Word: commissars
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...last week had definitely hit their stride in Moscow. Considering that most diplomats and their wives in the Soviet capital figure as "Capitalist spies" in the Communist press, it was notable last week that such prominent Soviet wives as Perfume Trust Manager Zhemchuzhina* and the spouse of Assistant Foreign Commissar Nikolai Krestinsky should have taken Mrs. Davies socially in tow on a round of Moscow creches and factory restaurants while Ambassador Davies, his daughter Emlen and his valet went off to inspect the Ukraine. It was not that Mrs. Davies, the extremely rich General Foods heiress, is known in Russia...
...apologies to make for Capitalism and wants to hear no arguments for Communism, adding that he likes a shooting match of questions about either the U. S. or the U. S. S. R. with the answers kept as factual as possible. The shooting started when Foreign Trade Commissar Rosengoltz gave a five-hour Russian lunch for Ambassador & Mrs. Davies at his magnificent dacha or country estate adjoining Dictator Stalin's west of Moscow. Such dachi simply do not exist in Soviet newspapers or for visiting Communists, who hear all about the "austerity and simplicity" of Big Reds. However...
This lunch was by no means "diplomatic." It was instead an affair of the earthy type of Big Reds who are fist-deep in Russia's toughest problems and rather scorn the Soviet Foreign Commissar, "Maxie" Litvinoff, and his English wife Ivy. Later Ambassador Davies was feted at the Litvinoff dacha and had plenty of chance to see that these country places, plus the official limousines and luxuries of their owners, make the nominally small salaries of J. Stalin & Friends of no real importance, set them definitely off from Russia's masses as Mr. & Mrs. Davies...
...Ivanovich Mezhlauk. Since 1932 he has been Soviet State Planner No. 1, and his latest Five-Year Plan is especially behind schedule in Heavy Industry. Last week J. Stalin made the now necessarily friendly move of having Buyer-Planner Mezhlauk appointed to replace the late Grigoriy Konstantinovich Orclzhonikidze, as Commissar for Heavy Industry. Russia's planners and Russia's performers, inevitably, blame each other for Five-Year Plan setbacks and it is no bed of roses in which long-jawed Mezhlauk was planted...
...Event of the week in every part of the Soviet Union was a local speech, duplicated by thousands of orators, echoing the keynote sounded at Moscow on the 19th Anniversary of the Red Army by Defense Commissar Klimentiy ("Klim") Voroshilov. The official keynote: "The two countries which most threaten peace-Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan-have made no secret of their plans to attack the Soviet Union. . . . They are viciously sharpening their swords!" This was followed by what was said to be historically the first intimation that the Red Army, always described by Communist orators as "purely defensive," now seems...