MOSCOW TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 9

MOSCOW TRIAL

ITS SIGNIFICANCE

SUPREMACY OF STALIN

TROTSKY'S COMMENT

(From f"The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, August 26.

A curious insight has been given to the Bussian mentality by the recent Moscow "conspiracy trial," in which 16 men were sentenced to death for their complicity in plotting for the murder of Stalin. To the average Englishman, and New Zealander for that matter, it has been a singularly bad advertisement for Communism, emphasising the desirability of democratic government under which it is not necessary for the Opposition to remove their opponents by killing or be killed in turn. In plain fact the trial has indicated that there can be no political movement in Russia hostile to Stalin, and that, to use a somewhat brutal phrase, it is the Russian equivalent of a General Election, Reasons are being asked for the motive underlying the staging of the trial, which, it is believed, is unaccompanied by widespread public acclamation. There are some who incline to the suggestion that one of the reasons is to discover the extent to which agents of the Gestapo (or Nazi Secret Police) were involved in the Trotsky conspiracy. Hitler, of course, has no love for Communism, and it is believed that there are many German agents in Russia who are seeking by indirect methods to overthrow or injure the Soviet State. This may explain the reason for the accused being unrepresented by counsel, for their hysterical admissions of guilt, and' apparent desire for punishment. With the execution of the 16 men, among whom were included two who played a great part in the revolution, Zinoviev and Kamenev, it would, appear that Stalin has dammed the fountain head of an opposition move. With Trotsky these four men were regarded as the rival successors to Lenin. Trotsky was thought to stand the best chance of succession, Stalin the least., and so on the death of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev craftily joined with Stalin to keep out Trotsky. They thought themselves safe, but they were disillusioned after Stalin had used them for a time, then undermined their position. Stalin struck against Trotsky in 1926, and eventually had him hounded out of the Soviet Union. Zinoviev and Kamenev deserted to Trotsky, but too late. After Stalin took over, the mantle of Lenin in 1929 their position was always precarious. They were both banished into Siberia after the, murder of Kiroff in 1934, later to be brought back to face a charge of moral responsibility for the crime since there was no proof that they had not been implicated. TROTSKY AND STALIN. The difference of opinion between Stalin and Trotsky is that Trotsky was guilty, in Stalin's opinion, of a "Left deviation." The root antagonism between the two men was a personal one, but in the Press and on the platform it had to find a political expression. Trotsky advocated quicker socialisation, concessions to the industrial workers at the. expense of the peasantry. Later, he developed his theory of "the permanent revolution" —the necessity for> a world-wide Bolshevistic ferment. To:this Stalin opposed his "Socialism: in one country," the one country being the Soviet Union. On the political issue Stalin triumphed. There has been a second major crisis in Stalin's career. It was brought on by a "Right deviation."' This time he fought against Bukharin, son of a Tsarist Court official, and a leading "theoretician" of Bolshevism, Tomsky, ex-trade Union leader, and Rykov, a mediocrity who had succeeded Lenin as chairman of the Council of Commissars. These men opposed Stalin's ruthless drive to force complete socialisation of the land at the first Tive-year Plan in 1928. Their'opposition was discovered, they were expelled from their positions, and disgraced, but soon they were performing the prescribed act of abject penitence as all the sinners against the Stalinist truth have done— except for Trotsky. Now Tomsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev are no more, and Bukharin is suspect. Throughout the trial Zinoviev was a mere softened empty shell of a man. But on the final day he recovered all his old pseudo-heroic platform splendour. In the same ringing tones and with the same florid gestures and table thumping which he used to prophesy the world revolution and order mass shootings of class enemies, he demandI ed, in fact, his own execution and that jof all his fellow-prisoners. He denounced himself as a "bad Bolshevik," not only now, but even when he enjoyed Lenin's full confidence. He claimed, of course, that the absent Trotsky was a real master. The old intellectual Jew Kamenev put on a relatively dignified performance. He made a flat confession of his terroristic offences against the dictatorship, and begged' his son, who is a pilot in the Soviet Air Force, and whose name his father declared he had stained, to fight, and, if need be, to die, only under Stalin's banner, and to devote his life to Stalin's cause. He himself, said Kamenev, would serve the cause, of the "Socialistic Fatherland" by being executed. Commenting on the trial from Norway, Trotsky said that no other course was left to the accusers than to execute the sixteen men. If they had been pardoned, he said, the whole of the Ogpu might have been pulled to pieces. In reply to the allegations that he has been operating terroristic activities from Denmark, France, and Norway, he says he has a claim that legal steps should be opened against him. He says that he has a duty to expose "one of the greatest crimes in the history of the world" and thereby inflict revenge on it. But he refuses to be tried in Moscow, preferring an impartial Court in Norway.