THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, June 17, 1937. RUSSIA UNDER STALIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23219, 17 June 1937, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, June 17, 1937. RUSSIA UNDER STALIN

The measures to which dictatorships, ruling as they do by force, have recourse in order that they may maintain themselves in power are again being strikingly illustrated in Russia. The spectacle is there provided of a Government ever fearful of the undermining of its authority, and impelled again and again by the haunting dread of conspiracy to resort to the most ruthless methods for the discovery and punishment of traitors. Who is safe in Russia, at least in the official and administrative sphere? This question must be prompted by the lengthening record of “ purges ” and summary executions. Details furnished in the latest cablegrams relative to the subject accentuate the conclusion that there is something very unsound indeed in a State of which the Government cannot function without all this shedding of blood. Terrorism means repression, yet it stimulates the very forces which it* seeks to eradicate. The effect of “Trotskyist” trials, and the arrest and execution of so many prominent figures in Russian politics and in the army, can only be exceedingly damaging to the country’s prestige abroad. The internal effect of them, the sinister evidence so abundantly provided that the administrators of Russia are devoured by suspicion and will brook no rivalry, may be more important. In two very recent articles dealing with Russia under Stalin a special correspondent of The Times throws some instructive light on the country’s present mood. Even Lenin’s bones, it seems, require a bodyguard. The Kremlin is now closed to visitors. Intercourse between foreigners and Russians has been reduced to a minimum. Such things are mentioned as but “ symptomatic of the atmosphere of intensified suspicion and fear pervading the vast bureaucracy of which Moscow is the centre.” Yet what is interesting in the current phase, The Times correspondent says, is that it is no longer strictly speaking a question of repression. The common people feel themselves relatively safe, but “ for the first time membership of the Communist Party—which indeed carries risks almost as great in 1937 as they were under the Tsar—is not a wholly enviable state. It is the people’s leaders, the men whom they have been sedulously trained to regard

as heroes, who are trembling if not toppling before the latest fashion in proscriptions.” The Administration has shown most plainly that its concern is the j elimination of all remotely potential opponents, perhaps not so much of the existing order as of the existing personnel at the top. As the correspondent of The Times puts it, “ the Soviet regime has created a plutocracy of power; and part of the eager ferocity with which that plutocracy is now being turned inside out is due to the personal ambitions of the iconoclasts, for denunciation creates vacancies and brings rewards.” So nobody outside the Politburo is safe—and not all the ten men inside it. “ Key-men vanish overnight, and in those who do not the Russian’s instinctive desire to shirk responsibility is being developed into an obsession.” The old Bolshevists and their associates, it is remarked, have inherited a tradition and a technique which assort ill with their contemporary responsibilities, and save for those to whom the “ plums ” of office have fallen they have an unconquerable instinct for discussion, criticism and intrigue. They do not thrive under a dictatorship. From the concentric waves of panic concerning Trotskyists and “ wreckers,” the Red Army formerly stood aloof. That cannot be said to-day. The army has been depicted as bewildered over the action of M. Stalin and Marshal Voroshilov in depriving it of some of its ablest leaders. As for the average Soviet citizen, windfalls and disasters are forever in the offing in his world, it is observed, “ governing almost everything from the availability of goloshes to his execution for treason.” Both deliberately and involuntarily the existing regime encourages the fatalistic semi-Oriental streak in his character that assists him to be adaptable. The State itself is depicted as contriving to double the roles of fairy godmother and demon king, popping up out of trapdoors all over the place, keeping hope alive as well as fear, while the Russians, “ helpless as passengers on a switchback, derive a certain zest from taking the ups with the downs.” That there is a considerable element of the fantastic as well as of the barbaric about the whole picture of Russia under her present rulers will be generally agreed.