Summary, 22–26 November 1963
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY
Moscow and most East European sources give flash
treatment to the early reports of the President's assassination and continue to
present comment and reportage throughout the following days, with the topic
dominating Moscow news and comment to an extent rarely achieved by noncommunist
world events. Czechoslovak and Yugoslav media broadcast voluminous material on
the President's death and related developments, while Rumanian sources provide
virtually no comment and Albanian sources offer only minimal accounts of press
conferences.
Moscow immediately adopts the theme that the President was
killed by right-wing elements in the United States, a recurrent line in news
accounts and commentaries reflected in varying degrees by most other bloc
sources. The late President is widely hailed as an "outstanding statesman," who
was "striving for peace," gunned down by American wild-men supported by racists.
GDR broadcasts, however, qualify their praise for Kennedy with misgivings about
some of his "dangerous" policies. The Dallas authorities' statements about the
accused assassin Oswald and his subsequent murder are claimed to reflect an
attempt to hide the fact that reactionaries incited and engineered the
President's death as well as an attempt to turn the world's indignation against
the communists to fan a hysterical anticommunist, anti-Soviet, anti-Cuban
campaign.
A few Moscow reports cite U.S. and foreign observers'
opinions that President Johnson will not make any real changes in domestic or
foreign policy in the next few months, and commentators express the hope that he
will follow Kennedy's peaceful line. One GDR commentator and scattered
Czechoslovak comments, however, express doubt that he will be as successful as
his predecessor in this.