Bertrand Russell And Moscow Trials

BERTRAND RUSSELL AND MOSCOW TRIALS

http://ghandchi.com/21-Bertrand_Russell_Trib.htm

In 1930s, right before the start of WWII, Stalin started Moscow Trials, purging many of his Communist Party "comrades", on the charges of being Nazi's fifth column, etc.

Among the ones murdered, were people like Bukharin, who had gone along with Soviet repressive system for a long time.

In those years, in the West, Bertrand Russell started a tribunal where Bertrand Russell and his colleagues created something like the predecessor of what later, after WWII, became courts of examining crimes against humanity.

It is interesting that this first example of such a tribunal, by Bertrand Russell, was not really about War Crimes and was about crimes of a dictatorial regime against its own people using spurious charges.

I hope the folks who have more literature about this *first* 1930s’ experiment of Bertrand Russell, to post them on SCI.

As you may all know, in later years, Bertrand Russell was the pioneer of War Crimes tribunals against the United States, because of the crimes of the U.S. in the Vietnam War. It is interesting to note that the U.S. reluctance of pursuing the crimes against humanity idea is because of its own problems.

Sam Ghandchi

Oct 14, 1999

http://www.ghandchi.com/index-Page4.html

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* The above article was first posted on SCI (soc.culture.iranian) Usenet newsgroup on Oct 14, 1999