TURKEY: Soviet Cinderellas

Back in Moscow with elegant collections of capitalist evening gowns last week were the wives of the three Soviet delegates who went to Ankara for the tenth birthday of the Turkish Republic (TIME, Nov. 6).

Turks called them good-humoredly “Soviet Cinderellas.” recalled that they were all dressed in dark, nondescript suits of no recognizable fashion when they landed at Istanbul with their eminent Soviet husbands, chubby War Commissar Klimentiy (“Klim”) Voroshilov, ferocious-whiskered Cavalry General Budenny and jovial Commissar of Education Bubnov.

Waiting at the dock was svelte, Paris-gowned Mme Suritz, spouse of the Soviet Ambassador to Turkey. She had wired to Moscow well in advance for the more important measurements of the Soviet Cinderellas. ordered ball gowns likely to please Turkish Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha, had an expert modiste on hand in Istanbul to fit them. Used to cotton and worse, the Communist wives reveled in silk. “On my word.” said a gallant Turkish Foreign Office official last week, “when the great ballroom of the Sultans in Dolmabagche Palace was filled with 3,000 guests in honor of Soviet Russia no ladies were better dressed than those from Moscow, though naturally their dancing was imperfect.”