Stalin's "Omelette"

Smuggled out of Russia and scanned with breathless interest by Reds abroad last week was a manifesto against Dictator Josef Stalin which Reds in Russia have been slipping fearfully from palm to palm.

"Everybody is now against Stalin!" charged the manifesto. "This includes the heads of the [collective] farms, the leaders of industry and the rank & file of the workers. The masses in the [Communist] Party are likewise against him. . . .

"Stalin's maneuvers, his leaps forward [toward Communism] and backward [toward private trade] have ruined everything. . . . As regards the peasants there is no clear policy which is most dangerous of all. One of two things should have been done: either the peasants should have been wiped out as a class or a moderate policy in the village should have been adopted."

Finally the manifesto appeals to the members of the Russian Communist Party " for the removal of the head of the dictatorship who is responsible for the failure of the Five-Year Plan and for the establishment of the personal rule of one man. . . . Stalin has destroyed every vestige of democracy within the Party!'' Extremely cautious, Dictator Stalin look no action against the manifesto's daring authors until he had obtained, by means best known to himself, a vote of confidence from the 1932 caucus of the Communist Party, sitting secretly inside Moscow's Kremlin (TIME. Oct. 17). With this in pocket, Comrade Stalin proceeded to strike last week, sharply but cautiously, Not a single Big Red was touched. Instead two comrades who were Big Reds in the world's headlines years ago and 22 smaller fry were booted out of the Communist Party, together with a terrifying (because unspecified) number of "others."*

Zinoviev & Kamenev, Still a Big Red to many an ignorant British voter is bullnecked, tousle-haired Gregory Zinoviev. In 1924 the notorious "Zinoviev Letter" helped to wreck James Ramsay MacDonald's first Cabinet. Addressed to the British Foreign Office, it contained "instructions" from Comrade Zinoviev. thus giving Scot MacDonald's foes a chance to tell British voters that his Government was "not taking orders from Moscow!"

Comrade Zinoviev, who promptly called the letter a "clumsy electioneering forgery"was at the time Chairman of the Third International: the World Communist Party whose main office was and is in Moscow. Two years later Zinoviev quarrelled with Stalin, was expelled from the Party in 1927, begged forgiveness. He was readmitted to the Party in 1928 but has never been a Big Red since. His job last week, before Dictator Stalin kicked him out a second time, was merely that of director of the Provincial University at Kazan--500 miles from Moscow.

Big, because he is the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky, is the name of lean, neat-bearded, introspective Comrade Leo Kamenev, onetime Chairman (Speaker) of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Soviet Congress). In 1927 Comrade Kamenev, like his friend Zinoviev, was kicked out of the Party, repented, was reinstated. Last week Kamenev (ne Rosenfeld) and Zinoviev (ne Radomyslski) were each 49. They were charged not with having written, printed, distributed or inspired the anti-Stalin manifesto but merely with having known of its existence without immediately reporting it to the Dictator.

For this crime of omission Zinoviev and Kamenev were "expelled in perpetuity" from the Party, together with two females, Comrade Kaiurova and Comrade Zamiatina (charged with printing the manifesto) and other obscure persons, including one Comrade Rutin, who was called the chief conspirator.

Strange Mercy was shown to four comrades with potent connections among Big Reds. They, although seemingly much closer than Zinoviev or Kamenev to the conspiracy, were "provisionally expelled" from the Party, may at any time be reinstated. Unknown outside Russia, the favored four were said to include Paul Petrovsky whose father is Big Red Gregory Petrovsky, boss of the Ukranian Socialist Soviet Republic, No. 2 state in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

Publicly to against expound himself and last week denounce the "plot"against himself last week Josef Stalin chose his Right-Hand-Man-Of-The-Moment, Comrade Lazar Kaganovitch. Ingenious, this henchman found the perfect metaphor with which to explain away major breaks in the Five-Year Plan and heap all praise upon Dictator Stalin. Keynoted Comrade Kaganovitch: ". . . Why wail over broken eggs when we are trying to make an omelette ! . . ."

*Expulsion from the Party bars a Russian from all the higher offices of State, deprives him of numberless special privileges, subjects him to social ostracism, means that he will almost certainly lose his job and may starve to death.

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