RUSSIA: The Man in Charge

There could be little doubt who was boss now. The Georgy Malenkov who, without any advance notice, stepped forward to address the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet last week, was plainly the man who was running the show. For an hour and a half in the Great Hall of the Big Kremlin Palace he laid down the law on everything from the price of milk to the prospects of peace. It was his first policy speech as chief of state.

The foreign diplomats and newspaper correspondents, looking down on the assembly from their semicircular loges, fastened most eagerly on one Malenkov statement: "The U.S. has no monopoly in the production of the hydrogen bomb" (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But that was not what pudgy Premier Malenkov devoted most of his speech to, nor what his hearers inside Russia seemed to get most satisfaction from (Communist papers the world over played down the H-bomb announcement). Still untried as leader, five months after Stalin's death, Malenkov sought to establish himself as the Consumer's Friend. He fairly crooned over prosperity to come, and "the solicitude of the Soviet state for the steadfast raising of the material and cultural level of the workers."

He promised a "drastic upsurge in the production of consumer goods" as "our main task." He pledged to increase the ''sales to the population" of cars, refrigerators, radio and TV sets. "We have every possibility," he said, in what was strange talk for a Communist, "to produce . . . smart clothes and elegant footwear." He did not blame Russian consumers for preferring the better finish and "exterior appearance" of foreign goods, "to the shame of the workers of industry." He spoke of the "justifiable reproaches of the workers" at the way the housing program is "still being carried out badly" and new houses are "carelessly finished off."

The state will spend 36% of its new budget on consumers (education, health, culture), he said, and by some Marxist magic which he did not elaborate, they actually would get back 127 billion rubles "more than they will contribute to it." He denounced the previous "incorrect attitude" towards the poor collective farmer, whose "private auxiliary farmstead" had been heavily taxed, and his private cows taken from him. All this would be changed.

"The urgent task lies in raising sharply in two or three years the population's supplies of ... meat and meat produce, fish and fish produce, butter, sugar, confectionery, textiles, garments, footwear, crockery, furniture and other cultural and household goods."

Targets on Time. But it was not all Georgy the candy-bringer. At last, he now could promise that light industry and the food industry could be developed at the same rate as heavy industry, but the party had been unswervingly right "in the struggle against the Trotskyites and the right-wing capitulators and traitors" who had fought the heavy industry program before. That, he said, would have meant "the doom of our revolution." He rattled off impressive-sounding (for Russia) production figures:

¶ Steel: now 38 million tons a year, or twice that of 1940, 21 times that of 1924 (but far less than half U.S. production).

¶ Coal: 70% more than 1940.

¶ Chemicals: three times 1940.