THE WEEK

Mrs. Ashton G. Thornhill has been sworn in as Director of Women’s Activities in the Office of Emergency Planning in the Executive Office of the President. As everyone knows, women are far more clever than men at planning emergencies.

Nikita Khrushchev, chief necrologist Of the Soviet Union, has announced to the world that the sarcoid remains of-Josef Stalin have been removed from the Lenin-Stalin showcase in Moscow and deposited in the necropolis of lesser heroes under a wall of the Kremlin. Stalin, it turns out, was not all sweetness and light (a revelation that may cause a corpse in Hyde Park to roll over too), and Socialist Realism requires this discovery to be visited upon the yellow-eyed Georgian’s ashes. ‘Twere simple, were that all, but now commences the task of burning millions of books, rewriting thousands of texts, tearing down monuments, renaming streets and towns and schools and factories and—children?—and draping cloth with dialectically correct slogans over chiseled inscriptions now found counterrevolutionary, and painting out that withered form and tapioca face wherever it appears in the heroic canvases of the revolution. But what will be done about that Volga city where the Russians halted the Nazi advance and, quite possibly, decided the outcome of World War II? You know, the one Shostakovitch wrote that symphony about. What is its name?… Molotograd?… Khrushgrad?

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Mrs. Ashton G. Thornhill has been sworn in as Director of Women’s Activities in the Office of Emergency Planning in the Executive Office of the President. As everyone knows, women are far more clever than men at planning emergencies.

Nikita Khrushchev, chief necrologist Of the Soviet Union, has announced to the world that the sarcoid remains of-Josef Stalin have been removed from the Lenin-Stalin showcase in Moscow and deposited in the necropolis of lesser heroes under a wall of the Kremlin. Stalin, it turns out, was not all sweetness and light (a revelation that may cause a corpse in Hyde Park to roll over too), and Socialist Realism requires this discovery to be visited upon the yellow-eyed Georgian’s ashes. ‘Twere simple, were that all, but now commences the task of burning millions of books, rewriting thousands of texts, tearing down monuments, renaming streets and towns and schools and factories and—children?—and draping cloth with dialectically correct slogans over chiseled inscriptions now found counterrevolutionary, and painting out that withered form and tapioca face wherever it appears in the heroic canvases of the revolution. But what will be done about that Volga city where the Russians halted the Nazi advance and, quite possibly, decided the outcome of World War II? You know, the one Shostakovitch wrote that symphony about. What is its name?… Molotograd?… Khrushgrad?