Stalin lauds Roosevelt as peace pioneer
Russians grieved – news brings tears
MOSCOW (UP) – Marshal Joseph Stalin hailed President Roosevelt in death today as “a great politician of world significance and a pioneer in the organization of peace and security after the war.”
Russians hearing the first word of Mr. Roosevelt’s death were stunned and deeply grieved. Their reaction was believed representative of the masses, as well as their highest leaders.
The Russians never forgot the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was the first President to recognize the Soviet regime.
Mr. Roosevelt’s and Marshal Stalin’s personalities clicked at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. They understood one another perfectly, parted genuine friends, and kept up extensive cable correspondence.
Won hearts of Russians
Once between sessions at Yalta, the two with an interpreter alone sat on a beach facing the Black Sea waves, chatting about everything but politics. Few if any foreign dignitaries could have had a similar session with Marshal Stalin.
Mr. Roosevelt’s warmth and simple manner won the hearts of every Russian on his personal staff at Yalta. His chambermaid, a 60-year-old peasant woman named Fenya who works on the third floor of the Hotel Metropole here, said the President was “such a dear, fine. sympathetic man.”
Fenya wept when she heard of Mr. Roosevelt’s death, as did several others of the Metropole staff who served the President.
Sends messages
Marshal Stalin’s tribute to Mr. Roosevelt was expressed in messages he sent to Mrs. Roosevelt and President Truman. That to Mrs. Roosevelt said:
Please accept my sincere condolence on the occasion of the death of your husband, and my expression of my sincere sympathy in your great sorrow.
The Soviet people highly valued President Roosevelt as a great organizer of the struggle of freedom-loving nations against the common enemy and a leader in the cause of insuring security for the whole world.
‘A great politician’
To President Truman, he messaged:
On behalf of the Soviet government and myself personally, I want to express profound condolence to the Government of the United States of America on the occasion of the premature death of President Roosevelt.
The American people and the United Nations have lost, in Franklin Roosevelt, a great politician of world significance and a pioneer in the organization of peace and security after the war.
The government of the Soviet Union expresses its sincere sympathy for the American people in their great loss, and their conviction that policy of friendship between the great powers who have shouldered the main burden of war against the common enemy will continue to develop in the future.