Councilor Stalin

Jugoslavia's Dictator is also her King. Italy's Dictator is Prime Minister. Poland's Dictator is Minister of War. But for seven years Josef Stalin, Russia's Dictator, whose individual authority is far greater than that of Poland's Pilsudski and fully as great as that of Italy's Mussolini, has maintained the pose of holding no office whatever in the Soviet Government. He dropped this pose last week. Further to strengthen the position of his lieutenant, "Prime Minister" Vyacheslav Molotov, successor to ousted Alexey Rykov (TIME, Dec. 29), Dictator Stalin became officially a member of the Council of Labor & Defense, one of three interlocking councils that run the Soviet Government. At the same time "Prime Minister" Molotov, considered by dispassionate critics a far less able man than the deposed Rykov, received a new assistant in the person of one Andrey Andreyev, trades union official who was appointed vice president of the Council of People's Commissars of the U. S. S. R. Contrary to early reports Stalin had not completely banished Rightist Rykov from Soviet usefulness last week. He was removed from his two most important posts: president of the Council of People's Commissars of the U. S. S. R., member of the Politicbureau, but he remained a member of the Communist Party Central Committee, out of the limelight but available in emergency.

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