Word: commissars
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...great and exciting moment. President Roosevelt's office was jammed with newshawks. He held up a mimeographed sheet and owlishly informed them that the State Department insisted that "Commissar" be spelled with one "s." Then he ceased jesting, and blurted out the blunt fact: the United States of America had entered diplomatic relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at ten minutes before midnight the previous day. The historic date...
...Russian trade that would soon be theirs. Ex-Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart, Russian-trade adviser of AAA, declared that as soon as adequate credits could be arranged, Russia would be in a position to buy $520,000,000 worth of U. S. goods every year. Said Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinoff who traveled from Moscow to Washington to conduct the negotiations that led up to recognition: "Enjoying the lowest foreign indebtedness in the world, the Soviet Union has the greatest capacity for absorbing the raw materials and products of other countries. . . . The U. S. could make use of this...
...past two years. Up to last week the Red Army was officially supposed to number only 562,000 troops and the Red defense budget for 1934 was supposed to carry expenditures of 1,665,000,000 rubles ($1,444,000,000). Abruptly and astoundingly Comrade Mikhail Tukachevsky, Vice Commissar for Defense, announced to the Ail-Union Congress that Russia actually spent 5,000,000,000 rubles ($4,348,000,000) last year for defense and has increased her standing Army to 940,000-by far the largest army in the world...
Breathlessly the Vice Commissar rattled off that since 1930 the Red Navy has been increased 435%; Red machine guns 215% for infantry and cavalry, 700% for planes and tanks; Red light tanks 760%; medium tanks 792%; heavy artillery 210%. Finally the Red Air Force has been increased 330%, the average speed of combat planes doubled, average cruising range tripled...
...most of the "progress" ostentatiously made when the Gay-pay-oo was transformed into the Commissariat of Interior under its Gay-pay-oo chief, Comrade Genrikh Grigorevich Yagoda (TIME, July 23). Last week Stalin was said to be so vexed with Yagoda that he had suspended him as Commissar of Interior. The decree of President Kalinin deprived persons arrested not only of any right to be defended by a lawyer but also of the right to be accused by a state prosecutor. They were simply stood up before a Red judge and two assistants, with no right of appeal...