Tyranny of Stalin

Franklin Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 43, 19 April 1940, Page 8 (Supplement)

Tyranny of Stalin

PEOPLE READY FOR CHANGE LIRE RATI ON PROG RA MM E M. Alexander Kerensky, who headed the second Provisional Government in Petrograd after the Russian revolution of 1917, has arrived in Paris from the United States, where he has lived for the past three years. In an exclusive interview, M. Kerensky outlined his view of the present situation in Russia, and his programme for Russian liberation, say the News Chronicle correspondent. “We are entering the second phase of the war, in which new lines of attack, must he opened against Germany,” he said.

“Hitler has boasted that his agreement- with Stalin keeps Germany s hack door open against the Allies' blockade. He is right. To close Germany's hack door we must move against- Russia. —that is, against Stalin s Russia.

“Russia is the key to Germany. If you can solve the problem of Russia you solve the problem of Germany, too. If you can free Russia from the grip of Stalin, Ribbentrop’s triumph of August, 1939, falls to pieces. With Russia working against her, not for her, Nazi Germany is doomed. Ripe for Change

“The Russian people today are ripe lor a change. In the age of beastliness they are the ones who have suffered most •- and longest in the ‘old ■world' from the denial of freedom.

, “Do you realise that seven million Russians are in concentration camps today; in Siberia, in the Caucasus — God knows where? “Do you know that every young Russian who begins to think for himself at about the age of 25 is automatically arrested and sent to Siberia if he is foolish enough to. say what he thinks in public. “Allowing three interested relatives —say, a father, a mother and one brother, sister or a fiancee —for each Of. these seven million Russians, you have in Russia today at least twenty million, perhaps thirty million or forty million, people who are either under the direct pressure of political tyranny, or at least under its shadow. Must Begin Inside

“The Russian people do not ask much —the majority of them perhaps do not consciously ask anything definite until someone points it out to them. “What they long for now. what we know they long for. is a very elementary freedom. “You ask me how I want to work on this feeling and what I want to do with it? First, I want to talk, or have someone who knows what has happened in Russia, to talk to the Russian people from outside, at first by shortwave transmitter and after that more directly, perhaps. “The movement I want to create is rot just one by a clique of political exiles to get back into power. “The movement for freedom must begin inside Russia. Then we shall be ready to help it. With, 7,000,000 in concentration camps and thousands of officers and independent thinkers shot by Stalin since 1937, you may be sere there is no lack of revolutionary feeling in Russia. “All it needs is co-ordination and Ihe call to action.”