OPECULATIONS regarding the precise significance of the con-
NEWS OF THE WEEK
stitutional changes in Russia announced last week are to some extent satisfied by examination of the full text of M. Molotov's address, which makes it clear that the projected decentralisation is to be of a limited character. It would probably be correct, indeed, to say that whenever Moscow thinks centralised action desirable, either in the military or the diplomatic sphere, centralised action will be taken. Meanwhile the first application of the new enactment is a development of considerable interest. The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, in which considerable Polish territories were incorporated in 1939, has appointed as its Commissar for Foreign Affairs M. Alexander Korneichuk, the dramatist, who has resigned his position as Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs at Moscow to take up his new post. M. Komeichuk is an ardent Ukrainian Nationalist who has in the past assumed a markedly antagonistic attitude towards Poland. His wife is Wanda Wasilewska, who has organised at Moscow the Union of Polish Patriots, which the Russians appear to regard as a possible alternative Polish Government to the administration of M. Mikolaiczyk in London. What M. Komeichuk's appointment portends, if it portends anything at all, will no doubt be revealed as events unfold themselves. Meanwhile, the Moscow paper, War and the Working Classes, ridicules the idea that the constitutional changes point in any way to the inclusion of other countries in the Soviet Union. If the journal had said any part of other countries it would have been more reassuring.
