After Lenin.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 17984, 30 January 1924, Page 8

After Lenin.

As there cannot be two Lenins in one country and century, anxiety about his successor is a little foolish. The " strong-willed and fanatical" candidate mentioned in to-day's cables, a master of ceremonies at Lenin's funeral of whom little has previously been heard, need not he feared. Nothing can possibly happen as mad. and as what has happened alrea^ l y ) n o r is there, on the other nand, any reason to hope that a new leade.-, that any new leadec, will bring back prosperity in a <reek or two, or re-establish liberty. For a long time yet the work that Lenin has done will remain, and the work that he has undone. Europe has seen no one for a generation, and probably no one since Napoleon, So j potent in political good and evil, and so sure of being remembered after his death. And in any case Lenin has not been the ruler of Russia for at least a year. While it has been impossible to reconcile the numerous accounts, wo have had of his and a waste of time to try, the ono fact that has been clear is that he ceased, as far back as the beginning of last year, to be anything but the,shell of the man who made the revolution. While his strength remained, he, and almost ho alone, was the maker of the new system and the breaker of the old. • Trotsky and Krassiu and Zinoyieff and Radek, Stalin and Kameneff and Kalinin and Bukharin, Tchiteherin and RykofF, and no less certainly the new Mark Antony Dzerzliinsky, have been executives only. Some aro supremely able men, and all eV?ver, but their force aud inspiration are derived- Lenin was an original, and the only man of the group, the only man in all Europe or all the world recently, whose will was equal to the designs of his powerful brain. It is Lenin therefore who will still rule in effect, and the personality of the man through whom ho enforces his will is of secondary importance. It may not, of course, be one man at all. The cables to-day speak of a triumvirate, and suggest that perhaps "Kalinin, Staiin, and Kameneff may jointly hold the system together. Kalinin is a comparatively obscure man, though he is president of the chief executive committee, and Kameneff, though an old and tried friend or the dead leader, is not Tn favour with Communist International. But Stalin is said to bo the man who more than any other had Lenin's secrets and confidence. Tho Moscow correspondent of the New York ' 'Times" described him some months ago as the subject of strange legends, a mystery man, extremely inaccessible, but of uncanny capacity. Sines Lenin's, illness began he has been one of' five—Trotsky, Radek, Zinovieff, and Kameneff are the others—who have carried on tho Government, and ho is also secretary of the Communist Party. Then it is pointed out by the same correspondent that S'fcalin, a Georgian, was brought up in the Greek orthodox faith, and that no one can succeed to the Premiership who "has not been born in the Chris- " tian orthodox religion"—a curious statement, certainly, but one which, if true, eliminates from tho "possibles" each of the others in the present Big Five. And outside that group there are only such men as Tchiteherin, a stout Communist and subtle diplomatist, but hardly a leader; Ivrassin, one of the ablest engineers in Europe, but not a born politician; Bukharin. editor of " Pravda,'' aiid a member of tho AIIRussian Executive Committee, but moro useful as a journalist than as chief of a stormy State. Those nearest the scene of events seem to give Stalin tho best chance if.the selection is made in the spirit in which Lenin himself would have made it, Kyi no ono can guarantee that. It ir\ay even lie thought wise to elect a rank outsider. those now directing affairs being less likely to resent the nominal leadership of a nobody than the actual control of a rival. What chiefly concerns the rest of the world is that the Soviet policy is likely to continue longer without Lenin than with him, since he alone was big enough to end it violently if he saw it really failing.