Sir: I wonder if I might offer a few points
in support of Sir Denis Brogan's splendid 'Table Talk' (11 October)? Firstly, it can hardly be stressed too often that even now many of the 'guilty men' in the West who sup- ported Stalin in those dreadful days are still unrepentant. Robert Conquest gives a glaring example in the current Encounter when he re- fers to a letter in the SPECTATOR as late as 1966 by the appalling Pat Sloan, defending his grue- some record. I would also instance the case of the former Labour MP, D. N. Pritt, QC, who wrote to the Manchester Guardian in the 'thirties saying the confessions must be genuine because if there had been torture these veteran Bolsheviks could have 'supported' it! And when he published his memoirs only a few months ago, most of the rev iews I saw in the 'respectable' papers went out of their way to say what a nice fellow he was.
Then there is one matter %%Ilia I do not think anyone else has alluded to. It was a common plea on the part of the apologists for Stalin in the West that the confessions must be genuine because it was impossible that all the prisoners in the show trials should have con- fessed under duress and not one stand out. Even as a theory the argument was, of course, monstrous. But they all overlooked the fact that there really was an exception and it was fully reported in all the papers at the time. His name was Krestinsky and he was a former Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. When the dreaded Vyshinsky read out his confession in open court, Krestinsky was brave enough to repudiate it as having been forced out of him. Needless to say, sensation in court. The judge immediately closed the hearing fur the day. The following day Krestinsky was back in the dock and duly repudiated his repudia- tion.- The sycophants in the West did not ask what had happened to him during the night.
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