Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1935. SOVIET REACTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 65, 28 December 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1935. SOVIET REACTION.

The announcement that the Soviet Communist party has decided to accept new members after a suspension of three years is of importance as showing that the extremist element in Russia is determined to renew its propaganda with a view to regaining its former predominant status. Recently the Administration has manifested a tendency to modify the policy that has hitherto marked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a result of the weakening of Communist control of the Government. In a recent article in a review Mr W. H. Chamberlin, author of ‘‘Russia’s Iron Age,” boldly affirmed that the Soviet regime has entered on a new and extremely significant stage of development—the stage of destroying and crushing its own extremists, and of trampling under foot many of its more Utopian early ideals. Many of Lenin’s basic ideas, he pointed out, have already been liquidated. “Bolshevism,” he wrote, “abolished private ownership of factories and mines, banks and farms, and substituted a vast bureaucratic system of State capitalism and State landlordism. Fascism, while it theoretically placed the interests of the State above those of the individual in the economic sphere, stopped short at the suppression of private economic enterprise, while subjecting it to drastic control. This last difference remains. But in its attitude toward nationalism and in its attitude toward equality Soviet practice during the last two years has been gravitating more and more towards Fascism.” Repeated references in recent speeches by M. Stalin and other Soviet leaders to the importance of the individual offer an indication, Mr Chamberlin suggested, that the very complexity of the new Soviet economic and technical problems is breaking down the original dogma of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that in time something like equality of opportunity for Soviet citizens of all classes may be realised. In this connection it is instructive to recall the impressions of Mr J. MDunningham (Minister of Labour m New South Wales), who, on a recent visit to the Soviet, found that workers in Russian factories were employed under what he described as a ? most vicious svstem of piecework. Ihe general standard of living was obviously lower than that of any other country he visited in his tour of Europe, and the people were most poorly clad and shod. This state of affairs cannot be expected to last for ever and the developments recently indicate that after the frenzy of Communistic doctrine that followed the revolution the country is now entering upon the road that will eventually lead to more rational conditions As was the case with the French Revolution, the Soviet experiment has prov.ded a valuable object lesson to the world on what to avoid in national policy.