RULERS OF SOVIET RUSSIA

Southland Times, Issue 23816, 13 May 1939, Page 13

RULERS OF SOVIET RUSSIA

The negotiations which are now proceeding between Britain and Russia for military guarantees for the Eastern European States lend a special interest to this article on the men who rule the Soviet. Since it was written M. Litvinov has resigned his position as Commissar for Foreign Affairs and it has been taken over by M. Molotov, the Chairman of Commissars or Prime Minister

By

A. L. BRIENT

Stalin's Lieutenants Are Men Of Humble Birth S 3 Tireless Industry

IN Soviet Russia’s “Cabinet” — 1 Politburo, as it is called—there is no room for faineants. Who among its 10 members, with duties and responsibilities already greatly in excess of those of any holding a corresponding post elsewhere in the world, would tolerate a sluggard? In the many “purges” that we have heard about some at least have suffered because of laziness—not by any means an uncommon Russian fault. No wonder that at its top the Soviet “Cabinet” has qualified for the distinction of being the “best balanced and most richly endowed governmental junta of modern times.”

But what a cleaning out there has been to accomplish this result, and not all of if for shiftlessness; otherwise, why were some of them shot—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda? Trotsky belongs to a different cate-

gory from all of them. Whatever may have been the real cause of their difference, Trotsky and Stalin could never have worked amicably together for long: the one cold, calculating and brutal—did not Lenin in his last testament say of Stalin that he was too brutal”—and the other romantic, intellectual and adventurous.

And who is Stalin? To begin with, that is not his birth name. His father, Vissarion Djugashvilli, a shoe maker, lived in a hovel somewhere in Caucasia. In a museum at Tiflis you can see the rope-seated stool on which he plied his trade. But he sent his son Josef to a good school. By some freak of fortune Stalin, to continue with the name that he was to adopt later—it means “steel —was marked out for the priesthood, and his early youth was spent in a seminary. But the rebel in him was soon to show out, and he was expelled. Thereafter he was an atheist, quickly to become one of the most active revolutionaries in the newly-formed Bolshevik Party. Indeed, most of his life up to the time of the 1917 revolution was spent either in prison or in exile. How much history owes to the embitterment that this suffering caused to a

man of iron will like Stalin we may never be able to calculate. Beyond that exceptional will power, of which we have had ample evidence over the years, there is really no other outstanding essential quality of leader in Stalin. Had Lenin lived he might never even have risen to “Cabinet” rank.

★ ★ ★ IN the “Cabinet” today are two men who have survived the vicissitudes of the last few trying years—Kalinin and Molotov. Michael Ivanovitch Kalinin is President of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party, and as suqh is looked upon as official head of the Soviet Union. Except that he was early astir as a Bolshevik—one of the last of the despised “Old Guard”—and was the first representative of the peasantry on the

original Central Committee, he has not bulked largely in the affairs of Russia in recent years. But he adores Stalin; whose “heroism,” as he describes it, in the dangerous days of the revolution first won his admiration and has held it ever since.

★ ★ ★ AS for Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, he also, probably, owes his post of President of the People’s Commissars—equivalent in rank only to our Premier—to his devotion to Stalin. But at 48 he does strike one as being rather young for a merely ornamental post. Of course we are not permitted to know what parts men like Kalinin and Molotov really play in the inner councils at Moscow. It may be a very great deal. It is the Commissars themselves—- “ Ministers,” we would term them—who actually run the great machine and who, therefore, are closely in touch with the 170,000,000 people who go to make up Soviet Russia. Some of them have so recently come to the surface in the latest “purges” that they are practically unknown. But there are three who have survived the upheavals and who may be regarded as world figures—Litvinov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, born in 1875, of Jewish origin, was originally named Wallach. He was an active revolutionary in the Tsarist days, but with the advent of Bolshevism his ability to speak English made him more useful out of Russia for several years, mostly in London. When Lenin lost his temper with the British for assisting the White Russians against him and clapped some of their Moscow officials in gaol, the British retaliated by arresting Litvinov, even although he had been accepted as the Soviet Ambassador.

The trouble was composed by releases on both sides, and for several years Litvinov was quite at home among the English people. In fact, he married one of them. He was recalled to Moscow to become Foreign Commissar in 1930, but he has kept some of his former contacts by frequent visit to the League of Nations, which he induced Russia to join. He was also mainly responsible for the United States giving official recognition to the U.S.S.R.

Those two happenings really marked the change in Bolshevik policy—from wishing to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries to minding her own business—sufficient as it is in all conscience for any single group of men. Ivan Maisky, his successor in London, lacks his international knowledge perhaps, but he has the requisite amount of urbanity for the post. Did not Mr Chamberlain attend his last party at the Embassy and appear to enjoy the experience?

KLEMENTIY Yefremovich Voroshilov (“Klim” to his friends), Commissar for Defence, is one of the most important men in the world today, in whose hands is concentrated the greatest amount of latent force any individual, perhaps, controls, certainly in Europe. Bom in 1881, he worked in the mines as a child. But, a soldier by disposition, he was to make a reputation in guerilla warfare against the Germans in the Ukraine, and without dispute became Commander-in Chief of the army and navy as long ago as 1925. A simple man of high spirits, a crack rifle shot, and a brilliant horseman, he is easily the most popular man in Russia today. The Red Army worships him, and because he tells them that Stalin is good for them they swear by Josef Stalin. Due mostly to Voroshilov, the Red Army of more than 1,000,000 regulars and 15,000,000 trained reserves is well equipped, educated, and fit. Due to Voroshilov, too, the air force is kept up to the minute by a,vast system of factories, every foot of it underground. No wonder they call him “the Napoleon of Soviet Russia.” ★ ★ ★ IAZAR Moiseyvich Kaganovich, as Commissar of Heavy Industry, has proved himself to be an organizer of genius. Before the revolution a simple shoe maker in Southern Russia, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1911, and was arrested many times while agitating in

the Ukraine. His first job when he became Commissar was to rebuild the railways as part of the vast scheme of industrialization which had proved too much for one Communist leader after another. How far he has succeeded we do not know, but he has given Moscow the finest underground system in the world, and he has made that city, with its other amenities, worthy of being the capital of one of the greatest of countries.

They say that Kaganovich is Josef Stalin’s most probable successor to the Russian dictatorship. You should read some of his speeches on “Red Tape,” which he flays unmercifully, even when addressing the party. On one occasion he mentioned that a colleague—the Commissar of Agriculture—had 29 boards and 202 sectors under him. When somebody cried out, “Oh, oh!” Kaganovich went on: “That’s nothing. Each sector manages the whole of the U.S.S.R.”