The Shape of Puppetdom

The Russians were by no means going out of business in Berlin. Bit by bit, in the weeks since the blockade was lifted, Communism in Berlin had been wearing a friendlier falseface.

In post-blockade days, not quite so many Germans had "disappeared." The curfew for the Soviet sector had been set back from 11 p.m. to midnight. Hungarian melons, Bulgarian grapes, Polish cranberries appeared in the markets.

Russian officials in the four-power city control board had lately consented to a joint battle against the potato bug. They agreed that East & West should honor each other's postage stamps—and then urged the West Berliners to buy stamps cheaper with soft Soviet marks ("Every agreement we make, we lose," lamented a U.S. official).

Poultry Week. The symbol for the build-up was Communist Artist Pablo Picasso's "Dove of Peace." Everywhere in the Soviet sector, on handbills, stickers and banners, the benign bird cooed Communist "pacifism." Berliners only sneered at the "Trojanische Taube" (Trojan dove); they dubbed each propaganda flurry as "Geflűgel Woche" (Poultry Week).

Along with the doves, there was a great program for furbishing up the state buildings, the Russian embassy, the swank Bristol hotel; scaffolds lined the buildings on Unter den Linden.