RUSSIA: Farewell, Dear Friend

A competent bombster and assassin in his youth, Joseph Stalin has provided Russia with the most thoroughly assassin-proof government it has ever had. Not since 1918 have Bolshevik leaders of any consequence been murdered, and Miss Dora Kaplan’s shot at Nikolai Lenin in that year was not fatal. Last week the hearts of millions of White Russians leaped high. “It has begun!” they exclaimed. “At last Communists have begun to shoot their leaders in Russia!”

So efficient are Soviet police that for a White Russian to get at Joseph Stalin or one of the nine other members of the all-powerful Politbureau (Steering Committee) of the Communist Party has been virtually impossible. Competent observers have believed for years that nothing but an inside job could finish one of the Big Ten. Last week in the very Cradle of the Revolution, in Leningrad’s Smolny Institute, came the momentous shot.

Historic Smolny was founded in Tsarist days as a finishing school for aristocratic young ladies. Elegant isolation was to produce “a new species of humanity.” In bloody October 1917, barrack-like Smolny became the stronghold from which Bolsheviks defied and finally conquered Kerensky. In the ex-finishing school’s assembly hall met the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets to proclaim the Bolshevik Government and the World Revolution of the World Proletariat. For months Lenin and Trotsky lived and worked in schoolgirls’ rooms at Smolny, signing death warrants, decrees and proclamations.

After the Government moved to Moscow, Smolny remained the Party stronghold in the No. 2 Soviet city. One afternoon last week the hard, brusque, shock-haired Big Boss of Leningrad, Comrade Sergei Mironovich Kirov, was striding down a Smolny corridor when up to him walked Comrade Leonid Vassilieivich Nikolaev, an agent of Dictator Stalin’s own Workers and Peasants Inspection until it was merged into the Commissariat of Interior (TIME. July 23). Crack! Leonid shot Sergei dead.

Crack! The censorship closed down. Though a member of the Big Ten—in effect a Cabinet Minister—had been shot at 4:30 p. m. in Leningrad, not a word leaked out until, at 11 p. m. in Moscow, 400 miles away, the Government radio was diffusing its usual nightly newscast. Apparently someone abruptly thrust a paper into the announcer’s hand. With surprise in his voice he cried: “Comrades! Listen to this very important news!” After the terse announcement, containing no details (not even the nature of the weapon), Moscow’s radio orchestra played the funeral march from Tannhduser and all broadcasting ceased.

To deny that Bolshevik had shot Bolshevik was impossible, since both men were known to the Leningrad proletariat. Somewhat awkwardly the Government referred to “the hand of a treacherous murderer inspired by class enemies.” This detracted nothing from the central fact that for the first time since Stalin became Dictator the Communist hierarchy has suffered a major “inside job.”

In a moving eulogy signed by Comrade Stalin and the living members of the decimated Big Ten. they apostrophized: “You have always been dear to us, Comrade Kirov, as a faithful friend, a beloved comrade, a reliable fighter. Up to the last day of our lives and struggles we will remember you, dear friend, and we will always feel the bitterness caused by your loss. Farewell, our dear friend Sergei!”

As the entire Soviet Union, largest country in the world, broke out in black-bordered red flags, Dictator Stalin and Defense Commissar “Klim” Voroshilov rushed from Moscow to Leningrad, emphasizing “the seriousness with which the Soviet Government views the assassination.” In Warsaw persons arriving from Moscow and Leningrad brought rumors that Stalin and Voroshilov had caused ten suspect officers of the Red Array to be shot “within an hour.” Next day the Government announced that 71 onetime “White Guards” had been arrested.

Meanwhile the Bolshevik propaganda machine roared full blast, filled entire editions of Russia’s newsorgans with resolutions said to have been passed by “workers.” Example, datelined from the Soviet steel and tractor plants at Leningrad: “We will give blow for blow to our enemy! Death to the enemies of the working class!”

“The assassin’s bullet will not turn back the pages of history,” predicted Pravda, official organ of the Party. “The bloody Capitalist Beast, which is weakening and is mad in its resistance, will be exterminated.”