TREASON TRIAL

Southland Times, Issue 21264, 10 December 1930, Page 7

TREASON TRIAL

PROFESSORS TO LIVE THE DEATH SENTENCES QUASHED IMPRISONMENT INSTEAD (United Press Assn.—By Telegraph—Courrlgbt.) Moscow, December 8. The Soviet Central Executive has commuted the death sentences on Ramzin, Larichev, Charnovsky, Kalinkoff and Fedotov to ten years' imprisonment and reduced the other sentences to eight years. Explaining the communtations the Central Executive, in a communique, say’s the convicted persons not only repented their crimes, but by testimony disarmed the counter-revolutionary organization which was acting as the agent of interventionist circles ruling in bourgeois France. The Soviet cannot be guided by a mere desire for revenge particularly in relation to the confessed repentant criminals, who have been rendered harmless. HANGING OF EFFIGIES STOPPED. (Rec. 7.0 p.m.) Moscow, December 8. As soon as the commutations of the sentences were announced at Leningrad the Soviet ordered the dismantling of gallows opposite the Winter Palace, where Communist Youth Pioneers proposed hanging effigies of M. Briand, M. Poincare, Sir Henri Deterding and Mr Winston Churchill simultaneously with the Moscow executions. GIGANTIC FARCE LONDON PRESS COMMENT. (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) London, December 9. The fact that the Russian death sentences have been commuted after all has persuaded most people that the treason trial at Moscow was a gigantic farce. The diplomatic correspondent of the Morning Post says that it is obvious that the trial was staged for internal political purposes. It was essential to give the ignorant pesantry and gullible proletariat some valid reason for the obvious failure of the five-year plan for industrialization. The Daily Express says: “So ends tho biggest burlesque on justice staged in our time. The whole thing has been a put up job.” A FRENCH QUERY. (Rec. 1.10 a.m.) Paris, December 9. Le Temps says that the Moscow trial prompts the question why civilized nations maintain diplomatic relations with a Power using such methods of systematically abusing ordinary international regulations. Experience has shown tho Powers that relations with Russia have only facilitated Bolshevik propaganda: SOVIET’S REPLY REFLECTIONS ON BRITAIN. RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED. (British Official Wireless.) (Rec. 5.5 p.m.) Rugby, December 8. The Foreign Secretary, Mr Arthur Hendereon, replying to a large number of questions in the House of Commons as to the reply received to the protest to the Soviet Government against the reflections on his Majesty’s Government at the Moscow conspiracy trial, read the translation of the reply of the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs. The reply says that the Soviet Government has not expressed its views on the references to the alleged participation of British circles in the intervention plans which were made by the accused in their evidence. It claims that the court could not deprive the accused of the right to any evidence or confessions they considered necessary, nor could the public prosecutor avoid basing the indictment upon them, and adds that the court devoted almost no attention to the matter.

Asked if a reply had been received to the representations to the Soviet Government respecting anti-British propaganda in the Moscow broadcast on Tuesday, December 2, Mr Henderson said that the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs made a verbal statement to the effect that the broadcasting was from a station not under the control of the Soviet Government, but under the control of the Council of Trades Unions. The Soviet Commissar added that at the time the Central Council was being given the right to broadcast, no messages of this nature were contemplated, and in consideration of the British Foreign Secretary’s declaration as to the undesirability of such broadcasts in future, it would bo impressed on the Council of Trades Unions that no such messages should be transmitted.