The Possessed

There could no longer be any doubt last week--the Soviet Government was again engaged in a nationwide purge, less publicized, and as yet less bloody, than the Great Purge of the '30s, but raking Soviet life from top to bottom. Pravda claimed for the move "political significance of the first importance." The long, grim decree, announcing the purge, bore an ominous joint signature: Premier Joseph Stalin (for the Soviet Government) and Secretary Andrei A. Zhdanov (for the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party).

The Government's first point of attack was the collective farms. The decree charged collective farm officials with "encouraging the seizure of communal lands by individual economic elements" who had tried to "introduce the principles of private property."

"Common Criminals." Worse still, the movement had a "mass character." In the Kuibyshev region alone, a check on "by no means all" the collective farms had already uncovered 19,367 cases of "turning them into sources of private income." Presumably at least that many Russians were involved. The decree added that these "common criminals guilty of anti-government activity" would be tried without delay.

What was behind the new purge? Last week the Soviet Government tripled the price of rationed food. (Little food in Russia is unrationed.) Black bread went up from 3.8-c- to 12.9-c-* a pound, white bread 10.6-c- to 30.3-c-, butter 90.8-c- to $2.27, sugar 18.9-c- to 60.6-c-, meat 53-c- to $1.29. _

Russian workers earning under $75 a month, as most of them do, also got wage boosts ranging from $6.67 to $9.16. But the raise by no means met the higher cost of living.

Shoes: $167 a Pair. The situation was highlighted by a.story. A Moscow factory executive, who was due a vacation with pay, had no place to go, so he kept on working. His extra month's salary ($167) was just enough to pay for one purchase: a new pair of shoes for his daughter. Neither he nor his wife has had a new pair of shoes for three years.

High prices, goods scarcities, and starvation wages might be having popular repercussions. For a fortnight there have been rumors of unrest in Russia, especially in the Ural region. Last week TIME learned from an informed source that riots in the Ukraine are "grave."

Techniques of Dictatorship. But whatever the meaning of the new purge in terms of Russian internal difficulties, it bore one other meaning that was inescapable. It drew grimly, for all the world to see, the line that divides the Soviet Government from the Russian peopie. The Soviet Government is Communist; the majority of the Russian people are not. The little group of men who review the massive musters of Soviet power from the Kremlin Wall are the masters, not the servants, of the Russian people.

Representatives of the fanatical Government minority, they rule the vast, inert, defenseless Russian masses, as all minorities must, chiefly by means of an omnipresent secret police and its informers, by intricate economic controls that make every Russian dependent on the Government for his livelihood, and by hope--hope for a better future, which never comes, but which beckons with each new Five-Year Plan from the disastrous present. But when these controls creak under the enormous task, purges are a summary corrective--at once a technique of dictatorship and a reflex of fear.

No one knows how many million Russians have been killed, since 1917, by purges, terror and other Government repressive measures. Certainly, the grim total must be numbered in millions. Brooks Atkinson, former N.Y. Times correspondent in Moscow, believes that ten to 15 million Russians are in Soviet jails, forced labor camps or exile. For the leaders of the Soviet Government are possessed by fanatical dogmas which they mean to make live at all costs. And the patient Russian people, who merely want to live, are possessed body & soul by their Government. The struggle between them, however hidden, is ceaseless. Purges indicate not its end but its persistence.

*Calculated at twelve rubles to the dollar, the diplomatic rate of exchange, which more closely reflects the purchasing power than the official rate of five to the dollar.

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