SURAT: To say that the Soviet with the Communist Party and its clique with Stalin as its head tends towards dictatorship is incorrect, was the view expressed by Professor Kolhatkar, Principal of the Commerce College, Baroda, inaugurating the Friends of the Soviet Union, Surat branch, yesterday [Jan 18].

Professor Kolhatkar said that Soviet Russia is enjoying democracy in the true sense of the term. The liberal institutions of legislature and the code of election which give every man in the street a chance to sit in the public bodies representation by numbers and nationality, the large proportion of Non-Party men in the legislature and public bodies — all these speak of a degree of democracy which is nonexistent in any other country of the world at present.

The speaker pointed out that the clash between declining production and increasing demands which gave birth to the dictator in Europe in the present century is absent in Russia. In Soviet labour, the largest class lives contented and there is nothing to justify the statement that the Soviet is tending towards ­dictatorship.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2020