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To these rapturous radicals last week gentle, refined, soft-spoken Lev Davidovich Bronstein said, in the fatherly fashion of an old maestro soothing impatient pupils who want to play the violin before they know how, that he wants to go to New York.
World Revolution. Taking a world view—and both Stalinism and Trotskyism are simply variants on the Communist world theme—the establishment of Trotsky in Mexico is almost an ideal Red setup. As the Times of London has recently pontificated, there is reason to think that broad political developments in South American lands are now nearing the splits into Fascism and Communism which are making Europe feel strange and uncomfortable. In Europe the cleavage is now so sharp that no eminent cleaver is needed, but if Communism is to make further headway in those Latin-American republics which refuse to recognize Russia it needs the stirring glamour of a great Red personality in the Americas.
Such glamour and revolutionary talent cannot be that of an official Soviet personage or even a comrade known to be intimate with Stalin. Reason: nearly every country which has recognized the Stalin regime has exacted formal treaty pledges—as did President Roosevelt—that Soviet diplomats, consuls and such will not in practice work to foment the "World Revolution of the World Proletariat" to which every Communist is pledged in theory. Mr. Roosevelt went even further, exacting from Comrade Stalin a pledge not to have on Russian soil any organization or persons engaged in attempting to overthrow the U. S. Government, including even U. S. citizens so attempting.
Since the Dictator is the most prominent member of the Moscow International devoted to fomenting the World Revolution, it is doubtful in a strictly legal sense whether Comrade Stalin has a right to permit himself to stay in Russia under the pledges given Washington, but neither the Dictator nor the President is a legal stickler. What is certain is that no great Red could, under the treaty pledges Moscow has given, stay abroad and foment Revolution if he were not officially an outcast from Russia.
Most Popular Red. In Russia the political setup has now come to such a pass that production of the Soviet Encyclopedia of Literature has been halted, Soviet history books printed only recently have been withdrawn from the schools by order of Stalin, and a dispatch last week announced that the Commissariats for Education were expected to put some old Tsarist history books into Russian pupils' hands again. Reason: Soviet educators can agree that the Tsarist history books are wrong, cannot agree that any history of Russia written since the Revolution is even approximately right, and cannot find an eminent Soviet historian ready to risk his neck by writing a history which the Dictator might decide was wrong. At the bottom of this dilemma is Trotsky.