Long Life

Stalin was back. Since last summer, he had hardly been glimpsed by the public. Rumors had him paralyzed, deposed, dead. When a Swedish cancer specialist flew to Moscow last month, U.S. newspapers started brushing up their Stalin obituaries.

Last week, on the huge, red-draped stage of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, before hills of spring-hued paper blossoms, Stalin was very much alive. The ceremonies hon ored the 24th anniversary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's death (Stalin, at 68, has now outlived Lenin by 15 years). Surrounded by assorted party bigwigs, Stalin listened to his new Agitation and Propaganda chief, tousled, turbulent Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, make his maiden speech. It was a right promising debut. Said Suslov:

"Lenin scientifically demonstrated . . . that the Soviet form of government is millions of times more democratic than the most democratic of the bourgeois republics. . . . 'Predatory American imperialism,' as Lenin called it, is aiming for world domination. . . . The American imperialists are obviously trying to fill the place of Germany and Japan. . . ."

Stalin led the applause. Then a hand-picked audience of some 2,000 artists, scientists and party stalwarts again & again shouted: "Da zdravstvuet Tovarish Stalin!--Long life to Comrade Stalin!" Stalin again applauded, most earnestly.

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