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The Nation: "Ten years ago something new was born into the world: . . . Soviet Russia, still hated and feared by the West, is enthusiastically celebrating its tenth birthday. . . . Soviet Russia has become a land of hope, a country where millions of men and women feel a new intensity in the dull business of living . . . women have a freedom exceeding even that of America and Scandinavia; children have a primary consideration unknown elsewhere; and the whole machinery of the State is directed .toward raising the standards of living of the millions. No government in history has set out so deliberately and so successfully, to annihilate illiteracy, to build up mass health, to set its people economically free."
Con. ALEXANDER KEREN SKY, onetime Provisional Head of Russia, in his book, The Catastrophe:-
"Ten years have passed since the fall of the provisional government. But the aims of the Bolsheviki dictatorship remain as irreconcilable as ever with the fundamental life interests of Russia. Social welfare, popular enlightenment, domestic order and international security will not be assured to the Russian people as long as the Bolsheviki continue to hold Russia in the grip of their party dictatorship. . . .
"In the struggle for liberation Russia must inevitably return to the road of popular, national, democratic government, the road upon which the Russian people embarked—hesitatingly and with uncertain steps—in March, 1917."
LEADERS. Outstanding personalities in present day Russia are:
MIKHAIL IVANOVITCH KALININ, 52, First Chairman of the Union Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party, a position roughly corresponding to the Presidency of the Soviet Union. Born a peasant, Kalinin (Karlee'neen) migrated to St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) at the age of 14 to work in a cartridge factory. There he became interested in revolutionary intrigue; imprisonment, banishment repeated themselves, as in the case of most of the revolutionists. Liberated in 1917, he took an active part in the Bolshevist revolution and in 1921 was elected to his present post. He is a small, wiry, typical Russian peasant, with all the peasant's limitations; yet, because of these shortcomings, he has proved invaluable to the Bolshevist cause by the restraint he has helped to impose upon the fiery out-and-out Communists in the interests of the peasants.
JOSEF VISSARIONOVITCH STALIN, 48, virtual dictator of the Soviet Union, is the General Secretary of the Polit-bureau (Political Bureau) of the Communist Party, in which the supreme power of the party is vested. Like his comrades, M. Stalin (Starleen) suffered imprisonment and banishment for his revolutionary activities. He is distinguished by a well-shaped head surrounded by a shock of black hair, just beginning to grey. He has a silky black mustache. His eyes are black, and rarely is there a gleam of merriment in them. His facial features suggest cruelty—a hard mask of oriental ruthlessness. He is a silent man, not given to speechifying; and behind his mask lies a singular determination. That is why M. Stalin is feared.