Cost

Despite blast and counterblast between President Roosevelt and Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinoff, each of whom remains convinced that the other is a liar,/- Russia's Amtorg Trading Corp. continues to buy in the U. S. much as if there had been no quarrel-making diplomatic recognition of Moscow by Washington (TIME, Nov. 27, 1933). Last week bustling Amtorg Board Chairman Ivan Boyeff signed in Pittsburgh a contract with Pittsburgh's United Engineering & Foundry Co. to buy more than $3,500,000 worth of electric-powered, roller-bearing equipment for the $700,000,000 Zaporozhstal (steel) Works, most of which will be built of Russian material by Russians in Russia.

In Washington pencil-pushers last week totaled up $50,000 as the minimum cost to the U. S. thus far of recognizing the U. S. S. R., most of this sum being diplomats' salaries. Sick in Philadelphia was U. S. Ambassador to Russia William Christian Bullitt ($14,875), but in Moscow the wife of Charge d'Affaires John C. Wiley ($7,310) lent her patronage, as did French Ambassador Charles Alphand (648,000 francs) to a ballet by Ulanova, the newest "Soviet Pavlova," who is an appetizing* 23-year-old. With the Soviet Pavlova danced a new "Soviet Nijinsky" named Chebukian whose Communist admirers boast that "his jumps are even better than those by the great man who today lives in a world of mental darkness in Switzerland."

/-Nearly every week the Soviet Foreign Office induces one or more U. S. correspondents in Moscow to cable Comrade Litvinoff's further insistence that Mr. Roosevelt promised him a "loan," whereas the White House insists that the President promised a "credit" which Litvinoff agreed the Kremlin would spend on U. S. goods but which the Kremlin now rejects.

*Joseph Stalin, high Communist Comrades and certain Ambassadors in Moscow continue the Imperial tradition that a Russian ballerina is always snapped up as somebody's wife or mistress. Ulanova has superseded Semyonovna who was recently snapped up by potent Comrade Leo M. Karakhan, Soviet Ambassador to Turkey. Three days before, in her last appearance in Russian ballet last week, Mrs. Karakhan slipped, fell, announced herself mildly hurt. She generously applauded her successor Ulanova from a box.

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