The Russian Puzzle
The Soviet spy-hunt continues to develop along expected lines, but two features of the meagre information emanating from the Soviet Press are worthy of remark. Firstly, although the " unmasking " of foreign agents and offenders against State security goes on, there has been no repetition of Pravdn's earlier complaint that the police authorities had been negligent in allowing-the " criminals " to remain at large for so long, although it is now openly declared that spies work. ing for a foreign Power have been successful in discovering Soviet State secrets. Secondly, the party as such has become involved through new charges laid against party secretaries in Kiev. So far, this new move is confined to Ukraine, and any such development will closely affect Khrushchev, Stalin's viceroy in the South and a Secretary of the Central Committee, whose recent duty it was to report to the Nineteenth Congress on the significant alterations to the Party Statutes. The anti- Jewish motif is sustained,' and the future of Kaganovitch, a Jew, whose responsibilities in the past have also extended to Ukraine; becomes a matter for increasing speculation. But only in. Russia .could such a methodical anti-foreign campaign at home be combined with the sudden acceptance of an invita- tion to- attend a conference on East-West trade sponsored by the Economic Commission for Europe. This Russian economic demarche, for in the circumstances it amounts to that, implies Soviet admission of the fact that East-West trade is better discussed within the E.C.E. than by " conferences " con- vened unilaterally in Moscow. The acceptance, received on January 17th. must have left Moscow at a time when the shock of the new purge was already petrifying initiative among Ministers in the capital. Beria's policemen have certainly retained their freedom of manoeuvre, and it seems that it is also shared by the moulders of Soviet economic policy. Nothing, of course, may come of it, but after we have grown so accustomed to Mr. Molotov's " No," it is refreshing, to say the least, that it should still be possible for Mr. Mikoyan to 4. say „ Yes."
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