Machinery, as we know, is what the Soviet rulers go to extreme pains to _import_. If they were serious now about exporting it, and if they really intended to deliver large quantities and not mere tokens, it would be something new, although even then they would probably not be exporting the advanced types which they usually seek to obtain in the West. It remained to be seen whether the U.S.S.R. would come anywhere near to complete fulfillment of the trade agreement with Argentina, for example. But one could only suspect that the promises of big and attractive deliveries--whether fulfilled or not--were made in large part for the purpose of weakening the ties of those countries with the rest of the free world. * * * * * In this chapter we have traced various threads of the Soviet trading activities, and have suggested reasons why they engaged in each kind of activity. Now it is necessary to look more deeply into the whole complex of Soviet foreign trade policy and sum up what's behind it all. _CHAPTER IV_ =What's Behind It All= From the Kremlin comes a continual flow of propaganda, spread to the ends of the earth by the international Communist movement, to the effect that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the Champion of Peace. Stalin's death afforded the Communists a convenient opportunity to portray a new regime zealous for a peaceful, normal world. They did not say out loud that Stalin had been _less_ zealous, but they were not reluctant to play upon the world's fervent wish that the new management would turn over a bright new leaf. And they were willing, even eager, for the world to believe that one part of the pursuit of peace was the promotion of East-West trade. =The Kremlin and Peace= Can the so-called Soviet "trade offensive" of 1953-54 really be explained as an effort to establish a just and lasting peace, as the West understands the word? If we could believe that, the world might suddenly seem a more comfortable place to live in. We must always keep the door ajar for any genuine steps to abandon the Soviet brand of imperialism, to abandon the basic unfriendliness of purpose toward everything not under Moscow's control. The free world was looking for such a movement at the Berlin Conference in the early part of 1954, but it did not show up. The only way peace could be accepted as a Soviet trading motive would be to define peace as the Soviet leaders themselves have defined it in the past, not in their propaganda but in their party teachings. "The peace policy of the proletarian state," according to a Comintern Congress resolution of 1928, "certainly does not imply that the Soviet state has become reconciled with capitalism ... It is merely ... a more advantageous form of fighting capitalism, a form which the U.S.S.R. has consistently employed since the October Revolution."