RUSSIA: Fall of Big Bill

From the rugged Kirghiz steppes they came, from the Hi River basin, from the trackless plains of sprawling Russia and from Moscow. Bigwigs of the Soviet Union, turbanned Kazaks. soldiers of the Red Army, peasants and nomads all came to “Big Bill” Shatov’s party. Big Bill had just completed the 1,475-mi. Turksib Railway, linking Siberia and Turkestan. Nothing was too good for him. Soviet orators praised his lurid past as a frequently jailed I. W. W. roustabout all over the U. S. As the senior U. S. Bolshevik in Russia,beaming Big Bill cried, “We old ones have built this road for you— for young, free Russia! You must remember to work in your turn for the Soviet State! Make it strong and great—not for your sake, but for the sake of all humanity!”

That party, celebrating a major achievement of the Five-Year Plan, took place three years ago (TIME, May 12, 1930). Last year Big Bill was made a Vice-Commissar of Railways. His U. S. past and the “Bill” by which everyone called him was glossed over in official statements mentioning that he had really been born in Russia, that his real name contained no “Bill” but is Vladimir Sergeyevich Shatov. “We’ll show the world,” cried Vice-Com-missar Shatov, “what railway-building is!”

Up to last week Comrade Shatov was supposed to be Josef Stalin’s most efficient, most popular man-driver on the railways of the Soviet Union. Suddenly he and the entire corps of five Soviet Railway Vice-Commissars were dismissed. Dictator Stalin’s closest working henchman, Commissar of Railways Andrey Andreyev, flayed the ousted five for “poor organization throughout, excessive bureaucracy at the top and bad discipline below, with an absurd amount of red tape and scribbling everywhere.”

Leather-lunged Big Bill could make no retort, no defense, since Soviet censorship closes down—smothering and airtight—around a fallen man. The explanation seemed to be that the Five-Year Plan period, when the Soviet Union’s whole stress was on building, expansion and quantity (rather than quality) is now definitely over. Russia has entered a less exuberant phase in which she must nurse her railways and try to make her plants efficient. Blatant “drivers” like Big Bill are giving place to quiet specialists. After the shake-up last week Premier Molotov of the Soviet Union signed a decree to encourage all Russia’s railway workers by granting them an increased food supply.