WE HAVE BEEN NAUGHT, WE SHALL BE ALL

This picture shows 22 leaders of World Communism gathered in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater for Joseph Stalin's 70th birthday. Between them they rule one-third of the human race. Most of them lived obscurely until tapped by the Kremlin's magic wand; thus they fulfill one prophetic line of the Internationale: "We have been naught, we shall be all." Left to right:

Palmiro Togliatti, son of a poor Genoese bookkeeper, who fled from Fascism in 1926; between foreign assignments for the Comintern (which included organizing the Garibaldi Brigade in the Spanish Civil War), he studied revolutionary strategy and wrote polemics in Moscow. He thrice escaped death (he was condemned to death by Mussolini, stabbed in Spain, shot at in 1948 in Rome). Shortly after U.S. troops invaded Southern Italy he flew to Naples, became leader of Italy's 2,283,000 Communists.

Alexei Kosygin, Soviet Minister of Light Industry.

Lazar Kaganovich, Politburo member since 1930.

Mao Tse-tung, son of a Hunanese peasant, who, said Mao, "gave me neither eggs nor meat." Mao was once expelled from the Party Central Committee for opposing Moscow, led the Chinese Red army (with Commander-in-Chief Chu Teh) on the famous 6,000-mile "Long March" from Kiangsi to Shensi in 1935, last year became the ruler of the world's most populous nation.

Nikolai Bulganin, son of a factory clerk, who first became known abroad when in October 1942 he organized Moscow's defense. He is now an alternate Politburo member and a marshal of the Soviet Union.

Stalin.

Walter Ulbricht, once a Leipzig woodworker, who became a Comintern agent during the Spanish Civil War, returned from Moscow to Germany with the Red army after the war, became Politburo member of Eastern Germany's Socialist Unity Party. Last month he stepped into the acting premiership of Eastern Germany when Premier Otto Grotewohl was reported ill. In imitation of Lenin, Ulbricht wears a trowel-like beard.

U. Tsedenbal, secretary general of the Mongolian Communist Party.

Nikita Khrushchev, once a Donbass coalminer, Politburo member since 1939. Longtime boss of the Ukraine, last month he became a secretary of the Bolshevik Central Committee.

Johann Koplenig, onetime shoemaker, served on the Comintern's Executive Committee, is now chairman of the Austrian Communist Party.

Dolores Ibarruri, called "La Pasionaria," born the daughter of a coalminer, worked as a washerwoman. She won her nickname for her fiery speeches during Spain's civil war (sample: "Women of Madrid! Do not hinder your husbands from going to war. It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a miserable coward"). She is now secretary general of what's left of the Spanish Communist Party.

Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, son of a laborer. He became a railway electrician, spent 1935-44 in prison for organizing unions, helped found the Cominform in 1947. As secretary general of the Rumanian Communist Party, he last month announced that he had completed a purge of "undesirable [Titoist] elements."

Mikhail Suslov, member of the Bolshevik Party's Orgburo.

Nikolai Shvernik (hands folded after concluding the opening speech), once a metal-turner, now President of the Supreme Soviet.

Vulko Chervenkov (born Volov--his party name means The Red Wolf), a Bulgarian-born, longtime NKVD tough who spent 1923-44 in Moscow, became the late Georgi Dimitrov's bodyguard and brother-in-law. After Dimitrov's death, Vulko succeeded in liquidating his rival, Traicho Rostov (TIME, Dec. 26), became undisputed boss of Bulgaria, recently swore "loyalty to the last breath" to Stalin.

Georgy Malenkov, son of an Orenburg Cossack. He became Stalin's personal secretary after a chance meeting with the boss in 1925. Now a Politburo member, he is one of the four most powerful men in the U.S.S.R.

Viliam Siroky, son of a Slovak railway worker, secretly returned from exile in Moscow to organize the Czech Resistance in 1944. He is now Deputy Premier of Czechoslovakia.

Lavrenty Beria, Politburo member, studied engineering, is now boss of the Soviet secret police and head of Russia's atomic research program.

Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin's oldest & best buddies, a Politburo member since 1926.

Molotov.

Anastas Mikoyan, once a Nestorian Catholic seminarian, a Politburo member since 1935. He controls Russia's foreign and domestic trade.

Matyas Rakosi, nonalingual secretary general of the Hungarian Communist Party, a commissar in the bloody and shortlived Communist dictatorship of Bela Kun in 1919. He served as a wartime contributor to Pravda, often complains that he "spent the whole of [his] youth in prison," where, he says, he learned patience by reading the Saturday Evening Post.

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