"The Little Blockade"

On a railroad siding, General Vladimir Petrov, chief of Russian rail transportation in Berlin, sweated in his greatcoat as he directed other Russian officers who hooked engines to stalled freight cars. In its second week, the railroad workers' strike against their Communist bosses had effectively tied up Berlin rail transport.

The strikers offered to man certain switch-boxes from the Western zones into Berlin's Western sectors, while still blocking Soviet trains bound for the Russian sector. The Russians indignantly refused. Their German stooges said they were ready to pay 60% of the workers' wages in West marks. The strikers said no. They demanded all their pay in West marks--the demand which had precipitated, the strike. When Russian violence failed, it looked as if the strike might go on for a while. U.S. and British planes stepped up their airlift loads to 8,000 tons a day. Berliners called the rail strike "the little blockade."

Said one striker: "The Communists say that we are gangsters, but they've been shooting and I've been picketing. It's time they learned the difference."

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