MOSCOW'S MOVE
THE concerted denunciation of the nine doctors who are accused .of plotting against the lives of Soviet leaders is the gravest news to come from Russia for a long time. The manner of the announcement by Moscow radio and throughout the Russian Press is an unmistakable sign to the Soviet peoples and the world at large that a major movement of policy has already begun—a move- ment which is to be aimed in the first instance against the Jews. The closest observers of Russian affairs have seen it coming not only in the two months since the specific denuncia- tions of Zionism at the Prague trials, but for some years. It is impossible to say where a movement of this kind, bearing all the marks of careful preparation, will end, but as soon as its close examination is begun the tremendous breadth of its implications becomes apparent. The possibility of a new mass outbreak of anti-Semitism` in the Communist ,countries, so soon after the demonstration by the late Fascist regimes of the lengths to which this menace :can ;be -talcen, is only a beginning. The persistent use of the word " Zionism "—which is even more carefully distinguished from " Semitism " in Eastern Europe than in the rest of the world—suggests an intensification of the long latent, Communist attack on Israel and a more open exploitation of the forces of unrest which have been so long at work in the vast group of Moslem countries stretching from Pakistan to the Atlantic. The delicacy and danger of the balance in the Middle East could lipt have been more effectively under- lined. And on top of all-this is the statement of all the Moscow agencies that the time has now come for a further strengthening both of the armed forces and of the Soviet internal security services—the twin pillars of the Russian Communist threat, ignorance at home and a military menace to the rest of the world. • This latest Communist move is very black news, and some of the more wishful interpretations that have already been put on • it look completely unconvincing. This may be, as the American • State Department points out, a new use of an old technique- - the accusation of medical sabotage. It may be an expression of the chronic Russian sense of insecurity. It may be a sign of a division within the innermost Kremlin circle. It may be a prelude to an attack on the Russian secret police. But if it is any of these things, or all of them, it is. for the world at large, the most dangerous manifestation of them for years. Nor is there much comfort in the possibility that the whole movement may blow over as suddenly as it has been forced on the public notice. If previous experience of the Kremlin's way of announcing a major change is anything to go on, the present blast of announcements from Moscow is only a beginning. A situation has already been created in which the slightest relaxation of vigilance in the world at large would be dangerous.
