RUSSIA'S CRISIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 236, 5 October 1937, Page 10

RUSSIA'S CRISIS.

THE NEW PURGE.

SPY-HUNTING POPULAR.

FOREIGN FRIENDS SHUNNED,

(% WILLIAM E. McDERMOTT.) MOSCOW. There is a crisi* in Rnsein. How grave and significant it is no outsider knows. Foreign observer* hove never been able to come to the heart of the

political realities in thie country an<l. at the moment, they are more isolated and bewildered than they ever were.

You hear talk of an industrial breakdown, of terror, intrigue and hysteria, but this is largely guess work. The real news is locked up in the Kremlin with the leadership,of the Communist party, which is immeasurably loss communicative than was Calvin Coolidgc. Certain facts and impressions are clear enough.

The tension and strain arc more apparent than at any time in the years I have been coining to Moscow. Fear, uncertainty and mistrust are thick in the air. Every day bring* reports, rumours and announcements of new arrests, of commissars fallen from favour, or shake-ups and reorganisation in the highest places, of spying, wrecking and sabotage. The country rages with a spy fever, and spy-hunting has become a lively industry.

Newspapers are filled with denunciations of "wreckers' , and "divursionists," the latter word apparently covering everything from treason to incompetence and stupidity. Articles in the newspapers describe the methods of espionage and a book is beinn; prepared for the instruction of the masses in the proper technique for the defection of spies.

Foreigners are naturally suspected of espionage and the result is that they now have become almost completely insulated from first-hand contact with Russian life. It is not wise in the present state of feeling for a Russian to have any social dealing with a foreigner. The newspaper men, the Embassy staff and other Americans resident in Moscowused to have a few Russian friends. They have dropped away like the leaves of autumn.

Delivered to the Hoosegow. An amiably disposed American invited 15 Russians, with whom he had been friendly, for a social evening. All lo accepted the invitation and only one had the courage, or the recklessness, to show up.

Another American family had been on good terms with an elderly Kiirssiun woman. A few weeke ago she visited the apartment of the Americans, and the next day she was arrested ami han not been heard from since. Xo charges wero publicly preferred against her— she was obviously a harmless and wellmeaning old woman, incapable of political intrigue—and tlie Americans assume she was delivered to tlie Hooispgow because ehe wae found in possession of an American newspaper which they had thoughtlessly given her.

The same American family had employed a Russian workman for odd jobs around the house. He was sober and reliable, and they recommended him to one of the members of the Embassy staff who had need of some repair work in his own home.

Tho Rii6«inn went to the Embassy one morning and thereafter disappeared for more than a week.

It eepmed he hnd been picked up at the Embassy entrance by a suspicion* member of the secret police, who wanted to know what business a Russian workman lijkl at tho American Kmbasav. The Rueeian spent a week in gaol while they were finding out that he wae not a spy. He took the nrrest a<s a matter of course and was apparently neither resentful, surprised nor much worried.

Suspicion Rampant. Such incidents could be multiplied into a long catalogue. They are eugjjeetive of the tension that exists and indicative of the abnormality in the relationship between the Russian people and the foreigners who attempt to understand and report what is happening to them.

No foreigner now has any real contact with Russians except in official dealings. It is too embarrassing and too dangerous for the Russians, and seneible foreigners no longer make any effort to see their Russian friends.

When I was here in years past it wa« possible to visit a Russian factory without an officinl guide, nnd you could ask questions of workmen through your own interpreter and arrange a visit to the living quarters of workers and employees.

It would be utterly impossible to do such things to-day. * People would not talk and you would be immediately suspected and inietrueted as a spy.

Fear and suspicion make the factual reporting of newe very difficult in Russia at this period. The newspaper gentry in practice here are about as unhappy in their professional activities as any lot of their brethren I have met in an uneasy and censor-plagued world.

One by one their Russian friends drop off or go to the calaboose or disappear from their familiar environments.

When they are invited to an official function they count heads to eee who i-s mwsinjr. If some official who would normally be present is not on band, they assume he has been arreeted, exiled or ehot. He may be ill or on a vacation, but the chances are that he is in disgrace.

No Public Trials. There are no public trials. The firet intimation one has of the downfall of a conimiesar, an administrator or a journalist is usually an item in a Russian newspaper referring to one or another formerly powerful Bolshevik as a wrecker, a diversionist or merely as lacking in zeal and efficiency. Sometimes the news of the subsequent arrests »■» published.

Nobody will venture an estimate of the number of people who have ■been gaoled a& Trotskyists, epies and wreckers but the total must be largo, since hundreds are publicly listed as

having been arreeted, and every foreigner seems to know of others whose downfall i« not announced but who can reasonably be assumed to have got into trouble.

Four premiers of the Soviet republics have been gaoled, including the Premier of Georgia, Stalin's home territory. Numerous directors of broadcasting stations and newspaper officials are under arrest. Whole industries and bureaus have been cleaned of their administrators. Hundreds are still t> r :ing arrested daily. In any democratic, bourgeois country this condition would mean the collapse of a (lovernment and probably the end of a system. Th.jre is nothing to suggest that it ha? any such meaning in Russia.

A Purge at the Top.

The paradoxical thing is that this sharp accentuation of fear and uncertainty in high places accompanied by evidence of substantial material improvement in the lot of tlie- majority of the people, as compared with their situation a few years ago. The Russians as a nation have mo-e to oat and more to wear than they had two years ago, when I was last hero.

I should gnoss that the people as a whole are little touched by what amounts to panic in the top ranks. The little fellow is not worrying, unless he happens to have had contact with foreigners. Demonstrations of protest would be inconceivable and, indeed, life here, as you see it in the streets, restaurants and amusement places, looks easier and less strained than it looked when political conditions were supposedly normal and stable.

This is a purge at the top. The powerful, the politically active, the prominent party members are largely the people who have been arrested and deflated. There is tremblinp anxiety and desperate alarm in the high and medium ranks, but the little fellow feels it only indirectly and by contagion.

For that reason, among others, it is probably logical to guess that the regime will weather the storm.— (N.A.N.A.) (To be continued.)