Gravitational Pull

On Satellite Row there has been no cheering about Russia's new course in world diplomacy. Communist bosses in these areas tug nervously at their white collars when they reflect upon Russia's abrupt decision to withdraw from Austria and her new-found friendship for the unforgetting Tito. In their apparent anxiety to please the West, is it possible that the Russians will go as far as to ring a few changes in the bureaucratic hierarchies of the satellite states? After Geneva, the local bosses felt a little better: the West had not pressed its demands for liberation, and Khrushchev & Co. had stood their ground. Last week, the word from Moscow was that the satellite bosses were safe--for the time being.

The occasion was the anniversary of the "liberation" of Rumania by the Red army, which after eleven years is still there, though its nominal job, supposedly guarding the Soviet supply route to occupied Austria, is ended. The Red army will stay on in Rumania, happily announced Rumania's Communist Premier Gheorghiu-Dej, so long as there are foreign soldiers in West Germany. Then came baggy-suited, First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev from Moscow with smiling assurances of "all-round assistance . . . from reliable and faithful friends" and to wish "you, dear friends, new great successes in building the foundations of socialism." The satellites must stay strong, Khrushchev added. "In the world there are forces which stand in the way ... of this great aim [i.e., ending the cold war]. All this makes it incumbent upon us to continue the struggle for the strengthening of the might of our countries."

Khrushchev's statement did not quite jibe with the announcement, .made the same week in satellite Czechoslovakia, that 34,000 men will shortly be dropped from the Czech Red army. But Communist delegations from Czechoslovakia. Albania, Bulgaria. Hungary. East Germany, Mongolia, Korea, Poland, listening intently to Khrushchev's words, found a message there. The applause, according to Tass, was "tempestuous and prolonged."

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