After the Party

U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman gave a cocktail party last week at his Moscow residence, Spasso House. His guests: Poland's exiled ex-Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, who had just come from London; Poland's Communist President Boleslaw Bierut, who had just come from Warsaw; and a swatch of other Poles who did not like each other. Drinks flowed. The party was a big success. Five days later the Polish factions surprised a world accustomed to Polish fractiousness: they had reached agreement and formed a government acceptable to all of the Big Three.

Obviously, drinks alone could not have brought this result. But Big Three pressures had been kept decently in the background. Even Russian pressure was not obnoxiously noticeable. The more important posts in the new government were almost equally divided between Russian's servitors in the old Warsaw Government and democratic Poles from abroad and in Poland.

Moscow's No. 1 Polish friend, President

Bierut. becomes one of three members of a presidential council. The other two: ailing Wincenty Witos, leader of the Peasant Party, and bearded Nationalist Stanislaw Grabski, 74. Edward Osubka-Morawski, 40, a Socialist who has recently worked in close harmony with Moscow, remains as 'Premier. As Deputy Premier, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk takes an unexpectedly subordinate role.

Loose Ends. Solution of the central issue--the make-up of a new Polish government--left some loose ends dangling. Loosest was Tomasz Arciszewski's London Government, now definitely in the discard. Poland's heroic, well-trained army in exile was still under the London Government's command, and still unreconciled to the changes at home.

Agreement on paper was one thing; the immediate future of the compromise government was something else again. The Yalta agreement provided that after the government was "reorganized" it would hold "free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates."

How free the coming elections would be depended on the Russians in Poland. All the considerations of history and current power-politics which made Russian control of Poland essential to Russia--and hard on Poland--still held good. And the Red Army was still there.

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