Evening star., 1934-12-27
"Capitalistic Powers"

MooCOW ldlcoI thpldIldtlOll OI tne
assassination of Sergei Kiroff, Dictator
Stains Leningrad lieutenant, is that
he was victim of a plot supported
by "capitalistic powers which aimed
to take the life of Stain and over
throw the whole bolshevik leadership
OF Soviet Russia. These lurid allega-
tions are contained in a confession
said to have been made by Leonid
Nicolaieff, who killed Kiroff, and now
issued by the Moscow authorities with
a great fanfare, in evident justifica-
ton of the terrorism with which they
have been stamping out revolt, or Sus-
picion thereof, since Kiroff was MUIR
dered on December l. One hundred
and three persons have paid the death
penalty in the ensuing purge" and a
group of formerly prominent Com
munists, headed by Gregory Zino-
vieff and Leo Kameneff, is in custody.
These are the officially admitted vic
tins of the purge" How many more
have been put out of the way, either
by firing squads after m-head
trials or through exile to frozen
Siberia, probably will never be known.
The official announcement of Nico-
laieff'S confession fails to identify the
"capitalistic powers" which he in
eliminates. He duplicates Leon Trot-
sky, apostle of world revolution, now
living in exile in France, and tells Of
a mysterious foreign consul" in Len
lngrad, from whom he received 5000
rubles to carry on activities against
Soviet leaders. This foreign consul, -
with whom Nicolaieff is said to have
confessed frequent visits, undertook to
establish contact with Trotsky on be-
half of Nicolaief and his fellow
plotters. The confession narrates that
the assassin of Kiroff believed" that
capitalistic powers would move against
the Soviet Union and force a change
In Soviet leadership, which Stains
enemies within the country were to
foment through terroristic acts. The
shot that killed Kiroff, according to
the confession version, was to be the
signal for action against the Soviet
government" Nicolaieff is reported to
have confessed that "our group" put
its faith in armed Intervention and
AID from several foreign powers"
Soviet methods, where political
conspiracies are concerned, are so
devious that it is impossible to know
the true inwardness of and actual
justification for the "capitalistic pow
ers" charge attributed to Nicolaier.
Recently the Soviet organ Lsvestia de-
clared that the Zinovieff group had
turned to Fascist political banditry''
and was fostering IAN internal coun-
ter revolution linked with foreign
FaSciSm." That may have been a
veiled reference either to the Brown
shirt Fascism of Germany or the
Black-shirt Faseism of Italy. The fierce
antipathy of both Hitler and Musso-
linl to communism of the Moscow
brand is well known. In this connec-
ton it will be remembered that at
the time of the Nazis blood purge
last Summer, one of its conspicuous
victims was alleged to have been en-
gagged in treasonable traffic with some
unnamed foreign government. There
is close resemblance between that
accusation and the Nicolaieff CON
fession" that "capitalistic powers" have
been conspiring for the destruction of
the Soviet.
To what degree these DEVELOPMENTS
are alibis for the reign of terror which
the Stain dictatorship has found it
necessary to institute can only be
guessed. From any standpoint the
conclusion is inescapable that beneath
the surface there is a ferment of re-
sentiment and revolt, famed and
stirred by rival political ambitions
that requires those now in control to
resort to ruthless and drastic meas
ures of suppression. One obvious way
of whipping up popular support among
the wavering proletariat would be to
propagate the theory that the state
is threatened from without. That may
be the real purpose of the "capitalistic