INTERNATIONAL: Our Sun!

Searching for the best phrase with which to hail Joseph Stalin, Soviet editors not long ago began calling him “Our Sun.” This caught on in the Soviet Union from coast to coast. Like Louis XIV of France, Le RoiSoleil (“The Sun King”), Dictator Stalin is the actual Sun around which Communist constellations revolve, might say truly if he liked “L’etat c’est moi.” One day last week Sun Stalin stood refulgent atop the Red Square tomb of Lenin and more than 1,750,000 Soviet citizens marched past him carrying flags and banners. Meanwhile, Madrid had devoted the whole week to Leftist Spain’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of Russia’s Communist revolution.

Sun Stalin’s likeness was plastered up not only all over Moscow, but all over Madrid. Madrid and Moscow editors front-paged portraits of Sun Stalin above eulogistic articles. Speeding from Madrid last week an official Spanish Leftist delegation arrived in Moscow bearing gifts and greetings. Madrid’s main thoroughfare for a distance of a mile was decked with crossed flags: the red, yellow and purple tricolor of Leftist Spain and the hammer & sickle banner of Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. Moscow marchers across the Red

Square carried floats in honor of Leftist Spain, and every important building in Madrid displayed the red, five-pointed star of Communism with the hammer & sickle or a portrait of Our Sun at its centre. Madrid’s mayor renamed part of the famed Gran Via as the “Avenue of the Soviet Union” and from Barcelona Leftist War Minister Indalecio Prieto cabled “Congratulations to the Red Army!”

With Sun Stalin eclipsing Trotsky in Spain as well as in Russia, the Dictator felt strong enough to permit the bringing to light in court last week of two attempts to assassinate him years ago. Both were made by natives of Georgia, the part of Russia in which the Dictator was born. The first of these attempts to put Home-Town Boy Stalin out of the way was in 1933, the second in 1935 — according to the October 29 issue of the Tiflis newspaper, Zarya Vostoka (“The Dawn of the East”), which last week reached Moscow. Both these at tempts on the life of Our Sun, the Moscow press continued to keep secret this week.

According to Zarya Vostoka, the largest building at Sukhum on the Black Sea, the State Theatre, is now the scene of a propa ganda trial of 47 accused which is filling columns in all Caucasian newsorgans. According to the State prosecutor, President Nestor Lakoba of the Abkhaz Soviet Republic originated the conspiracy to assassinate Joseph Stalin in 1933 and the would-be assassins were disgruntled agents of the Dictator’s own dread secret police, the Gay-pay-oo. They opened fire too soon on a launch carrying Stalin across Pitsunda Bay and it was able to veer away from shore to safety. The other attempt to assassinate Stalin, according to the State, was made near Gagry, in 1935, by a group of prominent local Communist officials who were armed with an automatic rifle, a German carbine and a revolver. They failed because the Dictator chanced to be driven past the point at which these Communists were going to try to kill him ahead of schedule. The assassins had not yet arrived.

Climaxing Moscow’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Revolution was a gala preview of the Soviet film Lenin in October attended by Stalin. In this it is not Lenin & Trotsky who make the Revolution of 1917 but Lenin & Stalin. The historic role of Trotsky as creator of the Red Army and as the Soviet War Commissar who defeated the White Armies and saved the Revolution is entirely omitted, as are other Old Bolsheviks who have now been executed. Watching the film this week, Our Sun beamed to observe that Lenin, impersonated by ace Soviet Cinemactor Schchukin, not only never has any dealings with Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev but at mention of their names denounces them.

Typical of eulogies of Our Sun in Communist prints last week was the following, said to have been penned by a Soviet poet in the Kazak Republic:

I wanted to compare thee to a prophet, but prophets told lies.

I wanted to compare thee to the ocean, but ships can run aground on hidden reefs in the ocean.

I wanted to compare thee to the mountain, but the summit of every mountain can be seen.

I wanted to compare thee to the moon, but the moon only shines at night.

I wanted to compare thee to the sun, but the sun only shines on, bright days.

The most flattering sign last week of Communist confidence in the ability of “Our Sun” to strike abroad came in no poem but in dispatches from Nanking. There officials close to the Soviet Embassy opined that Dictator Stalin is about to aid Dictator Chiang Kai-shek in a most ingenious way. In 1924, they recalled, Outer Mongolia broke away from Chinese sovereignty, began to revolve with the constellation of Soviet Republics, and has been heavily armed by Russia with battle planes, artillery, tanks. Outer Mongolia can now return to nominal Chinese sovereignty if Stalin pleases, thus carrying millions of dollars worth of war paraphernalia complete with Soviet military experts into the anti-Japanese camp, yet leaving Moscow technically guiltless of having taken hostile action against Tokyo. According to the Nanking version, last week Soviet Ambassador to China Dmitry Vasilevich Bogomolov, who recently flew from Nanking to Moscow on a secret mission (TIME, Oct. 18), is about to fly back with news that Outer Mongolia will soon rejoin China with the blessing of “Our Sun.”

That Sun Stalin shines in Switzerland too, appeared this week in dispatches from Zurich. There Swiss police arrested National Councilman Marino Bodenmann, a member of the pro-Stalinist Swiss Communist Party, and evidence seized led to arrests of many other Communists in Basel and Geneva as well. Documents seized show, according to the police, that Stalinists in Switzerland have succeeded in recruiting and shipping to Spain 1,200 volunteers for the Spanish Leftists in violation of neutral Switzerland’s law.

How many Stalin sunworshippers there may be in the U. S. could be guessed from a festive evening in Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall last week which opened with the Star-Spangled Banner and the Internationale. Morgan Partner Thomas William Lament’s son Corliss, who describes himself as “not a Communist but a critical Communist sympathizer,” was on hand with two Golden Books of American Friendship With The Soviet Union weighing 50 Ib. each. These contained the autographs of 100,000 U. S. citizens, were presented by critical Communist Sympathizer Lament to genial, likable Soviet Ambassador to the U. S. Alexander Troyanovsky, who with his homey wife constantly presents Washington with a spectacle of cozy domesticity. “How unfortunate would our country be,” twinkled the Ambassador, “if our Government and Stalin had not foreseen the aggressive tendencies of certain countries which want to jump on us at any moment.”