TRENDS: Ideas in action; events as they reflect social tendencies
OAK, LISTON M.
TRENDS: Ideas in action; events as they reflect social tendencies By Liston M. Oak Is Stalin Sick, Dead, or Ousted? ALL this is mere speculation, based on rumors and reports that are probably...
...Increasing grave concern is felt by American officials responsible for the administration of the American zone in Germany that we may lose the political fruits of victory through lack of any well thought-out plan, or adequate preparation, and public apathy...
...The dictatorship of Portugal's Salazar, most intelligent of the Fascist dictators, also triumphed in a free and unfettered election...
...In any one of these positions, Moscow's faithful servants could have worked havoc with France...
...Red Army officers and men have come into contact with Americans and British and French and talked...
...About 90 percent of the statement is similar to a New Leader editorial of one year ago, protesting that the decisions of Teheran and Yalta and Potsdam were betrayals of the Atlantic Charter...
...According to this rumor, many Red Army leaders, and some Communists, oppose the growing isolationism, the refusal of the Soviet Government to compromise and collaborate with Britain and the USA...
...The fact that 700,000 had the courage to do so is significant...
...it needs many years of peace for reconstruction...
...unanimity rule is totalitarian...
...one of it* major demand* it the abolition of the omnipotent NKVD, and in this the military loaders have mass support, especially of the peasantry...
...blocking the Koumintang armies, which cannot march in without American help...
...The fact that Stalin, for the first time, failed to appear at the celebration of the Russian revolution on Nov...
...Any hard-boiled, realistic Red Army general who is not a Bolshevik must feel trepidation at thedajiger of World War nMoward w>ienStalin is driving the world...
...However, these reports L are persistent, and it is far from impossible that they are true, or partly true...
...All these revolutionists had fought throughout the Nazi occupation in the Underground, and also were against British intervention...
...it cannot possibly carry out a vast aggressive imperialist policy in Europe and Asia against nations in possession of far greater wealth—and the atom bomb...
...Tito's claim that it was an overwhelming anti-monarchy vote might be justified—if monarchism were the real issue...
...THE DUALISM OF THE catholic CHURCH In an admirable statement against power politics the Catholic Bishops of the USA declared that though the UNO is inadequate the USA was wise to join and seek to improve it...
...FREE AND UNFETTERED ELECTIONS INCOMPLETE returns from the Yugoslavian "free'' elections give the Tito Government 6,500,000 to 700,000 for the opposition...
...I need not point out to any liberal, anti-clerical Catholic the inconsistencies of the Church's position...
...Victor Bernstein, pro-Soviet I'M correspondent in Berlin, admits: "There is no question Russian looting and raping were on a larger scale than ours, at least in the first weeks after VE-Day...
...As a powerful opposition the CP will be a damned nuisance, but not such a menace to French sovereignty...
...Anyway, the next election in Tito's realm will be better—7,000,000 to 0— unless events intervene...
...The new five-year plan, including the building of a big navy, will demand new and greater sacrifices from the people, and they have suffered too much to willingly bear further privations...
...It damns power politics...
...The Bishops damned the Russian distortion of democracy, and the spirit of vengeance which prevails against our former enemies...
...De Gaulle's dilemma is a frightful one, since the Socialists reject the only practicable alternative to a series of crises...
...Ninety German scientists have arrived in the USA on a secret mission, presumably to work on the atom bomb or other secret weapons the Nazis did net have time to perfect...
...Free elections and majority rule in any country of Central and Eastern Europe would reduce the CP to an insignificant role...
...If honest and courageous, he would tell Stalin that Russia is not strong enough economically or militarily to carry out his foreign policies or to win in a struggle with the western bloc that is forming in reaction to Bolshevik imperialism...
...The Mexican Revolutionary Party (PRM) refuses to reform the electoral laws by means of which it counts the ballots and maintains itself in power...
...The Russian Red Army is withdrawing—in accordance with the Soong-Stalin treaty — but the Chinese Red Army has taken possession...
...The AMG will probably withdraw from the Reich without having built anything to replace it, with consequent chaos...
...Others state that he is seriously ill, or perhaps dead...
...I agree with ao much of the Bishops' statement that I am impelled to protest that they should take a positive stand also against Franco and Peron...
...This is nonintervention, Soviet style...
...There were many additional victims among other working-class parties, reports Vitte, as well as old Communist militants who rejected the opportunist line...
...In Summary MoLOTOV reiterated the demand that Russia have veto power in the Allied Control Council for Japan...
...Vitte urges the publication of the facts about Stalinist terrorism against other parties in the united front, EAM was worse than in Spain during the civil war...
...The I! .1 Army men found that capitalism and democracy do not resemble at all the caricature presented to them for 28 years by Communist propagandists...
...But give me King Petejr anytime in preference to Tito...
...And Attlee still wants Stalin to state his aims, as the price of the atom bomb...
...Probably the rumors about Stalin ("from usually reliable sources") are apochryphal...
...Granting that Russian totalitarianism is, after the defeat of Nazism, the...
...The real Polish Socialist Party has been outlawed...
...Yugoslavia takes giant strides toward Soviet democracy...
...This means one set of candidates, one program, ont party split into four to fool the democratic world...
...The stalemate predicted here immediately after the French evictions has not been resolved as this is written, and I do not believe that any satisfactory workable solution that includes the agents of a foreign power can be found...
...Ferruccio Veechi accuses Pietro Nenni, pro-Communist Socialist leader of Italy and head of the purge commission, of having played an important role in a Fascist unit in Bologna, and of praising Mussolini in his newspaper...
...The opposition put up no candidates, but voters had the chance to vote against the government...
...But not unanimously...
...Furthermore, Europeans have been introduced to Russians and Russians to Europe...
...changes within the USSR are on the agenda...
...STALEMATE IN FRANCE It Is difficult to explain what seems, at this distance, the political error of the French Socialist leaders who refused to form a coalition government with the MRP (Catholic liberals) when the Communists created a crisis by demanding key Cabinet positions which de Gaulle wisely refused theip...
...The 700,000 negative voters will be liquidated as "Fascists...
...ALL this is mere speculation, based on rumors and reports that are probably false, despite the fact that they originate in high quarters...
...They have discovered that we are not Fascist barbarians, They have learned that the private in the American army is better situated materially than most officers in the Red Army, and that he speaks his mind freely, without fear of secret police...
...One report insists that Stalin is no longer master of the Kremlin, that he is in effect a prisoner of the NKVD...
...Thus the prediction made here that Manchuria, as well as Outer and Inner Mongolia and Sinkiang, will all become in effect Soviet satellite* ia being fulfilled...
...The St...
...De Gaulle declined to give the Communists either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or that of War, or of the Interior...
...7th or even send a greeting, and remains silent, lends color to such speculation...
...The fake Polish Socialist Party, created in the image of the Communist Party, has decided to join in a coalition bloc of "all democratic parties" in the promised "free" elections...
...They do it better in Outer Monoglia, where the people have achieved a Bolshevik state of unanimity...
...Majority rule is democratic...
...But what is certain is this: Stalin is not immortal and nothing is static, not even totalitarian Russia...
...Bolshevik totalitarianism is condemned as "promising benefits to the masses through an omnipotent police-state which extends its authority to all human relations and recognizes no innate freedoms...
...James Church in Prague held a special mass on Nov...
...The workers and peasants of Central and Eastern Europe and of Germany and Austria enjoy a far better standard of living than do the Russians under Communism...
...Unification of Germany's renascent trad* unions is blocked by France in order to keep that country divided and weak...
...The morale of the Red Army has disintegrated...
...A farther fact is that the Red Army and the Communists have lost prestige i ml popularity in every nation they have invaded...
...In addition, the Red Army military caste is rumored to be playing something of an independent political role...
...Nor can we readily forget the clerical Fascism of Doll fuss and Schuschnigg in Austria...
...Even in less crucial posts they could cause plenty of trouble, hut in any of these three the Stalinists would have destroyed the independence of France, upsetting, as de Gaulle said, "the French policy of equilibrium between two great powers"—the USA and USSR...
...Tillman Durdin cables the s Y. Timet that "Manchuria ia irretrievably lost to the Chungking Government" of China...
...It is said that a violent controversy is raging in the top organs of the Soviet Government and the party...
...Unopposed, the government won...
...A clash—and more purges—impends, the reports state...
...The Red Army is presumed to make a realistic appraisal: the USSR has lost probably 25,000,000 men during the war, killed and starved...
...This mistake will probably cost them dearly...
...They demand peace and the abolition of the omnipotent secret police, a relaxation of the dictatorship.' In answer to these Red Army and popular demands, the top clique are attempting to return to Bolshevik revolutionary policy...
...The unanimity rule has paralyzed the Allied Control Council in Germany, and hence the USA is opposed...
...Which describes accurately, not only Stalin's Russia, but Franco's Spain, still blessed by the Pope...
...but the Church has played power politics, and I doubt if Washington and London are more opportunist than is the Vatican...
...A week before the election the only opposition newspaper, Demoeratija, was suppressed, because df its dangerous thoughts...
...Without mass support the Sovietixation of this vast area it extremely difficult, and will require continuous occupation by the weakened, demoralized, war-weary Red Army...
...The Socialists insisted on a three party government of "national unity...
...It centers around the relation of Russia to the rest of the world...
...wortt of existing forms of tyranny, I insist that if the American Bishopa really believe in democracy, as they profess, and with evident sincerity, they should also damn the lesser totalitarianism of various Catholic countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Argentina...
...7 in the first celebration of the Russian revolution that has ever taken place in s Catholic church...
...Even in such countries as Rumania, poorest of European lands, there is relative luxury as compared with Russia...
...The manifesto of the American Bishops is instinct with the humanitarian spirit of Christianity—but unfortunately the hierarchy of the Spanish Church is not in agreement...
...postscript TO greek CIVIL WAR LoUIS CLAIR in The Call quotes Vitte, a leader of the Greek Archeo-Marxist Party, who wrote Marceau Pivert that during the Greek civil war launched by the EAM-ELAS in December, 1944, the Communists killed many members of the Archeo-Marxist Party—at least 60 leaders were executed, and the Greek CP boasts that not less than 700 were assassinated...
...But neither Vitte, nor Pivert, nor Clair has changed his opinion that democratic Socialists in Greece should have supported the Communist-dominated EAM-ELAS in the armed struggle for power against the British...
...it ia the most devastated country except Poland...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 47
