The Daily Alaska empire., 1938-03-26
The Moscow Lesson
(NeW York Times)


 For an overwhelming human interest story, this generation has had no such spectacle as the latest Moscow treason trial in its final stages. But it's historic signifance far transcends the personal drama. What has happened and is happening to Soviet Russia is of vastly more importance than the fate of Stalin his opponents We witnessing today the moral and intellectual collapse of com munism.
 To read that lesson it is not necessary for us to decide whether Bukharin Rykov and their associates guilty innocent. It is enough that Salins in- dictment should have been presented and the trial held. If the Stalin charges are true, what is this Communist Russia in its twentyfrst year? It is only the old Russia which cyncs defined as an absolutism tempered by assassination An autocrat who calls himself a Communist reigns, and the only way in which his opponents get hearing is by murder. Here is the twenyfirst year of what its voares call the greatest event in human history and what all of regard the greatest social experiment of our time and it is the old story of ruthless violence from above comtered by desperate violence from below; If the Staln version is true.
 But if the indictment does not tell the truth and the defendants confessng to crimes which they did not commit we are plainly not living in the new human society of the Communist dream. We are back in the torture chambers of the Aztecs and the Druids We have not changed human nature in Russia by abolishing the system capitalist explo taton. We have the same old human nature com peting, Stan is right for the privilege of operating
 system of State exploitation, and using any weapon that lies ready to hand.
 It is the same intellectual dilemma if the Moscow proceedings explained in terms of Russian "psy- choogy. People will often be heard say that they have read too many Dostoievsky novels not believe anything is possible in Russia Dostoevsky has pre- pared them. the one hand, for Russian physicians who poison their patients or, the other hand for Russian physicians who confess to murders of which they innocent But if this is true and the Russians apart, the idea of world revolu- tion is bankrupt. Obviously experiment is no experiment which has validity outside the labora- tory. Plain people everywhere have been saying that communism might do for Russia but not for their this argument, At the very time when he is summon ing the workers of all countries to join Russia in world revolution he does his best to prove that Russia stands outside the world
 We come, finally, to the question of social planning in the light of the Moscow trial Soviet Russia is our first and greatest example of planned social order Her first Fve-Year Plan has been initiated all over the world including the rival Relationships The idea cf planning. in various degrees has prestige every where the substitute for drift blind competition It is ideal which calls up the picture of concave of philosophers and saints administering the affairs of nation in perfect wisdom and selflessness in a spirit of moderation and compromise But the picture of Soviet Russia painted in the Moscow trials is ous competition It is planned order in which the plans are determined in the last analysis by firing squads and assassination.
 Moscow compels to look with kndlier eye on our alleged chaotic democracy.