Again Dizzy

When zealous henchmen were surpassing themselves in obeying Joseph Stalin's orders to collectivize the Russian peasantry by any ruthless means, he brought them up short with his famed statement in the Soviet press in March 1930 entitled "Dizzy From Success." This has since become a method by which the Dictator enables others to bear the blame for his total or partial failures. Last week Stalin was in the sunny Caucasus and rumors that he is suffering from hardening of the cardiac artery were reported in several European newspapers. Meanwhile his Russian henchmen were again definitely "Dizzy From Success."

This time they have been trying to succeed in breaking and ousting from the Russian Communist Party every critic of the Dictator--following the execution by firing squads of 16 of his critics as "Trotskyites" (TIME, Sept. 7). Last week the hounding and persecution of even faintly suspect Party comrades had reached such ridiculous lengths that Party headquarters in Moscow, with or without orders from Stalin, called a halt and slapped into Soviet newsorgans glaring examples of overzeal.

Example: After suspicion fell on a youth named Grober in Rostov, a woman who had sponsored him for membership in the Party was expelled, as were the chairman of the union to which Grober belonged and three men who had sat with him on a committee and were accused of "not exposing Grober." Grober's younger brother and sister were not only expelled from the Young Communist League but also from school. Last week the Moscow Central Party Committee scorchingly rebuked the Rostov Party Committee and ordered general reinstatement of all those "punished." Moscow had discovered that the charge against Grober dated from nine years ago when some remarks favorable to Trotsky were heard to fall from his lips.

Dismissed right & left last week were Soviet newspaper reporters whose stories recently caused dismissal from the Party as "Trotskyites" of veteran local Bolsheviks who are now staging comebacks and getting vengeance on their recent accusers.

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