Order No. 173

Just as President Roosevelt and Comrade Litvinoff were fraternizing last week (see p. 12), the Soviet War Council at Moscow, with blazing indiscretion, issued Order No. 173.

Abrupt and militant, it knocked into a Red soldier's turnip-shaped helmet the soothing assertions by Soviet publicists in recent weeks that Russia's leaders have abandoned the objective of her late, great Dictator Nikolai Lenin: to foment "the World Revolution of the Proletariat" by every practicable means including, when advisable, intervention by the Red Army. Order No. 173 is specific. It instructs every Red Army commander "to train each Red Soldier to be devoted in heart and in soul to the World Revolution of the Proletariat." The issuing of such an order at such a time seemed to indicate a slip between the cogs of Dictator Josef Stalin's complex State machine. Last week that popular cog War Minister Klimentiy ("Klim") Voroshilov had not yet returned from his junket to Angora where he congratulated Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha on the tenth birthday of the Turkish Republic (TIME, Nov. 6). Order No. 173 was therefore not signed by "Klim" but by fierce-bearded Vice-War Minister Jan Gamarnik, who looks like a world revolution all by himself. Had "Klim" been in the Kremlin, observers thought, Order No. 173 would have been circulated privately to Red Army commanders, not blatantly released to the Moscow Press.

By no means dead, though Dictator Stalin has ostentatiously withdrawn from its Executive Committee, is the Comintern or Third International, the world agency of proletarian revolution. While Comrade Litvinoff was en route to Washington, dispatches from Moscow reported that "the windows of the Comintern Building are dark." Last week the Comintern Executive Committee issued an appeal "to the toiling masses of the world," bade them to "Join ranks with the Soviet Union proletariat! Forge a uniform Revolutionary Front against Fascism and War! Against Japanese Imperialism and World Imperialism! For a Soviet China and a Soviet Germany!"

Equally embarrassing to Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinoff was the U. S. "Workers' Party" (Communist) which persisted in announcing during the New York mayoralty campaign that one of its main objectives is "Militant support of the Soviet Union!" Finally in Moscow last week the inopportune death of cackling, seamy-skinned Comrade Sen Katayama, 74-year-old Japanese member of the Comintern Executive Committee, forced Dictator Stalin to make open display of the fact that he is still pro-Comintern (i.e. pro-World Revolution), despite his resignation from the Comintern Committee.

In great flakes Moscow's first heavy snow of the season was softly falling. Red Army divisions, snug in their ankle-length winter overcoats and turnip helmets, filled the vast Red Square. All Moscow turned out to see who would bear the ashes of Comrade Katayama to their niche in the Kremlin wall. Millions of eyes fastened on a swart, powerfully built man in a long greatcoat who strode bareheaded through the snowstorm: Chief Pallbearer Josef Stalin.

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