Soviet Union: Hatred's Just Reward

Hatred's Just Reward

As the judge read the verdict in the Moscow courtroom last week, the defendant erupted. "I'm ready to die for Russia," yelled Konstantin Smirnov- Ostashvili, 54, leader of a faction of Pamyat, the ultra-right, Russian nationalist movement. "It's all a lie!" Unfazed, the judge sentenced Smirnov-Ostashvili to two years of hard labor for shouting anti-Semitic threats at a meeting of liberal writers last January.

It was remarkable that he had come to trial at all. Though a videotape made at the January session clearly showed the Pamyat leader shouting his diatribe against Jews through a megaphone, it was not until July...

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