MOSCOW SHOOTINGS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 96, 20 October 1936, Page 11

MOSCOW SHOOTINGS

DEFENCE IN RUSSIA

MYSTERY UNDISPELLED

The execution of Gregory Zinoviev, Leon Kamenev,' and fourteen of their fellow-accused at the conclusion of the Soviets' greatest and most sensational trial undoubtedly meets the approval of a majority of citizens, at least in Moscow, writes Harold Denny from that city to the "New York Times." This may be said without considering the thousands of resolutions of approval adopted at workers' meetings, on collective farms, and elsewhere whose spontaneity is open to question. Conversations with individuals indicate a general feeling that justice has been done. It has been a shocking thing, of course—the condemnation and shooting of "Old Revolutionaries," including men who had once occupied posts of highest honour. But no one knew better than Zinoviev and Kamenev the only possible penalty for even plotting the downfall of the present regime, not to speak of planning the assassination of Stalin and actually carrying out that of Kirov. Some remember how many, thousands Zinoviev sent to death in the' early days of the revolution when he was in command at Leningrad. Perhaps he thought that, too, as he walked slowly out of the court-room, his head bowed from drooping shoulders after Judge Ulrich had pronounced his awful words. TREASON CHARGED. The Soviet people, among whom has been built up a strong patriotic feeling along with distrust of Germany, reacted strongly to the prosecutor's charges that the Zinoviev-Kamenev group had conspired with German spies against their own land. That would be treason in any country. What most shocks the Russian intellectuals is the fact that the ZinovievKamenev group .apparently had no programme at air except to restore themselves to power, and, according to their own confessions, were willing to involve the U.S.S.R. in war in order to gratify purely personal ambitions. Russians with whom this correspondent has talked during and since the trial, hardened Old Revolutionaries who spent their youth plotting against the Tsar's Government, said they couldunderstand a group of men moved by political principles willing to risk death to remove the men they believed guiding the country to ruin. That is in the revolutionary tradition. But to plot the removal by force of the men who are guiding the country so successfully that violence is the only way whereby they could be, removed—— There is still great scepticism among certain foreigners whether the plot had all the ramifications it was represented as having. Knowing the Russian talent for stage management and acting, some wonder whether some of ttu testimony' was not framed in some way. Such observers have evolved several interesting theories, among them one that Fritz David, Olberg, Holtzman, and Luries were agents provocateurs acting a part, and that they will be secretly released after their execution is announced. But, if that is the case foreign diplomats, correspondents, and ordinary spectators never would have been admitted to the trial. There is too much danger that we would have encountered one or more of them some time afterwards and guessed the trick. Sitting through'five days of the trial and watching the witnesses closely, this correspondent confesses that the psychology of those prisoners ardently condemning themselves baffles him, although he could detect no slip which would betray anyone's performance as play-acting. • The case will have no political effect except to warn the elements who dislike Stalin that it is_ fatal to plot against him. Stalin is the master of the Communist Party, which is master of this country, but hardly more today than before the trial. The men who have now gone to death did not represent a coherent opposition, but were -the remnants of various opposition movements who were united only in hatred of Stalin. And now the search is on through the length and breadth of Sovietland for any further remnants of the "Trotskyists"—and the term Trotskyist will be quite loosely interpreted.