STALIN CARRIES THE BALL

...We will doubtless always be welcome everywhere as purveyors of goods on a Lend-Lease basis...

...Indeed it was this high degree of political central-, ization that made it easier for the Soviet regime to be generous in the matter of making concessions to local national feeling in the matter of the nationality of high officials and the use of the language...

...Both the realities and the limitations of national autonomy under the Soviet system must be clearly understood if we are to form a reasonable judgment of the probable design and effects of what seems on paper a very broad extension of the liberties of the individual republics...

...Stalin is definitely carrying the ball, romping up and down the field for touchdowns, while Roosevelt and Churchill are stand-ing on the sidelines and probably regarding the very unilateral ac-tivities of their Soviet colleague with mixed feelings...

...While it was a general rule that the highest officials in the non-Russian republics should be Ukrainians, White Russians, or Georgians, as the case might be, not Russians, these local officials quickly disappeared from office and were often "liquidated" if they failed to toe the Party line...

...Should this dictatorship be maintained, the formal grant of wider autonomy would be of little practical value...

...I suspect that experience will show the maintenance of a high measure of political and economic centralization in the Soviet Union, especially during the hard years of reconstruction, and that independent trade deals with the individual republics will remain theoretically, rather than practically possible...

...It is not generally realized in America that "Russia" is not a correct name for the vast medley of peoples who live under the Soviet regime...

...They will be less than half of the population of a Soviet Union enlarged by the addition of some 20,000,000 Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, White Russians, Poles, and Moldavians...

...An attack on the Vatican in the official Soviet newspaper Izvestia may be reasonably interpreted as a veto on "governments in the future Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Southeastern Europe that could be regarded as under clerical influence...

...And the Soviet Government, renouncing the occasional Tsarist attempts to Russify the non-Russian peoples, has emphasized the principles of racial equality and cultural autonomy for the many peoples of the Soviet Union...

...Racial Equality Stressed Russians, regardless of the type of regime under which they live, are freer from race prejudice than Anglo-Saxon peoples, and this has been a considerable asset in Russian expansion in Asia and in Russian dealings with Oriental peoples...

...Russia's most famous poets, Pushkin and Lermontov, surrounded the Oriental tribesmen of the Caucasus with an aura of romance...

...Until 1939 there were 11 such constituent republics...

...There is every indication that there will be a considerable difference in the status of the territory which will be annexed outright (Eastern Poland, part of - Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina) and the position of the countries which will fall into the Soviet sphere of influence: what remains of Poland, Rumania, and Finland, together with Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, perhaps Greece, Hungary, and, Austria...

...Touchdowns For Stalin The annexed regions will be fully Sovietized, although even there the promise of local control of the armed forces and foreign policy may make Soviet annexation more palatable and will certainly be utilized as a talking point by Soviet apologists in other countries...

...Of all the recent Soviet political and diplomatic moves the most interesting and significant is, I think, the granting of control of foreign relations and military affairs to the 16 constituent Soviet Republics, Hitherto those functions had been reserved for the central Soviet Government...

...Stalin made it abundantly clear that he would stand no nonsense about the Atlantic Charter or self-determination of small nations in absorbing Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and drawing what boundaries he saw fit for Poland and Finland...

...In the lands which are not marked for immediate Sovietization, control of administration, of the armed forces, even of the details of foreign policy (subject to a general overriding supervision from Moscow) will remain in the hands of more or less freely elected local governments...

...Within the first few weeks of 1944 the Soviet Union made the front pages time after time with some new move designed to shape the future map of Europe...

...For the immediate present the change seems to fit in well with the Soviet intention to mark put a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe...

...The decentralizing effect of the decree is likely to be felt in a fairly distant future...

...Cultural autonomy in these non-Russian Republics has been genuine...

...And here the looser, more flexible, more decentralized set-up indicated in the new decree may be quite useful, for purposes of StaMn's foreign policy, during the transitional period when the Soviet dictator does not apparently propose to Sovietize these countries, but certainly intends to keep them closely within the orbit of Soviet control...

...The actual significance of this extension, I think, is inseparably bound up with the still unanswered question whether the one-party dictatorship will be maintained in full vigor after the end of the war...

...This has found practical expression in the creation of a federation of republics, entitled to equal representation, despite the great differences in population, in the Council of Nationalities, the second house of the Soviet parliament...

...Most Significant Of All Although the Soviet Union by early April had not entirely cleared its territory of the Germans, it had made the fullest and most obvious preparations for turning a great area of Eastern and Southeastern Europe into an exclusive sphere of influence...

...It will be interesting to see whether the Ukraine, for instance, could conclude a separate trade agreement with the United States, exchanging its manganese and high-grade anthracite coal for some of the Woolworth five and ten cent articles which the Soviet economy somehow never did get around to producing in adequate quantity and quality...

...Russians were a little over half of the population of the Soviet Union within its pre-1939 frontiers...

...Decentralization might then become a much more genuine reality...

...It is not in this summary fashion that constitutional changes which mean a good deal are usually adopted...

...Marshal Jan Christian Smuts' proposal for an association of the smaller democracies of Western Europe with the British Empire suggests a countermove to this prospective great expansion of Soviet power, prestige, and influence in Eastern and Southeastern Europe...

...Just how much political influence or equality of commercial opportunity the United States will enjoy in a Europe partitioned into Soviet and British spheres of influence is a question that might conceivably be engaging the attention of the men and institutions . responsible for the conduct of our foreign policy and of our foreign trade under wartime conditions...

...If, however, there is a relaxation or modification of the one-party dictatorship, a breath of life may be infused into what seems a rather empty shell at the present time...

...The Moldavian Republic included Bessarabia and a small area on the left bank of the Dniester with the nucleus of a Moldavian population, which had formerly possessed autonomous administrative rights within the general set-up of the Ukrainian Republic...

...After the Soviet expansion of 1940 five new republics, the Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Karelo-Fin-nish, and Moldavian, were set up in the newly occupied regions...

...The cabled accounts of how this change, so momentous" in outward appearance, was adopted by the Soviet parliament would convey the impression that there will be no great immediate change in the status of the republics...

...The marriage of a Russian officer in pre-revolution-ary times with the daughter of a tribal chieftain would have caused much less social scandal and dislocation than a similar union between a British officer in India and an Indian woman...

...Local languages have been used in schools, courts, public business, and newspapers...

...It was adopted unanimously, with practically no comment or discussion, and the delegates did not take the trouble to read the copies of the text of the legislation...

...It could be welcomed in other countries...

...We may find the welcome less cordial when our role as Santa Claus is played out...

...Meanwhile the whole development can be considered an illustration of how Stalin is running down the field for political and diplomatic touchdowns, while Roosevelt and Churchill look on from the sidelines...

...But there has been a high degree of political and economic centralization of power in Moscow...

...It will be easy to test out the reality of the "new freedom" granted to the Soviet Republics...

...The Unanswered Question While the right of secession is assured to the constituent republics under the Soviet Constitution, anyone who openly advocated secession would have been a candidate for swift and summary elimination by the ever vigilant political police...

...The Karelo-Finnish Republic was a combination of Karelia, a former autonomous republic within the framework of the Russian Republic, with the regions which were wrested by force from Finland in the war of 1939-1940...

...For there is always more danger of aggressive war from a highly centralized totalitarian state than from a loose federation...

...Stalin is shrewd and realistic enough to be willing to make haste slowly in imposing an all-out Soviet political and economic pattern on peoples with non-Russian background and traditions...

...Stalin, the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union, is himself a Georgian, a native of a picturesque mountainous country which has always been a sort of borderland between Europe and Asia...

...Foreign policy and military organization would certainly not remain outside the scope of this power...

...The Pravda jab at England, through the publication of a rumor rather unconvincingly credited to Cairo about British separate peace negotiations, was a new move in an old war of nerves between Stalin and Churchill...

...Unlimited power in the promulgation of decrees and the taking of swift administrative action would remain vested in Stalin and his group of associates in the Political Bureau in Moscow...

...Swift and decisive action was always employed against alleged cases of local nationalism which went counter to the general Party policy...