Yanks for Stalin
Interview Transcript

Vladimir Posner      (cont)

Q Great.  Armand Hammer.  He is one of our characters in the film. He seems to be ambiguous to some degree or hard to understand his real contribution.  Would you say he has made a contribution or you might talk about his story briefly for us.

A Shortly before his death, this was at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, in, I think, 1989, Armand Hammer was invited as a guest of honor and he was speaking at this stadium.  At the end of his speech, and as you know, the Goodwill Games were Ted Turners attempt to bring together the best athletes of the world, but mainly the U.S. and the United States, during the Cold War times. So, it is 1989, and Hammer at the end of his speech said,"I want to thank you all from the bottom of my pace-maker," because he needed one. He should have thanked the Soviet Union, because in my opinion, he got enormous benefits from what he did.  The Soviet Union got virtually nothing.  It is true that he built the first pencil factory, there is no doubt about that.  But, the amount of art that he was able to buy for the cost of a few pencils, the amount of money that he made out of the Soviet, of course speaks to his intelligence.  The fact that he understood at a very early age the connection he might have, especially the one with Lenin, would be invaluable, certainly helped him.  Now, you know that there was a period in Armand Hammer's life when he was non grata, because a lot of the people who had known Lenin were seen by Stalin as being dangerous. Although, he was suppose to have been Lenin's favorite and beloved pupil, which, of course, he was not.  He feared those who knew Lenin, who remembered him and who knew that Lenin was not of a very high opinion of Stalin.  So, there was this period when Armand Hammer was not here, but, he made the best of when he was here and then when he came back afterwards to (Russian) time.  In my opinion, Armand Hammer did not play a very important role in so far as what the Soviet Union or Russia got.  I think he got much more out of it than the Soviets did.

Q Do you have any knowledge about whether or not he actually helped bring people here, other American business men?

A I think one has to understand that Armand Hammer has taken more credit for doing things that he never really did.  He was never really, how should I put this, he never made a big thing. He wasn't flamboyant about his relationship with Soviet Russia or the Soviet Union.  I think that he would have preferred to have kept it to himself as much as possible.  He was not a sharing king of a man, although he may have said at times that he brought in this man or that man or, I don't think so.  There was not a chamber of commerce in those days that was looking to or towards the Soviet Union as a source of economic enrichment.  I think that happened much, much later.  It happened after W.W.II.  It happened after Stalin.  It happened in more recent days.  The initial influx, as I said, of Ford going to (Russian) that did not have anything to do with Armand Hammer.  In fact, it had to do with the activities of the Soviet Union, which was saying,'come hither, we need your expertise and we are willing to pay for it'.

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