Heroes & Kosior

Last June at Moscow's airport delighted Joseph Stalin gave a great bear hug and kiss to Professor Otto Yulevich Schmidt, the most magnificently bearded Bolshevik in all Russia (see cut). The achievements of the Soviet North Sea Route Administration under Hero Schmidt were then the most daring and courageous to the credit of Soviet science (TIME, June 14). Last week there stood to the credit of Professor Schmidt and his Arctic colleagues this year's fresh crop of achievements by Soviet North Pole scientists (TIME, Feb. 28), but the Dictator was not handing out any more hugs & kisses. Instead, at Moscow it was Death which all important officials of the Soviet North Sea Route Administration faced, as the Soviet Council of People's Commissars ordered them investigated for "treason," "wrecking." Professor Schmidt, often called by Moscow papers "the Commissar of Ice," was not identified by name as Arctic Wrecker No.1 last week, but he was fairly started on the downward slide--by Big New Bolshevik Stanislav Vikentevich Kosior.

The word in Moscow for several months has been "Watch Kosior, he's gaining on Yezhov!" Yezhov, who is the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union as head of the Secret Political Police, won his power by persuading Stalin that the Dictator's life was being menaced by Russia's former Secret Police Chief Yagoda, recently executed (TIME, March 28). The quickest, most dangerous way to climb in Russia is by persuading the Dictator that a new set of his most trusted henchmen have just turned against him, and recently there have been signs that ambitious Soviet Vice Premier Kosior was busy along this same line.

Several months ago Soviet papers factually reported such a misfortune as Arctic scientists constantly risk in their perilous lives: unpredictably heavy ice at the beginning of the winter of 1937 had trapped an unusually large number of icebreakers in Siberian waters. This has been known for months, but suddenly last week Vice Premier Kosior rushed before the Council of People's Commissars, declared that the early ice was a factor which Professor Schmidt and his scientific colleagues are learned enough to have figured out in advance. The professor was called before the commissars, but what he said was kept secret last week. Soon the charge of wrecking was hurled, with an official announcement that, acting upon the report of Vice Premier Kosior. the Council of People's Commissars "consider it no accident" that last week 800 Soviet citizens were in peril aboard icebreakers jammed in frozen Siberian waters.

The Vice Premier also declared and the People's Commissars affirmed that "self-satisfaction and conceit" are prevalent vices among the Soviet Arctic scientists; moreover, that under Hero Schmidt there have been employed "methods of selecting personnel which provided an excellent base for the criminal anti-Soviet activities of wreckers!"

That climbing Kosior would reach as high as Schmidt--the Soviet equal of Lindbergh--was a tremendous Russian sensation last week. However, at the latest Moscow trial a prisoner who was later shot, Big Bolshevik Grinko, testified that one of the former Arctic officials, Sergei Bergavinov, had personally wanted to kill Stalin. According to Kosior & friends today, this Bergavinov was such a clever Trotskyist that for a long time he diverted suspicion from himself by "unmasking"' a total of 66 Trotskyists and having 33 Trotskyists arrested as "doubtful people who wanted to hide from the eyes of society in the wide-open spaces of the Arctic."

Several months ago an Italian humorous paper cracked that the reason the Soviet scientists refused for so many months to be taken off their drifting Polar ice pack (TIME, Feb. 28) was that "they feel safer there than they would at home in Moscow!"--a random jest which last week came squarely into line with the facts.

It was Kosior who in 1933 purged the Ukraine. He rushed about accusing its Bolshevik officials of having conspired with Dr. Alfred Rosenberg to turn over the Ukraine to Hitler's Germany. Scores were executed, several committed suicide or were "shot trying to escape." Kosior wiped out most of the Ukrainian Agriculture Commissariat and arrived in Moscow boasting that this "blood bath" had raised the grain yield from 41% to 89% of the Plan. Ever since, bald, ruthless Kosior has been on the make. It was he who suddenly got the idea that Trotsky, "from his exile, had contrived the assassination of the Dictator's "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov (TIME Dec. 10, 1934)-- an idea since made the piece de resistance of Moscow trials. Today Kosior is not only Vice Premier but chief of the Control Commission of the Communist Party. This post was once held by Stalin, later by Yezhov, and in holding it Kosior is in key position to wangle the promotions & demotions in the Communist Party, which runs the Soviet Union. It was thus that Stalin eventually rose to be Dictator on the shoulders of henchmen for whom he had obtained jobs, and today no Russian is quite so well worth watching as Kosior.

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