THE SOVIET AND THE THIRD

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21578, 14 September 1935, Page 22

THE SOVIET AND THE THIRD

INTERNATIONAL so ;thb jsditob o» the pbess. Sir,—l noticed in "The Press" to-day a letter signed by the press committee of the Friends of the Soviet Union, in which there was an attempt to refute certain statements I made in my previous letter against the devilish tyranny of the Soviet regime. I wish to add to my previous statements these: "that the Soviet regime has been such an utter failure from the very beginning that it was only through its introduction of the fiendish Ogpu spying system, the wicked persecution of all those noble men who criticised its iniquities, the abolition of the freedom of the press, and total disregard of the sacredness of human life, that the Soviet was able to continue and remain in power. I speak not through reading knowledge but through an intimate acquaintance with "Russian politics and political men and women. I have had a copy of a letter of that noble communist Prince Krapotkin, in which he openly accused Lenin of criminality, and ended by saying that even if he were certain that by such methods it was possible to bring about a real state of happy communism he would certainly oppose them, and stated also that Leninism had made communism just as hateful to Russia as Robespierre and his acolytes had made Jacobinism hateful to the French people. Now, I worked and lived with Rusisans, and I can safely state that. mentally they are up to the standard of the best European man. Of such men there were during the Tsar's regime at least 20,000,000. Yet with such an asset the Soviet regime has not as yet been able to produce sufficient tradesmen of the standard we have here in New Zealand. Japan in five years became independent of European experts. The Soviet must still go to Germany, England, and , elsewhere for tradesmen. Sabotage i is almost general ill Russia, and this I is the silent protest of the enslaved Russian worker against the tyranny* of Stalinism. Sabotage there is organised not by foreigners, but by RusiSans. A tradesman can be made within five years, an expert within 10 years. The Soviets have existed almost 20 years. The only expert there is the gaoler, the spy, the hangman! At the last Russian literary congress all those men who expressed their regret at the decline of the literary standard of Russian literature .were either suppressed or made to recant their opinions. When Lenin recognised the utter failure of his regime he blamed the existence of capitalism elsewhere, so he started his revolutionary propaganda all over the world, but this failed, too, and now we finally see that instead of the world ' turning communistic, Russia has developed a full-fledged State capitalism or the worst aspect of capitalism. Here the worker, has a right to organise himself, to voice his grievances, to strike, to fight politically for the betterment of his class. In pres-ent-day Russia this is a crime. The worker there is a mere wage slave; he is compelled to act, think, sleep, and starve at the will of the dictator. While the Russian worker goes to gaol and suffers martyrdom in order to gain his freedom, we have here an association of mentally purblind individuals who gloat on the misery and oppression of a noble nation. If ever I hated a tyrant, I cannot love those who are pleased to be his acolytes and supporters while living in a free country.—Yours, etc.,

COLUMNA ITALIAE. September 13, 1935.