RUSSIA: Red Menace

When vigilant conservatives denounce “The Red Menace of Moscow!” they commonly have in mind (however vaguely or ignorantly) the Communist organization for world propaganda which is famed and dreaded as the “Third Internationale” but is actually named the Third International Association of Workingmen. Last week the Communist party of the U. S. sent to Moscow as delegates to the sixth conference of the Third Internationale, Comrade John Pepper & Comrade John Loveday. A total of 50 nations were represented. Cheers rose all round Comrade Loveday, when he cried: “A free proletarian state will arise in the U. S. on the ruins of capitalism!” In short, the “Red Menace of Moscow” was in plenary and executive session, for the first time in four years. Conservatives redoubled nervous vigilance. Calm impartial observers refreshed their memories as to the actual nature of the Internationale by re-reading Article I of its Constitution. Text: The new International Workmen’s Association is formed for the organization of joint action by the proletariats of various countries, who are struggling for the same aims; the overthrow of capitalism, the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat and an International Soviet Republic for the complete abolition of classes and the realization of Socialism, the first step towards a Communist society.

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Acting as Chairman of the “Red Menace” last week, and preserving strictest order was Comrade Nikolai Bukharin. Today he is right-hand henchman to Dictator of Soviet Russia Josef Stalin, many of whose speeches he is believed to write. Pounding for order in parliamentary fashion, Chairman Bukharin announced the following agenda of subjects for discussion: 1) Reiteration of the program of world revolution. 2) Encouragement of Communism in nationalist China and India. 3) Defensive measures against the wars being planned by Capitalism. 4) Encouragement of revolt movements in all colonies held by imperialistic powers. 5) Inspection of the condition of the All-Union Communist party of the Soviet Union. . . .

Keenest excitement kindled over the last agenda item. It flung on the carpet the major issue of contemporary Russia—the issue between Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin and the great Communist whom he has exiled (TIME, Jan. 23, 30), famed Leon Trotsky, creator of the Red Army. Stalin stands for the more reactionary and Trotsky for the more revolutionary elements among Russian Communists. Stalin and Trotsky both claim to be the “intellectual successor” to the late Father of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Lenin, whose words are still the guiding oracles of Soviet policy. Stalin has triumphed over Trotsky and his chief followers, expelling them from the Communist party and banishing them from Soviet Russia. But last week Trotsky’s case was brought before the Delegates of the Internationale as though before a supreme court of world Communist opinion. Friends of Exile Trotsky put forth a printed broadside containing the following appeal: “We raise before the Sixth Congress of the Communist Internationale the question of restoring us to our party. . . . “The banishment of us, soldiers of the October Revolution and comrades in arms of Lenin, is a clear proof of the retrograde movements taking place in the country. … It is a question of preserving the dictatorship of the proletariat, won in October 1917. “We will not surrender the October Revolution to the politics of Stalin—the entire essence of which is contained in these few words: . . . capitalism on the installment plan. . . . “The proletariat thinks slowly, but it thinks strong. . . . [We say to Stalin] your persecutions, expulsions, arrests, will make our platform the most popular and the closest and dearest documents of the international workers’ movement. Expel us. You will not stop the victory of the Opposition—the victory of the revolutionary unity of our party and the Communist Internationale.” “The testament of Lenin never sounded more prophetic than at this moment.” . . .

The testament of Lenin referred to by Exile Trotsky constituted Lenin’s intellectual last will and legacy to the Soviet Union; but has been suppressed in Russia by Dictator Stalin because it contains the following damning passage: “Comrade Stalin, having become general secretary, has concentrated an enormous power in his hands; and I [Lenin] am not sure that he always knows how to use that power. . . . “Stalin is too rough, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us Communists, becomes insupportable in the office of general secretary. Therefore I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man who differs from Stalin—more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious.” . . . Rugged Dictator Josef Stalin and facile Propagandist Nikolai Bukharin are striving and succeeding with a program of discrediting Trotsky in Russia. Every book or newspaper article concerning him is censored, suppressed or distorted. New textbooks of Soviet history have appeared in which the great name of Trotsky and his creation of the Red Army is barely mentioned. With mighty Russia in the absolute grip of the Dictator, there remained last week small hope for any return to power of Trotsky, but merely the possibility that he was being championed before the plenary session of the Internationale. Naturally the press and cable censorship of Dictator Stalin made it impossible to know, last .week, how brisk a fight was being staged in behalf of Trotsky.

The impotency of the Internationale to take any disciplinary action against Stalin results from the tremendous influence he exerts through the Communist party of Soviet Russia of which he is nominally “secretary” and actually “boss.” Russians are forever reminding Englishmen who protest against the world propaganda of the Third Internationale that when James . Ramsay Macdonald was Prime Minister of Great Britain (Jan.-Nov. 1924), he continued to act as Secretary of the Second (Socialist) Internationale of which the Third (Communist) Internationale was originally a faction until it split off and achieved independence under Nikolai Lenin. The First (Radical) Internationale was organized with the participation of famed Karl Marx and held its first meeting at Manhattan (1868), “because that city was then considered the stronghold of radical thought.”