Another Stathmos?

Until they came to the sea at Trebizond, Xenophon's Greeks marched in a set pattern; he repetitiously records that each day's march (stathmos) covered so many parasangs. The inexorable Russians, whose diplomatic movements also follow a set pattern, reached Trebizond (now Trabzon) last week.

The Russian journey was still verbal. It began in Tiflis, where two professors, S. R. Dzanashia and N. Berdzenishvili, wrote a letter demanding that 10,000 square miles of Turkey (see map), "the seized cradle of our people," be forthwith handed over to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. The letter was promptly featured in Izvestia, Pravda and Red Star--the Government, Party and Army organs.

Throat and Backbone. Turkey was defiant. Recalling earlier Russian demands in Armenia and at the Dardanelles, General Kiazim Kara Bekir said Turks would fight for every inch. He added: "The world must know that the Straits form the throat of the Turkish nation and the Kars Plateau its backbone." The Turkish National Assembly at once voted his army more funds.

There may be no fight, since such Moscow pressure often means merely a drive for political concessions. This time even the ethnology was flimsy; Turks said the claimed area's Georgian and Armenian population is under 2%. The Kremlin had larger considerations. On the whole vast sweep of Russia's western and southwestern border, Turkey is the one country without a pro-Soviet regime. Russia wants to anchor the line. If its pressure could bring a Moscow-influenced Turkish government, Russia might forget her claim to the coastal region.

If not, the cession of this territory would greatly improve Russia's strategic position by making the Black Sea even more of a Soviet lake. Of its 2,000-odd miles of coast line, the U.S.S.R. now has about 45%, controls another 15% in Rumania and Bulgaria. The area west to Trabzon would give the U.S.S.R. some 8% more. With bases at the Straits, Russia would run the whole sea. Oil-conscious Russia also dislikes having an uncooperative Turkey right next to her great oil city of Batum and her new oil-rich satellite, Azerbaijan (see FOREIGN NEWS).

At Moscow Jimmy Byrnes and Ernie Bevin recognized the move as a typical Russian conference tactic. They recalled the sudden announcement of a Soviet-sponsored Austrian government during the San Francisco conference, and the Russian recognition of the Lublin Poles just before Yalta. The claim to Trabzon was also recognizable as another stathmos in the Russian march toward the Mediterranean.

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