Foreign News: Dear Georgy

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Naps at the Office. During World War II he not only ran the party, but also directed Soviet tank and aircraft production. Often working around the clock for days at a time, except for short naps on a cot in his office, he sent plane production up to 40,000 a year. In March 1946 Malenkov became a full member of the Politburo, and a few months later a deputy Premier of the U.S.S.R. (all but two of the twelve Politburocrats are deputy Premiers). His power and influence swelled. Highly popular decrees revaluating the ruble and reducing prices were jointly signed by Stalin and Malenkov. When tributes to Stalin on his 70th birthday were published, Malenkov's got first play in the Russian papers. Georgy Malenkov has been the fat man at Stalin's elbow in recent group pictures of the Kremlin hierarchy.

Of all the top men in the Kremlin, he alone still affects the plain military tunic and cap Stalin made famous. He has been married twice, first to one of Molotov's secretaries, now to a Moscow actress. He has, like Koestler's Gletkin, no cord to the outside world: he has never set foot on non-Communist soil, never been known to speak to Western newspapermen or Western diplomats. In the few speeches comrade Malenkov has made for public consumption, perhaps the most memorable line is: "Can there be any doubt that a Third World War will become the grave for world capitalism?"

The Big Three. Despite last week's demonstration, not all Western experts agree that Georgy Malenkov is clearly No. 2, for there is still Old Bolshevik Molotov, who has the seniority and prestige that goes with having helped Lenin hatch Communism. Molotov is still in high favor 35 years later. The experts prefer to put it negatively: it is no longer clear that Molotov outranks Malenkov. And not far behind is Lavrenty Beria, the mysterious, pince-nezed master of the midnight arrest and lord of the slave camps, whose Gletkin-like climb has paralleled Malenkov's. But there have been signs that 52-year-old Beria is Malenkov's friend & ally, not his competitor.

Some think Stalin deliberately juggles the three men to save any one of them from the temptation to speed up the process of succession. Another theory: that Molotov, Malenkov and Beria might take over together after Stalin's death, to rule the Communist cosmos as a troika (trpumvirate). Those who think this would not last long are increasingly putting their money on "Dear Georgy."