The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-02-04
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
RUSSIAN THERMlDOR


Nothing that has occurred IN RUSSIA lor years
is so significant as the recent merciless drl'e
AGAINST opposition Communists. THIS onslaught mas
Lb+ obou+ the execution of II Communists,
oil under 40, for alleged completely in the assas-
sinaton of Sergei Krof. 1t has so far resulted N
+ba sentencing of 90 others, including Lenln
earIv disciples, Gregory Binoveff and Leo kameh-
eff to Imprisonment and Punishment.
Neither executions nor arrests, of course are
novelties in Russia. But it is significant OF pro-
found change in social and economic thinking th"'
the sharpest edge of Soviet terrorism shoulu no"
be directed not against Observation-Disclosures III
the form of well-to-do peasants or lntelectuaS u
the older generation, but against Communists, VINO
perhaps have held more tenaciously to the original
ideals of their cause than have Stain and his as
socates in power.
The BACKGROUND for the drive against left-Wlng
Communists is clear to anyone who has been at
tentive to trends in Russia the last year or TWO
Armed with absolute dictatoral power, Stahn mas
been scrapping number Of cherished Communists
ideas and methods One sees the Soviet union S""-
denly joining the League Of Nations, dtef Coii-
munist orators during the last decade mad oeeil
assuring the Russian masses that 1t was an lilS'Iu
mant of .,capitalist imperialism" Propaganda for
world revolution, one of Lenns fundamentals W.
iactivas has been so curbed and softened as to be
almost innocuous. Russia is playing the old-tash-
toned diplomatic game of treaties and alhanceS III
stead of standing aloof and denouncng the real oE
snoposed Vaccinations of all the Capitalist pow
ers."
Inside Russia there is positively strdent Off
cial propaganda for material inequality Bernard
Shaw may freely advocate equality Of income to
oil thnp
tolerant British public opinion. But if he should
preach this doctrine in Russia at its present stage
of state-captalist development he would soon find
himself behind the barbed-wire barriers of one of
the numerous Soviet concentration camps. The last
vestges of workers control are being abolished in
the factories; the new governing class of high
Communist officials, managers and directors Of
state economic enterprises is concentrating in its
hands more and more power and is becoming dit
ferentiated from the masses by higher standard
of living.
In short, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution has
now reached the phase which no revolution in his
tory has escaped the phase of destroying and crush
ing its own extremists, of trampling under foot
some of it's more Utopian early ideals. Oliver
Cromwell found it necessary to smash the Dig
gers and Jewellers" the extremist fringe of his
revolutionary movement against DtlGSil SIONli
The French Revolution had its Ninth Thermidor,
when Robespierre and other extremists went to the
guillotine to which they had sentenced others and
when the new classes which had risen on the ruins
of the old settled down to enjoy fruits of victory.
The Russian Revolution has entered on It's
Thermidorian stage of development, when the for
midable resources of the system of arbitrary ter
rorism which it has built up will be directed large
ly against extreme revolutonaries. How loog this
Thermidor will last, what forms it will assume,
how many victims it will demand cannot be fore
seen; the answers to these questions depend large
ly against extreme revolutonaries. How long this
opposition groups which have evidently formed
within the Communist ranks.
! A revolution, in the Thermidorian stage of qui-
dating its own left wing, is not likely to be an in
ternatiOnal frebrand. And the sentimental appeal
of Russia to radicals in other lands is likely to de-
cline in pretty direct proportion to the number OF
Communists whom Stain finds it necessary TO
shoot Jail or exile.-Christian Science Monitor