SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2475, 2 September 1922, Page 2

SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY

PRACTICE OE SOCIALISTS IX POWER. MAXIM GORKI ON MURDER. Our purpose in dealing with the question of socialism and liberty is not ti interfere in the dispute taking place between Mr Potter, M.P., and the Officer of the Victoria College Debating Society, Wellington. Of intellectual freedom in the abstract and the relation of same to socialism, academically considered we think little. Our object here is to show the practice of the Socialists now in power in Russia and leave it to the judgment of *ll readers to consider the relation of such practice to freedom as we Britishers understand it. TRIALS IN RUSSIA.

During the concluding stages of the trial in Moscow of the SocialRevolutionaries the opinion was expressed in well-informed Kremlin circles that the passing of death sentences on all the prisoners was a foregone conclusion. It is believed that the majority of death sentences will be commuted to life sentences or long- terms of hard labour, but that the two leaders, members of the Central. Committee of the Social-Revolutionary Party, A. R, Got/, and D. D. Donskoi, will be executed.

According to the ‘‘lnvestin'" (Bolshevik Journal) the trial of the Petrograd priests and others who opposed the confiscation of Church treasures has now concluded. Eleven have been sentenced to death, among them the Metropolitan Benjamin, the Bishop of Kronstadt, the head of the Benedictine Monastery, Sergii, and Professor Ognev Novitskii. Twenty-three were acquitted and the remainder, fifty-three, were -enteneed to various terms of imprisonment. The Court decided to take criminal proceedings against the Patriarch Tikhon. MAXIM GORKI’S PROTEST. In connection with the trial of the Social-Revolutionaries Maxim Gorki wrote as follows : To Anatole Prance he says: — “The trial of the Social Revolutionaries has assumed the form of deliberate preparations for the murder of men and women who have honestly -creed the cause of freedom fur the Russian people. I therefore take the liberty to adress myself to you with the request that you will mi-e your voice once more to the Soviet Government in order that it may realise that such a crime i- inconceivable. Perhaps your inlluence may save the lives of tin ncru-ed Socialists."

To Kykov, Lenin’s acting deputy, tie addressed himself thus: —

“If the trial of the Social-Revolu-tionaries ends in murder, it will he a deliberately planned and precouvineed murder, the most vile murder imaginable. 1 would lie obliged if you couimunicatod this my view, on the subject to Trotsky and others. 1 hope that my views will not come to you as a surprise, as you know that during the revolution I have tried thousands of times to impress mi the Soviet Government the madness and wickedness of its attempts to annihilate and destroy all the intellectual forces of our illiterate and uncivilised country. To-day 1 am convinced that if the Social-Revolutionaries are put to death this crime will result in the moral blockade of Russia by Socialist Europe.” Ana to] France replies in these terms: —“I am at one with you in believing that the men and women hi trial in Moscow have sincerely served in their Lime the cause of freedom of the Russian people. 1 am at one with you in believing that their being condemned to death will have a most disastrous effect on the Soviet Republic. From the bottom of my heart 1 associate myself, dear Gorky, with the appeal that yon have addressed to the Soviet Gov-

mini at, one of tin* members of which, I am told, is acting as public prosecutor in this case.”

WHAT FOLLOWED THE DECISION. On hearing that the Metropolitan d’ Petrograd. Benjamin, and ten other Church dignitaries had been sentenced to death, the workers of Petrograd, Kronstadt and other industrial centres of the ‘‘Northern Commune” proclaimed a one-day protest strike. There was serious trouble with the Kronstadt sailors, with whom the Metropolitan was a great favourite. On July 9th, the Soviet Executive met and passed a resolution temporarily suspending the carrying out of the sentences. The Executive also decided that the new Soviet Criminal Code shall not take egect before August Ist that is after the trials of the Soial-Revolu-tbinaries and the Patriarch.

As showing what regard for libcrtly these believers in the “socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exshange” have. Article 161 of the new Criminal Code reads thus :—“Persons giving religious instruction to children and minors in State or private educational establishments shall be liable to punishment consisting of forced labour up to one year.” Well said Madam Roland, “Oh! liberty—what crimes have been committed in thy name.”

Organised labour in Great Britain has protested strongly against these crimes of socialisation. We have not up till now heard, or read, of any protest from the Red Labour Party of New Zealand although the leaders have referred to Soviet Russia on many occasions. Socialism in translating the general will

cares little for the individual, therefore its dictatorship can be as murderous, and destructive of liberty, as the crudest of Autocracies. This • is the lesson for us to bear in mind. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare”™ l League.)