Stalin's Stooge?

The late great Earl of Birkenhead, "The Galloper," when Secretary of State for India prior to Joseph Stalin's break with Leon Trotsky (TIME, Oct. 10, 1927), once openly remarked with characteristic recklessness that British agents had been working for some years to undermine the position of Comrade Trotsky in Russia. "But, dash it all, they don't seem to be able to do anything!"

Comrade Trotsky has since resided in Turkey, France and finally Norway. He is supposed to be a hatcher of anti-Stalin plots, but considering that agents of the Soviet secret service have made away in France with at least two of Stalin's lesser enemies, the health still enjoyed by Comrade Trotsky is matter for wonder. He is the most professional of revolutionists, with a finished technique of backhanded delicacy, and last week his activities were of unusual interest. Trotsky let it be known last month that he was going to have to leave Norway, and was afraid of hospitality proffered him by Mexico, lest he fall victim in its wilds to Stalinist agents. Last week, having established his unenthusiastic attitude toward Mexico in headlines, Comrade Trotsky quietly asked the pro-Stalin and highly radical Mexican Government to make its informally proffered hospitality official. This was promptly done by President Lazaro Cardenas, and Russia's Great Exile was expected to arrive in Mexico after the New Year.

In 1917 Trotsky went from Manhattan's slummy East Side directly to join the Revolution of Lenin in Russia. In circles where Trotsky is admired word went round last week, "In Mexico he will be able to work in the United States through agents, just as in France he worked through agents in Spain."

Messrs. Simon & Schuster are so enthusiastic about Trotsky's three-volume History of the Russian Revolution (TIME, March 14, 1932) that, although it failed to be the immediate best-seller they expected, they keep plugging it year after year in the U. S. and up to last week had disposed of some 10,000 copies. It admirably sets forth the "theory of permanent revolution" which Comrade Trotsky feels to be his chief contribution to mankind and which, Trotsky thinks, is taking place just as permanently and inevitably in the U. S. as anywhere else.

Best European opinion is divided as to whether Stalin and Trotsky are actually each other's bitterest foes or whether the Dictator, who hates to spare much money from Russia for purposes of "World Revolution," regularly spares a little to the Great Exile on the theory that his talents as a trouble-maker for Capitalism are so great as to render the little he costs a bargain. Exile Trotsky expectorates in print upon Dictator Stalin on all occasions, and Stalin only recently staged in Moscow an amazing trial of alleged "Trotskyist conspirators" against himself (TIME, Aug. 31). Death sentences were passed and swiftly executed upon 16 of the accused, several of whom had long annoyed Stalin by timid carping at his policies, and this trial is still in retrospect so stirring that in Manhattan last week pinks and reds of various hues held a monster mass meeting about it, addressed by such harmless folk as Norman Thomas.

Off presses in Manhattan simultaneously rolled what Pioneer Publishers say is Trotsky's own breakdown of the Moscow trial, appearing over the signature of one Shachtman. Entitled Behind the Moscow Trial, this book purports to expose "The Greatest Frame-Up in History." It presents to U. S. readers, on the eve of the Great Exile's arrival in Mexico, a version of Trotsky calculated to keep up the notion that Stalin regards him as a serious enemy. If the Dictator does. Trotsky's chances of not being assassinated in Mexico within the next few months may be considered nil. Should he be alive in Mexico 12 months hence it may then be considered established in December 1937 that Trotsky is Stalin's secret stooge.

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