The Gaurdian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1927. EVENTS IN RUSSIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 June 1927, Page 2

The Gaurdian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1927. EVENTS IN RUSSIA.

The situation in Russia owing to Soviet methods of governing is naturally obscure. It is very difficult to say precisely what is happening in Russia. Over so vast an area, peopled with so many millions, any attempt at a comprehensive survey may prove to be entirely delusive and misleading. But if we are to judge by present indications,- says a Northern paper, the Soviet Government is passing through one of its periodic paroxysms of nervous apprehension. The self-appointed Dictators of the Proletariat do well t:> fear and tremble. Kor sooner or laijer the Nemesis which follows hard upon the footsteps of cruelty and injustice and wrong is sure to overtake them. And there is little doubt that it is the disturbed condition of the country, and not the rupture of commercial and political relations with Britain, nor the assassination of a Bolshevik envoy in Poland, that lias occasioned the “emergency measures which the Soviet hierarchy has now once again put into operation. Nolrxly outside the Bolshevik ranks is likely to take seriously the manifesto issued by the Soviet Government to explain and justify its methods of repression. “In view of the open transition to a terroristic destructive struggle by Monarchist, White Gunrdist elements, acting from abroad, on the instructions of and with funds supplied by foreign intelligence services"—such is the flamboyant and blatant rhetoric in which the Bolshevik leaders prefer to issue their oracular decrees—seme twenty and more

people were judicially murdered. In Other words, the Soviet leaders seize upon the Soviet House raid in Loudon and the murder of Vnikoff at Warsaw as proofs that foreign Powers are planning the destruction of Bolshevism, and. linking up this ‘‘evidence’ with the signs of unrest that now pervade their wretched country, they pul forward tins as justification for the revival of the practice ol systematic and ferocious murder which lias made the name ol tin* Cheka inlamous iov all coming time. The institution of the Cheka itself—a tribunal whose barbarous and fiendish cruelties have not been equalled or paralleled in Europe for many centuries past was a crime for which Bolshevism should never he forgiven. But Trotsky and Lenin held that this pilicy uas justified by the desperate struggles of the "reactionaries" in other words of the •‘intellectuals.” the educated professional men and women, and the vast majority of the civilised section of the Russian populace—against the awful fate that was menacing them. Terrorism. it was explained, was inevitable to secure supremacy for the Soviets and to consolidate their power. And now this monstrous policy of rabid cruelty and wholesale murder is inaugurated again to crush once more the resistance of the hapless peciple. What terrorism has really meant in Russia is difficult to conceive, because no words can give any complete conception of its diabolic monstrosities. Those who flatter themselves that their nerves are in good order may lie invited to read for themselves Melgonnov’s ‘‘Red Terror in Russia,'’ where the unspeakable horrors of the Cheka are revealed by a distinguished Russian historian patriot. There is lio intention of dwelling upon the details of flits terrible record, ft is enough to say that tlie horrors of the French Reign of Terror and the famous Massacres of September fade into absolute insignificance beside the incidents set forth in the course of this terrific indictment. Tf a system is to lie judged by its fruits, then the ‘‘Red Terror’’ is amply sufficient to justify the eradication ot Bolshevism from the earth as a flagrant outrage upon hmnanitv itself.