Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-02-23
Debunkinq a Red God

Only short time after JOSEF Stains
death in 1858, the Kremlin- controlled
Soviet press began to belittle him indi-
rectly by hitting at the "cult of person.
atty" and the evil of "one-person deci-
Sions." But not until now have his sue
ceSsors-KhruShchev Bulganin, Mikoyan,
Molotov, Malenkov and other key figures
in Moscow's hierarchy-named him by
name in criticisms plainly calculated to
discredit him and glorify the idea of their
collective leadership"
While he lived, Of course, these very
same persons, these Johnny come Lately
critics, spared no effort to heap unre-
strained praise on this man and all his
works. AS recently as 1852, for example,
Deputy Premier Mikoyan described the
old dictators writings as a priceless
treasury Of ideas" in which "Comrade
Stain Eliminates our life with the bril-
liant light of science" Similarly, Khrush-
chev and every other Soviet bigwig COM
peted with each other, before the tyrant's
death, to eulogize him to the Russian
people as the greatest genius in history"
a leader of boundless virtue and benevo-
lence, an incompatible and infallible
personality incapable of the slightest
error-in short, veritable god worthy
of undying veneration and even outright,
unabashed worship
Today, however, as made clear at the
goth Congress Of the Soviet Communist
Party, his erstwhile sycophants and CO.
conspirators-theo ones who once shouted
the loudest in an effort to make him an
object of idolatry-have undertaken to
liquidate Stalin's synthetic divinity.
Perhaps they will not go about in this
effort, but they have already said enough
to downgrade him most drastically. They
have pushed him of his pedestal. They
have pointed to his feet Of clay. They
have deplored what he wrote in the field
of economics They have attributed
grave plumbers" to his one-man die
tatorship And they have strongly indi-
Gated that they intend to rewrite the
history he rewrote while everyone trem-
bled before him-a history in which he
put to death and reviled as traitors a
number of rivals now being extolled by
the collective leadership" that has re-
placed him.
come so suddenly and so forcefully. all
this debunking seems to have caused
considerable confusion and bafflement
among Communist groups outside the
Soviet Union-particularly among the
Kremlin's puppet Red regimes in the
captive satellite lands. The big question
about it has to do with why Khrushchev,
Bulganin and the other collective lead
ers" have. found it expedient to adopt
such line. At the moment, the answer
can only be guessed at Presumably,
however, one of the detectives involved
is to soften what Is remembered OF Sta
linism and to try to persuade the Russian
people and the world at large that the
regime now In command of the USSR
is reasonable, just, peace minded ana
nontyrannical.
It need hardly be added that this Is
a show to be watched with the greatest
measure of reserve by the free nations.
For the Kremlin, even If 1t goes so far
as to remove the embalmed Stain from
public display beside the still-preserved
remains of Nicolai Lenin, must continue
to be regarded as tyranny-multl-
headed and collective" perhaps, but
nonetheless tyranny at least as threat
full as its one-man predecessor. There
will be no good reason to think otherwise,
unless and until Soviet policy undergoes
a profound change for the better in the
form of deeds as well as words.