O, Ekaterina

In the Soviet Union women have the same status as men, and they may be seen laboring in road gangs as well as on assembly lines. But sex equality does not extend up the ladder of achievement. "One cannot overlook the fact," First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev told the recent 20th Congress of the Communist Party, "that in a number of party and local government organizations women are seldom promoted to leading posts." Last week Khrushchev himself promoted Ekaterina Furtseva to be an alternate member of the Party Presidium (which succeeded the old Politburo), the highest post ever held by a woman in the Soviet Union.

In the early days of Bolshevism, leading women Communists tended to be of two kinds: either freewheeling intellectuals like the handsome and dashing Aleksandra Kollantay, sometime U.S.S.R. ambassador, who advocated free speech and practiced free love, or professional revolutionaries like somber, spectacled Rozalia Zemliachka, the civil war liquidator of the Crimea, and the white-haired oldtime Chekist Elena Stasova. Although Stalin liquidated thousands of male members of the party apparatus in the great 1937 purges, he left these and other top women alone. But Stalin did not trust old revolutionaries, men or women.

Carper's Progress. Ekaterina Furtseva is the kind of woman functionary that Communist Stalin set out to create when he refashioned the party after the purges. A minor party worker in Kursk and the Crimea, she was called to Moscow and sent to the Institute of Chemical Technology. She graduated in 1941 as a chemical engineer. But instead of practicing her profession, she and her technical knowledge were used to prompt and police other workers. As she came up through the Moscow party secretariat, her speeches rang with carping phrases: "The Kirov dynamo factory is seriously lagging behind," or a local party committee "does not exercise influence on the march towards the fulfillment of the thematical plan of scientific research." She told the Physics Institute: "How can there be any talk of criticism and self-criticism when . . . 102 of the personnel are related or working under the supervision of relatives?" Stalin liked Comrade Ekaterina enough to let her make a speech at the 19th Party Congress (1952).

Ekaterina Furtseva has not changed her line, but like many another top Communist, she shows signs of being more relaxed since the death of her old patron.

At 46 she wears her hair in a severe hairdo and is often seen in a dark suit with white blouse and necktie. But last November she appeared at a big party affair in a slashing evening dress, danced with party bigwigs until 2 a.m. Moscow scuttlebutt says Ekaterina is now a sports car buff, drives a speedy ZIS 112. She is also said to be married to the Soviet Ambassador to Yugoslavia and to have two children, but in Russia, where no such private details are ever recorded in the public press, neither fact is readily verifiable.

Friend Nikita. One of the things that has clearly helped Ninotchka Ekaterina to power is the support of bulletheaded Nikita Khrushchev. She went along with Khrushchev on his junkets to Czechoslovakia and Red China (1954). At the May Day celebrations last year, Khrushchev spotted her standing among the crowd of party officials in Red Square and, before the onlooking thousands, came trotting down from Lenin's tomb to greet her and lead her to a place beside the great. Life has not been quite the same for Ekaterina since.

Her new importance in the Soviet world is indicated by the fact that she shares her promotion as an alternate to the Party Presidium with Red army Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Pravda Editor Dmitry Shepilov (often rumored to be Molotov's eventual successor as Foreign Minister), aging Nikolai Shvernik, longtime trade unions boss, and two party leaders from the critical Virgin Land areas, where a massive effort is being made to boost agricultural production. The whole package bears the Khrushchev stamp.

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