The Man in Charge

There could be little doubt who was boss now. The Georgy Malenkov who, without any advance notice, stepped forward to address the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet last week, was plainly the man who was running the show. For an hour and a half in the Great Hall of the Big Kremlin Palace he laid down the law on everything from the price of milk to the prospects of peace. It was his first policy speech as chief of state.

The foreign diplomats and newspaper correspondents, looking down on the assembly from their semicircular loges, fastened most eagerly on one Malenkov statement: "The U.S. has no monopoly in the production of the hydrogen bomb" (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But that was not what pudgy Premier Malenkov devoted most of his speech to, nor what his hearers inside Russia seemed to get most satisfaction from (Communist papers the world over played down the H-bomb announcement). Still untried as leader, five months after Stalin's death, Malenkov sought to establish himself as the Consumer's Friend. He fairly crooned over prosperity to come, and "the solicitude of the Soviet state for the steadfast raising of the material and cultural level of the workers."

He promised a "drastic upsurge in the production of consumer goods" as "our main task." He pledged to increase the ''sales to the population" of cars, refrigerators, radio and TV sets. "We have every possibility," he said, in what was strange talk for a Communist, "to produce . . . smart clothes and elegant footwear." He did not blame Russian consumers for preferring the better finish and "exterior appearance" of foreign goods, "to the shame of the workers of industry." He spoke of the "justifiable reproaches of the workers" at the way the housing program is "still being carried out badly" and new houses are "carelessly finished off."

The state will spend 36% of its new budget on consumers (education, health, culture), he said, and by some Marxist magic which he did not elaborate, they actually would get back 127 billion rubles "more than they will contribute to it." He denounced the previous "incorrect attitude" towards the poor collective farmer, whose "private auxiliary farmstead" had been heavily taxed, and his private cows taken from him. All this would be changed.

"The urgent task lies in raising sharply in two or three years the population's supplies of ... meat and meat produce, fish and fish produce, butter, sugar, confectionery, textiles, garments, footwear, crockery, furniture and other cultural and household goods."

Targets on Time. But it was not all Georgy the candy-bringer. At last, he now could promise that light industry and the food industry could be developed at the same rate as heavy industry, but the party had been unswervingly right "in the struggle against the Trotskyites and the right-wing capitulators and traitors" who had fought the heavy industry program before. That, he said, would have meant "the doom of our revolution." He rattled off impressive-sounding (for Russia) production figures:

P: Steel: now 38 million tons a year, or twice that of 1940, 21 times that of 1924 (but far less than half U.S. production).

P: Coal: 70% more than 1940.

P: Chemicals: three times 1940.

"The targets of the Fifth Five-Year Plan are being successfully fulfilled," said he. As for the heavy arms burden, that would now take 20.8% of the budget, as against 23.6% in 1952 (western observers were thoroughly suspicious of these figures, knowing the opportunities the Communists have to conceal armament items in their budget).

"The Soviet Union intends to attack no one," said Georgy Malenkov. "Aggressive intentions are alien to it ... We stood and stand for a peaceful co-existence of two systems. We consider that there is no objective ground for a collision between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. . . . After a long period of increasing tension, a certain discharge in the international atmosphere has become palpable for the first time in the postwar years."

Having said all of this, Malenkov fell back on the familiar Soviet doubletalk about "certain American circles" who are "putting their stakes on war," and called NATO "the main threat to the cause of peace." He talked fondly of Iran, and wished to be "good neighborly" with Turkey; he was anticipating "normalization" of relations with Yugoslavia and Greece; he was anxious to supply bread, coal and business contracts to "the glorious Italian people"; he sympathized with Japanese attempts "to win back the independence of their country" from the U.S.

But though his speech was studded with phrases designed to show how friendly Russia intends to be, Western diplomats could find in it no hints that Russia desires a Big Four conference, or is prepared to make any concessions in Germany or Austria. Most significant of all was the absence of any wooing of Germany; conceivably the East German riots had convinced him that this was an infertile field. Instead, he concentrated on France, pointing to the Franco-Soviet alliance as the best way of "insuring European security against the common foe--the German militarists." That particular phrase--the German militarists--cropped up six times in his speech; he trusted that "the German people have drawn serious conclusions from their own history."

Cheap War. Coming after the sludgy prose of Stalin, Malenkov showed a talent for macabre wit and agile invective. He jeered at the U.S. role in Korea: "The aggressive interventionists . . . looking for a cheap war, a blitzkrieg . . . suffered enormous material and human losses and were forced to renounce their aggressive plans. The sheep went in with all their wool and came out clipped."

Then he lashed out at Washington. "The partisans of a tough policy . . . openly urge, as does Senator Wiley, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the U.S. should present to the Soviet Union a number of ultimatum demands, and that these should be supported by force . . . We shall reply to Senator Wiley . . . without going into details: 'You started dancing on the wrong foot, Cousin.' '

The well-drilled 1,300-odd deputies in the Supreme Soviet laughed mightily. The tone of future Soviet policy had been set: a strong, defiant, but not warlike attitude.

Beria on Trial. In short, Malenkov was running on a platform of peace and prosperity. It was obvious that Malenkov's policy was dictated partly by internal considerations and the stresses of cold war. A reference to deposed Vice Premier Lavrenty Beria gave a passing clue to a problem obsessing the Soviet leadership: "The fact that this rabid agent of imperialism has been so quickly unmasked, and rendered harmless in time, can in no way be regarded as evidence of the weakening of the Soviet Union." This week the case of Lavrenty Beria was formally turned over to the U.S.S.R. Supreme Court--indicating that a great purge trial was probably on the way.

All in all, it was a commanding performance by Georgy Malenkov: designed to reassure his own people, and to relax the nations around him without in fact reducing the Soviet armed threat to them. But there was another side to it: the size of the promised concessions showed how much ground the Communists had to make up with their own dissatisfied people.

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