RUSSIA: Reds Kick Reds

To catch lazy, inefficient bureaucratic Comrades in its long jaws and crunch them with merciless humor is the job of The Crocodile, Soviet Russia's comic-monthly-with-a-purpose. Crunch went The Crocodile's jaws recently upon luckless Comrade Isakhanov, Red Director of a soviet shoe factory at Tiflis, 1.200 miles south of Moscow.

The editors of The Crocodile had managed to have inserted among the letters daily signed by Comrade Isakhanov the following:

To the Editors of The Crocodile:

I consider it my duty to inform you, most respected Comrade Crocodile, that through some misunderstanding I was promoted from the post of rationalizer to the post of factory director which I continue to occupy.

I seldom go to the workshops. I do everything that I should not do, and do not do what I should. I am a fool. Everybody knows that and I inform you as well. I am ready to sign any paper without reading it. I am proving this to you herewith. (Signed) G. Isakhanov

Because The Crocodile published this letter Comrade Isakhanov will almost certainly lose his job as Red Director and be kicked out of the Communist Party as well.

Last week the All-Russian Communist Union of Youth which recently numbered seven million members proudly announced, as the result of its annual spring Chistka (cleaning), the kicking out of the League of more than one million youths "some because of deviation from the party line, but most because of laziness or inefficiency."