MOSCOW TRIALS

Hokitika Guardian, 9 December 1930, Page 5

MOSCOW TRIALS

THE SENTENCES. [United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. 1 MOSCOW, December 7. The Moscow trial sentences are announced. Five of the eight accused, namely,<■ Remain, Larichev, Cliarnovsky, Kalinikoff and Fedotov were sentenced to death. Three, Kuprianov, Ochkin iSid Sitnin were sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude, in addition to the deprivation of their property. No appeal is permissible in any case.

The greatest excitement marked the dose of the trial. The sentences were greeted with continuous applause, the excited court crowd apparently expected the prisoners to be shot tbe same night.

Meetings have been held in the chief Soviet centres during the week-end, at which orators harangued the crowds, promising that the Government would teach the foreign Governments that it is futile to plot with internal enemies of the Soviet.

LONDON “TIMES’S” CRITiqSM OF THE TRIAL. LONDON, December 7/ “The Times” has a leading article commenting on the Moscow trial. It says:—“lt was dear, from the beginning, that the trial was intended to be, not a judicial inquiry but a great .political demonstration in order to direct to foreign Governments the odium for which the privations suffered by the Russian peoj> is bringing upon the Communist system. The whole proceedings have been elaborately stage-managed, with a view to producing the greatest effect in Russia and abroad. The chief effect upton foreign' opinion has been to strengthen the conviction that the oligarchy which employs such methods to maintain itself must be desperately afraid of power slipping from its grasp. It "may well he that those who have arranged the trial wanted to prepare public opinion for a foreign war as a possible issue out of its •difficulties. •'The Soviet press has been busier than usual for months past in inciting its readers against foreign Governments, and in predicting their collapse.”

MOSCOW EXECUTIONS. MOSCOW, December 8. Moscow Court announces the professor’s execution will be private. The condemneds will be shot within three days unless they succeed in their appeals to the Central Executive Committee. Death sentences COMMUTED. this dav at 8.80 a.m.) MOSCOW, Dee. 8. The Soviet Central Executive commuted the. death sentences on Ramzan, Larichev. Charngusky, Kalinikoff, and Fedotov to ten years, and reduced the other sentences to eight years. COMMUTATIONS EXPLAI NED. (Received this'dav at 1.5 p.m.) • MOSCOW, December 8. Explaining the commutations, the Central Executive in a communique says:—The convicted persons not only repended of their crimes but by testimony of . the disarmed counter revolutionary organisation, acting as agent of the interventionist circles ruling in bourgeois, France, the Soviet cannot be guided by a mere des.re for revenge, particularly in relation to the confessed repentant criminals, who have been rendered harmless.