Editorial
EDITORIAL A Round for Freedom The Supreme Court decision in the case of La Ronde, a movie banned in New York as "immoral," is a welcome blow for American liberty. The Court said that such a ban...
...At the last Yugoslav "election," Mr...
...We wonder...
...After Lenin's death, however, the party was discussing the reckless radicalism of Trotsky...
...Our Government now has in storage 292 million pounds of butter and 271 million pounds of cheese...
...If Malenkov meets this price, it is presumed that a deal will be made...
...Let Malenkov refuse such an offer at his own peril...
...We have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by extending our hand to the victims of Communist starvation...
...The butter will enter Russia's high-priced stores for Communist functionaries, and its presence will be cited in Pravda as proof that Bolshevik dynamism is solving the Soviet food crisis...
...2. The United States should use its plenty to aid peoples being deprived of the necessities of life...
...When Moscow's intermediaries asked to buy the butter at 60 cents a pound, Washington "anti-Communists" reacted by noting that a pound of butter commands 75 cents in the subsidized American market...
...let us see in which direction a liberated Hollywood now turns...
...The movie industry, as a result of the agitation of Samuel Goldwyn and others, will now set about revising its own antiquated production codes...
...Butter for Russia An air of obscenity surrounds the current Washington haggling over the price to be charged in selling surplus butter to the Kremlin...
...Such a deal makes no political sense...
...Stocks are still piling up, says the Secretary of Agriculture, "at an alarming rate...
...Although the butter and cheese contemplated in such a gift originally cost the Government about $250 million, we strongly doubt if that sum can ever be retrieved in the present market...
...when Stalin defeated Trotsky, he adopted the worst proposals of his adversary...
...Suppose that only half of the butter and cheese now in storage were distributed in Russia: It would mean more than a pound of butter and a pound of cheese for every Russian farmer and worker...
...Although hobbled by a stroke in 1922, Lenin in these last years began to realize that the ideology of a Communist party in power could no longer be what it was when the party was an underground conspiracy...
...It is our guess that Tito cannot stand still too much longer: He will have to make a radical turn, either toward orthodox Stalinism or toward the path the dying Lenin, and Djilas, glimpsed...
...Unprecedented economic and political terror followed...
...a new toleration of opposition within the party was another...
...From Lenin to Djilas Thirty years ago??January 21, 1924, to be precise??Lenin died...
...It will be remembered that, after the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 had demonstrated "proletarian" opposition to Bolshevism, Lenin began to have second thoughts...
...Although much is not clear in his proposals, his emphasis seems to have been on freer discussion within the party and a larger degree of democracy in the nation at large...
...Is this the end of Yugoslav revisionism...
...Such a deed of friendship, in any case, is worth billions...
...Sapronov, an intra-party critic, was one of Lenin's pallbearers...
...The proposed butter sale violates both of these considerations...
...During the first two weeks of this year, this surplus was augmented by another 13 million pounds of butter and 9 million pounds of cheese...
...The New Economic Policy was only one of the fruits of Lenin's revisionism...
...For Djilas, it would seem, was trying to do for Yugoslav Communism what Lenin was beginning to do for Soviet Communism in his last years...
...The important fact is not that we have embarrassing surpluses, but that the Russian people barely subsist as a result of the inefficient, doctrinaire Communist food policy...
...The Court said that such a ban violated the First Amendment free-speech guarantee as surely as had the banning of The Miracle for "sacrilege" in 1952...
...The test of this new freedom is responsibility...
...It is interesting that, a few days before this thirtieth anniversary, dictator Tito of Yugoslavia chose to expel Milovan Djilas from the Communist Central Committee...
...For this he has already lost his seat on the Central Committee, and is slated to be dismissed as Vice President by the Yugoslav Parliament...
...This fact invites two important considerations: 1. The United States should do nothing to bolster the rule of the Kremlin dogmatists, or to confirm them in policies which wreak havoc on the Russian people...
...Djilas received more votes than Tito, which certainly suggests popularity within the party...
...Governmental pre-censorship of films now seems about over...
...This is a tangible gift, indeed, from one people to another...
...Let us propose that International Red Cross teams be permitted to distribute our surplus butter, cheese and other produce directly to Russian farmers and workers...
...Rather than sell the butter to the Kremlin, we should give it to the Russian people...
...Direct distribution by a responsible international agency would both make clear the food's source and prevent it from being hoarded by the Bolshevik ruling class...
...In recent months, Milovan Djilas has been trying to point the way toward a revision of the Yugoslav Communist ideology...
...The old system barred much of both William Faulkner and Mickey Spillane...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 4
