JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
A.Kartasheff, Michael Federoff, and Boris Kateneff's To the Civilized World, an Appeal by the Russian National Committee is a four-page leaflet and strongly-worded plea to the world-at-large to not recognize the Communist government in Moscow, this based on the behavior of the government and judicial system is the first of the show trials, "the incredibly cynical Donetz trial". I've included the three pages of the indictment against the "bestial face" of the "communistic power which has its headquarters at Moscow". The authors ask readers to "not hinder us in our fight for freedom" and to "repudiate your direct and indirect alliance with the criminal power that has established itself in Russia". To the great tragedy of many dozens of millions of people, this was just the beginning of the Stalinist purge.
This was also H.L. Mencken's copy, given over in January 1929. I can't find him writing on the trial in 1928, but it does make an appearance in his American Mercury in November 1937 in a savage article "Ten Years of Soviet Terror" (by the magazine's "Moscow Correspondent", an anonymous writer kept so for the sake of protection):
"The famous Shakhty trial in May, 1928, was the signal for a nation-wide persecution· of engineers and technicians, which lasted for fully three years. Hundreds were shot on the thinnest evidence and on mere suspicion of sabotage, thousands were herded into concentration camps. They became the technical personnel in the vast structure of forced labor under the command of the GPU which, at its height, employed more than 2,000,000 prisoners." Also:
"The first major political trial to have the effect of seriously aggravating the internal political situation in the Soviet Union was the so-called Shakhty case. The defendants were engineers and technicians in the coal industry of the Donetz basin. They were accused of “wrecking,” deliberately causing explosions in the mines, and maintaining criminal ties with the former mine owners, as well as less serious crimes, such as buying unnecessary imported equipment, violating safety procedures and labor laws, incorrectly laying out new mines, and so on. At the trial some of the defendants confessed their guilt, but many denied it or confessed to only some of the charges. The court acquitted four of the 53 defendants, gave suspended sentences to four, and prison terms of one to three years to 10. Most of the defendants were given four to 10 years. Eleven were condemned to be shot, and five of them were executed in July 1928. The other six were granted clemency by the All-Union Central Executive Committee."--
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 258 via Espresso Stalinist https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/moscow-trials/
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