Comrade at Large

When Earl Russell Browder was kicked out of the Communist Party in 1946, a discredited symbol of Russia's wartime policy of playing down the coming revolt of the masses, his onetime comrades gave his character a routine knifing, then abandoned him to the lonely death of a political heretic. But Browder refused to die. He hustled off to Moscow, checked into the best hotel in town, and paid a call on Molotov. Two months later Browder was back in the U.S. as American representative of three official Russian publishing houses. The Kremlin had apparently decided that Browder was a valuable option on the day when friendly cooperation between Communism and capitalism might once more be the international party line.

Last week the option seemed to have run out. A newsman called at Browder's one-room, $100-a-month office on Manhattan's West 42nd Street and found that the publishing business had been closed up since the end of July. Earl Browder no longer had a pipeline to the Kremlin. "I have not been able to talk to Joe Stalin and find out if he still loves me," said Browder, wryly. "I am unemployed at present and looking for a job."

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