THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, JULY 4, 1938 A RUSSIAN REFUGEE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23080, 4 July 1938, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, JULY 4, 1938 A RUSSIAN REFUGEE

What goes on in the high places of Soviet politics at Moscow? The outside world would much like to know, not out of idle curiosity but because the doings of Stalin and the remnant of his old associates must be reckoned, in both West and East, as carefully as they can be, when any international forecast is attempted under the pressure of current anxieties. Beported to-day is an incident of possibly momentous importance. Lushkoff, Chief of State in Russia's Far Eastern administration, is said to havo fled over the border into Manchukuo. An artillery major, Frantzevitch, has similarly gone to Inner Mongolia, where Japanese control is as absolute as in Manchukuo. Lushkoffs wife has sought refuge in Poland. There is no substantial reason to doubt such items of news. Their virtually official Japanese origin may raise a suspicion that the story Lushkoff has told about Soviet preparations to take sides openly with China is coloured by nervous animosity in Tokio ; yet, since Japan has much to lose by circulating a false report, easily capable of exposure, about Lushkoff's flight and choice of refuge, this part of the information can be accepted as true. 'So, also, can be accepted the statements that Lushkoff and Frantzevitch have been constrained to fly by fear of a "purge." The happening of a rapid succession of these ruthless "liquidations" of Stalin's rivals and others whose opposition to the plans of the Government is dreaded cannot be effectively denied. Stalin himself has made no secret of it. The names of prominent victims have been made known abroad by political authority. Early this year, with unexampled ferocity, he plunged the country into yet another bloodbath, and his announcement of the new executions was accompanied ' by the old explanatory formula, "All the culprits confessed their guilt." A presumption exists, therefore, that what Lushkoff is reported to have said about this aspect of the matter is perfectly true. Foreigners allowed to see certain results of the Soviet regime have not ventured to say much about this sudden and repeated frenzy of destruction, for the sufficient reason that, whatever might be displayed for their approval, they were not encouraged to pry into the means adopted to get rid of persons disaffected toward the Government. Lushkoff, admitting his own share in the wholesale killings, has been explicit, it seems, in describing those means. In this he has but confirmed a general belief, based upon the testimony of others having first-hand knowledge and upon the Government's own declarations. Throughout the twenty years of Soviet rule blood has never ceased to flow. Terrorism has been rife, beginning with the civil war, going on through "the liquidation of the kulaks," until the succession of "purges" that have had, as their one distinction, the prominence of group after group of chosen victims. The banishment of Trotsky, the slaying of Zinovieff, Kameneff, Smirnoff, Piatakoff, Serebriakoff and other stalwarts of the earliest stage of the regime, the imprisoning of Badek, Sokolnikoff and many more, the extinction by various means of Rykoff, Bukharin, Bubnoff and others holding key positions under Stalin himself, have steadily thinned the ranks of helpers once trusted. Even the Foreign Commissariat was thus harried, until only Litvinoff and Maisky of the chiefs remained; and all the leading ambassadors and officers abroad were dismissed or shot. Recent executions have included those of Karakhan, foremost among exponents of Soviet foreign policy since the revolution, and Enukidze, who for eighteen years was an executive officer of Cabinet and had been, a year or two ago, rewarded with the Order of Lenin. Either these men were guilty of treason, in which case their defection was a remarkable proof of their dissatisfaction, or they were innocent, in which case the regime is indicted with at least equal devastation. Amid so terrible an orgy of assassination, unparalleled in the history of peoples ostensibly civilised, no man could feel safe for long. • Lately it was grimly said that in the foreign diplomatic service resident at Moscow heavy betting was in progress—as to whether the next to fall would be Molotoff, Kalinin or Voroshiloff.

About Lushkoff's flight into Manchukuo, then, it is impossible to say whether it is evidence of his harbouring of treasonable designs. His own way of putting the position is that he has been a traitor to Stalin but never to Russia. There that aspect of the incident can rest. It is otherwise with the substance of his reported declarations about Russia's preparing for war against Japan. These are circumstantial, and they have all the air of probability. Yet the fact that the particulars emanate from an authoritative Japanese source makes uncritical belief difficult. Enough is authentically known to justify an expectation that Russian aid to China will be continued. It may prove a deciding factor in the struggle. Nevertheless, the Soviet Government, whatever the depth of its wish to supplant Japan in the Orient, is extremely unlikely to show its hand at the present time. Internationally, Russia still looks West as well as East, and an attack upon Japan would introduce a political complication in Europe that Stalin has good reason to avoid, at all events postpone. The preparations alleged to have been described by Ltishkoff may be, neither so extensive nor so immediately menacing 'as is said.