Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1937. AMAZING EUROPEAN TRIALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 20, 25 January 1937, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1937. AMAZING EUROPEAN TRIALS

In the hall where the British engineers were tried a couple of years ago and where Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others more recently met their death sentences, before the same Judge Ulrich, and with the same M. Vishinsky prosecuting, four leading Sovietists, with lesser lights, are now facing trial. There is the same atmosphere of confession, and the same cries (from beyond Russia's boundaries) that the confessions are spurious. Moscow trials have such a distinctive continuity of surface procedure and ironic detail and cynical undertone that they seem to be suc-j cessive chapters in one serial story, j Among the trials of all history, even | among the trials of fiction and drama, they stand unique. What is their explanation? One offered explanation of them is that they are Moralities—age-old dramatic representations in which persons stand for qualities. If a story were built up round Ivan and Serge, depicting the things both good and bad that Ivan and Serge did to each other and to [people generally, the result, dramatised, would be some sort of a play. But when Ivan stands for Good and Serge for Bad, the play deals not with persons but with qualities impersonated, and becomes a Morality. Why should Russian trials take on the aspect of Moralities? Malcolm Muggeridge, who asks the question in "The Fortnightly," answers it with one word: the "Terror." In Russia— and not only in Russia—Terrorism is such that a Terrorist Administration feels impelled to impute Terrorism tt> its victims —Judge Ulrich, for instance, has to remind the Soviet exjournalist Radek that Terrorism is "punishable by death." Terror, says Mr. Muggeridge, finds counter-Ter-rorists everywhere.

This made it inevitable that sooner or later Kamenev, Zinoviev, and the others should fall victims to the machinery of Terror ol which in their day they had made such lavish use.

. . . Whoever rules by fear must be afraid. That is a law of life. . . . Being afraid, he sees plots and stratagems and enemies everywhere. His fear accumulates, until, to ease himself, he dramatises it. There are his enemies, and there his power to crush them. It is a Morality he stages, with Good, himself, triumphing over Evil, his enemies. These mass trials that have become an integral part of the Soviet regime, and that have occurred in Nazi Germany, are such Moralities.

If they have their origin in a central Terrorism that discovers lesser Terrorisms, the Moralities will be similar in tone and in undertone. And that, it is submitted, accounts for the continuity and the "serial story" atmosphere of Moscow trials. Also, on the same argument, it accounts for recourse to Moralities not only by the Sovietists but by their arch-enemies (yet alleged imitators) the Nazis. A Terror, by whatever name, is still a Terror, whether in Russia or in a country that would devour Russia.

It does not matter much who the victims are. They may be veteran revolutionaries, or a half-witted Van der Lubbe, or foreign engineers, or an overambitious colleague like Rohm. The victims are not people, but symbols.

. . . They are the Terrorists' Terror. Once the deadly principle of government by fear is accepted, fear must become the prevailing emotion. When Kirov was murdered, 700 persons at least, in different parts of the U.S.S.R. were taken out and shot in sheer panic. On this showing the Moscow trials, the Reichstag fire trial, the Rohm purge, and the concentration camps are of the same genesis, however much they may be rooted in systems that are mutually hateful to each other. The eyes, keenest to observe the mote in other people's eyes are Terrorist eyes. The history of self-justification, which is very largely the whole story of human life, abounds with various forms of Morality, in which some person (whether bad or good) is selected by the ruling system to impersonate Bad, and to pay the penalty. The plan is old, but the technique of the confession seems to have been improved in Russia in modern times, and naturally provides a conspicuous target for the arrows of one of the strangest figures of history, surpassing fiction —for the arrows of the exile Leon Trotsky. Continuity asserts itself everywhere in the Russian story. Today, among the leading accused, appear the names of Sokolnikov and Radek. In October, when Mr. Muggeridge wrote, their trial was merely foreshadowed. Radek's "kissing ot the rod," he records, "seems for the moment just to have saved his skin." That moment passed, and this moment finds Radek before Judge Ulrich in Moscow's historic hall of trial. As to Sokolnikov, there had been rumours last year that he also was "in trouble," and he was recalled to Moscow from London. To meet the then situation, he gave a tea-party in Moscow. A representative of the Foreign QjzjSu ■ 'were* present,£ atfd* Si> tfcrftt&kxj&sAMta** 1

between them, said with a sickly smile how glad he was to be home again, 'and how absurd were the' rumours of his being under arrest. "Why," he said, with a sicklier smile "one foreign newspaper has actually reported my death. You can see I'm not dead, can't you?" If he had any plotting left in him, I should be surprised. Yet today the cablegrams record Sokolnikov as among the confessed. Of course, the continuity would not be perfect unless some super-trial eventuated in Moscow with Trotsky in the dock, but that-does not seem to be likely unless the technique of kidnapping, like that of confessing, undergoes some amazing improvements. How pleased, writes Mr. Muggeridge, Stalin would be "to hear Trotsky confessing to all and more of the sins he is accused of, and then pleading for mercy." But that chance seems to have been j finally lost when the Terror, in one of its uncertain moments, allowed Trotsky to slip through its fingers.