RUSSIA: C'est Si Bon

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The Communists' new "relaxing" look made more news: Since Jan. i, when Premier Georgy Malenkov threw an unprecedented New Year's party, tens of thousands of Moscow moppets have frolicked through the Kremlin, stuffing themselves with oranges and sweets provided by the Communist Party. Malenkov, along with other Soviet bosses, has made a point of stepping down from his fearful eminence to participate in precinct meetings of the party and the workers. He has been popping up in towns and villages all over European Russia to pump oldsters' hands and wave at the muzhiks from his train. His puppets in satellite Hungary have revived old-style coffee shops, which under Stalin were banned as "reactionary," and let American jazz (Blue Tango, C'est Si Bon) push Russian classical music off the radio.

In capitals from Oslo to Singapore, Russian envoys, suddenly polite, have been passing out caviar and cognac, lunching Western newsmen, offering to provide Soviet orchestras for their hosts' enlightenment. Smart-suited Soviet buyers are shopping everywhere, touting a bottomless ^market (of 660 million Russians and Chinese) for the surplus commodities of Western farms and factories. The Communists want cotton, wool, fats, steel and rubber—and the payment they offer is attractive: gold, timber, even strategic materials.

What remains unchanged in all this is the size of Russia's army and air force and the control of the secret police. The outward changes are all the kind that a regime under pressure, and needing time to consolidate its hold, could be expected to make.