Stalin

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30073, 6 March 1963, Page 8

Stalin

Sir, —For students of world events, today is a significant anniversary: a decade will have passed since the death of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, that shadowy figure who to the Russian people embodied supreme wisdom and benevolence, and to the enlightened Westerner supreme corruption. To his power politics the Communist bloc owes its former monolithic might, and nine East European nations owe the extinguishing of their freedom of thought. Has was a doctrine of fear, of aggressive militarism, and no compromise. His successors in the Kremlin have vehemently denounced their old master’s “personality cult” sadism, and perfidy; but have they renounced his legacy? In the West, Mr

Khrushchev’s effusive displays of goodwill have projected an image of bonhomie; but at home the reins of the dictatorship are grasped tightly in his chubby fist The Soviet peoples are really no freer than under Stalin’s regime; totalitarianism has only become tolerable.—Yours, etc., BMC. March 5, 1963.

Saved In Surf.—An 18-year-old youth, Mr Norman Travener, supported a distressed teen-age girl in heavy surf at Karekare, near Auckland, on Sunday, until surf club members came to her rescue. The girt, Miss Susan Munro, had lost her surf board.—(PA.)