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Ehrenburg is not a Communist Party member, but is nonetheless one of the Soviet Union's best-paid, most honored writers—winner of a Stalin prize, the Red Banner of Labor, and, last week, the Order of Lenin, Russia's top civilian honor. Incredibly prolific, he writes pamphlets, radio broadcasts, recently published a volume of lyric verse. His only rival in popularity is stocky Mikhail Sholokhov, 39, author of And Quiet Flows the Don (TIME, July 2, 1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (TIME, Aug. 4, 1941). Pravda has been serializing his new epic They Fought for Their Country.
The Comic Line. Crocodile is little known in the U.S.; few copies leave Russia. But it is more important than any other humorous magazine is elsewhere. LIFE-sized, it is the Soviet Punch. Its prewar circulation of 500,000 is now down to 100,000. Most of its cartoons are political or military, and most of its humor is about as subtle as a sledge hammer.
The Class Line. Russia's newest and increasingly important publication is the 32-page, semimonthly Voina i Rabochi Klass (War and the Working Class), started eleven months ago as a forum for discussion of foreign affairs. It proclaims itself free of official Government or Party influence, declares that its articles represent only its writers' views. But U.S. correspondents frequently find War and the Working Class a rich source of clues to future Soviet action.