Red Tears

Charged with "the counterrevolutionary crime of misuse of power," Comrade Nikolai Konekov was hauled sobbing before a Moscow Soviet tribunal last week.

With great tears rolling down his stupid face he explained that, placed in charge of a Soviet collective farm in the region of Dalmatov, he had racked his brains to find some way of turning what looked like an unavoidable deficit into a profit. "I wanted to make a g-g-good showing for the glory of the p-p-proletariat!" sobbed Nikolai.

"No you didn't!" cut in the Soviet prosecutor. "Your order was given with the deliberate intention of creating social unrest, and that is counterrevolution and I shall ask the full legal penalty--Death!"

Green with terror the culprit wailed: "I acted in good faith! I ordered all the women in my cooperative to cut off their hair and I sold it at a good price and I turned over every kopeck to the Government. That was the only way I could show a profit! Could I help it if the women were angry?"

Sympathetic, the judge before whom Comrade Nikolai appeared ordered further investigation of his case, ignored the legalistic prosecutor who stormed, "Nonsense! A clear instance of counter-revolution!"

Significance: Dictator Josef Stalin is now easing up on his stern program of forcing independent peasants onto the Government's collective farms; examples are beginning to be made of over-zealous patriots like stupid Nikolai Konekov.

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