Word: sofia
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Unbelieving Ears. As Kostov walked into the great hall of Sofia's Military Club, which had been rigged up as a courtroom, high Communists in the spectators gallery sat back smugly, waiting for him to cringe before his judges...
...called across the smoky room: "When are you Americans going to stop the Russians?" No country in the West so deeply hates and fears the Russians. Turkey lives in a state of siege. Russian propagandists have been claiming Turkey's eastern provinces for the Soviet motherland. Radio Sofia purrs the happy lot of Bulgaria's Turkish minority; Radio Azerbaijan calls on all Kurds, including Turkey's, to revolt...
Guards with Tommy guns peered down from the roof of Sofia's grandiose Hôtel Bulgarie, and armored cars toured the streets below. In the hotel's plush lobbies and corridors, swarthy Albanian colonels conferred importantly with bemedaled Czech generals; Polish officials huddled with thoughtful Hungarians. Vulko Chervenkov, new boss of Bulgaria, walked side by side with Ana Pauker, Stalin's Amazon satrap for Rumania. Over all watched the steady eyes of the Russians sent for the occasion from Moscow. The Cominform was meeting in full conclave. Chief item on the agenda: what to do about...
Even before the special embalmers got started, Dimitrov looked impressive in death (see cut). Less attention, however, was focused on the dead man than on the living who surrounded him. Describing a Moscow ceremony, before Dimitrov's body was sent to Sofia last week, Pravda wrote: ". . . 23 hours 20 minutes: J. V. Stalin enters the hall. With him, placing themselves in a guard of honor, are Comrades G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria, K. E. Voroshilov, L. M. Kaganovich, A. I. Mikoyan, N. M. Shvernik, N. A. Bulganin...
...this order of precedence did not jibe with the photograph of the scene; in the picture, Voroshilov, not Malenkov, stood closest to Stalin. The discrepancy gave rise to subtle speculations: Voroshilov merely had the place of honor because it was he who was about to accompany the body to Sofia, but the fact that Pravda mentioned Malenkov's name first meant that the 47-year-old boss of the Communist Party organization was on his way up. Some watchers from afar were also disturbed by the fact that Molotov was missing from the scene; but his absence...