SOVIET PURGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 54, 3 February 1937, Page 9

SOVIET PURGE.

SEQUEL TO TRIAL. LONDON, Fell. 1. The Daily Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent says that about 100 persons, old and young Bolsheviks, engineers and others, were implicated by the confessions of the accused in last week’s trial. It may be assumed that all have already been imprisoned, but whether they will ever be publicly tried is another matter.

Meanwhile news is reaching Moscow of new purges in the great chemical and munition plants in the provinces. An official communique issued at Leningrad refers to the expulsion from the Communist Party of M. Kudriavzev, chief of the political department of the LeningradH'arsaw railway, for relations with the Trotsky plotters. It does not mention his late. ‘ ‘THE AT RICA L PItODU CTIONS. ’ ’ COMMENT BY TROTSKY. MEXICO CITY, Feb. 1. M. Leon Trotsky, in a copyright article for the United Press news agency, says: — “The Moscow trials occurred not because the Ogpu discovered traces of a plot and located the criminals, not because the criminals, shaken by the pangs of conscience, have voluntarily accused themselves of committing crimes. No! The trials were staged because the Ogpu has at its disposal an unlimited number of men whom it can mould as it wishes, according to political necessity, men who are educated in a system of false confessions anti who arc forced to take upon themselves all sorts of duplicity in order to demonstrate their sincerity and attempt to save their lives.

“The trials are purely theatrical productions with the roles written out in advance and with an absolute fuhrer as stage manager. Their political aim is to kill the opposition, remove everyone who speaks for it, and poison at every source once and lor all every vestige of critical thought. Has bureaucracy attained its purpose? No! Stalin is greatly mistaken. The consequences of his error will be fatal to iiis dictatorship. We shall see that in the near future.”