The Kremlin Stands

It was just past midnight in Washington when the Moscow radio announced Joseph Stalin's "sudden brain hemorrhage." Swiftly the all-night monitors of Central Intelligence Agency passed the word to Director Allen Dulles. Thus, key men of the Administration were roused out of bed.

The CIA's chief called brother Foster, the Secretary of State, and then CIA's contact man at the White House, Robert Cutler. From Cutler the report hurried on to C. D. Jackson, the President's assistant in charge of psychological warfare, and to James Hagerty, secretary. On advice of John Foster Dulles, it was decided not to disturb the sleep of President Eisenhower; but a message was prepared for his earliest information. Allen Dulles, Jackson, Cutler and Hagerty agreed to a 7 a.m. meeting in Hagerty's White House office.

Memo at Dawn. By chance that morning, Eisenhower's sleep was restless. Up at 6 a.m., half an hour earlier than usual, he read the memo left for him. The presidential day that followed was crammed with urgent consultation.

The first move was Eisenhower's idea.

With Allen Dulles, Jackson, Cutler and Hagerty standing by, a presidential statement aimed at the Russian people was drafted. Said Eisenhower: "The thoughts of America go out to all the people of the U.S.S.R.--the men and women, the boys and girls--in the villages, cities, farms and factories of their homeland ..."

Then came an appeal to Russia's deep-rooted religious tradition which still persists despite Marx's dictum that religion is "the opium of the people": "[The Russian people] are the children of the same God who is the Father of all peoples everywhere . . . Regardless of the identity of government personalities, the prayer of us Americans continues to be that the Almighty will watch over the people of that vast country and bring them, in His wisdom, opportunity to live their lives in a world where all men and women and children dwell in peace and comradeship."

Before the morning was done, the President talked things over in a meeting with Foster Dulles, held a phone consultation with U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in New York, gathered with the National Security Council for a weighty session that ran for 2 1/2 hours.

Next day presidential aides worked out the message that the U.S. Government would send to Moscow when death came. This was it: "The Government of the U.S. tenders its official condolences to the government of the U.S.S.R. on the death of Generalissimo Joseph Stalin, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union."

Said a White House official later: "Certainly it was chilly. After all, Stalin's gang is shooting at us."

Mixed Feelings. The U.S. press and people reacted with mixed feelings. Ex-President Harry Truman remarked: "I am sorry to hear of [Stalin's] trouble ... I'm never happy over anybody's physical breakdown." Much more typical was a Chicago restaurateur who put a black wreath in his window, with a sign below reading: "Joe's gone. Vodka on the house." The New York Daily News, as usual, called a spade a meat-ax: "Jailbird son of a drunken cobbler . . . in essence, a backwoods plug-ugly and killer." Less crudely, but no less clear in its condemnation, the New York Times said: "Our children's children will still be paying the price for the evil which he brought into the world."

Rarely had the U.S. been so nearly unanimous about anything as in its hatred of what Stalin stood for. But the U.S. was far from being either unanimous or precise on why or what it hated. To some, Stalin was a personal despot who had betrayed the cause of Socialism and progress. To others, he was another expansionist czar who disturbed the peace of the world with aggression. To others, he was the typical and inevitable product of the Marxist religion.

The last group would have the least difficulty in adjusting themselves to Stalin's death. The philosophy that made Stalin had not died, and it was capable of producing thousands of leaders to carry on the basic policies and methods of Stalinism. The symbol of this force was the Kremlin, with its old defensive walls and churches converted into the nerve center of a vast effort at world revolution.

The change from Stalin to Malenkov & Co. might bring changes of tactics, a more pressing threat or a more cunning effort to lull the anti-Communist world to sleep. But the Kremlin and all that it stood for endured, essentially unchanged in its meaning and its menace.

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