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"Why," asked Stalin further, "did Mr. Churchill have to delude people" and "wander around the truth" in speaking of the growth of Communism in Europe? Churchill had made it sound like the result of Communist police-government tactics. It was really that Europe's "common people, having tried the Communists in the fire of struggle," had given Communists their confidence. Stalin added pointedly: "It is they, millions of these common people, who voted Mr. Churchill and his party out in England."
"Ridiculous Position." The dictator of the world's largest one-party state said that Churchill had assumed a "ridiculous position" by decrying the lack of "true democracy" in eastern Europe. According to Stalin, such nations as Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Poland were far more democratic than Britain, because each of them was ruled by a bloc of several parties, while the British Government was run by one party, with the opposition—including Churchill—barred from membership.
Few Russians under 50 knew enough about the world outside Russia to see the wild nonsense of Stalin's comparison. Stalin, who is 66 and had a political education before the night closed on Russia 29 years ago, knew that no Soviet citizen would contradict him.