RUSSIA: Defenses to the East

If President Roosevelt should decree special privileges for all U. S. citizens west of the Rocky Mountains; if he should order the pay of U. S. soldiers in the Pacific area raised by one half; if he should tell the Treasury to pay California fishermen 20% more than they now get for their fish—then U. S. citizens east of the Rockies might well be expected to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt for reelection. Josef Stalin comes up for re-election next month as General Secretary of the Communist Party—the post which makes him Dictator. Josef Stalin decreed last week special and extraordinary privileges for all Soviet citizens east of the Ural Mountains—Russia’s “Rockies.” The pay of Red soldiers assigned to the favored area will be upped 50%, that of their officers 20%. The wages of office and factory workers east of the Urals will be raised from 10% to 30% by their all-potent employer, the State. Fishermen on Soviet Far East coasts will get 20% more for their catch. All this effective Jan. i, 1934. Moreover—and this was the greatest boon of all—the obligation of Soviet peasants to sell most of their grain to the State at miniscule prices was suspended east of the Urals by Dictator Stalin, for ten years in the case of collective farms, for five years in the case of private farmers. In effect, the Red Dictator conferred the privilege of Capitalist free trade on the entire Soviet peasantry east of the Urals. Stalin had not suddenly become a crackpot. He merely felt able, with U. S. recognition now safe under his belt, to take sweeping, super-drastic measures of defense against Japan. The best defense, he reasoned, is to make bleak, sparsely populated Siberia so attractive to Russians that they will swarm there with enthusiasm and, once established, fight to defend their homes. The tragic error of Nicholas II was to suppose that he could beat Japan with soldiers from European Russia who could not understand why Asiatic soil 4,000 miles from their homes was worth fighting for. Wiser than Nicholas II, Stalin I plunged Russia last week into the most farsighted and stupendous effort of military-economic preparation for defense in history. To help put the Dictator’s program across, newsorgans throughout all the Russias printed scare stories to the effect that Japan’s sword-handy War Minister Lieut.-General Sadao Araki is about to stage a Fascist coup in Tokyo, will emerge as Premier and launch an immediate war on Russia.