How To Wait

(See Cover)

Absolute dictatorship the world has never seen, will never see. Every tyrant is a slave to the inescapable calculus of power: how can I keep them bent to my will? Last week when the Kremlin extended its new conciliatory foreign policy line (see INTERNATIONAL), it was recognizing (as it often had before) that the blindfolded, voiceless 193,000,000 inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. were still a major factor in determining Russia's course.

In Lucius Boomer's spacious Waldorf-Astoria apartment Molotov compromised on Trieste and conceded the principle of free trade on the Danube. That was intimately related to such apparently unrelated domestic problems as the Russian housing shortage (the world's worst) which confines most Russians to dwelling space of less than 7 by 7 ft. each.

At Lake Success, Molotov told U.N. that Russia not only favored disarmament but was willing to accept (subject, of course, to the veto) inspection and international control of disarmament enforcement. That was related to such phenomena as the fact that inflation, a symptom of production shortages, is mounting in Russia. (In September a single food price jump trebled the cost of eating.)

In Germany the Red Army's heavy hand was slackening. That was related, among many other things, to the fact that millions of Russians face their hungriest winter, one in which thousands may die in the fields and streets.

What Lenin Thought. In the long view, Russia's internal distress would not contribute to world amity. But in the immediate context of 1946, it had the effect of enforcing on the Russian leaders conformity with James F. Byrnes's painfully developed policy of resisting Russian expansion by "patience and firmness." Byrnes had ended the easy growth of Russia's foreign influence; before the Kremlin was ready for the really strenuous efforts required to buck the Byrnes line, it had to turn its attention homeward, where chubby Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, Stalin's deputy in the party, is now the chief executor of the Politburo's intensified domestic policy. The new Soviet line was a perfect example of Lenin's way of thinking about foreign policy, as explained by the Soviet theoretician, M. Leonov:

"He [Lenin], however, doesn't limit himself to the establishment of unity and of connection between internal and external policies. He points out that internal policy is the basis of external policy."

In its turn, the internal policy would be shaped by the internal facts. Most important of Russia's present domestic policies was a new Five-Year Plan whose details make interesting reading for anyone trying to figure out how Russia will behave on the world stage in the next few years. By 1950, if the present plan is completely fulfilled, each Russian will still have less sugar than in 1913, less beef and mutton than in 1929, less soap and oil than in 1937, less pork than in 1938, less living space, shoes & stockings than in 1940.

What the Clowns Think. Obviously, the people of Russia, who are remarkably like people everywhere, would rather improve this sorry picture than carry the Marxist banner to distant lands. Stalin & Co., in spite of their enormous foreign and military commitments, have been trying desperately since the war ended to ease the shortages. They have had some success. A walk around Moscow last week showed Russians better dressed than last year, more toys and cooking utensils in shop windows and, in some sections, lights gleaming in rooms which last year were only hollow shells of construction interrupted by the war or bombed-out wrecks gutted by war.

Nevertheless, millions of Russians who have discovered, via the Red Army abroad, that almost all other nations live better than they do grumble at the slow rate of improvement. In a police state, grumbles are harder to hear--and far more important--than in a free country. Dissatisfaction creeps out in art, literature, and even in the circus. Two samples from last week's Moscow scene:

At a puppet show a chorus of 30 puppets sang:

We have a wonderful, wonderful subway

But just try to get inside. At a circus, a clown named "Karandash" (pencil) kept dashing into the ring with a little white hen, which escaped in a flutter of feathers. "Why do you beat your hen?" asked the ringmaster. Answers Karandash: "Because she only gives me powdered eggs."

-Left to right: Marshal S. M. Budenny; Colonel General K. A. Vershinin; Marshal I. S. Konev; Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky, Chief of Staff; Marshal L. A. Govorov; N. A. Bulganin, Deputy War Minister; Zhdanov; N. A. Voznesensky, Chairman of State Planning Commission; N. M. Shvernik, Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet; G. M. Popov, Party Secretary; A. N. Kosygin, Vice Chairman of Council of Ministers; M. F. Shkiryatov, Member of Presidium of Supreme Soviet; N. S. Patolichev, Party Secretary; A. V. Khrulev, Vice Minister of Armed Forces; A. A. Kuznetsov, Party Secretary.

The Art Council of Soviet State Circuses had criticized the "unsatisfactory nature" of the jokes and organized a contest to improve them. "Can it be," asked the London Times, "that the clowns have been too funny?"

The People's Consciousness. Grumbles can be handled in two ways; putting a hand over the grumbler's mouth, or trying to remove the cause of the grumbling. Stalin--through Zhdanov--is trying both methods.

In the last 3 1/2 months Zhdanov has led the pack in the literary-artistic purge directed against all "cultural deviationists" from Clown Karandash to Producer Sergei Eisenstein. He also signed (for the party, with Stalin signing for the Government) the highly significant agricultural decree aimed against the mass, illegal reconversion of collective farms into private holdings. To emphasize the importance of Zhdanov's twin tasks Stalin, ailing at Sochi on the Black Sea, let Zhdanov have the place of honor on Lenin's tomb (see cut) at the Nov. 7 celebration of the 1917 revolution. (A typical and revealing excerpt from Zhdanov's speech the night before: "It is precisely those remnants of capitalism in the people's consciousness we must still overcome and extirpate.")

Noting Zhdanov's new duties and honors, the handicappers who try to figure who will win the race as Stalin's successor now believe that Zhdanov is back in form, after a severe strain to his reputation in the Finnish war; they rate Zhdanov just after Molotov, which is very good going for a man who 15 years ago was so little known in Communist politics that he did not even get his name in the Soviet Encyclopedia.

Unlike Stalin (ne Dyugashvili), Trotsky (ne Bronstein) and Molotov (ne Scriabin), Zhdanov still has the name he was born with. Sharing a common root with the Russian verb zhdat, to wait or to expect, it is a good name for a man who was to ride quietly up the party escalator until he could expect (or at least hope for) succession to the biggest political job on earth. His father was a school inspector in Tver (now Kalinin), about 100 miles northwest of Moscow. Zhdanov had a better education (including German and French) than any present member of the Politburo. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 when he was 19, and had an undistinguished career as an organizer until, after years of fidelity to Stalin, his great chance came in 1934.

When Stalin's closest friend ("Dear Sergei") Kirov was assassinated, Zhdanov got his job as party boss of Leningrad. Because Westernized, fractious Leningrad was the hottest spot, the post implied absolute trust in Zhdanov's loyalty and ability, and was regarded as the party's No. 2 job.

Warning to Optimists. In 1939 he identified himself with the party's "liberal" wing by an extraordinary speech which marked the close of the Great Purge begun in 1934. He said:

"Mass purges . . . are attended by many mistakes, primarily by the infringement of the Leninist principle of an individual approach to people. . . . There were numerous cases of unwarranted expulsions from the party, and of hostile elements who had wormed their way into the party taking advantage of the purges to persecute and ruin honest people. . . .

"We must get an iron broom and sweep our party house clean of this garbage. The refusal to be worried about human beings ... is a malady which still ails a good many leaders of our party organizations. ... If you scratch these pseudo-moralists, you will find plenty of hypocrites and humbugs among them. You'll never cook your porridge with a lot of gravediggers like this. . . ."

But, as a warning to those who put their faith in "liberal" elements in Communism, Zhdanov made another statement in 1939. Two months before the Hitler-Stalin pact, Zhdanov published an article in Pravda giving it as his "personal opinion" (Red leaders usually use the protective "we") that Britain and France were not dealing honestly with the U.S.S.R. He noted contemptuously that: "My friends do not agree. They still think that when commencing the negotiations on a pact for mutual assistance with the U.S.S.R., the British and French Governments had serious intentions to create a powerful barrier against aggression in Europe."

Mistake. In a few months Zhdanov turned his distrust in another direction. As boss of Leningrad, he was acutely conscious of a danger he saw from nearby Finland. His fear led him into the one great boner of his career: he persuaded Stalin that the Finns would collapse easily. After the courageous Finnish defense ended that delusion, Stalin made a somber crack to Zhdanov: "So things are going normally on the Finnish front, huh? Well, when the Finns get to Bologoe [halfway between Moscow and Leningrad], let me know."

Zhdanov's Finnish disgrace was a delight to his rival Molotov. One anecdote of the period tells how Zhdanov was talking to Stalin in the latter's office in the Kremlin. The phone rang. It was Molotov. Stalin talked to him for some five minutes, but Stalin's part of the conversation consisted in saying "yes, yes, yes" while Zhdanov sweated visibly. Finally, just before he hung up, Stalin said "no, no." Stalin glanced up at Zhdanov, who was looking relieved, and said: "Don't be too happy. He just asked me whether I was having a satisfactory conference with you."

When Stalin celebrated his 60th birthday on Dec. 21, 1939, every member of the Politburo but Zhdanov had some variation of the congratulatory tribute to "our father and teacher, our bright sun, hope and glory of peoples" printed in all Russian newspapers. Zhdanov was not even allowed at the party.

Comeback. Zhdanov came back to Stalin's favor the hard way. As the Germans approached Leningrad there was no demoralization in the city. Zhdanov, Marshal Klimenty Voroshilov and Leningrad's "Mayor" Peter Popkov turned the tide with a ringing declaration which sent 400,000 Leningraders to the fortifications. Before the 29-month siege ended in 1944, one of the great stories of human endurance had been written.

Some 1,300,000, mostly civilians, had died of hunger, cold and shell fire in the city. When in 1942 a relief road was opened to Leningrad across frozen Lake Ladoga, Zhdanov, iron-willed, withheld from the people the food it carried, ordered it stocked in the reserve. In Soviet propaganda the story of Leningrad has been overshadowed by Stalingrad, because the latter marked the beginning of the Red Army offensive. But if the Kremlin should decide (in order to underline Russia's strength against an enemy it can't reach) to stress the U.S.S.R.'s purely defensive power, the propaganda story will be Leningrad, and Zhdanov its hero.

Hyvaeae Paeivaeae. After the war, in token that he had been forgiven for the Finnish fiasco, Zhdanov was made head of the Finnish Control Commission. Finns expected the worst, but Zhdanov is too hardheaded to bear a grudge. At Helsinki's airport a glum honor guard of Finns was lined up to meet him. Said Zhdanov in Finnish, "Hyvaeae paeivaeae pojat" (Hello, boys). The soldiers stood stonily for a long Finnish moment, then grinned back and said, almost in chorus: "Hyvaeae paeivaeae Kenraali" (Hello, General).

That's the way Zhdanov ran the Russian mission to beaten Finland. No rough stuff, no looting, not much interference in Finnish affairs. Today Finland and Czechoslovakia are the only countries on Russia's European border where the Red reputation has improved since V-E day.

Of Souls & Lumber. To his next assignment, the cultural purge, Zhdanov brought a pretension to cultural inclinations, of a sort; he plays the piano indifferently well, and reads modern novels, but many of them are detective stories. In fact it might be said that Zhdanov's artistic approach is that of a detective who sees a crime in any work that does not positively advance Communist doctrine. Zhdanov put it this way recently: "If an industry's production is unsatisfactory, or a program for the satisfaction of the consumer has not been fulfilled, or if not enough lumber has been stored away --it's quite normal if the guilty are reprimanded; but if an unsatisfactory education of human minds and souls goes on, then we tolerate it. . . ."

Zhdanov sees his job as making sure that Soviet organs will not tolerate artists who, consciously or unconsciously, either by what they say or what they omit, give expression to the people's discontent. When Zhdanov attacks the lyric poetess Anna Akhmatova as "a fornicatrix and nun, who mixes fornication with prayer," the whole Soviet press gets the fairly obvious idea: Zhdanov doesn't like the way she writes. Critics, press (but not necessarily the public) follow Zhdanov's verbal sawmill through Soviet arts & letters while he cuts cultural props to shore up the Five-Year Plan's inadequacies.

Dewberries & Tea. In spite of these peculiarly totalitarian ideas, Zhdanov gets along well with the few Westerners he has met. They find him a plump, well-manicured, neatly dressed little (5 ft. 6 in.) man with just the faintest touch of perfume about him and a fondness for white wine and dewberry cordial. He has nice manners, except (the British note) that his tea-drinking is noisy. Such observations have led at least one aristocratic key British diplomat into the perilous assumption that the rude Communists will be safe international playmates when they learn "the rules of the game" better.

Zhdanov has the usual Politburo allotment of Kremlin apartment, suburban dacha and Caucasus villa. With his wife, widowed daughter and son, he favors the apartment. Even in the coldest Moscow winter, Zhdanov (unlike most Russians) sleeps with the window open and tries vainly to keep his weight down by starting the day with 15 minutes of calisthenics. His favorite recreation is gorodki, a mixture of bowling and shuffleboard, which Lenin also liked. Kremlin dwellers have their own gorodki club; in its recent tournament Zhdanov placed second to Stalin's chauffeur, Khvostov.

The Gang. On the official Politburo list (more important than gorodki scores) Zhdanov now stands fourth--after Stalin, Molotov and the hated Lavrenty Beria, head of the secret police. Of those below Zhdanov, his most serious rival is Georgi Malenkov, 44, a brilliant backstairs intriguer. Others are Anastas Mikoyan, the Armenian foreign trade chief, who enjoys Stalin's personal favor but has little party following, and a dark horse, Nikolai Bulganin, the political boss of the Army. Molotov, Beria and Malenkov are loosely grouped as the reactionary anti-Westerners. But as long as Stalin lives the whole gang will stick together, and Zhdanov, who was once against mass purges, will willingly follow the Politburo's cultural purge wherever it leads him.

The Chances. Can the Russian people ultimately break through the straitjacket which these men so carefully, so busily stitch for them? Last week brought signs that the Kremlin was still able to tend to the people's minimum needs. So long as it does, the 193,000,000 Russians are most unlikely to revolt. As to the long future, the American who knows Soviet Russia best has this to say:

"The strength of the Kremlin lies largely in the fact that it knows how to wait; the strength of the Russian people lies in the fact that they know how to wait longer."

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