RUSSIA: Hero Up

Pavel Ephimovich Dybenko, young and colorful Communist, emerged into the news again for an instant last week when Dictator Stalin of Soviet Russia appointed him Chief of the Red Army Supply Service.

“Pavel the Daredevil” it was, who, at 26, big, jovial and reckless, won over the sailors of the Baltic fleet to Bolshevism and thus sealed the doom of Alexander Kerensky. Returning to Moscow a hero, he enraged such serious-minded Communists as Lenin and Trotsky by light-heartedly dragging off to his bed and board a lady undeniably fair but old enough to be his mother. The great Lenin, scandalized at his philandering in an hour of crisis, very nearly had the hero shot, and Leon Trotsky was especially loud in demanding his execution. Next day a mob of sailors from the Baltic Fleet sought out M. Trotsky, commanded his secretary to tell him to come out and be drubbed. No weakling, Leon Davidovich Trotsky (née Bronstein) rushed forth, stood with folded arms before the sailors, cried: “Ha, you want Trotsky! Well, Comrades, here he is!”

Abashed, the sailors slunk. But their hero Pavel Dybenko was not thereafter molested. Having served the Communist Government in several minor capacities he has now achieved again a position of trust, responsibility.