RUSSIA: Tug of Power

Brawny jack-tars of the Red Navy this week entered the harbor of Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, on a hulking grey-snouted cruiser and ten smaller Soviet warships. To statesmen this was grim business, the physical establishment of the Red Navy on a base dominating Estonia and commanding the Gulf of Finland in accordance with the treaty which Dictator Stalin recently forced Estonia to sign (TIME, Oct. 16), but for the sailors it was a lark, an adventure into the strange world of Capitalism.

They crowded to the rails, rubbernecking eagerly as the towers of the City Hall came into view, and then the long, squat shipbuilding yards and factories of Tallinn. Like Cook’s Tour lecturers, Communist political commissars on the Soviet warships pointed out the sights, reminded Red Navy tars that in Tallinn once lived that popular Old Bolshevik gaffer Mikhail Kalinin who today is frontman for secretive Joseph Stalin in the role of Soviet President. “Look there, comrades!” cried the political commissar, “Over there you can see where Mikhail Ivanovich once worked as a mechanic.”

The Red sailors grinned as Nazi steamers, busy in Tallinn harbor taking aboard Germans for evacuation to the Reich (see p. 21) , dipped their swastika flags three times in salute to the Soviet flotilla which replied with three dips of the hammer & sickle. Orders then cracked, Soviet gunners leaped to their positions, and a Red salute of 21 guns belched out over Tallinn, smartly returned by shore batteries.

As the ships dropped anchor, Estonian naval officers came aboard and Soviet captains offered them large glasses of smoking hot Russian tea. Immediate question was what to do with 300 Red Army troops who were now sailing into the harbor aboard the Soviet transport Luga. These were only the first instalment of 25,000 Soviet soldiers who are being brought to Estonia under the Treaty to garrison Stalin’s bases. The Estonians agreed to billet these troops in private homes. Since most Estonians speak or understand Russian, since every Red Army soldier is well drilled in Communist propaganda, this billeting seemed clearly a Soviet opening wedge. Moreover the Red Fleet brought quantities of Moscow newspapers, immediately put on sale in Tallinn kiosks, and curious Estonians promptly bought them up. Off the Soviet cruiser stepped ace Communist Propagandist Vsevolod Vishnevski, announcing that in Tallinn he will deliver a public lecture on “The Soviet Union.”

Reds in Riga. No. 2 on Stalin’s Baltic list is Latvia and this week its entire General Staff went down to the railway station in Riga to greet a Soviet Military Delegation which arrived to see about establishing Red Navy, Army and Air Force bases. Although these mean the rid of Latvian independence, the General Staff made the best of a sad occasion, banqueted their Soviet guests.

Wilno to Liths. No. 3 on the Stalin card is Lithuania, which has no naval harbor worth Russia’s taking. Reason: Hitler seized last spring the only important Lithuanian harbor, Memel. Nevertheless, last week in Moscow the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Juozas Urbsys signed with Soviet Premier Viacheslav Molotov a treaty reducing his country to the same status as Latvia and Estonia, but with two new wrinkles.

In the first place, the treaty does not state to what extent Russia is to have war bases in Lithuania, this being covered by a special protocol. In the second place Wilno, the onetime Lith capital, which the Soviet Union has just taken over from Poland, and which Poland seized in 1920 from Lithuania, was handed back by Red Robin Hood Stalin to Lithuania. In Kaunas, the Lithuanian capital, this led to a general breaking out of Lithuanian flags and wild rejoicing, especially by Jews. Nearly all Kaunas Jews have relatives in Wilno and in recent years they have been forbidden to see them except on one day a year when permitted to come to Wilno for a mass get-together in the Jewish Cemetery.

Talking Turkey. This week dispatches from Ankara, capital of Turkey, gave the first direct inkling of what Dictator Stalin and Premier Molotov have been trying to get in Moscow for the past three weeks from Turkish Foreign Minister Shokrü Saracoglu:1) Turkish recognition of the Russo-German partition of Poland; 2) Turkish benevolent neutrality—with closing of the Dardanelles to British and French warships—in case of partition of Rumania; 3) Turkish adherence to a so-called “Neutral Baltic Bloc” of states to be formed under Russo-German tutelage.

In Moscow secretive Mr. Saracoglu was reported on the verge of signing a compact of some sort, but Ankara insisted that he had said a flat “No” to Mr. Stalin’s chief proposals. In Bucharest, where it was rumored that Rumanian Foreign Minister Gafencu was about to be “invited” to Moscow for negotiations, his friends said he would resign rather than obey a threatening Stalin summons.

This week the Turkish press carried charges, denied from Moscow, that Red Army troops were massing on Russia’s Transcaucasian frontiers facing Turkey and Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and Turkish President Ismet Inönü, according to these sources, were counter-massing their troops to resist possible Soviet invasion and the Turkish Fleet was deployed in the Dardanelles. Said the authoritative Istanbul newsorgan Republique: “Feverish preparations” are being made at Smyrna and in the Dardanelles for anti-aircraft exercises.