ZHDANOFF

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 December 1940, Page 8

ZHDANOFF

IS HE STALIN’S HEIR? The man who sits at Joseph Stalin’s right hand these days, in sessions of the Supreme Soviet, is Andrew Alexandrovich Zhdanoff, a comparative newcomer who is already a power in the high councils of Russia (writes the Moscow correspondent of the ‘Christian Science Monitor’). Only since 1934, when he became secretary of the Communist Party in the Leningrad district, has Zhdanoff been a national figure, and now, like Mr. Stalin,’ he is not an official member of the Government. But at the moment he is generally regarded as most likely heir and sue-, cessor to the Soviet dictator.

During the last Supreme Soviet sessions in August, when the Baltic States and Northern Rumania were taken into the Soviet Union, he was constantly with Mr. Stalin, and their friendship was displayed for the benefit of the nation’s deputies. When Mr. Zhanoff and Mr. Stalin sit side by side at Council sessions they look like father and son. Both are burly in physique, jovial in nature, and dark in complexion—Mr. Stalin’s hair growing grey, the heirapparent’s still glistening black. Both wear semi-military grey tunics over their barrel chests. They talk, joke, and laugh together at the rear of the party bench in the great modern Council Chamber of the Kremlin. They rise together to applaud, and sit down together, with the teamwork of two well-trained American football cheer leaders. Mr. Stalin’s place is at the very back of the party benches, on the right of the Speaker’s tribune, across from the Government benches, where sit Premier Molotov and the other commissars. Next, nearer the front, comes Mr. Zhdanoff, and then other party leaders. Mr. Stalin’s main title is that of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Mr. Zhdanoff holds second place in the party line-up, as chief in Leningrad, the second city -of Russia, and from there it would be only one. step up for him to become first in j command. Mr. Zhdanoff’s rise has been a] quick one. j During the Revolution he was a. mere stripling and an obscure worker in the upheaval which brought the Bolsheviks to power. He came into prominence with the passing of the Old Guard.

Mr. Zhdanoff was born in 1896 at Mariupol, in the Northern Caucasus, son of a school inspector.