RUSSIA: Execution Week

Eighty-three times last week Soviet firing squads spat lead. The crimes for which the guilty died were instructive. Specimens:

For “selling smuggled diamonds” two Moscow jewelers met death. (The American Jewelers Association estimates that 50% of the diamonds sold in the U. S. have been smuggled.)

For “encouraging private trading in fish and caviar” 14 minor Soviet officials were shot at Astrakhan, since their villainy had resulted in a sales loss of $4,500,000 to the Government Seafood Trust. One hundred and nine accomplices in this orgy of “CounterRevolution” (highest Soviet crime) were sentenced to imprisonment.

For “organizing a religious society called The Union of Those Who Praise His Name, which was in fact a counter-revolutionary association of priests and land-owners,” 15 persons, including two one-time Tsarist army officers, were shot at Rostov in the Northern Caucasus.

For “opposition to the Government’s grain collecting campaign” (TIME, Oct. 28), 50 “kulaks” (rich peasants) were executed in various parts of the Soviet Union. This crime of crimes is committed in three ways: 1) by failing to sow all one’s grain fields (a shameful hotbed of this vice is the district of Kuba, where only 4% of the fields were sown last Spring); 2) by refusing to sell grain to the Government collector at the price fixed in Moscow; 3) by inciting others to such “opposition.”

There were no executions last week for murder pure and simple. Killing is no capital crime in the Soviet Union unless committed in some way against the State, for example by shooting a grain collector.