House Cleaning

Josef Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili, whom Lenin nicknamed "Stalin" ("steel''). last week did what Moscow correspondents have been prophesying for many a day: booted out of political office all the Right Wing leaders of the Communist party, house-cleaned the Soviet of all but strictly pure Stalinite department heads.

Most important head to fall was that of lantern-jawed, saturnine Alexey Ivanovich Rykov, President of the Union Council of People's Commissars, or Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. Month after month Rykov's removal has been rumored, because of his alleged "Right'' tendencies. Always he has managed to hang on, because of his extreme popularity with Moscow crowds. He was ousted last week, not only from the presidency of the Union Council and of the Council of Labor & Defense, but also from his membership in the powerful Political Bureau of the Party. Succeeding him in both posts is Vyacheslav Molotov (real name Scriabine), a squarejawed, pince-nezzed gentleman who looks not unlike the late great Theodore Roosevelt, is chiefly notable as an able newspaperman. In 1911, just out of prison, he helped found Pravda, now the Soviet's official organ.

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