The Test

Monday, Jan. 17, 1944

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Russians were told last week that the Red Army had taken Rokitno, ten miles inside Rovno Province and one step closer to the still distant (200 miles) Polish border. Most of the rest of the world considered that the Russians had advanced ten miles into Poland. The difference in viewpoint established the first tangible test of Teheran; people everywhere watched to see how the powers would meet it.

Russia's World. To Moscow, the facts were so self-evident that they scarcely called for comment. Yet comment came in the form of an ill-tempered growl at Wendell L. Willkie to stop talking about the future of the Baltic States and prewar eastern Poland as though they were still discussable matters (see p. 12).

This gratuitous slap disturbed many Americans and Britons. Yet Mr. Willkie need not have taken the slap too much to heart—it was completely in tune with Soviet Russia's recent reactions to any & all suggestions that Eastern Europe and Russian affairs in that area are subject to world discussion. On its face, this fact seemed to hoot at the Moscow and Teheran declarations that Russia, the U.S. and Britain share a common interest in Europe, along with the rest of the world.

But Russia, so far, has not actually rejected the principles of Teheran; it has qualified them, as her spokesmen probably did when they talked to Messrs. Hull and Roosevelt. On the Russian record to date, the Soviet qualification is that the U.S.S.R. insists on making its own regional position secure before it actually enters any framework of "general security."

World of Enemies. This twofold policy can be interpreted in terms which do not rule out the fulfillment of Teheran, but do clarify the Russian realities which lie in the way of that fulfillment. The real Russian case, as the Russians might present it:

Manifestly, Joseph Stalin and those around him still feel that they are living in a world of potential enemies. Their main aim is Russia's development. For this, they need 25 years of peace. To this end, they want military security. As the Russians see it, in a world of potential enemies military security is guaranteeable only through territorial padding and balanced buffer states—not primarily through agreements. To the Russians, this seems particularly true so long as any agreement made with Britain or the U.S. might be modified or nullified by new governments.

Therefore the current Soviet policy is based on the creation of a cordon sanitaire in reverse in Eastern and Central Europe. The small states in this cordon, mutually not too friendly, would be tied to Moscow by agreements like the Soviet-Czech pact. Any overall federation in this area would form a large unit which might become a menace to Russia; that is why Moscow has opposed any Balkan, Danubian or Scandinavian federations.

The Russians figure that this policy, if effective, would give them regional security and at the same time enable them to maintain an army which need not be very large, yet would be the largest in Europe. Russia then could concentrate most of her energies on the construction and expansion of the Soviet economy.