RUSSIA: Jubilee

Behind the pillared portico of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, built by an imperial czar, the imperial commissars held jubilee last week on the 26th anniversary of holy Lenin’s death. Present for the annual memorial address were the new Red masters of China, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who had been in Moscow since Dec. 16, and his Premier and Foreign Minister Chou Enlai, who had just arrived.

The orator of the day, Pravda Editor P. N. Pospelov, gloated:

“The great victory of the Chinese people already has proved that imperialism is incapable of suppressing the forces of the people … In the camp of imperialism and the warmongers there is a frenzy because it feels its internal weakness and historic doom.”

By week’s end no communiqué had been issued on the outcome of five weeks of dickering between the Russian and Chinese commissars.