NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1933. RUSSIAN LAW

Northern Advocate, 17 April 1933, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1933. RUSSIAN LAW

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper.

The trial of employees of Metf or politan Vickers, Ltd., in Moscow, has served to illustrate the entirely different conception of the administration of law which, prevails in the Soviets as compared with other countries. The death sentence has been abolished in Russia, except for political crimes, but it is pointed out that what is termed “social dangerousness,” under which political offences may be classified by an extremely elastic, practice, keeps the executioners fully employed. According to writers who have had experience of it, Soviet justice is concerned, not with prevention and punishment of ordinary crime, but with, the protection of the Red State. Political offences may cause the death of the unfortunate, but the extreme penalty for ordinary murder is ten years’ imprisonment. In civil cases the social origin of the contending parties exerts a predominating influence. The civil courts deal out different “justice” to the workers and to the bourgeois, and consequently people not of worker or peasant origin rarely bring a case against anyone of the new ruling class. In' “Red Russia,” written by Theodor Seibert, a German jotirnglist, who represented several

i)cwspapers during 'four years’ residence in Russia, .some remarkable eases are reported, showing tbe danger with which any one is faced who has to stand trial for a political offence. Seibert states that the Bolsheviks have disregarded the principles of modern jurisprudence. :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. It is sufficient that he has worked for sev- j oral years in . a party bureau orj working class organisation. 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 courtsA For practical purposes (says the author) 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. The poor vestiges of free advocacy remaining in contemporary Russia are a thorn in the side of the Bolshevik leaders, Public Prosecutor Krylenko more than once denouncing' these unhappy defenders in very rough terms. This Krylenko is described as a fanatic of fanatics, the Foqnier-Tinville of the Russian revolution, always in fighting trim, ruthless,- cynical, fatherly, caressive, or’ fierce, accord- , ing to circumstances, and never , allowing /sentiment to interfere with . business. .* ‘ Therq is no word in English, French or German,” says Seibert, “which can fitly describe Soviet Russian 1 ‘legal’ theory and practice. There is no law in the Soviet State. There are only regulations to facilitate the use of police measures for expanding and maintaining. the Bolshevik dictatorship. The Bolshevik leaders have never seriously contended that law in the western sense: of the term exists in Russia.” The “preliminary inquiry” is an impory taut part of the criminal procedure. According to the code, an accused person must be brought before the court within 24 hours; but in actual practice persons are kept in prison for many days, or weeks, after arrest without being brought up for trial and without the silence with which they are surrounded being broken, the object being to produce mental , depression, and to arouse a state 'of mind in which the accused will be ready to make an avowal. This has been demonstrated in the case of MacDonald, one of the British engineers who is on trial in Moscow. , The late Mr Ashmead-Bartlett emphasised the same thing, declaring that the whole system might be described hs one of mass terror. The dreaded O.G.P.U. (secret police) is all powerful. When it makes arrests it prefers to do* so by night secretly. No intimation is given to friends or relatives of the victims, and, sometimes persons are shot without being given any idea how they got into trouble. ' Generally,, anything the harshest critic of Western justice could say would be insignificant as compared with the systematic travesty of justice in Soviet Russia. In the criminal procedure accused persons are deprived of safeguards which elsewhere are taken as a matter of course. In the face of facts such as have been related, there is surely good ground for the fears and anxiety created for the safety of the British prisoners in Russia.