MOSCOW’S FARCE.

Southland Times, Issue 21265, 11 December 1930, Page 4

MOSCOW’S FARCE.

Until the recent trial of the Russian Military College professors, the Soviet had shown the world that it had a particularly drastic method with counter-revolutionaries and traitors, and knowledge of that practice has given point to the fact that the principals in the recent farcical trial, after being solemnly sentenced to death, were let off with terms of imprisonment which may be reduced quietly for “good behaviour” before, during or after the court proceedings. The fact that the majority of the accused had been in positions which gave them the opportunity to contaminate the young officers being trained for the Red Army, or the teachers going into the Red schools made their offences appear all the more serious, and, with crowds marching about demanding the death penalty, the extreme clemency of the Soviet Government is all the more difficult to understand if we rule out the explanation that the whole business was stage-managed to prepare for the failure of the Five Year Plan. Threat of invasion is the Soviet’s most frequently used weapon for the coercion of the masses, kept in ignorance of the doings of the outer world, and evidence of plots instigated by foreign governments is useful to justify Bolshevik interference in other countries. But the business was handled so clumsily that no one outside of Russia Ims been deceived, and perhaps some day the truth will spread in Russia itself. For the world outside of the Sovietized Russia, the most significant point in connection with this farcical trial is that all is not well with the Five Year Plan, and some diversion is necessary to keep the Russian people from appreciating the real causes of the failure.