Professor Rubin, one of the six Jews on trial in the big Menshevik conspiracy action here (who is incidentally a brother-in-law of the Bundist leader Abramovitch, who figures prominently in the act of indictment) confessed to-day under examination by the State Prosecutor, Krylenko, that it was on his account that Professor Ryazanov, the famous Bolshevik theoretician, Who was dismissed from his post as head of the Marx-Engels Institute and expelled from the Communist Party for treason on the same day that the proceedings against the accused were announced, was brought into the affair, only because of his anxiety to shield him (Professor Rubin).
Professor Rubin tried desperately to save his teacher and friend from being dragged into the case, but Krylenko aucoeeded in showing that Professor Ryazanov had been aware of Rubin’s Menshevik activity, and had shielded him out of friendship for his pupil and co-worker.
Professor Rubin said that it was Professor Ryazanov who had indirectly warned him that his arrest was imminent, and an hour after he had received the warning he had handed Ryazanov a packet of Menshevist documents, ostensibly for scientific study, so that they should be in safe keeping. Ryazanov had hesitated for a few minutes, he said, before accepting the packet.
Krylenko tried to interpret his statement to mean that Ryazanov knew of the contents of the packet and had committed himself to the Menshevists. Pressed by Krylenko, Rubin testised that he had known Professor Ryazanov since 1920, and that Ryazanov had helped him with his work and had protected him when he (Rubin) had been previously under arrest.
With tears in his eyes, Rubin pleaded that all that Professor Ryazanov had done for him was prompted entirely by his personal friendship, and that there was no political motive whatever for his actions. Ryazanov is in no way connected in the movement, he insited. I plead guilty, he said, to having misused Ryazanov’s good nature.
Krylenko retorted that Ryazanov was too astute a revolutionary not to have known the significance of his action in shielding a Menshevik and taking Menshevist documents into his safe keeping. If he did so, he said, the only conclusion is that he was bound to the Menshevist cause politically.
The “Pravda” refers to Professor Ryazanov to-day as “a Talmudist book-worm” and “a reader of Marx, but no Marxist”.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
