Intellectuals’ Club in Moscow Attacked

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7169, 17 March 1930, Page 9

Intellectuals’ Club in Moscow Attacked

OUTLINED USEFULNESS” MOSCOW. Much concern was recently aroused in Eussian intellectual circles by an attack which was daunched on The Tsekubu, or Central Committee for Improving tho Living Conditions of Men of Learning, to give the institution its full title. The Tsekubu was created in 1921, for tho purpose of saving the most distinguished Eussian natural scientists, and as tho situation improved, it continued to exist, partly as a club, partly as a professional organisation which defended the interests of intellectual workers in such matters as obtaining for them tho separate extra room to which they arc legally entiled. It maintained a clubhouse in Moscow, whero concerts and lectures were often given, together with sanatoria and rest homes for its members in the provinces.

Centre for Intelligents. The drive against the Tsekubu was initiated by a certain Professor Korovin, who expressed the opinion that tho institution had outlived its usefulness and that it served as a centre for intelligentsia who were out of sympathy with Communist ideas. He critised tho atmosphero prevailing in the sanatoria of tho Tsekubu, declaring that someone who had attacked the old Academician Zhebelev for publishing an article in an emigre Eussian publication had been socially boycotted in the Kislovodsk sanatorium. The Moscow committee of the Varintso, an organisation of scientists who aro pledged to active co-opera-tion with Socialist ideas of reconstruction, joined the hue and cry against the Tsekubu and passed a very strong resolution against the latter, characterising its activity as objectively counter-revolutionary, since it contributes to the solidarity of those scientists who are alien and hostile to socialist reconstruction ant leads to caste isolation of the intellectual workers from the proletarian masses.” The resolution cites the Soviet Vice-Premier, I. S. Sirtsov as authority for the statement that the successful building of Socialism means the triumph of scientific thought, and draws the conclusion that there is no reason for the continued existence of the Tsekubu as a special organisation for the protection of the interests of intellectuals. Dissolution Imminent.

After the publication of these attacks tho dissolution of tho Tsekubu seemed imminent, since the usual procedure in the Soviet Union, when it is desired to get rid of some institution, is not to have tho Government take direct administrative action, but to induce some social organisation to pass an unfriendly resolution. However, a counter-attack soon developed, with tho sympathy of some Communists in good standing who are actively participating in tho work of the Tsekubu. The central committee of the Varintso refused to subscribe to the violent resolution of tho Moscow committee, which was sent back for fundamental revision. Last year witnessed the inauguration of a system of “re-electing” professors and instructors in universities and higher schools. Under this procedure, which is soon to be repeated, the views and activities of professors aro subjected to searching examination, and those pedagogues who are considered guilty of anything m the nature of disloyalty or hostility to the Soviet regime aro liable to dismissal.