Ten Russians who have rendered such supreme services to the Soviet Government as to win its highest decorations, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star, received their beribboned medals from the Soviet Central Executive Committee last week. What had these heroes done? Who were they? As to nine of the ten, Moscow correspondents could find out absolutely nothing, not even where they live or what may be their jobs. The only hero definitely spotted was Leonid Mikhailovich Zakovsky, and everyone in Russia knows that little more than two years ago the Secret Police of Leningrad were put in his charge after the assassination of Dictator Stalin's "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov (TIME, Dec. 10, 1934 et seq.). In Moscow this week most people were willing to bet that the other nine heroes have also distinguished themselves by deeds the nature of which will be kept quiet so long as the Secret Police can manage it.
Joseph Stalin last week was in such genial spirits that, when publicly welcoming the Soviet North Pole Expedition home to Moscow, he kissed its chief, heavily bearded Professor Otto Schmidt, full on the mouth. Also back in Moscow last week from their Coronation trip to England were U. S. Ambassador and Mrs. Joseph E. Davies, he bent on making an immediate tour of the Ukraine. As if most of the Soviet Union were not weltering in a lather of treason trials, executions and suicides of Big Reds, and purges from the Communist Party which its news-organs reported under screamers daily (TIME, June 28 et ante), life went on at Moscow in most of its accustomed grooves. The story about What Ails Russia was so big that most correspondents in Russia completely gagged on it last week, sent few dispatches. Suddenly New York Times Correspondent Harold Denny, whose Moscow by-line has for many weeks shone alone while famed Walter Duranty visited the U. S., started sending reams of matter which the Pulitzer Prize Committee can hardly overlook and which the Times printed day after day with the proud notation "Uncensored."
Denny details which the delighted Times picked as most meriting cogitation: "The anxiety that broods over Moscow was painfully palpable the other night at a diplomatic reception. Dozens of faces of Russians we were accustomed to seeing were missing. Everyone was watching for confirmation or proof of the falsity of the rumors that this or that high official who ordinarily would have been there had been arrested. And many so reported did not come. 'It is like being in the midst of a bubonic plague,' said a foreign woman guest from the Far East, 'watching to see who have been stricken.'
"If one accepts only what is authoritatively published here and only what has admittedly happened, two conclusions suggest themselves—either the Government and the Communist Party leadership, which in reality are identical, have staged a frame-up on a gigantic scale or there exists a situation of discontent, unrest and active disloyalty in the Stalin regime amounting almost, if not fully, to a counterrevolution. . . .