World Notes SOVIET UNION

Glasnost has given Soviets an unprecedented look into their history. One result: rehabilitation for perhaps millions of people, including many of those villainized for blatantly political purposes during Joseph Stalin's long and dictatorial reign.

Last week the Kremlin recommended blanket amnesty for everyone convicted by the infamous star-chamber "troika" courts of the Stalin era, in which three party and state officials had absolute power over the accused. The courts were the dictator's primary instrument of mass terror during the 1930s and functioned until his death in 1953. According to Western historians, the amnesty may apply to as many as 20 million people, a large number of them posthumously. Another post-Stalinist landmark: the weekly magazine Literaturnaya Gazeta published a detailed account of the role played by the dictator's secret police in the 1940 assassination of his exiled rival Leon Trotsky, finally acknowledging that the killer was acting on Stalin's orders.