David Borisovich Riazanov (Goldenach), one of the “old Guard” of Bolshevism and a personal friend of Lenin, has been dismissed from his post as Director of the Marx-Engels Institute by the Central Committee of the Union of Soviet Republics, according to an official announcement made here to-day.
Simultancesly, the Presidium of the Central Control Committee of the Communist Party has announced Ryazanov’s expulsion from the Communist Party for “giving assistance to the Menshevik interventionists, and for treason to the Communist Party”.
Ryazanov, who is 61 years of age, was regarded as the leading authority on Marxism. He was the editor of the complete works of Marx published for the German Social Democratic Party before the war. The Communist Academy, which he founded, only recently published an official biography of him in which he was described as the greatest expert on Marxism, and the history of Socialism, whose great merit it is that he has always lived for the working-class and served the interests of the proletarian revolution.”
There are six Jews included in a list of 14 persons named in an indictment published to-night by the Government, who are to be put on trial before the Supreme Court on Sunday, March 1st., on the charge of being members of a Menshevist counter-revolutionary party.
They are Abram Moiseevich Einzberg, 52 years of age, an economist; Lazar Borisovitch Zalkind, 45 years of age, an economist; Boris Markovich Berlatsky, 41 years of age, formerly connected with the Gosbank; Moisei Isaevich Teitelbaum, 54 years of age, former member of the Labour Commissariat; Isaac Ilyitch Rubin, 55 years of age, Professor of Economics and formerly a member of the Bund, and Aaron Lvovich Sokolovsky, 47 years of age, an economist and a former member of the United Jewish Socialist Democratic Party.
Vasily Viadimirovitch Sher, 47 years of age, a former member of the Gosbank, another of the accused, was at first thought to be a Jew, on account of his name, but he is not Jewish.
One of the points in the act of indictment is that these 14 accused were connected with the Menshevists, countered evolutionary leaders abroad, headed by the Bundists Abramovitch and Dan.
All the accused are charged with seeking to bring about the restoration of capitalism in Russia, by encouraging foreign intervention from abroad, industrial wrecking inside the country, and endeavouring to bring about the disorganisation of the Red Army.
The Second Socialist International is mentioned in the act of indictment as the centre of the intervention programme. The act of indictment alleges that two members of the Central Committee of the Menshevist Party abroad visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1928 and the spring of 1929, the first of them being Abramovich and the second Brounstein. They came, the indictment says, as the agents of the Western Social Democratic Parties and the Second International in order to conduct counter-revolutionary work.
All the accused, the closing paragraph of the indictment says, when they were confronted with the facts proving their guilt confessed to the charges contained in the indictment.
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