RUSSIA: Just Too Bad

Into the Kremlin’s gleaming white Hall of Soviets, where the Throne of Tsar Nicholas II has been replaced by a statue of Nikolai Lenin, crowded happily last week 2,500 Soviet Congressmen & Congresswomen from every part of European & Asiatic Russia. On the stroke of 5 p. m. a big-boned Asiatic in an unadorned Army tunic entered. Up leaped the 2,500 to cheer Joseph Stalin uproariously for 30 minutes and again at every pause during a two-hour speech in which the Dictator presented for ratification Russia’s much discussed new Constitution (TIME, June 15 et seq.).

For the second time in Soviet history, J. Stalin had had himself put on the air, and all Russia could hear his thick and at times almost unintelligible Georgian accent as he tonelessly reeled off a speech so dry that even the Orator found it best to solemnly drink on the platform a total of five bottles of mineral water. The happy rural delegates, for most of whom a free trip to the Moscow All-Union Congress of the Soviets once every few years is a glorious treat, gave their mass cheers with greatest goodwill at all the right places and even whooped merrily at J. Stalin, “Louder! Speak up!”

The 2,500 delegates in their exuberance had filed 43,000 amendments to J. Stalin’s Constitution—not that they expected these to be adopted or even debated but just for the fun of boasting afterward back home that they had filed an average of 17 amendment’s each. There was no doubt that the Congress would vote whatever the Dictator wanted in its entirety this week and J. Stalin, ignoring the 43,000 amendments, told the Congress crisply: “In ten days we shall have a new Constitution.”

Out of two hours of the Dictator’s speaking time he devoted 40 minutes to reacting in his Asiatic way to foreign criticism of the new Constitution. It is a document in which many of the original world revolutionary principles of Lenin & Trotsky are toned down to dovetail into Stalin’s practical scheme of encouraging Communist parties to unite with Socialist and other parties throughout the world. Reds thus may foment revolutions and capture administrations from within against which, as pure Communists, they could only have struggled from without but inevitably they themselves will become somewhat watered down and followers of Trotsky are loud in proclaiming that with this Constitution the toiling masses are being duped and betrayed by Stalin.

It was beneath the Dictator’s dignity last week to notice or answer Exile Trotsky, but Stalin did address himself to a different school of outside critics. Many of these are Socialists, Liberals and Democrats vaguely sympathetic with some Communist aspirations but on the whole suspicious. They know that Soviet propaganda has for months been grinding on the theme that “this is the most Democratic constitution in the world,” but, although it grants universal suffrage for the first time in Russian history, they have wanted to know whether it also restores freedom to organize various political parties or leaves all power in Russia still in the grip of the highly disciplined Communist Party whose boss is J. Stalin.

Without beating about the bush, Comrade Stalin settled this once and for all last week. “Yes,” he said thickly and slowly, “the dictatorship of the working class will remain and the Communist Party will retain its leading position. If critics see these as defects from the standpoint of the Constitution, that is just too bad, because we Bolsheviki see advantages in them. In the U. S. S. R. there is no soil for several parties. There is soil for only one party, which can only be the Communist Party.”

Thus Russia will continue, ruled by a small minority of Communists (less than 1 ½% of the population) whose rigid party discipline makes them cogs in a machine of which J. Stalin is the Great Engineer. From now on Communist organs will call this Democracy. An audacious touch in Moscow last week was for Intourist guides to tell visiting foreigners: “Our new Constitution is a million times more Democratic than any other!” The new and adroit Communist Constitution, indeed, almost entitled J. Stalin to rank with the immortal H. Dumpty of Through the Looking-Glass who boasted, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean!”

Officially in Moscow declared the Commissar for Justice, Nikolai Vassilievich Kryleriko: “Those in the Soviet Union who want to restore the Capitalist system will get from our new Constitution neither freedom of the press nor of speech.”