The rules of the game
Sir: el hesitate to cross swords with Tibor Smuely (28 March), whom I regard as the shrewdest of all the commentators on the com- munist world, but I think he is wrong in adopt- ing Koestler's explanation of the reason why hardened Bolsheviks made utterly preposterous confessions in the show trials.
Even when I first read Darkness at Noon I fancied that the theory that they felt they must not damage their Revolution (which Stalin had already murdered) to be too subtle for me. But since then Stalin himself has made it all clear. In a letter from the Master which Khrushchev read in the 'secret speech' to the twenty-first Congress. we find his plain instruction in the case of the leading Bolshevik (nay, Stalinist), Kossior. It was a prescription for 'beating, beat- hig and more beating.'
I see no point in looking for subtle explana- tions when simple ones are not only available but proven.
L. E. Weid berg
14 Templewood Avenue, London NW3
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