Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1936. SOVIET CONDITIONS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 266, 22 August 1936, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1936. SOVIET CONDITIONS.

The proceedings at the trial of those implicated in the plot against M. Stalin cast another vivid light on conditions under the Soviet regime. According to the evidence, Leon Trotsky, or his son, was the instigator of the plot. Trotsky himself, however, denies complicity, alleging that since he was exiled he has had no communications whatever with his native country. This disclaimer carried no weight with the grim-faced gudges, for at the very outset of the case they convicted him. To this the discredited leader replies that the charge against him has been brought purely as an act of revenge, but he displays the ruthlessness of his character in the words, Give me a brief respite and the prosecutors themseuves will be prosecuted.” The difference between the two rivals is that Trotsky stands for the original Communist doctrine of world revolution, while Stalin seeks to reconstruct Russia from within. But the trial is of interest, not from the personal aspect, but from its revelation of the state of affairs in Russia. It cannot be pretended that after twenty years of Bolshevist rule Russia is presenting in her domestic life a picture of ordered and harmonious citizenship whicn other countries have cause to envy. A regime which is established by force has generally to be maintained by force. The first Communist State continues to afford striking illustrations of what equality -and fraternity amount to when authority is exercised in the name of the proletariat. M. Stalin and his colleagues sit no more easily in their places than did the veriest tyrant of old. They live in apprehension of plots, and plottings are a significant national symptom. They are the evidence of discontent and disaffection driven underground. When a dictatorship, whether of the proletariat or of another order, walks in fear, it is apt to express itself in ferocity, leading, as in the case in point, to counter-terror-ism. Thus Communism, which should be symbolic of equality for all an idea founded on some conception at least of justice—appears to manifest itself in all manner of contradictions to a doctrine that is held up to admiration by those who profess so much to admire its practical operation in the Soviet State.