Soup Sabotage

Moscow had a villain last week and his name was Oshkin Mikkhail. He was 20 times worse than a murderer. In fact a charge that he and an accomplice had once murdered a young Communist went almost unnoticed. To thousands of workers who go reluctantly for their meals to the Moscow Restaurant Trust the issue was: who has been putting hair into their cabbage soup, leaving bits of metal in their meat balls, giving them sugar with sand in it ? The State said that Oshkin was the man. With a whoop one of Moscow's swiftest propaganda trials was on. It lasted five clays, all devoted to accusation & proof. "The defense," cried the defense attorney, ''is unable to offer any defense!" By the time the State got through Oshkin had put into the sugar not only sand but powdered glass. He and his eleven accomplices, allegedly "Tsarists & kulaks at heart," were charged with "holding back fresh meat and vegetables until they spoiled" and generally conspiring to give the Moscow Restaurant Trust an evil, stinking name. After five days five culprits, including Soup Saboteur Oshkin Mikkhail, were sentenced to "the highest form of social protection--death by shooting." Six accomplices got prison terms of from 18 months to eight years, one was acquitted. Russia faced a grave food shortage last winter at the time Oshkin was supposed to have been most active. The food supply in all large Russian cities is better now. Since Soviet executions take place in complete secrecy Moscow will doubtless never know whether its five scapegoat cooks are shot or not.

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