STALIN'S PURGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 291, 8 December 1937, Page 15

STALIN'S PURGE.

CRUSH OPPOSITION.

VICTIMS MAY NUMBER 1500,

RIGA (Latvia). Josef Stalin's campaign to crush nil opposition to his Soviet Russian dictatorship has turned into one of the most extensive peace-time blood letting m history In October firing squads have kMled 125 persons, including eight high officials of one of the constituent Soviet republics. Since February 1 of this year at least 885 have been put to death. them were army generals, railway executives, collective farm and grain officials, industrial chiefs, and dozens of men who formerly were hi-'h in Soviet State councils.

This total of 885 in a little more than eight months includes only those executions reported in Russian newspapers. Unofficial reports place the number of victims as high as 1500. The executions are only part, of tli» story. Several highly-pliced Reds have suddenly committed suicide or have met death under mysterious circumstances. '1 housand* have l>een imprisoned, and other thousands have been kicked out of big political jobs.

Readers of the official "Pravda" ("Truth") have no idea of the extent of the purge. Moat news of muss executions is printed only in obseure local newspaper# in the districts where they occur.

Soviet sympathisers insist that the Moscow Press is not trying to hush the ftory. They declare that the metropolitan papers publish little about executions because the papers lack «paco, and because, anyway, those executed were worthless fellows.

Xo effort i« made by Russian* to explain the system under which a man on one day is high in Soviet State councils, and on the next day is a "Trotskyist," wrecker, or counterrevolutionary.

Experienced observers, however, advance several theories. One theory is that the Stalin regime, frightened at a growing wave of unrest and disloyalty, is using mas# murder to etop a possible counter revolution. These observers point to the sudden invoking of censorship, in contra»t to the strenuous efforts made to publicise the two spectacular "old Bolshevik" trials in August, lO.'i'i. and in January of this year. Another theory is that Stalin wishes to make sure of no dissenting votes in the first Parliamentary elections soon to be held under the new constitution.

Some commentators have suggested that the exiled Leon Trotsky, now in Mexico, is being uaed by Stalin as an excuse for removing any "old Bolsheviks." These observers believe Trotsky has escaped ass<wisinationt because Stalin nee<k him as * bogey man.

Another suggested explanation of the purge is one advanced recently in Moscow by an editorial writer for "Izvartia," who daringly accused Communist officials of hiding their own inefficiency under a campaign against "saboteurs." Possibly one way to explain the purge 1s to go back to Czarist day*. Then the Czar and 130,000 landowners ruled the country. They eliminated their opponents with censorship, terrorism, and intimidation. Twenty years have passed, but Russians are still Russians.