Why The/ Praise Stalin

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 88, 13 April 1940, Page 8 (Supplement)

Why The/ Praise Stalin

"The workers' most remarkable guide.* "... the liope of all the oppressed." . . the father of all who struggle for happiness and humanity." "The epitome of 'all the grandeur of the common era of humanity."' . . the greatest man of our time." "Stronger than the valiant lion." "A magnificent garden of perfumed fruits."' "The most glittering diamond of the party." "All that is beautiful, strong, wise and marvellous." The subject of this extraordinary adulation is the inan who goes by the name of Stalin. The authors of it are some of his "comrades." One of them, a delegate to a congress, went even further: " At that moment I saw our beloved father, Stalin, anrl T lost consciousness. I he "hurrahs resounded for a long time, and it was prohablv this noise which biought me to myself. ... you will excuse me, comrades, if. finding myself in such a state of bewilderment at the sight of Comrade Stalin, I did not salute him." Ihe motive force of such sycophantic declarations, says Boris Souvarine in his Stalin (Angus and Robertson), is fear, the universal fear of a tyrant. The Fate of Millions For that fear there are many reasons. - talin, as Mussolini once remarked, has mowed down his enemies in lar-re armruls, and not only his enemies, but also nis friends" and subordinates. .He has mowed down, among others, the "old guard" of the Communist party, the (lower of the Communist voutii the general stair of the Red Army, an.l virtually all the heads of Government administration*. Of the directing staff of the Communist partv in Lenin's lifetime there remained. 20 years after, only Stalin, and Trotsky—and Trotskv' in -Mexico, is always <ruarded. There have disappeared, among countless <S>

" others, the larpe majority of members of the Commission which drew up "the e most democratic constitution in the world. almost all of the experts f who drew up or directed the Five-year plans and the rulers of all the "feder- " ated" republics of Soviet. Union, including one Nestor Lakaba. Lakaba had 1 written a pamphlet in which he described Stalin ns "the greatest man of ? the whole epoch, such a* history gives to humanity only once in one "or two » hundred years." and as the "genial leader, unshakable and made of steel, our dear' and 'beloved Stalin." But even that did not save him from a bullet in the neck. ; Gap In Population Many of these men, of whose names and positions M. Souvarine gives a list ' a, ~^ s had been unanimously elected by the people. Others bad been friends of Lenin. Rut -Stalin discovered 1 that they were false friends. '•Fascists" spies, saboteurs, traitors, dogs—in a word, "Trot-Ovists." ]t cannot be said that all of t-j.'m were shot. Some committed suicu*. Others are believed to be among the millions—from five to ten millions imprisoned or banished. M. Souvarine believes the most probable estimate is seven millions in the concentration camps alone, and fifteen millions in all. Do these figures seem incredible' 5r Souyanne points to the population statistics (though in another place ho says most of the Soviet statistics are faked). On the basis of the 1920 census, there were 147 million inhabitants, and if the natural increase is three millions a year, as Stalin has said, there should !oi V t° 180 I,,illionfi at the end of . ; Tller<> a census at the beginning of that year, but the directors ot the statistical bureau were arrested ami -(he results were not announced. According to General Krivit«ky (whose book was reviewed recently in this column) only 14:", millions were found. AVliat of the others? No one can sav for certain, but it has been estimated that at least siv millions died of starvation in the Ukraine in 1932-3,1, and millions elsewhere.

8 Z™* thinks (JI. Souvarine writes) ot © the distress of the millions of exiles; of the innumerable ill-treated penal labour squads; of »the concentration camps, where s a frightful mortality makes huge gaps; of r u ?, verflo wing prisons; of the millions of abandoned children, of whom only a minute percentage manage to survive; of - the executions and punitive expedition®; 1 m short of the multitudes 'mown down in armfuls' by Stalin, one csuinot be astonished a.t the immense charnel-houses of this gigantic prison, which with double 3 iPt»ny is called a "Socialist fatherland." > If wer © not Tor its length (600 pages) and its necessary complexity, M. . Souvarinee book could be recommended [ to all those who want to read a history of Bolshevism in Russia. As it is, it is a book for students, both professional and unprofessional, especially those of the latter, whose "study" of the subject ; has been done in the "pages of authors ; whom M. Souvarine describes as "a whole string of (Stalin's) hired adulators in foreign countries." The Russian leader "encourages without what he dare not tolerate within. He supports strikes and promotes subversive acts, of which he would crush the least glimmerings, in foreign countries." He "calls himself the defender of the workers in capitalist countries and is himself their worst oppressor in the 'Socialist fatherland.' " Russia To-day The author's general conclusion about the state of Russia to-day deserves quotation: The Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics, the very name a fourfold contradiction of the reality, hns long ago ceased *o exist . . . only well-menning but very young ists still hope for its spontaneous i r ,?'\ Urr n' tl . < ?i' 1 ' the dominating party has all illusions in this respect and forgotten its Socialist programme. So-called ! f. K '' ety . rcs, - s on its own method of rtnclr h °v f man bv man - ot the PfovfL V m b « re «ucracy. of the technician b} the political power. For the individual appropriation of surplus value is Huho' t ! ltcd a collective appropriation by the a ilwiuction made for the parasitic consumption of functionaries. The bureaucracy takes an undue part o'f the produce, corresponding more or less to (he fflsrsa S-sr,, T ,x .'.r3