Colonial Bullitt

A keen judge of character, the late great Nikolai Lenin set the seal of his approval on William Christian Bullitt, now U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, by calling him "a young man of great heart, integrity and courage." With this Lenin kudos behind him, Mr. Bullitt wound up last week a scouting visit to Moscow on which he was received by almost every prominent Soviet leader except Josef Stalin. Other ambassadors and ministers, most of whom are ostracized in Russia as "Capitalist spies," sat in their embassies and legations while Bill Bullitt hobnobbed with: Premier Molotov, dry, dynamic and full of statistics, who signs decrees for the State while Stalin signs them for the Party. Stalin's Front Man, gay and juicy old President Mikhail Kalinin, whom Ambassador Bullitt called "charming." Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinoff whose bright-eyed children Tanya and Mischa convinced nine-year-old Anne Bullitt that "Moscow is swell and the theatres are grand!" War Minister Klimentiy ("Klim") Vorishilov, who was picked and successfully popularized by Stalin to efface from Soviet minds the Red Army's oldtime War Lord and Stalin's rival Trotsky. With "Klim" at a dinner tendered Ambassador Bullitt by the Litvinoffs were the Commissars of Foreign Trade, Light Industry and Internal Supply. With Foreign Trade Commissar Arkadi Rosengoltz, Ambassador Bullitt had "a long and interesting conversation." Necessarily, however, his Moscow visit was devoted not to trade but to finding suitable quarters for a U. S. Embassy.-- The Soviet Government offered to rent the huge mansion on Spasopeskovskaya Square which was once the residence of a Tsarist textile tycoon, is now the reception house of the Soviet Central Executive Committee. This, Mr. Bullitt said, will do, temporarily, but he decided that in Moscow the U. S. should follow the example of France and build an embassy. Pure water the Ambassador hoped to get by sinking artesian wells. Pure milk for Anne and other Embassy children he felt should come from imported U. S. cows. The Embassy, if Congress proves willing, will be pure colonial in style, with a good chance that patriots will start a fund to fill it with such sturdy colonial reproductions as Mrs. Roosevelt's craftsmen make at her Val-Kill furniture shop.

Soviet Ambassador to the U. S. Alexander Troyanovsky meanwhile told Ambassador Bullitt his plans for the long-closed Tsarist Embassy on Washington's 16th Street near the Racquet Club. Workmen were chipping off the Tsarist eagles last week, tearing out the faded satin coverings of the walls, but no attempt will be made to reconstruct the building in Soviet "modernist style." Architect Eugene Schoen, charged with the redecoration, said last week that Russia's Embassy "will remain one of the finest examples of French Renaissance architecture in America." It will cost, estimated Architect Schoen, $10,000 to take down, wash and put up again, all the Imperial Russian crystal chandeliers in the Embassy's 64 rooms. Last week the satin-padded Tsarist elevator was still stuck between floors, but steam was hissing and pounding in the old radiators. Plumbers were busy ripping out antique tubs to provide Ambassador Troyanovsky and his Reds with the latest in U. S. chromium, glass and tile baths.

"I should like to go with you," Ambassador Troyanovsky told Mr. Bullitt as the U. S. Ambassador prepared to leave Moscow for Washington last week, but the Soviet Foreign Office hinted some delay. Russia has been represented in Washington for years by Comrade Boris Skvirsky who was called Chief of the Soviet Union Information Bureau before recognition and Charge d'Affaires afterward (TIME, May 30, 1932). With Comrade Skvirsky on the spot and the Embassy Building in chaos, there was no urgent reason why Ambassador Troyanovsky should hurry to Washington before Ambassador Bullitt's appointment is confirmed by Congress.

--The former U. S. Embassy in Russia was, of course, not in Moscow but in Petrograd (now Leningrad).

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