty years ago, there is now but one mosque and one Muslim school. The mosque is in a bad state of disrepair and the school must serve the whole of Central Asia. In Krasnovodsk, in Ashkhabad, and in Stalinbad we found no mosque at all…The Muslim religion in Soviet Central Asia has been crushed by the Soviet government. People do not become atheistic or lose their interest in religion within a period of two generations. The chancellor of the University of Alma-Ata admitted to us that during the period of communizing the countries of Central Asia, there was opposition from some of the religious leaders who, therefore, had to be eliminated. A professor at the University of Frunze said they look upon people who practice religion as backward people. It is obvious they want no backward people in the United States.

Some definite material gains have been made in soviet Central Asia. The standard of living of the people would seem higher than the standard of living of the people in the comparable areas of the Middle East. I do not doubt but that the industrialization that is taking place in the cities, the mechanization of the farms, and the compulsory education of the citizens will undoubtedly impress people visiting Soviet Central Asia from the Middle and Far East. I think it is only right, however, that they should examine a little bit the price that has been paid and is being paid to achieve some of these gains…

All I ask is that before we take any more drastic steps that we receive something from the Soviet Union other than a smile and a promise—a smile that could be as crooked and a promise that could be as empty as they have been in the past. We must have peaceful coexistence with Russia, but if we and our allies are weak, there will be no peace—there will be no coexistence.