RUSSIA: Otpusk!

Russia was relaxing. The Soviet Union's First Proletarian, Joseph Stalin, set the pace. The papers reported last week: "Comrade J. V. Stalin . . . went away on leave." But, with customary caution, they did not say where he went.

It was Comrade Stalin's first vacation in four years, and he well deserved it. During the war he had labored long & hard, saving his country—and incidentally working up from Chairman of the State Defense Committee to full Generalissimo. His hair, even in official pictures, was now grey. And rumors persisted that his health was in very poor shape.

During Stalin's absence, the Kremlin secretariat could relax, too. The London conference had failed miserably and Western capitalism was being its usual annoying self (see INTERNATIONAL), but the Soviet press preferred not to worry its readers too much. It played up refresher courses in Communism.

At the Red Fleet rally Russian officers and their friends looked like so many Britons at play. For most people there were still few vacations. Factories were working full blast, many on peacetime luxuries (brassieres, chocolates), and cities were laying the foundations for new houses. Stalingraders' pulses quickened at a reconversion dream: two rooms and a private water closet. Such work, the people felt, was in itself an otpusk (vacation) for them.

But Russia did not believe in strength through joy alone. All along her new borders she proceeded with the building of a new frontier:

¶ In Austria, the Red Army abruptly took over the Zistersdorf oilfield, against Austrian and Allied opposition.

¶ In New Poland, the Russians leased several towns near Stettin, containing important water works and one of Poland's last oil plants. The Russian Government was also planning to lease the entire city of Swinemuende, one of Germany's main experimental stations for flying bombs.