A Jew has been sentenced to death for alleged “economic crimes” for the first time since the ouster of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, it was reported here today from Moscow.
The Soviet newspaper Trud said that M. Rabinovich, 43, was convicted and condemned by a Moscow city court for leading a ring of factory employes who allegedly made more than $407, 000 “by conspiring to steal slate-owned materials, selling goods made there from for personal profit.”
It was charged that Rabinovich and accomplices, most of them with Jewish names, took jobs and then “did business on the side” by reducing the amount of material designated for each garment. “The material stolen in this manner was then used for private manufacture of dresses, shirts, sweaters, and underwear,” the Soviet newspaper stated. It was alleged that Rabinovich organized the conspiracy.
From 1962 to 1964 more than 150 persons were executed for economic crimes in the Soviet Union; over one-half were Jews. It was charged in many quarters that the alleged criminals were victims of anti-Semitism. The trials halted abruptly at the time of Khrushchev’s ouster.
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