LEADERS IN RUSSIA

Grey River Argus, 6 December 1938, Page 10

LEADERS IN RUSSIA

BIG POSTS CONCENTRATED. EFFECTS OF PURGES The Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S..R. frequently proclaimed in the Soviet. Pres s t° be the "world’s newest and most democratic Parliament.” concluded its second session during the latter half of August after a series of almost daily sittings in the Krem-

lin extending over twelve days, writes the Moscow correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” The time was devoted almost entirely to hearing reports from Government officials and to discussions of them which amounted to amplifications of the reports. The discussions never could have been said to have developed into debate, and there was no record of a negative vote’s having been cast throughout the proceedings. What could not escape observant eyes was the disappearance since January of a number of faces which had been prominent during the historical first session. Some of these were entirely expected. The official dismissal of three commissars had been announced during the interval—Bakulin, of railway transport, Popov, of State procurements, and Pakhomov of water transport. What further has happened to them has not been divulged, as Is usually the case these days. They belonged to the dozen or more commissars named by the Premier, Molotov, in January who had no na* tional reputations and who were virtually unknown to the Soviet public generally. Rumour had involved the names of other commissars. Eiche, the Commissar of Agriculture, who disappeared from his post about May 1, was not a nonentity but a Bolshevik and revolutionist of long standing. Just before the session opened it was reported widely in Moscow that the first ocmmissar of the newly-created Commissariat of Naval Affairs, P. A. Smirnov, had been removed for unknown reasons. Earlier there had been similar reports involving four little-known commissars—Bruskin, of machine building, Gilinsky, of food industry, M. P. Smirnov, of Internal trade, and Boldyrev, of health. None of these men attended the Supreme*Soviet sittings, and seats in the box were reserved for. the Council of People's Commissars . were noticeably empty An announcement on August 28 that “wreckers” in the Naval Commissariat had been “liquidated” probably points to the fate of P. A. Smirnov. Two other members of the Council of Commissars whose rumoured disgrace. was confirmed by their nonappearance' at the Kremlin session were more important in the Soviet hierarchy 61 than any . of these. 'They were the members of the all-power-ful Communist Party Polit-bureau, V. Y. Chubar and S. V. Kosior, who had been elected in January vice-chair-men of the council, or Deputy Pre-

miers. Both were Ukrainians, and it is believed their sudden downfall from an eminence surpassed only by Stalin in the Soviet Union wa s connected with the new“purge” in the Ukraine in the late spring, which has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Chubar had become recognised as •the oratorical mouthpiece' of the Kremlin, and his talents had been employed in January to denounce “enemies” and “wreckers” to the deputies. The veteran President of the Ukraine, G. I. Petrovsky, a vice-chair-man of the Supreme Soviet, was reported involved with Chubar and Kosior, but he appeared at the recenr session. It was observed that he was given no part to play, and his post in the Ukrainian Government has been filled. The score on the Council of Commissars mav be summed up by reporting that of the twenty-eight members nominated bv Molotov for his Cabinet in January eleven apparently have be,en cast into limbo in six months’ time.

Two figures raised up by the Supreme Soviet to prominence also have passed into the shade—Segisbayev and Levitski, vice-chairmen respectively of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities. The Supreme Soviet was called upon to deal with only six of the eleven vacancies in the Cabinet, it confirmed interim appointments of L. M. Kaganovich as Commissar of Railways and N. I. Yezhov as Commissar of Water Transport and named three little-known men to the machinebuilding, food industries, and procurements posts. Kaganovich was also made a deputy Premier, but in whose place was not revealed, as neither Chubar nor Kosior was mentioned, even to denounce him. This gives Kaganovich thre e portfolios, for he remains Commissar of Heavy Industry. It is recalled that in January Chubar and A. I. Mikoyan relinquished posts as commissars in becoming deputy Premiers, because it was stated to be a policy not to have deputy Premiers hold other portfolios in the Cabinet. The fact that two of Stalin’s most trusted lieutenants. Kaeamvinh and Yezhov, have undertaken the leadership of the commissariats of railway transport and of waterways respectively, in addition to the arduous tasks already imposed upon them as commissars • of heavy industry and of internal affairs respectively, reveals a tendency which the Soviet Union, in contrast with the other dictatorial regimes, had not previously displayed. The new development suggests that the Kremlin is experiencing difficulty in finding men experienced in directing the unwieldy economic apparatus who at the same time are trustworthy (jnd display the dynamic qualities which the present situation in Russia palls for from its leaders. The purge, through its executions and arrests, took heavy toll of the- front-rank administrators. With these men disappeared as a rule all the men of second rank who might have been prepared to take over the vacated posts and fill them with a show of ex-

perience and familiarity with the responsibilities. They had to go with their chiefs because they inevitably suspected of having been in complicity with theni or, at least, of having failed to reveal their alleged wrong-do-ings. This accounts for Cabinet appointments of men little known to the public. One of these was A, V. Bakulin who had already been .acting as Commissar of Railway Transport since L. M. Kaganovich relinquished the post late in 1937 to become Commissar of Heavy Industry. Now Kaganovich whose drastic tactics in the Railway Commissariat won him the sobriquet of the “Iron Commissar,” has displaced Bakulin, taking on his stolid shoulders at the same time the two most Herculean and heart-breaking tasks in the Soviet Union—the piloting of Russia’s chronically chaotic railway system and the co-ordinating of the heavy industry. And,-, as if this were not enough, he also has become Deputy Premier.