The Daily Worker

Fight Pilsudski Terror Sentence in Hromada Case

(Red Aid Press Service)

WARSAW, (By Mail).- On the 28th of February the proceedings were timed to begin in the appeal of the members of the West White-Russian workers and peasants Hromada who were sentenced to terrible terms of hard labour in Vilna last year. The chief accused are the ex-deputies Tarashkievitch, Voloshin, Miotla and Rak-Michailovski. The 37 accused were sentenced to a total of 209 years hard labour.

The process against the Hromada was one of the measures of Pilsudski to make the Hinterland secure in case of war with the Soviet Union. The idea being that if the workers and peasants in West White-Russia were robbed of their class-organization and its leaders, they would be unable to offer any resistance to the war plans of Pilsudski against the Soviet Union for which West White-Russia would form the jumping off base. West White-Russia and the Western Ukraine are being turned into military encampments for the war against the Soviet Union and under such circumstances it is perfectly clear that Pilsudski needs above all peace in these districts, even if it is only the peace of the graveyard.

Pilsudski knows that he cannot corrupt the workers and the poor peasants and for them and their leaders therefore he has only the noose, but he hopes to corrupt the White-Russian bourgeoisie and urban petty-bourgeoisie and a number of guarded concessions have been made recently with this end in view. The persecutions of the toilers are increasing. The prisons are full with political prisoners and armed force is being continually used to crush strikes, etc., workers having been shot down in Kossov, Landvorov, Lemberg and in other places.

The upper classes are falling away and the national-revolutionary movement in West White-Russia and in the Western Ukraine is taking on a purely class character. It must be feared that the Warsaw court will confirm the brutal sentences passed upon the leaders of the toiling peasants and the workers. However, the workers of the world must protest immediately and demand the freedom of these class-fighters from the Polish prisons.

MOSCOW, (By Mail).- The Committee for the Defense of the Hromada in Minsk has issued an appeal to the workers and intellectuals of the Soviet Union and of the whole world calling upon them to protest against the suppression of the Hromada and the burying alive of its leaders. The appeal bears the signatures of 17 prominent leaders, scientists, authors and others in the Soviet Union.