(2 of 6)
Expression of Peace. Last week the unknown, disturbing Malenkov made one of his rare public addresses. The occasion was the windup of Russia's election festival when the masses are led to the polls by the party to approve the party's unopposed candidates for the Supreme Soviet.
The final pre-election ritual is a series of speeches by Politburo members. Malenkov spoke from Moscow's marble Hall of Columns, which the Czars built as a playhouse and where the dead Lenin lay in state before he was embalmed and moved to his red granite tomb in Red Square. It was a long spiel (some 7,000 words in its English translation), full of stock praise for Soviet achievements. The keynote lines were aimed at Western ears:
"The Soviet government . . . will not abandon further efforts directed toward insuring peace, and is ready to be an active participant in all honest plans, measures and activities to avert a new war."
This seemed to repeat the invitation to another conference, and another deal, which the Moscow press extended to the West last month (TIME, Feb. 27). Police Boss Beria and two others of the Politburo's hierarchs, Deputy Premiers Anastas Mikoyan and Andrei Andreev,* echoed Malenkov's bid. They were followed next day by Molotov, who first held out the olive branch, then knouted the West for "blackmail . . . with the so-called hydrogen atomic bomb, which does not exist in fact." He wound up by promising that a new world war would "sweep away imperialism from the world." Much to the outside world's surprise, Number 1 himself, who usually brings the election ritual to its climax, remained silent.
On Sunday, to no one's surprise, 99-odd% of the Russian electorate (some 105 million people) voted for Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov & Co.
A Parallel. By the jobs he has held and from his few public statements known to the West, Malenkov may be classified as a practical more than a theoretical Marxist. His talent and the stages of his career tend to parallel those of Stalin. He is unquestionably a first-rate organizer, with a flair for totalitarian political management. As a party intellectual, he is a sort of lower middlebrow, whose unshakeable ideological orthodoxy is tempered with hard common sense. He is tough and abusive to his associates—perhaps the same temper that the dying Lenin found obnoxious when he wrote, before his death, that "Comrade Stalin is too rude." Malenkov uses the Russian equivalents of four-letter words, and behind his back his underlings have dubbed him "the Kremlin's turkey."
The standard Soviet privacy surrounds Malenkov's personal life. If he does not drink heavily, he obviously eats well; a favorite snack is French pastry. He smokes an expensive brand of Russian cigarettes, Northern Palmyras. Despite his Kremlin pallor, he likes fresh air. He goes duck hunting in the marshes outside Moscow. He rates a suburban villa on the Mozhaisk Road, a bulletproof limousine, and an armored-car escort.