Monday, May. 07, 1945

The Russians

The trouble began when word got about that the Russians had brought a whole shipload of caviar and vodka. Actually, the Russian ship anchored in San Fran cisco Bay was there primarily for radio communication with Moscow. Some of the delegation lived aboard, and they presumably had a supply of their national food and drink. But the refreshments were incidental. Thanks to Russian secrecy about the ship, and the press's failure to check, tongues were clacking furiously when Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov arrived by plane from Washington.

He was smiling, gracious, obviously eager to please. But an unconscionable mixup in press arrangements soured newsmen, colored their whole attitude and many of their stories.

Behind the Azaleas. Russian security police seemed to be everywhere. They were hard-eyed and husky. They made pathetic efforts to be unobtrusive, standing self-consciously behind potted palms and azaleas in the hotel lobbies, and giving their identities away with their long Russian cigarets. Some of them, arriving without proper headgear, visited a store and bought felt hats. The clerks carefully creased the hats. The Russians as carefully uncreased them, restoring the round newness of hats on a shelf.

Molotov never appeared without his flying wedge of guards and his interpreter.* Some of them were inoffensive consultants in his delegation, but they all spelled Ogpu to the onlookers. The contrast with Stettinius and Eden, striding carelessly through the lobbies, was too much for Americans, who often forget that three of their Presidents have been assassinated.

Russian officials soon learned that their seclusion, their secretive official air did not sit well. On the conference's opening day, Molotov and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, must have overheard the rude remarks of newsmen waiting with them for an elevator in the Fairmont Hotel: "Those bastard Russians!"; "Did you hear how so-&-so got the brushoff?" Gromyko speaks and understands English; Molotov does not.

Guards & Gavels. Next morning, before the conference steering committee opened its first meeting, newsmen had clustered around erect, impassive Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts when someone cried: "Molotov!" In mid-question, the reporters deserted Smuts. Resembling Cartoonist Otto Soglow's "Little King" amid his guards, Molotov entered the Veterans' Building lobby and walked rapidly to an elevator. Smuts trailed along, tried to enter the same elevator and was blocked by a line of photographers. A U.S. Army captain pushed a photographer aside, and Smuts eased in. Molotov, painfully embarrassed, bobbed a greeting to Smuts. One of the hard-faced Russian guards peered at Smuts's insignia, twitched an eyebrow at another guard whose expression seemed to say: "How would I know?"

Most of the committeemen expected to elect the official host, Secretary Stettinius, permanent president of the conference. Anthony Eden made the routine nomination. Curt and strained, Molotov rose and objected. The conference, he said, should have four presidents, one for each of the sponsoring powers (the U.S., Russia, Britain. China); each of the presidents should take his turn with the gavel, and together they should control all the business of the conference. The delegation heads who made up the steering committee heard this proposal with successive disbelief, dismay, anger: it seemed to them to be a deliberate, pointless affront to Stettinius and international custom.

Secretary Stettinius, who was presiding, kept his head, kept out of the quarrel, and did his failing best to keep order. Molotov had forewarned both Stettinius and Anthony Eden that he would propose to rotate the presidency, but not that he wanted to tie up all conference procedure in a four-man presidium. Eden finally suggested a way out: rotate the conference presidency, make Stettinius permanent chairman of the potent steering and executive committees. Molotov seemed to agree, then insisted that only the four-way split of the conference presidency be announced that day. Everything was put over until the next day. Thoroughly incensed at Molotov, the committeemen filed out.

In the lobby, Molotov strode ahead of his guards and encountered a San Francisco girl. Said she: "Welcome to our city." Molotov understood her manner, if not her words. He bobbed his quick, characteristic little curtsey, smiled with his eyes, and tossed something in Russian over his shoulder. Someone told the girl that he had said: "You are very nice."

"My," she breathed. A punctilious Russian who spoke English paused and set her right. The Commissar had said: "You are very kind to say so."

By Their Words. . . . Within the hour, Molotov called a press conference, apologized for being late, met all questions (mostly about Poland) amiably and well, and dashed off with a farewell "Poka"--"So long!"

So far, the No. 1 Russian in San Francisco had been alternately sullen and affable, domineering and humble. Net reaction: what the hell? Then came the Russians' first formal, enlightening statements to the conference.

Two notes--one from the White Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, one from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic-- sought to justify their requests for seats and votes at the conference and in the future General Assembly. Nobody credited their pretensions to separate sovereignty; if the requests were granted, the Soviet Union would have three votes. But knowing delegates paid attention to both notes' emphasis on the war record and the sentiments of the White Russians and Ukrainians themselves.

When Molotov addressed the conference, not one listener in a hundred understood his emphatic Russian. But they satin taut quiet, waited anxiously for weary Mr. Pavlov's translation. It told them much.

P: The Russians felt that Britain and France, the guiding powers of pre-1939 Europe, had botched their job. Russia now proposed to do better; in taut quiet, waited anxiously for weary Mr. Pavlov's translation. It told them much.

P: The Russians' memories of the League of Nations, and of their unhappy exit from the League, still burn and rankle. Russia perforce took a back seat in the League; she proposes to take and hold a front seat in the new world organization. Front-seat manners will have to be acquired later, if at all.

The few who could follow Molotov in his own language felt the fierce intensity in his conclusion:

"You must definitely know that the Soviet Union can be relied upon in the matter of safeguarding the peace and security of nations. ... It is the most important task of the delegation of the Soviet Government to express these sentiments and thoughts of the Soviet people."

After that, everybody felt a little better.

The Collision. The bargaining went on. At a second steering-committee meeting, Molotov conceded Ed Stettinius his important committee chairmanships, settled for Big Four rotation of the conference presidency. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had promised at Yalta to support the Russian demand for three Assembly votes; it carried without a public dissent.

Well content, Molotov raised but did not Dress Moscow's third immediate demand--recognition and seating at the conference of Poland's still unreconstructed Warsaw Government. Stettinius, backed to the hilt by President Truman and Anthony Eden, met Molotov headon, and the Polish proposal never had a chance.

Molotov accepted the decision--until the executive committee insisted upon admitting Argentina's tawdry, turncoat government on the basis of its recent enforced conversion to the United Nations. At that, Molotov put his Russian back up, rocked the conference with his stern objections.

He called his second press conference, argued quietly but earnestly that Russia asked only to delay the vote until Argentina's record could be studied. At a full session of the world conference that afternoon, Molotov stumped to the rostrum, quoted Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull on Argentina's recent sins against the Allies. But arguments did not count; the U.S., the Latin Americans, most of the Europeans had lined up against him. On the decisive vote, only Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Greece supported the Soviet Union. Many a delegate instantly wondered: would Molotov and his delegation take their beating, stay in the conference?

When Translator Pavlov reported the result, Molotov quietly rose, quietly walked out. Most of the other Russians followed. Ambassador Gromyko stayed in his seat, as if to say that Russia was not deserting the conference. Said Britain's Lord Halifax, strolling from the hall: "I don't think this is the end of the world." The Russians' memories of the League of Nations, and of their unhappy exit from the League, still burn and rankle. Russia perforce took a back seat in the League; she proposes to take and hold a front seat in the new world organization. Front-seat manners will have to be acquired later, if at all.

The few who could follow Molotov in his own language felt the fierce intensity in his conclusion:

After that, everybody felt a little better.

*Molotov's harassed interpreter, Vladimir Nikolayevich Pavlov, is a pallid, thin fellow of 29. Pavlov sometimes translates for Stalin. But he is Molotov's man, accompanies him everywhere. At Yalta his penetrating voice pleased President Roosevelt because it was so easily heard. Pavlov speaks English with a decided British accent, but has an accurate ear for the idiom and nuances of American speech.

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