RUSSIA’S RULER

Evening Star, Issue 20316, 26 October 1929, Page 15

RUSSIA’S RULER

THE POWER BEHIND THE SOVIET M. STALIH AH 11 ABSOLUTE MONARCH '* Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. PARIS, October 25. Even M. Lenin in his palmiest days had not the same personal influence as M. Stalin, who now, according to M. Bessedovsky, who is continuing his narrative in the ‘Matin,’ lives’ at Gorky, near Moscow, in the villa in .which M. Lenin passed his last days. Every morning at 9 o’clock he goes to Moscow in a powerful closed motor car. Two members of the secret police sit beside the chauffeur, and another car filled with police agents follows. The route is guarded night and day. At headquarters he works all day long, sometimes for seventeen or eighteen hours at a stretch.

M. Bessedovsky. expresses the opinion that there will be no successor to M. Stalin, and when his place has to bo filled it will bo by a body of men, and then will come a debacle, and everything will go to pieces. At present ho is assisted by M. Molotoff and M. Kaganovitch, who only act when the chief is unable to work longer, M. Stalin is the uncontested head of the political bureau, or “cell,” which administers the ' Third International and the Council of Commissaries. This bureau was intended as a deliberative body oi equals, but M. Stalin makes all the decisions. According to M. Bessedovsky, M. Stalin is the only one of the old guard from the October revolution who continues to believe in the imminence of a world revolution. Ho has so little time for his own affairs that when he wanted to divorce his wife and marry a young woman ho could not spare the time to go to a proper Government office, so he just sent a note by a messenger, who returned with the divorce in a quarter of an hour. Ho is not an orator, and he sticks closely to his manuscript. He impresses his audience not by arguments, but by tone and gestures. He uses the most vulgar language, and he holds his entourage by fear, by his powers of organisation, and by the legend that his disappearance will mean a catastrophe. He is an absolute monarch. Australian Press Association. DEAD OR ALIVE? HUNT FOR RED “ HERETIC " LONDON, October 10. M. Bessedovsky, formely First Counsellor of the Soviet Embassy at Paris, who has been accused of political heresy, says the Paris correspondent of the ‘ Daily Mail,’ alleges that ho was told that he was to be taken back to Russia dead or alive. He ascertained that the Soviet envoy boug.it a long, black trunk, in which his bod}' was to be forwarded to Moscow as diplomatic baggage if ho refused to return voluntarily.