Karakhan Out?

The Soviet Government was doing everything in its power last week to show that it meant no harm to any other nation. In Rome a non-aggression pact with Italy was signed. A guest in the still magnificent English Gothic Morosov Palace (now the Foreign Office guest residence) and there plied with champagne and caviar blini was bulky, friendly Edouard Herriot of France. Holding no government post, Citizen Herriot smiled a great deal and said nothing. All Moscow was convinced that new Franco- Russian trade agreements were brewing, felt that the old problem of the 20 billion ($4,000,000,000) gold franc loan made by France to the Imperial Government, repudiated by the Soviet, was due for another airing. Even the Red Army was fairly peaceable last week. For weeks past two Moscow military factories have devoted their energies not to engines of death but to a colossal 25,000-cubic-meter gas bag. The balloon and its aluminum gondola was finished last week, only waiting good weather to attempt a stratosphere flight.

The most spectacular example of Soviet docility came from the Foreign Commissariat. It was discovered that tall, swart Leo M. Karakhan had been quietly transferred from his important post as chief of the Far Eastern section of the Foreign Office, will in the future busy himself with the Near East. And a Moscow court last week gave stiff jail sentences to four Russian coastguardsmen who last July killed three Japanese crab fishermen.

Impressed reporters have called Vice Commissar Karakhan the "cleverest living Asiatic." An Armenian with Turkish forebears, he was educated in Vladivostok and made his career the winning of China for Communism and the Soviet. He went to China in 1923 to negotiate a Chinese-Soviet treaty of recognition and agreement. Accepted as Ambassador at Peking in 1924 he worked hard for two years to accomplish his dream. Brilliant talker, genial host, Leo Karakhan is also one of the few athletic Soviet leaders: he plays first-rate tennis. His house in Peiping became a meeting place for the intelligentsia of north China. He picked the growing Nationalist movement as the coming power in China, gave it money and support. His nemesis was wily Old Chang Tso-lin of Manchuria, captor of Peiping in 1926, always an enemy of the Soviet. Leo Karakhan was recalled to Moscow, but in no disgrace. Stalin knew how near he had come to succeeding.

His eclipse last week was due to one thing: unalterable opposition to the sale of Russia's section of the Chinese Eastern Railroad to Japan. Because the Soviet dares at this point risk no open break with Japan, Steel Man Stalin was firmly prepared to sacrifice both his railroad and his Vice Commissar.

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