The choice of the person who was to commit the murder has always
served as the basis for the invention of lies and legends about the
actual murder itself. They have always chosen persons to whom - in
the event of their arrest - credible tales about motives other than
the orders of the Kremlin, motives of a personal or political
character, could be imputed, so as to conceal the fact from the court
that the order to murder was issued by Moscow.
In the case of Petlura, a Jew, Schwarzbart, was instructed by Moscow
to carry out the murder. He received orders to give himself up of
his own accord to the police as a Communist agent, in order to start
a political trial in this way. Thus there was a two-fold purpose
behind this murder: to murder Petlura who was a danger to the
Bolsheviks, and to direct the political trial of this murder in such
a way that the person of Petlura and the Ukrainian government which
he represented, as well as the national liberation movement, which
was a danger to Moscow, could be defamed from the political point of
view. It was Schwarzbart's task during this trial to conceal the
part played by the Russian GPU in this murder and to pose as a
national avenger of the Jewish people for the brutal pogroms
committed against them by various anarchist groups, who operated in
Ukraine during the years of the revolution, that is from 1919 to
1921, and in the interests of Russia also fought against the
Ukrainian state. The blame for the pogroms carried out by these
groups was to be imputed to Petlura. By planning the trial in this
way the Russians managed to gain a two-fold success. In the first
place, they succeeded in winning over most of the Jews in the world
for the defence of the Communist agent Schwarzbart and in arousing
anti-Ukrainian feelings, which, incidentally, persisted a long time,
amongst the Jews, and, secondly, as a result of the unjust verdict of
the Paris court, the Russians and other enemies of an independent
Ukraine were able to obtain "the objective judgement of an impartial
court in an unprejudiced state," which could then be used in
anti-Ukrainian propaganda. For years the Russians made use of this
judgement in order to defame Petlura in the eyes of the world and to
misrepresent the Ukrainian state government which he represented and
the Ukrainian liberation movement as an anti-Semitic, destructive and
not a constructive state movement, which would be capable of ensuring
human democratic freedoms to the national minorities in Ukraine. The
jury of the Paris court, who consisted for the most part of
supporters of the popular front at that time and of socialist
liberals, refused to believe the testimony of the numerous witnesses
of various nationalities, which clearly proved that Petlura had
neither had any share in the pogroms against the Jews, nor could be
held in any way responsible for them. They ignored the actual facts
of the murder, and by their acquittal of the murderer rendered
Bolshevist Moscow an even greater service than it had expected. Thus
Moscow scored two successes. But it did not score a third, for the
Paris trial did not help Moscow to change the anti-Russian attitude
of the Ukrainians into an anti-Semitic one or to conceal its
responsibility for the murder of Petlura from the Ukrainians.
(Anonymous, Murdered by Moscow: Petlura - Konovalets - Bandera,
Ukrainian Publishers Limited, London, 1962, pp. 8-9)
Three reflections arise from the Schwartzbard assassination:
(1) Juror historians. One wonders whether the jurors in a criminal case are
competent to arrive at a fair determination of historical truth, or whether they are
more likely to bring with them personal convictions of historical truth which are
likely to be unshaken by the evidence.
(2) French justice. The acquittal of a self-confessed assassin might be an outcome
peculiar to French justice. Other Western states might more typically require the
conviction of a self-confessed assassin, and consult his motives only to assist in
determining the severity of sentence. A comment which in part reflects on the French
acquittal:
It is a strange paradox that the once so sacred right of asylum, even
for the spokesmen of hostile ideologies and political trends,
nowadays does not even include the protection of the fundamental
rights of life of the natural allies of the West in the fight against
the common Russian Bolshevist world danger.
(The Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN),
Munich, December 1961, in Anonymous, Murdered by Moscow: Petlura
Konovalets - Bandera, Ukrainian Publishers Limited, London, 1962, p.
65)
(3) True-believer assassins. If an assassin is sent by the Kremlin, then is it
necessary for the Kremlin to find one who is personally committed to the
assassination? The answer is yes. This is because a Soviet assassin sent to Paris
has some opportunity to defect and to seek political asylum. He might choose to do
so to escape totalitarianism, to raise his standard of living, to avoid going through
