The Liberal Life

The grim axiom of Soviet trials is "They Always Confess." Last week that axiom again proved sound in Leningrad where Joseph Stalin was having privately polished off a group of redoubtable Old Bolsheviks--some older than Stalin in the Communist aristocracy founded by Nikolai Lenin.

The accused were too eminent to be tried in Moscow, although in Moscow drastic Judge Vassily Ulrich recently ordered 36 of the 117 executions decreed to avenge Dictator Stalin's assassinated "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov (TIME, Dec. 10). Last week Judge Ulrich arrived in Leningrad in the midst of exceedingly select Communist company--including such prisoners as Comrade Lev Kamenev (brother-in-law of Great Exile Trotsky) and Comrade Grigory Zinoviev, famed "Bomb Boy of Bolshevism," and personal bodyguard of Lenin during the late Dictator's years of exile.

Zinoviev was with Lenin in the famed "sealed car" that brought them from Switzerland to start Russia's revolution. Later Comrade Zinoviev, raised by Dictator Lenin to head the Third International (Moscow's permanent base of operations for fomenting the World Revolution of the World Proletariat), was indirectly the cause of turning out James Ramsay MacDonald's first Labor Cabinet when British Conservatives published the notorious "Zinoviev Letter" (TIME, Dec. 1, 1924). As Kamenev (born Rosenfeld) and Zinoviev (born Apfelbaum) stood in the dock before Ulrich last week, no Bolshevik could doubt but that a Red pigmy was judging two Red giants.

According to the State's press handout, Zinoviev and Kamenev were proved to have conversed with other Communists in Moscow to this effect: 1) they believe that in Russia today ''there is no Party and no Central Executive Committee"* of any validity, merely Dictatorship; 2) they believe that within the Stalin clique quarrels have been frequent of late, threatening a split in the Dictatorship; 3) they believe that "everything written in the Soviet Press about the success of industrialization has been false." amounting to systematic "deception of the proletariat"; 4) they believe that "the material condition of the Russian worker is not improving but getting worse"; 5) they believe that Stalin today is not the champion but the "forsaker"' of the international working class.

For Russians who believe such things, is Death the right punishment? According to the State's Press last week, "Yes!" The Dictator's newsorgans printed reams of resolutions said to have been passed by Communist groups all over Russia demanding Death for Kamenev and Zinoviev. Since 117 small fry had already been shot (TIME, Jan. 7). seemingly nothing could have saved Prisoners Zinoviev and Kamenev last week, if the expressions of popular demand were genuine. When dread Judge Ulrich, "Stalin's Executioner," sentenced Zinoviev to only ten years imprisonment and Kamenev to only five, the cat was out of the bag.

Other defendants, who had done most of the confessing as to Zinoviev's and Kamenev's beliefs, also received five to ten year sentences. The State hand-out quoted Zinoviev as confessing thus: "The foul murder of Kirov cast such a fatal light on all preceding anti-Party struggles that I admit the Party is quite right when it speaks of political responsibility of the former anti-Party Zinoviev group for the assassination."

Since the State had proved to its own satisfaction that the defendants think the "Party" is a mere setup, this confession could be called pure gibberish, presumably penned by some particularly stupid confession-getter. Another gem: Defendant G. E. Yevdokimov, once Leningrad Communist Party Head and a close collaborator with Lenin, reputedly signed a statement that he has now repented and believes that "the fate of the working class is in the firm hands of the Party and its genial leader Stalin."

In Moscow, with terror in the air and suicides increasingly commonplace, correspondents who had not ventured to Leningrad busily cabled the State's handouts, added reassuring touches at which the tight lips of censors somewhat relaxed. MANY INDICATIONS STALIN AND HIS FELLOW LEADERS STRONGER THAN EVER cabled United Press Moscow Chief Joseph H. Baird. NOT ONLY HAS AN ANNOYING THOUGH SMALL OPPOSITION BEEN SMASHED BUT INTERNAL COMMUNIST PARTY BICKERING IS LESSENING BECAUSE THINGS ARE RUNNING MORE SMOOTHLY. . . . LIFE IN GENERAL IS BECOMING MORE LIBERAL.

*The Soviet Congress.

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