Letter: The Death Penalty in Soviet Russia (1942)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from a reader the following letter about the paragraph in our August issue : —

24/8/42.

Dear Sirs,

In the August issue of the Socialist Standard it is stated that a reader, on enquiring by telephone at the Soviet Embassy as to the truth or otherwise of Boris Souverine’s statement that children in the U.S.S.R. are liable to the death penalty for theft from the age of 12 years upwards, was informed that this statement is false, and that the death penalty applies only to people of 18 years of age and more.

Boris Souverine (formerly leader of the Communist Party of France, and a man with considerable experience of Soviet life) makes the charge on page 612 of his biography entitled “Stalin,” but unfortunately does not give the reference.

The reference, however, can be found by anyone who is interested, in “Stalin’s Russia,” by Max Eastman, friend of Lenin and Trotsky, and formerly editor of the “Liberator,” the only American magazine to support the Bolsheviks from the day they came to power.

On pages 28 and 29 of that work Max Eastman says :

“In the spring of 1935 Stalin’s government issued a decree which made the death penalty for theft—adopted for adults three years before—applicable to minors from the age of twelve. When this fact was announced at a congress of the French Teachers’ Federation in August of the same year, the Stalinists in the Federation indignantly denied it. Being shown a copy of Isvestia (April 8, 1935) containing the decree, they lapsed into silence, but they were ready next day with the information that ‘under Socialism children are so precocious and well educated that they are fully responsible for their acts’ ! It is but a reflection of the manner in which this ideology is being stretched to cover every saddest thing in Russia.”

The law is referred to in many other works on Soviet conditions and I should imagine it is too late in the day for the matter to be disposed of by an anonymous telephone message from the Soviet’s Embassy. The Soviet Government denied the reality of the famine of 1932-33 (in which upwards of 4,000,000 peasants died of hunger), but the facts are now admitted by every prominent newspaper correspondent who was in Russia at the time, many of them (such as Eugene Lyons and W. H. Chamberlin) Communists or Communist sympathisers. The Stalin Constitution to-day guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the Russian workers, but no one dares to raise his voice against the prevailing administration nor can anyone mention the name of a single newspaper published in opposition to the Government.

As many are puzzled by what is taking place in Russia to-day and at a loss to understand what conditions in Russia really are, I would ask your permission to append a list of several of the most informative works on the subject for the benefit of those who wish to investigate the matter further : —

“I was a Soviet Worker ” : Andrew Smith.

“The Russian Enigma ” : Anton Ciliga.

“Stalin ” : Boris Souverine.

“Stalin’s Russia ” : Max Eastman.

“The Destiny of a Revolution ” : Victor Serge.

“Assignment in Utopia ” : Eugene Lyons.

“A Fake Utopia ” : W. H. Chamberlin.

“I Speak for the Silent ” : Professor Tchernavin.

“Russia Under Soviet Rule ” : N. A. De Basily.

“Russia in Chains ” : Ivan Solonevich.

The first six of these works were written by former Communists, but all are informative, and give a picture of Soviet life and conditions that is as different from the “facts” of Communist propaganda as night is different from day. They should be obtainable at any public library.

—Yours faithfully,

H. W. Henderson