COMMUNIST PARTY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 133, 2 December 1937, Page 29

COMMUNIST PARTY

NEW MEMBERS SOUGHT

CONCERN FELT IN RUSSIA

The Communist Party leadership fa showing concern at the slowness with which local party organisations are inducting new members to replace old ones who have been expelled by the thousands for various offences, ranging from inactivity to disloyalty to theNstalin regime (writes Harold Denny from Moscow to the "New , York Times"). , The membership is now well below 2,000,000 as a result of these purgings, which have been systematic for a decade following Joseph Stalin's crushing of Leon Trotsky and which have been prosecuted with increasing severity since the assassination of Sergei. Kiroff, Leningrad" Communist leader, in the winter of 1934. Last autumn, after three years, the ban on the admission of new members into the Communist Party ranks was lifted. One function of these cleansings and of the admission; of new members is to make the party completely Stalinist by bringing in young men and women whose political education has been under Stalin. The party leadership's instructions on the reopening of membership rolls were to take in the most advanced and most loyal elements of the forking class, chosen only after searching investigations. Some> local leaders thought this wad an inyitatioil-to conduct regular membership .campaigns, and drew up plans for; gaining the greatest number.'of .'inducted candidates on a mass scale, notwithstanding that the basic principle: of the party has always been to .restrict membership, only to the most devoted and most active Communists.' I Loyalty to Stalinvis ■naturally of overwhelming importance, ; in view t>f the fact that the avowed policy is to have a Communist Patty, member in every key- place. This importance is even further enhanced by the approach of secret elections under the new Con-! stitution. . . ADMISSIONS ENDED, The Communist Party leadership quickly stopped the mass admissions. But then local organisatiqns in many places leaned so far the other way that, they admitted almost nobody. For instance, 80 per cent, of party organisations in the Kiev and Kharkov districts did not accept a single newmember in eight months. In Azerbaidjan, where there are large industrial centres, 90 per cent, of the organisations did not accept a single member. The reason for this excessive caution is that every candidate must be recommended by at least two.Communist Party members, who are liable to penalties, including expulsion, if the person they recommended later proves to be unworthy. The Soviet Press in its denunciation of party members exposed as "enemies" is continually calling to account members who recommended them. ■ t ■, With purges going on right and left, Communist Party members in many places are playing safe and not taking the responsibility of recommending anybody. The newspaper "Pravda" held this attitude up to scorn by laying that such "cowardly self-insurance is non-Bolshevist. v ... . . "It is a disgrace when the party organisation, is ready- to; accept - a Stakhanofflst .member in the party out is afraid ■ to, recommend him," says the chief'organ of > the party. _ The Young Communist organisation, eight of whose highest officials were recently removed under charges im-, plying their arrest, is now promoting thousands of new members to local executive posts.-Of 7800 members of committees elected in Moscow, 5000 had become Young Communists since 1931, 3000 of whom are 20 years old or younger. YOUTH - PROMOTED. Osoaviakhim—-whose former chief, General Robert P. Eideman, was shot with Marshal Tukhachevsky and six other Red Army generals as traitors and whose whole leadership has been combed for disloyalty—is also holding local elections with the avowed purpose of eliminating any elements that could interfere with the society's work of training military reserves. The promotion of the StakhanofflstJacob Yussim to the directorship of one of the Soviet Union's largest factories is apparently only an early step in the deliberate programme, to replace old executives with young, men or women; , The .Commissariat of "Heavy Industry' emphasised the need of utilising young, talent who have completed their, education since the Revolution.

So iri'many, of the most important fields of.Soviet; activity young people, presumably, indoctrinated in Stalinism, are being put in influential places, which. older men are relinquishing or-from.which they are being gently or violently removed. ,

DLJLJLJL