Manawatu Daily Times

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times

Trotsky, Stalin, and Russia’s Future

£JOMMUNIST policy grows more refined with the years. A decade ago the Communist custom called foi summaiy action of an altogether unpleasant sort against those who dared to be independent. In those days one chose to conform or to be condemned. It was a simple matter; so simple, in fact, that the ranks of the dissenters were quickly thinned. But fashions have changed Ihe times are mild. To-day, those whom the Soviets cannot bend they banish.

Of this fact, Trotsky, the revolutionist, is the latest proof. Turkestan, one had assumed, would prove prison enough even for Trotsky. But from the fastnesses of Asiatic Russia his intrigues went forward. Secret presses in out-of-the-way corners of Moscow —several thousand miles distant —continued to print his declarations. Secret agents—carrying his orders—continued, übiquitously, to appear wherever trouble brewed Secret plots, of his engineering, continued to harass the agents of the secret police. Altogether, Russia was not large enough to hold both Totsky and his foes.

To-day, however, Communism's second greatest revolutionist, Lenin’s right-hand man, is reported in Turkey, where he is telling the world that America and England may soon be at war. Trotsky's final banishment—if it proves to be final—will leave the enemies of Stalin without significant leadership. This, so far as the future of Russia is concerned, is probably fortunate. Trotsky stoou and stands to-day for a return to the militant policies of Lenin. In season and out, he has assailed the “Stalin compromisers ” His policy called for an aggressive Communist drive abroad, with only a poor second thought for the internal reconstruction of Russia. Soviet Russia, victorious abroad, could readily surmount domestic obstacles, he reasoned. And many orthodox Communists agreed with him.

But Stalin did not. To Stalin—a Russian first and a Communist afterward—the first obligation of the Government was internal rehabilitation. This obligation he has sought, with sometimes drastic means, to discharge. His inclinations are all to the Right, despite the fact that a year ago after Trotsky's first banishment, he swung momentarily toward the Left. That move, obviously, was a gesture designed to placate party members who had grown restless under Trotsky’s assaults. He quickly swung bask again and took up his task of stabilising industry, relieving the agricultural situation, bettering internal relationships.

And this policy, doubtless, is the only one that can continue to hold Russia. The Commmunist conversion of the agricultural Russian has been abandoned as a hopeless task. But the agricultural Russian must, none the less, be kept content. This Stalin, within the limits set by forces beyond his control, has set himself to do. A Trotsky victory would almost certainly lead to another revolution. Stalin, continuing in power, while still an ardent Communist in primary intention so far as his belief in and desire for a world revolution is concerned, will with almost as much certainty continue the nation’s evolution away from the extremes of Communism. In this latter course, without doubt, lies the greater hope for the future of the nation.