A STRANGE FIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 23142, 8 March 1937, Page 9

A STRANGE FIGHT

TROTSKY AND STALIN LONDON, February 15. The world’s strangest fight—that between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin — continues. Stalin, as successor to Lenin, stands as dictator at the head of 170,000,000 people, commanding the resources of one-seventh of the world’s surface. Trotsky, a solitary wanderer on the face of the earth, lives at the moment in exile in Mexico, after expulsion from Norway. Stalin fights with all the facts in his favour, since he is backed by all the power of a mighty nation. Trotsky uses words and ideas. He does not command, so far as the world knows, the slightest physical force; yet Stalin’s very ruthlessness in rooting out the “Old Bolsheviks” suggests that Trotskyism is still in power. The official assertion at the recent Moscow treason trial was that Trotskyism seriously menaced Russia, nor has the menace ceased, judging by the fact that the Soviet Press is still _ attacking “pro-Fascist, Trotskyist traitors and wreckers.” The newspapers are especially demanding the prosecution and punishment of Bukharin, former editor of Izvestia, Rykoff, a former president of the Council of People’s Commissars, and M. Uglanoff, while there have been more arrests of directors and high officials, especially of the railways.