15th Birthday

The job--the colossal job--of celebrating the Soviet State's 15th birthday last week was diligently done all over Russia. but nowhere with such zeal as in Red Moscow. For a whole week there was no food shortage. The State released at moderate prices thousands of tons of canned goods, butter, candy and other luxuries. To help feed more than 1,000,000 Russians who marched all day across the vast Red Square, while 1,000 marching bands blared Red music, the Moscow Soviet spent 4,000,000 rubles (nominally $2,000,000). Because Russians love nothing so much as the theatre, their smart State made them a birthday present of 15 new plays, five new Soviet films and an elaborate Revolutionary Ballet--all of which played triumphant premieres in Moscow. As they left the theatres the delighted horde of proletarians, soldiers, sailors and peasants rollicked down streets festooned with blazing lamp bulbs. For did not LENIN say: Electrification plus the Soviet Power equals Communism.

Characteristically STALIN uttered no harangue last week, though the Dictator did acknowledge the plaudits of Moscow's marching million by waving his khaki cap. It was his henchman, the Soviet President, peasant-born Comrade Mikhail Kalinin, who made the speech of the week. Addressing the Moscow Soviet, while Secretive Stalin sat impassive on the platform, Orator Kalinin told all the Russians how well off they are, with particular reference to the U. S. "The American President," cried the Russian President, "acts like an illiterate peasant in the fields waiting for heaven to send him rain! Hoover waits for prosperity while the present regime only increases the starvation of millions of people." Observers turned from such Soviet birthday talk to scan the Soviet record: Russia's 15 Red Years began with a prelude on Oct. 26, 1917 when slender, semitic, smouldering-eyed Leon Trotsky (ne Bronstein) harangued the existing Petrograd workers' Soviet (council) into passing a resolution that Trotsky & Friends should take supreme military command, replacing Alexander Kerensky's wavering authority in Petrograd.*

On Nov. 6 Nikolai Lenin (ne Ulyanov), chunky, magnetic and 100% Russian, emerged from the hiding into which Kerensky's police had driven him and fired Petrograd's proletariat with such zeal for a Soviet Government that militant Lenin followers (mobilized by Trotsky) were able to seize most of the Government buildings except the Winter Palace without firing a shot. Next morning--in the historic dawn of Nov. 7, 1917, which Reds now celebrate as the birthday of their State--distracted Premier Kerensky dashed from Petrograd to the Russo-German war front. He hoped to come back with enough troops to crush the revolution. Enough loyal troops could not be found. Toward sunset a Congress of the Soviets of Russia began an all-night session in Petrograd (now Leningrad). From this Congress emerged the Soviet Government, with Lenin as Premier, Trotsky as Foreign Minister (later War Minister) and Josef Stalin (ne Dzhugashvili) as Minister of Nationalities. Telegraphs and telephones flashed the news to Moscow and other Russian cities. Revolt followed revolt. Local Soviets seized power after local clashes. In a few days the Lenin Government was strong enough to begin three long years of desperate resistance to counterrevolutionaries, White Russian troops and to the Allied armies of intervention which put more than 150,000 alien soldiers on Russian soil.

The fact that the Soviet Government fought from the first against a cordon of encircling foes identified it in millions of Russian minds as the defender of Russia. Decisive also were Lenin's promises to Russians of "Land!", "Bread!" and "Peace!" (1918-20) "War Communism" is Russia's name today for the lurid period of nearly three years when Trotsky became the "Red War Lord" and Statesman Lenin virtually abolished money, rents & wages and tried to provide everyone free with the necessities of life--including free streetcars and free railways. During this period the world Press was revolted by Russia's "nationalization of women" (which never occurred), puzzled almost daily by imaginary assassinations of Lenin or Trotsky and revolted by the fact of Soviet antireligion. Everyone missed the real news: that the Soviet State was 1) winning its war to possess Russia; 2) losing its fight to impose pure Communism (now called "War Communism"), which was snarling Russia's economic life, into an impossible muddle.

(1921-27) "NEP" or the "New Economic Policy," proclaimed by Lenin on Aug. 9, 1921, was his masterly compromise with Capitalism, both within Russia and without. By restoring the use of money, permitting Russians to buy & sell for what the traffic would bear and letting concessions to foreign capitalists, Nikolai Lenin gave Russia a new lease on economic life. But not in time to avoid the Great Famine. Maxim Gorki appealed for food to Herbert Hoover, then chairman of the American Relief Administration (A. R. A.). It is history that during the desperate famine winter of 1921-22 the A. R. A. fed some 10,000,000 Russians, other foreign relief agencies fed 2,000,000 and the Soviet Relief Administration (S. R. A.) fed 12,000,000. On July 6, 1923 the quiet work of Comrade Stalin as Minister of Nationalities bore fruit when the Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (U. S. S. R.) was promulgated at Moscow. Couched in terms of uniting voluntarily almost one-seventh of the world under one flag, the Constitution omits mention of the Communist Party which in fact masters and rules Russia.

Lenin died Jan. 21, 1924 and three quarters of a million Russians braved 30DEG below zero to march past his corpse. The struggle between Trotsky and Stalin for supremacy began. It raged for four years, during which time numerous features of the NEP were modified and Soviet life became less Capitalistic, more Socialistic. In line with this trend Trotsky & Friends demanded the wiping out of the kulak or rich peasant. Stalin called their doctrines a "Left Heresy." He secured their expulsion from the Communistic Party in December 1927--then, as the new year opened Stalin proceeded to adopt Trotsky's heresy as his policy, moved ruthlessly to "liquidate the kulak as a class."

(1928-1932) "Planned Economy" is the Soviet period from Stalin's triumph over Trotsky until now. The point is not that Russia adopted a "FiveYear Plan." The point is that, spurred by Josef Stalin, Russians have pursued the socialist line of their revolution and tried to bring every function of the national life--from tractors to abortions--under the regulation of a Planned Economic Order. Its basic concept is not one but an endless series of Five-Year Plans, stretching off into remotest future. Jan. 1, 1933 is the date set for completion of the Five-Year Plan about which everyone knows. Generally speaking it has raised Soviet production above the pre-Plan level, which level was from 4% to 37% higher than the pre-War level and was far above the pit of stagnation in Russia's famine year. The Plan has marked a tremendous stride toward industrializing Russia and toward proletarianizing Russians, but the Plan has fallen and is falling short of many of its goals.*

Again the point--so easy to miss in Russia--is not whether the current Plan statistically succeeds or fails but whether its major premise is sound, whether it will or will not permit of success for the Planned Economic Order which is now almost the State. The major premise of the present Plan was to expand "heavy industry" in Russia ahead of "light industry." This means that Russia's titanic planned efforts have been put forth not to create factories able to make small things which individuals can use, wear or enjoy; but instead to build blast furnaces, metal mills and factories which turn metal into tractors and other large, productive machines. As they learn to use their machinery the Russian people are inevitably breaking much of it--at a rate suggested by the statistics that 8,000,000 backward Russian tillers of the soil have become "factory workers" since 1928. Russian Peasants are the vast, preponderate, stubborn mass of the population who--after 15 years--still constitute the immovable (?) body with which the irresistible (?) force of the Communist Party and the Soviet State remain in collision.

Despite Dictator Stalin's ruthless "liquidation" of the kulak, despite the herding of millions of peasants into various sorts of collective farms, despite tractors and despite terrific Communist Party pressure, the eternal Russian peasant remains suspicious of Communism, tends to horde his grain and "strikes" by restricting his sowing to his own bare needs whenever the State fails to offer him enough things which he can use, wear or enjoy in exchange for his surplus grain. Under the current Five-Year Plan the State has failed to supply enough of such "consumer goods." Latest statistics show Russia's 1932 sowing & harvesting fate fully below the 1931 figures and food prices have climbed so fast that famine is again mentioned (TIME, Sept. 12). Alarmed by this situation, which they foresaw months ago, Josef Stalin & henchmen remembered Lenin's NEP and proceeded to make NEP-like concessions to Russia's peasants last spring, permitting them to sell for what the traffic would bear, instead of at State fixed prices. Results were unsatisfactory. This autumn the Stalin "directives" (he never gives "orders") have been reversed with a vengeance. Not only has the door been slammed again on private trade, but from now until Jan. 1, 1934 each peasant family must pay the State a tax collected in meat. Each individual family must pay from 88 to 110 pounds of meat. State farms have had their meat production quota more than doubled.

Thus the irresistible (?) force is now trying to be truly irresistible. No fool, Dictator Stalin last week raised the pay of the entire Red Army ("World's Largest") and Navy not by a measly 25% or even 50% but by as much as 100% for the lower ranks. Unquestionably this is the largest, most significant salary boost in the world of 1932.

*Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated the previous spring (March 15, 1917) when the first Provisional (Duma) Government was formed. He was not shot until the following summer (July 17, 1918), thus lived through 16 months of Russia's slow change from pink to red. *Statistics, covering the first seven months of 1932, show Russian industrial production 17% above the corresponding period in 1931 but this is much below the planned increase of 36%. Latest statistics show that the output of Russia's leading industries has recently been declining after an upward spurt at the beginning of 1932.

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