SURVIVOR RECALLS HOW STALIN LIQUIDATED CONGRESS DELEGATES
As part of the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the seventeenth congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, the © February 7 Pravda printed an article by Lev Shaumyan, | one of the few survivors among the delegates. That congress was, in the phrase employed by Khrushchev in his report at the twentieth congress, the "victors!" congress; the victors being Stalin's faction after it had erushed all the opposition groups. But these "victors" found their victory particularly bitter in succeeding years, Stalin. turned against his own followers and made a veritable hecatomb out of them while at the same time exterminating his defeated opponents.
Shaumyan: cites the figures that Khrushchev placed before the twentieth congress, Out of 1,966 delegates to. the 1934 congress, 1,108 were liquidated, Out of 139 members and alternates elected to the central committee, 98 fell victim,
The Pravda article also recalls that it was the assassination of Sergei Kirov, leader of ‘the party in Leningrad, that served as Stalin's pretext to unleash the.terror, Whereas Khrushchev in his speeches at the twentieth and twenty-second congresses, spoke only of troubleSome and obscure circumstances surrounding the assassination, Shaumyan speaks: of it as a “premeditated and carefully planned crime," - a
It would be interesting to know the "new" facts which led to the conclusion about Stalin's guilt. Trotsky showed at the time that the known facts pointed in: this: ‘direction.
A real innovation in Shaumyants article is his affirmation ‘that among “some of the congress delegates, . . above all those who remembered. Lenin's testament" the "idea was ripening that it. was time to transfer Stalin :from the post of general secretary to other work,"
Prom all that is known up to now, there is nothing to indicate that there is .any substance tothe affirmation that the delegates considered any such proposal, It is known that in the Central Com= mittee, as late as 1932 after the elimination of oppositionists, at a time of great difficulties inthe countryside, Stalin was once placed in a minority, But he had. overcome that situation, “In °1934 Stalin's sweep was complete; no one disputed him, It is more likely. that he had not forgotten what had occurred in 1932 and his congeni~. tal mistrust led him to believe that he could never be sure of his position with men who had passed through the fire of the Revolution, Hence the fearful purges which cut down his own followers as well as others in order to liquidate the old generations and place new men without - a past in theip ‘Place, |
While Shaumyain speaks of the delegates, he doesn't name a single
one, not even Khrushchev who took the floor at this congress to make a speech in which he did not fail to pay eloquent tribute to Stalin as the "leader of genius." In fact, among the flatterers, Khrushchev was among the most extravagant.
Shaumyants article shows that “MWaenStalinization" continues under the same conditions as before, The Khrushchevist leadership does not seek to bring out the complete truth regardless of whom it may affect, but doles out half truths bit by bit, hoping these will prove of immediate advantage. - - Khrushchev would like to dissociate the bureau- ‘oracy from its own past, from Stalin, This’ is an impossible task,
THERE 'S-NO=DOUBT-ABOUT=THAT DEPARTMENT
"President Johnson needs time to study the world outside of the United States. We live in an enormously complex, revolutionary, pro foundly disturbed age, and a very dangerous one. The President must understand this, It is a mistake to serve the American people soft soap instead of the strong medicine of harsh reality." -- Editorial in the New York Times February 15-16 [international edition].
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