J'Accuse

VISHINSKY: Accused Rykov, tell us, when did your underground conspiratorial activities against the Soviet government begin?

RYKOV: Essentially they began in 1928 . . . I actively fought the policy of the party and the Soviet government, and chiefly the policy of the party towards the peasantry . . .

VISHINSKY: Consequently, you committed direct high treason?

RYKOV: Yes.

--Court proceedings in "the Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (Moscow, 1938)

Andrei Y. Vishinsky, the "haranguing hyena" or the "jeering jaguar" who achieved U.N. notoriety (1947-54) for his vitriolic attacks on the U.S., made his reputation as a prosecuting attorney in a theatrical series of purge trials of Bolshevik leaders in Moscow in 1936-38. Among the 54 men cross-examined by Vishinsky was one ex-Premier (Rykov), several Vice Premiers, two ex-chiefs of the Communist International, two ex-chiefs of the political police, nearly all the Soviet ambassadors in Europe and Asia, and all the members of Lenin's old Politburo except Chief Defendant Trotsky (in exile) and Joseph Stalin, who brought the charges. All 54 were executed, or disappeared in Siberia. What made Prosecutor Vishinsky's triumph as peculiar as it was complete was that all the accused seemed to make free admissions of their guilt.

Three Conjectures: Soviet law (like most Western law) held that confession, unless supported by corroborative evidence, is insufficient for conviction. Vishinsky, a sharp lawyer, produced a huge law study, ostensibly aimed at "strengthening Soviet legality," actually a justification of his method of basing cases on confessions alone. The book won a Stalin Prize (200,000 rubles).

Outside the Soviet Union a vast literature, topped by Koestler's Darkness at Noon, grew up around the explanation of why the Old Bolsheviks had made Stalin's leap to absolute power easy by confessing (whether it was true or not) to a conspiracy against him. It was conjectured that they had done so 1) for ideological reasons, i.e., to preserve the monolithic party front, or 2) because their consciences were poisoned by the common guilt of Communist intrigue, or 3) to indicate obliquely, by admitting the incredible and fantastic, that they were being murdered. Later study of Soviet police methods, e.g., the Cardinal Mindszenty case, suggests a simpler explanation: the Old Bolsheviks were subjected to physical and mental torture and blackmailed by threat of injury to their families. Few foreigners were permitted to attend the trials, and the official court report bears evidence of extensive editing.

Eighteen months ago Andrei Vishinsky, the man who knew the answer to all these conjectures, died in the New York headquarters of the Soviet U.N. delegation. Since then Stalin's successors have hinted that the military trials of 1937 that wiped out the whole top layer of the Red army were frame-ups. Last week the journal Soviet State and Law denounced the whole process of trial by confession.

"Glaring Violation." Vishinsky's theory, said the journal, "denies the need for a court to establish the absolute truth in each case and was a glaring violation of the principle of Socialist legality." The journal (published under auspices of the Vishinsky Institute of Law) attacked the entire Soviet prosecuting system "for recognizing guilt and responsibility for crimes on the basis of individual confessions of the accused themselves."

In the same week Pravda published an old Lenin memorandum addressed to ex-Premier Alexei Rykov. a leading defendant in the trials, around whose "individual confession" Vishinsky had built a web of guilt. The mention of Rykov's name gave strength to the fascinating conjecture that the Soviet authorities may yet reopen the entire "Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites."

The motive behind these moves was not justice to the dead, but the safety of the living. With the reaffirmation of the old law which prevents conviction by confession, the Soviet Parliament last week set up a special committee to check the activities of the secret police, i.e., to curb methods of extracting confessions. Although Stalin was three years dead, his heirs apparently still had reason to fear the technique of liquidation by confession and trial.

In 1938 Stalin disbanded the Polish Communist Party and quietly executed some 200 of its leaders. Re-emerging after World War II, the Polish party and its government structure was purged again and again to keep it weak and subject to Stalin's domination. Poland, the most valuable of Russia's colonial conquests, has proven the hardest to rule.

Last week the same reversal of the past that has been at work in Moscow during the past three months was also working in Warsaw, with more apparent vigor. The government announced a forthcoming general amnesty for some 30,000 political prisoners. The sentences of 70,000 others* are to be drastically reduced, and there were rumors that top Polish generals, imprisoned since 1951, are to be rehabilitated. At the same time the government officials nominally responsible for recent repressions, Justice Minister Henryk Swiatkowski, his two chief prosecutors, and a number of police bosses, were fired. The Cabinet was reformed. Warsaw was officially reported to be enjoying a period of "stormy and passionate discussion."

*Total prewar prison population of Poland: about 70,000.

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