Word: radek
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...sentencing not to Death but to ten years' imprisonment Karl Radek and the onetime Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Comrade Grigoriy Sokolnikov, Stalin's Supreme Court spared two Big Reds with friends among journalists and statesmen of the World - although many attributed the sudden mercy twist of Moscow Justice to discreet, telegraphic intervention by the Premier of France...
...Soviet archcriminal, guiltiest of the Old Bolsheviks on trial, was "That Monkey" Radek, depicted horribly grimacing and malevolent on the placards which the Moscow crowds were about to shoulder in the Red Square, shouting exultation that Karl Radek was to be put to death. Up to about four months ago, Comrade Radek lived in an elaborate penthouse, atop a new Bolshevik skyscraper, and was honored as the No. 1 journalist of the Communist world, writing daily in Stalin's official newsorgan Izvestia. That Radek should have confessed to high treason and blanket "Trotskyist" conspiracy against the Soviet Fatherland...
Everyone last week who believed Izvestia, now raking Radek savagely in its columns, everyone who believed in Soviet Justice saw clearly that in Arch-Traitor Radek's case the only possible sentence was Death-and this had been predicted in cables not only by Walter Duranty of the New York Times but by all the big wire services out of Moscow...
When at last came the news that the Supreme Court had handed down 13 Death sentences but spared "That Monkey" Radek and three other self-confessed arch-traitors last week, the crowds in the Moscow alleys were at first stupefied, incredulous. Had not Radek just been called by everyone such things as "the worst betrayer since Judas Iscariot"-the betrayer of Stalin? However, Communists are the world's most disciplined Party. With almost no grumbling, the Radek placards were discarded, the caricatures of other Old Bolsheviks doomed to Death raised high, and shouting, cheering into the Red Square swarmed...
...That Monkey" Radek almost certainly knew in advance he would be spared, for he behaved in Court last week with consummate impudence. He called a Supreme Court Judge "Comrade" - implying there were traitors and "Trotskyists" even on the Bench. He intimated that all the confessions were Ogpu-cooked lies, his own included...