Bogus Khrushchev 'Small Doses of Socialism' Quote Makes the Rounds Again

(UPDATED) In case you weren't properly terrified at the prospect of President-elect Obama and his "terrorist pals" remaking this country into a communist police state, the right-wing blogosphere would like you to get a load of this prescient quote from a past leader of the Soviet Union:

AND SO IT BEGINS!

"We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."

-Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

Except, um, so far as anyone has been able to prove, Comrade Khrushchev never said any such thing. 

Folks have been trying to authenticate the passage, to no avail, ever since it was first foisted on the American public around 1959-60. The late Rep. Morris Udall chronicled his own efforts to do so in an article published in The New Republic some 46 years ago. Among other dead ends, his query to the Library of Congress yielded this reply:

We have searched the Legislative Reference Service files, checked all the standard reference works on quotations by Khrushchev, and consulted with the Slavic division of the Library of Congress, the Department of State, and the US Information Agency, in an attempt to determine the authenticity of this quotation. From none of these sources were we able to produce evidence that Khrushchev actually made such a statement."

Be that as it may, the quote was widely distributed during the early 1960s via the preferred viral medium of the day, postcards. One well-known purveyor of such literature was Republican banker Joe Crail, who, according to author Rick Perlstein (Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, New York: Hill and Wang, 2002) distributed as many as two million pieces of right-wing propaganda in 1961 alone, much of it, apparently, to his own clientele at Coast Federal Savings and Loan.

"In a typical blitz," Perlstein writes, "account holders received a red postcard bearing a spurious quote from Khrushchev: 'We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism, until they suddenly awake to find they have communism.'"

When pressed by Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana to authenticate the quote in 1962, Crail admitted he could not and said the mailings had been discontinued.

Quote dismissed as 'a deliberate fabrication'

According to Paul F. Boller and John H. George, authors of They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (Oxford, 1989), the quote was, in fact, a "deliberate fabrication of some radical rightists in this country, who thought it summed up Khrushchev's attitude."

Here it is, still in use some 50 years later, the only difference being that now they want us to believe it sums up the attitude and agenda of Barack Obama.

And so it continues.

UPDATE: Ezra Taft Benson, an unreliable witness

Some folks have offered up an excerpt from a speech delivered by former Secretary of Agriculture (under Eisenhower) Ezra Taft Benson on October 25, 1966 as "proof" that the Khrushchev quote is authentic. Here's the excerpt (which you can also listen to via YouTube, courtesy of Glenn Beck):

I have personally witnessed the heart-rending results of the loss of freedom. I have talked face-to-face with the godless Communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Khrushchev for a half-day when he visited the United States. Not that I'm proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor.

As we talked face-to-face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under Communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his, and all other grandchildren, will live under freedom, he arrogantly declared, in substance:

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright. But we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.

Mr. Benson isn't the reliable witness he seems, however. In his writings and public statements he gave conflicting accounts of both the content and the origin of the alleged statement by Khrushchev.

You've read what Benson said in 1966. Now read what he wrote in his 1962 book, The Red Carpet: Socialism -- The Royal Road to Communism, page 65:

A few months before coming to the United States Khrushchev is reported to have said:

"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism, until they suddenly awake to find they have communism."

Which version of events are we to accept as true? Benson's meeting with Khrushchev took place in 1959. Had he forgotten, when he wrote the book in 1962, that Khrushchev uttered those words in his own presence? Or was his claim four years later that Khrushchev had spoken them to him directly a misremembrance, or an embellishment?

In any case, there's no record of Benson taking personal credit for the quote until 1966, by which time it had already been in circulation for at least six years, along with the standard Khrushchev-said-this-a-few-months-before-coming-to-the-U.S. preamble.

Here it is, for example, in a speech given by Ronald Reagan in 1961:

Three months before his last visit to this country, Nikita Khrushchev said, "We can't expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism, until they awaken one day to find they have communism."

Did Reagan cite Benson as its source? No. Did he say Khrushchev uttered the words to an American official on American soil? No.

According to Reagan in 1961, Khrushchev said it three months before he visited the U.S. in 1959.

According to Benson in 1962, Khrushchev said it a few months before visiting the U.S. in 1959.

According to Benson in 1966, Khrushchev said it in the U.S., in Benson's presence, in 1959.

Or perhaps, as more than one researcher has concluded over the past 50 years, Khrushchev never said it at all.

Sources:

Benson, Ezra Taft. "Our Immediate Responsibility." Speech delivered at Brigham Young University, 25 October 1966 (via LatterDayConservative.com).

Benson, Ezra Taft. The Red Carpet: Socialism -- The Royal Road to Communism (Bookcraft, 1962), p. 65.

Boller, Paul F. and George, John H. They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (Oxford, 1989), pp. 59-60.

Reagan, Ronald. A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961-1982 (Regnery, 1983), p. 25.

"Right-Wingers Hit on 'Quote' by Khrushchev." Los Angeles Times, 9 March 1962, p. 24.

Udall, Morris K. "Khrushchev Could Have Said It." The New Republic, 7 May 1962, pp. 14-15.