SEE THAT some commentators on the Moscow Purge still consider
that the dispatch of Molotov to Mongolia is an improvement on Stalin's methods of dealing with opponents. But Stalin
appointed Kamenev as an Ambassador—to Rome, at that—only to have him shot later on. And with Khrushchev continuing to charge Malenkov with capital offences, and smearing him as an agent of Beria, it will not be surprising if a bloodbath, or at any rate a shower, will follow demotion even quicker than it did in Stalin's time. Evidence is growing, too, that some of these same commentators were wildly wrong
in what was their prevalent guess last July—that the purge was due to Chinese intervention. In a coldly worded telegram to Moscow the Chinese Central Committee has thanked the Russians for informing them of the events 'through Comrade Yudin, Soviet Ambassador in Peking'—a phrase omitted by Pravda when it published the mes- sage. But quite the silliest of the commentators' arguments has been the assertion that Khrushchev was being democratic in appealing from the Prxsidium to the Central Committee, because the Central Committee is larger. Doubtless the same
justification was put forward in Roman times for appeals from the Senate to the Pretorian Guard.
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