RUSSIA: Ways to Power

A blood red globe, symbol of World Revolution, hung before the Seventh World Communist Party Congress in Moscow last week, flanked by huge posters showing Karl Marx’s hairy halo, Friedrich Engels’ waterfall mustache, the bald cranium and spiked beard of Lenin and Joseph Stalin’s well-oiled, glistening locks. For a month 600 Reds of all nations have been non-paying guests in Moscow, candidly preparing Revolution in all countries despite the Soviet State’s pledge to President Roosevelt that it “would not permit the formation or residence on its territory of any organization or group aimed at bringing about by force any change in the political or social order of the United States” (TIME, Aug. 12).

Since the Congress opened, alert U. S. Ambassador WilliamChristian Bullitt has several times given Moscow correspondents reason to cable that he was about to make vigorous protest on orders from Washington. Last week, as the World’s crack revolutionists prepared to return to their homelands, the Moscow Congress made curious overtures. Its Keynote Spokesman, fiery George Dimitroff, implied in an adroit speech that the Communist Party may support Franklin Roosevelt in the next election because his defeat might enable forces now opposing U. S. Communism to give it a body blow.

There was also sudden talk in Moscow last week of establishing nondenominational U. S. Protestant churches in Russia. This, Bolshevik leaders seemed to feel, would help President Roosevelt shush devout U. S. critics of his failure to protest up to last week the broken Soviet pledge. Correspondents were told that all U. S. Protestants have to do is supply the money and they can have a church in Moscow.

As the Congress of Revolution moved to adjourn, Keynoter Dimitroff urged “Exert your efforts with cunning!” This in the U. S. should take the form of discreet Communist infiltration into labor and religious groups hitherto repelled by Communist bluster, according to Comrade Dimitroff. Mild U. S. Socialists were marked for especially considerate attention by earnest Earl Browder, Secretary of the U. S. Communist Party.

“Our slogan is united action!” he declared. “We want to explain to the Socialist Party that without withdrawing from our fundamental position on the question of ‘ways to power’ and of the ‘structure of Socialism,’ we do not at all put as a condition for a united front the indispensable recognition by them of the principles of Proletarian Dictatorship and Soviet Power.”

In simpler terms, U. S. citizens who favor a Socialist United States built by ballots are to be humored and cajoled into aiding Communists whose aim is to forge a Socialist Soviet United States by violence and bring it into the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Washington would then stand in the same relation to Moscow as Kiev which today is the obedient capital of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic.