Pretenders Forward

The international market for quislings, stooges, puppets and pretenders picked up smartly last week with the chance that Adolf Hitler might possibly have the mighty throne of Russia to fill. Even if he conquered the Ukraine and let the rest of Russia go, he would have use for a stooge. Candidates:

P:Heavy, surly-faced Grand Duke Vladimir, 23, who gets a large part of his exercise as pretender to the Romanov throne. A first cousin once removed of the late Tsar, he is the son of the late, sumptuously-mustached Grand Duke Cyril, who in 1924 proclaimed himself "Tsar of all the Russias" and died in 1938. Grand Duke Vladimir's mother was a German Princess of Saxe-Coburg. He was born in Finland, where his parents had fled to escape the Red terror, attended London University, is now supposedly in Paris, where he has long been considered an admirer of Adolf Hitler.

P: Grand Duke Vladimir's brother-in-law, Prince Louis Ferdinand, who is the eldest living son of the late Crown Prince of Germany. He married Vladimir's sister Kyra in 1938. Adolf Hitler is said to have encouraged the marriage and to have suggested that he might make Louis Ferdinand the Russian Tsar. In the '20s agile Louis Ferdinand studied as an apprentice mechanic at the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit. Before World War II he was a pilot for Germany's Lufthansa airline and he has recently flown with the Luftwaffe.

P:General Count Michael Grabbe, a former Russian officer, also leader of the Cossacks-in-exile. So far as specifically Ukrainian -- rather than all-Russian -- puppetry was concerned, unemployed stooges included:

P:Pavlo Petrovich Skoropadsky, 67, of Berlin, an amiable old schemer who was Germany's Ukrainian puppet in 1918 (TIME, June 30). Since his brief puppet leadership ended with Germany's World War I defeat he has lived on a German pension. His chief sponsor today is said to be Hermann Goering. Finagling old Pavlo Skoropadsky is not too popular with the Nazis' Russian-Ukrainian expert Alfred Rosenberg, a smart man, nor with many Ukrainians who think him stupid.

P:Prince Leon Mazeppa von Razumovsky, socalled, who calls himself sole surviving descendant of the Count Razumovsky whom Catherine the Great named as hetman of the Ukraine. In the U.S., where he was known as Jacov Makorin, he was once a member of the Marine Corps. After World War I (in which he did not fight) he became an antique dealer, later found a good living in pushing his claims to the hetmanship of the Ukraine, backed by Canadian Ukrainians and some U.S. speculators interested in oil concessions. When last heard of, he was living in Italy.

P: Audrey Melnyk, 50, who was born in the Galician Ukraine, rose to be an Austrian Army Colonel. Today he heads the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists in Berlin--a Fascist movement composed mostly of Galician Ukrainians. He is hand in glove with the Gestapo.

P:Alexander Sevriuk, 49, Alfred Rosenberg's personal adviser on Ukrainian matters. As a boy of 13 he fought against the Tsarists in the abortive Revolution of 1905. Later he fled to France. After Adolf Hitler came to power, Alexander Sevriuk surprised many friends by giving up his Russian revolutionary sympathies, moving to Berlin in body and spirit.

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