LADY LITVINOV

Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1929, Page 2

LADY LITVINOV

A FRIGHTFUL RED SCANDAL.

BERLIN, August 8. There is a frightful scandal in the Communist camp.

The worst of it is that the 'cause of the scandal is no less a personage than the wife of Citizen Litvinov, the man who is directing the foreign- policy oi the Soviet Union during the absence of Citizen Chicherin. The “Red Banner,” the organ of the German Communists, demands the bani shinent of the offender and, refusing to call her either a comrade of citizeness, shows indignation by calling her the Lady Litvinov. What the Lady Litvinov has done is to write a chatty article for that thoroughly bourgeois, newspaper the <• £orfiner Tageblntt,” in which she expresses her admiration of the fashionable people of Berlin. She says: Nothing is more entertaining than to see (the “haute volee”) (fashibnablo society) of Berlin riding on horseback beneath the chestnut trees of the Tiergarfcon. These stiff gentlemen with monocles, these impcrturable ladies, are all so well turned out and seem dignity itself. And these lovely polish ed horses! It is like a scene of the 18th contnry and a sheer delight.

AN AWFUL REBUKE. Listen to the awful rebuke of the “Red Banner-.” Probably the Lady Litvinov is not aware that these stiff gentlemen with monocles are almost exclusively officers past and future murderers of the workers, men who are training themselves for war against the Soviet Union and for pointing machine guns at the German proletariat. s There is worse to come. Mme Litvinov seated in an Unter den Linden cafe writes: 1

Great motor-cars through whose windows one saw indolent women and captains of finance with friendly glances roll majestically past.

That was another howler and the “Red Banner” says:

Perhaps the Lady Litvinov does not realise that the captains of finance with the friendly glances who roll majestically by are the deadly enemies of the German prqletariat, the organisers of the economic war against the Soviet Union.

And then the “ Red Banner ” simply goes for Mme. Litvinov:

“It is a scandal that, leading comrades of the Soviet Union let their good revolutionary names be tarnished by the repulsively bourgeois performances of such fashion madames as Ivy Litvinov. The time has come to purge the institutions of the party in the Soviet Union, and let the purge not stop before the Soviet madames who abuse their positions, Purge, purge, Comrade Litvinov.

The “Red Banner” says darkly that it is certain that the right answer will be found by the party in the Soviet Union to the social parasitism of the Lady Litvinov. Imprisonment in chains would probably meet the views of the “lied Banner.”