On with the Waltz

As a lifelong apologist for Soviet Russia, Nebraska-born Journalist Anna Louise Strong, 69. has not always found the party line easy to follow. On one stay in Russia, where she lived for years, she tried to join the Russian Communist Party, was turned down as a "sentimental bourgeois." The Russians, however, were tolerant enough to let her start the first English-language Soviet newspaper, the Moscow News. Then, in 1949, without explanation or warning, she was arrested in Moscow and charged with being "incriminated in espionage and subversive activities in the Soviet Union." Bewildered but still submissive to the will of the Kremlin, she was deported to the U.S.

"The accusations," she said, "were a terrible shock, and smashed my career." But her devotion never abated. Scarcely a month later she tried to put up $1,000 for the defense of eleven first-string Communist leaders on trial in Manhattan, only to have the party blast her "shabby promotion scheme." But last week she announced that the Communists were for giving her at last. In Washington she called a press conference, sponsored by the party-line Progressive Party, blithely reported that she had been entertained at an "excellent" lunch by Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Georgy N. Zarubin, who personally assured her that she was welcome back in Russia any time she could get a U.S. passport.

Why had the Russians changed their minds about her again? As in Tito's case, her fall from grace had all been a mis take, the Russians had explained, perpetrated by Soviet Police Chief Lavrenty Beria. Now that Beria was executed, the Russians were correcting their error. When a reporter asked if she feared being arrested again, she replied confidently: "From the amount of scandal it caused through the rest of the world, I don't think they will do that again." Was she angry about the arrest? Oh no, she answered. "Injustices occur everywhere." If the State Department grants her a passport, said Journalist Strong, she expects to visit Red China as well as Russia.

In China she hopes to renew her acquaint ance with Communist Premier Chou Enlai, whom she encountered in Yenan nine years ago at a dance. Recalled Anna Louise: "He's a very able and controlled type of person, and perfection in a waltz."

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