"AGREEMENT WITH BRITAIN"

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22343, 5 March 1938, Page 17

"AGREEMENT WITH BRITAIN"

♦ EVIDENCE AT MOSCOW TRIAL LORD CHILSTON ATTENDS HEARING CTOITED PBEBS ASSOCIATIOK—COPTBIGHT.) (Received Marcrt 4, 4 p.m.) | MOSCOW, March 3. ! The British Ambassador to the Soviet (Lord Chilston), who was | present in Court on the resumption I of the Moscow trial, heard Ivanov, the former Commissar of Forestry, declare that Bukharin, the former President of the Communist International, had told him that the members of the Right had an agreement with Britain to overthrow the: Soviet and give Britain concessions in North Russia. Rosenholz, as a guarantee of good faith, sold Britain millions of pounds worth of timber) at a heavy loss. Ivanov, who followed what has become the normal procedure of self-denunciation, J said he was originally attached to the Tsarist, Secret Police, at whose behest he joined the Communists and later he joined the British Intelligence Service. ! Zubar, the former Assistant Commissar of Agriculture, confessed in evidence, that he and Rykov had j plotted sabotage, and he added that they had organised a terrorist group within the Commissariat of Agriculture for the purpose of killing M. Stalin, the President of the Union* Council (M. Molotov), and the Commissar of Defence (M. j Yoroshilov). He also admitted that he had been a member of the Tsarist Secret Police since 1908. , Bukharin, broadcasting his con-1 fession to the nation, said: "I am fully guilty and deserve punishment." "You will be punished," declared the State Prosecutor (M. Vishinsky), to which Bukharin replied: "Thank you. I know that without your consoling reminder." The most dramatic moment in the trial was when Krestinsky, the former Assistant Commissar of Foreign Affairs, his resistance breaking down under M. Vishinsky's searching examination, withdrew his plea of not guilty. "Yesterday under pressure, shame at being in the dock and illness, I said I was not guilty. I plead guilty to all the crimes," he said.