A Semi-Permanent Thing

When Lenin died in 1924, so many Russians filed past his bier that a Soviet leader asked: "Could we not make a semi-permanent thing of it?" Professors Boris Zbarsky and Vladimir Vorobyev went to work, and after four months announced they had found a method that would preserve Lenin's body intact indefinitely.

Last week, Sofia announced that precisely the same method would be applied to the body of the late Georgi Dimitrov--the first Communist hero since Lenin to receive the signal honor of this treatment.

Even before the special embalmers got started, Dimitrov looked impressive in death (see cut). Less attention, however, was focused on the dead man than on the living who surrounded him. Describing a Moscow ceremony, before Dimitrov's body was sent to Sofia last week, Pravda wrote: ". . . 23 hours 20 minutes: J. V. Stalin enters the hall. With him, placing themselves in a guard of honor, are Comrades G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria, K. E. Voroshilov, L. M. Kaganovich, A. I. Mikoyan, N. M. Shvernik, N. A. Bulganin."

Lynx-eyed watchers for signs & portents from the Soviet Union quickly noted that this order of precedence did not jibe with the photograph of the scene; in the picture, Voroshilov, not Malenkov, stood closest to Stalin. The discrepancy gave rise to subtle speculations: Voroshilov merely had the place of honor because it was he who was about to accompany the body to Sofia, but the fact that Pravda mentioned Malenkov's name first meant that the 47-year-old boss of the Communist Party organization was on his way up. Some watchers from afar were also disturbed by the fact that Molotov was missing from the scene; but his absence was not presumed to imply disgrace, because his name appeared prominently on proclamations mourning Dimitrov. Thus Molotov remained first choice, with Malenkov a strong second, for the job of Stalin's successor, if & when Stalin, like Lenin and Dimitrov before him, becomes a semi-permanent thing.

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