The MANAWATU DAILY Times TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1936. A Parliament For Russia

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 134, 9 June 1936, Page 6

The MANAWATU DAILY Times TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1936. A Parliament For Russia

The promulgation of a new constitution for Russia illustrates more vividly perhaps than any of the recent developments in her foreign policy, the manner in which she has become a political forcing-house. For in no other country has there been the accelerated change that has enabled Russia to encompass within the short space of two decades three or four centuries of social and political evolution.

After casting off the Tsarist regime, Russia embarked upon a tremendous social and political experiment which moved forward in well-defined stages. The intensive purging of the internal political machine carried out by the Revolutionary Government was followed by a period in which the zeal to convert the world to the new doctrines found expression in a mass of propaganda distributed throughout other countries. This, in its turn, gave place to a phase of high-pressure industrialisation forced forward at reckless speed by the State administration of agriculture and industry—the first five-year plan.

The disappointing results of this plan led to another, in which different methods were employed; and Russia once more looked to the outside world, this time for expert assistance in organising industry. While the forcing-house was thus working to produce in the minimum of time a new industrial machine, new culture, new literature, new loyalties, and new morality, outside influences were at work which were to have a profound effect upon Russia’s position in the world.

The chief of these influences was a hostile one, the growth ot‘ fascism, not only in Italy, but in Germany and, to a less obvious extent, in Japan. Russian communism, therefore, once the enemy of all bourgeois Governments, was thrown on the defensive against fascism, particularly German fascism, and its leaders began to see that there were virtues in democracy which could not be ignored.

The knowledge that they could not afford to stand apart from the conflict between democracy and fascism has produced in Russia’s leaders of to-day a more conciliatory spirit than has been shown in the past. It is significant'that her entry into world politics has been characterised by overtures lo the three nations in which democracy is most firmly entrenched, France, the United States, and Great Britain. The diplomatic successes of M. Litvinov, the Russian Commissar of Foreign A ffairs, included friendly treaties with France, recognition (not entirely an altruistic gesture) by the United States, and finally, admission to tlie League of Nations, carrying with it implied recognition by all the member States.

The new constitution must bring Russia into even closer sympathy with the remaining democratic nations. The draft proposals for the Russian Parliament include an elected Lower House of COO members, “where all legislation will be initiated,” and an Upper House of 200 members; but there is no indication of the manner in which the directive energies of the Soviet’s “Big Four” (Stalin, Kaganovich, Zhadanov, and Kirov) are to be housed within the more strictly limited confines of an elected Parliament. Nevertheless, a Parliament, however nominal its powers may prove to be, is a significant change in Russian politics, and one which may have consequences not foreseen or intended by its authors?.