Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1926. "THE NEW LENIN"

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 35, 10 February 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1926. "THE NEW LENIN"

It is from Riga that London gets, the bulk of its Russian news, since any place within the jurisdiction of the Soviet Government would be unhealthy for a correspondent who desired to tell the truth about them. Yesterday's report about the Soviet dictatorship was an exception to this rule, but the fact that it was based upon a Zurich message confirms the broader rule which makes a direct service from Moscow impossible. The agency which reports that "the dictatorship of Stalin in Soviet Russia is now complete" must, however, be of good authority, or the Press Association's correspondent would not have thought the message worth cabling. He (Stalin) is, we arc told, hailed a3 the new Lenin. Zinovieff, Trotsky, and Madame Lenin are now back numbers, who are protesting against their treatment Trotsky was only offered a choice of the Commissarship of Finances or the Presidency of the Third International. Zinovieff is reported to be under arrest. In its general purport the message agrees so closely with what previous reports had rendered probable as to impose no .tax on our credulity. The ultimate triumph of Stalin was assured weeks ago, and the "disciplining" of the dissentient minority must follow as a matter of course. The details of the process by which his victory was consummated and his opponents pnt to shame are, however,, not supplied, but the British correspondents stationed at Riga are not likely to leave the gap long unfilled. The trial of strength between Stalin and his opponents began with the opening of the Congress of the Communist Party of the Union of v Soviet Republics about a week before Christmas. The trio who had recently been described as the real rulers of Russia —Zinovieff, Kameneff, and Stalin —were then seen to be hopelessly at variance. The partially reinstated Trotsky, who had been represented as slowly working bis way back to power again, occupied a position in the background, or perhaps we should lay the middle distance, from which he was able to contemplate, under the guise of a disinterested spectator, the same kind of storm that his independence had brought upon himself during the previous year. Trotsky, wrote the Riga correspondent of "The Times" in his report of the Congress, had no first-rank Communists openly on his side, and so it was comparatively easy to deal with him. Trotsky has returned to some measure of influence. He is a member of the Presidium of the present Congress, but has taken no open, active part in the quarrel. He sits calmly on the platform watching his former fierce assailants, Zinovieff , and Kameneff, being treated to the same sort of medicine as they and Stalin administered to him last year. ' - The Congress, though the fourteenth of the series, was of special importance as only the second full Congress of the party since the death of Lenin. The question which divided it was but another phase of the question that had divided the party during his lifetime. It had indeed divided Lenin himself, and dictated an apostasy from Leomism on the part of its founder. In the New Economic Policy which he propounded in 1921 Lenin had to confess that the short cut which under his guidance the party had attempted from Capitalism to Communism was leading them to disaster, and that there was no escaping it except by partially retracing their steps. The Bolsheviks^ great idealist, being also a great realist, frankly recognised that the facts of economics and the -facts of human nature as represented by the refusal of the peasants to grow corn for the maintenance of their political masters in the towns were too strong for him. A compromise with the evil thing which Communism was organised to destroy was accordingly effected to, avert the threatened disaster. Ever since Lenin's death the main question which has from time to time divided his successor is whether this principle should be extended or restricted to meet the constantly changing conditions, and as the master himself was inconsistent in his attitude both sides are able to claim that .they are the true followers alike of the letter and of the^spirit of his gospel. When Trotsky fought his lone hand against Zinovieff and his colleagues in 1924 he attacked them as bourgeois politicians who had forsaken the standard of orthodoxy; and of course they returned the compliment. The /fourteenth Congress of the Communists was divided, as we have said, on similar lines. Stalin submitted the official report of the Central Committee in a five-hour speech. A parallel report from Zinovieff was then demanded by the Opposition group, and the gist of it, 'as reported by "The Times" correspondent, was as follows: — There were two main features which Zinovieff and Kameneff could not approve:—(l) The policy adopted in the villages, which was giving the more well-to-do peasants—the Kulaka (literally "fists") —too much scope for asquiring wealth and power, a policy which, if continued, would inevitably convert this Kulak element into a real danger for the Soviet regime; (2) the development of Soviet industry and commerce on a basis of "State Capitalism,** wHeh was guiding the entire economic life into channels wMeh eonid by no stretch of the imagination be c.«

pected to lead to the goal Lenin had in view. Indeed, if persisted in and if Russia continued as an oasis in the desert of " bourgeois-capitalist States,'' it would become impossible to turn back on their tracks or to convert fio system into Socialism. Unless the overdue world-revolution broke out, they would then bo lost entirely. After a passionate and prolonged debate the Committee's report was adopted by 559 votes to 63. The significance pf this notable* departure from the fiction which has hitherto represented these proceedings as unanimous was heightened by the fact that some hundreds must have abstained from voting. But Stalin had triumphed, and his critics are paying the penalty.