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> Dark, swarthy, forceful Andrei Zhdanov is the Leningrad party boss, a member of the Soviet Union's omnipotent nine-man Politburo, an intimate friend of Stalin. Before the war, he urged seizure of eastern Finland and the Baltic States. When war came, he helped to pull Leningrad through the 515 terrible days of siege. A priest's son, he fought with valor in World War I, helped to break up the Czarist Army with slogans of peace, bread and land, slowly climbed up the ladder of party hierarchy. Soapbox-oratory has given him a chronic hoarseness. He is a tremendously able organizer, an articulate speaker, a student of foreign affairs.
> Handsome, dark-eyed Andrei Andreyev, who looks something like Eden, heads the U.S.S.R.'s Parliament, the Supreme Soviet. A peasant's son, he became a munitions worker, joined the Bolsheviks during World War I. His first key post was as head of the party's Control Commission, which keeps the Reds on their toes, purges those who do not conform. Andreyev's mind is intelligent and subtle. Close to Stalin, he is definitely one of Russia's up-&-coming men.
Stalin's Voice. These men proclaim no policy on their own. Their job is to advise Stalin, who makes the final decision. But these men are of the mold which produced Stalin himself, and their thought patterns are his. Once Stalin approves of a policy, it is announced in Foreign Commissar Molotov's dull, stammering monotone.
Nicolai Lenin, his good friend, described Molotov as "Russia's best filing clerk." The epithet was unfair. True, Molotov is colorless, pedantic, phenomenally hardworking. His mind likes order, method, efficiency, and all that passes through it is filed neatly in mental pigeonholes. But he is no dullard. A clear thinker, he keeps his feet on a solid foundation of history, philosophy and economics. Like most Soviet leaders, he quotes from Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Plekhanov—and Stalin—at the drop of a gavel.
Leon Trotsky, his bitter enemy, called him "a social climber." The epithet was untrue. Molotov is unassuming. He has had power for a quarter of a century. For half of this time, he has been Stalin's Man Friday, which is as high as a man can climb in Russia. Molotov has not let the power go to his head.
He is reserved to the point of shyness. With strangers he is wary and reticent. With men he knows, he is warm and voluble. But he is still more voluble on the platform: two-hour speeches from him are not rare. His addresses are clear, often viciously ironic, but never so polished as the oratory of Roosevelt or Churchill. Some of the speeches he delivered in 1939-41 Molotov would probably just as soon forget.
In appearance Molotov is Teddy Roosevelt minus "T.R.'s" color. He is wide-browed, broad-shouldered, stocky. Almost alone among the Red leaders, he has retained the white collar and tie, the neat dark suit, the stiffly worn fedora. As a concession to his proletarian environment he sometimes wears a cap. But not even the cap can conceal his indisguisable middle-class look.