Foreign News: Winter Sunshine

To Russians the health resorts of the Caucasus offer warm breezes and the winter sunshine which the rest of the world seeks along the French Riviera. Thither, in search of such natural restoratives, set out Leon Trotzky, from Moscow, for the second time this year.

Last January the Bolshevik Triumvirate—Stalin, Zinoviev, Kemenev—triumphed over him, ousted him as Chairman of the War Council, disciplined him for alleged party insubordination, and sent him to the Caucasus “for his health.” It was recognized that the excuse was a trumped up one. By May the star of Trotzky was again waxing portentously. He returned to Moscow, and has labored unceasingly for the economic aggrandizement of the Soviets* ever since. At present he is thought to be on exceedingly good terms with the Communist leaders, and can count on the powerful influence of Lenin’s widow. Hence it is generally believed that Trotzky is now seeking the little Caucasus resort of Kislovodsk “for his health” in good earnest. He is reported to seem weary and to be aging rapidly— he who created the Red Army with the tireless fury of a demon!

If he recovers his old vigor (and his physicians declare that there is nothing the matter with him that cannot be cured by rest and diet), it is expected that when he next returns to Moscow it will be to occupy a position vastly more important than any which he has held since his “banishment.”

*As Chairman of the General Concessions Committee, and later head of the Scientific and Technical Branch of the Supreme Economic Council.