Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-11-03
BY FRED THEROUx

Forty years ago this Thursday.
Q little band Of dedicated and
determined men, led by a cold.
yet magnetic political genius.
seized power in Russia. The
fioundering Provisional Govern
ment Of Alexander Kerensky,
which had replaced the Cars
autocracy the previous March,
was routed in a few hours
Of street fighting and carefully
planned parliamentary intrigue.
In the ensuing days-"10 days
that shook the world" to use the
phrase of the American John
Reed, q correspondent who never
lived to see the confirmation Of
his analysis-the Bolshevik wing
Of the Russian Social Democratic
Party consolidated its control OF
the battered, war-weary and hun
CRY Russia that for centuries had
been a monument to feudal autoc-
racy. In those 10 days was laid
the foundation for the transfor-
nation Of a backward land of
peasants, to an industrial giant of
the world.
But also in those 10 days came
the almost inevitable steps for the
protection Of the new government
that were to lead to a bitter.
ironic denial of the very slogans
that gave voice to the longings Of
the Russian people = freedom,
peace, land and bread"
Vladimir nyitch Lenin - born
Ulanov - struck swiftly to frus-
trate the enemies of his new gov
eminent Of workers and peasants.
He succeeded in defeating counter
revolutionary forces at home and
the several armies of foreign
interventionists. He built the en-
during basis for the worlds first
Marxist state, insured its survival
with every means at his command.
And he also guaranteed the Gre
alton and survival Of perhaps the
greatest tyranny over the minds
Of men ever to exist in the modern
world.
The Iron Hand
A little over a week ago great
military hero of Russia's valiant
resistance to Nazi Germany's
vicious invasion of World War II
returned to Moscow from hero's
visit to the Balkans.
He was Marshal Georgi K.
Zhukov, Minister of Defense OF
the USSR and a member Of the
all-powerful Presidium of the
Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. Not long after he stepped
from his plane he was told that
he had been relieved Of his duties
as Minister of Defense.
Yesterday the world learned OF
his public disgrace, and the dark
background of his predicament
spotlights once again the violent
paradoxes of Soviet power: Politi-
NAL opposition, however honest
and sincere, is treason; disagree
ment with the existing leadership
is, at its least, error" and at its
worst, sabotage; espousal OF a
course disapproved by the man
or men who WELD the power is
deviation"
Marshal Zhukov will, in the
current atmosphere of Soviet in
ternal politics, escape the fate Of
many others-a bullet in the head
in the dim cellars of the Lubianka,
or an existence-without-life in the
labor camps of Siberia. But the
Zhukov incident illustrates the
contrast between today's Soviet
power and the Marxist state en-
visioned by Lenin in 1917:
Democracy from below! De-
mocracy without officialdom, with
out police. without an army
none shall have the opportunity
of becoming bureaucrats . the
state itself will wither away by
virtue of the simple fact that.
freed from capitalist slavery, from
the innumerable horrors. savagery,
absurdities and infamies Of CAPT.
talist exploitation, people will
gradually become accustomed to
the observation Of the elementary
rule of social living. known for
centuries and repeated for thou
sands of years in all sermons
without constraint, without sub
lection, without the special appar-
atus for compulsion which is called
the state"
Host Of Contradictions
Today, 40 years after he almost
single handedly created his Soci-
alist state amid the ruins and
wreckage and despair Of a losing
war, Lenin's Union Of Socialist So
Wet Republics stands as a monu-
mental series Of contradictions.
II success is measured by mate
rial accomplishments, the success
of Lenin's Socialist state cannot
be denied. From a raw, primitive,
agricultural nation Of illiteracy,
poverty and tyranny, the archi-
tects of the Soviet state have
wrought. in less than two genera
tions. a highly industrialized, SUI
perbly educated, immensely
wealthy nation that can challenge
any nation in the world.
But the contradiction y here: