ZIK

Mightier than the Soviet Supreme Court is the ZIK. The Presidium (standing committee) of ZIK met in Moscow last week to temper Red justice with Red mercy. During the previous night, at 11:27 p. m., the Supreme Court justices (including two workmen) had brought in their verdict upon the eight engineers accused of plotting with prominent foreigners (see p. 20) and specifically with the French General Staff to overthrow the Soviet State (TIME, Nov. 24; Dec. 8). With a glass of hot tea at his elbow, Presiding Justice Vyshinsky faced the microphone, told all Russia for an hour how extremely guilty the Court had found the prisoners, then paused to deliver sentence: "Xenophon. Sitnin! Ten years imprisonment!" Two other less important prisoners received the same sentence. But the five ringleaders, headed by Professor Leonid Ramzin, were condemned, one after an-other to: "The highest measure of social protection, Rastrel [Death by shooting]." At each death sentence cheers rang through the packed courtroom, echoed by a crowd of 10,000 which had been standing in the snow outside since 5 p. m.-- seven hours. To correspondents, some of the men sentenced to death looked "broken," others "nervous," as OGPU police took them to their cells. Were they really going to die? Occidental observers have been suspicious from the first that the trial was supreme propaganda, rehearsed in advance by prosecutor and prisoners, broadcast throughout Russia to convince peasants and proletarians that if the Soviet Government seems to get poor results at times the blame should be placed on "foreign plotters.'' A public shooting of all those condemned to death, an execution witnessed by all the occidental correspondents in Moscow would have done much to convince doubters that the trial was no fake.

Instead of an execution came a meeting of the presidium of the ZIK, the Central Executive Committee or "parliament" of the Soviet Union. The ZIK voted to commute each ten-year prison sentence to five years, each death sentence to ten years imprisonment. Official reason of the ZIK:

"The proletarian state does not desire revenge upon beaten and disarmed enemies, mere tools of French imperialism who have rendered important service by disclosing completely all the ramifications of this vast conspiracy."

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