Title | World voices on the Moscow trials |
Alternative Title | World voices on the Moscow trials: a compilation from the labor and liberal press of the world |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Pioneer Publishers |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1936? |
Subject.Name (LCNAF) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 64 pages: 1 illustration; 20 cm |
Original Item Location | DK266.3.A45 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304404~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | In Copyright: This item is protected by copyright. Copyright to this resource is held by the creator or current rights holder, and the resource is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without permission of the copyright owner. Users assume full responsibility for any infringement of copyright or related rights. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 19 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_2774257_018.jpg |
Transcript | The Soviet Purge The execution of all the sixteen prisoners in the Soviet treason trial followed promptly on their conviction. With Zinoviev and Kamenev there disappear two others who played a part only a little less distinguished in the early years of the revolution, Smirnov and the general head of the civil war, Mratchkovsky. Tomsky, formerly the head of the trade unions and later of the State Publishing Concern, shot himself to escape a less honorable fate. Of the original revolutionary executive of the Bolshevik Party only Stalin is now left alive and in power. Bukharin and Radek, accused in the dock by some of the prisoners, are under suspicion, while Sokolnikov, formerly ambassador in Paris and London, is in prison. The purge goes on upon a great scale throughout the party in the provinces. The trial, if one must trust the available reports, was wholly unconvincing. The accused had no counsel, and the evidence consisted solely of confessions worthless in the circumstances. That part of the opposition at one time grouped around Trotsky may have continued to plot is quite possible. But it is hard to believe that all these orthodox Bolsheviks broke the first rule of the party by planning terrorism and assassination, and even more unlikely that they conspired with the Nazi secret police. Zinoviev and Kamenev, under a cloud since 1927, several times in exile and prison and all the time under surveillance, would have been reckless heroes if they had gone on plotting; and that was never the reputation of these particular revolutionaries. The worst interpretation is that the Soviet Political Police vamped up this conspiracy to perpetuate its power on the eve of the adoption of a quasi-democratic constitution. The truth is unknown. There may well have been a plot. But the disadvantages of these methods of justice, coupled with unconvincing confessions and broadcast propaganda, is that they reflect among those who retain any integrity of judgment, at least as much upon the State which employs them as upon the victims it condemns. August 29, 1936. 17 |