Front Man's First

A sort of genial grandpa to the whole Soviet Union is stern Josef Stalin's front man, twinkly-eyed, scrubby-bearded Michail Ivanovich Kalinin, whose wife, many Russians think, resembles Mrs. Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt calls Grandpa Kalinin officially "President"' as do heads of other foreign states, but Russians call him to his face familiarly and affectionately "Michail Son-of-Ivan." One day last week U. S. correspondents in Moscow were ushered in to the first interview ever given by the Grandpa President. They found him in a blue serge suit, old brown sweater and clean white shirt perched on the desk of Commissioner of Communications Alexei Rykov. "Well, well," chuckled Grandpa Kalinin accepting and lighting a U. S. cigaret, "I have never been so close to so many American newspapermen before."

"Now, Michail Ivanovich," prompted Commissar Rykov, "tell us about. . . ."

"I can tell you how the Russian peasant feels about recognition." interrupted the peasant-born President. "If I were still a peasant I would say to myself: 'Well, America did not want to recognize us for 16 years, but, after all. was compelled to do it.' Yes, that is what the Russian peasant thinks. Our people, however, always liked America and they hope the two countries will remain friends."

"Now, Michail Ivanovich," jogged Commissar Rykov, "about the Second Five-Year Plan."

Dry and droll was the President's comment: "We Russians are working slowly and trying to work faster. You Americans are working fast and trying to slow down."

At the close of the interview President Kalinin grinned broadly when asked whether President Roosevelt, by insisting that Russia reaffirm the religious rights of foreigners in the Soviet Union, had paved the way for a rapprochement be tween Moscow and the Vatican. "About that," he twinkled, "I do not want to make propaganda." With asperity in Vatican City the Papal newsorgan L'Osservatore Romano last week declared that Comrade Litvinoff's pledges to President Roosevelt on the freedom of religious practice in U. S. S. R. are not only worthless but "clearly mean ingless."

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