The Moscow Trials The incidents of the past week at
Moscow have, even more than those which preceded them, bewildered and dis- mayed the Western world. If the evidence is taken at its face value, and some at least of it, is difficult to reject, it suggests that behind the façade of Stalinism the U.S.S.R. has for several years been governed by the political methods of the Italian Renaissance. Plot, counter-plot, treason, espionage, murder, blackmail, counter-revolution, poison, have each played their part. Bukharin and Trotsky plotted to murder Lenin, Stalin and Sverdloff in 1918, and Rykoff was privy to the murder of Kiroff. Yagoda attempted to murder his successor Yezhoff by spraying his room with chemicals, and impressed Levin and other doctors, by various threats, into murdering Gorki and his son by means of pneumonia, drugs, bonfires and over-exposure. The absence of docu- mentary evidence, and the contradictions and denials in the testimony of the accused, justify extreme scepticism at every point, though in an atmosphere in which such allega- tions are possible any crime may conceivably have been committed. The only testimony which carries conviction is that of Bukharin, especially in his explanation of how opposi- tion to the over-rapid collectivisation of agriculture and the liquidation of the peasants led him, with Trotsky, Rykoff, Tukachevsky and others, into a general opposition to Stalinism, to plots against the regime and to his present position in the dock, which no doubt he will only leave to face the firing squad.
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