RUSSIA: Precedents and Parades

Having made his grab of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania legal if not altogether convincing by a “Vote Da!” plebiscite, Joseph Stalin last week continued to nibble at the North. He persuaded Finland to yield a strategic, half-mile-wide strip of land in the Jääski region, north of Viipuri, and promised to return a similar patch elsewhere. More important, he exacted the right to transport military material across Finland. For the time being, this right was to be exercised only in fortifying the Russian treaty port of Hanko; but Finns—and Swedes as well—knew that a fateful precedent had been set.

By now Russia, that Baltic power, was ready to flex her muscles. OnNational Navy Day there were demonstrations, maneuvers, parades on all Russia’s seas. People’s Commissar for Navy Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsovdeclared that 168 new Russian “warships”—many of which may be mosquito torpedo boats, which the Russians love—would be launched this year; and newspapers boasted that soon the Red Navy would be second to none other.