In the Idol's Name

Twenty minutes past nine was the historic hour. Sullen but docile Russians had slowly gathered, drifting in to the number of 1,500. Now they waited, massed before the great railway terminus at Moscow, shuffling and shivering beneath cold stars, but ready to shout, "Long live Trotsky!" and then "Farewell! Farewell. ..."

He came at 9:19, surrounded by agents of the Secret Police. Wan and pallid, he strode impassively into the station, stepping quickly, clad in an old, serviceable military cloak. At that symbol the crowd cheered, remembering that Lev Davidovich Trotsky had appeared thus when he organized and commanded the Red Army of 1,500,000 men. Today, however, Trotsky is as threadbare as his cloak. Man and symbol they passed, last week, into a drab railway car which rumbled out of Moscow at twenty minutes after nine. The crowd, moved but still perfectly docile, fell to sobbing plenteous Russian tears, murmured, "Trotsky is gone. Trotsky! Oh how sad. . . ."

Where did he go? Why was he banished? The last question must be answered first. Lev Davidovich Trotsky and 50 more prominent Soviet politicians were banished, last week, because they had attempted to lead an opposition wing in the Russian Communist party, a party which brooks no opposition. By command of Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin, the oppositionists had been cast out of the party (TIME, Dec. 26) and expelled from the Soviet Parliament (TIME, Jan. 16). Last week the outcasts were sorted out into grades, according to truculence, and then banished to regions of exile carefully chosen to fit their political crimes. Emerged three sharply classified groups: i) Ultra-truculent; 2) Truculent; and 3) Penitent.

Ultra-Truculents. Exile to rot in Siberia was the sentence enforced, last week, upon the little known, ultra-truculent, blindly conservative group, formerly led in the Communist party by Comrade Sapronov. This stubborn band of heroes or madmen have braved threats of exile for years, and were the "opposition" when Trotsky was still "regular."

Truculents. Secondly, last week, were classed the great and rationally truculent: 1) Fallen War Lord Trotsky; 2) Onetime Soviet Ambassador to Paris Christian Rakovsky; 3) Leading Soviet Propagandist Karl Radek. These and their immediate followers were sent away to individual exile in separate, widely dispersed towns of Asiatic Russia. Trotsky was scheduled to speed by rail from Moscow across European Russia, traverse the broad Volga, proceed again by rail through the steppes of Kirghiz and to the end of the line in the mountains of Turkestan. Thence he would pass by caravan over more mountains and steppes to remote Vyernyi, topping the uplands of Semirechensk, and distant some 150 miles from the Chinese frontier, 1,800 miles as the crow flies from Moscow, and 500 miles from the border of India. Thus ringed by remoteness, Lev Davidovich Trotsky will yet have the companionship of his wife and son, both voluntary sharers of his lot.

Penitents. The third or penitent group which went into exile, last week, was headed by famed "Bomb Boy of Bolshevism" Grigory Evseevich Zinoviev. For years he directed Soviet subversive propaganda throughout the world, and it was the notorious "Zinoviev Letter" (possibly forged) which chiefly brought down the British Labor Cabinet of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, on the mere suspicion that some British labor politicians were "in the pay of the Reds'' (TIME, Nov. 17, 1924).

Last week Zinoviev, once a world menace, went submissively into exile at Tambov, in central Russia, only 280 miles from Moscow. So lenient a sentence resulted from the fact that he and his followers have renounced their recent alliance with the truculent Trotsky faction and now petition humbly to be reinstated in the Communist Party. All Zinoviev followers were thus considerately placed in probationary exile. With the passing of a twelvemonth more or less the penitents, if they display continued docility, are expected to return to Moscow.

At Moscow who remains? Paramount is Nikolai Lenin, lying embalmed at the Kremlin, a lifelike, strangely magnetic effigy of himself, an idol wondrously potent among groping, uncertain Russians. In the Idol's name rules Josef Stalin, like most high priests a perverter of original doctrine. Under him the Nep-Communism* of latter-day Leninism has been twisted to such conservative ends that private capitalism is on the increase in Russia and foreign capital is flowing in under reasonable protection. Against this salutary state of affairs Trotsky and Zinoviev tried to lead a firebrand revolt back to "pure" Communism and the discarded cause of "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat." Their utter failure and devastating exile, last week, means that Anti-Communist statesmen can rejoice at the hamstringing of Conservatism's most active and dreaded foes. Optimistic Conservatives went so far as to believe, last week, that Russia is staking out at last a quiet square upon the orderly checkerboard of nations.

*Nep.--N. E. P.--New Economic Policy.