Soso's Lullaby

Soso Stalin (as his intimates call him, using the Georgian for Joe) was hip deep in sycophantic congratulations last week, the kind that dictators always expect but are shrewd enough never to overvalue. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of his election as general secretary of the Party. No other leader in the world has been in power as long. Back in April 1922, in Lenin's declining days, when Stalin was forging his way to the top, Harding was President of the U.S., Lloyd George was Prime Minister of Britain, Raymond Poincare Premier of France, and somebody named Luigi Facta ruled Italy--all of them long since dead.

That 30th anniversary was the most significant fact about last week's wary maneuverings between East & West. For Joseph Stalin in those 30 years has ruthlessly consolidated power in his own country, survived a catastrophic war, shown a genius for organization, an ability to raise up obedient lieutenants and to discard them at will, a talent for calculated and patient diplomacy and a flair for timing. Last week, at 72, the old pro was waging what editorial writers--using a habitual but meaningless phrase--called a new "peace offensive."

Actually, the old pro is trying to create an illusion of relaxed tensions. He got the impression over (for those still impressionable) with a minimum of expenditure. He telegraphed U.S. editors that war was not inevitable; he blandly charmed an Indian ambassador into believing that a little talk would settle anything. At Panmunjom, the Communist "newspapermen" confided in U.S. correspondents that a Korean truce was just around the corner--launching a flood of optimistic news stories.

These were but minor roundelays. The two most important Russian lullabies, arranged for full propaganda choir and orchestra, were these:

TRADE: the Communist world economic conference, in an atmosphere of glistening candelabras, ended in Moscow. The big news was the negotiation by private British traders and the Chinese Communists of a $56 million barter deal--subject to later approval by the British Board of Trade. Britain would exchange textiles, chemicals and metals in return for Chinese coal, tea, soybeans and peanut oil. Talk of textiles was meant to tantalize the depressed cotton towns of Lancashire, but the whole deal rang a little phony. Obviously what mattered to the Chinese was the other 65% of the deal--the chemicals and the metals. "Our advice to members at present," said the F.B.I. (Federation of British Industries, the British equivalent of the N.A.M.), "is to have nothing to do with it."

GERMANY: Russia sent the Western allies a new diplomatic note about Stalin's month-old proposal for a united, rearmed and "independent" Germany. Russia would not let the U.N. supervise free elections in all Germany, but had a counterproposal: let them be supervised by the Big Four who are responsible for carrying out the Potsdam Agreement (whose other clauses Stalin has already thrown to the winds). That would give Stalin, in effect, a veto capable of operating at every stage and a chance to rig the polls.

This Russian lullaby had the desired effect of lulling some Germans and raising the hopes of others. To counter it, Allied negotiators and Chancellor Adenauer's men worked far into the night at Bonn, with the Germans occasionally reaching into bulging briefcases for thick wurst sandwiches. They were hastening the West German peace treaty and the end of the occupation, hoping to have it all finished by next month, before the old pro in the Kremlin manages to convince too many people that the old Soso is just out to make everybody happy.

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