Out of the Naphthalene

Muscovites may have been slightly surprised last week to see Marshal Semen Budenny canter across the cobbles of Red Square on a chestnut stallion. He took the place of honor on the 33rd anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik revolution.

Old (67) Cavalryman Budenny had been a hero of the civil war of 1918-21, but not much had been seen or heard of him since 1941 when the Nazis plowed through the armies under his command. Why had the Kremlin rulers decided to remove Budenny and his massive mustaches from naphthalene powder (Russian equivalent of mothballs)? Best guess: Budenny symbolized patriotism as distinguished from Communism, and the Kremlin was again whipping up the love of the fatherland which had so heroically stirred Russia in 1941-45. To the troops in Red Square Budenny roared:

"Vigilantly guard the peace, the borders of our country and the creative work of our people [against] . . . the bandit interventionists in Korea!" The evening before, in the Bolshoi Theater, a select audience of top-level comrades & commissars heard Politburocrat Nikolai Bulganin compare the war in Korea with the civil war in Russia when the Allies unsuccessfully intervened against the Bolsheviks. Accusing the U.S. of instigating World War III with the aim of destroying the Soviet Union, Bulganin keynoted: "The Soviet people are able to defend . . . their homeland . . . with guns in hand."

To point up the shift in the propaganda line, three top Kremlinites who are known more as Communists than as Russians absented themselves from the ceremonies. The absent: Stalin, Malenkov and Beria.

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