The Rigors of Equality

Britain's sharp-worded, sharp-witted critic George Orwell thus paraphrased the philosophy of the Soviet state: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Last week Russia, which long ago branded equality as "egalitarian" heresy, took another step toward hierarchy. True to Philosopher Yudin's axiom that to preserve the Red Army means to preserve the state, Generalissimo Stalin issued a whip-cracking new set of army regulations. The statutes ordered Red warriors to "respect seniors in command . . . observe strictly military conduct and the salute."

In a state designed (by optimistic Leninist-Marxist prophecy) to wither away, officers had been receiving only spotty respect and obedience. Now that the state was sprouting stronger & stronger, they were given new power & glory: "The senior in command is not to leave unpunished a single offense. . . . Officers . . . have the right ... to make declarations concerning misuse and shortcomings. . . . Courts of Honor have been created for the guarding of the dignity and honor of the officers' rank."

Stalin, said Moscow Radio, had drafted the orders "utilizing the rich and many-sided experience of the Great Fatherland War," and "permeated with . . . solicitude for the might of the Soviet Armed Forces." But there was no doubt that Stalin was permeated also by solicitude over the fact that in the wake of the Great Fatherland War, undisciplined occupation troops proved Russia's most potent ambassadors of ill will.

Other echoes of Red Army sabers rattled through Europe. From Paris, the New York Times's chief foreign correspondent Cyrus Leo Sulzberger reported that "certain [Red Army] units" around Trieste and in southeastern Germany had "been put on the qui vive." Next day, the Times's chief military analyst Hanson Weightman Baldwin mildly pooh-poohed such rumors, declared that the Red Army was demobilizing. His estimate of remaining occupation forces: 2,000,000 plus.*

If the Red Army was demobilizing, the Red press was not. On the fifth anniversary of the Nazi invasion, editorialists proclaimed that the Red Army was the world's "mightiest and "toughest," whose "new and important task" was to shield the Soviet people against threatening fascist crusades. Historian Eugene Tarle, who jumps higher for his fish than any other Soviet-trained seal, declared in Red Star that such crusades were even now being plotted by U.S. reactionaries who were trying to crush the U.S. working class as a preliminary to the imposition of a "Pax Americana" on the world.

*Baldwin's approximate breakdown (in thousands): Germany, 700; Rumania, 390; Poland, 325; Hungary, 260; Korea, 200; Bulgaria, 150; Austria, 105; Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Iran, up to 10 (probably NKVD).

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