IVAN STALYE

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11783, 20 March 1924, Page 11

IVAN STALYE

LENIN’S LIKELY SUCCESSOR. A HOST OF “DARK HORSES.” Of the dozen passible successors to Nicolai Lenin as Premier of Soviet Russia, Ivan Stadlyn appears to lead. His real name is Ivan Jugashvili. He assumed tho name of Stalyn, which means “steele,” out of caprice. He is known as “the man who never wore a boiled shirt. As Lenin’s confidant he rose rapidly in the Bolshevik regime, and now is senior secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, a member of the Political Board and Commissar for Nationalities. Should Stalyn not be selected, the choice may fall on a “dark hone,” for, at a recent election to the Presiding Council of Soviets, it was shown that former favourites like Leon Trotsky, Leo Kameneff, the Acting-Pre-mier, M. Zinovieffj chairman of tho Executive Commission of the Communist International, M. Buoharin, editor of “Pravda,” and M. Kalenin, formerly director of famine relief, were losing ground. Almost all the “dark horses” were formerly platters against the Czar, and have seen service in Siberian prisons. First among these is M. Tsurpa, one of three vibe-ohairmen of the National Commissars, who twenty years a revolutionist went to Siberia for his “underground” plotting against the Czar. Alexei Ivanovitch Rykoff, vicechairman of the Soviet of Labour and Defence, likewise" a former Siberian exile, has the support of Central Russia.

Other men who are regarded as possibilities are Valerian Kuibyshef, young ' son of a former Czarist general, who, freed from a Siberian prison, fought the Bolshevik cause in Central Asiaj. M. Moltov, a political agitator well - known in Russia; M. Frunze, who popularised himself because of battles he successfully fought against Kolchak in the Urals; Christian Ratovsky, known as “the Lenin of the Ukraine,” and described as “clean-shaven like an English lord”; Ivan Tomgky, chairman of the All. Russian Central Committee of Trade Unions, and M. Ruzutak, a Lett, who is secretary of the Communist Central Committee.