May-to-May

As happens every May Day, Joseph Stalin publicly reviewed in Red Square this week a dazzling demonstration of Soviet armed might. In private, Moscow observers noted that scarcely one year has passed since the Dictator began the most spectacular purge that ever hit an army, navy, air force. Last week it was possible to reconstruct from numberless small items in the Russian official press a fairly accurate picture of the secret May-to-May military purge which is not over yet.

Typical is the case of S. K. Timoshenko, Second-Rank Red Army Commander (Major General). Last summer he was Assistant Commander at Kiev of the Ukraine Military District in western Russia, adjoining Poland. In the autumn he was appointed Commander in the Caucasus in Russia's south. By winter he was shunted to Kharkov, the industrial centre of the Ukraine, and today he is back at Kiev, now as full Commander--four shifts in less than a year, and at each shift but one Timoshenko has replaced a Red Army officer who was "purged."

In the same short period the Baltic Fleet, backbone of the Soviet Navy, has had three different commanders: Sivkov, Issakov, and now Levchenko. Eight grand figures of the Soviet armed forces signed their names as judges to the condemnation of Marshal Tukachevsky, and of these eight at least four had by last week been purged. A fifth, Goriachev, figures in Moscow as in "doubtful standing."

Meanwhile, since May 1937, according to accounts in the Soviet press, the example set by Stalin in arraigning as traitors to Russia her greatest military leaders has been followed by an epidemic of soldiers denouncing their officers before Red Army courts-martial, these made up of other officers afraid not to convict lest they in turn be denounced, no matter how flimsy the evidence or grudge. Firing squads have been crackling all over Russia at such a rate that even the official Red Army organ Krasnaia Zvezda ("Red Star") has expressed concern at the "great depletion of regimental, brigade and divisional commanders." In one or two cases prospective purge victims in the Red Air Force have hopped into Soviet battle planes, escaped over the frontier.

On May Day this week it was Moscow's best opinion that slipping in the Dictator's favor is Defense Commissar Kliment ("Klim") Voroshilov. It has been noticed at Stalin's more recent public appearances that Klim pathetically works overtime striving to appear as much as possible near the Dictator and be seen in conversation with him. "Soso" (Joseph) Stalin has been notably inattentive, even at times visibly short with Klim.

Moscow censors, closely under the thumb of Soviet Political Police Chief Nikolai Yezhov, have recently passed dispatches telling the outside world that Yezhov now largely controls appointments in the Red Army, but from the Soviet press it appeared last week that the Russian to watch most closely in this connection is not Yezhov but his great present rival in the Dictator's favor, Commander (General) Leo Z. Mekhlis. This slim, neat Red of medium height with regular features and calm, reserved mien has just turned 49, and his swift rise in Stalin's favor behind the scenes was first apparent at the time of Russia's latest election. Then magically all over Russia groups of workers who had not even heard Mekhlis' name a few days before nominated him "spontaneously" as their candidate for the Supreme Soviet. Only a dozen of the very greatest Russian officials were nominated as many times over as was quiet General Mekhlis. Everyone knew such sudden popularity meant he had become one of the dozen Russians most popular with Stalin. Today he is Vice-Commissar in Charge of the Political Department of the Red Army-- i. e., if Mekhlis should suspect the "politics" of even Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov it would be his job, his duty to get Klim purged. However, Mekhlis spends most of his time attending to the politics of fighting service personnel below the rank of major general. The Dictator personally purges above that rank.

Next to Stalin on May Day, many considered the strongest figure in Russia this week to be Marshal Vasily K. Bluecher. Amid all the shifting and the Red Army's bloody purge, the Marshal remains commander of the Special Red Banner Far East Army, which he has been for the past nine years. Bluecher, one of the few picturesque, independent Bolsheviks alive today, is Russia's potent front man against Japan. His job is to hold the East, while Stalin holds the West. Up to now the Dictator has taken the Marshal's advice not only on the defenses but on the politics and economics of the Soviet Far East. Marshal Bluecher. for example, has been notably more liberal toward Soviet forced collective farmers than the Dictator. Because the Trans-Siberian railway lines a vulnerable to Japanese bombing, cannot be relied on in time of war to keep supplies moving. Dictator Stalin has been obliged to send the Far East Army gigantic stores of war machinery, ammunitions and food--enough for Marshal Bluecher to wage war unaided against the Japanese Empire for months. By the same token the Far East Army is the only group Russians today able to sever relations with Moscow, as several of the Soviet constituent republics have thought of doing only to have Stalin agents swoop down and execute their highest State officials.

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