Man of the Year
On the year's shortest day, 60 years ago, in Gori, near Tiflis, a son
was born to a poor, hard-working Georgian cobbler named Vissarion
Djugashvili. The boy's pious mother christened him Joseph, after the
husband of Mary, mother of Jesus. But names were not to stick very long to this newest subject of the
Tsar; he was to answer to Soso, Koba, David, Nijeradze, Chijikov and
Ivanovich until at length he acquired the pseudonym of Stalin, Man of
Steel. Last week, as another Dec. 21 rolled around, the little town of Gori was
a mecca for 450 Russian writers, “intellectuals” and students sent to
gather material on Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili's birthplace and
early surroundings. Newspapers printed sentimental poems and stories
about the “little house in Gori” and latest photographs showed that it
had been enclosed in an ornamental stone structure and turned into a
Soviet shrine. A Tiflis motion-picture studio started filming Through
Historic Localities, a cinema intended to conduct the spectator through
every part of the country associated with Joseph Stalin's name. In Moscow 1,000,000 copies of President Mikhail Kalinin's biography, A
Book About the Leader, were issued, while sketches by Defense Commissar
Kliment E. Voroshilov and Commissar for Internal
Affairs Laurentius Pavlovich Beria are soon to appear. In a twelve-page
edition of Pravda, Moscow Communist Party newsorgan, only one column
was not devoted to Joseph Stalin on his birthday morn. In an editorial
called “Our Own Stalin,” Pravda declared: “Metal workers
of Detroit, shipyard workers of Sydney, women workers of Shanghai
textile factories, sailors at Marseille, Egyptian fellahin, Indian
peasants on the banks of the Ganges—all speak of Stalin with love. He
is the hope of the future for the workers and peasants of the
world.”In his honor the Council of People's Commissars founded 29
annual first prizes of 100,000 rubles each for outstanding
achievements in “medicine, law, science, military science,
theatre, inventions, while 4,150 Stalin student scholarships were
announced. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet conferred on Tovarish
Stalin the Order of Lenin and gave him the title of “Hero of
Socialist Labor.”Shop committees, laborers' clubs, Soviets, Party
and State functionaries felicitated Hero Stalin, but among the
congratulations from abroad one came from an old enemy now turned
friend—Adolf Hitler: “I beg you to accept my sincerest
congratulations on your 60th birthday,” wired the Fhrer. “I
enclose with them my best wishes for your personal welfare as well as
for a happy future for the peoples of the friendly Soviet Union.”
The Nazi press meanwhile carefully eulogized Mr. Stalin as the
“revolutionary fhrer of Russia.”The Man. In all this
wordage over Comrade Stalin's 60 years of life only six-line
communiqus on the progress of the Red Army in Finland were printed in
the U. S. S. R. Obviously, the hammer-sickle propaganda machine
preferred that Soviet citizens pay as little attention as possible to
a scarcely encouraging military campaign . Much, however,
was written about Joseph Stalin's enormous effect on world affairs in
the last twelve months.
