Stalin & Son

Stalin's Son

Moppets of New Haven, Conn.'s Truman Street School last spring pasted up a scrapbook of maps and pictures of the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. and sent it to Moscow. There it found its way to Soviet School No. 25 and there last week alert New York Herald Tribune Correspondent Ralph W. Barnes found poring over it a sandy-haired twelve-year-old with a great name. The youngster was Vassily ("Vasya") Iosifovich Stalin, in a neat blue double-breasted jacket and a red tie. Close-cropped fair hair, pale face and lively eyes marked Vasya for the son of his late blonde, plump mother rather than of his father, Russia's blue-black-haired Steel Man.

A keen nose has Correspondent Barnes for the family that Dictator Stalin so scrupulously keeps out of sight. Two years ago, comparatively new to Moscow, he flushed Stalin's second wife, Vasya's mother, Nadya Alliluieva, young, shy and serious, in an industrial school studying to become manager of a synthetic silk factory. When she died last November of peritonitis, appendicitis or poison (she was supposed to have tasted everything prepared for her husband several hours before he ate it), she arose from public anonymity in a magnificent Moscow funeral. Last week Correspondent Barnes stood at the door of a classroom and watched Son Vasya wave his hand anxiously at his motherly-looking, sixtyish grammar teacher for a chance to recite. Not until late in the lesson did she call on him. Then he answered correctly in a bashful voice, hastily sat down. Vasya is in the fifth grade (equivalent of a U. S. seventh grade) while his seven-year-old sister Svetlana is in the first grade (U. S. second). They go to school, not in a Government limousine, but as their mother used to travel, in Moscow's overcrowded tramcars. In the main floor corridor they daily see an heroic picture of their great father but they get no special privileges at School No. 25.

To Correspondent Barnes the Communist-primed pupils in No. 25 sharply criticized the New Haven scrapbook last week. They pointed to a crayon map on which they said the Ukraine had been incorrectly drawn--a charge hotly denied in New Haven next day by the drawer, Moppet Walter Matwych whose parents are Ukrainian. Leafing on through the scrapbook, the Moscow children pointed disapprovingly to a pasted-in-picture of Pilgrim Fathers giving Red Indians a turkey dinner on the first Thanksgiving Day. "Quite capitalistic!" they commented, "Quite bourgeois! Here the white colonists are fraternizing with the natives, but not long afterward they began to liquidate those same natives. Where are the Indians today?"

No. 25 will send a return scrapbook to the Truman Street School. Vassily Stalin's teacher asked Correspondent Barnes if he thought the New Haven children would object to receiving a pasted-in-copy of the song that greets Dictator Stalin whenever he appears in public, the Internationale. Written to incite "the World Revolution of the World Proletariat" it loudly trumpets:

Arise, ye toilers of all nations Condemned to misery and woe; To Hell with humbleness and patience Give deadly battle to your foe! Wipe out the ruling wealthy classes, Arise and slash your thralldom chains, Let power be wielded by the masses, Let those who labor hold the reins! Chorus Proletarians rally For this big final fight; Internationally All toiling folks!

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