Evening star., 1943-12-19

occasion to village above the Arctic
circle. He was there for about four
years, until his release with other DO
litical prisoners as result of the March
revolution OF 1917.
He became one of the trusted heuten-
ants Of Lenin. There was a saying in
Moscow after while that "Ienin
trusts Stain: Stain trusts no one"
From The time of its creation in Octo-
Der, 1917. he was member of the all
powerful Politburo, and when the gov
ernment was organized he was made
the Commissar of Nationalities, in
charge Of the difficult job OF Welding the
more than 100 separate races and ma
tionalities nj Russia into stable union.
His role in the revolution, however,
brought him little into the public eye.
Trotsky was much more conspicuous.
Stain was the spade-worker. the Or
ganizer, the wire -puller, making effec-
tive use Of the contacts he had formed
during the long period of his under
ground work These were later to aid
him in his rise to supreme power.
During the Civil War. though again
he was less active than Trotsky. Stain
was a member of the revolutionary
military committee and served en- sew
eral fronts as political ccmmissar.
His chief military achievement was in
the defense of Tsaritsin, on the Lower
Volga. against the Don Cossacks of Gen.
Krasnov ir 1918. Had Tsaritsin fallen.
the way would have been opened to a
union between Krasnov's forces and the
anti-Soviet troops fighting farther up
the river. 1t was at Tsaritsin-renamed
Stalingrad-thst the Red Army "a years
later won its epic victory over the Ger
man invaders. Stain also saw service
against Yudenitch in Petrograd and
helped to conquer his native Georgia
from the Soviet regime. He served on
the Polish front in 1920
After the death Of Lenin in 1924,
Stain set out methodically to tear down
Trotsky. In this fierce struggle for
power the names OF the two protagonists
came to symbolic two radically opposed
programs for the future of the Soviet
oAAAoAA' AAoOoAy AlSAA liioI oLilS lOuSll
continued world revolution could the
Communist regime be maintained in
Russia. Stain said the regime could
be made successful in one country. The
difference was as profound as the diff
ference in the characters and tempera-
ments of the two men.
Stalin's control of the party machine
enabled him, bit by bit, to strip Trotsky
of power. He was deposed as Commissar
of War; his pictures disappeared from
government Offices; his followers in the
government. concerned with keeping
their jobs, fell away. He was banished
first to Soviet Central Asia and then,
in 1929, sent into exile abroad None
was now left, five years after the death
OF Lenin, to challenge the mastery of
the cobbler's son from Georgia.
The three treason trials of 1896, 1887
and 1888, with their bizarre confessions
of the defendants, make strange and
batting chapter in Stalins career. "Old
Bolshevik" leaders, important vice COM
missars, former high-ranking diplomats,
Red Army generals, were tried and shot.
Fifty men were liquidated in this way,
scores of others disappeared without a
public trial.
The charges at the three trials were
sensational in the extreme-men of
famous names in the Soviet Union had
plotted with Trotsky to overthrow the
Stalinist government. the generals had
sold out to Germany and Japan. The
whole Western World was perplexed.
Many believed at the time that the
purges, and especially that of the Red
Army generals, had dealt the Soviet
Union blow from which it would be
long IN recovering. Stain, it was said,
might have freed himself of a latent
danger to his rule, but the strength of
the state had been sapped.
stalingrad alone has proved the con-
trary.
printed b. Special Advancement with the
st. Louis Post-DiSpatch.)