Russia is in the news again with another spectacular trial, and one that has a particular meaning for those who are not blind to the nature of the development of Russia under Stalin’s leadership.

The victims of the present trial must be nearly the last of the “old guard” of the Bolshevik movement that engineered the uprising of 1917 which, under Lenin and Trotsky, was heralded as the beginning of a world revolution to inaugurate Socialism by means of dictatorships.

Nearly twenty years have passed since then, and these years have made it quite clear that Lenin and his associates were pursuing a chimera that has had a disheartening influence upon the working-class movement everywhere.

At the moment of writing, the main trial is over, the prisoners having been executed. The published reports contain certain important points that merit notice.