"You Are Shmelka Ginsberg!"

In December 1937, while Stalin was purging Old Bolsheviks and generals, there appeared in Paris one Walter G. Krivitsky, who said he had been a general in the Red Army and had fled from Russia for his life. General Krivitsky proved to be an articulate foe of the Stalin regime. He gave out interviews declaring that the purged Bolsheviks were innocent, that Stalin was betraying both the Soviet Union and the working class. Last December General Krivitsky came to the U. S. Last month he began publishing a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post.

Post readers found the articles sensational; Post editors were proud of their scoop. General Krivitsky told how Stalin had tried to set up a puppet state in Spain, how he had shot his generals on framed evidence furnished by the German Gestapo, how his every political move was directed toward making a deal with Hitler. Although a few informed critics questioned some of General Krivitsky's facts and many open-minded persons questioned his disinterest, no one questioned his identity until last fortnight, when the editors of the Communist New Masses popped out from behind the curtains and. leveling accusing fingers at the general, declared:

" 'General Krivitsky,' you are Shmelka Ginsberg!

"You were never a general. You cannot even use a rifle. . . ."

Krivitsky-Ginsberg, the New Masses went on to say last week, was not a Russian, but an Austrian, whose fiercest battles were "waged about a roulette wheel in Paris." Furthermore, said the New Masses, General Krivitsky had not even written the Satevepost articles, but had had them ghosted for him by Isaac Don Levine, anti-Stalinist biographer of Stalin and some-time writer for the Hearst press.

Unperturbed by the New Masses' revelation, the Post blandly admitted that Writer Levine had collaborated with the general, explained: "Krivitsky doesn't write English and Levine did his translating." As for Krivitsky's name being Ginsberg, the Post said: "That's quite true, but Trotsky's name is Bronstein. It's just an old Bolshevik custom." The Post added that it had checked through the U. S. Embassy in Paris and the State Department in Washington and was satisfied that its author was the real Krivitsky.

This week the State Department refused either to confirm or deny the authenticity of General Krivitsky. The Soviet Embassy said it had never heard of any such person. The New Masses stuck to its guns. The Dies Committee invited the general to Washington. The Post, pleased with all the publicity, scheduled the next article of its series.

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