The Succession

From a knowledgeable source in Europe, who has a fairly high batting average for reliability, TIME last week received this report:

"On Dec. 6 Afanassy Constantinovich Abrikosov, Stalin's doctor and a top Russian specialist in heart disease, privately told Soviet leaders that Stalin's illness consisted of a worsening angina pectoris. The diagnosis had been established by a medical council at Sochi the day before.

"Last week Stalin called a meeting of the Politburo and Orgburo at Sochi, and said it was time to name his successors for all party and Government posts. Pursuing his idea to retire (taken in 1945), he wanted the mechanism of power transferred before his death to the form it will take when he is gone.*

"He proposed the following: Premier, Molotov; First Vice Premier, Beria; Foreign Minister, Mikoyan; First Secretary of the Party [Stalin's own original post of power], Zhdanov; Second Secretary, Malenkov; Minister of Defense, Voroshilov; First Vice Minister of Defense, Bu-denny; President of the Council of the Union, Andreyev; President of the Council of Nationalities, Bulganin; President of the Supreme U.S.S.R. Council, Shver-nik.

"Stalin's proposal was accepted unanimously, but for tactical reasons it was decided to postpone announcement until next spring."

Survival of the Fittest. This arrangement of the succession fits all known factors. Molotov has long been Stalin's chief administrative assistant, and with Beria in the next top post, the new Government can hope for the full support of the secret police. As for the Army, the other force on which the Kremlin has to reckon, the new marshals like Zhukov, who might have Bonapartist ambitions, are suspect. Voroshilov and Budenny, as old party warhorses, are politically much more reliable.

The Kremlin also wanted a Foreign Minister who is relatively well known abroad, especially in the U.S. Anastas Mikoyan, the slick little Armenian who long ran Soviet foreign trade, fills that bill. Eric Johnston called him "a Jesse Jones, a Donald Nelson and a Harry Hopkins rolled into one."

-This week the Chinese Ministry of the Interior gave the right-wing Nanking newspaper National Salvation Daily a week's suspension for hoping Stalin would "die soon so the world would get a bit of peace."

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