Evening star., 1939-10-15

"strike together but march sepa-
rately."
This was the posthumous instruction
of Karl Marx, successfully followed by
Lenin in the Russian Revolution. It is
today the ruthless strategy Of Joseph
Stain in expanding the Soviet Unions
domination over Eastern Poland, Es-
tonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with the
prospect that he'will try to extend it to
Finland. Sweden and Norway.
Lenin joined with former enemies to
snatch control of the st. Petersburg gov.
ernment, but when his Bolsheviks had
obtained the upper hand he returned to
his lone-wolf tactics and later annihi-
lated his temporary allies. Stain has
joined Adolf Hitler for the control of
Eastern Europe. How will he treat Hitler
and Germany if he reaches his OBJ
jectives i'll the Baltic countries? Will he
turn then to Russia's neighbors on the
Black Sea, demanding the return of
Bessarabia from Rumania and the con-
troll OF the Dardanelles from Turkey?
Will he attempt to communize the rest
Of Europe? His character, his personal
history, his political philosophy all indi-
cate that the Stain Hitler rapproche-
ment cannot long endure. The entente
will continue as long as Stain finds it
profitable. In the past he has Joined
with others if such a move was to his
advantage; when he could he has
marched separately. distrustful Of all.
Ardent Communists have already
deifled Stain, the son of a peasant cob
bier, as "the most powerful man on our
planet" He is the absolute master of
17O,000000 people, courted yet feared by
every government in Europe. He is the
only modern ruler accountable to no one
an overwhelmingly superior position in
present-day politics OF force and threats
of force.
An Enigma Even in Russia.
1t is popular, even in Russia, to call
Stain an enigma. Until the 1917 revo-
luton he was merely one of Lenins
trusted professional revolutionaries,"
and there was time when even the
founder of Bolshevism could not recall
Stains family name of Djugasvili Until
Stain drove Trotsky into exile in 1928
he was barely known to the outside
world except to those Communists who
had learned of his great influence as
general secretary of the Russian party.
At last book has appeared in Eng
ish which strips much of the mystery
from Stain and the Communist move
ment. 1t is Boris Souvarine's Stain"
a 676-page. well-documented but preju-
diced study of the Red Gar of All the
Russias. Despite its bitter bias against
Stain in favor Of Trotsky, it must be ac-
cepted as the most complete single book
in English about the most extraordinary
revolutionary figure of recent times.
Souvarine, a founder of the French
Communist Party and former member
OF the Executive Committee of the Com
munist International, writes with au-
thority, and sometimes with first-hand
knowledge, of the epochal events which
shook the world more than two decades
ago and have placed the implacable
Stain in position where he alone was
able to determine whether the power and
the disposal of its former enemy, Nazi
Germany, or of its new but suspicious
friends, Great Britain and France.
Only Communist could have painted
with such infinite detail the theological
controversies, personal intrigues, intra-
Autobiography battles which led to
Stains subjugation of his associates and
exile or execution of his enemies The
portrait is so gruesome that it defeats its
manifest purpose, particularly when it
derides Stains intellectual powers, gives
him little or no credit for the effective
steps taken to further education among
the masses, and asserts that the 1885
constitution was merely vast diver
sion" to camouflage the "atrocious re-
preston" which was to follow.
Nor is the French writer convincing