TREASON TRIAL IN SOVIET

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22339, 1 March 1938, Page 9

TREASON TRIAL IN SOVIET

Twenty-One Arrests Reported FORMER HIGH j* , OFFICIALS Alleged Conspiracy And Murder ■ (UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.) (Received February 28, 9.12 p.m.) LONDON, February 28. The Riga correspondent of “The Times” says that the Soviet State Prosecutor (M. Vyshinsky) has announced that a great treason trial before a militarv tribunal will be held on March L, of 21 prominent persons, the majority of whom hold, or have held, important Government posts. Correspondents of other newspapers confirm the news of the arrests and the forthcoming trial, ■v/hich are regarded as the most sensational in the Soviet’s history. Those reported to be charged are MM. Nikolai Bukharin, former President of the Communist International, who was expelled from the Communist Party last year; Aleksey Rykov, former associate of Lenin and former Commissar for Posts, Telegraphs and Radio; Christian Rakovsky, former Chief of the Department of Scientific Research in the Health Commissariat (he was reinstated in 1934 after being expelled as a.member of the Trotsky Opposition); Nicolai Krestinsky, former Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs; Rosenholtz, former Commissar for Foreign Trade; Grinko, former Commissar for Finance; Ivanov, former Commissar for Forestry; Chernov, former Commissar for Agriculture; Isaak Zelensky, former member of the Central Executive Committee; Bessonov; Okranhov; Khojaev, former president of the Central Executive of Uzbekistan; Sharonovich, former secretary to the White Russian Communists; Zubar; Bulanov; Levin, former chief of the Kremlin Hospital; Pletnov, a leading heart specialist; Kazokov, Director of the Institute of Facial Metabolism; G. G. Yagoda, former head of the Ogpu; Maximov, a ■ Kremlin physician; and Kryuchkov, formerly secretary to the novelist and playwright, Maxim Gorky. The accused are charged with organising espionage, wrecking and . J terrorism on behalf ~ oL hostile -ft foreign states 1 in order to provoke war, dismember the Soviet, and deliver up the Ukrainian, White Rusffl. sian, Turkemonistan, and Caucasus / - Republics, and the Far Eastern Maritime Province to their employers. Their activities are alleged to date from the inception of the Soviet, when Bukharin and Trotsky plotted without avail to frustrate the BrestLitovsk Treaty with Germany. It is asserted that with the help of prominent doctors, they murdered the head of tue Ogpu,. M. Kuibyshev, and the author. Maxim Gorky, in 1936, and Korov in 1934. The organisation was on a broad basis, it is alleged, embracing all groups, with the object of establishing a bourgeois regime. M. Leon Trotsky, though absent, will also be arraigned on a charge of close association with the agents of a foreign Power since 1921.

This message conflicts with a message received last year, in that M. Yagoda, who is here mentioned as one of the accused, was reported to have Shot himself in prison. MM. Bukharin. Rykov. Rakovsky, Krestinsky, Grinko, and Zelensky were all associated with the foundation years of the Soviet, either as Commissars or party officials. The charges, as they are outlined, are almost exactly the same as those preferred against Karl Radek, Piatakov, Sokolnikov. and Serebriakov in January last year. With others, those four men were charged with implication in “a vast plot engineered by Trotsky to destroy the Soviet regime and to help Germany. Poland, and Japan,” with espionage, wrecking, terrorism. and attempts to introduce capitalism; and with planning to yield the Maritime and Amur Provinces to Japan and the Ukraine to Germany.