SOVIET’S REPRIEVE

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 65, 10 December 1930, Page 11

SOVIET’S REPRIEVE

“Revenge Not Desired”

TRIAL ANTI-CLIMAX

Conspirators Spared

REASONS FOR DECISION

Bl Telegraph—Pre»» Association —Copyright (Rec. December 9, 8 p.m.)

Moscow, December 8. An announcement has been made that the Soviet Central Executive has commuted the death sentences on Hamzin, Larichev, Charnovsky, Kalinikoff, and Fedotov, the condemned professors and engineers who were found guilty of plotting against the Soviet, to ten years’ imprisonment.

The sentences of the others have been reduced to eight years’ imprisonment. , . .u As soon as the commutations of the sentences were announced at Leningrad, the Soviet ordered the dismantling of a gallows opposite the Winter Palace, where the Communist . Youth Pioneers proposed hanging the effigies of M. Briand, M. Poincare, Sir Henri Deterding, and Mr. Winston Churchill simultaneously with the Moscow executions. Deprived of Property. At the close of the trial of the Russian professors and engineers, it was announced that Hamzin, Larichev, Charnovsky, Kalinikoff, and Fedotov were sentenced to death, and Kuprianov, Ochkin, and Sltnin to ten years’ penal servitude In addition to the deprivation of their property. Later, it was stated by the Court that the professors would be executed privately, and that all the condemned prisoners would be shot within three days unless they succeeded In their appeal to the Central Executive Commit“Repented of Crime.” Explaining the reason for the commutation of the sentences, the Central Executive says that the convicted persons not only repented of their crime, but, by the!' testimony, had disarmed the counter-revolutionary organisation acting as the agent for the interventionist circles ruling In bourgeois France. The Soviet cannot be guided by a mere desire for revenge, particularly In relation to confessed and repentant criminals who have been rendered harmless. GIGANTIC FARCE Opinion in England JUSTICE BURLESQUED (Rec. December 10, 12.5 a.m.) London, December 9. The fact that the Russian death sentences have been commuted after all has persuaded mosf people that the treason trial at Moscow was a gigantic farce.

The ‘‘Morning Post’s” diplomatic correspondent says it is obvious that the trial was staged for internal political purposes. It is essential to give the Ignorant peasantry and gullible proletariat some valid reason for the obvious failure of the five-year plan for industrialisation.

The “Dally Express" says: “So ends the biggest burlesque on justice staged in our time. The whole thing has been a put-up job.” BRITISH PROTEST Evidence of Prisoners UNCOMPROMISING REPLY (Rec. December 9, 5.5 p.m.) British Wireless. Rugby, December 8. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Arthur Henderson, in replying to a large number of questions tn the House of Commons to-day as to the reply received to his protest to the Soviet Government against the reflections on His Majesty’s Government at the Moscow conspiracy trial, read a translation of the reply of the Soviet Commissar Of Foreign, Affairs, M. Chicherin. The reply says that the Soviet Government has not expressed its views on the references to the alleged participation of British circles in the interven-

tion plans which were made by the accused In their depositions and evi- • dence. It claims that the court could not deprive the accused of the right to any evidence or confessions they considered necessary; nor could the Public Prosecutor avoid basing his Indictment upon them. The court devoted almost no attention to the matter. Trades Union Blamed. Asked If a reply had been received to the representations to the Soviet Government respecting the antl-British propaganda in Moscow broadcast on Tuesday, December .2, the Foreign Secretary said that the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs had made ' a verbal statement to the effect that the broadcast was from a station not under the control of the Soviet Government, but controlled by the Council of the Trades Union. The Soviet Commissar added that at the time of the Central Council being given the right to broadcast, no messages of this nature were contemplated, and, in consideration of the British Foreign Secretary’s declaration as to the undesirability of such broadcasts, in future It would be impressed on the Council of the Trades Unions that no such messages should be transmitted.