RUSSIA: Dizziness From Success

(4 of 5)

To Each. . . . Communists could recall the old ideal of Karl Marx's perfect state: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Trouble was that in the fifth partition of Poland, Russia got what she did not need (agricultural areas). She needed industry, which Germany got—and did not need—while the needs of Poles were completely left out of the picture, and their abilities were better forgotten.

No one, perhaps not even the Dictators themselves, knew what the final line-up would be. But at week's end as the Red armies poured over the Polish frontier to occupy Wilno, Baranowicze, Tarnopol, Zaleszczyki, last Polish capital, it appeared that Russian strategy was directed toward three objectives: a position that would insure her future position on the Baltic; control of the Pripet Marshes; a defense line along the Rumanian frontier. A map published in Izvestia showed the projected Russian frontier: a line extending from a point on the East Prussian frontier north of Osowiec south through Brest-Litovsk and Lwow to a point just west of Rumania's western frontier.

This line roughly paralleled Tsarist Russia's frontier. It would include an area of some 67,000 square miles. Its inhabitants (before deaths resulting from war and Russian occupation) numbered about 10,000,000. Sandy soil, impoverished peasants, made land-rich Russia's economic gain negligible. The region's strategic value told more of Russia's needs, suggested that her greatest need, as she saw it, was defense against her new friend, if their friendship got more pressing, or a jumping-off place for an attack on some small Baltic state, if the two big friends could continue to aggress together.

Although a joint German-Russian communique announced a common aim in Poland (restoring order) and hinted at a buffer state between their frontiers, it gave no outlines of the geographical position of that unhappy country of the future. Nobody expected Germany to give up Drohobycz, Jaslo and Stanislawow, which produce 500,000 tons of oil annually, the potash at Kalusz and Kukawy, the zinc-lead smelters at Katowice, the salt deposits between Wieliczka and Bochnia, Upper Silesia's coal or the sugar factories near Poznan. Nor was Germany likely to give up West Poland, source of fat and pork, needed in Germany as much as oil.

Germany seemed likely to get:

¶An inferior defensive line in the event of future hostilities with Russia, loss of possible support from the Baltic states in the same eventuality.

¶The biggest minority problem in Europe: 23,000,000 Poles, who faced the prospect of extremely rude exploitation.

From Each. . . . Each got what she deserved, in the hard language of power, according to her ability to take it. Division looked like a fair index of the relative power of the two dictatorships. In the broad sweep of the forces involved, Russia got relatively no more than Poland got when, Germany dismembering Czechoslovakia last year, Poland grabbed Teschen.