Everybody's Red Business

(See front cover) A taciturnity without beginning, without end, shrouds the purpose and achievements of Josef Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili, Dictator of Russia, called Stalin (pronounced Stahl-yn and meaning "Steel").

If peace is menaced by Benito Mussolini, at least, like an honest rattlesnake, he jangles his sword (TIME, May 26, et seq.). Stalin acts without warning. At his sudden fiat, Trotsky (a Communist with a greater name than Stalin's own) was bundled out of Moscow on a few hours notice, exiled to Turkestan for a year, then banished (TIME, Jan. 30, 1928). In decisions of state Stalin is equally abrupt. One (day he orders wholesale "liquidation" (extermination) of the kulak or "rich peasant" class, and the grim campaign begins (TIME, Jan. 13, et seq.). A week, six months or two years later the Dictator may change his mind. As in the case of the anti-Religion campaign, he may modify or relax his whole program, reserving if not the Right then the Power to redouble persecution of the pious at his pleasure.

Compared to Stalin and Communism, Mussolini and Fascism are negligible forces. More than 69 times larger than the Kingdom of Italy, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics wields the might of the largest standing army on earth (725,000 men--U. S. Army 136,217). To grasp even a fraction of Stalin's purpose and achievements--which today are mainly economic--one must grapple with no easy map. Like stars in the firmament, like grains of caviar spread by a lavish Russian on his pancakes, are the elements of Stalin's Five-Year Plan.

Already these myriads of power plants, tractor works, mines, factories and whole new cities for workers have meant to U. S. business since the stockmarket crash $450,000,000 in contracts now being executed. Moreover Amtorg, the principal trade representative of the Soviet Government in Manhattan, has bought more than $211,580,000 worth of U. S. goods in the past six years.

As Stalin said recently:

"With giant strides we move toward Lenin's aims--Industrialization! Electrification!! MECHANIZATION!!!"

Stalin and Religion. As a matter of course Stalin and every member of the Communist Party accept as gospel Lenin's further dictum: "Religion is opium for the people."

Christian statesmen campaign, sometimes vigorously, sometimes desultorily against opium. In much the same spirit Soviet statesmen campaign against religion. With entire sincerity they believe that "Religion is opium for the people," but they can spare only a fraction of their time for the anti-Religion crusade--now largely conducted by the Society of Militant Atheists (600,000 members).

Stalin and Revolution. Similarly the Dictator can take only a part-time interest in the Third International. This organization is defined in its official program as "The gravedigger of the Capitalist system." Its frankly avowed purpose is to foment in every land "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat." It operates legally apart from the Soviet Government, actually with an interlocking directorate.*

Naturally Stalin assists the International. In his younger days the Dictator exploded bombs, arranged assassinations of Tsarist officials, robbed banks--all this to reduce the number of his Party's enemies, increase the amount of Party funds. Six times he was exiled, six times escaped. Lenin, in recognition of the young man's cold, keen, remorseless efficiency, nicknamed him "Steel."

Exactly "where Stalin stands on the question of overthrowing the U. S. Government appears from what he said last year in an address to the American Section/- of the Third International.

"I consider that the Communist Party of the U. S. A. is one of the few Communist Parties to which history has confided decisive tasks from the viewpoint of the world revolutionary movement. The revolutionary crisis . . . in the United States . . . is near.

". . . The American Communist Party must be ready to meet the crisis fully armed to take over the direction of the future class war. You must prepare yourselves for this, Comrades, with all your strength and by every means!"

Notice that Stalin was addressing U. S. citizens, exhorting the U. S. Communist Party. It is not necessary for the International to smuggle secret Russian agents into the U. S.--as they are often charged with doing--for by training U. S. citizens in Moscow a type of revolutionist is produced who has every legal right to re-enter his native land.

In the U. S., the actual title of the Communist Party used to be "The Workers' Party," was recently changed to "The Communist Party, U. S. A." Leader: William Z. Foster, now in jail (TIME, April 21). Organ: The Daily Worker. In Manhattan on March 6th last Mr. Foster said: "Charges have been made that this meeting tomorrow [which resulted in his arrest] has been called by the Communist International in Russia. Well it has-- what are you going to do about it?"

Stalin and Business. Grateful indeed in these slack times are most U. S. businessmen to receive orders from Dictator Stalin's agents. Newsorgans which report every new contract to build up the Red State begin with the Wall Street Journal and by no means end with the Boston Herald, the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger, the Stockton (Calif.) Independent.

Clippings from these and many another U. S. paper are proudly included in Soviet Economic Development and American Business, a new book (Liveright, $1.50) by one of Stalin's closest friends, Saul G. Bron, moonfaced Board Chairman of Arcos, the London Soviet trade office, recently Board Chairman for three years of Amtorg in New York.

Comrade Bron's logical conclusion: The U. S. will sooner or later, and probably sooner, extend full diplomatic recognition to Soviet Russia, because "American manufacturers and financiers are beginning to realize that the real possibilities of Soviet American trade cannot be attained under the present abnormal relations."

Stalin and Hoover. If U. S. businessmen should refuse to sell Red Russia what she wants, gladly would British, German or even Japanese businessmen fill her orders. Christian, capitalist and patriot though he may be, the U. S. businessman has this perfect alibi far his traffic with the Reds.

The only effective weapon business could draw against Stalin would be an international Capitalist boycott of the Soviet State.

In Moscow this is the very thing Soviet statesmen expect, fear. As Communists they are arrayed against the Capitalist world. They expect it to fight back. When President Herbert Hoover and Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald summoned the London Naval Conference a queer thing happened in Moscow. Newsorgans directly under the Dictator's thumb screamed with alarm, warned that at last representatives of the Capitalist nations were meeting to organize secretly a Capitalist attack upon and boycott of the Soviet proletariat.

If Comrade Stalin were Quaker Hoover that is what he would do--it may be fairly, logically assumed.

Stalin and Congress. The last time U. S. Reds were investigated--by Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer in 1919-- some 5,000 people were arrested and 263 deported. Such action today would mean a staggering loss to Business--cancellation of Soviet contracts by the tens of millions. However, not all Congressmen are businessmen. Some think that to stamp out U. S. Communism now would be a national boon, cheap at any price.

On this theory last week Representative Hamilton Fish Jr. of New York, red-hot anti-Red, was appointed chairman of a Congressional committee of five who will begin the 1930 Red hunt by calling three star witnesses: 1) Attorney-General Mitchell for the Department of Justice; 2) Secretary of Labor Davis for informaton about Red immigrants; 3) Third Vice President Matthew Woll of the American Federation of Labor.

Stalin and Friends. Among potent U. S. business friends of Josef Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili are:

Standard Oil, whose famed Ivy Ledbetter Lee is commonly said in Wall Street to be "the Soviet publicity man in the U. S." Naturally no one thinks that Mr. Lee is "in the pay of the Reds." He is simply friendly to friends of his employers who buy gargantuan quantities of Red Oil.

General Electric is building, as part of a $100,000,000 contract, the four largest hydroelectric generators in the world (100,000 h. p. each) for installation some 200 miles from Odessa on the Dnieper River.

Austin Co. of Cleveland, under a $50,000,000 contract are erecting the City of Austingrad, complete with tractor and automobile factories involving an additional $30,000,000 contract for parts and technical assistance with Ford Motor Corp.

Other business friends are General Motors, DuPont de Nemours, International Harvester, John Deere Co., Caterpillar Tractor, Radio Corp. and the U. S. Shipping Board, which sold the Reds a fleet of 25 cargo steamers (TIME, Jan. 27). Banks which sent business-getters to Moscow last year include National City. Chase National, Equitable Trust.

No friends of Stalin are W. A. Harriman & Co. who obtained a 22-year Russian manganese concession in 1925 but gave it up at a loss after three years, because the Soviet Government resorted to "petty abuses," imposed "impossible conditions." Today the Anglo-U. S. concessionaires of the Lena Gold Fields claim that they are being forced out by means equally "unfair."

Reports that President Ralph Budd of the U. S. Great Northern R. R. would spend "several years" assisting Soviet railway builders (TIME, May 12) simmered down to the fact that he and his son John, just graduated from Yale's scientific school, sailed from Manhattan last week "to spend several weeks in making a survey of the Russian-Siberian Railway facilities for the Soviet Government."

Five-Year Plan. Quoting official Soviet statistics, Comrade Bron shows in his book that the Five-Year Plan, now in its second year, has more than attained its industrial objectives, has fallen somewhat short in persuading the stubborn Russian peasant to plant as much seed as the Government wishes, to sell it at the price fixed by the Government, and to espouse with proper enthusiasm the Government's program of "collective farms" (TIME. Oct. 21, et seq.). Nevertheless 10,530,000 acres are now under collective cultivation.

Turksib. To date the most spectacular achievement under Stalin's plan has been Turksib, a railroad which to Russians is pure romance. Citizens of the U. S. are seeing Turksib--romance and all--in an astonishing film now being distributed by Amkino, the U. S. representative of the Soviet film trust.

Through blistering Turkestan desert, across mighty rivers and on over frozen Siberian steppes Turksib was built by a onetime U. S. "wobbly" and tramp, William ("Wild Bill") Shatoy. Last week Wobbly Shatoy's road was traversed by its first trainload of U. S. tourists.

In Tsarist times to ship Siberian grain to Turkestan by rail would have meant a detour of 2,500 miles via Samara would have been like shipping Massachusetts shoes to Florida via Denver, Col. "But now," cry the Comrades. "Turksib has come!" Proud and exultant are they to see the sluggish Russian Bear, goaded by ruthless Dictator Stalin, thus take "giant strides."

Women. To Manhattan from Moscow, where he had purchased many a fur, returned last week Vice President Murray M. Singer of Fifth Avenue's smart Bergdorf-Goodman shop. Amazed he reported:

"Russian women are so zealously interested in the success of the Soviet Government that they are not interested in what women are wearing in Paris or New York! They live in a different world."

*See William C. White's able, authoritative description of the International in the current (June) Scribner's Magazine, written after two and one-half years at the Institute of Soviet Law in Moscow.

/-Usually consisting of some 20 whites and about half as many Negroes from the U. S. who major in Propaganda and minor in Agitation, most of them at the Lenin school in Moscow, where they are paid $35 per month. Eventually they return to the U. S. Communist party, now claiming 12,000 members. Besides the Lenin school, the International operates in Moscow the University of the Struggling Workers of the East, and exclusively for Chinese revolutionaries, the Sun Yat Sen University.

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