Standing beside the Tomb of Lenin, Joseph Stalin used to watch thousands upon thousands of bright-cheeked Red soldiers, male & female, marching smartly past Moscow's Red Square on May Day. No Russian or foreigner who ever saw the Red Army on these occasions failed to be impressed by its might.
To see the Red Army in a real test of might, last week Joseph Stalin would have had to go 35 miles north of Leningrad. If he went to Leningrad, if he watched any of his bright-cheeked soldiers floundering through the snow on the Karelian Isthmus, no word of it leaked out: Leningrad is the only one of the world's ten largest cities without a foreign correspondent. But one thing was certain: that to celebrate its 22nd anniversary last week the Red Army did not take Viipuri. If Joseph Stalin was disappointed, that was nothing to the chagrin of his best friend, Andrei Zhdanov.
In Leningrad last week Joseph Stalin's best friend could hear the rumble of distant artillery. He could see long trains loaded with men and supplies departing for the front, returning trains unloading their wounded. In spite of an absence of blackouts and air-raid alarms, Leningrad was a city at war — the only city in Russia where the Finnish war seemed real. For that war is not so much Russia's war as it is Leningrad's. Although Russia's army comes from as far south as the Caucasus and its material from the banks of the Volga, the direction of the campaign is entirely under the control of the Leningrad Military District, whose boss is Andrei Zhdanov.
Dear Friend No. 2. It is a Soviet tradition that the No. 2 Bolshevik shall run the No. 2 Russian city. The job used to be held by Stalin's "Dear Friend" Sergei Kirov, whose bumping-off in 1934 gave the world a new word: purge. To succeed Kirov, Stalin picked chubby little Andrei Alexandrovitch Zhdanov, who up to that time had been a fairly inconspicuous Soviet administrator. He had picked up the Order of Lenin for successfully organizing a motorcar industry in the Nizni-Novgorod district. By the time Kirov was shot, Andrei Zhdanov, 38, had become a member of the Party's Central Committee and he had the ear of Stalin. No sooner had Stalin made him Party secretary of Leningrad than he proved his importance by getting shot in the chest by a plotter.
Hitler-mustached Zhdanov admires German efficiency, German methods. As long ago as 1936 he made an impassioned speech before the All-Union Congress of the Soviets urging annexation of the Baltic States and Finland. Last summer it was Zhdanov who paved the way for agreement with Germany. As Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission for Foreign Affairs, he has an influence in foreign affairs greater than that of Molotov.
As Russia extends her hegemony around the Baltic and reaches back toward maritime power, Zhdanov gains in prestige. For Leningrad is Russia's No. 1 seaport—in area, the world's second largest—and headquarters of the Red Fleet. And if Russia's power spreads through Scandinavia to the Atlantic, Zhdanov will be the man who wields it.