IN SOVIET RUSSIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 46, 26 February 1935, Page 7

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

A NEW MOVEMENT ZINOVIEV AND KAMENEV LEADERS? WHY THEY ARE EXILED 1 he mystery about the assassination of Kirov in Leningrad has taken a new turn. The alleged instigators and perpetrators of the trimc arc no longer the foreign White Guards, arrived from Latvia and Finland, of whom over a hundred were shot without trial. The charge of complicity in the assassination is now levelled against the leaders of an important group within the ruling Russian- Communist Party itself, says a writer in the Manchester Guardian. The persons concerned are Zinoviev and Kamenev, formerly close colleagues of Lenin, and a number of post members of the Central Committee and the Leningrad organisation Salutzki, Yevdokimov, Safarov, Vardin, and others. Nobody who knows Zinoviev and Kamenev will attribute to these of all men any participation in a terrorist plot. Had there been any suspicion of it Stalin would have had them publicly tried by a party tribunal and would not have contented himself for the present with banishing seven leaders of their group to the furthest confines of Russia. Everybody knows the timidity that Zinoviev and Kamenev showed in the face ■of every dangerous situation in the Russian revolutionary movement. There exists a significant letter written by Lenin on October 19, 1917, scarcely a week before the October revolution. Tkc Central Committee of the Bolsheviks had decided by a majority to organise a rising against the Kerensky Government. Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were members of the Central Committee,* came out against this resolution with an article in the Opposition Press, in which they gave a warning against any rising. “Can any grosser betrayal than this be conceived?” wrote Lenin, in the utmost indignation. ”1 declare that I no longer regard them as comrades and that I shall energetically demand their exclusion from the party.” Later, after the triumph of the October revolution, Zinoviev and Kamenev rejoined the Bolshevik party. Lenin made Kinoviev president of the Communist International and Kamenev head of the Moscow Soviet. Declaration of 1926. •

No, these two arc certainly not teirorists. But it is not without good politi'eal grounds that it should be just, these two who arc now receiving such drastic treatment. It was they who, together with Trotsky, had been hot opponents of Stalin’s Government since 1925. In July, 1926, they issued a declaration to the party in which they mercilessly criticised the situation in Soviet Russia. To all appearance, even now, eight years later, with the Five-year Plan completed, their criticism has not lost its actuality. Otherwise Stalin would not have worried about them, especially as he had already degraded them in the eyes of the party and prevented them from holding any post of responsibility. It is of interest, therefore, to recall the main lines of their criticism. In their declaration of eight years ago they wrote: The principal cause of the constantly growing crisis in the party is the alarming way in which bureaucracy has been growing since Lenin’s death, and is still growing. The Central Committee possesses not only ideological means in influencing the party but also governmental and economic means. Comrades who are dissatisfied or in dissent arc afraid to raise their voices in the. party meetings. The masses only hear the speeches of the pnity officials, all of them from one and the same mould. Mutual solidarity and confidence are being weakened. All resolutions are being adopted with unfailing unanimity. ” “The Old Sort.” The bureaucratism comes from the fact that the advances guard of the working class is not prepared to recognise the policy of the Government as its own. It is clear that, in its composition and its style of living, the personnel of the administration is largely bourgeois and is turning away from theh interests of the proletariat and the poor of the villages in order to serve the trader, the kulak, the new bourgeois, the intellectual in a good position. . . . The party bureaucrat is living on a dangerous illusion. Tie says: “Our State is a workers’ State; why then arc people demanding increased influence over this State for the worker?” These people forget what Lenin wrote —that “our administration has only been painted over a little; except for that it has remained a typical administration of the old sort.” Zinoviev and his supporters wont on to show the workings of this bureaucratism in industry and agriculture, in town and country: The bureaucratic regime eats I’ke rust into the life of every factory, every cell. If party members have in practice no right of criticism of their committees thov are also unable to criticise their immediate superiors in the factory. The factory director who has assured himself of the support of the party thus protects himself against any sort

his work before thinking of his wife of responsibility for his bad management. The building up of a Socialist society means in the first place control by the masses. So long as they arc unable to come out openly against moss and muddle, so long as they are afraitl that to do so will mean being turned out of the party and out of the factory as well, there can be no productivity of labocr. . . . This is also the reason for the irresponsibility of the higher control. Circulars are continually being written against irresponsible and luxury, but the masses are sceptical with regard to this paper warfare. “A Bourgeois State.’’ Salutzki, one of the men who have now been exiled, wrote inlignantly at the time: Our leaders’ policy is dangerous. In their pursuit of the development of the forces of production they are allowing private capitalistic forms to grow and thrive. They are building a petty bourgeois State and calling it Socialism. An enormous stratum of Government officials is bringing yreesure on our party in Moscow. It is not. we that are directing officialdom, but officialdom in association with the bourgeoisie that is determining our mentality. It is perfectly true (declared GlebovAvilov, who was then president of the Leningrad trade unions) that our factories are nationalised. But what are the relations between the factory and the worker? The forms of payment, the piece-work rates, the treatment of the workers by the management, the overtime—are all these elements of a Socialist factory? The line of thought of the Opposition at that time is clear. If all these abuses, denouced by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and the others, had disappeared in the years that have passed since, Stalin would not have worried any more about these •critics. But the fact that the Government suddenly attacks these men again and brands them afresh as enemies of the State casts a revealing light on the situation in the country. It may be that Zinoviev and Kamenev are becoming, against their will, the representatives of a movement that is progressing by it own momentii