International: United Peasants?

• Share

In the Crystal Room of Washington's Burlington Hotel, two exiled agrarian leaders from Russian satellite states faced the press last week. "I hope," said Bulgarian Peasant Leader Georgi M. Dimitroff,* "that I speak better English than Stalin speaks democracy."

Dimitroff spoke English with a thick accent and democracy with a ring of conviction. He read an appeal for "the creation of a democratic International Peasant Union and eventual realization of the United States of Europe." Dimitroff left no doubt where he stood in what Molotov called the "division of Europe." Ferenc Nagy, Hungary's ex-Premier and leader of its Smallholders' Party, sat beside him and nodded approval. Nagy had already symbolically established kinship with the U.S. by donning an American Indian headdress on a recent visit (see cut).

Croat and Serb peasant leaders in exile endorsed the declaration. Czech, Austrian, Rumanian and Polish agrarian groups might soon follow. The U.S. cautiously refrained from publicly supporting the proposed union. Washington, however, was well aware that the union might become a useful link with peasant movements which form the main opposition to Communist domination of Eastern Europe.