Evening star., 1924-08-06
BY SEYMOUR B. CONCER.

great party purge to comb out non
proletarian elements. To date about
22 per cent of the old members in the
MOSCOW, Leningrad and Penza or
ganizations first Investigated have
completed from 10 to Is per cent of
the entire membership, whose hands
do not show the necessary callouses,
or who have failed to live up to pre-
scrlned proietarian standards, Will
have walked the plank. The mortal
ity has been tremendous in the COM
munist cells in the higher educational
estab tabiishments-52 to SIS per cent
and in the administrative govern
ment institutions, particularly those
directing trade and industry. Brain
workers, holders OF what would be
e-collar Jobs if white collars were
worn, communists Of the commercial
and clerking classes, have been ex-
pelied unless able to produce convinc-
ing PROOF of devoted communist spirit
and practice. With them have gone
many communists for self-interest or
revenue only, but also great deal of
communist intelligence.
Not only are no new leaders being
developed. but independent thinking
and new ideas of any kind are dis
couraged. Political thought appar-
emily ceased with the death of Lenin
IIeninism has become religion. Amy
policies laid down by the dead leader
is accounted criminal heresy. This
was exemplified strikingly at the
Communist congress, where speakers
competed with each other to see who
could include the most quotations
from Lenin in his Speech, and where
Lenin citation was conclusive au-
thority on all questions at issue.
Trotsky alone did not quote Lenin
and Trotsky's views counted for lit
tie.
Conditions are changing in Russia.
perhaps not rapidly, but changing
nevertheless. Lenin was big enough
to change with them, to introduce
policies when the old ones broke
down. The 1928 model bolshevism
promises to be as out of date in a
few years as the 1918 had become in
1920 or 1922. 1t is not necessary to
be a prophet or the son of a prophet
to foresee that unless the present
slavish adherence to the Lenin writ
ten word is abandoned, unless the old
guard cease stoning the "opportun-
lists" out of the party and unless new
men with fresh ideas and a point of
view, based not on books, but on con-
tact with the masses, are permitted
to come up in the party, the Russian
Communist party will be in very
bad way in few years.
Some See the Danger.
l will admit that some OF the party
bosses see the danger. I'VE are try
ing to carry out a peasant policy
without knowing anything about the
Russian peasantry," said one critic at
the congress, after which he went
calmly ahead laying out a peasant
policy Another complained of the
spirit OF bureaucratic omniscience, of
the calm assumption of ability to
tackle any task or settle any prob
lem, merely because placed in a posi-
tion of authority, and was himself a
convincing exponent of his own criti-
cism. Trotsky assailed the machine
leaders for talking through their
hats and making important decisions
on theory, not knowledge, and is
day on chemical warfare, world eco
nomic conditions and all imaginable
subjects, in which to denonstrate,
blandly and completely inconsistent
is prime bolshevist trait.
The leadership crisis will not ma
terialiZe this year or next. The ma
chine has the rank and file, particu-
larly the new recruits, well in hand,
and by feeding them Lenin catch
words and by throwing opposition
critics to party lions now and then,
can probably maintain its authority
unllt pTcDlti1is, SuCu iHAI
prosperity and living wage for the
proletariat. of establishing working
relations with the peasantry and of
obtaining permanent backing for the
government of the more than 80 per
cent of the population by the less
than / per cent of the communist
Russians, become SO acute as to show
them up.
The old guard is passing away or
breaking down fast under the strain.
leaders nTOnfnent since
the days of the 1903 congress, at
which bolshevism was evolved, died
while / was in Russia. Few others of
the central committee of the party
but suffer from physical or mental
ailments resulting from the steady
pressure of executive functions since
1917. following years of imprison-
ment, exile or the precarious life of
the hunted. Trotsky, Radek and
Preobrajensky are but few of those
whose wings have been clipped for
presuming to buck the machine. AS
they go, the old guard close up their
ranks, but there is no young guard
forming to take over their task, no
new bolsheviSt Napoleon rising to
take the place of the dead Lenin.
The devotion to Leninism, the: de-
cision of all problems on the basis of
what Lenin. said, is only one more
sign of the absence of any construc
tive leadership capable of dealing
with conditions as they change in
Russian and the outside capitalistic
world.
Copyright, 1924. by Public Ledger Coz