RUSSIA TO-DAY

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 7 May 1928, Page 5

RUSSIA TO-DAY

MOSCOW TORN BY DISSENSION. TROTSKY IN GRAVE PERIL. (Daily Express Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 6. The complete expulsion from the Communist Party of Trotsky, leader of the revolutionary left wing group, and Zinovieff, former president of the Third International, who ( has become his most active follower, has created, iq the view of British officials conversant with the trend of events in Moscow, the most menacing situation with which the Soviet regime has been faced since the revolution.

“Should Trotsky and Zinovieff persist in their present subversive activities against Stalin and the political bureau of the party,” said an official of the Foreign Office, specialised in Russian affairs, “it is more than likely that they will be arrested, and perhaps shot. Then —if not before —civil war is not an impossible eventuality.” The split in the Communist party, which nearly a year ago led to the dismissal from all their governmental posts' of Trotsky, his brother-in-law, Kameneff, Zinovieff, and Karl Radek, has steadily widened, until to-day it is impossible to estimate the real feeling of the country in one direction or another. Trotsky himself can always rely on the support of an important

Section of the Red Army, of which he was for many months the efficient and, indeed, popular commander-in-chief. He may also be said to have behind him the vast majority of the sixteen thousand officers who were summarily dismissed in the summer by M. Voroshiloff, his successor. A small army in itself was thus formed which, “in the interests of economy,” was suddenly thrown on the streets to swell the ranks of Russia’s unemployed two millions. The break was precipitated in the first instance by Trotsky’s alleged disagreement with the Government’s policy in dealing with the peasants, who represent almost. 85 per cent, of the, populace. Trotsky, appearing before the Communist Congress or Parliament of the country, openly attacked M. Stalin and his “Cabinet” “for letting off the peasant too lightly,” demanding, instead, that the proletariat should be allowed to prosper at the ex-

pense of the worker on the land. He complained (that) the peasant, having been given the soil which he controlled, not only received the highest prices for his produce, but that he was being accorded, to the detriment of the State, unreasonable immunity from taxation. Trotsky further advocated, in still more aggressive terms, in which he was | joined by Zinovieff, the relentless pursuit of a campaign for the overthrow of capitalism in, all countries as a necessary preliminary to the setting up of a permanent Socialist state in Russia. The fundamental difference between this and the attitude of M. Stalin is that, while world revolution should always remain a definite aim of Russian Bolshevism, the establishment of a prosperous state in Russia was quite possible without it. These were the original issues resiponsible for the present breach, but what they are to-day few people really know. Personal jealousies and hatreds have so far entered into the conflict that the real causes are lost in obscurity. Trotsky is now thundering about “freedom of speech” and the “rights of the Opposition,” while Zinovieff, firebrand that he. is, is stalking through the country decrying Stalin from the housetops as “an autocrat, ’ a. dictator,” and “a Menshevik.”

No one can. tell at the present stage where the conflict will end. The latest action of the Government deprives both Trotsky and Zinovieff of every vestige of association with the party. They are outcast s . No more ignominious fate can befall a Communist in Russia or m any other country of the world. What, then, will the Government do next? The arrest of either will extend the conflict to every State in the Union, while even Stalin, known as much owing to his courage as to the derivation of his name as “Russia’s man of steel.” will scarcely accept the responsibility for their execution.