CONFERENCES: Old Rock Bottom

(See Cover)

“Uncle Joe Stalin is all right—a straight shooter. It’s that doublecrossing little Molotov who causes all the trouble. He’s trying to cut Uncle Joe’s throat.”

Seldom had so much error been compressed into so few words, spoken by a high U.S. official in the hopeful, innocent spring of 1945. His was a view of U.S.Russian relations then widely current; it died hard as international cooperation deteriorated through a year of deadlock and turgid compromise. But by the strained and troubled summer of 1946, when Molotov at the Paris Peace Conference again held the center of the stage, the world was learning to think of him not in terms of personal caprice or ambition. Now it knew him as the tough and devoted servant of the toughest political reality on earth. Soviet foreign policy.

In the Groove. Molotov was only one of the 14-man Politburo (see chart) which made that policy, and every decision of the 14 could be changed or reversed by one man, Stalin. But in the field of foreign affairs Molotov was the chief executor of the Politburo’s will. Last week a diplomat who has spent more than a decade in close study of the Russians called Molotov “perhaps the best executor of policy in the world.”

Spectators and delegates in the Paris arena last week watched him at work and saw a trained soldier—not a robot, but a quick-witted, iron-nerved fighter, attentive to the word from his superior, who reacts in disciplined grooves of mental habit.

The climax of the Conference’s first fortnight came in a plenary session the day after Molotov had lost in the Rules Committee (actually the same people who make up the Conference) his two-day fight to tie the committee up with a rule requiring a two-thirds vote. France’s Georges Bidault, first chairman of the Conference, opened the plenary session: “We are now called upon to vote on our rules of procedure, adopted yesterday by a competent committee.” Then he blandly continued: “If there are no observations, will those delegates in favor of the adoption of these rules please raise their hands?”

Molotov’s No. 2 man, cynical, subtle Andrei Vishinsky, looked around worriedly for his boss. Molotov, who is rarely late for a meeting, was not in the room.* The British delegation and some others raised their voting hands; but U.S. delegate Jimmy Byrnes apparently assumed that no vote would be taken until Molotov made another speech. Byrnes and most of the other delegates did not vote. Bidault repeated his question.

Enter the Head Man. There was a stir in the back of the hall and Molotov bustled in with his brisk, bobbing swagger. His face was pink with anxiety and his tie (for once) was askew. He snapped his finger to attract the chair’s attention, and Bidault wearily said: “The Soviet delegation has an observation to make.” A reporter muttered: “Hold your hats, boys, here we go again.”

Then Molotov launched into a 50-minute speech rehashing his previous arguments. “It will lead to no good,” he said, “to set a majority against a minority.” And: “As a golden rule all conferences should attain unanimity.”

What he meant was that Russia was, and for a long time expected to be, in the minority. For such a situation, the golden rule of unanimity could be expressed another way: it was also the right of any one power to block agreement until it had what it wanted. Britain and the U.S. took the opposite view, partly from conviction, partly because of the practical consideration that they controlled the majority, and partly because the Conference’s decisions are not binding on the Big Four in any case.

The Importance of Details. But to Moscow and Molotov all things, including procedures for advisory decisions, are important. So Molotov fought on & on. Observers noted that his interpreter, the limp and weedy Pavlov, was still working over the latter parts of the speech as Molotov read the first part; they concluded that the address was based on new instructions received that morning from the Kremlin.

The Kremlin knew and Molotov knew that he would lose. On every specific issue the vote went against the Russians. But when it was all over the decisions taken by the Conference were well hedged about with Molotov’s qualifications. Nowhere in the record was there a clear-cut decision that a simple majority would control either the work of the Rules Committee or of the Conference itself.

That was what the Russians wanted, and that, through Molotov’s dogged obstinacy, was what they got. He had tediously built a parliamentary fence which might partly conceal the real obstructionist meaning of Russian policy if, on some future point in the Conference, Russia insists on a decision contrary to the majority’s will

Such attention to appearances and details rather than to true substance went to the very essence of the struggle in Paris. Speeches and votes were moves in a propaganda contest wherein the two sides wrestled for influence over the minds of the world’s peoples.

“Loose & Wicked.” The Conference was only eight days old when Secretary Byrnes made it perfectly clear that he understood the game’s nature; after categorically denying Molotov’s charges that the U.S. had hidden any selfish motives at the Conference, Byrnes said: “I challenge him to secure or permit publication in the Soviet Union of the statement I have now made.”

Molotov picked up the challenge.

“The Soviet Union,” said Molotov in 1933, “does not need to be studied. Everybody lead who one can read & write that can understand it.” This chart might lead one to belivethat Molotov was right. But in all countries there is a gap between the formal political setup and the way things are really run. In Russia the difference is greater than anywhere else because the Communist Party is a “shadow government” which runs the nominal one.

The Party. Its 6,000,000 members (up from 3,500,000 in 1940) elect the All-Union Party Congress, which last met in March 1939. That in turn elects the Central Committee (71 members, 68 nominees as second-string members), which “directs the Party” in intervals between Congresses. That in turn relinquishes its power to three party organs: 1) the Politburo, a group of 14 men (probably the most powerful in the world) who decide domestic and foreign policy and are officially listed in (Russian) alphabetical order; 2) the Orgburo, which runs the Party and whose first five members form 3 ) the Secretariat, which runs the Orgburo.

The State. The two chambers of the Supreme Soviet are chosen by the 102,000,000 voters in Russia’s 200,000,000 population. For a few days twice a year these two chambers meet, applaud and unanimously endorse. The rest of the time their functions are carried out by the Presidium of 33 with a chairman (Shvernik, who is sometimes called “President of the U.S.S.R.”) on the Politburo and two members (Malenkov, Popov) on the Secretariat. The “highest executive and administrative organ of state authority” is the Council of Ministers. Its chairman and eight vice chairmen all happen to be on the Party’s Politburo.

The Leader. Holding the reins of all power—Party, Government and Army—is the Vozhd (Leader), Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. The Army is under his direct command and the first of his six deputies, Army General Bulganin, is on the Politburo and Orgburo. The Party also keeps a vigilant eye on the military through the Political Administration of the Army.

Stalin’s personal secretariat is headed by Alexander Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev, who last month was given the military rank of general-major. Better than any other, his job illustrates how Russia really works. Foreigners who get in to see Stalin know Poskrebyshev as the bald, tubby little man who sits in the outer office. Russians who get that far are more respectful; they know that Stalin organized his personal secretariat during the struggle for Lenin’s succession. Ever since then it has been garnering all possible data on Communists who might rival Stalin. Communists in the inner circle call him otkormlennaya vosh (“gorged louse”) behind his back.

The Vozhd’s vosh is one reason why the flow of power, which according to the Soviet Constitution is supposed to run from bottom to top, really runs from top to bottom, thereby admitting (if anybody still doubted it) that the Russian press was completely controlled by the Russian Government. He said: “Let him give us his text. We will publish it.” Molotov kept the letter of his word, as he usually does. But a few days later the Russian press was back in its established practice of printing Molotov’s Conference statements at length while barely mentioning what representatives of the Western powers also spoke.

The day Byrnes’s rebuttal was published in Moscow, Molotov again attacked the U.S. and Britain and charged them with breaking Big Four agreements by “evasions” and an “about-face.” Byrnes retorted with the sharpest attack he had ever made on Molotov’s tactics:

“What loose and wicked talk this is. . .Repetition of an inaccurate statement will not make it accurate. . . . Those who have insisted most loudly on unanimity here have . . . insisted upon [it] to compel a majority to yield to a minority which was unwilling on its part to make the concessions necessary to make a common understanding possible.”

Point of Order. The Russians’ petty maneuvers and needless obstructions tried the patience of the delegates and of gentle Georges Bidault. Even when the Russians wanted to be cooperative, Bidault assumed they were obstructing again. Toward the end of one long debate came this revealing passage:

Vishinsky: “I ask for the floor on a point of order.”

Bidault: “I would like to speak first.”

Vishinsky: (Not translated from the Russian.)

Bidault: “I have the floor.”

Vishinsky: (Not translated from the Russian.)

Bidault: “I am obliged to insist on respect for the chair. . . .”

Vishinsky: (Not translated from the Russian.)

A voice from the left: “Translate it.”

Bidault: “There is no reason to translate what Mr. Vishinsky says, since he does not have the floor.” (The Conference translators speak only when the President gives them the signal.)

As Vishinsky continued in Russian, Bidault banged his gavel; when that had no effect he rang the chairman’s bell, which is used only to open and close sessions. Finally Vishinsky got the floor and said he had merely been attempting to withdraw a Russian objection. He added: “I am very sorry the President was disturbed, and particularly that he disturbed the august bell at his elbow.”

Replied Bidault: “I did not ring the bell. It was rung by article 62 of our rules of procedure.” The delegates, who had had little to laugh about, laughed.

This week, after the two weeks’ wrangle over procedures, the Conference got down to its business—the drafting of peace treaties with Germany’s satellites. On every issue confronting the Conference, the pattern would be determined by Russia’s effort to squeeze from victory in the war the last drop of political advantage in the postwar world. Whether Russia’s dynamic advance would continue or be halted peaceably depended largely on how much Molotov at Paris enlarged Moscow’s somewhat limited ability to win friends & influence peoples.

Life in a Cellar. Vyacheslav Mikhailovitch Scriabin was born 56 years ago, the son of a store clerk in Nolinsk, 480 miles northeast of Moscow. At 16, by adopting the Russian word Molot (for hammer), he became Molotov the Communist—in whose vigorous, resilient carcass was buried Scriabin the Man.

Molotov, one of the most important figures of the mid-20th Century, began his real life in a dark cellar in Kazan where he became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Bolshevik faction). At 19 he was exiled to the Arctic (30 years later he jailed the policeman who had arrested him). By 1912 he was helping Joseph Stalin to edit a small sheet called Pravda, and by 1917 he had risen to a dizzy revolutionary height where Lenin himself noticed Molotov; Lenin called him “the best file clerk in Russia.”

Few of the ex-revolutionaries who ran the U.S.S.R. in the early years of civil war and chaos were first-rate administrators. Molotov’s orderly mind soon put him near the top. At 31 he was made one of the three secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In 1922, when Stalin moved into the Secretariat with the title of Secretary-General to get control of the Party in his feud with Trotsky, he had Molotov as his assistant. Molotov’s position in the tangled Soviet hierarchy has been riveted solidly to Stalin’s ever since. In 1925 he became a full member of the potent Politburo. In 1930 Stalin made him premier of the U.S.S.R., a job he held through the decade of the Soviet Union’s greatest growth. The approach of war turned the Kremlin’s main attention from domestic to foreign affairs. None of the top-rank surviving Old Bolsheviks had specialized in foreign relations. Ex-Mensheviks Vishinsky, Maisky, Surits were not wholly trusted. So Molotov in 1939 was made Foreign Minister.

The Great Adventure. These are the bare external facts of the career of Molotov the Communist. Neglected by many of those who watch him at Paris is the drama—the Great Adventure of the Russian Revolution—which really molded his political character and now determines his every action on the international stage. Molotov threw in his lot with a little group who believed that by brains and ruthlessness and unity they could overthrow a society that other European revolutionaries watched with patient hope for the worst, but no determined plan of attack.

Molotov and his leaders swiftly rent the ties that bound Russia—Czar, Church, family, village, the fatherland. The Communist Party established its own ties and it held on through foreign intervention and civil war. Unlike other revolutions, its victory did not wash away as the victors relaxed. The victors never relaxed. Though the Trotskyites scream to the contrary, Russia today has not departed far from the magnificent evil of Lenin’s conception.

Unity or Else. The lesson of this great adventure was not lost on Molotov—especially that bloody part of the moral that relates to unity or “party discipline.” Europe’s radical parties in the time of Molotov’s youth created futility out of internal dissension. Among the Old Bolsheviks themselves unity has been maintained by terror. Of the Politburo as it existed in 1925 when Molotov was raised to it, three men—Stalin, Voroshilov and Molotov—are left. Tomsky committed suicide; Kalinin and Dzerzhinsky died; Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Rykov, Rudzutak, Petrovsky, Uglanov and Kamenev were all efficiently purged. In 1930 when he became Premier he told the secret of his survival in his inaugural speech:

“During the last years I had, as Secretary of the Central Committee, to learn the Bolshevik work under the direct guidance of Lenin’s best disciple, Comrade Stalin. I am proud of this. Until today I lad to work mainly as a Party worker. I declare to you, comrades, I am going to work in the Government also as a Party worker, as the agent of the Party’s will.”

The complete subservience in that speech explains why Molotov is the No. 2 man in Russia today (though that does lot necessarily mean he will be Stalin’s successor). Molotov heads no clique, associates himself with no policy other than Stalin’s; he even avoids what seminarians call “particular friendship” with his fellow Communist leaders. Associates in the Soviet Foreign Office refer to stubborn Molotov as “Kamenny Zad”—rock bottom—meaning he has a heavy anchor.

The Unimportance of Babushka. Last week a man who has dealt with Molotov in Moscow for years said he did not even know where the Soviet Foreign Minister slept. “It is taken for granted that he lives in the Kremlin, but he might as well live out of doors. All that is known is that the door opens and in walks Molotov.” The same source added: “After all Molotov’s personal life is about as important as the private life of a Jesuit. The important thing is that it is not important, that nobody knows anything about it.”

Molotov has a wife, the charming Polina Semenovna, who used to be head of the Soviet cosmetic trust and later became boss of all the fisheries in all the Russias. She was fired in 1939. He has a daughter, Svetlana, a pert 18-year-old, who won a prize for “distinguished success” at school and as a reward is now in Paris with her father.

When his daughter was four, she cried because he was leaving the apartment one morning. “But father has to go to work,” explained Madame Molotov. Sobbed Svetlana: “Father doesn’t work. He just walks in the Kremlin with Stalin.”

One of the few other stories about his home life concerns Madame Molotov’s aged mother, who took her Orthodox Jewish religious services so seriously that she was reluctant to pay a visit to the home of her goy son-in-law. She sent word in advance that she wanted to prepare her food in a room separate from the kitchen. When the Molotovs called for her she was ready with a crate of live chickens.

Madame Molotov assured her mother that the chickens were not necessary, that poultry slaughtered by kosher rules was available in Moscow. But Molotov humored the old lady, whom he always called Babushka (granny), and later she made her home with the Molotovs for years, helped bring up Svetlana.

There is nothing in Molotov’s life or in his looks to indicate that he would not be a kindly man about his home. There is also nothing in his record, or in that of any other Bolshevik, to indicate that he would fail to sacrifice Babushka, chickens and all, if they got in the way of the Party or the Party’s Leader.

Jimmy Byrnes, Molotov’s chief opponent, dislikes him personally. This may be a matter of regret to Jimmy, a friendly fellow who used to believe that all differences between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could be solved by better understanding. But it could make no difference whatever to Molotov, who would pursue Russia’s aims just as relentlessly if he looked upon Jimmy as his blood-brother.

Jimmy understands the gap between Russia and the West better now. When he listens to Molotov he knows he is hearing an echo of the Russian’s deep conviction that, by cunning, aggressiveness and unfaltering discipline, the Great Adventure can be protected and extended as far out from Moscow as the world will let it grow —or as the world can be forced to let it go.

*When Molotov was an earnest young socialist, a saying was current in the party: “If you come too early for a meeting, you waste your own time; if you come late, you waste the comrades’ time.”