DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Vantage Point, issue 2, May 20, 1945

Transcribe
Translate

Vantage Point, issue 2, May 20, 1945

Page 4

2 This to any of my readers who may be backward is the act of not telling a lie. Also of not perverting the facts so that only lies may be deduced from them. Let no one belittle the consequences of little strings of lies told consistantly, day in, year out. Look at Europe. A character sadly in need of the catharsis afforded by the MITM is the editor who recently wrote the captain :Russia Fires Railway Chief over a short squib appearing in the New York Post. The story was a brief one and originated in one of those mysterious items appearing from time to time on the back pages of Pravda, Isvestia or Krasny Zvesda, and which seem to possess the awful power of bringing a blanched, blasted look to heads of states, editors and Hanson W. Baldwin. As anyone on the staff of Time, Life, PM and the Saturday Review of Literature knows, these sticks of dynamite must be carefully prodded with a scalpel to get at the truth. This one concerned the unexplained replacement of L.M. Kaganovitch as Commissar of Railways and Communications, by Ivan Kovalov. The mental turmoil of the citizens assigned to handle the story is best imagined as comparable to the state of mind of a man who has just learned that his wife and best friend have bolted to Mexico with his remaining carton of cigareets. Especially when the closing lines of the Moscow item disclosed the fact that Kaganovitch had been promoted to the Vice-Chairmanship of the Council of People's Commissars ---the Sovnarkom, or Sovietskaya Narodnaya Kommissarov. Admitted that the problem was a tough one, full of sharp stumbling blocks. Kaganovitch is replaced by Kovalov. At this point the sinister sound of those names grips the imagination of our editor who [remembered?] two just like them in a book by a Trotskyist friend who was [travelling?] [last?] when he crossed the Soviet Border on the way out. From here on, the process is automatic. Replaced, Why? Had Karganovitch been playing with the switches in the Moscow railyards? Doubtless Kovalov, in line with established procedure had intrigued for years with higher ups for Kaganovitch's downfall. As anyone with the political sagacity of Arthur Koestler knows, the Soviets dote on the long view. A plot must have time to ripen. And what happens when it falls off tree? Kovalov replaces Kaganovitch who is promoted to the Sovnarkom. The status of the latter organ is completely lost and assumed by the [reader?] to be a sub-committee of the Moscow City Soviet, in charge of repairing backyard clotheslines. Conclusions are obvious to everyone. Watch the wires carefully for the next few months for another cryptic note from Pravda. From the highest governing body in the Soviet Union, Kaganovitch can go only to the next post---Commander of a Red Army, sent to his death in the trenches. In anyone thinks this sort of card stacking is confined to the slug-slingers, we need only present the pressing cases of Mr. Philip Wylie and William L. White, two of our intellectual banner bears. From his pillbox atop a pile of novels, an editorial chair in a [big?] New York publishing concern and from behind the barricades of a [weekly?] newspaper column, Mr. Wylie wields a deadly slingshot in the direction of Communism. It is his conviction, generally seen most clearly in the light of morning after a hard night out with Cafe Societythat America is culturally shot to hell, the bourgeoisie, its hope is sunk beneath a wave of sordid commercialism and that a bank if barbarians is waiting behind the counter of the nearest drugstore, poised to jump us all.

Saving...

2 This to any of my readers who may be backward is the act of not telling a lie. Also of not perverting the facts so that only lies may be deduced from them. Let no one belittle the consequences of little strings of lies told consistantly, day in, year out. Look at Europe. A character sadly in need of the catharsis afforded by the MITM is the editor who recently wrote the captain :Russia Fires Railway Chief over a short squib appearing in the New York Post. The story was a brief one and originated in one of those mysterious items appearing from time to time on the back pages of Pravda, Isvestia or Krasny Zvesda, and which seem to possess the awful power of bringing a blanched, blasted look to heads of states, editors and Hanson W. Baldwin. As anyone on the staff of Time, Life, PM and the Saturday Review of Literature knows, these sticks of dynamite must be carefully prodded with a scalpel to get at the truth. This one concerned the unexplained replacement of L.M. Kaganovitch as Commissar of Railways and Communications, by Ivan Kovalov. The mental turmoil of the citizens assigned to handle the story is best imagined as comparable to the state of mind of a man who has just learned that his wife and best friend have bolted to Mexico with his remaining carton of cigareets. Especially when the closing lines of the Moscow item disclosed the fact that Kaganovitch had been promoted to the Vice-Chairmanship of the Council of People's Commissars ---the Sovnarkom, or Sovietskaya Narodnaya Kommissarov. Admitted that the problem was a tough one, full of sharp stumbling blocks. Kaganovitch is replaced by Kovalov. At this point the sinister sound of those names grips the imagination of our editor who [remembered?] two just like them in a book by a Trotskyist friend who was [travelling?] [last?] when he crossed the Soviet Border on the way out. From here on, the process is automatic. Replaced, Why? Had Karganovitch been playing with the switches in the Moscow railyards? Doubtless Kovalov, in line with established procedure had intrigued for years with higher ups for Kaganovitch's downfall. As anyone with the political sagacity of Arthur Koestler knows, the Soviets dote on the long view. A plot must have time to ripen. And what happens when it falls off tree? Kovalov replaces Kaganovitch who is promoted to the Sovnarkom. The status of the latter organ is completely lost and assumed by the [reader?] to be a sub-committee of the Moscow City Soviet, in charge of repairing backyard clotheslines. Conclusions are obvious to everyone. Watch the wires carefully for the next few months for another cryptic note from Pravda. From the highest governing body in the Soviet Union, Kaganovitch can go only to the next post---Commander of a Red Army, sent to his death in the trenches. In anyone thinks this sort of card stacking is confined to the slug-slingers, we need only present the pressing cases of Mr. Philip Wylie and William L. White, two of our intellectual banner bears. From his pillbox atop a pile of novels, an editorial chair in a [big?] New York publishing concern and from behind the barricades of a [weekly?] newspaper column, Mr. Wylie wields a deadly slingshot in the direction of Communism. It is his conviction, generally seen most clearly in the light of morning after a hard night out with Cafe Societythat America is culturally shot to hell, the bourgeoisie, its hope is sunk beneath a wave of sordid commercialism and that a bank if barbarians is waiting behind the counter of the nearest drugstore, poised to jump us all.