New Britain herald., 1928-06-28
RUSSIAN TRIAL IS
 NOT INTERESTING
Press Doing Best to Maintain
 Mel0dramatiC Effect
BY EUGENE LYONS

Limited Press Staff Correspondent
 Moscow. June II by Mail.-(UP)
 There has been an enormous
 amount Of romanticising, both at
 home and abroad, about the
 ''Shakhty trial' which has been
 droning along here since the 18th
 of May. At close range, unfortunate
 ly for those who must sit through
 1t. the affair is neither as dramatic
 nor as thrillingly sinister as the
 world is led to believe.
 The hearing still centers in the
 coal pits of the Don Basin. where it
 has succeeded in showing a group
 of engineers deliberately sabotaging
 production and accepting money
 for their trouble. When it gets to the
 so-calIed ''Kharkov center" and "Moscow center''-and particularly when it bars the doors for a closed
 session on matters involving foreign goyernments-the larger propor- A Melodrama
 Having advertised the trial as d melodrama, the press is doing its
 best to keep word with it's clientele. especially abroad. In a judicial pro- ceeding as complicated as this all perties can be exhumed by glib journalists. They find a Judas or two, several Roskolnikoffs, a hloodthirsty prosecutor. rows of pallid faces, etc.
 The fact that the trial is set in employ such worm tricks so much stronger. encouraging much loose writing about "Dostoievsky char cters," "Slav fatalism' and the like.
 The truth is that. taken in the
 large, this trial is remarkable for it's resemblance rather than it's contrast as compared to trials the world over. The chief difference, indeed, is it's lack of the usual awe-inspir- ing formalities: The free and easy way in which witnesses make speeches and argue with court and lawyers. the absence of gowns and wigs and rituals. The informality gives the place a rather tame ap- pearance. A stranger entering this lcollonaded red-draped hall in the house of trade unions, so often the scene of labor conventions, might think for a moment that another such convention was under way. Real and Grim
 Under the same surface, of course, the matter is real and grim enough. |Fifty-three men face the possibility
 of death. Right or wrong, the coun- l try considers these men an indi- cation Of larger menace. But cer- |tainly there is little of the unusual and nothing of the brutal--in the procedure. The defendants get full Opportunity to speak for themselves. There is very little of the "yes or no" type of questioning, and wit neeses speak without restraint. The presiding judge curbs the prose- cutting attorneys at least as often
 as the defense lawyers.
 The trial Is "Schauspiel," as |reported abroad, only in the sense that all sensational trials are such. [The anxiety of the public to get a glimpse of the court is not without parallel in other lands. One need |only think Of certain notorious mur- der trials in America. The press here makes as much to-do about political crime as the American press does about sexual crimes, and the public responds accordingly. The incisive Nicholas krylenko. chief prosecutor. is indeed an inter- esting personality. Short. compact. electrically alert. with mind that seems to work with the force and precision Of a machine, he seems to have been cast for his role. Yet de- |scriptions of him 'prowling like a wolf' are just so much journalistic