How Stalin sent three Russian Gandhians to the gallows...now the story can be told

Sixtyfour years ago, nine Russians were convicted in what was registered as case no 53212 in a Leningrad court. Three -- L Adler, P Zelenkov and V Ekshurskie -- were sent before the firing squad, and the rest sentenced to varying terms in prison.

Their crime? Precious little was known about it, except that the accused belonged to the same local organisation -- Mr Leningrad -- and were 'traitors to the government'.

Now, half a century later, Russian historian Mikhail Khryuchkov, in an article run by the government-owned monthly Russia, tells us the details.

The Leningraders's crime, it would appear, was that they, all staunch admirers of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, wanted to end the ongoing violence of the Stalin era! Their objective, they proclaimed at the trial, was to 'eliminate violence 'through non-violence.'

After Tolstoy's death, his admirers -- 'Tolstoyians', as they came to be known -- had formed several groups in Leningrad, Moscow and other cities to 'fight tyranny with non-violence.'

Mr Leningrad was one of such. And in February 1933, the Stalin government arrested them for 'working against the Russian government and the Bolsheviks.'

''We had openly advocated Gandhian methods for fighting violence. But arrests carried out by the authorities have disrupted our spreading and popularising Gandhism in the country,'' the accused said at the trial. ''Their only weapon was Gandhism, but Russia is not India,'' comments Khryuchkov.

Though the Leningraders's descendants had approached the courts to restore their fathers's fair name after Stalin's death, nothing was done about it. It was only in 1989, during the twilight years of the Mikhail Gorbachev era, that the courts declared the Leningraders not guilty.

It has taken another eight years for the true details to come out.