THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1933 THE MOSCOW TRIALS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 104, 13 April 1933, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1933 THE MOSCOW TRIALS.

The trials which have just begun in Moscow of the Vickers Company’s employees, charged with various ‘‘crimes” committed against the Soviet State, will be followed with intense interest and anxiety throughout the British Empire. Indeed, one may say throughout the civilised world, for all intelligent thinkers cannot but feel some apprehension as to with the ultimate international consequences may be of a conviction followed by any such ruthless punishment as has previously been meted out to Russian subjects accused of political offences. It is, of course, almost inconceivable that these engineers, engaged in carrying out big constructional contracts as yet uncompleted and with years of well paid work still ahead of them, could have actually been guilty of the hazardous follies that are laid at their hands. Before anything like a judicial and impartial tribunal there would probably be not the least uneasiness as to the verdict. But in Moscow it is impossible to guess at what the outcome may be before a bench of judges entirely obsequious to the purposes the ruling powers have in view. It is worth while noting, too, that while capital punishment has been abolished in a general way—the extreme penalty for “private” murder is only ten years’ imprisonment—it has been specially retained in respect of political crimes. This, of course, is an expression that, under the Soviet regime, can be made to cover almost anything desired. As a matter of fact, the Bolshevik code is not so much concerned with the prevention or punishment of ordinary crime as with the preservation of the Red State. A German journalist of high standing and four years’ residence in Russia has

told us something of the danger with which anyone is faced who has to stand trial for what it may be chosen to deem a political offence. The judges in the law courts are elected for a year’s term by the provincial executive committees of the Soviet and, as they can be cashiered at any time, they are in the hands of the authorities, which means the ruling political party. No preliminary legal training is required in the case of a judge or magistrate, The lack of legal experts is made good by strongly centralised public prosecutors, who thus exercise a decisive influence on the proceedings. So, ‘too, with the Bar. There is no independent defending counsel obtainable. The place of the free counsel is taken by the “Collegium of Defenders,” the members of which are appointed by the Soviets after nomination by the provincial law courts. “For practical purposes,” says the writer already quoted, “the defending counsel in a Soviet law court cuts a pitiful figure. In political trials counsel for the defence give the impression of doing their work under stress of unceasing terror.” It is, of course, from this Collegium that the defending counsel .in the present cases have been drawn. In short, as the German writer puts it, there is no law in Russia in the modern acceptation of the term. There are merely regulations to facilitate the use of police measures for expanding and maintaining the Bolshevik dictatorship. The Bolshevik leaders themselves have never seriously contended that law in the Western sense of the term exists in Russia. As was the case during the “Terror” when the first French Republic was in the making, the courts set up to make a show of justice are merely instruments of revenge and intimidation. The difference is that, while in France this phase of the revolution lasted only a relatively short time, in Russia it has been in open evidence for the last sixteen years and looks like being preserved indefinitely for at least as many years to come. Under conditions such as these there cannot but be the most serious fears as to the result of the present trials and as to both the immediate and eventual comma quences. It may be taken that the decisions of the court and the penalties inflicted will accord closely with such intimations as the governing body may give of its desires. The main hope therefore lies in that body awakening to a sense not only of all that may be implied in the serious warnings that have been given by the British Government, but also of possible reactions among all civilised nations with which Russia may wish to maintain relations even of a nominally friendly nature.