The Boss Gets Promoted

Unlike Europe's other dictators, big-nosed, mammoth-mustached Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin looks man enough for the part. Unlike the others, he has never been Premier. He has bossed the Soviet Union for 19 years as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

The fiction of Stalin's position, convenient in the days when Russia was railing against dictatorship, makes little difference now that Stalin is worshiped as a god.* Joseph Stalin must therefore have felt justified last week in giving himself the dual job that only sainted Nikolai Lenin has held. He suddenly promoted himself to the Premiership, the Presidency of the Council of Commissars, leaving the former Premier, glum, encyclopedic Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, with the titles of Vice Premier and Foreign Minister.

Two days after Stalin's hoist by his own bootstraps, the Soviet press announced that Russia was concentrating no troops in the Ukraine, no naval forces in the Black Sea. The day after that Russia recognized Nazi control of Norway, Belgium, Yugoslavia. This week the U.S.S.R. announced recognition of the Naziphile Government of Iraq.

The peace pact with Yugoslavia, the day before German troops moved in, and Soviet petulance at the occupation of Bulgaria had shown Russia's attitude toward Hitler's drive into the Balkans. Last week, with the Germans pressing in on the Dardanelles and the Middle East in a ferment, Stalin seemed preparing to make the best deal he could to get something out of the grab bag for Russia. If this scheme succeeds, his will be the glory. If it fails, Molotov will be the goat.

* The New York Times last week quoted a Soviet poet: Should be say that coal turn white, It will be as Stalin wills.

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