SOVIET TRIALS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22414, 30 May 1938, Page 15

SOVIET TRIALS

Europe Mystified By Confessions MUCH SPECULATION IN BRITAIN Union oua own coreespokdent.) LONDON. March 22. The whole of Europe has been watching the Moscow trial with growing interest and amazement during the last week. . The maner in which 21 of the most prominent figures of the Bolshevik Revolution have striven to condemn themselves has outdone even the efforts of their predecessors at earlier trials and marked this as one of the strangest events of modern history. “The abject confessions uttered by each new batch of victims becomes an ever greater mystery,” says the “Sunday Observer." “How can men who know they are to be shot and have nothing more to lose be reduced to such terror? On Wednesday Mr Krestinsky, former Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was the only one to protest ‘not guilty,’ Within 24 hours he changed his plea to 'wholly guilty.’ As before, the prisoners were featured as traitors who had acted in the interests of foreign Powers. History knows nothing more terrible than this continuous , holocaust, which springs from the terror in the minds of those who perpetrate it." “Some of the details expounded in Court during the last few days are so fantastic, even by past standards, that they appear to remove these trials finally into a realm which only the psychiatrist can elucidate,” says the “Yorkshire Post." “It seems clear that none of the utterances of the accused can safely be judged by ordinary standards of logical plausibility.” Torture or Drugs? Authorities profess themselves quite unable to account for the behaviour of the accused. “The most imaginative author of thrillers would reject as too incredible the stories which the accused men tell to their own destruction,” says one writer. “The Public Prosecutor has no part to play in this strange case. The prisoners, with all the eloquence, intelligence, and forcefulpess that earned for them their high places in the Bolshevik revolutionary regime, not only plead guilty but by the most damaging avowals destroy any possible pretext for leniency.” The theory that the confessions are wbung from the victims by torture Is rejected on the grounds that they show no sign of sufferings in dock and exchange smart repartee with their judges. Many believe that relatives are being held .as hostages on promises of immunity'if the accused utter sufficiently damning indictments of themselves. Yet some of the accused are ruthless men unlikely to be swayed by such considerations, and as the evidence is being broadcast one at least would be sure to blurt out the facts. The drug theory is a favourite one, but no treatment known would act in the manner, and for the length of time, manifested in this case. Neither do the accused act as if they were drugged and hypnotised—another solution that has been advanced. Strange Stalin Rumour

Whatever the reason for the behaviour of the accused, the trial shows Russia in a most peculiar light. The “Yorkshire Post” draws the conclusion that “either we must suppose that for the last 15 years or more nearly every leading Bolshevik—including ambassadors, generals, editors, industrial executives, and even the chief, Yagoda, of Stalin’s own secret police—have been consistently conspiring to wreck the Russian regime with the aid of foreign spies. Or we must conclude that Stalin, a terrified dictator, is engaged in an utterly ruthless campaign to exterminate every conceivable challenge to his autocratic power.” This adds point to a rumour that a Vienna heart specialist who recently visited Moscow to examine Stalin had to go through the process with five individuals, all of whom so closely resembled the Russian Dictator that he was unable to determine which was the real one.

There have been some peculiar reactions to the trial on the Continent. The German press has reported and commented on it at great length, in the same issues which have denounced the publicity given in British papers to Pastor Niemoller’s trial as unwarranted interference with the internal affairs of another country. Mussolini’s Theory

In. an . article, in. “Popolo. d’Jtalia,”. Mussolini describes the Moscow trial as "the fifth act of the traeedv.” and

suggests that Stalin has secretly become a Fascist. Stalin, he writes, stages these big trials when he wants to hit the great chiefs of the revolution, “the men in whom the enormous proletarian and democratic idiocy of the West” has believed. The accused, whose names, he says, were often quoted “among the stupid sheep who idiotically gabble the Bolshevik catchwords,” are “a beautiful cartload," and the impression is that the whole of Russia “is but a sort of madhouse, staffed by bloodthirsty keepers.” In Britain, the trial has drawn a bitter protest from the Soviet’s former friends in the Independent Labour Party Parliamentary group. Signed by Mr J. Maxton, Mr G. Buchanan, Mr J. McGovern, and Mr Campbell Stephen, it says: “If the charges were true, we would be compelled to conclude that there was something inherently wrong in the Russian Revolution to attract such degenerate types to the top of the ladder of leadership. That explanation we unreservedly reject. . “Barbarous Injustice” “This is not working-class justice. It is barbarous injustice. It is an insult and an injury to all international working-class ideals and interests. We cannot believe that you realise how much irreparable damage you are inflicting through this ruthless terror upon the cause of the entire international working class and the ideals of Socialism. The most bitter foes of the Soviet system could never have done as much to shake the faith of class-conscious workers and to cause doubt, and demoralisation in their The allegations that British subjects had persuaded certain of the accused to engage in spying are described as fantastic by all the persons concerned and by the Prime Minister (Mr Neville Chamberlain). Lady Muriel Paget, who was mentioned by Rakovsky, indignantly denied any association with the British Intelligence Service. She has for many years conducted relief work for British subjects in Russia.

“In my opinion it is part of a plot by the Soviet to get rid of British subjects and British influence in Russia,? - she said.: in an - interview with the "Sunday Dispatch.” “Just an excuse tn clear us all out”