Red Square Deal

After each major act of Joseph Stalin's regime, a vast cheering throng swells into the Red Square, carrying aloft on long poles horrid caricatures of the enemies of Bolshevism, handsome likenesses of its Dictator. At 15DEG below zero last week, thousands of prospective demonstrators stood shuffling, stamping and blowing on their hands in narrow side streets and alleys adjoining the Kremlin Fortress in which J. Stalin lives, and the Red Square. They were all ready to march in and cheer as soon as the Soviet Supreme Court should hand down its batch of death sentences in the Second Old Bolsheviks' Trial (TIME, Feb.1), and the waiting Moscow crowd had plenty to talk about.

So much Trotskyist deviltry had been confessed to before the Supreme Court that a map of the Soviet Union last week was a map of assassinations, rail wrecks, mine explosions, sabotage and conspiracy by Old Bolsheviks (see map), plus everywhere the spirit of Leon Trotsky, exiled from Russia in 1929 but still the rival in Communist hearts of Joseph Stalin. According to the State Public Prosecutor's charges and the confessions of all 17 prisoners, they had conspired with Exile Trotsky, who is now in Mexico (TIME, Jan. 25), not only to accomplish 3,500 railway wrecks in Russia in two years, but also in connivance with Japanese and German spies to cede to these countries, after a war which would unseat Dictator Stalin, vast areas of Siberia and the Ukraine.

Japan was to get the rest of the Island of Sakhalin, and the confessions made screamer headlines about "TROTSKYISTS TO GIVE JAPAN OIL FOR WAR WITH AMERICA."

The Soviet archcriminal, guiltiest of the Old Bolsheviks on trial, was "That Monkey" Radek, depicted horribly grimacing and malevolent on the placards which the Moscow crowds were about to shoulder in the Red Square, shouting exultation that Karl Radek was to be put to death. Up to about four months ago, Comrade Radek lived in an elaborate penthouse, atop a new Bolshevik skyscraper, and was honored as the No. 1 journalist of the Communist world, writing daily in Stalin's official newsorgan Izvestia. That Radek should have confessed to high treason and blanket "Trotskyist" conspiracy against the Soviet Fatherland was too despicable, too foul, to be put adequately into words by even the most picturesque proletarian.

Everyone last week who believed Izvestia, now raking Radek savagely in its columns, everyone who believed in Soviet Justice saw clearly that in Arch-Traitor Radek's case the only possible sentence was Death--and this had been predicted in cables not only by Walter Duranty of the New York Times but by all the big wire services out of Moscow.

When at last came the news that the Supreme Court had handed down 13 Death sentences but spared "That Monkey" Radek and three other self-confessed arch-traitors last week, the crowds in the Moscow alleys were at first stupefied, incredulous. Had not Radek just been called by everyone such things as "the worst betrayer since Judas Iscariot"--the betrayer of Stalin? However, Communists are the world's most disciplined Party. With almost no grumbling, the Radek placards were discarded, the caricatures of other Old Bolsheviks doomed to Death raised high, and shouting, cheering into the Red Square swarmed the marchers.

"Extradite Trotsky!" Old Bolsheviks taken from the prisoners' dock last week to Ogpu subterranean cellars, whence their execution was announced by the Government after 60 hours, were all ace-high Communists only in Russia, scarcely famed abroad. The execution this week of Grigoriy Piatakov, Vice-Commissar for Heavy Industry, after his super-sabotage confession, leaves Dictator Stalin's "Dear Friend Grigoriy" Ordzhonikidze Commisar for Heavy Industry, vindicated in the Soviet press for Heavy Industry's having fallen behind the Five-Year Plan. Other confessions and executions of the week vindicated virtually all Russia's thousands of recent wrecks and breakdowns.

In sentencing not to Death but to ten years' imprisonment Karl Radek and the onetime Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Comrade Grigoriy Sokolnikov, Stalin's Supreme Court spared two Big Reds with friends among journalists and statesmen of the World -- although many attributed the sudden mercy twist of Moscow Justice to discreet, telegraphic intervention by the Premier of France (see p. 24).

"That Monkey" Radek almost certainly knew in advance he would be spared, for he behaved in Court last week with consummate impudence. He called a Supreme Court Judge "Comrade" -- implying there were traitors and "Trotskyists" even on the Bench. He intimated that all the confessions were Ogpu-cooked lies, his own included.

"For weeks I tortured my investigators by refusing to confess!" sneered the Monkey, thus openly hinting third-degree methods by the Ogpu -- and yet Karl Ra dek got away with all his impudence while 13 others got Death.

The two minor prisoners sentenced to jail instead of Death seemed to be mildly picturesque stool pigeons and one, Comrade Vladimir Volfridovich Arnold, had been on two occasions a private in the U. S. Army, so he said. "I was born illegitimately and remain illegitimate and have acted like an illegitimate," cried Arnold in court, "but it is not my fault but the fault of Tsarist society, which, unlike the Bolsheviki, who do not recognize illegitimacy, never gave an illegitimate a chance of becoming a decent citizen."

Obviously the Second Old Bolshevik Trial was either above or below board and Great Exile Leon Trotsky either merits execution in Ogpu cellars or does not.

Challenged Trotsky last week: "In official Moscow circles they begin to imply, al though in a very vague manner, the possibility of a demand for my extradition. I welcome this idea warmly. What is more, for my part, I demand that the Russian Government present such a request!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.