Comrade Ehrenburg Errs

Russia's prolific and eloquent pamphleteer, Ilya Ehrenburg, earned his journalistic spurs as a war correspondent. Ever since, he has been riding off in all directions as a propagandist. Most U.S. editors, unwilling to believe that any Soviet newsman could stray very far from the collective corral, have presumed that Russian policy was riding in the same direction.

Last week, to everyone's surprise, Mr. Ehrenburg was soundly spanked -- and not by a U.S. editorialist but by a fellow Russian. The spanker was George Alexandroff, propaganda chief of the party's Central Committee, who took space in mighty Pravda to attack Ehrenburg's contention that all. Germans are bad. This line does not square, it appears, with Soviet at tempts to persuade German small fry to surrender. Alexandroff began his article with an ominous heading: "Comrade Ehrenburg Simplifies Matters." The Ehrenburg conclusions, said his propaganda superior, were "not well thought out and visibly erroneous. ... In this in stance Ehrenburg does not express Soviet public opinion." No one doubted that Comrade Ehrenburg would promptly 1) change his tune or 2) hold his tongue.

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