Foreign News: Truespeak

Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was not the man he once was in the Kremlin hierarchy. Watching him last week as he tried to answer the West's challenge, his opposite numbers concluded that he had been relegated to the status of an "operator." He had the air of a man quoting from something. But the bland and deceptive phrases he rolled out were still an instructive lesson in Russian truespeak, a code designed to confuse the inattentive. Herewith, a running translation of Molotovisms:

¶"The principal obstacle to security in Europe is the existence of military groupings." Meaning: We cannot push European countries around the way we would like because of NATO.

¶"The remilitarization of Germany within the framework of the Western Alliance has created new obstacles to the solution of the German problem."—We are not going to unify Germany anyway right now. Its membership in NATO is as good an excuse as any.

¶"It would be quite unrealistic to bring about the unification of Germany through a mechanical merger . . . at the expense of the social achievements of the working people of the German democratic republic."—We are not going to expose the East German Communists to the embarrass ment of free elections. We know they would lose.

¶"An appropriate settlement can be brought about only gradually . . . as a result of a rapprochement and better cooperation between the two parts of Germany."—The division of Germany suits us very well, and Adenauer had better get used to dealing with East Germans.

¶"The new proposal by the three powers does not accord with the demands of the creation of effective European security, and . . . would make the situation in Europe even more aggravated."—We can't think of a good reason to reject it, but we reject it anyway.