No. 1 Sob

After poking Communist fun for 18 long years at the "sob stories" and "personality stuff" of Capitalist journalism, Moscow's two great official newsorgans, Pravda ("Truth") and Izvestia ("News") went abruptly into intellectual reverse last week, came out simultaneously with a personality sob story about Dictator Joseph Stalin and his Old Mother.

Since it is Bolshevik dogma that only the decadent bourgeois are curious about statesmen's private lives, since Soviet leaders usually see in print only their last names with no personal details whatsoever, astonishment was the reaction of most Russians last week to the Pravda & Izvestia story headed

"MOTHER."

Excerpts: "We visited the mother of Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin. A few days previously Stalin had been there. Keke, his 75-year-old mother, was friendly and in good spirits. She told us of those 'unforgettable minutes.'

" 'Joy?' said she. 'You ask what joy I experience? The whole world rejoices when it looks at my son and our country. What then should I, his mother, experience?'

"We sat in a large, light room with a round table in the centre, covered with a white tablecloth and a bouquet of flowers. There were also a couch, a bed and some chairs.

" 'He came unexpectedly,' the mother continued. 'That door opened and there he was. We kissed each other for a long time. I asked, "How do you like our new Tiflis?" He said, "Fine." He recalled the past and how we had lived then. I worked out by the day and brought him up.

" 'It was hard. Rain leaked through the roof of the little dark house where we lived and it was damp. We had poor food, but he was always a loving and considerate son--a model son.

" 'The day went by gaily--he spent it just with me. Joseph Vissarionovitch joked a lot and was gay and happy.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.