New Bolshevik

Photographic evidence from Moscow and Rome to settle the most significant controversy in which Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff has become involved in recent years arrived in the U. S. last week. The case has concerned M. Fedor Butenko, one of the New Bolsheviks who are being spectacularly advanced in the Soviet Union by Dictator Stalin to replace the liquidated Old Bolsheviks. Since Stalin's purge has been mowing down Soviet diplomats right & left, the Moscow diplomatic school has to work fast and overtime to keep filling up the constantly depleted ranks. Through this forcing house for New Bolshevik talent, Russia's Proletarian Writer Fedor Butenko was put with such speed that two months ago, only two years after he matriculated, he was in full command of the Soviet legation at Bucharest, Rumania as Charge d'Affaires. His unfortunate superior, the Soviet Minister, had just "disappeared."

Apparently Commissar Litvinoff, himself an Old Bolshevik, which today in Russia is risky and apt to leave one out of things, judged that New Bolshevik Butenko was a typical favorite of the Stalin entourage. Meanwhile, the Soviet Secret Political Police, who operate strictly on their own, were closing in upon Butenko at the very time when all Rumania was in ferment because of the Goga Cabinet collapse (TIME, Feb. 21). When the Soviet Charge d'Affaires suddenly "disappeared" one night in Bucharest, the local Soviet Tass news agency man concluded that Rumanian Fascists had kidnapped or murdered New Bolshevik Butenko. In Moscow this news electrified Old Bolshevik Litvinoff. Showing his Stalinist zeal, he ordered rushed off three hot notes in succession to the Rumanian Government, demanded that they rescue Butenko from Fascist toils, finally ordered the Soviet Minister to Czechoslovakia to rush to Rumania and personally enforce the Soviet Union's demands.

Few days later, New Bolshevik Fedor Butenko quietly turned up in Rome. He explained that he had ducked out of Rumania because he had felt the hot breath of the Soviet Secret Political Police on his neck, and then provided a pretty good reason for their propinquity by going on to denounce Joseph Stalin and excoriate conditions in the Soviet Union. This seems to have left the Soviet press, Tass and Old Bolshevik Litvinoff in a predicament. Thereupon, with all the authority of the Soviet Foreign Office, the Butenko in Rome was branded an "impostor." although Commissar Litvinoff observed darkly that "torture" might have been applied in Italy to extort statements hostile to Stalin from a Russian of some sort. In Soviet papers it was said that Rome papers were printing pictures of "Butenko" which did not resemble him in the least and Soviet papers printed his true picture taken in Moscow. Only last week was it possible to place this beside the Rome picture for comparison and this was possible only outside the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the "impostor" has been able to show neutral correspondents his official Soviet diplomatic identity papers and Soviet police identity card, each bearing his likeness confirmed by Moscow's official stamp. By last week the Rumanian Government had also compared the Rome pictures of Butenko with pictures of this New Bolshevik in its files at Bucharest, verified the likeness. Further, the Rumanian Government affirmed that a letter from the Rome Butenko attesting that he "fled voluntarily" and was "not kidnapped" is in the same handwriting as that of the Soviet Charge d'Affaires who was on duty in Bucharest. There does not seem to be any doubt that Butenko is Butenko and he is in Italy.

Why. From the description of conditions in Russia and of Stalin given by New Bolshevik Butenko, it is not difficult to understand why he figured it was best for him to skip. Excerpts: "I personally attended many of those treason trials in Russia. . . . I know better than anyone else the horrible tortures with which the Bolsheviks have taken the lives of many worthy and innocent persons. . . . The Bolsheviks promised the people of Russia full and complete liberty and autonomy. They even proclaimed the 'free right of the different regional nationalities to leave at their will the Soviet Federation.' Every slightest sign of nationalism in the Ukraine*... is completely pulled up by the roots and annihilated by the Bolsheviks. Tens of thousands of men inhabiting the Ukraine, some of them its noblest and most courageous patriots, have been shot or slapped into prisons already overflowing.

"The people of the Ukraine are saturated with hatred for the Bolsheviks. . . . The conditions existing in the Ukraine are also found in Georgia, White Russia and among the populations and races of Southern Asia. . . .

"Stalin's Secret Police were trying to kidnap or kill me. That was probably because the Bolsheviks suspected that I could no longer bear to see their treachery [to Russia] and had decided to break forever with Bolshevism. In [Tsarist] Russia Joseph Stalin says with his pretense of infallibility, there prevailed 'the darkest terror of a police dictatorship.' . . . In reality never has the [Russian] working class suffered such privations as have been inflicted upon it in the period of so-called Socialization. ... I have been able to speak with many workers who still remember and liked work in the old Russia. They remember it still as a hazy mirage because their salaries then guaranteed them sufficient food and the possibility of clothing themselves decently. ... I lived in 1937 and 1938 in western European countries, and therefore I am able to render a clear, exact account of the depth to which the fall of contemporary Russia has gone."

Controversy. In London last week the British Socialist monthly Controversy was out with much the most detailed analysis thus far of the Stalin purge in Russia, offered it to the masses at three pence. During 1937 the total number of persons purged in Russia of whom these British Socialist have been able to learn was 2,776. Among purged Bolshevik bigwigs they list by name seven presidents in the Soviet federated States; six premiers; 31commissars & vice commissars; nine Red Army & Navy bigwigs; 16 leaders Soviet trade & industry; ten leaders in transport & communication, six leaders of Soviet trade unions; five secret police, eight press & radio directors; and eight in the arts. Purged among these last week were Betty Glan, director of the Moscow Park of Culture & Rest; Playwright Sergei Tretiakov who wrote famed Roar China but now, according to Soviet accusations, turns out to have been a Japanese spy for the past 20 years; Director Arkadiev of the Moscow Art Theatre; and Comrade Nissen, who turned the crank of a cine-camera and made a film of Joseph Stalin which failed to please the Dictator.

*The part of Russia adjoining Eastern Europe of which Adolf Hitler has said, "If we had the Ukraine, then Nazi Germany would be swimming in prosperity" (TIME, Sept. 21, 1936).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.