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POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

In a courtroom known as the Solemn Hall, in Sofia's grey Palace of Justice, 15 Protestant pastors went on trial last week on trumped-up charges of treason, espionage and black marketeering. This time, the Communists were less hostile to foreign observers than they had been during the hasty trial of Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty. The world watched the slow, orderly proceedings at Sofia through 25 foreign correspondents and two official U.S. and British observers. But as one churchman after another took the stand and wept, shouted and whispered his "confession" and his "guilt," the world no more understood this trial than it had understood the cardinal's.

The great mystery story that started with the Moscow purge trials of 1936-38 had not yet been solved. In spite of a thousand explanations, the free world still had little clue as to how Stalin's agents broke or bent the wills of their own comrades, of Mindszenty--and now those of the Bulgarian Protestant pastors. All confessed to what was certainly not true.

The words spoken by the pastors in Sofia last week seemed to be echoes of the Moscow purge trial confessions, as if both had been written by the same diabolical playwright. To understand the echoes, it was necessary to recall the originals.

On trial in Moscow in 1938 Genrikh Yagoda, hard-boiled head of the OGPU, said: "Citizen judges, I want to tell [you] how a man who spent thirty years in the party and worked a great deal, stumbled [and] fell ... I have committed heinous crimes. I realize this. It is hard to live after such crimes . . . But it is terrible to die with such a stigma. Even from behind bars I would like to see the further flour-ishings of the country I betrayed."

Scholarly Alexei Rykov, former president of the Council of People's Commissars, said: "... I confirm the admission of my monstrous crimes . . . We were preparing for a coup d'etat, we organized kulak insurrections and terrorist groups ... I would like those who have not yet been exposed and have not yet laid down their arms to do so immediately . . . Their only salvation lies in helping the party."

Brilliant Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Third International, said: "When you ask yourself, 'If you must die, what are you dying for?' an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for if one wanted to die unrepented. And . . . everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man's mind . . ."

"I Am Ashamed to Beg." In Sofia last week, three judges sat in front of a heroic mural of the blindfolded Goddess of Justice. Behind the defendants and their armed guards was a special section reserved for the defendants' relatives. First to come before the court was the Rev. Nikola Naumov, president of the Supreme Council of Bulgaria's United Evangelical Churches. He had always been known to his friends as a man of staunch convictions. "I confess I am guilty," he said in a clear voice. "I am sincerely sorry for what I have done." He remained on the stand for three hours. He said he had given military, economic and political information to foreign intelligence agents.

From time to time, his voice broke. Again & again the tall (6 ft.), robust man broke into tears, wiping his face with his handkerchief. "Believe me," he sobbed, "I am ashamed to beg for mercy. Give me a chance to correct my errors . . . Never in Bulgaria's history was there so much religious freedom as now . . . Christians and Communists are two brothers who have bypassed each other, but they will find each other some day . . ."

One of the things that contributed to his repentance, said Naumov, was American literature. "When I read books describing the lives of Negroes in America and Upton Sinclair's King Coal on the sufferings of workers in America, I was depressed because the money taken from them by the capitalists was given to me."

On a question from the judge, Naumov denied that Bulgaria's state police had mistreated, beaten or "burned" him. Said he: "I advise all waverers to go to the state security people for re-education."

"I Don't Believe in Man." Next was the Rev. Yanko Ivanov, a bald, short man who is superintendent of Bulgaria's Methodist Church. Said he: "I don't believe in man because he lies frequently ... I will give you now a full account of my criminal activities, which make me ashamed ... I will say that I am a sinner . . ."

Ivanov said he had set up an intelligence service for Cyril Black, formerly at the U.S. political mission in Sofia and now a history professor at Princeton. Ivanov said he furnished Black with information about things like "the people's dissatisfaction with the government [and] what factories were producing what materials."

Some of the information allegedly passed on by him could not be classed, even by the wildest stretch of the imagination, as constituting espionage, e.g., reports on whether the Bulgarians were carrying out their armistice terms, and the scarcely sensational news that "Bulgarian economic life was stagnant."

Black last week denied Ivanov's whole story. Actually all charges of espionage against Bulgarian Protestant churchmen are patently phony. As pastors of minority churches they have long been under surveillance. Said one U.S. diplomat who knows Bulgaria well: "The Protestant clergy has never been on the inside. To say that it could know about what is going on inside the government is about as ridiculous as saying that the ministers of small churches in the Washington suburbs would be effective espionage agents."

"People Not Without Sin." Ivanov tried to explain his downfall by his father's sins. "He was a small bourgeois," explained Ivanov, "a member of the Democratic Party. He left his mark on me."

Ivanov continued: "I committed everything knowingly . . . What inspired me to all this was fear--fear and faulty orientation regarding Communism ... It was my conviction that the Communist leaders must be suffocated and paralyzed . . . I expected the Communists to treat me severely, but they instead gave me this opportunity to lift the curtain . . .

"The people [who interrogated me] sat next to me, to persuade me that I must open my heart ... I understood then that these people were not without sin but that they had the attribute of repairing their mistakes ... I cite one incident: when I was giving testimony to a girl, I mentioned that I had not eaten any grapes. Immediately she arranged for grapes to be brought to me . . ."

Ivanov wound up his seven hours on the stand: "I don't want to plead for mercy, because there are no extenuating circumstances for my crimes. But I want to have the opportunity to understand the new way of Fatherland Front reality, and to work for the benefit of the republic . . ."

"Come Back, Prodigal Son!" Then it was the turn of Rev. Vassil Ziapkov, head of the Congregational Church in Bulgaria. He shouted or sobbed almost throughout his testimony. At times, .his voice was nearly inaudible. "Why am I here after 25 years as a preacher?" he cried. "The answer is that there is something rotten in me. What is that? The answer is that 29 years ago I received a scholarship to study in England, and they plucked me from Bulgaria and planted me in foreign soil."

Like the others, he confessed giving information to Americans and Britons. "Behind the American Protestant stands American Capitalism, the greatest enemy of mankind. The leaders of the World Council of Churches are agents of that capitalism." In 1944, he said, he had a conversation with a U.S. colonel in Sofia. "There were espionage elements in that talk," cried Ziapkov, "there were treasonous elements in that talk. Now I am ashamed of it." In 1946, as a delegate to the Paris peace conference, he passed on information to Western delegates, including Bernard Baruch, he said. (Baruch pointed out last week that he was not in Paris at the time.) He also tried to see Mrs. Claude Pepper (wife of Florida's New Dealing Senator Pepper) but she, he related, slammed the door in his face and said: "I won't talk to any Bulgarian." (Mrs. Pepper indignantly denied ever having met Ziapkov. "I am a Southern lady," she said. "I would never slam a door in anybody's face.")

Ziapkov said America was plotting against Bulgaria because it could not stand the idea of a "quiet, happy land" on the border of strife-torn Greece. Bundled in a grey overcoat, he waved his arm and shouted: "We became the faithful tools of this fearful foe -- American Capitalism. I sinned. I repent! I repent! . . ."

He continued: "Death and resurrection ! Everything bad and criminal carries death with it. This trial, this evolution in me, is my return to life through the state security police and you. It seems as though my father, a shepherd from Kotel, is calling -- come back, you prodigal son, to your people.

"Your indulgence made a new man of me. I sinned. I committed many great crimes as the result of the Americanism in me ... Comrades, judges, what will you make of me -- a heap of dust or a new man? A heap of dust is of no use to any one, but a new man is." The Communists knew a way of draw ing statements such as that from simple, sturdy, innocent men. How they did it was unknown. That they could do it was the measure of Communism's evil, and its power.

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