HOW STALIN RULES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 993, 9 June 1930, Page 9

HOW STALIN RULES

VICTIM OF HIS OWN TERRORISM MOVEMENTS IN SECRECY Stalin as the victim of the terror which he himself has created is the picture drawn in a newspaper article by “a former Soviet dignitary who does not intend to return to Russia.” Formerly (says the writer) the Bolshevist despot lived openly and was easily accessible to any member of the party. The journeys between the Moscow Kremlin and the country mansions at Gorki, where Lenin died and where Stalin now lives, made without concealment or special preCE.utions. The visitor who wishes to spe-ak with the dictator today must run the gauntlet of chancelleries and commandants’ offices, of police guards and bodyguards, and fulfil many' precautionary formalities before he is admitted to the presence. For Stalin does not rule alone in the Kremlin. Enthroned by his side are fear and suspicion. The journeys to and from Gorki are now “veiled in such secrecy that not even the bodyguard know in what car and through what streets he will drive. No one knows whether he passes the night in Moscow or at Gorki. It is forbidden to all to know this. The most casual inquiries as to these secrets involve distrust and removal from the Kremlin, even if the indiscreet member is a member of the closest entourage The atmosphere of Asiatic despotism prevails in the Kremlin.” By mere mention in private conversation of one of the high councils so often held in the Kremlin, a member of the Bolshevist Party called down upon himself a reprimand, and an outsider may incur banishment. “Stalin’s personal bodyguard” (says the Berlin correspondent of the "DailyTelegraph’) “consists of two companies of Caucasians, one of which is stationed in the Kremlin and the other at Gorki. When the dictator drives out. four exactly similar cars travel by different routes to the same destination. In which of these vehicles Stalin sits is known to no one but the commander of the bodyguard. “During the journey the cars often change their direction on orders from the officers on duty, who sit beside the chauffeurs. The entire route from Gorki to Moscow is constantly under the supervision of Stalin's bodyguard, who for the most part patrol it in armed ca -s and motor cycles. No stranger dare show himself at Gorki.” The despot’s private life is closed even to his few intimates. Only one of these has even seen his wife —“a reserved and taciturn young Georgian with a worried look.” It has, however, transformed “a practical revolutionary” into a political theoretician, a despot dangerous to the nation, his country, and the world, who has detached' himself from the people, its needs, aid its life, and, with the obstinacy of mediocrity, is blindly following the single object of putting into practice his senseless and hazardous j theories.”