Foreign News: Old & New Bolsheviks

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There were not placed on the green tables last week any pieces of paper stated to be from the hand of Trotsky. There were just charges and confessions in matching pairs. Confessions. Radek last week confessed that he helped assassinate in Leningrad two years ago Stalin's famed "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov (TIME, Dec. 10, 1934 et seq.), adding: "We decided to kill enough leaders from Stalin down to bring about a coup."Piatakov and Radek joined in confessing they sabotaged the work of Stalin's "Dear Friend Grigoriy" Ordzhonikidze, so that Heavy Industry has fallen behind the Soviet Plan. Piatakov, extending his confession into what became a lecture, told of alighting at Berlin's Tempelhof Field, being supplied with a forged German passport with a Norwegian visa, flying on to Oslo; conferring with Trotsky, and getting back to Russia without exciting the Ogpu's suspicion. This may seem possible if the thoroughness of Soviet, German and Norwegian secret police methods is not known, but in Moscow it was such an obvious cock-&-bull story that Prosecutor Vishinsky endeavored to draw out Piatakov into further and believable details, asking: "How was all this arranged?" Piatakov, voluble in his confession up to this point, gave the Prosecutor a reproachful glance, and lapsed into silence with a gesture of helplessness. Few minutes later, Prosecutor Vishinsky brought a minor prisoner to the rescue with a confession that a German named Stimmer "knew people able to arrange things like that." Perhaps true, but open for the prize of "Moscow's Most Remarkable Confession,"was the confessing by all hands last week that Adolf Hitler's apple-cheeked Deputy Nazi Party Leader, Rudolf Hess, also went to Oslo, where Trotsky was of course guarded at all times by Norwegian secret servicemen to prevent his fomenting plots, and conferred with the Great Exile in detail. Red Trotsky & Nazi Hess were supposed to have agreed that, after Stalin had been assassinated, Germany was to get the Ukraine and Japan Eastern Siberia, with the headline-making addition last week that Japan be given the island of Sakhalin from which she would get "oil for the Japanese Navy to make war on America."Red Romm, A charge had been made by Prosecutor Vishinsky that many letters between Radek and Trotsky were carried by Vladimir Romm, erstwhile Washington correspondent of Izvestia ("News"), the official government newspaper. Comrade Romm was far enough down the list of witnesses so that before he was called a group of leading news correspondents in Washington had opportunity to rush a cable to U. S. Ambassador Davies in Moscow. They asked him to tell the Soviet Supreme Court, that "In our dealings with Romm we found him a true friend and advocate of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Never once did he even faintly indicate lack of sympathy or disloyalty towards the existing Soviet Government."Prisoner Romm, when invited by Prosecutor Vishinsky to confess, did so in words as satisfactory to the state concerned as were the words of Prince Edward in his abdication broadcast. Confessed Romm: "I had full knowledge of the terrorist plot against the Soviet Government. ... I carried five letters from Radek to Trotsky. ... I agreed to become Trotsky's under- cover correspondent in

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