Stalinites Make W.P.A. Writers' Project CP. Headquarters
Stalinites Make W.P.A. Writers' Project CP. Headquarters Heartened by the opportunity The New Leader is giving WPA workers to call public attention to the Communist dictatorship in certain...
...fJJ This was, above all other things, what Stalin did not wish to reveal- His political enemies must be turned by hook or creek into unprincipled criminals, willing tools of Fascism, champion* of political exploitation...
...It might have stimulated one or two of the badgessd creatures to explain why they considered Stalin an imposter as* his policies counter-revolutionary...
...When, we find that the so-called managing editor of the project is none other than the organizer of the Hungarian branch of the CP...
...The story i* sickening...
...But these are just small fry, when it comes to the former associate director of last year's May Day Committee, who was on the project and who, during the six to eight weeks of his dictatorship, did nothing at all but sign time sheets, collect his check and back to work on plans for the committee (with him were some five women members of the party, who also signed the sheet, but instead were up in the headquarters of the May Day Committee doing so-called voluntary work...
...and he transmits party orders to others, then it's high time to sit up and take notice of who is who and what is really going on at the Federal Writers' Project First, we find a Jewish worker, who is supposed to turn some three hundred words in on Jewish people of this city, instead we find this fellow on the staff of the Freiheit, either full time or part time doing work on the paper...
...Bat whmtw they may have talked of doing, it seems to me certain' on the ground of common sense that the Old Bolsheviks wars luiitllOtM by their revolutionary principles...
...on its own account executed thousands without the pretense of a trial...
...agents...
...The letter follows: Editor of The New Leader: I have read the article in this weeks New Leader titled, "Drive G.P.U...
...Then we find another who is also a party member also doing some party work and on the side he has managed to write a book for the Modern Age...
...Its activities were extended to other countries so that in several nations in the past few years G.P.U...
...Trotsky, Bukharin...
...MEN AND MULES QINCE the beginnings of capitalist production wage workers in industry have been the chief victims of labor-displacing machinery...
...Bukherfo had done the unpardonable thing: he had tried to explaia ah views, instead of merely confessing crimes, , "y The Kremlin did not want the Russian google reminded that these revolutionary leaders had held views, good, bad, or taeV-ferent...
...EXECUTING COMMUNISM •TOE MOSCOW butcher, shop called a "trial" has finished its work...
...This bunch can be found any day just around the corner of Third Ave...
...Despite the self-evident faking in the trial it would be naive to assume that titers was no core of truth in the mountarr...
...The feelings agaisst Stalin held by Bolshevik pioneers and news* ooatfakgente of munists have spread beyond strict Party circles to the Red Anty, the Bed Navy, the G.P.U., the governments of constituent Republics, the diplomatic Service, practically all department* ¦ and commissariats...
...WHERE THE NEWS ENDS Tleast convincing, in the whole tragic series...
...Printed below is the indictment of Communists' oppression written by some one on the projects whose name cannot be revealed for obvious reasons...
...He too just signs the sheet, and once every two months turns in some two or three hundred words for which he collects every week and not so very long ago, aside from being reinstated after receiving his pink slip, he received a re-rating to senior newspaperman which carries a raise of two dollars and some change in pay...
...The more impressive the revolutionary record of a political opponent, the more urgent was 8talhVs need to destroy his reputation...
...Whether they accept Stalin's changing policies or not they are compelled to change with him or endanger their own skins...
...It must have been to save tie revolution, rather than to destroy it, that they conspired...
...WHATEVER the exact proportions of truth and lies *in the trial, it stands as an indictment of the Soviet IJH>W of power...
...Prof...
...terrorism in those divisions of the relief bureaus...
...moment be at grips with the monstrous Thing that seeks to enslave all Europe, our organized workers are divided into two groups and are fighting like fishwives in the market place...
...Infuriated at having the lid torn off the Stalinist persecution on the projects the supervisors have directed fellow CP...
...The Ben Lieder Fund was questioned about it and they too knew nothing about the raffle, and he was told to desist, but in the meantime this supervisor and his "clique—all party members—had taken in some $3,900...
...The terror they have approved now broods over them...
...While tens of millions of working people abroad live in dread of another terrible conflict and may at any...
...The mechanics of frame-up wens boon amtistiiss*jLilasa ever—impertinent in the disregard of common sense and common probabilities .But the scaffolding of reality, too, seemed to me pare easily discernible than ever...
...Last summer a poor devil, who I found out later to be o Trotskyite, dared to come around the project that is supposedly controlled by the Stalinists and give out anti-Stalin leaflets...
...of fantasy...
...This chap was beaten up by this same Paul White-Munter (associate director of last year's May Day Committee...
...That would also mean that we could give some time and attention—yes, even aid—to the European working class in their hour of apprehension and need...
...In both countries the "pure" German who disagrees with Nazism is aoj brutally treated as the Jew...
...The greatest crime of the trial is that it issssiSj the anti-Stalin opposition from the realm of political ideas and buried n in the mire of dirty police-court eriintasWj...
...Farm workers are now being uprooted by machines and ten* of thousands have migrated to California to vegetate in conditions that beggar description...
...I do not say that there was such a plan...
...We then find others who while they are supposed to be at work at their desk as supervisors either checking work or etc., are in a nearby tavern from 10:30 to 3 P. M. and then come back to sign out...
...f fio matter what the Daily Worker says, the dreaded G.P.U...
...Out of the inner party strife Stalin emerged as supreme dictator...
...The shots that ring out in the prisons of Russia are also executing the Communist movement throughout the world...
...so the hat was passed around...
...But when we see party members signing time sheets, and turning no assignments in for weeks, or if they do, it's once every six weeks, and then some five hundred words which are meaningless and then this must be re-assigned—all this time they have been doing party work, and for party members who are supervisors threatening others with the loss of their jobs for the most unreasonable excuse, giving others tedious assignments, then it makes one hot under the collar...
...Thinking has become the most hazardous thing in Russia,* hazardous for the dictator but even more so for the thinker...
...The nobility of its present pretensions or original purposes cannot sove 0 dictatorship from ultimate corruption...
...He settled differences of opinion with firing squads...
...Not essSSeWSsfs* killing its victims, the Stalin clique has ¦¦idhuog their digmtjr...
...an reads*** bask to she very origins of the Soviet regame, ta 1*17^0, tht trfcr charges involved themselves ia a labyrinth of historical dis*ott*>«»: Stalin ead his police have attempted, in effect, to rewrite hiwory, arbitrarily translating political conflict into terms of underworld criminality...
...i ii i...
...This is reported as many details of the massacres, sacking and rape by the Japs in Nanking become known...
...Civil war followed in the Communist parties of all countries...
...Whatever there was of disorganised, rather vague disease** and scheming—and surely there was and still is much of thos*— hat been dumped into one kettle, boiled up as a unified plot as* served as justification for Stalin's murder of thousands and is> prisoiunent of tens of thousands of his political opponents, i^JdU Even by the confessions, the defendants did net go, beyond planning their grand coup against Stalin...
...It framed the socialist idea—socialist thinkers will have to tig for gaisif" tkms in the Bolshevik debris to save the SiigiHol also from the mess...
...t<i - Such a line of questioning, obviously, was too dangerous for Stalin...
...Clarence Darrow has joined hosts of liberators at the moment when" it appears that the lights are going out in Europe...
...Last summer, we found one supervisor got a list of names together and they in turn issued out raffle books to be sold to workers at 10c a chance lor The Ben Lieder Memorial Fund, they Were supposed to raffle off a $60 Bulova watch, after some three hundred books were practically .forced on the workers, under the threat of dismissal, lo and behold the date of the raffle is changed, the hotel where the raffle was supposed to be held knew nothing about it...
...It is somewhere k that thought that the grain of truth in this trial may be fouad...
...FT is no accident that Bukharin was the special object of the * State Prosecutor's classic invective in the summation...
...It framed the makers of the J seals tion, from Lenin down, by painting them as tripsins hi and tools of criminals rather than men actuated by socialist boys...
...A restless idealist, he has earned the rest that is now his...
...Had the trial presented a group of revolutionists ptotting-^Ema motives of principle and in o spirit of patriotism—to unseat i dictator whom they considered a counter-revolutionary usurper, it would have sounded altogether credible...
...This fellow and his gang had ready excuses when workers asked about the raffle...
...In all countries today where Stalin has a Communist Party its leaders are caught in the meshes of the G.P.U...
...The Browders, Fosters and their hind in each country, as well as the diplomatic representatives of Stalin abroad, know that they are watched by GJ*.U...
...their alleged murssn of Kirov, Gorki, et al, are no part of the larger scheme, out * fhtle bloody trimming of no direct value to the big coup...
...The tractor i. emancipated the mule, but the worker has been reduced a wandering outcast...
...is morally and intellectually bankrupt today, and this bankruptcy has its roots in the Leninism which nearly forty years ago insisted that power in the Social Democratic Party should be centered in a dictatorship of party leaders...
...Despotism by a clique was glorified...
...Important as are some of the issues involved in our inter-union dispute they are trivial in the race of the gigantic crisis that confronts the democratic peoples across the Atlantic...
...mem be re to attack The New.Leader in the next issue of the "Red Pen," publication 6f the writers on the Federal Projects, which is controlled by the Stalinists...
...Rykov, Rskovsky, Piatakov, all those whose place in Soviet history saoaOOa •sOeaSOf and whose communist faith seemed beyond doubt must be dragged down to the level of "mad dogs" held in leash by Fascists...
...Every new piece of terror intensifies the hatreds while shutting tighter every possible vent...
...JAP LUST IN NANKING ^y<lE item in the news regarding Japan's raid on China is encouraging...
...Were it oniy just to contribute or even to subscribe to the Daily we might raise a squawk, but then we might give in so as not to give the administration a chance to bait us...
...It was .rusted with absurdity, and studded with obvious lies...
...Following the death of Lenin, differing opinions developed and each faction employed this low code against each other...
...It is obvious that the "German blood brother" is one who spills German blood with Ae same gusto that he does Jewish gore...
...However, the names of the men he mentions are in the files of The New Leader and will be revealed if necessary...
...Naturally, the Communists carried this idea into action by dispersing Russia's first really free representative body, the Constituent Assembly, with bayonets...
...No effort was made at any point as the proceedings to ascertain why the founders of the Soviet state, its leaders for many years thereafter, had turned mysteriously into rimamig spjsi sad traitors...
...Then we find another who is supposed to write on sports, but instead we find him reporting for the Daily and Sunday Worker, but he makes sure to sign his name to sheets and like the rest collects his pay check every week...
...There is no legal and natural outlet for this cumulative hostility against the regime...
...OUR DUTY TO EUROPEAN LABOR _^h^DISCOURAGING phase of the terrifying spectre that now haunts Europe is the impotence and disunity of the American Labor Movement...
...and 43rd St., meeting with some party members discussing plans for a so-called siege on the project against non-party members...
...now dogs the heels of the Communist leaders in this country and the same is true of the leaders in other countries...
...If we continue to fight each other while our brothers give their lives in a death grapple Vith despotism, we will deserve to go down in history as unwitting accomplices hi events that crush democracy abroad...
...It framed the spirit of the whole revolution, ptctUrnsg it as an ugly hoax pulled off by foreign agents and assorted rascals...
...Thus the trial remains a frame-up regardless what oVssscass of truth there .may be in it...
...It would be strange, in fact, if the cumulative pressure* of Stalinist absolutism, the systematic extermination of gres: revolutionary figures, did not stimulate subterranean activities against the government...
...Rosa Luxemburg protested the founding of the dictatorship with the following memorable statement: The ego which has been beaten down by Russian ab-solutism takes revenge by setting itself on the throne in its revolutionary thought-world and declaring itself omnipotent —as a conspirational committee in the name of a non-existent 'popular wtU...
...I eannot strongly commend your article, but every word of it- is solid truth...
...Other victims of this injustice are asked to communicate with The New Leader...
...The esso thing that has been established beyond doubt by toe trials and the miscellaneous secret shooting* Is that tt*f&a»a pervasive, deeply-rooted, and flaming hostility to Stalin atsj ha ways in all high places in the Soviet land...
...Clarence Darrow was a sincere rebel against injustices in all its forms...
...Communism never trusted the masses...
...Wherefore legitimate opposition program*, from 1918 forward, were twisted to look like "plots" and "conspiracies...
...EVERYTHING beyond that is audacious police invention, 1» have told the story starkly, truthfully, would have exposal Stalin and his regime as imposters, captors of the - revoiatj©*, Wherefore it was embellished with nightmarish accusations at espionage, dismemberment of the country, restoration' of cspi-'talism...
...It is reported that the unofficial boycott of Japanese goods in this country is so effective that it has not only surprised the Japanese authorities but has also made it more difficult for Japan to finance the war...
...They are caught in the despotism which they had planned for others and they know it...
...he is party member number one...
...Terror From WPA Project...
...In attempt*?* to prove too much at once, over an area of twenty years, the Kremlin ;-'Spo4o A millngi new depths of III 1 MOT IJ...
...Communism...
...The masses were regarded as unfit and here Communism agreed with Czarism...
...When we asked where was the money, the subject was switched and meeting adjourned...
...Their names will not be disclosed without their consent...
...Motives were forgotten, as those, h it were' the most natural thing in the world for life-long communists, for/-*** closest associates of Lenin, to sell llnisslisi to foreign governments...
...agents have assassinated dissident Communists...
...No proof beyond the confessions was offered, and those confessions were so rotten with unmistakable falsehoods that we are scarcely justified in acajJMs* one part while rejecting the rest...
...A Fodorol Writers' Project Worker...
...They must not be given the credit of a faith, not even of a false faith...
...Paul S. Taylor of tb,e University of California declares that refugees from the rtarm explain that they have been "tractored out...
...i ¦* CLARENCE DARROW ^^HEN on March 13 Clarence Darrow died in Chicago at the age of 80 the working masses and humanity in general lost one of their noblest crusaders...
...GERMAN BLOOD BROTHERS" J^iTLERS love for what he calls "German blood brothers" is demonstrated in both Germany and Austria...
...The circumstance that nothin*., literally nothing, was done in the direction of forcibly ousting Stalin—despite the fact that key positions throughout the regime were occupied by alleged conspirators—argues against the existence of a real plan, as distinct from vague scheming...
...Often misunderstood and denounced, not always consistent—who of us are?—he battled for a more civilized code of thinking and action and for the realization of a nobler civilization...
...To this was added the advice that in dealing with other workers' movements the good Communist must practice trickery and cunning, to lie, to besmirch and compromise opponents...
...Headquarters Heartened by the opportunity The New Leader is giving WPA workers to call public attention to the Communist dictatorship in certain Federal Works Projects, many of them have supplied the editorial department with sufficient evidence to support the charge of G.P.U...
...Nothing would so hearten our brothers abroad as the knowledge that our family quarrel had ended in an honorable peace...
...J...
...their reputations, their whole past records...
...Under the circumstances it is altogether likely that the more courageous, and the less discreet, political foes of Stalin had pooled their distress in whispered discussion...
...The brutal massacres are horrifying enough, but when young Chinese girls are ravished, many infected with venereal diseases, and girls welcome abortion to avoid Japanese parentage of their babies, we have some faint idea of the inferno that is Nanking...
...Whether the killers will stage another killing depends upon whether more Bolsheviks can be found who think without the approval of Stalin...
...It is within the realm of roasoo-able possibilities that they plotted ways and means, of fogribly removing Stalin as a counter-revolutionary imposter...
...The result...
...But I do say that the possibility of such a pita emerg^Jpa the trial...
...The ruthlessly brutal G.P.U...
...And so we can go on and on, especially when the project had their sitdown strike, some $800 collected but no accounting, and no money in the treasury to pay for hall rent the following week...
...Out of sheer respect for the Russia* revolutionary tradition, one is moved to hope that there was » considerable ingredient of fact in the police brew of fable...
...For more than a half-century he gave his rich talents to the service of unpopular and -persecuted causes and men...
...Suppressed hostilities fester, and infect the entire regime...
...Is Russia, as in Germany, political aleagroeseeass inevitably take the course of secret conniving and plotted violence...
Vol. 21 • March 1938 • No. 12
