IS STALIN THE MODERN NERO?

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 13

IS STALIN THE MODERN NERO?

The “Bloody Tyrants” of Old Ascribed Their Murderous Rule to Reasons of State. Stalin Has Established a Reign of Terror in Russia, “ Liquidating” All His Former Friends. He is Out-N eroing Nero.

|N the light of certain recent revelations, there

are some who believe that Joseph Vissarion vitch Djugashvilli, known to fame as Joseph Stalin, is driven to destruction by some dark impulse within himself, writes D. F. Wickets, in Physical Culture.

grain of salt. Kakabadse’s revelations would be rejected by the present writer, if they did not tally with th actions of the dictator.

these facts—making due allowance for exaggerations and wilful distortions —suggest the possibility that Joseph Stalin is a Sadist. Both masochism and Sadism are expressions of the “will to die” that exists—if Freud may be trusted—side by side with the “will to live.” Masochism is the passive, Sadism the active, expression of the same destructive impulse. In the masochist it is directed against the individual himself; the Sadist diverts it from himself to others. It is also probably entangled with the desire to punish oneself or others for various offences.

Some children are crushed completely by parental brutality. Stalin’s childhood experience made him what his name implies, a “man of steel.” It taught him to defend himself with cunning and ruthlessness.

There was a time when the stocky Dictator seemed well-balanced and well-intentioned. However, history records innumerable instances of rulers who began as humanitarians and ended as bloody tyrants.

These qualities liberated him from the sense of inferiority engendered by pain and humiliation. They are the qualities with which he triumphed over men far superior to him in

Nero's contemporaries looked upon him in the

beginning as a promising young man. Tiberius, before his mind was darkened, was extolled as one of the great rulers of Rome. Both Nero and Tiberius were clearly pathological cases. Both cunningly justified their bloody deeds by reasons of state. In the beginning the excuse was accepted, but as the madness of the Caesars grew upon them, their

mental equipment. If this were all, Russia could draw her breath in peace. Ruthlessness and cunning may be desirable attributes of statesmanship, but recent events in Russia justify the suspicion that Stalin is sacrificing the interests of the country and the principles that seem to have guided him in the past, to his passions. It is difficult to reject the suggestion that, like other autocrats, Joseph Stalin derives a

All these elements may enter in some way into the psychology of the man whom the friend of his youth calls “Stalin the Terrible.” Fortunately, in most individuals even Sadist—the destructive impulse stops short of murder. But where the barrier of the law is removed, havoc may ensue. Absolute rulers, tyrants, dictators, are likely to overstep all limits. Yet they are cunning enough to rationalise their bloody impulses by ascribing their murders to political motives. Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, usually ascribed some reason, however fandiful, some legal quibble, however farfetched, to explain their ruthlessness. “I have no enemies,” said one great tryant, Porfirio Diaz. “Why not?” “They are all dead.’ “If I did not chop off the heads of my subjects,” said Stalin’s compatriot, Ivan the Terrible, to the Prussian Ambassador, “my subjects would chop off mine.” Something like this would no doubt be Stalin’s explanation of his mass executions. Is it more than a coincidence that Stalin occupies in the Kremlin the apartment that once harboured Ivan the Terrible? Before his death Lenin warned the Communist Party against Stalin. When Trotsky read the message of the dead leader to the high council of the Bolshevist Party, Stalin shrugged his shoulders and insisted that Lenin was no longer mentally responsible when he wrote his list will. But he resented its introduction, and everyone who opposed him at that time or any other time, no matter how great his merit, how powerful his claim to consideration, is either a corpse or an exile. Kill —kill —kill—seems to be the leitmotif of the dictator. Lenin died in time. “If my husband had not died,” Krupskaja sarcastically remarked, “he too, would have been liquidated.”

pretext grew ever more paltry. It became clear that both men were Sadists, practising cruelty for its own sake. Is there, the thoughtful reader asks himself, a Sadistic strain in Joseph Stalin?

The blood lust of a Nero or a Tiberius is

traced by modern psychology not to innate wickedness, but to some unhappy childhood experience, some derangement of the glandular system, some hereditary taint, some shock to the psyche, some repressed impulse raging in the unconscious.

Some twisted nerve, some ganglion gone awry, predestinates the sinner and the saint. Undetected by others, unsuspected by the individual himself, some complex colours the acts of the psychopath, ever waiting to spring to the surface in an unguarded moment. Once the repressed impulse bursts its chains, it may dominate the personality completely. If the individual is unchecked, disaster will follow. No Caesar, no Czar, ever ruled more absolutely than Stalin. He holds in the hollow of his hand one-seventh of the globe and one hundred and seventy million people. Stalin’s father, Vissarion Djugash villi, a cobbler by profession, was a confirmed dipsomaniac.

mordid pleasure from the exercise of his cruelty and his cunning. Not satisfied with killing, he plays with his victims like a cat with a mouse. He imprisons them and sets them free, only to jail them again to-morrow. Before their final annihila-

In one of his drunken rages the brute almost beat his son to death. He attacked the boy, not only with his fists, but drew blood by stabbing him with the implements of his craft. With difficulty the mother of Joseph Vissarionovitch Djugashvilli saved her son’s life. The father died in a drunken brawl, but his beatings left on the soul of the son even deeper marks than those left in his face by smallpox. This information is vouchsafed by Stalin’s former friend and fellow countryman, Kyrill Kakabadse, one-time deputy People’s Commissioner of Georgia, the land where Joseph Stalin was born.

tion he forces them to humiliate themselves in public and to praise the hand that slays them.

Some students believe that Stalin’s emissaries use drugs which make the mind exceedingly susceptible to suggestion, to extract confessions. The Cheka is accused of practising refinements of cruelty, unknown since the inquisition, until weakened, terrorised, starved, its prisoners break down. If these methods fail to work, Stalin’s victims are tricked by false promises of a pardon or threats to their wives and children. Those who still refuse to succumb, die in prison. The others sign weird confessions with which the world is familiar, all written in the same style, all dictated by the dictator! Even Stalin’s friends admit that he is vengeful and that he never forgives an insult. All

Trotsky, Zinovieff, Kameneff, Bukharin, Radek, Rykov, Tomski, the leaders of the Left and Right, have been slain, imprisoned or exiled one after another. Eight commanders of the Red Army, including Field Marshal Tukhachevsky, followed. Stalin’s regime is a succession of St. Bartholomew’s Nights. In the Ukraine, among the Cossacks, in the Caucasus, everywhere flamed opposition and everywhere firing squads silenced Stalin’s critics. Every day there are reports of new shootings.

After holding high offices under the Soviet Government and representing the Russian Manganese Trust in Berlin, Comrade Kakabadse fell out with the dictator. Condemned to death on his refusal to return to Russia, he remained abroad to tell tales out of school about the friend of his youth, Stalin. All others who know' the truth, Comrade Kakabadse avows, are either dead or in prison. It behoves us to take all information, friendly or hostile, concerning Soviet Russia, with a

However, the man who is feared by all Russia, is himself pursued by fear. At home or in the street he is protected by triple guards.