Supreme Propaganda

A million feet tramp-tramping through ankle-deep snow. Night coming on. Torches, banners, the roar of the Internationale from half a million throats. White breath & red noses. People stamping and shouting to keep warm. Men and women from everywhere--mostly Russians, but Tartars too, Uzbeks, Little Russians, White Russians, Tadjiks, Chinese students and a group of Communist literati from New York, just arrived but exulting with the boldest. Thus last week Moscow staged one of the largest, most impressive demonstrations in Soviet history, as her second, epochal Counter-Revolutionary Trial began (TIME, Nov. 24).

On the banners of the marching, milling throng appeared such strange devices as:

Down with Poincare and the Oil Kings!

Strangle the Jackals of Foreign Imperialism !

Death to Enemies of the Proletariat!

And most complex of all: We Demand the Supreme Punishment for Counter-Revolutionaries and the Order of Lenin (highest Soviet decoration) for the Ogpu! (secret police).

Shouting these and many another slogan the people crowded round and edged as near as they dared to what in Tsarist times was the Nobles' Club, containing one of the most sumptuous ballrooms in all Russia, the famed "Hall of Columns." Red soldiers in their peaked caps kept the people back. Only those with tickets (all the New Yorkers had them) were admitted to the dazzling show: a session of the Supreme Tribunal of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

Judges in Flannel, Prisoners in Starch. White as when they looked down upon the Tsarist Court, the huge pillars of the "Hall of Columns" stood last week like a double row of sentinels guarding the Red Court. The vast oblong hall was draped and festooned in Red. At a Red desk on the right of the Supreme Court Bench sat Nikolai Vassilievitch Krylenko. dreaded prosecutor, famed for his sneer. He seemed a bit plumper but no less tense and tigerish than at the famed Schakhta Trial two years ago when he sent five counter-revolutionaries to Death (TIME. July 2 & 16, 1928).

With ash trays at their elbows the Supreme Court judges smoked incessantly, seemed frankly bored. Their President Comrade Alexy Vyshinsky, also presided at the Schakhta Trial. Two of the judges had come to the Supreme Court Bench directly from their workbenches in a Moscow and a Leningrad factory.

All the Judges, most of the male spectators, were in workmen's flannel shirts. Only the prisoners wore "bourgeois clothes," dark business suits, starched collars and neat ties--the costume most calculated to prejudice Court and spectators against them.

The prisoners' box was not a confidence-inspiring red but leaden grey. Four soldiers guarded the eight prisoners. Facing Death, they smoked and read magazines to pass the time. Thirteen Jupiter arc lamps blazed upon judges, prosecutor, prisoners. A dozen Soviet photographers prowled and climbed about unhindered, taking snapshots. Cinema cameras, both silent and sound-recording, purred softly. To the half-million citizens shouting "Death! Death!" outside, batteries of loudspeakers shouted every word of the trial. To illiterate millions of Soviet citizens the state radio broadcast. By order of Prosecutor Krylenko daily bulletins from the trial were despatched from Moscow to every city, town and village in the vast Union, there to be posted up, enlivened by cartoons which the government supplied. Within a few hours after the trial began every cinema theatre in Moscow was showing newsreels of this real-life drama. All Russia was enabled by every means which Science could devise to learn--what?

No. 2 Son v. No. 2 Father. The theme of the trial (already expounded by Prosecutor Krylenko in a 30-column statement which every Soviet newsorgan dutifully printed) is that France, her Little Allies (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Rumania) and Great Britain have:

1) Employed secret agents throughout Russia in a partially successful effort to sabotage and delay fulfillment of the Soviet Union's famed Five Year Plan of industrialization (TIME, June 9 et ante}.

2) Perfected a program of intervention worked out by the French General Staff to send "white armies" against Russia, upset the Soviet State, proclaim a "Bourgeois Republic."

The theme of the Schakhta Trial, broadcast two years ago, was merely sabotage. In that trial and again last week the son of one of the accused passionately denounced his father as a traitor to the proletariat. During the Schakhta proceedings several of the accused pleaded "not guilty," defended themselves wildly, vainly in a dramatic radio dialog with Prosecutor Krylenko, who beat down their defense as a tiger claws to bits a bleating sheep. Last week however all the star prisoners--six of the eight accused--expressed a desire to plead guilty, entered the courtroom with bulky, manuscript confessions which they proceeded to read in turn.

Sowing Crisis. The confession of the No. 1 prisoner, Professor Leonid Ramzin, until his arrest Chairman of the All-Union Heating Institute, was too long to be got through at a single session of the Court. Standing primly before the microphone Professor Ramzin began in teacherish tones, "I am guilty. I do not know what to say in my defense," then spoke for three hours while everyone smoked.

On the second day of the trial Professor Ramzin concluded his confession with a four-hour address, bore out all the contentions of Prosecutor Krylenko, summed up:

"Thus we planned and worked to sow discouragement and produce crisis in the Soviet land, to prepare intervention by foreign foes, to restore the capitalists and landlords and to plunge the country afresh into a bloody war. In these plans and this work the central role was played by me--I admit it."

In only one respect could Professor Ramzin's confession be called defective. He admitted that on his trips to London and Paris he never actually talked face to face with the men he named as the brains and backers of the plot: Oilman Sir Henri Deterding, Raymond Poincare who during some of the visits was Prime Minister of France, Lord Churchill* and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand.

On top of everything else Professor Ramzin finally confessed to high treason in the commonly understood sense--not the special Soviet sense in which sabotage is construed as treasonable. In the summer of 1929 Professor Ramzin, according to his own statement, betrayed the more im- portant plans and secrets of the Soviet Air Force to a "French secret agent, Monsieur R., who seemed very pleased."

Vanished Hopes; Bourgeois Spoils. One by one the other prisoners rose to confess. Planner Victor Larichev, until his arrest a member of the State Planning Commission, testified that he was the "treasurer" of the conspirators (who called themselves "The Counter-Revolutionary Party"), had handled some $2,300,000 in foreign contributions. Any premature conclusion that counterrevolution pays well was nipped by Prisoner Professor Alexander S. Fedotov: "As I sat in prison and thought of my vanished hopes, I told myself that had our plans succeeded it would have been foreign imperialists and a handful of rich emigres who would have reaped the spoils, not we. We were their tools and we would not have got five kopeks on their ruble promises. I admit I tried, and I AM GLAD I FAILED--let the Court judge me as it will."

Significance. One effect of the trial last week was to turn popular suspicion in Moscow upon the local colony of foreign diplomats. "The trial throws new light on the espionage system here," declared The Moscow Worker. "The spies are not old-school snoopers with electric torches and disguises but honored gentlemen living in mansions guarded by the Soviet police and with limousines adorned by many-colored national flags"--i.e. embassy and legation pennants.

Most London editors denounced the 'trial as bare-faced fraud and propaganda, suggested that Professor Ramzin will never be shot, though his execution may be "officially announced." A large section of the Paris press demanded that Prime Minister Andre Tardieu recall the French Ambassador from Moscow, break off Russo-French relations--but M. Tardieu was not stampeded. Throughout the U. S., editors appeared puzzled by the goings on at Moscow, anxious but unable to believe them faked. Typically the New York Herald Tribune seemed to have faith that Professor Ramzin will actually be executed if convicted, but found inexplicable his conduct and that of the others in apparently seeking Death, wound up a long editorial with three bewildered questions, left all unanswered.

In Moscow quiet, firm diplomatic protests apparently had some effect. When the prisoners seemed inclined to keep on with confessions tending to incriminate high French officials by name, President Vyshinsky of the Court loudly rang his bell, announced that when accusations involving prominent foreigners were to the fore the Court would sit in secret with no broadcasting.

"Deliberate Sabotage." Commented the American-edited Moscow News: "The indictment . . . reads like fiction of the dime novel sort, and would be rejected as preposterous if it were not so clearly based on fact. Everyone who has been in the Soviet Union long has known personally of cases of deliberate sabotage . . . on the part of an enemy of the Soviet Government who happened to be in a responsible position."

*Most Russian Comrades suppose that every prominent Briton is a "Lord," just as most British Lords suppose that every Soviet Russian is a "Comrade." Strictly speaking no man is a Lord unless he is a member of the Peerage, or a Comrade unless he belongs to the Communist Party. "Lord" Churchill is an unimportant Viscount. Professor Ramzin meant of course "Mr." Winston Churchill, not long since the vigorous Chancellor of Britain's Exchequer (1924-29).

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