Soviet Justice for the Jews: Change in Policy Foreshadowed Which May Have Favourable Effect on Futur

A change of policy in the methods of administering justice in the Soviet Union is anticipated as a result of severe criticism of the Soviet judiciary made today in the Soviet official organ, “Izvestia”, by Aaron Soltz, one of the heads of the Commissariat of Justice, in connection with which 700 prisoners have been released and the sentences of 108 others have been reduced.

The Soviet method of dealing justice is based not on the nature of the crime, but of the criminal. A crime committed by a workman may receive a third of the sentence that the same crime would receive if committed by an intellectual or professional. The class approach to justice has been a cause of irritation and suffering to all citizens who are not included in the class of proletarians. The judges in Russia are in nearly all cases workmen from the bench and factory. They have been given some legal training, but what they are taught to stress most is the origin of the criminal and his class, and he is sentenced accordingly as his class is one that the Soviet State looks upon with favour or ill-will.

Jews in particular, have suffered in this way from unjust sentences. Mostly classed as merchants and Nepmen, many of them were given sentences of three and even five years, when the normal sentence for their offence would have been a month. There has been a good deal of personal malice, too, in the meting out of sentences. It is dangerous for the accused to enlist the services of a lawyer because the judge being a workman resents interference from an intellectual, and the appearance of a lawyer on the scene automatically prejudices the case. Very often, if a lawyer does appear, the judge will tell him to sit down, and that the court knows how to run its own business.