For German Consumption?

The National Conference of the Soviet Communist Party met last week for the first time in four years, and all was not brotherhood at the meeting. The delegates heard a bitter speech by a member of the Central Committee's Secretariat, Georgi Maximilianovich Malenkov, admitting that Soviet industry had been slowed down by a top-heavy bureaucracy, buck-passing, lazy administration. Shops, depots, harbor and railroad works, he said, were suffering a "reign of dirt." Dirt, he said, is "the bulwark of capitalist traditions." It was interesting to note that Comrade Malenkov's sharpest criticisms were leveled at producers and transporters of goods destined for Germany: oil, ores, timber, wheat.

In the military sphere, Russia also made a move which may or may not have been aimed for German consumption. General Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, an expert with tanks and parachutes and one of three boosted to the rank of General of the Army after generals were reinstated last spring, was elevated to Chief of Staff of the Red Army. The interesting thing about this appointment was the fact that for nine months General Zhukov has been chief of the Kiev military district--next to the touchy Balkans. He recently stated that his men must be constantly ready, "so that no tricks of foreign enemies can catch us unprepared."

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