Traitors

Black secrecy had reigned for ten days within the thick, awesome walls of the Kremlin. There the Central Executive Committee of the Communist party was in the progress of expelling Comrade Lev Davidovitch Trotzky from its ranks --this in a country where the Communist Party is the only one per mitted to exist. Comrade Trotzky, creator of the Red Army and one-time chief defender of the Communist Fatherland, was assumedly being read out of the party councils--and with him Comrade Gregory Zinoviev, zealous apostle of "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat." The struggle between these two fiery Opposition leaders and cold, relentless, stubborn Dictator Josef Vissarionovitch Stalin (TIME, June 13) had reached its ultimate crisis, for the Stalin controlled press was daily flaying Comrades Trotzky and Zinoviev as "traitors."

Amid extreme suspense the Central Executive Committee handed down a joint 5,000-word decision which was puzzling. For whom was it a victory? On one hand it declared: "The joint plenary session has accepted in foundation a resolution for the expulsion of Trotzky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee." But the resolution went on to say: "The Opposition have found it necessary to give way and to renounce a number of their errors and to agree basically (although with excuses) to proposals of the plenary session by giving a declaration. ... In view of this declaration, the plenary session has decided to withdraw the question about exclusion of Trotzky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee and to admonish them with severe blame and a warning." What did these so contradictory decisions portend? Soon the dean of U. S. correspondents at Moscow, Walter Duranty of the New York Times, cabled an opinion: "All signs now indicate that the Communist Party has emerged stronger than ever from what appeared to be the gravest crisis in its history. . . . Here is the real secret of the events of the past week. The stage was all set for a split--one might almost say it actually occurred--and then suddenly, almost miraculously, it was averted." The greater part of the Committee's 5,000-word resolution was taken up with a recital of alleged political irregularities by the Opposition; but tucked away in one clause was an important concession to them. This provided that Opposition publicists will be given space in the Stalin-dominated press to state their views for six weeks, prior to the annual session of the All-Union Congress of Soviets, next December.

Since the Soviet press has been largely inaccessible to Opposition leaders for many months, this concession was of the highest impor tance, and suggested that a tangible ground of compromise between Dic tator Stalin and Comrade Trotzky may have been found at last.