Forecast

Germany is where changes in the Russian attitude toward the West often become apparent in practical policies. Last week the Russian attitude was stiffening like a wet sheet in Berlin's icy wind. Some observers guessed that the Soviet's local representatives were laying groundwork for the Moscow conference. They noted that the new intransigence followed soon after Lavrenty Beria's visit to Berlin last month.

Policeman's Mission. Who is Beria? The known facts of his life could be handily engraved on a police badge. Beria is one of the 14 members of the all powerful Politburo; he still supervises the secret police, which he controlled directly for nine years when it was called the NKVD. Every Soviet citizen knows his name, knows that he is a Georgian, like Stalin; that he is 47 years old; that he wields great and mysterious power. But Russians and Americans both might learn a lot more about Deputy Beria and his Berlin mission through one revealing anecdote.

At the time of the Yalta conference (the story goes), Beria was seated between two senior U.S. diplomats at the banquet table. Beria and his neighbors exchanged toasts--to Stalin, to Roosevelt, to peace, to friendship. Finally one American proposed: "To the people." Beria twisted his small mouth. "Why to the people?" he asked. "The people don't decide anything. The leaders decide. Now take the German people; they aren't bad people, but they got into the hands of bad leaders. So let's drink to the leaders."

Last week Beria was back in Moscow, but his subordinate leaders were determined that they--and not the 450,000 people in Berlin's trade unions, nor the U.S., British and French representatives in the four-power Berlin Kommandatura --should decide the make-up of the union congress executive committee. When the Western Allies opposed an obviously rigged election plan, Soviet Major General Alexander Kotikov (an entomologist in civil-life) attacked them, in the Soviet licensed German-language press.

Although the General's press outburst violated a basic Allied directive (which forbids the German press to publish material calculated to provoke trouble among the Allies), the U.S.'s Colonel Frank Howley had no choice but to reply in kind.

Delaying Action. From Berlin, TIME Correspondent John Scott cabled:

"Behind this trade-union fight was a very simple fact: embittered by early .Soviet Army excesses, Russian reparation removals, and more recent deportation of labor, the German working class has become increasingly anti-Russian. The Russians are striving to maintain at all costs Communist-sponsored political leadership of the trade-union movement against the will of the majority of the membership.

"Colonel Howley and his British opposite number, Brigadier W. R. N. Hinde, have stuck to their guns, and refuse to approve the union election procedure until it provides for a fair, democratic election.

"While drastically reducing their occupation troops in Germany (to roughly 100,000 by March), the Russians have been preparing their administrative apparatus here for a time of intense tension during the Moscow conference. [It was] for this purpose that Beria came to Germany. The best American observers here expect the Russians to be simply 'extremely difficult' on every point, to delay the reaching of even the simplest agreement in Moscow, thus postponing the time when they will have to relinquish their special economic and political position in their own zone in favor of German unity.

"A fairly senior Russian officer acquaintance summed up their preconference attitude to me as follows: 'Money and food will buy much. You'll try to buy yourselves in and us out of Central Europe. You may succeed, but we'll try in every way to stop you, because we know that in buying your wares the masses of people in Europe will be buying eventual disaster.' "

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