RUSSIA: Plans for Asia

The four-motored plane from Chungking came down at Moscow’s airport. China’s Premier T. V. Soong was the first to alight. He wore a blue suit, but not his horn-rimmed spectacles. Russia’s Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov greeted him. The foreign colony stood by, including U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. A guard of honor snapped to attention. A band played the national anthems of China and Russia.

Immediately T. V. plunged into a round of diplomatic activity which might well mark a new era in Chinese-Russian relations. Within his first four days in Moscow, China’s indefatigable Premier saw Generalissimo Stalin twice — with “most gratifying” results, said well-informed sources. He conferred three times with Ambassador Harriman. He was wined & dined by Molotov. He went to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. The audience claqued thunderously for his benefit.

No communiques were issued, but high diplomatic sources said that T. V. and the Kremlin were discussing virtually all issues in which Moscow and Chungking have common concern. Speculation ranged over these possibilities:

¶The Chinese and Russians might be negotiating a pact. It might mean Russian military aid for China in its fight against Japan. It might mean economic assistance.

¶In return for such help, Chungking might grant Moscow a warm-water naval base (presumably Port Arthur) and railway rights in Manchuria, thus restoring to Soviet Russia the privileges Japan had taken from her in 1905 and 1933.

¶Moscow might press the Chinese Communists to come to an agreement with the Chungking Government, thus scotching China’s dangerous internal conflict.

¶Moscow might be proposing a territorial deal. In return for concessions in Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and Korea, the Russians might support a Chinese claim in French Indo-China.

Enter a Mongol. On the fifth day of T. V.’s mission another visitor suddenly arrived from the East: Marshal Kharloin Choibalsan, Premier of the Mongolian People’s Republic (Outer Mongolia), the vast, semiarid, herd-rich heartland of Central Asia. Like T. V., Marshal Choibalsan deplaned at the central airport. Like T. V., he was greeted by Molotov, a guard of honor and national music. Like T. V., he conferred with Stalin.

No communiqué disclosed the reason for Premier Choibalsan’s appearance. The non-Soviet world knew even less about him than about his Soviet-dominated country. But it knew that he wears the Order of Lenin, for “conspicuous services in organizing material aid to the Red Army in the Mongolian People’s Republic,” and that in any discussion of Chinese-Russian relations, Marshal Choibalsan’s nation will play an important part.