Thirteenth Session

PART 1[edit source]

April 17th, 1937, at four o’clock p.m.

DEWEY: We will first repeat the statement made this morning. There will now be an opportunity for questions asked of Mr. Trotsky by the Mexican labor organizations, provided any of them wishes to ask such questions.

(The remarks of Chairman Dewey were translated into Spanish by Dr. Bach.)

ADELAIDE WALKER: They have not arrived yet.

DEWEY: We will give them an opportunity later.

FINERTY: It may be well, Mr. Dewey, to give them an opportunity after the next recess.

DEWEY: I wish now to refer to quite another matter. A considerable and quite legitimate interest has been expressed in the question of the official transcript of the testimony. I am going to ask the official stenographer if there is a statement to make on that.

GLOTZER: I have most of the record finished, and I am going to stay several days to complete the record of the last day and a half, and finish the transcript before I leave Mexico.

GOLDMAN: Before I launch into my closing speech. I am going to ask permission of the Commission to present documents just received on the Copenhagen matter, referring to the questions of Mr. Trotsky’s stay in Copenhagen, and the possibility or impossibility of Holtzman, Berman-Yurin and Fritz David having seen him in Copenhagen. There is a deposition by one Kenneth Johnson of England. There is a deposition by Raymond Molinier of France, and one by Anton Grylewicz, who is now residing in Prague. Then there is a lease showing that someone on behalf of Mr. Trotsky leased a certain villa. These I ask to be considered as part of the folder introduced into evidence as the Copenhagen exhibit, if I am not mistaken.

FINERTY: I suggest, Dr. Dewey, that these be received subject to the right of the Commission to examine the documents at some future time.

DEWEY: They will be accepted under the conditions as stated.

GOLDMAN: President of the Commission, Mr. Finerty, ladies and gentlemen of the Commission: Mine is not the task of examining and analyzing the evidence which was produced at the last two Moscow trials on behalf of the Soviet Government and here on behalf of Leon Trotsky; nor shall I attempt to answer the speeches of Vyshinsky, who prosecuted the defendants in Moscow. It is a rather unenviable position for an attorney to be in, where he is compelled to state that his client will argue his own case, but I am reconciled to being in such a position because the client is none other than Leon Trotsky. Trotsky needs no attorney to analyze the evidence and answer Vyshinsky. It is my desire simply to present before the Commissioners some aspects of the case which may be considered of a legal character, although not everything that I shall say will readily find its place under that category.

In my opening statement I asserted that if we wanted to be technical we could readily claim that all we needed to do was to raise a reasonable doubt as to the truth of the accusations made against Trotsky. It would then become the duty of the Commission – at least under the Anglo-Saxon procedure – to find Trotsky not guilty. But I stated that we would not rely on such a technicality; that, on the contrary, we would assume the burden of proving Trotsky’s innocence beyond all doubt.

Was I too rash in making such a statement? It might have seemed so before we presented our evidence. Some, perhaps, would say that my boldness was due to my failure to understand that it is impossible to prove a negative – a proposition which, taken generally, is quite correct.

If Trotsky did not plot to assassinate the leaders of the Soviet Union, if he did not enter into an agreement with the German fascists and Japanese militarists to surrender Soviet territory to these two powers, and if he did not instruct his fellow conspirators, allegedly, to commit acts of wrecking and diversion, how can he prove that by documentary evidence? There are no documents of events that never transpired or that were not even thought of.

Were it simply a question of a general accusation, without the production of any evidence by the accusers, then an accused would indeed be in a bad position. For a defendant would be unable to prove his innocence – that is, to prove a negative – if the accuser would not be required to prove his accusation by producing evidence of time, place, occasion, circumstance, etc. That is why under all forms of judicial procedure it is necessary for the prosecution to produce some evidence of the alleged guilt of the accused.

The prosecution in the Soviet Union was in a dilemma. Merely to have asserted the guilt of Leon Trotsky and his son, Leon Sedov, without producing some evidence of direct contact on the part of some of the defendants with Trotsky or his son, would have weakened its case tremendously. On the other hand, to manufacture evidence of such direct contact would mean to risk the possibility of a grave slip-up that might compromise the whole case. A perfect frame-up is just as difficult to create as it is to commit a perfect crime. In spite of the risk involved, however, the Soviet prosecution decided to pursue the second course.

That was fortunate for us. We were thereby afforded an opportunity to prove the innocence of Leon Trotsky and his son beyond all doubt. We are now able to prove a negative, to prove the innocence of Trotsky and his son, by demolishing the chief pillars of the prosecution’s evidence, by proving to the satisfaction of every person with an independent mind that the testimony of Holtzman, Berman-Yurin, Pyatakov and Romm, who claimed to have met and talked with Trotsky, was completely false. And since the testimony of all the other defendants depended directly and fully upon the testimony of those whom I have just mentioned, the whole case falls to pieces, and before us is revealed a frame-up as crude and vile as the frame-ups against Tom Mooney and Sacco and Vanzetti. It is because we knew that we had at our disposal incontrovertible evidence of the falsity of the testimony of the key witnesses in the Moscow trials that we dared to assume the burden of proving the innocence of Trotsky and his son. We were neither bold nor rash when we assumed that burden at the opening of the hearing; we were merely confident, because we knew what we had in our possession. And we have met that burden clearly and decisively.

There are those like D.N. Pritt, the English lawyer who has rushed to the defense of the Soviet prosecution, who will claim that by proving Trotsky innocent and claiming that the prosecution in the Soviet Union was a frame-up we have placed ourselves in a “grave logical difficulty” – to quote Pritt’s words in his pamphlet At the Moscow Trial. Because, forsooth, to use his own words, “it follows inescapably that Stalin and a substantial number of other high officials, including presumably the judges and the prosecutor, were themselves guilty of a foul conspiracy to procure the judicial murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev and a fair number of other persons.”

In the first place, for the Commission to find Trotsky innocent does not necessarily mean that it also finds that the prosecution is guilty of a frame-up. In the second place, I cannot for the life of me see any logical difficulties for those who, like myself, believe in the innocence of Trotsky and in the guilt of Stalin and his henchmen as creators of a frame-up. The difficulty, logical or otherwise, exists for Stalin and his prosecutors and judges, and not for those who accept Trotsky’s innocence because he is proved to be innocent.

But, then, if Trotsky is innocent, are not the defendants at the Moscow trials also innocent, and if they are innocent why did they plead guilty and why did they confess?

From a strictly logical point of view, it does not follow that to pronounce Trotsky innocent is also to assert that the defendants were innocent as well. For it may be that the defendants were guilty and dragged Trotsky in because the prosecution compelled them to do so, or because they had some personal grievance against Trotsky. But it has been our contention all through, and it is now our contention, that the defendants – at least those whose revolutionary career is known to us – were just as innocent as Trotsky is. It is true that the Commission does not have to pass on that point, just as it does not have to pass on the question of frame-up. The Commission will undoubtedly cling to its original intention of finding Trotsky and his son guilty or innocent of the charges leveled against them. That does not, however, preclude us from asserting that the inevitable conclusion of the evidence presented in the Soviet court and in this hearing is that the chief defendants of the Moscow trials are also innocent.

If innocent, why did they plead guilty? I shall not enter into a discussion of the possible reasons for their pleading guilty. We have introduced the article of Dr. Anton Ciliga, printed in the International Review, which gives a first-hand description of the methods used to extort confessions from Soviet prisoners by the GPU.

We have also referred you to Victor Serge, who, like Dr. Ciliga, spent several years in prison in the Soviet Union because of his opposition to the Stalinist régime. We sincerely hope that a sub-commission will take their evidence in Paris. Here I want to stress the point, that the fact that any one of a dozen theories advanced to explain the incredible “confessions’ proves to be incorrect, does not make the confessions true when, as a matter of fact, they have been proved false in every essential particular. The theory explaining the existence of a certain phenomenon may be incorrect; that does not, however, do away with the phenomenon. I hope that all of the Commissioners, as well as the rest of us, will live long enough to get a true confession by the GPU, explaining the methods used to compel the defendants to give false testimony against themselves and Trotsky and his son.

A legitimate question arises: Since the defendants pleaded guilty, what was the necessity for their lengthy confessions and the voluminous testimony? The answer by the Stalinist attorneys is that upon a plea of guilty it is proper for a court to hear evidence for possible mitigation of punishment. That is correct. But if that were the real reason and not simply a pretext, we would not have close to five hundred pages of testimony printed in an official report of the Zinoviev-Kamanev trial. If that were the real reason and not simply a pretext, the Commissariat of Justice of the USSR would not print those reports in various languages and sell and distribute them by the tens of thousands.

It is clear, both from a reading of the official reports of the two last trials and from the nature of the distribution of those reports. that the purpose for the taking of the defendants’ testimony was not to determine the degree of punishment but to convince a skeptical world.

Obviously, there were far better methods that the prosecution could have used to convince an astonished and skeptical world opinion. It would be asserting that Stalin is the greatest of fools to say that he did not realize that trials involving leaders of the October Revolution in an alleged conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and to help Hitler and the Mikado would cause the greatest of excitement. Was he anxious to allay all doubts? It could have been accomplished very easily. Responsible organizations could have been invited to send their attorneys and representatives to talk privately with the accused, to cross examine them at the trial if necessary. Doubters and cynics could have been put to rout had such a procedure been followed. It was a duty that the leader of the Soviet Government had to the workers of the Soviet Union and the workers throughout the world.

Oh, yes – advantage can be and has been taken of the technicality that the Soviet Government is a sovereign state, and it is not meet and proper for a sovereign state to have anyone interfere with its functioning. But such an attitude is false to the very roots, and only condemns those who advance it, as lacking in an attitude of responsibility to the working masses. For the sake of clearing Soviet justice of all suspicion, the Soviet Court was in duty bound to do the very thing I suggested. The Soviet Government, under Lenin and Trotsky, did this very thing when the Social Revolutionaries were on trial, and it was proof that they had nothing to hide. The failure of the Stalinist Government to do the same thing, the haste with which the defendants were tried and executed, are very powerful bits of circumstantial evidence that the accusations could not Stand the light of day.

To this hearing the Commission invited our adversaries and enemies to come and cross examine our chief witness, Leon Trotsky.

I am only sorry that they did not accept the invitation of the Commission. Your invitation indicated a sincere desire to arrive at the truth; their refusal to accept indicated a feeling on the part of our enemies that they knew they could not possibly shake our testimony, which is based on absolute truth.

Oh, if we had only been invited to cross examine the witnesses and defendants at the Moscow trials! How eagerly and gladly we would have accepted such an invitation! I understand that more Moscow trials are to come. Let the Soviet prosecution invite me to be present and cross examine anyone testifying to the same things that the defendants of the last trials testified to. I don’t claim to be among the best cross examiners, but I can say with great confidence that had any fairly good lawyer been permitted to cross examine the defendants at the Moscow trials, this hearing would not be necessary. Out of their own mouths it could have been proved that the principal defendants were lying against Trotsky and against themselves.

Here I want to mention something about the nature of our evidence. I raise this question because petty lawyers, anxious to defend the Soviet trials, will undoubtedly point out that some of our evidence would not be admissible under Anglo-Saxon rules of evidence. That may be true. In my opinion, however, the sub-commission acted wisely in not following the strict rules of evidence that prevail in American courts. First, because the sub-commission is not a court in the ordinary sense of the term; if anything, it is more in the nature of a Congressional investigation committee which investigates matters without following any strict rules of evidence; and, second, because the nature of the case is such that it is necessary to permit wide latitude in the introduction of evidence, in order to get at the truth.

FINERTY: Mr. Goldman, I don’t want to interrupt your speech, but the Commission had a legal adviser. We received all the evidence subject to investigation. Any evidence which would not be admitted as legal evidence in a court, ultimately will not be received – that is, evidence not verified by subsequent investigation. I understand that to be the sense of the Commission. Such evidence as has been received might very well be received in any court. The exhibits should be verified and an exhibit stricken out if not verified. I want to say for the Commission that we think – so as to make it clear – to say we received no evidence finally at this hearing. It is not received under rules of evidence permitting its proper introduction.

GOLDMAN: I am glad that Mr. Finerty explained the attitude of the Commission. However, I must say frankly that I don’t agree with that attitude, for the following reasons: In the first place, the Commission is not a court in the ordinary sense of the term, and has not the powers that a legal court has. The Commission is more of an investigating body to attempt to get at the truth. I think that Mr. Finerty will agree when I say that very frequently, in American courts, the application of the strict rules of evidence under Anglo-Saxon procedure sometimes hides the truth. I think that the Commission could be more likened to an investigating committee.

FINERTY: Mr. Goldman, I stated that we are not governed by the rules of court. We will, of course, have to take the best evidence under the circumstances. We have not accepted any evidence now, except subject to subsequent verification.

GOLDMAN: The very nature of the case, Mr. Finerty – you have to agree with me that the very nature of the case is such that to attempt to apply strict rules of evidence would mean to throw out most of the evidence. But I won’t raise this point. I think that Mr. Finerty will agree with me – at least I hope so.

Of course, the Soviet prosecution and its defenders should be the last to raise any question concerning the introduction of testimony which under Anglo-Saxon rules of evidence would be inadmissible. Conservatively speaking, ninety-five per cent of the testimony contained in the Soviet official reports of the trials with reference to Trotsky would be absolutely excluded in an American court.

The difference between that part of the evidence which we introduced at this hearing and the evidence admitted in the Moscow trials which would be excluded in an American court is this:

Whereas our “inadmissible” evidence is subject to verification if the Commission is in the least doubtful of its truth, the “inadmissible” evidence of the Moscow trials cannot be verified either because the witnesses who testified are dead or because we are unable to enter into the Soviet Union for the purpose of verifying the testimony given at the Moscow trials.

Matters have been gone into at this hearing which might be considered irrelevant. On our part, we have not objected to a single question put by any of the Commissioners, although problems might have been involved that could not possibly throw any light on the real issue – that is, whether or not Trotsky is guilty of the charges made against him. It was evident that Trotsky was willing to discuss all questions of history and theory upon which there may be and there are legitimate differences of opinion.

Let me illustrate: It is well known that Trotsky is bitterly opposed to the theory of Socialism in one country. Is it the duty of the Commission to pass upon the correctness of that theory? Obviously not. It may be that certain members of the sub-commission agree with Stalin that Socialism can be built in one country. Would they be disqualified for that reason from serving on the Commission?

Of course not – unless they would draw the very far-fetched conclusion that opposition to such a theory must inevitably lead to acts of terrorism or to plots with Hitler to surrender to him some Soviet territory.

Other questions of great theoretical importance were raised. For instance, Mr. Beals, who resigned from the Commission and whose attitude was such that we can justifiably conclude that his motives in asking some questions were not of the best, wanted to know Trotsky’s attitude towards the People’s Front Government in Spain.

This question was not, of course, nearly so bad as the one whereby Mr. Beals attempted to find out whether it was not Trotsky who sent Borodin to Mexico in 1919 for the purpose of creating a Communist party and fomenting revolution. The latter question was obviously put with the express purpose of making Trotsky’s presence in Mexico impossible. Trotsky did not even refuse to answer that impermissible question. Of course, he had nothing to conceal, for the simple reason that he never had anything to do with Borodin. On the question of Spain, I doubt whether there are any members on the full Commission who will agree fully with Trotsky. Can it possibly be, however, that the Commission will undertake to pass on the correctness of Trotsky’s ideas as to the tactics to be followed in Spain? That is hardly conceivable. Much less is it conceivable that the Commission, because it disagrees with Trotsky on the Spanish situation, would find him guilty of plotting against the Soviet leaders.

Does this mean that Trotsky’s theories have nothing to do with the charges made against him? Not in the least. We have contended from the beginning that Trotsky’s theories, expounded for four decades, would in themselves be sufficient to disprove the accusations against him. Trotsky’s theories are very relevant to the questions at issue, and we are anxious to have every member of the Commission read everything that Trotsky has written, in order to understand the absolute inconsistency between the accusations and Trotsky’s conceptions. This is of exceedingly great importance, because there are those Stalinist followers and other simpletons who, with an ignorance that is colossal, have the audacity to claim that Trotsky’s ideas on war and international revolution make the accusations against him highly probable – in fact, so probable that he is guilty. Vyshinsky has torn sentences out of their context to prove that Trotsky advocated terrorism. We challenge any honest man who can understand simple language to find a single idea in the works of Trotsky to justify in the slightest the allegations in the indictment of the Soviet prosecution or the evidence of the defendants in the trials.

Our answer to these Stalinists who speculate about the guilt of one who has devoted his whole life to the cause of the working class is, first: Every bit of evidence introduced against him is false; and, second: His whole life, everything he has said, written or done, is overwhelming proof of the falsity of the charges made against him.

Many who feel that the evidence of the defendants in the Moscow trials cannot be believed are at a loss to understand why these trials were staged. If there is anything that can clear up the mystery, it is the last statements of the main defendants. Read those last statements carefully, and the reason why the trials were held becomes clear as daylight. I read from Sokolnikov’s last plea, on page 555 of the official report of the Radek-Pyatakov trial:

I express the conviction – or, at any rate, the hope – that not one person will now be found in the Soviet Union who would attempt to take up the Trotskyite banner. I think that Trotskyism in other countries, too, has been exposed by this trial, and that Trotsky himself has been exposed as an ally of capitalism, as the vilest agent of fascism, as a fomenter of world war who will be hated and execrated by the millions everywhere.

I therefore think that inasmuch as Trotskyism, as a counter-revolutionary political force, ceases to exist, has been finally smashed, that I and the other accused, all the accused, may nevertheless plead, citizen judges, for clemency.

Read Pyatakov’s, and especially Radek’s, last pleas, and between the lines you will read as follows: “You demanded that we degrade and stultify ourselves in order to expose Trotsky and Trotskyism. Because we are broken and demoralized individuals, because of the mental torture we have suffered, because we fear that you will torture our loved ones as you are torturing us, we have agreed to say everything that you dictated to us. Now grant us our lives, and, if not, then shoot us and save our fathers, mothers, wives and children.”

Can there be any doubt that the Moscow trials are staged in order to discredit in the eyes of the Russian workers and the workers throughout the world the chief representative of the current of revolutionary Marxism, which is the greatest danger to the ideas and practices of Stalinism? Why is that necessary? Trotsky himself, in his final argument. will discuss why that is necessary.

It must be repeated over and over again that the “defendants” in the Moscow trials were not in reality defendants; they were witnesses against the real defendant, who was not present – Leon Trotsky. In passing, I might ask the Stalinist attorneys to explain how it happens that the Soviet court convicted Trotsky and his son in their absence and why, after having been convicted, they should be subject to immediate arrest and trial if they should be discovered on Soviet territory? We can expect as little logic from the Soviet court as truth.

Vyshinsky, in his closing argument in the Pyatakov-Radek trial, made a remarkable statement. “In order to distinguish truth from falsehood,” he said (page 513 of the official report of the trial), “judicial experience, is, of course, sufficient; and every judge, every procurator and every counsel for defense who has taken part in scores of trials knows when an accused is speaking the truth and when he departs from the truth for some reason or other.” From this statement something very peculiar follows, as far as Vyshinsky himself is concerned.

He was, I believe, the prosecutor in the Zinoviev trial of January 1935, where the defendants assumed moral responsibility for the assassination of Kirov. According to the very penetrating Vyshinsky, the defendants departed from the truth because, indeed, they were guilty not only of moral responsibility but of actually organizing the assassination. Did Mr. Vyshinsky at that time proclaim to the world that the defendants had departed from the truth? Perhaps he did not have sufficient experience at that time.

Then came the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial of August 1936. By that time Vyshinsky had more experience. The defendants at that time admitted that they were directly responsible for the murder of Kirov and that they plotted to murder other leaders of the Soviet Union. But they did not divulge some very important “facts’; they testified nothing at all to the alleged existence of any parallel center nor to their alleged connections with the German and Japanese Governments nor to their program for the reestablishment of capitalism. Were they lying? Vyshinsky, at the Radek trial, accused them of wholesale lying.

But why did not Vyshinsky, who has surely taken part in scores if not hundreds of trials, charge the defendants of the Kamenev-Zinoviev trial with concealing the whole truth at the time of their testimony?

The reason is obvious: Vyshinsky knew that Zinoviev, Kamenev and the other defendants were lying, for the simple reason that he knew that the defendants were repeating the lies prepared for them by Vyshinsky with the help of the GPU and at the command of the master before whom he bends his knees so frequently and humbly.

I have also had experience in scores of trials, but I claim no such penetrating powers of detecting truth from falsehood as Mr. Vyshinsky. Together with other persons of fair intelligence, I make mistakes of judgment. But there are undoubtedly many instances where all of us – and we need not be lawyers or judges or prosecutors – become possessed of a profound conviction that a certain person is or is not telling the truth.

For a week you have listened to the testimony of Leon Trotsky. Judge by the frankness of his replies, even in those instances where he knew the members of the Commission could not be in agreement with him, judge by his whole demeanor as a witness, and is it possible to conceive that Trotsky was uttering the least falsehood? In my humble opinion, only one whose mind is completely closed by ignorance, hatred and prejudice can have the least doubt about the truthfulness of the testimony presented here.

I think I am correct in saying that we all feel that we are participating in a historic event, And to me, at least, it is not historic simply because it involves Leon Trotsky, a person who has achieved a great reputation by his writings and revolutionary activities. To those of us who have devoted our lives to the struggle for a great social ideal which we believe will abolish all exploitation of man by man and which will raise mankind to an infinitely higher cultural level, the hearing which the Commission is conducting has a far greater significance than simply clearing the name of a great man who is innocent. We are anxious to clear the name of Leon Trotsky, because that will renew the faith of hundreds of thousands of workers and intellectuals in the movement which is mankind’s only hope, because that will, to some extent, heal the terrible wound inflicted on the Socialist movement by the monstrous frame-up concocted by those who have dragged the word “Socialism” into the dust.

For myself, for thousands of others who have been acquainted with Trotsky’s writings and activities, who have participated in a common struggle for the liberation of the working masses from all forms of degrading slavery, there was no necessity for a hearing, to convince us that Trotsky is innocent. We are not, we cannot be, “impartial”. For not only Trotsky, but we ourselves were subjected to attack; from the very first moment when the accusations were made we recognized that the accusers were the criminals, and not the accused.

But it would be absurd for us to deny that there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of workers and intellectuals, believers in and sympathizers with the ideas of Socialism, who have been bewildered and whose faith has been shaken. Trotsky is innocent; we are innocent; and in spite of the smallness of our number, in spite of the powerful forces arrayed against the movement represented by Trotsky, we have a profound faith that the truth will ultimately conquer. We do not blind ourselves to the tragic fact, however, that the one who is responsible for the accusations and the bureaucracy which he represents are at the head of the first workers’ state created by such huge sacrifices on the part of the Russian workers. And it is because of that, that the blow to the Socialist movement is a severe one indeed.

The Commissioners, I presume, do not see eye to eye with me on the question of the significance of this hearing for the cause of Socialism, because their ideas are not the ideas of the movement represented by Trotsky. The Commissioners may look at the whole matter simply from the point of view of affording an accused man a chance to present his case before the bar of world opinion. Very well – that is, by far, not an unimportant task. The report and verdict of the Commission will be of tremendous significance, regardless of the point of view adopted by the Commissioners as to the significance of this hearing. And the fact that your report and your verdict cannot end in a formal judgment and in a writ of execution granted by a court of law supported by all the powers of a state, does not in the slightest detract from the value of that report and verdict. On the contrary, its moral value is all the greater.

What can that report, what can that verdict be?

You have listened to the evidence; you have examined Trotsky; you can read the record. It is hardly believable that anyone, under such circumstances, should not agree with us that the innocence of Trotsky has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. We promised at the very beginning to destroy completely the structure of falsehoods erected at Moscow. We have fulfilled our promise. And if there will be those who will not be convinced by our evidence or by the report of the Commission, then they or their posterity will be convinced by the victory of the ideas represented by Leon Trotsky.

DEWEY: First, I want briefly to make a statement that I am not a lawyer, and the other members of the Commission are not lawyers. We cannot pass upon the technical question about evidence raised. We shall take under advisement the statement of Mr. Finerty, but, in advance of that, I want to say that while we cannot speak for the full Commission, I am confident that it is the attitude of the preliminary Commission that any testimony presented here that is not reasonably confirmed or verified by subsequent investigation will not be taken into account in any final report the Commission may make. On the other hand, whatever evidence or testimony we find that impugns or impeaches the evidence or testimony presented here will certainly be given due consideration, serious consideration. We will now take a recess. I wish to repeat that immediately after the recess representatives of the Mexican workers’ organizations will have an opportunity to ask questions of Mr. Trotsky.

DEWEY: I will now ask the representatives of the Mexican labor organizations to ask such questions as they wish to put to Mr. Trotsky.

(Chairman Dewey’s remarks were translated into Spanish by Dr. Bach.)[edit source]

(At this point, Ramon Garibay, the representative of the Casa del Pueblo, asks the following questions: 1. Why is Stalin persecuting Mr. Trotsky in this way? What are the reasons? 2. Where would Lenin be if he would still be alive, and if Stalin would have the same power today? 3. Has Stalin made a pact with the bureaucracy of the world? 4. Is Mr. Trotsky in accord with the world proletariat? These questions were translated by Dr. Bach.)

BACH: The workers’ delegates are from the Casa del Pueblo.

DEWEY: The first questions are presented to the Commission?

BACH: Yes; they are addressed to the Commission, and the last question is for Mr. Trotsky to answer,

DEWEY: Regarding the first three questions, we are unable to make any reply at this time, because we are down here simply to collect, in a preliminary gathering, any evidence and facts upon which the decision of the full Commission must be based. We have not as yet the privilege at this time of answering these questions. (Diego Rivera translates Dr. Dewey’s remarks into Spanish.)

LAFOLLETTE: Repeat the last question to Mr. Trotsky.

BACH: The first three questions are directed also to Mr. Trotsky, they say. So that Mr. Trotsky may answer all four. Mr. Garibay says that the first three questions are for the Commission and that they are not only for the Commission, but also for you, Mr. Trotsky.

TROTSKY: I understand.

BACH: The last one only for you, and the others for the Commission.

TROTSKY: I will only suggest that my closing arguments, genuinely closing, for this Commission – that they involve also the answers to the questions put to me by the representatives of the Mexican organizations. It would be better for them to receive the answers through the translation of my closing argument. The answers can be made in my closing argument, because they are more fully presented than in the short answer that I can give orally. I believe they would consent to accept this procedure. (Rivera translates Trotsky’s remarks.)

DEWEY: Are there more questions?

GOLDMAN: I would suggest that we proceed.

BACH: They agree that Mr. Trotsky shall answer the questions in his final speech.

DEWEY: The representative of the Pueblo labor organization says they are satisfied that Mr. Trotsky shall give his answers in his final speech. Mr. Finerty, do you want to make a statement now or later?

FINERTY: I think it might be well, Mr. Chairman, in order to make clear both to Mr. Trotsky and to Mr. Goldman and perhaps to the public, that I advised the Commission that the rule of evidence that should apply in receiving evidence here is what is well known, as a fundamental rule of evidence – “the best-evidence rule.” That is, that the Commission should take the best evidence adapted to the issues before it and which the circumstances permit. I think that in that connection I pointed out that the Commission is in a somewhat difficult position. The alleged accomplices of Mr. Trotsky are dead, and their alleged confessions are not subject to cross examination. Those who conducted the trial of the defendants, though asked to participate in this investigation and offered a full opportunity to participate in this investigation – have refused to participate, and they leave the Commission an a position where it must determine, among other things, the question of the fairness of the trials by which the Soviet Government claims to have established Mr. Trotsky’s guilt. Under these circumstances, we could only take the best evidence which in the honest judgment of the Commission, is available to it. What I have stated to the Commission, is that even this situation would not excuse the Commission in accepting Mr. Trotsky’s unsupported denial of his guilt – accepting unsupported statements not subject to cross examination by the Commission. Mr. Trotsky, in this hearing, has, as far as possible, supported his denials by circumstantial evidence, and has placed at the disposal of the Commission all his archives, all the documentary evidence to bear on this question. The Commission has tentatively accepted the depositions and sworn statements of certain persons. It is expected that these depositions or sworn statements are subject to the right of the Commission to examine these persons personally – either by this sub-commission or by the full Commission. I want Mr. Goldman to understand why I have advised the Commission that all the evidence offered by Mr. Trotsky which would not ordinarily be acceptable under strict rules of evidence has been accepted only subject to final authentication by the Commission through future investigation. I just want to make it clear that we have a practical situation to face, and in that practical situation we are endeavoring to apply only such rules of evidence, as in the best authenticated opinion, will permit the Commission to obtain the best evidence within these limits. We have received his evidence under these conditions.

DEWEY: Mr. Trotsky will now sum up.

TROTSKY: I consider my closing speech as closing only for this Commission, as I mentioned. I present only a part of my arguments today. The other part I present in writing, in order to finish tonight. I will begin with the question, why the investigation is inevitable. If you permit me, I read my statement sitting.

I. WHY IS AN INVESTIGATATION NECESSARY?[edit source]

It is entirely beyond dispute that the trials of Zinoviev-Kamenev and Pyatakov-Radek have aroused the utmost distrust of Soviet justice, among workers’ and democratic circles throughout the entire world. However, it was precisely in this affair that full clarity and unimpeachable judicial power of persuasion were absolutely necessary. The accusers, like the accused – at least the most important of them – are of world-wide renown. The aims and motives of the participants had to flow directly from their political position, from the characters of the persons involved, from their whole past. The majority of the defendants have been shot; their guilt – we assume – must have been absolutely proved! However, if one leaves aside those who can be convinced of anything, no matter what, by simple telegraphic orders from Moscow, Western public opinion has flatly refused to support the accusers and the hangmen. On the contrary, alarm and distrust have grown into horror and revulsion. Moreover, no one supposes that a judicial “mistake” has been made. The Moscow authorities could not have shot Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Pyatakov, Serebryakov, and all the others “by mistake” To lack confidence in the justice of Vyshinsky is, in the present case, directly to suspect Stalin of a judicial frame-up, with political aims. There is no room for any other interpretation.

But perhaps sentimental public opinion has been misled by preconceived sympathies for the accused? This argument was used more than once in the cases of Francisco Ferrer in Spain, of Sacco, Vanzetti and Mooney in the United States, etc. But so far as the Moscow defendants are concerned, there can be no question of partisan sympathies. The most informed section of world public opinion, it must be plainly said, no longer had either confidence in or respect for the principal defendants, in view of their numerous prevlous recantations and, above all, their conduct in court. The prosecution represented the accused, with their assistance, not as capitulators to Stalin, but as “Trotskyites’ who had assumed the cloak of capitulation. Such a characterization, to the extent that it was accepted as true, could in no way increase sympathy for the accused. Finally, “Trotskyism” itself today is represented by a tiny minority in the workers’ movement, which is in sharp struggle with all other parties and factions.

The accusers are in an incomparably more favorable position. Behind them is the Soviet Union, with all the hopes of progress which it represents. The rise of world reaction, especially in its most barbarous form – fascism – has turned the sympathies and hopes of democratic circles, even the very moderate ones, toward the Soviet Union. These sympathies, to be sure, are very hazy in character. But that is precisely why the official and unofficial friends of the USSR are not inclined, as a general rule, to unravel the internal contradictions of the Soviet régime; on the contrary, they are ready in advance to consider all opposition against the ruling stratum as voluntary or involuntary cooperation with world reaction. To this it is necessary to add the diplomatic and military ties of the USSR, taken in the general context of present-day international relations. In a number of countries – France, Czechoslovakia, to some extent Great Britain and the United States – purely nationalist and patriotic sentiments predispose the democratic masses in favor of the Soviet Government, as the adversary of Germany and Japan. It is not necessary to mention that, to cap this, Moscow has at its disposal powerful levers, tangible and intangible, with which to exert pressure on public opinion in the most widely separated layers of society. The agitation about the new Constitution, “the most democratic in the world,” which was made public, not accidentally, on the eve of the trials, has aroused still more sympathy for Moscow. An overwhelming preponderance of a priori confidence was thus assured to the Soviet Government at the outset. Despite all this, the omnipotent accusers have not convinced and have not conquered world opinion, which they tried to take unawares. On the contrary, the authority of the Soviet Government dropped sharply after the trials. Implacable adversaries of Trotskyism, allies of Moscow, and even many traditional friends of the Soviet bureaucracy, have demanded verification of the Moscow charges. It is enough to recall the steps taken by the Second International and the International Federation of Trade Unions in August 1936. In its incredibly rude response the Kremlin, which had counted on a complete and absolute victory in advance, exposed the full depth of its disappointment. Friedrich Adler, secretary of the Second International and, consequently, an implacable foe of Trotskyism, compared the Moscow trials to the witchcraft trials of the Inquisition. The well known reformist theoretician, Otto Bauer, who considers it possible to declare in the press that Trotsky is speculating on a future war (a statement which is not only false but also absurd!), is compelled, despite all his political sympathy for the Stalinist bureaucracy, to recognize that the Moscow trials are judicial frame-ups. The New York Times, an extremely prudent newspaper and far from having any sympathy for Trotskyism, sums up the end of the last trial in the following words: “The burden of proof lies not on Trotsky but on Stalin.” This single, crushing phrase reduces the juridical persuasiveness of Moscow’s court procedure to zero.

If it were not for diplomatic, patriotic and “anti-fascist” considerations, the lack of confidence in the Moscow accusers would assume incomparably more open and vigorous forms. This can be easily demonstrated by a secondary but extremely instructive example. In October of last year my book The Revolution Betrayed was published in France. Several weeks ago it appeared in New York. Not one of the many critics, most of them my adversaries – among them the former French Premier Caillaux – so much as mentioned the fact that the author of the book has been “convicted” of an alliance with fascism and Japanese militarism against France and the United States. No one, absolutely no one – not even Louis Fischer – considered it necessary to compare my political conclusions with the charges of the Kremlin. It was as if there had never been either trials or executions in Moscow. This single fact, if one thinks about it, is irrefutable proof that the thinking sections of society, beginning with the most interested and most sensitive country, France, not only have not accepted the monstrous accusation but have, quite simply, cast it out with scarcely concealed disgust.

We cannot, unfortunately, say what the stifled population of the Soviet Union thinks and feels. But in all the rest of the world the toiling masses have been seized by a tragic confusion which poisons their thought and paralyzes their will. Either the entire old generation of Bolshevik leaders, with a single and sole exception, has really betrayed Socialism for fascism, or the present leadership of the USSR has organized a judicial frame-up against the founders of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state. Yes, that is precisely how the question stands: Either Lenin’s Political Bureau was composed of traitors, or Stalin’s Political Bureau is composed of falsifiers. There is no third possibility! But it is precisely because there is no third possibility that progressive public opinion cannot, at the risk of its very existence, evade making this difficult and tragic choice and explaining it to the popular masses.

II. IS THE INVESTIGATION POLITICALLY ADMISSIBLE?[edit source]

The oft-encountered, semi-official objection that the work of the Commission can “politically harm” the USSR and help fascism constitutes – to put it mildly – a compound of stupidity and hypocrisy. Let us for a moment grant that the charges of the Court against the Opposition have some basis – that is, that dozens of men were not shot for nothing. In that case, it can be little trouble for a powerful government to produce the materials from the preliminary investigation, to fill in the gaps in the records of the court proceedings, explain the contradictions, and dispel doubts. In such case an examination could only increase the authority of the Soviet Government.

But what if the Commission laid bare the premeditated fraud of the Moscow charges? Would not political caution then dictate avoiding the risk of an investigation? Such a consideration, seldom expressed candidly and fully, is based on the craven notion that one can fight the forces of reaction with fictions, humbug and lies, as if the best remedy for curing a sickness consisted in refraining from calling it by name. If the present Soviet Government is capable of resorting to bloody judicial frame-ups to deceive its own people, it cannot be the ally of the world proletariat in the struggle against reaction. Its internal inadequacy must in this event reveal itself at the first major historic shock. The sooner the infection is exposed, the sooner the inevitable crisis comes, the greater the hope that it can still be overcome in time by the living forces of the organism. On the other hand, closing one’s eyes to disease means only to drive it deeper internally. This would lead to a great historic catastrophe.

Stalin rendered his first great service to Hitler through the theory and practice of “social-fascism.” He rendered his second service through the Moscow trials. These trials, in which the greatest moral values are crushed and violated, cannot be blotted out from the consciousness of mankind. It is possible to help the masses recover from the wound inflicted upon them by the trials only through complete clarity and the full truth.

The opposition of a certain type of “friend” to the investigation. which in itself is a crying scandal, arises from the fact that even the most zealous defenders of Moscow justice lack inner conviction of the soundness of their case. They cover their secret fears with completely contradictory and unworthy arguments. An investigation, they say, is “intervention in the internal affairs of the USSR”! But has not the world proletariat the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the USSR? In the ranks of the Comintern they still repeat: “The USSR is the fatherland of all the toilers.” A strange fatherland in whose affairs nobody dares intervene! If the working masses are suspicious of the acts of their leaders, the latter are under obligation to give them full explanations and every facility for an investigation. Neither the state prosecutor, nor the judges, nor the members of the Political Bureau of the USSR are exempt from this elementary rule. Whoever tries to raise himself above workers’ democracy, by that very act betrays it.

To the above it must be added that the question is not an “internal” affair of the USSR, even when viewed purely formally. It is already five years since the Moscow bureaucracy deprived me, my wife and our elder son of Soviet citizenship. Thereby they also robbed themselves of every special right with respect to us. We have been bereft of a “fatherland” which could defend us. It is but natural that we should place ourselves under the protection of international public opinion.

III. THE OPINION OF PROFESSOR CHARLES A. BEARD[edit source]

In his reply of March 19, 1937, to George Novack, the secretary of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, Professor Charles A. Beard motivates his refusal to take part in the Commission of Investigation with principled arguments which have great value in themselves, apart from the celebrated historian’s participation or non-participation in the investigating commission.

First of all, we learn that Professor Beard has made “a careful study of many documents in the case, including the official report of the last Moscow trial,” One understands without unnecessary comment the weight of such a statement from a scholar who knows very well what a careful study is. Professor Beard, in a very restrained but at the same time absolutely unequivocal manner, communicates “certain conclusions” to which he has been led by his study of the question. First of all, he says, the accusation against Trotsky rests exclusively on the confessions. “From a long study of historical problems, I know that confessions, even when voluntarily made, are not positive proof.” The word “even” indicates clearly enough that the question of the voluntary character of the Moscow confessions is for this scholar, at the very least, open. As an example of false self-accusations, Professor Beard cites the classic cases of the trials of the Inquisition, along with instances of the darkest superstition. That single comparison, which coincides with the development of the thought of Friedrich Adler, secretary of the Second International, speaks for itself. Furthermore, Professor Beard deems it proper to apply a rule which governs American jurisprudence, namely: The accused must be considered innocent of there have not been brought against him objective proofs which leave no room for reasonable doubt. Finally, the historian writes that “it is almost, if not entirely, impossible to prove a negative in such a case; namely, that Mr, Trotsky did not enter into the relations of conspiracy charged against him. Naturally, as an old revolutionist, experienced in the art, he would not keep incriminating records of the operations, if he did engage in them. Furthermore, no person in the world could prove that he has not engaged in a conspiracy, unless he had a guard set over him every moment of the time covered by the charges. In my opinion it is not incumbent upon Mr. Trotsky to do the impossible – that is, prove a negative by positive evidence, It is incumbent upon his accusers to produce more than confessions, to produce corroborating evidence to specific and overt acts.”

As has already been said, the conclusions reached are of the highest importance of and by themselves, since they contain an annihilating appraisal of Moscow justice. If unconfirmed confessions of a doubtfully “voluntary” character are insufficient basis for accusing me, they are also insufficient for accusing all the others, This means, in Professor Beard’s opinion, that dozens of people who were innocent or whose guilt had not been demonstrated were shot in Moscow. Messrs. Executioners must reckon with this estimate, made by an exceptionally conscientious investigator on the basis of a careful study of the question.

Nevertheless, I must say that in my opinion Professor Beard’s formal decision – namely, his refusal to participate in the investigation – does not at all follow from his material conclusions. Indeed, public opinion seeks above all to resolve the enigma: Is the charge proved or not? It is precisely this question which the Commission primarily wishes to resolve. Professor Beard declares that he personally has already arrived at the conclusion that the charge has not been established, and that that is why he does not join the Commission. It seems to me that a correct decision would be the following: “I enter the Commission in order to test the accuracy of my conclusions.” It is absolutely clear that the collective decision of the Commission, in which representatives of the various branches of intellectual endeavor are found, will carry much more weight with public opinion than the conclusions of a single person, even a great authority.

Professor Beard’s conclusions, with all their importance, are incomplete, however, even in their material essence. The question does not consist simply in knowing whether or not the charge against me has been established. In Moscow dozens of people have been shot. Dozens of others await execution. Hundreds and thousands are under suspicion, accused indirectly or calumniated, not only in the USSR but also in all other parts of the world. All this on the basis of the “confessions,” which Professor Beard finds himself able to compare to the confessions of the victims of the Inquisition. The fundamental question, consequently, should be formulated in this manner: Who organizes these inquisitorial trials, these crusades of calumny, why, and for what purpose? Hundreds of thousands of men throughout the entire world are firmly convinced, and millions suspect, that the trials rest on systematic falsifications, dictated by definite political aims. It is precisely this accusation against the ruling clique in Moscow that I hope to establish before the Commission. Consequently, it is a question not only of a “negative” fact – that is to say, that Trotsky has not participated in a plot – but also of a positive fact; namely, that Stalin did organize the greatest frame-up in human history.

However, even so far as the “negative facts” are involved, I cannot accept Professor Beard’s over-categorical judgment. He supposes that, being such an experienced revolutionist, I would not keep documents which would compromise me. That is absolutely correct. But neither would I write letters to the conspirators in the least prudent and most compromising way. I would not heedlessly reveal the most secret plans to young people unknown to me, nor entrust them, at our first meeting, with serious terrorist missions. Since Professor Beard grants me a certain credit as a conspirator, I, basing myself on that credit, can fully discredit the “confessions,” in which I am presented as a comic-opera conspirator, primarily concerned with furnishing the greatest possible number of witnesses against myself for the future prosecutor. The same holds true as far as the other defendants, especially Zinoviev and Kamenev, are concerned. Without rhyme or reason they enlarge the circle of initiates, Their lack of prudence, which cries to high heaven, has a deliberately calculated character. All this notwithstanding, there is not a shred of evidence in the hands of the prosecution. The whole affair is built on conversations – more exactly, on recollections of alleged conversations. The absence of evidence – I shall never cease repeating this – not only annihilates the charges, but also is a terrible piece of evidence against the accusers themselves.

However, I also have more direct and, moreover, quite positive proofs of the “negative fact.” That is not so very unusual in jurisprudence. Naturally, it is difficult to demonstrate that in eight years of exile I had no secret meetings – with anyone, anywhere – devoted to a conspiracy against the Soviet authorities, But that is not in question. The most important witnesses for the prosecution, the defendants themselves, are forced to indicate when and where they had meetings with me. In all of these cases, thanks to the circumstances of my mode of living (police surveillance, constant presence of a guard composed of my friends, daily letters, etc.), I can with irrefutable certainty demonstrate that I was not and could not have been at the places named at the times indicated. In juridical language, such positive proof of a negative fact is called an alibi, Furthermore, it is absolutely indisputable that I would not preserve in my archives records of my crimes had I committed any. But my archives are important for the investigation, not for what they lack, but for what they contain. Positive acquaintance with the daily development of my thought and acts over a period of nine years (one year of banishment and eight of exile) is entirely sufficient to demonstrate a “negative fact” – namely, that I could not have committed acts contrary to my convictions, to my interests, to my whole character.

IV. A “PURELY JURIDICAL” EXAMINATION[edit source]

The agents of the Moscow Government are themselves well aware that the Moscow verdicts cannot stand without the support of authoritative, expert opinion. For this purpose the English attorney Pritt was secretly invited to the first trial, and another English attorney, Dudley Collard, to the second, In Paris, three attorneys – obscure but quite devoted to the GPU – tried to use for the same purpose the shingle of the International Juridical Association, By arrangement with the Soviet Embassy, the obscure French attorney Rosenmark, acting under the cover of the League for the Rights of Man, issued an expert opinion no less benevolent than ignorant. In Mexico, the “Friends of the Soviet Union” have proposed to the “Socialist Lawyers’ Front” – by no means accidentally – that they undertake a juridical investigation into the Moscow trials. Similar steps are apparently being prepared at the moment in the United States, The People’s Commissariat of Justice in Moscow has published in foreign languages the “verbatim” report of the trial of the seventeen (Pyatakov, Radek, etc.), the better to obtain from authoritative jurists certification that the victims of the inquisition have been shot entirely in accordance with the rules established by the inquisitors.

In fact, a certification of a purely formal observance of external rules and the ritual of jurisprudence has an importance which is close to zero. The essence of the affair is in the material conditions of the preparation and conduct of the trial. Of course, even if one disregards for the moment the decisive factors which are to be found outside the courtroom, one cannot help recognizing that the Moscow trials are a pure and simple mockery of justice. The investigation, in the twentieth year of the Revolution, is carried on in absolute secrecy. The entire old generation of Bolsheviks is judged before a military tribunal composed of three depersonalized military functionaries. The whole trial is dominated by a Prosecutor who has been all his life, and still is, a political enemy of the accused. Defense is waived, and the procedure is deprived of any vestige of controversy. The material proofs are not presented to the court; they are talked about, but they do not exist. The witnesses mentioned by the Prosecutor or by the defendants are not questioned. A whole series of accused who form a part of the judicial inquiry are absent from the defendants’ bench, for reasons unknown. Two of the principal accused who happen to be abroad are not even apprised of the trial, and, like those witnesses who are outside Russia, are deprived of the possibility of taking any steps whatsoever to bring out the truth. The judicial dialogue is wholly constructed of a pre-arranged game of question-and-answer. The Prosecutor does not address a single concrete question to any of the defendants which might embarrass him and expose the material inconsistencies of his confession. The presiding judge obsequiously covers up the work of the Prosecutor. It is precisely the “verbatim” character of the record which most clearly reveals the malicious side-stepping of the Prosecutor and the judges. To this it is necessary to add that one is scarcely inspired with confidence in the authenticity of the record itself.

But, however important these considerations are in themselves – opening as they do broad grounds for juridical analysis – they are nevertheless secondary and tertiary in character, since they concern the form of the frame-up and not its essence. Theoretically, one can imagine that if Stalin, Vyshinsky and Yezhov are able over a period of five or ten years to stage their trials with impunity, they will attain such a high technique that all the elements of jurisprudence will be found in formal accord with one another and the existing laws. But perfection in the juridical technique of the frame-up will not bring it one millimeter closer to the truth.

In a political trial of such exceptional importance, the jurist cannot divorce himself from the political conditions out of which the trial arose and in which the preliminary investigation was conducted – to put it concretely, the totalitarian oppression to which, in the final analysis, all are subjected: accused, witnesses, judges, counsel, and even the prosecution itself. Here is the nub of the question: Under an uncontrolled and despotic régime which concentrates in the same hands all the means of economic, political. physical and moral coercion, a juridical trial ceases to be a juridical trial. It is a juridical play, with the rôles prepared in advance. The defendants appear on the scene only after a series of rehearsals which give the director in advance complete assurance that they will not overstep the limits of their rôles. In this sense, as in all others, the judicial trials only represent a coagulation of the political régime of the USSR as a whole. At all the hearings the orators say one and the same thing, taking their cue from the chief orator, in utter disregard of what they themselves said the day before. In the newspapers all the articles expound one and the same directive, in the same language. Following the orchestra leader’s baton, the historians, the economists – even the statisticians – rearrange the past and the present without any regard for facts, documents, or the preceding editions of their own books. In the kindergartens and schools, all the children in the same words glorify Vyshinsky and curse the defendants. No one acts this way of his own volition; everyone violates his own will. The monolithic character of the judicial trial, in which the accused try to outdo each other in repeating the formulas of the Prosecutor, is thus not an exception to the rule, but only the most revolting expression of the totalitarian inquisitorial régime. It is not a court we see in action, but a play in which the chief actors play their rôles at pistol point. The play can be performed well or badly; but that is a question of inquisitorial technique and not of justice. The “purely juridical” examination of the Moscow trials reduces itself essentially to the question of whether the frame-up was well or poorly executed.

To illumine the question still further – in so far as it requires illumination – let us take a fresh example from the domain of constitutional law. After Hitler took power he declared, contrary to all expectations, that he had no intention of changing the fundamental laws of the State. Most people have probably forgotten that even today in Germany the Weimar Constitution remains intact, but into its juridical framework Hitler has introduced the content of the totalitarian dictatorship. Let us imagine an expert who, adjusting his scholarly spectacles and arming himself with official documents, sets out to study the structure of the German State “from a purely juridical point of view.” After several hours of intellectual effort, he will discover that Hitler’s Germany is a crystal-clear democratic republic (universal suffrage, a parliament which gives full power to the “Fuehrer,” independent judicial authorities, etc., etc.) Every sane man, however, will cry out that a juridical “appraisal” of this nature is at best a display of juridical Cretinism.

Democracy is based on the unconfined struggle of classes, of parties, of programs and ideas. If this struggle be stifled, there then remains only a dead shell, well suited for cloaking a fascist dictatorship. Contemporary jurisprudence is based on the struggle between the prosecution and the defense, a struggle which is conducted in certain judicial forms. Wherever the conflict between parties is stifled by means of extra-judicial violence, the judicial forms, whatever they may be, are only a cover for the inquisition. A genuine investigation of the Moscow trials cannot avoid embracing all their aspects. It will, of course, utilize the “verbatim” reports; not, however, as things in themselves, but as a constituent part of a great historical drama, whose determining factors remain behind the scenes of the judicial play.

V. AUTOBIOGRAPHY[edit source]

In his summation of January 28, Vyshinsky said: “Trotsky and the Trotskyites have always been the agents of capitalism in the working-class movement.” Vyshinsky denounced “the face of real, genuine Trotskyism – this old enemy of the workers and peasants, this old enemy of Socialism, loyal servant of capitalism.” He painted the history of “Trotskyism which spent the more than thirty years of its existence on preparing for its final conversion into a storm detachment of fascism, into one of the departments of the fascist police.”

While the foreign publicists of the GPU (in the Daily Worker, New Masses, etc.) spend their energy trying to explain, with the aid of fine-spun hypotheses and historical analogies, how a revolutionary Marxist can change into a fascist in the sixth decade of his life, Vyshinsky approaches the question in an entirely different manner: Trotsky has always been an agent of capitalism and an enemy of the workers and peasants; for thirty-odd years he has been preparing himself to become an agent of fascism. Vyshinsky is saying what the publicists of the New Masses will say, only later on. That is why I prefer to deal with Vyshinsky. To the categorical assertions of the Prosecutor of the USSR, I oppose the equally categorical facts of my life.

Vyshinsky errs when be speaks of my thirty years of preparation for fascism. Facts, arithmetic, chronology, as well as logic, are not, generally speaking, the strong points of this accusation. Indeed, last month marked the completion of the fortieth year of my uninterrupted participation in the working-class movement under the banner of Marxism.

At eighteen I organized illegally the “Workers’ Union of Southern Russia,” numbering more than 200 workers. Using a hectograph, I edited a revolutionary paper, Nashe Delo (Our Cause) – At the time of my first exile to Siberia (1900-1902), I participated in the creation of the “Siberian Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.” After my flight abroad, I joined the Social-Democractic organization Iskra, headed by Plekhanov, Lenin and others. In 1905 I did leading work in the first Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.

I spent four and a half years in prison, was twice exiled to Siberia, where I spent about two and a half years. I escaped twice from Siberia. In two periods I spent about twelve years in exile under Tsarism. In 1915 in Germany I was sentenced in contumacy to prison for anti-war activities. I was expelled from France for the same “crime,” arrested in Spain, and interned by the British Government in a Canadian concentration camp. It was in this manner that I performed my function as “an agent of capitalism.”

The tale of the Stalinist historians that until 1917 I had been a Menshevik is one of their customary falsifications. From the day Bolshevism and Menshevism took form politically and organizationally (1904), I remained formally outside of both factions, but, as is shown by the three Russian revolutions, my political line, in spite of conflicts and polemics, coincided in every fundamental way with the line of Lenin.

The most important disagreement between Lenin and me in those years was my hope that through unification with the Mensheviks the majority of them could be pushed onto the path of revolution. In this burning question, Lenin was entirely right. Nevertheless, it must be said that in 1917 the tendencies toward “unification” were very strong among the Bolsheviks. On November 1st, 1917, at the meeting of the Petrograd Party Committee, Lenin said in this connection: “Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this, and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik.”

From the end of 1904, I defended the view that the Russian revolution could end only in the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, in its turn, must lead to the Socialist transformation of society, given the victorious development of the world revolution.

A minority of my present adversaries considered this perspective fantastic right up to April 1917 and inimically labelled it “Trotskyism,” opposing to it the program of the bourgeois democratic republic. As for the overwhelming majority of the present bureaucracy, they did not adhere to the Soviet power until after the victorious termination of the Civil War.

During the years of my exile I participated in the workers’ movement in Austria, Switzerland, France and the United States. I think of the years of my exile with gratitude – they gave me the possibility of coming closer to the life of the world working class and of changing internationalism from an abstract concept into the driving force of the rest of my life.

During the war, first in Switzerland and then in France, I carried on propaganda against the chauvinism consuming the Second International. For more than two years I published in Paris, under the military censorship, a Russian daily newspaper, in the spirit of revolutionary internationalism. In my work I was closely connected with the internationalist elements in France and took part, together with their representatives, in the international conference of opponents of chauvinism in Zimmerwald (1915) – I continued in the same work during my two months stay in the United States.

After my arrival in Petrograd (May 5th, 19I7) from the Canadian concentration camp where I taught the ideas of Liebknecht and Luxemburg to the imprisoned German sailors, I took a direct part in the preparation and organization of the October Revolution, particularly during the four decisive months when Lenin was forced to hide in Finland.

In 1918, in an article in which his task was to limit my rôle in the October Revolution, Stalin was nevertheless forced to write:

“All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the immediate leadership of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky. We can say with certainty that the swift passing of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the bold execution of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee the Party owes principally and above all to Comrade Trotsky.” (Pravda, No.241, Nov. 6th, 1918)

This did not prevent Stalin from writing six years later:

“Comrade Trotsky, a comparatively new man in our Party in the period of October, neither did nor could play a special part, either in the Party or in the October Revolution.” (J. Stalin, Trotskyism or Leninism, pp.68-69.)

At the present time the Stalin school, with the aid of its own scientific methods, in which both the court and the prosecution are educated, considers it beyond dispute that I did not direct the October Revolution but was opposed to it. However, these historical falsifications do not concern my autobiography, but the biography of Stalin.

After the October Revolution, I was in office for about nine years. I took a direct part in the building of the Soviet state, revolutionary diplomacy, the Red Army, economic organization, and the Communist International. For three years I directly led the Civil War. In this harsh work I was obliged to resort to drastic measures. For these I bear full responsibility before the world working class and before history. The justification of rigorous measures lay in their historical necessity and progressive character, in their correspondence with the fundamental interest of the working class. To all repressive measures dictated by the conditions of civil war, I gave their real designation, and I have given a public accounting for them before the working masses. I had nothing to hide from the people, as today I have nothing to hide from the Commission.

When in certain circles of the Party, not without the behind-the-scenes participation of Stalin, opposition arose to my methods of directing the Civil War, Lenin in July 1919 on his own initiative and in a fashion wholly unexpected by me, handed me a sheet of blank paper, on the bottom of which he had written:

“Comrades, knowing the harsh character of Comrade Trotsky’s orders, I am so convinced, so absolutely convinced, of the rightness, expediency and necessity, for the good of our cause, of the orders he has given, that I give them my full support.’

There is no date on the paper. In case of need, the date was to be inserted by myself. Lenin’s caution in everything that concerned his relations to the workers is known. Nevertheless, he considered it possible to countersign in advance an order coming from me, even though on these orders often depended the fate of great numbers of men. Lenin did not fear that I would abuse my power. I may add that not once did I make use of this carte blanche given me by Lenin. But this document is testimony to the exceptional confidence of a man whom I consider to be the highest model of revolutionary morality.

I participated directly in the drafting of the programmatic documents and tactical theses of the Third International. The principal reports at the congresses on the international situation were shared by Lenin and me. The programmatic manifestoes of the first five congresses were written by me. I leave to Stalin’s prosecutors to explain what place this activity occupied on my road to fascism. As far as I am concerned, I still stand firmly today by the principles which, hand in hand with Lenin, I put forward as the basis of the Communist International.

I broke with the ruling bureaucracy when, due to historical causes which cannot be adequately dealt with here, it was transformed into a conservative, privileged caste. The reasons for the break are set down and sealed at every stage in official documents, books, and articles, accessible for general verification.

I have defended Soviet democracy against bureaucratic absolutism; the raising of the living standard of the masses against excessive privileges at the top systematic industrialization and collectivization in the interests of the toilers; finally, international policy in the spirit of revolutionary internationalism against nationalist conservatism. In my last book, The Revolution Betrayed, I attempted to explain theoretically why the isolated Soviet state, on the basis of a backward economy, has extruded the monstrous pyramid of the bureaucracy, which has almost automatically been crowned by an uncontrolled and “infallible” leader.

Stifling the party by means of the police apparatus and crushing the opposition, the ruling clique banished me, at the beginning of 1928, to Central Asia. On my refusal to cease political activity in exile, it deported me to Turkey at the beginning of 1929. There I began to publish the Bulletin of the Opposition, on the basis of the same program I had defended in Russia, and entered into relations with ideological companions, still very few at that time, in all parts of the world.

On February 20th, 1932, the Soviet bureaucracy deprived me and the members of my family who were abroad, of Soviet citizenship. My daughter Zinaida, who was abroad temporarily for medical treatment, was thus deprived of the possibility of returning to the USSR to rejoin her husband and children. She committed suicide on January 5th, 1933.

I am presenting a list of my most important books and pamphlets, which have been completely or partly written during my last period of exile and deportation. According to the calculations of my young collaborators, who in all my work have given and are giving me devoted and irreplaceable aid, I have written 5,000 printed pages while abroad, without counting my articles and letters, which together would comprise several thousand pages more. May I add that I do not write with facility? I make numerous verifications and corrections. My literary work and my correspondence, therefore, have constituted the principal content of my life in the past nine years. The political line of my books, articles and letters speaks for itself. The citations given by Vyshinsky from my works represent, as I will prove, gross falsification – that is to say, a necessary element of the whole judicial frame-up.

In the course of the years from 1923 to 1933, with respect to the Soviet state, its leading party and the Communist International, I held the view expressed in those chiseled words: Reform, but not revolution. This position was fed by the hope that with favorable developments in Europe, the Left Opposition could regenerate the Bolshevik Party by pacific means, democratically reform the Soviet state, and set the Communist International back on the path of Marxism. It was only the victory of Hitler, prepared by the fatal policy of the Kremlin, and the complete inability of the Comintern to draw any lessons from the tragic experience of Germany which convinced me and my ideological companions that the old Bolshevik Party and the Third International were forever dead, as far as the cause of Socialism was concerned. Thus disappeared the only legal lever with which one could hope to effect a peaceful, democratic reform of the Soviet state. Since the latter part of 1933, I have become more and more convinced that for the emancipation of the toiling masses of the USSR and of the social basis established by the October Revolution from the new parasitic caste, a political revolution is historically inevitable. Naturally, a problem of such tremendous magnitude provoked an impassioned ideological struggle on an international scale.

The political degeneration of the Comintern, completely shackled by the Soviet bureaucracy, led to the necessity for launching the slogan of the Fourth International and for drafting the bases of its program. The books, articles and bulletins of discussion which relate to this are at the disposal of the Commission, and present the best proof that it is a question not of “camouflage” but of an intense, impassioned ideological struggle on the basis of the traditions of the first congresses of the Communist International. I have been continually in correspondence with dozens of old and hundreds of young friends in all parts of the world, and I can say with assurance and pride that precisely from this youth will come the firmest and most reliable proletarian fighters of the new epoch which is opening.

Renouncing the hope of peaceful reform of the Soviet state does not mean, however, renouncing the defense of the Soviet state. As is particularly demonstrated in the collection of extracts from my articles in the past ten years (In Defense of the Soviet Union), which recently appeared in New York, I have invariably and implacably fought against all vacillation on the question of the defense of the USSR I have broken more than once with friends on this question. In my book, The Revolution Betrayed, I theoretically proved the idea that war menaces not only the Soviet bureaucracy, but also the new social basis of the USSR, which represents a tremendous step forward in the development of mankind. From this flows the absolute duty of every revolutionist to defend the USSR against imperialism, despite the Soviet bureaucracy.

My writings in the same period give an unequivocal picture of my attitude toward fascism. From the first period of nay exile abroad, I sounded the alarm on the question of the rising fascist wave in Germany. The Comintern accused me of “over-estimating” fascism and of becoming “panicky” before it. I demanded the united front of all organizations of the working class. To this the Comintern opposed the idiotic theory of “social-fascism.” I demanded the systematic organization of workers’ militias. The Comintern countered with bragging about future victories. I pointed out that the USSR would find itself greatly menaced in case of a victory for Hitler. The well known writer, Ossietzky, printed my articles in his magazine, and commented on them with great sympathy. All to no avail. The Soviet bureaucracy usurped the authority of the October Revolution only to convert it into an obstacle to the victory of the revolution in other countries. Without the policy of Stalin, we should not have had the victory of Hitler! The Moscow trials, to a considerable degree, were born of the Kremlin’s need to force the world to forget its criminal policy in Germany. “If it is demonstrated that Trotsky is an agent of fascism, who will then consider the program and tactics of the Fourth International?” Such were Stalin’s calculations.

It is quite well known that during the war every internationalist was declared to be an agent of the enemy government. So it was in the case of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Otto Ruehle and others in Germany, of my French friends (Monatte, Rosmer, Loriot. etc.), of Eugene Debs and others in the United States, and finally of Lenin and myself in Russia. The British Government imprisoned me in a concentration camp in March 1917 on the charge, inspired by the Tsarist Okhrana, that in agreement with the German high command I attempted to overthrow the provisional government of Miliukov-Kerensky. Today this accusation seems a plagiarism from Stalin and Vyshinsky. In fact, it is Stalin and Vyshinsky who are plagiarizing from the Tsarist counter-espionage system and the British Intelligence Service.

On April 16th, 1917, when I was in the concentration camp with German sailors, Lenin wrote in Pravda: “Can one even for a moment believe the trustworthiness of the statement ... that Trotsky, the former chairman of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Petersburg in 1905 – a revolutionist who has devoted decades to the disinterested service of revolution – that this man had anything to do with a scheme subsidized by the German Government? This is clearly a monstrous and unscrupulous slander against a revolutionist.” (Pravda, No.34) ―

“How fresh these words sound now,” I wrote on October 21, 1927 – I repeat, in 1927! – “in this epoch of contemptible slanders against the Opposition, differing in no essential from the slanders against the Bolsheviks in 1917.”

Thus, ten years ago – that is, long before the creation of the “unified” and “parallel” centers and before the “flight” of Pyatakov to Oslo – Stalin was already flinging against the Opposition all the insinuations and calumnies that Vyshinsky later converted into an indictment. However, if Lenin in 1917 thought that my revolutionary past of twenty years was in itself sufficient refutation of these filthy insinuations, I make bold to think that the twenty years which have since elapsed – important enough in themselves – entitle me to cite my autobiography as one of the most important arguments against the Moscow indictment.

VI. MY “JURIDICAL” SITUATION[edit source]

The very necessity of having to “justify” oneself against the charge of being in league with Hitler and the Mikado indicates the full depth of the reaction which today is conquering a great portion of our planet, and particularly the USSR. But none of us can leap over historically conditioned stages. I put my time and my energy at the disposal of the Commission with entire willingness. It is superfluous to remark that I have and can have no secrets from the Commission. The Commission will itself understand the necessity of being guided by caution with respect to third parties, especially subjects of fascist lands and of the Soviet Union. I am ready to answer all questions and to place at the disposal of the Commission all my correspondence, personal as well as political.

At the same time, I think it necessary to state in advance that I do not at all regard myself as a “defendant” before the bar of public opinion. There is not even a formal basis for such a characterization. The Moscow authorities did not indict me in a single one of the trials. And that is, of course, not accidental. To indict me they would have had to summon me before the court, or to demand my extradition. For this purpose they would have had to announce the date of the trial, and to publish the indictment at least some weeks before the opening of the court proceedings. But Moscow could not even go that far. Their whole plan was to take public opinion by surprise, and to have the Pritts and Durantys ready in advance as commentators and reporters. They could have asked my extradition only by opening the question in a French, Norwegian or Mexican court, before the eyes of the world press. But that would have meant for the Kremlin to court a cruel failure! For this very reason, the two trials were not a prosecution of myself and my son, but only a slander against us, carried out by means a legal process, without notification, without summons, behind our backs.

The verdict of the latest trial states that Trotsky and Sedov ’having been convicted ... of personally directing the treacherous activities ... in the event of their being discovered on the territory of the USSR, are liable to immediate arrest and trial” I leave aside the question of the technical means by which Stalin hopes to “discover” me and my son on Soviet territory (apparently by means of the same technique which permitted the GPU on the night of November 7th, 1936, to “discover” a part of my archives in a historical institute in Paris and to transport them in substantial diplomatic valises to Moscow) – The fact which, above all others, commands attention is that the verdict, after declaring us “convicted,” although we have not been indicted and examined, promises to deliver us to the court for trial, in the event of our being discovered. In this way I and my son have already been ’convicted” but not yet tried. The object of this nonsensical but not accidental formulation is to arm the GPU with the possibility of shooting us upon “discovery,” without any judicial procedure whatsoever.

Stalin cannot permit himself the luxury of a public arraignment of us, even in the USSR.

The most cynical among the agents of Moscow, including the Soviet diplomat Troyanovsky, raise the following argument: “Criminals cannot choose their own judges.” In its general form, this idea is correct. It is only necessary to determine on which side of the dividing line are the criminals. If one accepts the view that the real criminals are the organizers of the Moscow trials – and that is the opinion of wide and growing circles – can one then permit them to set themselves up as judges of their own case? Just because of this the Commission of Inquiry stands above both parties.

VII. THREE CATEGORIES OF PROOFS[edit source]

The territory covered by the Moscow trials is immense. If I assumed the task of refuting before you all the false accusations directed against me, if only those contained in the official reports of the two most important Moscow trials, I would be forced to take up too much time. It is sufficient to recall that my name is met on almost every page, and more than once. I hope that I shall have the opportunity to speak more fully before the entire Commission. Now I am forced to impose severe limitations upon myself. For the time being, I am compelled to leave aside a whole series of questions, each of importance for the refutation of the charges. For a series of other questions, still more important, I must confine myself to a short résumé, noting only the general outline of the conclusions which I hope to present in the future to the Commission. On the other hand, I will attempt to bring out the crucial points of the Soviet trials, principled as well as empiric in nature, and to clarify them as much as possible. These crucial points lie on three planes:

1. The foreign apologists of the GPU monotonously repeat the selfsame argument: It is impossible to admit that responsible, veteran politicians accused themselves of crimes they had never committed. But these gentlemen obstinately refuse to apply the same common-sense criterion not to the confessions, but to the crimes themselves. Yet it is much more appropriate to the latter.

My point of departure is that the accused were responsible individuals – that is, normal – and consequently could not knowingly carry out absurd crimes directed against their ideas, their whole past, and their present interests.

In planning a crime, each of the accused had what from the juridical point of view can be called freedom of choice. He could commit the crime, or refrain from doing so. He considered whether the crime was expedient, whether it corresponded to his aims, whether the means employed were reasonable. etc – in a word, he behaved as a free and responsible person.

The situation, however, changes radically when the real or pretended criminal falls into the hands of the GPU, for whom, because of political reasons, it is necessary at all costs to obtain certain testimony. Here the “criminal” ceases to be himself. It is not he who decides; everything is decided for him.

That is why, before I deal with the question whether or not the accused acted in the trials in accordance with the laws of common sense, another preliminary question must be posed: Could the accused have perpetrated the incredible crimes to which they confessed?

Was the assassination of Kirov advantageous to the Opposition? And if not, was it not advantageous to the bureaucracy to ascribe the assassination of Kirov to the Opposition, whatever the cost?

Was it advantageous for the Opposition to commit acts of sabotage, to cause mine explosions, and to organize railroad wrecks? And if not, was it not advantageous for the bureaucracy to place the responsibility for the mistakes and accidents in industry on the Opposition?

Was it advantageous for the Opposition to enter into an alliance with Hitler and the Mikado? And, if not, was it not advantageous for the bureaucracy to obtain from the Opposition the confession that it was in alliance with Hitler and the Mikado?

Qui prodest? It is enough to formulate this question clearly and precisely, in order to have the first outlines of the answer already apparent.

2. In the last trial, as in all the preceding ones, the only bases of the charges are the standardized monologues of the accused, who, repeating the thoughts and expressions of the Prosecutor, outdo one another in confessing, and invariably name me the principal organizer of the plot. How explain this fact?

In his summation, Vyshinsky tries this time to justify the absence of objective proofs by the considerations that the conspirators did not have membership cards, did not keep records, etc, etc. These miserable arguments appear doubly miserable on Russian soil, where plots and trials stretch out over many decades. The conspirators write pseudo-conventional letters. But these letters can be seized during raids, and then constitute serious evidence. The conspirators quite frequently have recourse to chemical ink. But the Tsarist police hundreds of times seized such letters and presented them in court. Among the plotters there are provocateurs who give the police concrete information about the progress of the plot, and make it possible to seize documents, laboratories, and even the conspirators themselves at the scene of the crime. We find nothing like that in the trials of Stalin-Vyshinsky. Despite the five-year duration of the most grandiose of all plots, with ramifications in all parts of the country and connections across the western and eastern borders, despite the innumerable raids and seizures and even thefts of archives, the GPU has not been able to present to the tribunal a single piece of concrete evidence. The defendants refer only to their real or pretended conversations about the plot. The judicial inquiry is a conversation about conversations. The “plot” has no flesh and blood.

On the other hand, the history of the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle alike knows of no case in which dozens of seasoned conspirators, over a period of years, committed unparalleled crimes, and, after their arrest, despite the absence of evidence, confessed without exception, betraying one another and furiously blasting their absent “leader.” How do criminals who yesterday assassinated leaders, shattered industry, prepared war and the dismemberment of the country, today so docilely sing the Prosecutor’s tune?

These two fundamental features of the Moscow trials – the absence of evidence and the epidemic character of the confessions – can but arouse suspicion in every thinking man. The objective verification of the confessions, therefore, assumes so much the more importance. Yet the court not only did not make such a verification, but, on the contrary, avoided it from every side. We must take this verification upon ourselves. To be sure, it is not possible in all the cases. But there is no need for that. It will be entirely sufficient for us, as a beginning, to show that in many extremely important instances the confessions are in complete contradiction with the objective facts, The more the confessions are standardized, the more they will be discredited by the revelation that some of them are false.

The number of instances in which the testimony of the accused – their denunciations of themselves and others – falls to pieces when confronted with the facts, is very large. That has already been made sufficiently apparent here during the inquiry. The experience of the Moscow trials shows that a frame-up on such a colossal scale is too much even for the most powerful police apparatus in the world. There are too many people and circumstances, characteristics and dates, interests and documents, which do not fit into the framework of a ready-made libretto! The calendar stubbornly maintains its prerogatives, and the seasons of Norway do not bow even before Vyshinsky. If one approaches the question in its artistic aspect, such a task – the dramatic concordance of hundreds of people and innumerable circumstances – would have been too much even for Shakespeare. But the GPU does not have Shakespeares at its beck and call. In so far as it is a question of “events” in the USSR, the external semblance of concordance is maintained by inquisitorial violence. All – the defendants, the witnesses and the experts – chorus their confirmation of materially impossible facts. But the situation changes abruptly when it is necessary to extend the threads abroad. Yet, without threads abroad, leading to me, “Public Enemy Number One,” the trials would lose most of their political importance. That is why the GPU was forced to risk dangerous and most unfortunate combinations with Holtzman, Olberg, David, Berman-Yurin, Romm, and Pyatakov.

The choice of objects for analysis and refutation thus unfolds by itself from the “facts” which the accusation alleges against me and my son. Thus, the refutation of Holtzman’s assertion about his visit to me in Copenhagen, the refutation of Romm’s testimony about his meeting with me in the Bois de Boulogne, and the refutation of Pyatakov’s account of his flight to Oslo, are not only important in themselves, since they pull down the main props of the charges against me and my son, but also because they permit one to peer behind the scenes of Moscow jurisprudence in its entirety and to illumine the methods which are there employed.

Such are the first two stages of my analysis. If we succeed in demonstrating that, on the one hand, the so-called “crimes” contradict the psychology and the interests of the defendants, and that, on the other hand – at least in several typical cases – the confessions contradict facts established with precision, we accomplish, by the same token, a very great task for the refutation of the indictment as a whole.

3. To be sure, even then there remain not a few questions which demand answers. Chief among them are: Why, then, did the accused, after twenty-five, thirty, or more years of revolutionary work, agree to take upon themselves such monstrous and degrading accusations? How did the GPU achieve this? Why did not a single one of the accused cry out openly before the court against the frame-up? Etc., etc. In the nature of the case. I am not obliged to answer these questions. We could not here question Yagoda (he is now being questioned himself by Yezhov), or Yezhov, or Vyshinsky, or Stalin, or, above all, their victims, the majority of whom, indeed, have already been shot, That is why the Commission cannot fully uncover the inquisitorial technique of the Moscow trials. But the mainsprings are already apparent. The accused are not Trotskyites, nor Oppositionists, nor fighters, but docile capitulators. The GPU had educated them for these trials for years. That is why I think it extremely important, for the understanding of the mechanics of the confessions, to bring out the psychology of the capitulators as a political group, and to give a personal characterization of the most important defendants of the two trials. I have in mind not arbitrary psychological improvisations, constructed after the event in the interests of the defense, but objective characterizations based on unimpeachable documents which pertain to various parts of the period which interests us. I have no lack of such materials. On the contrary, my dossiers are bursting with facts and citations. That is why I choose one example – the clearest and most typical, namely: Radek.

Already on June 14th, 1929, I wrote of the influence exerted by the powerful Thermidorian tendencies on the Opposition itself: “We have seen by a whole series of examples how old Bolsheviks, striving to preserve themselves and the traditions of the Party, tended with all their strength to go with the Opposition; some until 1925, others until 1927, and yet others until 1929. But in the long run, they did not hold out; their nerves gave way. Radek is now the most headlong and vociferous ideologue of the elements of this type.” (Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos.1-2. July 1929.) It was none other than Radek who in the last trial provided the “philosophy” for the “criminal activities” of the “Trotskyites.” According to the testimony of many foreign journalists. Radek’s testimony seemed in the trial to be the least artificial, the least constructed on a model, the most deserving of confidence. All the more important is it to demonstrate by this example that on the defendants’ bench sat not the real Radek, as nature and his political past made him, but a “robot” out of the laboratory of the GPU. If I succeed in demonstrating this with full conviction, then the rôle of the others accused in these trials will also be clarified to a considerable extent. That does not mean, obviously, that I discard the clarification of each separate personality. On the contrary, I hope that the Commission will give me the opportunity to carry out this task at the next stage of its work. But now, because of the limitations imposed by time, I am obliged to concentrate attention only on the most important circumstances and the most typical figures. The work of the Commission, I hope, will only gain thereby.

PART 2[edit source]

VIII. THE MATHEMATICAL SERIES OF FRAME-UPS[edit source]

1. It can be unimpeachably established, on the basis of official sources, that the preparations for the assassination of Kirov were made with the knowledge of the GPU. The head of the Leningrad section of the GPU, Medved, and eleven other GPU agents, were sentenced to prison because “they possessed information concerning the preparations for the attempt on S.M. Kirov ... and failed to take the necessary measures,” One should imagine that the police agents who “knew” ought to have figured as witnesses at all the subsequent trials. But we never hear again of Medved and his collaborators; they “knew” too much. The Kirov assassination serves as the basis of all the subsequent trials. Yet at the basis of the Kirov assassination lies a colossal provocation of the GPU, attested to by the verdict of the military court on December 29th, 1934. The task of the organizers of the provocation consisted in implicating the Opposition, and especially myself, in a terrorist deed (through the medium of the Latvian consul Bisseneks, an agent provocateur employed by the GPU who has likewise vanished without leaving a trace). The bullet fired by Nikolayev was hardly part of the program, but rather one of the incidental costs of the amalgam.

This question was analyzed in my pamphlet, The Kirov Assassination and the Stalin Bureaucracy, written at the beginning of 1935. Neither the Soviet authorities nor their foreign agents even attempted to answer my arguments, which were based exclusively on official Moscow documents.

2. As we have proved before the Commission, seven trials took place in the USSR, with the Kirov assassination as their starting point: (a) the trial of Nikolayev et al., December 28-29th, 1934 (b) the trial of Zinoviev-Kamenev, January 15-16th, 1935; (c) the trial of Medved et al., January 23rd, 1935; (d) the trial of Kamenev et al., July, 1935; (e) the trial of Zinoviev-Kamenev, August, 1936; (f) the Novosibirsk trial, November 19-22nd, 1936; (g) the trial of Pyatakov-Radek, January 23-30th, 1937. These trials are seven variations played on one and the same theme. Among the different variations there is almost no discernible connection. Each contradicts the others in fundamentals and details. In each trial, different persons organize the assassination of Kirov, by different means and for different political objectives. The mere comparison of the official Soviet documents is ample proof that at least six of these seven trials must be frame-ups. In fact, all seven are frame-ups.

3. The Zinoviev-Kamenev trial (August, 1936) has already inspired a voluminous literature, which contains a number of extremely important arguments, testimonies and weighty considerations in support of the idea that the trial constitutes a malicious frame-up by the GPU. I mention here the following books:

Leon Sedov: Livre Rouge sur le Procès de Moscou
Leon Sedov: Lettre au Comité Central de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme et à la Ligue
Max Shachtman: Behind the Moscow Trial
Francis Heisler: The First Two Moscow Trials
Victor Serge: Destin d’une Revolution, URSS, 1917-1937
Victor Serge: 16 Fusillés. OùVa la Révolution Russe?
Friedrich Adler: The Witchcraft Trial in Moscow

Not one of these books, which represent the product of serious and careful study, has thus far met with a critical appraisal – leaving aside the gutter epithets of the Comintern press, which for a long time has not been taken seriously by any self-respecting person. The fundamental arguments of these books are also my arguments.

4. As far back as 1926, the Stalin clique tried to charge various oppositional groups with “anti-Soviet” propaganda, connections with White Guards, capitalist tendencies, espionage, terrorist aims, and, finally, the preparation of armed insurrection. All these attempts, which are akin to rough drafts, have left their traces in official decrees, in newspaper articles, in documents of the Opposition. If we were to arrange chronologically these rough drafts of and experiments in frame-up, we would obtain something in the nature of a geometric progression of false accusations, whose end terms are the indictments in the last trials. Thus we uncover the “law of frame-ups” and the mystery of the alleged Trotskyite conspiracy vanishes into thin air.

5. It is the same with the improbable declarations of the defendants, which at first sight contradict all the laws of human psychology. Ritualistic recantations on the part of Oppositionists date back to 1924, and especially the end of 1927. If we collate the texts of these recantations on the basis of the leading Soviet press – often consecutive recantations made by the self-same individuals – we obtain a second geometric progression, the end terms of which are the nightmarish confessions of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Pyatakov, Radek and others at the judicial trials. A political and psychological analysis of this accessible and unimpeachable material wholly and conclusively reveals the inquisitorial mechanics of the recantations.

6. To the mathematical series of frame-ups and the mathematical series of recantations, there corresponds a third mathematical series – that of warnings and predictions. The author of these lines and his closest co-thinkers followed attentively the intrigues and provocations of the GPU, and in advance, on the basis of particular facts and symptoms, warned time and again, in letters as well as in the press, against Stalin’s provocative plans and against amalgams in preparation. The very expression, “Stalinist amalgam,” was given currency by us almost eight years before the Kirov assassination and the spectacular trials which followed it. The relevant documentary proofs have been placed at the disposal of the Commission of Inquiry. They show with absolute incontestability that what is involved is not an underground Trotskyite conspiracy first unearthed in some startling manner in 1936, but a systematic conspiracy of the GPU against the Opposition, with the aim of imputing to it sabotage, espionage, assassinations and the preparation of insurrections.

7. All the “recantations” extorted from tens of thousands of Oppositionists since 1924 contained by compulsion a barb directed at me. All who wished to re-enter the Party, the exiles wrote in the Bulletin of the Opposition (No.7. Nov-Dec. 1929), were ordered to “give us Trotsky’s head.” In conformity with the previously indicated law of the mathematical series, the threads of all the crimes of terrorism, treason and sabotage, in the trials of 1936-1937, lead invariably to me and my son. But our entire activity during the past eight years was, as is well known, carried on abroad. Here the Commission enjoys, as we have already seen, a great advantage. The GPU abroad had no approach to me, since I was always surrounded by a circle of devoted friends. On November 7th, 1936, the GPU stole a portion of my archives in Paris, but until now they have been unable to make any use of them. The Commission has at its disposal all my archives, the testimonies of my friends and acquaintances, not to speak of my own depositions. The Commission is in a position to compare my private correspondence with my articles and books, and in this way determine whether my activity bears the slightest tinge of double-dealing.

8. But that is not all. The directives of the conspiracy allegedly came from abroad (France, Copenhagen, Norway). Thanks to an unusually fortunate combination of circumstances, the Commission has full opportunity to determine whether any of the alleged conspirators – Holtzman, Burman-Yurin, Fritz David, Vladimir Romm and Pyatakov – did visit me at the specified times and places. While the Moscow court has not lifted a finger to prove (by questions regarding passports, visas, hotels, etc.) that these meetings and interviews really did take place, we are able here to solve a much more difficult problem: To prove with documents, depositions of witnesses, circumstances of time and place, that these meetings and interviews did not and could not have taken place. To employ legal terminology – I am able in all important instances, where exact dates are given, to establish an unshakable alibi.

9. If the criminal is not mentally deranged, but a responsible person and even an old and experienced politician, then his crime, however monstrous it may be, must fit in closely with his specific aims. Yet in the Moscow trials there is no such concordance of aims and methods. The state Prosecutor at different trials ascribes different aims to the very same defendants (now a naked “struggle for power” under the Soviet régime, now a struggle for the “restoration of capitalism”).In this question, likewise, defendants docilely take their cue from the prosecution. The methods to which the defendants resort are absurd from the standpoint of their supposed aims; certainly, they appear to be specially created to furnish the bureaucracy with the best possible pretext for exterminating every kind of opposition.

The conclusions which flow from the initial stages of this investigation are, in my opinion, the following:

1. Despite long years of struggle against the Opposition, despite tens of thousands of raids, arrests, banishments, imprisonments, and hundreds of executions, the Soviet judicial authorities do not have at their disposal even a single substantial fact, not a shred of material proof. to confirm the truth of the accusations. This fact constitutes the most damning evidence against Stalin.

2. Even if we concede for sake of argument that all or some of the defendants really committed the monstrous crimes attributed to them, their stereotyped references to me as the principal organizer of the plot do not carry any weight. Moral degenerates capable of preparing railroad wrecks, poisoning workers, entering into relations with the Gestapo, etc., would naturally have attempted to ingratiate themselves with the bureaucracy by means of standardized slanders against its principal adversary.

3. The testimony of the defendants – at least those whose political physiognomy is well known – is, however, false also in those sections where they expose their own criminal activity. We are not dealing with bandits, or with criminal perverts, or with moral degenerates, but with the unfortunate victims of the most horrible inquisitorial system of all time.

4. The trials are a judicial comedy (hard as it is to use the word “comedy” in this connection), whose lines have been worked out over a number of years on the basis of countless experiments by the organs of the GPU, under the direct and personal supervision of Stalin.

5. The charges against old revolutionists (“Trotskyites”) of desertion to fascism, of alliance with Hitler and the Mikado, etc., were dictated by the same political causes as the accusations of the French Thermidorians against Robespierre and other Jacobins guillotined by them, that they had become “Royalists” and “agents of Pitt.” Analogous historical causes produce analogous historical consequences.

IX. THE POLITICAL BASIS OF THE ACCUSATION: TERRORISM[edit source]

If terror is feasible for one side, why should it be considered as excluded for the other? With all its seductive symmetry, this reasoning is corrupt to the core. It is altogether inadmissible to place the terror of a dictatorship against an opposition on the same plane with the terror of an opposition against a dictatorship. To the ruling clique, the preparation of murders through the medium of a court or from behind an ambush is purely and simply a question of police technique. In the event of a failure, some second-rank agents can always be sacrificed. On the part of an opposition, terror presupposes the concentration of all forces upon preparing acts of terror, with the foreknowledge that every one of such acts, whether successful or unsuccessful, will evoke in reply the destruction of scores of its best men. An opposition could by no means permit itself such an insane squandering of its forces. It is precisely for this, and for no other reason, that the Comintern does not resort to terroristic attempts in the countries of fascist dictatorships. The Opposition is as little inclined to the policy of suicide as the Comintern.

According to the indictment, which banks on ignorance and mental laziness, the “Trotskyites” resolved to destroy the ruling group in order in this way to clear for themselves the path to power. The average Philistine, especially if he wears the badge of a “Friend of the USSR,” reasons as follows: “The Oppositionists could not but strive for power, and could not but hate the ruling group. Why, then, shouldn’t they really resort to terror?” In other words, for the Philistine the matter ends where in reality it only begins. The leaders of the Opposition are neither upstarts nor novices. It is not at all a question of whether they were striving for power. Every serious political tendency strives to conquer power. The question is: Could the Oppositionists, educated upon the enormous experience of the revolutionary movement, have entertained even a moment’s belief that terror is capable of bringing them closer to power? Russian history, Marxist theory, political psychology reply: No, they could not!

At this point, the problem of terror requires clarification, even though briefly, from the standpoint of the “anti-Soviet terror,” I am compelled to invest my exposition with an autobiographic character. In 1902, I had no sooner arrived in London from Siberia, after almost five years of prison and exile, than I had the occasion, in a memorial article devoted to the bicentennial of the fortress of Schlusselburg, with its hard-labor prison, to enumerate the revolutionists there tortured to death. “The shades of these martyrs clamor for vengeance.” But immediately thereafter I added: “Not for a personal, but for a revolutionary vengeance. Not for the execution of ministers, but for the execution of the autocracy.” These lines were directed wholly against individual terror. Their author was twenty-three years of age. From the earliest days of his revolutionary activity he was already an opponent of terror. From 1902 to 1905 I delivered, in various cities in Europe, before Russian students and émigrés, scores of political reports against terrorist ideology, which at the beginning of the century was once again spreading among the Russian youth.

Beginning with the ’eighties of the past century, two generations of Russian Marxists in their personal experience lived through the era of terror, learned from its tragic lessons, and organically instilled in themselves a negative attitude toward the heroic adventurism of lone individuals. Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism; Lenin, the leader of Bolshevism; Martov, the most eminent representative of Menshevism; all dedicated thousands of pages and hundreds of speeches to the struggle against the tactic of terror.

The ideological inspiration emanating from these senior Marxists nourished my attitude toward the revolutionary alchemy of the shut-in intellectual circles during my adolescence. For us, the Russian revolutionists, the problem of terror was a life-and-death matter in the political as well as the personal meaning of the term. For us, a terrorist was not a character from a novel, but a living and familiar being. In exile we lived for years side by side with the terrorists of the older generation. In prisons and in police custody we met with terrorists of our own age. We tapped out messages back and forth, in the Peter and Paul fortress, with terrorists condemned to death. How many hours, how many days, were spent in passionate discussion! How many times did we break personal relationships on this most burning of all questions! The Russian literature on terrorism, nourished by and reflecting these debates, would fill a large library.

Isolated terroristic explosions are inevitable whenever political oppression transgresses certain boundaries. Such acts almost always have a symptomatic character. But politics that sanctifies terror, raising it into a system – that is a different thing. “Terrorist work,” I wrote in 1909, “in its very essence demands such a concentration of energy upon ‘the supreme moment,’ such an over-estimation of personal heroism and, lastly, such a hermetically concealed conspiracy as ... excludes completely any agitational and organizational activity among the masses ... Struggling against terrorism, the Marxian intelligentsia defended their right or their duty not to withdraw from the working-class districts for the sake of tunneling mines underneath the Grand Ducal and Tsarist palaces.” It is impossible to fool or outwit history. In the long run, history puts everybody in his place. The basic property of terror as a system is to destroy that organization which by means of chemical compounds seeks to compensate for its own lack of political strength. There are, of course, historical conditions where terror can introduce confusion among the governing ranks. But in that case who is it that can reap the fruits? At all events, not the terrorist organization itself, and not the masses behind whose backs the duel takes place. Thus, the liberal Russian bourgeois, in their day, invariably sympathized with terrorism. The reason is plain. In 1909 I wrote: “In so far as terror introduces disorganization and demoralization into the ranks of the Government (at the price of disorganizing and demoralizing the ranks of the revolutionists), to that extent it plays into the hands of none other than the liberals themselves.” The very same idea, expressed virtually in the same words, we meet a quarter of a century later in connection with the Kirov assassination.

The very fact of individual acts of terror is an infallible token of the political backwardness of a country and the feebleness of the progressive forces there. The revolution of 1905, which disclosed the vast strength of the proletariat, put an end to the romanticism of the single combat between a handful of intellectuals and Tsarism. “Terrorism in Russia is dead,” I reiterated in a number of articles. “... Terror has migrated far to the East – to the provinces of Punjab and Bengal ... It may be that in other countries of the Orient terrorism is still destined to pass through an epoch of flowering. But in Russia it is already a part of the heritage of history.”

In 1907 I found myself again in exile. The whip of counter-revolution was savagely at work, and the Russian colonies in European cities became very numerous. The entire period of my second emigration was devoted to reports and articles against the terror of vengeance and despair. In 1909 it was revealed that at the head of the terrorist organization of the so-called “Social Revolutionists” stood an agent provocateur, Azef. “In the blind alley of terrorism,” I wrote, “the hand of provocation rules with assurance” (January 1910). Terrorism has always remained for me nothing but a “blind alley.”

During the same period I wrote: “The irreconcilable attitude of the Russian Social Democracy towards the bureaucratized terror of the revolution as a means of struggle against the terrorist bureaucracy of Tsarism has met with bewilderment and condemnation not only among the Russian liberals but also among the European Socialists.” Both the latter and the former accused us of “doctrinairism.” On our part, we, the Russian Marxists, attributed this sympathy for Russian terrorism to the opportunism of the leaders of European Social Democracy who had become accustomed to transferring their hopes from the masses to the ruling summits. “Whoever stalks a ministerial portfolio ... as well as those who, clasping an infernal machine beneath a cloak, stalk the Minister himself, must equally overestimate the Minister – his personality and his post. For them the system itself disappears or recedes far away, and there remains only the individual invested with power. We shall presently, in connection with the Kirov assassination, meet once again with this thought, which runs through the decades of my activity.

In 1911 terrorist moods arose among certain groups of Austrian workers. Upon the request of Friedrich Adler, editor of Der Kampf, the theoretical monthly of the Austrian Social Democracy, I wrote in November, 1911, an article on terrorism for this publication:

Whether or not a terrorist attempt, even if “successful,” introduces confusion in the ruling circles depends upon the concrete political circumstances. In any case this confusion can be only of short duration. The capitalist state does not rest upon ministers and cannot be destroyed together with them. The classes whom the state serves will always find new men – the mechanism remains intact and continues to function. But much deeper is that confusion which the terrorist attempts introduce into the ranks of the working masses. If it is enough to arm oneself with a revolver to reach the goal, then to what end-are the endeavors of the class struggle? If a pinch of powder and a slug of lead are ample to shoot the enemy through the neck, where is the need of a class organization? If there is any rhyme or reason in scaring titled personages with the noise of an explosion, what need is there for a party? What is the need of meetings, mass agitation, elections, when it is so easy to take aim at the Ministerial bench from the Parliamentary gallery? Individual terrorism in our eyes is inadmissible precisely for the reason that it lowers the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to impotence, and directs their glances and hopes towards the great avenger and emancipator who will some day come and accomplish his mission.

Five years later, in the heat of the imperialist war, Friedrich Adler, who had spurred me to write this article, killed the Austrian Minister-President Stuergkh in a Vienna restaurant. The heroic skeptic and opportunist was unable to find any other outlet for his indignation and despair. My sympathies were, naturally, not on the side of the Hapsburg dignitary. However, to the individualist action of Friedrich Adler I counterpoised the form of activity of Karl Liebknecht who, during war-time, went out into a Berlin square to distribute a revolutionary manifesto to the workers.

On the 28th of December 1934, four weeks after the Kirov assassination, at a time when the Stalinist judiciary did not know as yet in which direction to aim the barb of their “justice,” I wrote in the Bulletin of the Opposition:

... If Marxists have categorically condemned individual terrorism – even when the shots were directed against the agents of the Tsarist Government and of capitalist exploitation, then all the more relentlessly will they condemn and reject the criminal adventurism of terrorist acts directed against the bureaucratic representatives of the first workers’ state in history. The subjective motivations of Nikolayev and his associates are a matter of indifference to us. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So long as the Soviet bureaucracy has not been removed by the proletariat – a task which will eventually be accomplished – it fulfills a necessary function in the defense of the workers’ state. Should terrorism of the Nikolayev type spread, it could, given other unfavorable circumstances, render service only to the fascist counter-revolution.

Only political fakers who bank on imbeciles would endeavor to lay Nikolayev at the door of the Left Opposition, even if only in the guise of the Zinoviev group as it existed in 1926-1927. The terrorist organization of the Communist youth is fostered not by the Left Opposition but by the bureaucracy, by its internal decomposition. Individual terrorism in its very essence is bureaucratism turned inside out. For Marxists this law was not discovered yesterday. Bureaucratism has no confidence in the masses, and endeavors to substitute itself for the masses. Terrorism behaves in the same manner; it wants to make the masses happy without asking their participation. The Stalinist bureaucracy has created a revolting leader-cult, endowing leaders with divine attributes. The hero" cult is also the religion of terrorism, only with a minus sign. The Nikolayevs imagine that all that is necessary is to remove a few leaders by means of revolvers, in order for history to take another course. Communist-terrorists, as an ideological grouping, are of the same flesh and blood as the Stalinist bureaucracy. [January 1935, No.41]

These lines, as you have had the opportunity to convince yourselves, were not written ad hoc. They summarize the experience of a whole lifetime, which was in turn fed by the experience of two generations.

Already in the epoch of Tsarism, a young Marxist who went over to the ranks of the terrorist party was a comparatively rare phenomenon – rare enough to cause people to point their fingers. But at that time there was at least taking place an unceasing theoretical struggle between two tendencies; the publications of the two parties were waging a bitter polemic; public disputes did not cease for a single day. Now, on the other hand, they want to force us to believe that not young revolutionists, but old leaders of Russian Marxism, with the tradition of three revolutions behind them, have suddenly, without criticism, without discussion, without a single word of explanation, turned their faces toward the terrorism which they had always rejected, as a method of political suicide. The very possibility of such an accusation shows to what depths of debasement the Stalinist bureaucracy has dragged the official theoretical and political thought, not to mention Soviet justice. To political convictions gained through experience, sealed by theory, tempered in the white heat of the history of mankind, the falsifiers counterpose inchoate, contradictory, and utterly unsubstantiated testimonies of suspicious nonentities.

“Yes.” said Stalin and his agents, “we cannot deny that Trotsky did warn with the very same insistence against terrorist adventurism, not only in Russia but also in other countries in various stages of political development and under different conditions. But we have discovered in his lifetime a few instances which constitute an exception to the rule: In a conspiratorial letter he wrote to one Dreitzer [and which nobody ever saw]; in a conversation with Holtzman who was brought to Trotsky in Copenhagen by his son [who was at the time in Berlin]; in a conversation with Berman-Yurin and David [of whom I never heard prior to the first reports of the court proceedings], in these four or five instances Trotsky issued to his followers [who were in reality my bitterest opponents] terrorist instructions [without making any attempt either to justify them or to tie them up with the cause to which my entire life has been devoted]. If Trotsky had imparted his programmatic views on terror orally and in writing to hundreds of thousands and millions in the course of forty years, it was only in order to deceive them. His real views he expounded in strictest secrecy to the Bermans and the Davids.” And then a miracle came to pass! These inarticulate “instructions,” which rest wholly on the mental level of the Messrs. Vyshinsky, proved sufficient for this: That hundreds of old Marxists – automatically, without any objections, without uttering a syllable – turned to the path of terror. Such is the political basis of the trial of the sixteen (Zinoviev et al.). In other words, the trial of the sixteen completely lacks a political basis.

X. THE KIROV ASSASSINATION[edit source]

In the Moscow trials much was said about vast projects, plans. and criminal preparations. But all this took place in the realm of conversation, or rather of reminiscences of conversation, which the defendants had allegedly had with one another in the past. As we have already said, the trial record consists of nothing but conversation about conversations. The only real crime was the assassination of Kirov. But this very crime was committed neither by Oppositionists nor by capitulators passed off for Oppositionists by the GPU, but by one, perhaps by two or three, young Communists who fell into a trap baited by the GPU provocateurs. Regardless of whether the provocateurs intended to carry things to the point of assassination, the responsibility for the crime falls upon the GPU, which could not have acted in so serious a matter without direct orders from Stalin.

On what are these assertions based? All the materials needed for the answer are to be found in the official documents of Moscow. An analysis of these was made in my pamphlet, The Kirov Assassination and the Soviet Bureaucracy (1935), in Leon Sedov’s Livre Rouge, and in other works. Here I will briefly summarize the conclusions of this analysis:

1. Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others could not have organized the assassination of Kirov, because this assassination was utterly meaningless politically. Kirov was of the second rank, without any significance by himself. Who in the world had heard of Kirov before he was assassinated? Even if one were to admit the absurd notion that Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others had taken the path of individual terror, they could not but have understood that the murder of Kirov, promising no political results whatever, would provoke furious reprisals against all those suspected and mistrusted, and make further oppositional activity of any kind – especially terronsm – more difficult. Real terrorists would have begun with Stalin, as a matter of course. Among the accused were members of the Central Committee and of the Government, who had free access everywhere. The assassination of Stalin would have presented no difficulties for them. If the “capitulators” did not commit this act, it was only because they were serving Stalin, and were not struggling against him or seeking to assassinate him.

2. The assassination of Kirov threw the ruling caste into a state of panicky confusion. Although Nikolayev’s identity was immediately established, the first Government announcement did not link the assassination with the Opposition, but with White Guards who allegedly had entered the USSR from Poland, Rumania and other border states. No fewer than 104 “White Guards” were shot, according to the official figures. Over a period of more than two weeks, the Government found it necessary by means of summary executions to turn public attention in another direction and to efface certain clues. The White Guard version was abandoned only on the sixteenth day. No official explanation has yet been given of the first period of Government panic signalized by more than a hundred corpses.

3. In the Soviet press nothing whatever was said about how and under what circumstances Nikolayev killed Kirov, or about the post Nikolayev held, or his relations with Kirov, etc. Everything concrete, whether concerning the political or the purely external facts of the assassination, still remains shrouded in darkness. The GPU cannot tell what happened without revealing its initiative in the organization of the Kirov assassination.

4. Although Nikolayev and the thirteen other executed men said everything that was asked of them (and I assume that Nikolayev and his companions were subjected to physical torture), they did not have a word to say about the participation of Zinoviev, Bakayev, Kameney, or any other “Trotskyite” in the assassination. The GPU, obviously, never once questioned them along these lines. All the circumstances of the affair were still too fresh, the rôle of provocation still too obvious, and the GPU was less concerned about hunting for traces of the Opposition than with covering up its own tracks.

5. While the Radek-Pyatakov trial, which directly involved the governments of foreign states, took place publicly, the trial of the Komsomol Nikolayev, who killed Kirov, was conducted on December 28-29th, 1934, behind closed doors. Why? Apparently not for diplomatic, but for internal reasons; the GPU could not make a public display of its own work. It was necessary, first, quietly to exterminate the direct participants in the assassination and those closely connected with them; carefully to clean the hands of the GPU, and only then to fall upon the Opposition.

6. The Kirov assassination aroused such alarm within the bureaucracy itself that Stalin. on whom the shadow of suspicion had to fall in the circles of the initiated, was compelled to find a scapegoat. On January 23d, 1935, the trial of twelve leading functionaries of the Leningrad department of the GPU, headed by Medved, took place. The indictment admitted that Medved and his collaborators had “information about the preparation of the assassination of Kirov” in advance. The verdict declared that they “took no measures for the timely exposure and prevention” of the work of the terrorist group, “although they had every possibility of so doing.” Greater candor one cannot ask. All the accused were condemned to from two to ten years at hard labor. It is plain that: the GPU, through its provocateurs, played with Kirov’s head in order to involve the Opposition in the affair and then expose the conspiracy. Nikolayev, however, fired his shot without waiting for Medved’s permission, and thereby cruelly compromised the amalgam. Stalin used Medved as a scapegoat.

7. Our analysis finds complete confirmation in the rôle of the Latvian Consul Bisseneks, an obvious agent of the GPU. The Consul, according to Nikolayev’s confession, was in direct touch with him, gave him 5,000 rubles for carrying out his terroristic deed, and for no reason asked Nikolayev for a letter to Trotsky. Vyshinsky, in order to link my name at least indirectly to the Kirov case, introduced this astonishing episode into the indictment (January 1935), and thereby completely revealed the provocative rôle of the Consul. The name of the Consul was made public, however, only at the direct insistence of the diplomatic corps. Thereupon he disappeared from the scene without leaving a trace. In subsequent trials, Bisseneks was not once mentioned, although he had been in direct contact with the assassin and had financed the assassination. All the other “organizers” of the terrorist act against Kirov (Bakayev, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Mrachkovsky, etc.) knew nothing about the Consul Bisseneks and did not once mention his name. It is difficult to imagine a cruder, more confused, more shameless provocation!

8. Only after the real terrorists and their friends and accomplices – doubtless including the GPU agents involved in the conspiracy – had been wiped out, did Stalin consider it possible to go after the Opposition in earnest. The GPU arrested the leaders of the former Zinovievists and divided them into two groups. The Tass agency, on December 22d, said that there was not “sufficient basis for turning over to the court” the seven leading personalities, former members of the Central Committee. The less important members of the group, in accordance with the traditional technique of the GPU, were left beneath the suspended sword of Damocles. Under the threat of death, some of them testified against Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others. The testimony, it is true, did not deal with terror, but with “counter-revolutionary activity” in general (dissatisfaction, criticism of Stalin’s policies. etc.). But this testimony sufficed to force Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others to confess their “moral” responsibility for the terrorist act. At this price, Zinoviev and Kamenev (temporarily!) bought themselves off from the charge of direct participation in the assassination of Kirov.

9. On January 26th, 1935, I wrote to American friends (the letter was printed in the Bulletin of the Opposition, No. 42, February, 1935): “The strategy developed around Kirov’s corpse won Stalin no great laurels. But just for this reason he can neither stop nor retreat. Stalin will have to cover up the misbegotten amalgam by new, more extensive and ... more successful amalgams. We must meet them well armed!” The trials of 1936-37 confirmed this warning.

XI. WHO DREW UP THE LIST OF “VICTIMS” OF THE TERROR? (The Molotov “Affair”)[edit source]

The Zinoviev-Kamenev trial (August 1936) was constructed entirely on the basis of terror. The task of the so-called “center” consisted in destroying the Government through the assassination of the “leaders,” and seizing power. With a careful comparison of the two trials, that of Zinoviev-Kamenev and that of Pyatakov. Radek, it is not difficult to convince oneself that the list of leaders who were doomed to extermination was drawn up not by terrorists but by their supposed victims – that is, above all by Stalin. His personal authorship emerges in a most revealing fashion in the question of Molotov.

According to the indictment in the case of Zinoviev et al, “the united Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist center, after it had killed Comrade Kirov, did not confine itself to organizing the assassination of Comrade Stalin alone. The terrorist Trotskyite-Zinovievite center simultaneously carried on work to organize assassinations of other leaders of the Party, namely, Comrades Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Kossior, Orjonikidze and Poslyshev.” Molotov’s name is absent from this list. The listing of the victims singled out by the Trotskyites varied in the mouths of the several defendants at various stages of the preliminary investigation and the trial. But on one point it remained unaltered; none of the defendants named Molotov. According to Reingold’s statement during the preliminary investigation, “Zinoviev’s main instructions amounted to the following: The blow must be directed against Stalin, Kaganovich and Kirov.” At the evening session of August 19th, 1936, the same Reingold testified: “That is why the only method of struggle available is terroristic acts against Stalin and his closest comrades-in-arms, Kirov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Orjonikidze, Postyshev, Kossior and the others.” Molotov does not figure amongst the “closest comrades-in-arms,” Mrachkovsky testified: “... We were to kill Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Stalin was to be killed first.” Again Molotov is not mentioned.

The matter is not otherwise with my “terrorist directives. “... Dreitzer’s group ... received instructions to murder Voroshilov directly from Trotsky,” says the indictment. According to Mrachkovsky. Trotsky in the autumn of 1932 “once again emphasized the necessity of killing Stalin, Voroshilov and Kirov:” In December, 1934. Mrachkovsky, through Dreitzer, received a letter from Trotsky urging him “to accelerate the assassination of Stalin and Voroshilov.” Dreitzer testifies to the same thing. Berman-Yurin states: “Trotsky also said that in addition to Stalin it was necessary to assassinate Kaganovich and Voroshilov:” Thus, in the course of some three years I gave instructions to assassinate Stalin, Voroshilov, Kirov and Kaganovich. There was no mention of Molotov. This circumstance is all the more remarkable because during the last years of my participation in the Political Bureau neither Kirov nor Kaganovich was a member of that body, and nobody considered them political figures, while Molotov occupied the first place after Stalin in the leading group. But Molotov is not only a member of the Political Bureau; he is also the head of the Government. His signature, alongside Stalin’s, adorns the most important Government orders. Despite all that, the terrorists of the “unified center,” as we have seen, obstinately ignore Molotovs existence. Hut – and this is the most astonishing thing – Prosecutor Vyshinsky not only fails to evince surprise at this omission, but, on the contrary, himself considers that it is quite in the order of things. Thus, at the morning session of August 19th, Vyshinsky asked Zinoviev, as regards the prepared terrorist acts: “Against whom?”

“Zinoviev: Against the leaders.
"Vyshinsky: That’s, against Comrades Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich?”

The words “that is” leave no room for doubt: the Prosecutor officially excludes the head of the Government from the ranks of the leaders of the Party and the country. Finally, in drawing up the balance-sheet of the court hearings, the same Prosecutor, in his summation, thunders against the “Trotskyites,” “who raised their hand against the leaders of our Party, against Comrades Stalin, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Orjonikidze, Kossior and Postyshev, against our leaders, the leaders of the Soviet state” (Session of Aug. 22nd). The word “leaders” is repeated three times, but here again Molotov is not mentioned.

It is thus clearly indisputable that at the time of the lengthy preparation of the trial of the “unified center” there must have existed certain serious reasons for excluding Molotov from the list of “leaders.” The uninitiated in the secrets of the heads of the Government are completely at a loss to understand why the terrorists deemed it necessary to kill Kirov, Postyshev, Kossior, Zhdanov – “leaders” of provincial stature – and to ignore Molotov, who, as is generally recognized, looms one head, if not two, above these candidates for killing. Already, in the Livre Rouge, devoted to the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, Sedov called attention to the ostracism of Molotov. Sedov writes:

“Among the leaders listed by Stalin as those whom the terrorists allegedly intended to kill were included not only leaders of the first magnitude but even the Zhdanovs, the Kossiors and the Postyshevs. But Molotov is not included. In matters of this kind Stalin never makes slips ...”

Where does the secret lie? In connection with the renunciation of the policies of the “third period.” there circulated persistent and stubborn rumors of friction between Stalin and Molotov. These rumors found an indirect but unmistakable reflection in the Soviet press; Molotov was not quoted, extolled, or photographed, and at times was not even mentioned. The Bulletin of the Opposition remarked upon this fact more than once. It is incontestable in any case that in August 1936 Stalin’s chief comrade-in-arms in the struggle with all the Oppositionist groups was publicly and rudely ejected from the staff of the ruling heads of the state. Thus it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the confessions of the accused, as well as my “directives,” were intended to assist in resolving a specific episodic task: to elevate Kaganovich, Zhdanov and others to the rank of “leaders,” and to discredit the old “leader,“ Molotov.

Perhaps, however, the matter is explained simply by the fact that at the time of the Zinoviev trial the judicial authorities did not yet have at their disposal the evidence on the attempts against Molotov?

Such a hypothesis will not withstand the least criticism. The “evidence” in these trials, as has been said, does not exist in general; the verdict of August 23rd, 1936, speaks of attempts (against Postyshev and Kossior) about which there is not a word in the court record. This consideration, however, which is not without importance of and by itself, is entirely overshadowed by comparison with the fact that the accused – and, above all, the members of the “center” – speak in their confessions not so much of attempts as of plans for attempts. It was exclusively a question of which persons the conspirators deemed it necessary to assassinate. The composition of the list of victims was consequently determined not by the materials of the preliminary investigation, but by a political appraisal of the leading figures. All the more astonishing is the fact that in the plans of the “center,” as well as in my “directives,” there entered all the possible and impossible candidates for martyrdom – except Molotov. Yet nobody ever considered Molotov a decorative figure like Kalinin, On the contrary, if one poses the question of who could replace Stalin, it is impossible to avoid answering that Molotov has incomparably greater chances than all the others.

Perhaps, however, the terrorists, on the basis of rumored discords among the leaders of the state, had simply decided to spare Molotov? As we shall see, this hypothesis will likewise not survive the test of examination. As a matter of fact, it was not the “terrorists” who spared Molotov, but it was Stalin who wished to create the impression that the terrorists did spare Molotov and thereby definitely break his opponent. Facts indicate that Stalin’s design was crowned with complete success. Even before the August trial there could be observed a reconciliation between Stalin and Molotov. This immediately found a reflection in the pages of the Soviet press, which, at a signal from above, set about restoring Molotov in his former authority. One could, on the basis of Pravda, give a very clear and convincing picture of the gradual rehabilitation of Molotov in the course of the year 1936. In remarking upon this fact, the Bulletin of the Opposition (No.50, May 1936) said:

“After the liquidation of the ‘third period,’ Molotov, as is well enough known, fell into semi-disgrace But finally he managed to get back into line.

“During the last weeks he has delivered himself of several panegyrics of Stalin ... By way of compensation ... his name occupies the second place, and he himself is called the closest ‘comrade-in-arms’.“

In this question, as in many others, comparison of the official publications of the bureaucracy with the Bulletin of the Opposition resolves many enigmas.

The Zinoviev-Kamenev trial reflected the period which preceded the reconciliation; it was impossible at a moment’s notice to change all the materials of the preliminary investigation! Furthermore, Stalin was not precipitate about a complete amnesty; Molotov had to be given an effective lesson. That is why Vyshinsky was still obliged in August to adhere to the former directive. On the other hand, the preparation of the Pyatakov-Radek trial took place already after the reconciliation. In conformity therewith, the list of victims is also changed, not only as concerns the future but also as regards the past. In his testimony of January 24th, Radek, referring to his interview with Mrachkovsky dating back to 1932, stated that he “did not have the slightest doubt that the acts were to be directed against Stalin and his immediate colleagues, against Kirov. Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich.” According to the testimony of the witness Loginov, at the morning session of January 25th, Pyatakov, at the beginning of the summer of 1935, “said that the Trotskyite parallel center ... must quite definitely make preparations for terrorist acts against Stalin, Molotoy, Voroshilov and Kaganovich.” Naturally, Pyatakov does not fail to confirm the deposition of Loginov. The defendants in the last trial, in contradistinction to the members of the unified “center,” thus not only name Molotov among the intended victims, but also accord him first place after Stalin.

Who, then, drew up the list of proposed victims – the terrorists or the GPU? The answer is plain: Stalin, through the GPU! The hypothesis mentioned above, that the “Trotskyites” were aware of the friction between Stalin and Molotov and spared Molotov for political reasons, might be invested with a semblance of truth solely in the event that the “Trotskyites” engaged in the preparation of terrorist acts against Molotov only after his reconciliation with Stalin. But the “Trotskyites,” it seems, were striving to kill Molotov as far back as 1932: they had merely “forgotten” to speak about it in August 1936. and the Prosecutor “forgot” to remind them of it.

But no sooner had Molotov obtained political amnesty from Stalin than the memories of both the Prosecutor and the accused were instantly refreshed. And that is why we are witnesses to a miracle; despite the fact that Mrachkovsky himself in his testimony had spoken of the preparation of terrorist acts only against Stalin, Kirov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich, Radek. on the basis of a conversation with Mrachkovsky in 1932, retrospectively included Molotov’s name in this list. Pyatakov spoke, supposedly to Loginov, about the preparation of attempts on Molotov at the beginning of the summer of 1935 – that is, more than a year before the Zinovsev trial. Finally, the defendants Muralov, Shestov and Arnold spoke about the “actual” attempt on Molotov, which took place in the year 1934 – more than two years before the trial of the “unified center”! The conclusions are absolutely dear; the defendants had as little freedom in their choice of “victims” as in all other respects. The list of those selected as the targets of the terrorists was in fact a list of leaders officially recommended to the masses. It was altered in accordance with the combinations at the top. It only remained for the defendants, as also for the Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, to conform to the totalitarian instructions.

There remains one more possible objection: But does not this whole machination appear too crude? To that we must reply: It is no more crude than all the other machinations in these infamous trials. The stage manager appeals to neither reason nor criticism. He aims to crush the authority of reason by the massiveness of the frame-up, signed and sealed by the firing squad.

XII. THE POLITICAL BASIS OF THE ACCUSATION: “SABOTAGE”[edit source]

The crudest part of the judicial frame-up, alike in design and execution, is the charge of sabotage against the “Trotskyites.” This aspect of the trial, which constitutes one of the most important elements of the whole amalgam, has convinced nobody (if one excludes gentlemen of the type of Duranty and Company). The world learned, from the indictment and the proceedings, that all Soviet industry was virtually in the control of “a handful of Trotskyites.” Nor were matters any better as regards transportation. But of what did the Trotskyite acts of sabotage really consist? In Pyatakov’s confessions, corroborated by the testimony of his former subordinates who sat beside him on the prisoners’ bench, it was revealed that: (a) plans for new factories were too slowly drafted. and revised time and again; (b) the construction of factories took far too long, and caused the immobilization of colossal sums; (c) enterprises were put into operation in an unfinished state and consequently were quickly ruined; (d) there were disproportions among the various sections of new plants, with the result that the productive capacity of the factories was reduced in the extreme; (e) the plants accumulated superfluous reserves of raw materials and supplies, thus transforming living capital into dead capital; (f) supplies were wildly squandered, etc. All these phenomena, long known as the chronic diseases of Soviet economic life, are now put forward as the fruits of a malicious conspiracy which Pyatakov led – naturally, under my orders.

However, it remains perfectly incomprehensible what, while all this went on, was the rôle of the state organs of industry and finance, and of the accounting authorities, not to speak of the Party, which has its nuclei in all institutions and enterprises. If one believes the indictment, the leadership of economy was not in the hands of the “genial, infallible leader,” nor in the hands of his closest collaborators, the members of the Politburo and of the Government, but in the hands of an isolated man, already nine years in banishment and exile. How is one to understand this? According to a Moscow dispatch to the New York Times (March 25th, 1937), the new chief of heavy industry, V. Mezhlauk, at a meeting of his subordinates, revealed the criminal rôle of the saboteurs in the drawing up of false plans. But up to the time of Orjonikidze’s death (February 18th, 1937), Mezhlauk himself was at the head of the State Planning Commission, whose special task was precisely to examine economic plans and projects. Thus, in its pursuit of frame-ups, the Soviet Government issues to itself a degrading certificate of bankruptcy. Not for nothing does the Temps, semi-official mouthpiece of the French ally, remark that it would have been better never to have let this part of the trial see daylight.

What has just been said about industry applies wholly to transportation as well. Railroad specialists calculate that the carrying capacity of a railroad has certain technical limits. From the time when Kaganovich took over the management of the transportation system, the “theory of limits” was officially declared to be a bourgeois prejudice; worse yet, the invention of saboteurs. Hundreds of engineers and technicians had to atone for their direct or indirect support of the “theory of limits.” Undoubtedly many old specialists, trained under the conditions of capitalist economy, flagrantly underestimated the possibilities inherent in planned methods, and were consequently inclined to set extremely low norms. But that does not at all mean that the tempos of the economy depend solely on the inspiration and energy of the bureaucracy. The general industrial equipment of the country, the reciprocal interdependence of the various branches of industry, transportation and agriculture, the level of skill of the workers, the percentage of experienced engineers, and, lastly, the general material and cultural level of the population – these are the essential factors which have the last word in the fixing of limits. The effort of the bureaucracy to violate these factors by naked commands, reprisals and premiums (“Stakhanovism”) inevitably exacts harsh penalties in the form of disorganization of plants, damage of machinery, a high proportion of damaged goods, accidents and disasters. There is not the slightest ground for dragging a “Trotskyite conspiracy” into this matter.

The task of the prosecution is extremely complicated by the additional fact that from February 1930 onwards, I exposed in the press, systematically and persistently, year in and year out, from one month to the next, the self-same vices of bureaucratized economy which are now being charged against a fantastic ’Trotskyist” organization. I proved that Soviet industry required not maximum but optimum tempos – i.e., such tempos as would, by resting upon mutual correspondence among various sections of one and the same enterprise and among various enterprises, insure the uninterrupted growth of economy in the future. I wrote in the Bulletin of the Opposition on February 13th, 1930:

Industry is racing towards a crisis, above all because of the monstrous bureaucratic methods of collating the plan. A five-year plan can be drafted, preserving the necessary proportions and guarantees, only on the condition of a free discussion of the tempos and the terms set, with the participation in the discussion of all the interested forces in industry, the working class, all its organizations, and above all the Party itself; with the free verification of the entire experience of Soviet economy in the recent period, including the monstrous mistakes of the leadership – A plan of socialist construction cannot be arrived at in the guise of an a priori departmental directive.

The “Trotskyites,” we are told at every step, constitute an insignificant handful, isolated from and hated by the masses. It is for this very reason that they allegedly resorted to the methods of individual terror. The picture alters completely, however, when we come to sabotage. To be sure, a single man can throw sand into a machine or blow up a bridge. But in the court we hear of such methods of sabotage as would be possible only if the entire administrative apparatus were in the hands of the saboteurs. Thus, the accused Shestov, a transparent agent provocateur, at the session of January 25th:

And finally, at all the mines – the Prokopyevsk, the Anzherka and the Lenin Mines – the Stakhanov movement was sabotaged. Instructions were issued to worry the life out of the workers. Before a worker reached his place of work, he must be made to heap two hundred curses on the heads of the pit management. Impossible conditions of work were created. Normal work was rendered impossible, not only for Stakhanov methods but even for ordinary methods.

All that was done by the “Trotskyites”. Obviously, the whole administration from top to bottom was composed of “Trotskyites.”

Not content with this, the prosecution also lists acts of sabotage which would be unrealizable without the active or at least passive support of the workers themselves. Thus, the President of the Court cites the following statement of the accused Muralov who, in his turn, cites the accused Boguslavsky: “Trotskyites on the railways ... were putting locomotives out of commission, disrupting the traffic schedule and causing jams at the stations, thereby delaying the transportation of urgent freight.” The crimes enumerated simply mean that the railroads were in the hands of the “Trotskyites.” Not satisfied with this excerpt from Muralov’s testimony, the President asks him:

And quite lately Boguslavsky carried on wrecking activities on the construction of the Eiche-Sokol line?

Muralov: Yes.
The President: And as a result disrupted the construction job?
Muralov: Yes.

And that is all. How Boguslavsky and two or three other “Trotskyites,” without the support of the employees and workers, could have disrupted the construction work of a whole railroad line, remains entirely incomprehensible.

The dates of the sabotage are contradictory in the extreme. According to the most important testimony, sabotage in 1934 was “something new.” But the aforementioned Shestov places the beginning of Sabotage at the end of the year 1931. In the course of the court proceedings the dates are shifted, now forward, now backward. The mechanism of these shiftings is quite clear. Most of the concrete accusations of sabotage or “diversion” are based upon some mishap, failure or disaster which really occurred in industry or transportation. Beginning with the first Five-Year Plan there were not a few failures and accidents. The indictment chooses those which can be linked to one or another of the defendants. Hence flow the interminable jumps in the chronology of the sabotage. In any case, as far as one can make out, the general “directive” was first given by me only in 1934.

The most vicious manifestations of “sabotage” are now discovered in the chemical industry, where the internal proportions were especially grossly violated. Yet seven years ago, when the Soviet power first really began building this branch of industry, I wrote:

For example, the solution of the question as to what place the chemical industry should occupy in the plan for the years immediately ahead can be prepared only by an open struggle among the various economic groupings and various branches of industry for their share of chemistry in the national economy. Soviet democracy is not the demand of abstract politics, and still less of morality. It has become a matter of economic necessity.

What was the real situation in this respect? “Industrialization,” I wrote in the same article, “is more and more kept going by the administrative whip. Equipment and labor forces are being strained. The disproportions between the individual branches of industry are accumulating.” Knowing only too well the Stalinist methods of self-defense, I added: “It is not difficult to forecast the response our analysis will evoke in official circles. Functionaries will say that we are speculating on a crisis. Scoundrels will add that we seek the downfall of the Soviet power – That will not stop us. Slanders pass, facts remain.”

I do not intend to burden the record with citations. But I am ready to demonstrate with a collection of my articles in my hand that for seven years, on the basis of the official Soviet press reports, I untiringly warned against the ruinous consequences of skipping the period of laboratory preparation, of putting incomplete plants into operation, of supplanting technical training and correct organization by frantic and senseless reprisals, and, not infrequently, fantastic premiums. All the economic “crimes” referred to at the last trial were analyzed by me countless times – beginning in February 1930 and ending in my latest book, The Revolution Betrayed – as the inevitable consequences of the bureaucratic system. I have not the slightest ground for boasting of my perspicacity. All I had to do was to follow attentively the official reports and draw rudimentary conclusions from the incontestable facts.

If the “sabotage” of Pyatakov and the others, as the indictment states, began actively only around the year 1934, how is one to explain the fact that already in the four preceding years I demanded the radical remedying of those diseases of Soviet industry which are now represented as due to the malicious activities of “Trotskyites”? But perhaps my critical work was mere “camouflage”? According to the real sense of that term, such camouflage could only have been intended to conceal crimes. Yet my criticism, on the contrary, exposed them. It thus transpires that while secretly organizing sabotage, I did everything in my power to draw the attention of the Government to the acts of “sabotage” and thereby – to the perpetrators. All this would have been extremely clever – if it were not so utterly nonsensical.

The system of Stalin and his police and prosecution agents is quite simple. For major accidents in plants, and especially for train wrecks, usually several employees were shot, often those who shortly before had been decorated for achieving high tempos. The result has been universal distrust and discontent. The last trial was intended to personify in Trotsky the causes for the accidents and disasters. Against Ormuzd, the spirit of good, was to be set the evil spirit Ahriman. Following the unchanging course of current Soviet legal procedure, all the accused naturally confessed their guilt. Is it any wonder? For the G.P.U. it is no great labor to place before a certain number of their victims the alternative: Either be shot immediately, or preserve a shadow of hope on the condition that you agree to appear in court in the guise of “Trotskyites,” conscious saboteurs of industry and transportation. The rest requires no commentary.

The conduct of the Prosecutor in court constitutes in itself deadly evidence against the real conspirators. Vyshinsky limits himself to simple questions: “Do you confess yourself guilty of sabotage? Of organizing accidents and wrecks? Do you confess that the directives came from Trotsky?” But he never asks how the accused carried out their crimes in practice: how they succeeded in getting their wrecking plans adopted by the highest state institutions; in hiding the sabotage for years from their superiors and subordinates; In procuring the silence of local authorities, specialists, workers, etc. As always, Vyshinsky is the chief accomplice of the GPU in the frame-up and the deception of public opinion.

The extent of the shamelessness of the inquisitors, moreover, is seen in the fact that the accused, on the persistent demand of the prosecution, declared – though, to be sure, not without reluctance – that they deliberately strove to cause as many human victims as possible, in order thus to inspire discontent among the workers, But that is not all. On March 24th – that is, just a few days ago – a dispatch from Moscow related the shooting of three “Trotskyites” for malicious arson of a school in Novosibirsk in which many children were burned to death. Permit me also to recall that my younger son, Sergei Sedov, was arrested on the charge of attempting the mass poisoning of workers. Let us for a moment imagine that the Government of the United States had, on the heels of the Texas school disaster which shocked the entire world, launched throughout the country a rabid campaign against the Comintern and charged it with the malicious extermination of children, and we get an approximate notion of the current policy of Stalin. Such vile charges, possible only in the polluted atmosphere of a totalitarian regime, bear their refutation within themselves.

XIII. THE POLITICAL BASIS OF THE ACCUSATION: THE ALLIANCE WITH HITLER AND THE MIKADO[edit source]

To bolster up the all too improbable accusation of an alliance of the “Trotskyites” with Germany and Japan, the foreign attorneys of the GPU are circulating the following versions:

1. Lenin, with the agreement of Ludendorff, crossed Germany during the war, in order to be able to carry out his revolutionary tasks.
2. The Bolshevik Government did not shrink from ceding enormous territory and paying indemnity to Germany, in order to save the Soviet regime.
Conclusion: Why not admit that Trotsky entered into agreement with the same German General Staff in order to secure, through the cession of territory, the possibility of realizing his aims in the rest of the country?

This analogy represents, in reality, the most monstrous and poisonous slander against Lenin and the Bolshevik Party as a whole.

1. Lenin actually crossed Germany by utilizing the false hopes of Ludendorff that Russia would disintegrate as a result of internal struggle. But how did Lenin proceed in this matter?

(a) He did not conceal for a moment either his program or the purpose of his trip;
(b) He called in Switzerland a small conference of internationalists from various countries who fully approved his plan to travel to Russia through Germany;
(c) Lenin did not enter into any political agreement with the German authorities, and made the condition that no one was to enter his car during the passage across Germany;
(d) Immediately upon his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin explained before the Soviet and the laboring masses the purport and nature of his trip through Germany.

Audacity of decision and carefulness of preparation characterize Lenin also in this episode; but no less is he characterized by full and unconditional honesty towards the working class, to whom he is ready at any moment to render an accounting for each of his political steps.

2. The Bolshevik Government really did cede great territory to Germany after the peace of Brest-Litovsk, in order to save the Soviet régime in the rest of the country. But:

(a) The Soviet Government had no other choice;
(b) The decision was adopted not behind the backs of the people. but only after an open and public discussion;
(c) The Bolshevik Government did not for one moment conceal from the popular masses that the Brest-Litovsk peace signified a transitory and partial capitulation of the proletarian revolution to capitalism.

In this case, too, we have a full concordance of aims and methods and an unconditional honesty of the leadership before the public opinion of the toiling masses.

Now, let us see what sense there is in the accusation against me. I have allegedly concluded an agreement with fascism and militarism on the following basis:

I agree to renounce Socialism in favor of capitalism;
I give the signal to destroy Soviet economy and exterminate workers and soldiers;
I conceal from the whole world my real aims as well as my methods;
My entire public political activity serves only to fool the working masses about my real plans, into which Hitler, the Mikado and their agents are initiated.

The activity ascribed to me has consequently nothing in common with the above-mentioned example of Lenin’s activity, but in every respect represents its direct opposite.

The Brest-Litovsk peace was a temporary retreat, a compulsory compromise, with the object of saving the Soviet power and realizing the revolutionary program. A secret alliance with Hitler and the Mikado is a betrayal of the interests of the working class for the sake of personal power, or rather the illusion of power – i.e., the basest of all possible crimes.

To be sure, some attorneys of the GPU are inclined to dilute with water the over-potent wine of Stalin. It may be, they say, that Trotsky agreed only verbally to restore capitalism, but in reality was preparing to realize in the remaining territory a policy in the spirit of his program. In the first place, this variant contradicts the confessions of Radek, Pyatakov and others. But, independently of this fact, it is just as senseless as the official version given in the indictment. The program of the Opposition is the program of international Socialism. How could an experienced adult imagine that Hitler and the Mikado, possessing a complete list of his treasons and abominable crimes, would permit him to realize a revolutionary program? How could one hope, anyway, to achieve power at the price of acts of high treason in the service of a foreign general staff? Is it not clear in advance that Hitler and the Mikado, after using such an agent to the limit, would fling him aside like a squeezed lemon? Could the conspirators, headed by six members of Lenin’s Political Bureau, have failed to understand this? The accusation is thus internally meaningless in both its variants – the official variant, which speaks of the restoration of capitalism, and the semi-official variant, which concedes to the conspirators a hidden design – to fool Hitler and the Mikado.

To this it is necessary to add that it must have been clear in advance to the conspirators that the conspiracy could in no case remain undiscovered. At the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, Olberg and others testified that the “collaboration’ of the “Trotskyites” with the Gestapo was not an exception but a “system.” Consequently, scores and hundreds of people must have been initiated into this system. The commission of terrorist acts – and especially sabotage – would, in its turn, require hundreds and even thousands of agents. Discovery, therefore, would be absolutely unavoidable – with simultaneous exposure of the alliance of the “Trotskyites” with the fascist and Japanese spies. Could anyone but a lunatic hope to arrive at power in this way?

But that is still not all. The acts of sabotage, like acts of tenor, presuppose on the part of their executors a readiness for seif-sacrifice. When a German fascist or a Japanese agent risks his head in the USSR, he is impelled by such powerful stimuli as patriotism, nationalism, chauvinism. By what stimuli could the “Trotskyites” have been driven? Let us grant that the “leaders,” having lost their senses, hoped to seize power by such methods. But what were the driving motives of Berman-Yurin, David, Olberg, Arnold and many others who, taking the actual path of terrorism and sabotage, thereby condemned themselves to certain death? A man is capable of sacrificing his life only for the sake of some high ideal, even though it be a mistaken one. What high ideal did the “Trotskyites” have? The desire to dismember the USSR? The desire to give Trotsky power for the sake of the restoration of capitalism? Sympathy for German fascism? The desire to supply Japan with oil for a war against the United States? Neither the official nor the semi-official version furnishes any answer whatever to the question: For the sake of what were the hundreds of executors ready to stake their heads? The whole construction of the indictment is mechanical. It ignores the psychology of living men. In this sense, the indictment is the logical product of a totalitarian régime, with its disregard and contempt for men when they do not happen to be “leaders.”

The second fantastic theory which is put into circulation by the friends of the GPU declares that in view of my general position I am presumably politically interested in expediting war. The usual line of argument is as follows: Trotsky is for the international revolution. It is well known that war often produces revolution. Ergo, Trotsky must be interested in expediting war.

People who believe this, or who ascribe such ideas to me, have a very feeble conception of revolution, war, and their interdependence.

War has in fact often expedited revolution. But precisely for this reason it has often led to abortive results, War sharpens social contradictions and mass discontent. But that is insufficient for the triumph of the proletarian revolution. Without a revolutionary party rooted in the masses, the revolutionary situation leads to the most cruel defeats. The task is not to ’expedite” war ... for this, unfortunately, the imperialists of all countries are working, not unsuccessfully. The task is to utilize the time which the imperialists still leave to the working masses for the building of a revolutionary party and revolutionary trade unions.

It is in the vital interest of the proletarian revolution that the outbreak of war be delayed as long as possible, that the maximum possible time be gained for preparation. The more firm, the more courageous, the more revolutionary the conduct of the toilers, the more the imperialists will hesitate, the more surely will it be possible to postpone war, the greater will be the chances that the revolution will occur prior to war and perhaps make war itself impossible.

It is precisely because the Fourth International stands for the international revolution that it is one of the factors working against war; for – I repeat – the only check to a new world war is the fear, among the propertied classes, of revolution.

War, we are told, creates a revolutionary situation. But have we had a lack of revolutionary situations in the period from 1917 until today? Let us glance briefly at the post-war period:

A revolutionary situation in Germany, 1918-1919.
A revolutionary situation in Austria and Hungary at the same time.
A revolutionary situation in Germany in 1923 (the Ruhr occupation).
A revolutionary situation in China, 1925-1927, which was not immediately preceded by a war.
Profound revolutionary convulsions in Poland in 1926.
A revolutionary situation in Germany. 1931-1933.
A revolution in Spain, 1931-1937.
A pre-revolutionary situation in France, beginning in 1934.
A pre-revolutionary situation in Belgium at present.

Despite the superabundance of revolutionary situations, the toiling masses have not carried off any revolutionary victory in any of the enumerated cases. What is lacking? A party capable of utilizing the revolutionary situation.

The Social Democracy has sufficiently demonstrated in Germany that it is hostile to the revolution. It now demonstrates this anew in France (Leon Blum). The Comintern, for its part, having usurped the authority of the October Revolution, disorganizes the revolutionary movement in all countries. The Comintern has, in reality, regardless of its intentions, become the best assistant of fascism and reaction in general.

Precisely for this reason there rises before the proletariat the iron necessity of building new parties and a new international which correspond to the character of our epoch – an epoch of great social convulsions and permanent war danger.

If, in the event of a new war, the masses are not headed by a bold, courageous, consistent revolutionary party, tested through experience and enjoying the confidence of the masses, a new revolutionary situation would throw society back. A war may, under such circumstances, terminate not with a victorious revolution, but with the crumbling of our whole civilization. One would have to be pathetically blind not to see this danger.

War and revolution are the gravest and most tragic phenomena in human history. You cannot joke with them. They do not tolerate dilettantism. We must understand clearly the interrelationship of war and revolution. We must understand no less clearly the interrelationship of the objective revolutionary factors, which cannot be induced at will, and the subjective factor of the revolution – the conscious vanguard of the proletariat, its party. It is necessary to prepare this party with the utmost energy.

Can one admit for a moment that the so-called “Trotskyites,” the extreme left wing, hounded and persecuted by all other tendencies, would devote their forces to contemptible adventures, sabotage and war provocation, instead of building a new revolutionary party capable of meeting the revolutionary situation well armed? Only the cynical contempt of Stalin and his school for world public opinion, together with Stalin’s primitive police cunning, are capable of creating such a monstrous and nonsensical accusation!

I have explained in scores of articles and hundreds of letters that a military defeat of the USSR would inevitably signify the restoration of capitalism in a semi-colonial form under a fascist political régime, the dismemberment of the country, and the wrecking of the October Revolution. Indignant at the policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy, many of my former political friends in various countries arrived at the conclusion that we cannot take upon ourselves the obligation “unconditionally” to defend the USSR Opposing this attitude, I argued that it is impermissible to identify the bureaucracy with the USSR; that the new social foundation of the USSR must be unconditionally defended against imperialism; that the Bonapartist bureaucracy will be overthrown by the toiling masses only on condition that the foundation of the new economic régime of the USSR is preserved. On this question I broke publicly and demonstratively with dozens of old and hundreds of new friends. My archives contain an enormous correspondence devoted to the question of the defense of the USSR. Finally, my latest book, The Revolution Betrayed, gives a detailed analysis of the military and diplomatic policies of the USSR, expressly from the standpoint of the defense of the country. Now, by the grace of the GPU, it appears that while breaking with many close friends who did not understand the necessity of unconditional defense of the USSR against imperialism, I was actually concluding alliances with the imperialists and urging the destruction of the economic foundation of the USSR.

It is impossible to discern, moreover, exactly what Germany and Japan contributed in practice to the alliance. The “Trotskyites” sold their heads to the Mikado and Hitler; what did they receive in exchange? Money is the sinews of war; did the “Trotskyites” at least receive money from Germany and Japan? Not a word of this in the trial. The Prosecutor is not even interested in this question. At the same time it appears, from references to other financial sources, that neither Germany nor Japan gave any money. What, then, did they give to the “Trotskyites”? Throughout the trial this question receives not a shadow of an answer. The alliance with Germany and Japan rests wholly in the domain of metaphysics. To this I would add that it is the most dastardly of all the police metaphysics in the history of mankind!

XIV. COPENHAGEN[edit source]

The “Copenhagen” chapter of the trial of the sixteen (Zinoviev and others) is, by virtue of the accumulation of contradictions and absurdities, the most monstrous of all its chapters. The facts relating to Copenhagen have been established and analyzed long since in a number of books, beginning with Le Livre Rouge by L. Sedov. I have presented to the Commission the most important documents and evidence, and I reserve the right to present supplementary material in the further course of the investigation. That is why I will be as brief as possible concerning the “terrorist week” in Copenhagen.

I accepted the invitation of the Danish students to lecture in Copenhagen, in the hope that I would succeed in remaining in Denmark or in securing admission to another European country.

This hope was not realized because of pressure exerted by the Soviet Government on the Danish Government (threat of economic boycott).In order to deter other countries from offering me their hospitality, the GPU decided to transform my week’s stay in Copenhagen into a week of “terrorist plotting.” Holtzman, Berman-Yurin and David allegedly visited me in the Danish capital. All three arrived independently of one another, and each one received separate terrorist instructions from me. Olberg, who was in Berlin, received similar instructions from me from Copenhagen, but in the shape of a letter.

The most important witness against myself and Leon Sedov is Holtzman, an old member of the party and personally known to both of us. Holtzman’s confessions during the preliminary investigation, and at the trial itself, are distinguished from the confessions of most of the defendants by their extreme meagerness. Suffice it to say that, despite the insistence of the Prosecutor, Holtzman denied any participation whatever in the terrorist activity. Holtzman’s testimony must be regarded as the least common denominator of all the depositions. Holtzman agreed to admit only the terrorist plans of Trotsky and the participation in them of Leon Sedov. It is precisely the meagerness of Holtzman’s confessions which at first glance invests them with exceptional weight. Yet it is precisely the testimony of Holtzman which crumbles into dust upon contact with facts. The documents and affidavits presented by me, which I refrain from enumerating again, establish with certainty that, contrary to Holtzman’s declaration, Sedov was not in Copenhagen, and consequently could not have brought Holtzman to me, especially from a Hotel Bristol demolished in 1917. Moreover, the statements of the three other “terrorists” – Berman-Yurin, David, and Olberg – improbable in themselves, undermine one another and conclusively invalidate the testimony of Holtzman.

Holtzman, Berman-Yurin and David were, one and all, according to their own words, sent to Copenhagen by Leon Sedov. But the presence of Sedov in Copenhagen is mentioned by neither Berman nor David. Only Holtzman was supposed to have met Sedov in the vestibule of a razed hotel.

Berman-Yurin and David, who, according to their own admissions were utter strangers to me, are supposed to have been first recommended to me by my son, at the time a twenty-six year old student. Thus it follows that I concealed my terrorist views from those closest to me, while issuing terrorist instructions to chance acquaintances. This perplexing fact can be explained only in one way – those who were “chance acquaintances” to me were not at all “chance acquaintances” to the GPU.

A fourth terrorist, Olberg, declared at the evening session of August 20th, 1936: “Before my departure for the Soviet Union, I intended to go to Copenhagen with Sedov to see Trotsky. Our trip did not materialize, but Suzanna, Sedov’s wife, went there. On her return she brought a letter from Trotsky addressed to Sedov, in which Trotsky agreed to my going to the USSR ...” (My emphasis.)

My Berlin friends, the Pfemferts, as appears from their letter of April 30th, 1930, already at that period regarded Olberg, if not as a GPU agent, at least as a candidate for the job. I rejected his proposal that he come to Prinkipo from Berlin as my Russian secretary. It is all the more inconceivable that two years later I should have given him “terrorist instructions.” But Olberg, unlike Berman-Yurin and David, did really engage in correspondence with me at one time, made Sedov’s personal acquaintance in Berlin, met him several times, was acquainted with Sedov’s friends – in short, to a certain degree moved in his circle. Olberg had the opportunity to learn and, as his testimony shows, really did learn, that the attempts of my son to reach Copenhagen proved unsuccessful, but that his wife, who had a French passport, did go there.

All the four “terrorists” declare, as you observe, that it was Sedov who put them in touch with me. But from that point on their testimony diverges. According to Holtzman, Sedov himself was in Copenhagen. Berman-Yurin and David make no mention of Sedov’s presence in Copenhagen. Finally, Olberg categorically insists that Sedov was unable to make the trip to Copenhagen. The most astonishing thing of all is that the Prosecutor pays not the least attention to these contradictions.

At the disposal of the Commission there is, as I have stated, documentary proof that Sedov was not in Copenhagen. The testimony of Olberg and the silence of Berman-Yurin and David corroborate this fact. The most imposing testimony against Sedov and myself, that of Holtzman, thus crumbles into dust. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that the friends of the GPU seek at any price to save the testimony of Holtzman, on which hangs the whole story of the Copenhagen “terrorist week.” Hence the hypothesis: Sedov might have gone to Copenhagen illegally without the knowledge of Olberg and the others. In order to deprive my adversaries of their last loophole, I shall dwell briefly on this hypothesis.

What need had Sedov to risk an illegal journey? All that we know about his alleged stay in Copenhagen is reduced to this: That he brought Holtzman from the Hotel Bristol to my apartment and during my conversation with Holtzman “very often Trotsky’s son Sedov came in and out of the roam.” That is all was it worth while to make an illegal journey from Berlin just for that?

Berman-Yurin and David, who, according to their own admissions, had never met me before, were able to locate me in Copenhagen without the help of Sedov who, as can be gathered from their own statements, gave them all the necessary directions in Berlin. It was all the easier for Holtzman, who had met me in the past, to ascertain my whereabouts. No sensible person will believe that Sedov traveled with a false passport from Berlin to Copenhagen in order to bring Holtzman to my apartment, while leaving Berman-Yurin and David, whom he had also sent from Berlin and whom I did not know personally, without any attention.

But perhaps Sedov came to Copenhagen illegally to meet his parents? This supposition might, at first glance, seem a trifle more plausible if Sedov had not, several days later, journeyed to France quite legally for the same purpose – that is, for a meeting with his parents.

But, persist the friends of the GPU, could not Sedov have made a second and legal trip solely to hide the first illegal trip? Let us for a moment picture this combination in all its concreteness. Entirely openly, in the view of all, Sedov busies himself with the preparations for his trip to Copenhagen. In other words, he hides from nobody his intention of meeting us. All our friends in Copenhagen know that we expect our son. His wife and attorney arrive in Copenhagen, and tell their friends of his unsuccessful efforts. Now they ask us to believe that, failing to secure a visa, Sedov procures a false passport and arrives secretly in Copenhagen unbeknown to any of our friends. There he meets Holtzman in the vestibule of a hotel which does not exist, brings him to a meeting with me without being seen by my guards, and during my conversation with Holtzman keeps coming “in and out of the room.” Thereafter, he disappears from Copenhagen as miraculously as he appeared. Upon returning to Berlin, he manages to obtain a French visa, and already on December 5th meets us again in Paris at the Gare du Nord. And all this to what end?

On the one hand, we have the testimony of Holtzman, who has not a single word to say regarding the kind of passport he used for his journey to Copenhagen (the state Prosecutor does not, of course, question him on this point), and who, as the crowning misfortune, indicates a non-existent hotel as his meeting place with the absent Sedov. On the other hand, we have the silence of Berman-Yurin and David about Sedov, the absolutely true assertion that Olberg and Sedov remained in Berlin, upwards of a score of affidavits corroborating the statements of Sedov, his mother and myself, and, for added measure, plain common sense, whose authority cannot be denied.

To sum up: Sedov was not in Copenhagen; the testimony of Holtzman is false. Holtzman is the chief witness for the prosecution. The whole “Copenhagen week” crumbles into dust.

I can state a number of supplementary arguments, which ought to dispel the last shred of doubt, if any is at all possible in this matter.

None of my pretended visitors names either my address or the section of the city where the meeting took place.
The small villa which we occupied belonged to a danseuse who had gone abroad. All the furnishings of the house evidenced the owner’s profession, and could not have failed to attract the attention of any visitor. Had Holtzman, Berman-Yurin and David visited me, they would unfailingly have mentioned the furnishings of the apartment.
During our stay in Copenhagen. a rumor of Zinoviev’s death circulated through the world press. The rumor proved false. But it made an impression on all of us. Can one imagine that my visitors, who came to receive “terrorist” instructions, either heard nothing from me or others about the death of Zinoviev, or else forgot all about it?
None of my pretended visitors said a word about my secretaries, my guards, etc.
Berman-Yurin and David said nothing about the passports with which they traveled, how they found me, where they lodged, etc.

The judges and the state Prosecutor do not raise a single concrete question, for fear that an incautious gesture might topple the flimsy structure.

The organ of the Danish governmental party, Sozialdemokraten, immediately after the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, on September 1st, 1936, stated that the Hotel Bristol, in which the alleged meeting between Holtzman and Sedov took place, was demolished in the year 1917. Moscow justice met this not unimportant revelation with a deep silence. One of the GPU lawyers, presumably the irreplaceable Pritt, advanced the supposition that the stenographer in writing the name “Bristol” made a slip of the pen. If one considers that the trials were conducted in Russian, then it is entirely incomprehensible how a Russian stenographer could have made a mistake with such an un-Russian word as “Bristol” The carefully corrected reports of the court proceedings were, furthermore, read by the judges and the public. Foreign journalists attended the trial. No one noticed the “slip of the pen” before the revelation of Sozialdemokraten. The episode naturally became widely known. The Stalinists kept silent for five months.

Only in February of this year did the Comintern make a saving discovery: There really was no Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen, but there is, however, a confectioner’s shop named Bristol which is contiguous to a hotel by virtue of a joint wall. To be sure, this hotel is called the Grand Hotel Copenhagen, but it is, nevertheless, a hotel. To be sure, the confectioner’s shop is not a hotel; still, its name is Bristol. According to Holtzman, the meeting took place in the vestibule of the hotel. To be sure, the confectioner’s shop has no vestibule; but on the other hand, the hotel, which is not called the Bristol, does have a vestibule. To this it must be added that, as it appears even in the diagrams published in the Comintern press, the entrances to the shop and to the hotel are on different streets. Now, where did the meeting really take place? In the vestibule without the Bristol or in the Bristol without the vestibule?

Let us, however, assume for a moment that Holtzman had confused the shop and the hotel in arranging the meeting with Sedov in Berlin. How, then, did Sedov discover the place of the meeting? Let us meet the authors of the hypothesis more than half way and let us suppose that Sedov had demonstrated an unusual resourcefulness, that he turned into the other street and there found an entrance to a hotel of another name and met Holtzman in the vestibule. But it is self-evident that Holtzman could have made a mistake as regards the name of the hotel only before the meeting. During the meeting the error must have been cleared up and imprinted all the more sharply in the memories of both parties. After the meeting Holtzman could in no case have spoken of the vestibule – of the Bristol confectioner’s shop. The hypothesis thus collapses at the very first touch.

But in order to confuse the situation still further, the Comintern press asserts that the Bristol shop has served for a long time as a meeting-place for Danish and transient “Trotskyites.” There is an obvious anachronism here. In November, 1932, we were unable to find a single “Trotskyite” in Denmark. German “Trotskyites” appeared in Copenhagen only after Hitler’s triumph – that is, in the year 1933. Yet, even if we suppose for a moment that there not only were “Trotskyites” there in 1932, but that the Bristol shop was already being utilized by them, the new hypothesis appears still more senseless. Let us turn to Holtzman’s testimony, as given in the official report:

... Sedov said to me: “As you are going to the USSR. it would be a good thing if you came with me to Copenhagen where my father is ...” I agreed. But I told him that we could not go together, for reasons of secrecy [my emphasis]. I arranged with Sedov to be in Copenhagen within two or three days, to put up at the Hotel Bristol and meet him there.

It is clear that the old revolutionist, who did not want to make the trip together with Sedov because his life would be endangered if his Copenhagen trip were discovered, would not be likely to fix a meeting place which, according to the Comintern press, “had for years [!] been the meeting place for the Danish Trotskyites, and for those in their circle, as well as for meetings between the Danish and foreign Trotskyites.” In the latter circumstance, which, as has already been said, is a sheer invention, the over-zealous agents of the Comintern see a confirmation of their hypothesis. According to them, it follows that Holtzman fixed a meeting place in a shop sufficiently well known to the Stalinists as a “Trotskyite hangout.” One absurdity is piled upon another. If the shop was generally known to the Danish and foreign “Trotskyites,” especially to Holtzman, then he could not in the first place have mistaken it for the Grand Hotel Copenhagen, and secondly, he would have shunned it precisely because of its “Trotskyite” reputation, as he would a plague. In such a manner do these people correct the stenographer’s “slip of the pen”!

The Commission knows from the documents submitted by me that Sedov could not have been in the “Trotskyite” confectioner’s Shop because he was not in Copenhagen at all. In Sedov’s Livre Rouge the Hotel Bristol episode is treated as a curiosity which characterizes the GPU’s extremely slovenly methods of work. Main attention is concentrated on proving that Sedov was in Berlin in November, 1932. Innumerable documents and affidavits leave no room for any doubt on that score. They want us to believe that Sedov’s ghost found its way into the ghost]y vestibule of the confectioner’s shop, which, after some delay, was transformed into a hotel by the fantasy of the agents of the GPU.

Holtzman made his alleged trip separately from Sedov and, naturally, with a false passport in order to leave no traces. The entry of foreigners is nowadays registered in all countries. Holtzman’s testimony could be verified immediately if we knew what passport he used in journeying from Berlin to Copenhagen. Can one imagine a court procedure in which the Prosecutor, under such circumstances, does not question the defendant about his passport? It is well known that Holtzman categorically denied connection with the Gestapo. All the more reason for the Prosecutor to ask Holtzman who, then, procured the false passport for him. However, Vyshinsky, naturally, did not put this question, in order not to sabotage his own work. From all indications, Holtzman must have passed the night in Copenhagen. Where? Perhaps in the Bristol confectionery? Vyshinsky is not interested in this question, either. His function consists in protecting the defendants from a verification of their own testimony.

Naturally, the error in the matter of the Hotel Bristol discredits the accusation. The error regarding the meeting with the absent Sedov doubly discredits the trial. But what most discredits the trial, and Vyshinsky himself, is the circumstance that the latter did not interrogate the defendant about his passport, the source from which he obtained it, or his place of lodging, although these questions clamor for answer. Vyshinsky’s silence exposes him in this case, also, as an accomplice in the judicial frame-up.

XV. RADEK[edit source]

In his summation (January 28th). Prosecutor Vyshinsky said: “Radek is one of the most outstanding, and, to do him justice, one of the most able and persistent Trotskyites ... He is incorrigible ... He is one of the men who is most trusted by and intimate with the big chief of this gang, Trotsky.” All the elements of this characterization are false, with the possible exception of the reference to Radek’s talent; but even here it is necessary to add, talent as a journalist. And only that it is possible to speak of Radek’s “persistency,” of his “incorrigibility” as an Oppositionist, and of his intimacy with me, only by way of inept jesting.

Radek’s outstanding characteristics, as a matter of fact, are impulsiveness, instability, undependability, a predisposition toward falling into panic at the first sign of danger, and exhibiting extreme loquacity when all is well. These qualities make him a journalistic Figaro of first-rate skill, an invaluable guide for foreign correspondents and tourists, but utterly unsuited for the rôle of conspirator. Among informed persons it is simply unthinkable to speak of Radek as an inspirer of terrorist attempts or the organizer of an international conspiracy!

However, it is not by accident that the Prosecutor attributes to Radek traits which are in direct contradiction to his real character; otherwise it would be impossible to create even the semblance of a psychological basis for the accusation. As a matter of fact, had I chosen Radek as the political leader of the “purely Trotskyite” center, and had I initiated none other than Radek into my negotiations with Germany and Japan, it would be perfectly self-evident that Radek must have been not only a “persistent” and “incorrigible” Trotskyite, but also one of my ’most trusted and intimate” men. The characterization of Radek in the summation of the prosecutor is an indispensable constituent of the judicial frame-up.

According to the Prosecutor, Radek was the “holder of the portfolio of foreign affairs” in the “Trotskyite” center. Indeed, Radek was closely occupied with questions of foreign policy, but exclusively in the capacity of journalist. True, in the first years after the October Revolution he was for a time a member of the Council of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. But the Soviet diplomats complained to the Politburo that “anything said in Radek’s presence is spread all over Moscow by the next morning.” Radek was quickly removed from the Council.

At one time he was a member of the Central Committee, and in that capacity he had a right to attend the sessions of the Politburo. On Lenin’s initiative, matters requiring secrecy were invariably discussed in Radek’s absence. Lenin appreciated Radek as a journalist, but could not tolerate his lack of self-restraint, his light-minded attitude towards serious questions, his cynicism.

One cannot avoid recalling the estimate of Radek which Lenin gave at the Seventh Party Congress (1918) during the controversy over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Referring to Radek’s remark, “Lenin yields space to gain time,” Lenin said, “I return to what Comrade Radek said, and take this opportunity to emphasize that he has accidentally succeeded in uttering a serious thought.” And, further on, “This time it has happened that Comrade Radek has delivered himself of a thoroughly serious thought.” This twice-repeated remark well expresses the very essence of the attitude toward Radek not only of Lenin himself, but also of Lenin’s closest collaborators. I note here that even six years later, in January 1924, at the Party Conference which was called shortly before Lenin’s death, Stalin said: ’Most men’s heads control their tongues; Radek’s tongue controls his head.” For all their rudeness, these words are not misdirected. In any case, they astonished no one, least of all Radek himself; he was accustomed to such appraisals. Who will believe that I placed at the head of a grandiose plot an individual whose tongue controls his head and who is in consequence capable of expressing serious ideas only “by accident“?

Radek’s attitude towards me underwent two stages of development. In 1923 he wrote a panegyric about me ("Leon Trotsky – Organizer of Victory,” Pravda, March 14th, 1923) which astonished me by its exalted tone. In the days of the Moscow trial (August 21st, 1936), Radek wrote about me the most slanderous and cynical of all his articles. The interval between these two articles is divided midway by Radek’s capitulation. The year 1929 was the breaking-point in his political life as in his attitude towards me, the story of our relations before and after 1929 can be followed without difficulty from year to year through articles and letters. In this question, as in others, to reestablish the basic facts is to refute the accusation.

From 1923 to 1926 Radek vacillated between the Left Opposition in Russia and the Right Communist Opposition in Germany (Brandler, Thalheimer, etc.).At the time of the open break between Stalin and Zinoviev (beginning of 1926) Radek sought in vain to draw the Left Opposition into a bloc with Stalin. Thereafter Radek belonged for almost three years (an unusual period for him!) to the Left Opposition. But within the Opposition he kept swinging now to the right, now to the left.

Developing, in August, 1927, the idea of the menace of Thermidor, Radek wrote in his programmatic theses:

The tendency toward Thermidorian degeneration of the Party and its leading institutions is exemplified in the following instances: – - – (d) in the line of augmenting the weight of the Party apparatus as against the organizations at the base of the Party, which line finds its classic expression in the declaration of Stalin to the Plenum (August, 1927) : “These cadres can be removed only by civil war” – a declaration which is . . . the classic formula of the Bonapartist coup d’état; (e) in the foreign policy formulated by Sokolnikov. It is necessary to designate these tendencies openly as Thermidorian . . . and to say openly that they find their complete expression in the right wing of the Central Committee (Rykov, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Sokolnikov) and partly in the center (Stalin).It is necessary to say openly that the Thennidorian tendencies are growing . . .

This quotation is important in two respects:

(a) It shows, in the first place. that already in 1921 Stalin proclaimed that the bureaucracy ("these cadres") were irremovable, and pronounced that all opposition to it was equivalent to civil war (Radek, together with the whole Opposition, designated this open declaration as a manifestation of Bonapartism).

(b) It unequivocally characterizes Sokolnikov, not as an ideological adherent, but as a representative of the Thermidorian Right Wing. Yet in the last trial Sokolnikov figures as a member of the “Trotskyite” center.

At the end of 1927 Radek, along with hundreds of other Oppositionists, was expelled from the Party and banished to Siberia. Zinovier, Kamenev and then Pyatakov made declarations of repentance. By the spring of 1928 Radek began to hesitate, but still for about a year he tried to stand erect.

Thus, on May 10th, Radek writes to Preobrazhensky from Tobolsk: “I reject Zinovievism and Pyatakovism as I reject Dostoievskyism. Doing violence to their convictions, they recant. It is impossible to help the working class by falsehood. Those who remain must speak the truth.”

On June 24th, replying to my apprehensions, Radek wrote to me as follows: “None of us proposes to renounce his views. Such a renunciation would be all the more ridiculous since the test of history has brilliantly demonstrated their correctness.

For Radek, there was, thus, not the slightest doubt that the Oppositionists could recant only for the purpose of restoring themselves to the good graces of the bureaucracy. It never entered his head that behind the recantations there might lurk some diabolical design.

On July 3rd, Radek wrote to the capitulator Vardine: “Zinoviev and Kamenev have recanted, if you please, in order to bring aid to the Party, but as a matter of fact the only thing they are bold enough to do is to write articles against the Opposition. That is the logic of their position, for the penitent must give proof of his repentance.” These lines throw a glaring light on the trials to come, in which not only Zinoviev and Kameney, but also Radek, were to “prove” the sincerity of all their preceding repentances.

In the summer of 1928, Radek, together with Smilga, elaborated political theses in which, among other things, they state: “Those who, like Pyatakov, make haste to bury their pasts through betrayal are gravely mistaken.” Thus does Radek express himself about his future collaborator in the mythical “parallel center.” At that very time Radek was himself already vacillating. But psychologically he was unable to appraise Pyatakov’s capitulation as anything but treason.

However, Radek’s urge to make his peace with the bureaucracy had already become so transparent in his letters that F. Dingelstedt, one of the most prominent exiles of the younger generation, openly stigmatized Radek’s “capitulationist" tendencies. On August 8th Radek replied to Dingelstedt:

The circulation of letters about my capitulation is a piece of lightmindedness. an action which can only sow panic, and which is unworthy of an old revolutionist . . . When you have thought the matter over, when your nerves have regained their balance (and we need strong nerves, for exile is a trifle in comparison with what we are destined to see in the days to come), then you, an old member of the Party, will be ashamed that you lost your head. Communist greetings, K. R.

Especially noteworthy in this letter is the remark that exile to Siberia is a mere trifle by comparison with the repressions ahead. It is as if Radek foresaw the future trials.

On September 16th Radek wrote to the exiles in the village of Kolpashev:

Stalin demands that we acknowledge our ’errors" and forget his errors – this formula is a demand for our capitulation as a special tendency and our submission to the center . – - On this condition he is ready to offer us clemency. We cannot accept this condition. [Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos. 5-4, September, 1929.]

That same day Radek wrote to Vrachev concerning the blows heaped upon him by the firmer Oppositionists: “The outcry will not hinder me from doing my duty. And whoever, on the basis of these criticisms [the criticisms of Radek] continues to babble about preparing for Pyatakovism will only give proof of his mental deficiency.”

Pyatakov still remains for Radek the measure of extreme political bankruptcy.

These quotations alone, which describe the real process of differentiation within the Opposition and the desertion of its unstable and opportunist wing to the camp of the bureaucracy, completely destroy the indictment’s police-manufactured version of the capitulations as a calculated method of conspiracy against the Party.

In October, 1928, Radek made an attempt to appeal to the Central Committee to stop or at least soften the persecution of the Opposition. “Despite the fact that the older ones among us have struggled for Communism for a quarter of a century,” he wrote from Siberia to Moscow, “you expel us from the Party and banish us as counter-revolutionaries – - – on the basis of an accusation which dishonors not us, but those who make it." (Article 58 of the Penal Code.) Radek enumerates a series of instances of the cruel treatment of the exiles – Sibiriakov, Alski, Khorechko – and continues: “But the circumstances surrounding Trotsky’s illness exhaust one’s patience. We cannot remain silent and passive while malaria eats away the strength of the fighter who all his life has served the working class and who was the sword of the October Revolution.”

Such was one of the last declarations of Radek, the Oppositionist, and his last positive judgement of me. At the beginning of 1929 he already refused to conceal his vacillations. In the middle of June, after negotiations with the Party committees and the G.P.U., Radek, the capitulator, returned to Moscow, though to be sure still under guard. At one of the railroad stations in Siberia he had a conversation with the exiles, which one of the participants recounted in a letter abroad (Bulletin of the Opposition, No. 6, October, 1929):

Question: And what is your attitude towards L. D. [Trotsky]?
Radek: I have completely broken with L D. From now on we are political adversaries . . . With the collaborator of Lord Beaverbrook we have nothing in common.
Question: Do you demand the abolition of Article 58?
Radek: Emphatically, no! For those who come along with us it will be automatically inapplicable. But we will not abolish Article 58 for those who continue to undermine the Party and who engage in organizing discontent among the masses.
The agents of the G.P.U. would not allow the conversation to continue. They shoved Karl [Radek] into the train, accusing him of agitating against Trotsky’s deportation. Radek shouted from the train: “I agitate against Trotsky’s deportation? Ha! Ha! . . . I am agitating for comrades to return to the Party!” The G.P.U. agents listened in silence and shoved Karl further into the train. The express began to move .

Regarding this vivid narrative, which paints Radek as he is in the flesh, I wrote an editorial note: “Our correspondent says that at bottom [of the capitulation] is ’cowardice.’ This formulation may seem over-simplified. But in essence it is correct. Naturally, it is a question of political cowardice – personal cowardice does not necessarily enter here, although often enough they happily coincide.” This characterization harmonizes completely with my appraisal of Radek.

Somewhat earlier, on June 14th, no sooner had the telegraph brought the news of Radek’s “sincere repentance” than I wrote:

In capitulating, Radek strikes himself from the roll of the living. He will fall into the category of the half-doomed, half-pardoned, headed by Zinoviev. These people fear to utter a single syllable aloud, fear to have minds of their own, and thus live in constant dread of their own shadows. [Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos. 1-2, July. 1929.]

Less than a month later (July 7th), I wrote, in another article on the subject of the capitulations: “Generally speaking, no one ever yet accused Radek of constancy or consistency’ (Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos. 1-2, July, 1929).These words seem like a polemical retort to Prosecutor Vyshinsky, who seven years later was to be the first to accuse Radek of being "constant” and “consistent.”

At the end of July, I again returned to the same theme, this time in a broader perspective:

The capitulation of Radek, Smilga, Preobrazhensky, is in its way a major political fact. It shows above all how completely a great and heroic generation of revolutionists, whose destiny it was to pass through the experiences of the war and the October Revolution, has spent itself. Three old and meritorious revolutionists have removed their names from the roll of the living. They have deprived themselves of the most important thing, the right to command confidence. This they can never regain.

From the middle of 1929 Radek’s name became, in the ranks of the Opposition, the symbol of the most degrading forms of capitulation and the knifing of yesterday’s friends. The aforementioned Dingelstedt, in order to outline Stalin’s difficulties more clearly, asks ironically, “Will he receive any aid from the renegade Radek?” To emphasize his contempt for the document of a recent capitulator, Dingelstedt adds, “You have cleared for yourself a road to Radek” (September 22d, 1929).

Another exiled Oppositionist writes from Siberia on October 27th (Bulletin of the Opposition, No.7, November-December 1929):

“Radek’s work has taken on an exceptionally despicable character – there is no other word for it. He lives on petty intrigues and gossip; he rabidly besmirches his own past.”

In the autumn of 1929 Rakovsky describes how Preobrazhensky and Radek entered the path of capitulation: “The former did it with a certain measure of consistency, the latter, as always, with evasions and jumps from extreme left to extreme right, and vice versa.” (Bulletin of the Opposition, No.7, November-December 1929.) Rakovsky observes sarcastically that each capitulator, on deserting the Opposition, is obliged “to kick at Trotsky with hoofs” shod with “Radekist nails.” All these citations speak for themselves. No, the capitulations are not a military ruse of “Trotskyism”!

In the summer of 1929 a former member of my military secretariat, Blumkin, who was in Turkey at the time, paid me a visit in Constantinople. Upon his return to Moscow, Blumkin told Radek of the meeting. Radek immediately betrayed him. At that time, the GPU had not yet descended to accusations of “terrorism.” Nevertheless, Blumkin was shot, secretly and without trial. Here is what I then stated in the Bulletin, on December 25th, 1929, on the basis of letters received from Moscow: “Radek’s nervous babbling is well known. Now he is absolutely demoralized, like the majority of the capitulators ... Having lost the last remnants of moral equilibrium, Radek stops before no vileness.” Further on, Radek is called an “empty hysteric.” The letters give a detailed account of how Blumkin was betrayed after his meeting with Radek. From then on Radek was held in greatest scorn by the Opposition; he was not only a capitulator, but a traitor as well.

Seven years later – I am forced here to anticipate – Radek, in an article which demanded death for Zinoviev and the others, wrote in Isvestia on August 21st, 1936, that in 1929 I ordered Blumkin “to organize raids on Trade Representations abroad to obtain money that [Trotsky] needed for anti-Soviet operations.” I will not stop to discuss the absurdity of this “order”: the Trade Representations, one would think, keep funds not on their premises, but in banks! We are interested in another aspect of this matter: In August 1936 Radek was still, according to his words, a member of the “Trotskyite center.” In the course of the four months after his arrest he denied, according to his own statement in court, any participation whatsoever in the plot – that is, according to the prosecutor’s characterization, he showed himself to be a stubborn and incorrigible “Trotskyite.” Why, then, on August 21st, 1936 – without any apparent reason – did he ascribe monstrous and nonsensical crimes to me, the “leader’ of the plot? Let someone invent an explanation which can be made to fit into Vyshinsky’s schema. For my part, I refuse to make any such attempt.

The bitter hostility between Radek and the Opposition can be traced year by year. I am forced to limit myself to a selection of examples.

Thirteen exiled Oppositionists in Kansk, Siberia, addressing a protest to the Praesidium of the Sixteenth Party Congress (June, 1930), wrote, among other things: “The Council of the GPU of the USSR basing itself on treacherous information received from the renegade Karl Radek, has condemned Comrade Blumkin, member of the CPSU, to the supreme penalty.”

An exiled Oppositionist, characterizing the political and moral degeneration of the capitulators in the Bulletin of the Opposition (No.19, March 1931), did not forget to add:

The one who has degenerated most rapidly is Radek. The capitulators from the other groups, not only among the rank and file but also among the leaders, endeavor to make it clear that not only politically but also personally they have nothing in common with him. The frankest of them say, plainly: “Radek is playing a filthy, treacherous rôle.” ... I communicate [adds the correspondent] only a minor fact, but one indicative of Radek’s cynicism. In response to a request to help an exiled Bolshevik who was gravely ill, Radek refused, adding, “He will return all the sooner.” Radek measures everything with his dirty little yardstick!

The following, written from Moscow, appeared in the Bulletin on November 15th, 1931:

All quiet on the capitulation “front.” Zinoviev is writing a book on the Second International. Politically, neither he nor Kamenev exists. About the others, nothing to report. One exception: Radek; he is beginning to play a “rôle.” Radek really directs Isvestia. He has become quite notorious in his new rôle as “Stalin’s personal friend.” And this is no joke! In every conversation Radek tries with all his might to create the impression that he is on the most intimate terms with Stalin. “Yesterday, when I was having tea with Stalin,” etc. [Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos.25-26, November-December 1931.]

Radek, unlike the other capitulators, began to play a certain “rôle” only because through his whole conduct he regained the confidence of the rulers. I might point out that the correspondence which has just been cited was published precisely at the time when, according to the accusation, I was taking the necessary measures to induce Radek to enter the path of terror. Evidently I was forcing my left hand to destroy what my right was doing.

The discussion revolving around Radek took on an international character. Thus, the German oppositional organization, the Leninbund, published the declaration of Radek, Smilga and Preobrazhensky, and offered to print my declaration. In October 1929 I answered the leadership of the Leninbund: “Isn’t it monstrous? In my brochure I defend the point of view of the Russian Opposition. Radek, Smilga and Preobrazhensky are renegades, bitter enemies of the Russian Opposition, and furthermore Radek does not stop at any calumny.” In the publications of the Left Opposition during those years one can find, in several languages, not a few scornful articles and comments flaying Radek.

The American journalist, Max Shachtman, one of my co-thinkers, well informed about the internal relations of the Russian Opposition, sent me from New York on March 13th, 1932, several old remarks by Radek about me with the following comment: “In view of the Stalinist chorus in which Radek is now singing, would it not be interesting to remind the Communist workers again that about twelve years ago, before fighting against ‘Trotskyism’ became a profitable business, Radek sang a different song?”

PART 3[edit source]

During the trial, Radek testified: “... in February, 1932, I received a letter from Trotsky ... Trotsky further wrote that since he knew me to be an active person he was convinced that I would return to the struggle.” Three months after this alleged letter, on May 14th, 1932, I wrote to Albert Weisbord in New York: “... The ideological and moral degeneration of Radek testifies to the fact that not only is Radek not made of first-grade stuff, but also that the Stalinist régime must support itself either on depersonalized functionaries or demoralized people.” Such was my real appraisal of this “active person”!

In May, 1932, the German liberal paper, Berliner Tageblatt, in a special issue devoted to economic construction in the USSR, published an article by Radek which for the one-hundred-and-first time condemned me for my disbelief in the possibility of building Socialism in one country. “This thesis is denied not only by the avowed enemies of the Soviet Union,” wrote Radek, “but is also disputed by Leon Trotsky.” I answered him in the Bulletin (No.28, July 1932) by a brief note entitled: A Lightminded Man on a Weighty Question. Let me remind you that it was in the Spring of that year that Radek went to Geneva, where he supposedly received, through Romm, a letter from me proposing the earliest possible extermination of the Soviet leaders. It turns out that I entrusted rather “weighty” missions to “a lightminded man”!

During the years 1933-1936 my ties with Radek, if one believes his testimony, became firmly welded. This did not prevent him from passionately revising the history of the Revolution in the personal interests of Stalin. On November 21st, 1935, three weeks before Pyatakov’s “flight” to Oslo, Radek recounted in Pravda his interview with some foreigner: “I related to him how Lenin’s closest comrade-in-arms, Stalin, directed the organization of the fronts and elaborated the strategic plans, on the basis of which we were victorious.” I was thus completely excluded from the history of the Civil War. Yet the very same Radek once knew how to write in a different vein, I have already mentioned his article, Leon Trotsky – Organizer of Victory (Pravda, March 14th, 1923). I am now compelled to quote from it:

The need of the hour was for a man who would incarnate the call to struggle, a man who, subordinating himself completely to the requirements of the struggle, would become the ringing summons to arms, the will which exacts from all unconditional submission to a great, sacrificial necessity. Only a man with Trotsky’s capacity for work, only a man so unsparing of himself as Trotsky, only a man who knew how to speak to the soldiers as Trotsky did – only such a man could have become the standard bearer of the armed toilers. He was all things rolled into one.

In 1923 I was “all”; in 1935, I became, for Radek, “nothing.” In the lengthy article of 1923 Stalin is not once mentioned. In 1935 he turns out to be “the organizer of victory.”

Radek thus has in his possession two diametrically opposite histories of the Civil War: One for the year 1923, the other for the year 1935. The two versions, regardless of which happens to be true, unmistakably characterize the degree of Radek’s honesty as well as his attitude toward myself and Stalin at various times. While supposedly linking his fate with mine by the bonds of a plot, Radek indefatigably defames and blackens me. On the other hand, having decided to kill Stalin, he ecstatically shines his boots for seven years.

But this is still not all. In January, 1935, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others were sentenced, in connection with the Kirov assassination, to some years of imprisonment. During the trial they confessed a desire “to restore capitalism.” In the Bulletin of the Opposition I stigmatized this self-accusation as a rude and nonsensical frame-up. Who hastened to Vyshinsky’s defense? Radek! “It is not a question of whether capitalism is the ideal of Messrs. Trotsky and Zinoviev,” he wrote in Pravda, “but whether the building of Socialism is possible in our country ...”, etc. I answered in the Bulletin (No.43, April 1935): “Radek blurts out that Zinoviev and Kamenev did not engage in any plots with the aim of reestablishing capitalism – contrary to what the official statement so shamelessly affirms – but merely rejected the theory of Socialism in one country.”

Radek’s article of January 1935 entering as a logical link into the chain of his calumnies against the Opposition, prepared the way for his article of August 1936 captioned: The Zinovievite-Trotskyite Fascist Gang and Its Hetman Trotsky. This, in its turn, was nothing else but a prelude to Radek’s court testimony in January 1937. Each succeeding step developed from the preceding one. This is precisely why absolutely no one would have believed Radek had he figured in the trial only as a witness for the Prosecution. For his testimony against me to carry any weight, it was necessary to transform Radek into a defendant, suspending above him the Damocles sword of the death penalty. The manner in which Radek was transformed into a defendant is a special question which, in essence, belongs in the domain of inquisitorial technique. Here it suffices for us that Radek took his seat on the defendants’ bench, not as my co-thinker, collaborator and friend of yesteryear, but as an old capitulator, the betrayer of Blumkin, demoralized agent of Stalin and the GPU, as the most perfidious of all my enemies.

At this point we may anticipate the question: How, in view of these facts and documents, could the Government represent Radek as the leader of a “Trotskyite” plot?

This question, however, relates not to Radek himself, but rather to the trial as a whole. Radek is transformed into a “Trotskyite” by the same methods which transformed me into an ally of the Mikado – and for the self-same political motives. To the question posed above, a brief answer would be the following: 1. For the system of “confessions” only capitulators, who had passed through the school of recantation, self-abasement and self-vilification, were suitable; 2. the organizers of the trial did not and could not find a better candidate for the rôle assigned to Radek; 3. the whole calculation of the organizers is constructed on the summary effect of public confessions and executions, which were intended to stifle all criticism. Such is the method of Stalin. Such is the present political system in the USSR. The case of Radek is only the most striking example.

XVI. VLADIMIR ROMM – “WITNESS”[edit source]

The whole tissue of the trial is rotten. We shall see this now in the testimony of Vladimir Romm, a most important witness, who, moreover, was brought to court from jail under guard. If we leave aside Pyatakov’s flight to Oslo in the mythical airplane, then Romm – according to the design of the indictment – serves as the chief connecting link between myself and the “parallel center” (Pyatakov-Radek-Sokolnikov-Serebryakov). Through Romm, letters were supposedly conveyed from me to Radek, and from Radek to me. Romm, allegedly, met personally not only Leon Sedov, my son, but also me. Who is this witness? What did he do and what did he see? What are the motives behind his participation in the conspiracy? Let us listen to him most attentively.

Romm is, of course, a “Trotskyite.” Without Trotskyites by special appointment of the GPU, there would never have been any “Trotskyite conspiracy.” We should like to learn, however, the exact date of Romm’s adherence to the “Trotskyists,” granting that he ever did join them. But even to this first and, it would seem, not unimportant, question we hear a very suspicious answer:

“Vyshinsky: What were your ties with Radek in the past?”

“Romm: At first I was acquainted with him in connection with literary work and later, in 1926-1927, I was connected with him in joint Trotskyite anti-Party work.”

And that exhausts the answer to Vyshinsky’s leading questioni What strikes one’s attention first of all is the manner of expression. The witness makes no reference to his Oppositionist activity; he does not utter a single word to characterize its content; no, he immediately applies to it a criminal qualification: “Trotskyite anti-Party work” – and nothing more. Romm simply proffers the court, in ready-made form, the formula required for the report of the court proceedings. It is in this way that each disciplined accused and witness conducts himself during the trials of Stalin-Vyshinsky – the undisciplined are shot before the trial. In recognition of services rendered, the Prosecutor refrains altogether from embarrassing the witness by questioning him about the circumstances under which he joined the Opposition and the manner in which his “anti-Party” work expressed itself. Vyshinsky’s fundamental rule is: Thou shalt not place witnesses and defendants in an embarrassing position! But even without the assistance of the Prosecutor it is not difficult to gather that in his very first statement Romm is telling an untruth. The years 1926-1927 embrace a period in which Oppositionist activity attained its widest sweep. The extended platform of the Opposition was elaborated and multigraphed; within the Party there was heated discussion; large meetings of the Opposition took place, attended by tens of thousands of workers in Moscow and Leningrad alone; finally, the Opposition participated in the November demonstration with its own banners and slogans. If Romm had really belonged to the Opposition during that period, he must have been connected with numerous individuals. But, no; he cautiously names only Radek. While Troyanovsky was assuring everybody in New York that Romm “really” was a “Trotskyite,” the verbatim report of the trial definitely refuted the false statement of the diplomat. Radek says about Romm: “I knew Romm since 1925. He was not a worker in a general sense, but he was with us on the Chinese question.” This means, in other words, that Romm stood apart from the Opposition on all other questions. So this man who, even according to Radek’s testimony, was only episodically with him on the Chinese question (1927), is dragged into the light of day in the guise of – terrorist!

Just why did it fall to Romm’s lot to masquerade as the contact man? Because in his capacity of foreign correspondent he traveled to Geneva, Paris, the United States, and, in consequence, possessed the technical facilities for the fulfillment of the commission foisted upon him retroactively by the GPU. And inasmuch as after the tenfold purgings to which all the foreign delegations and institutions of the USSR had been subjected since the end of 1927, it was impossible to locate even with a lantern any “Trotskyite” or even capitulator abroad. Yezhov was compelled to appoint Romm as “Trotskyite,” while Vyshinsky had to content himself in silence with Romm’s answer concerning the “anti-Party” connection with Radek in 1926-1927.

But what did Romm do after 1927? Did he break with the Opposition or did he remain loyal to it? Did he recant or had he nothing to recant? Not a word about all this. The prosecutor is interested not in political psychology but in geography.

“Vyshinsky: Were you ever in Geneva?
“Romm: Yes, I was Tass correspondent in Geneva, also in Paris. In Geneva from 1930 to 1934.

Did Romm read the Bulletin of the Opposition during the years of his stay abroad? Did he contribute funds to it? Did he even make, a single attempt to establish connections with me personally? About all this – not a word. Yet it would have been no very great labor to write me a letter from Geneva or Paris. To have done so, one need only have been interested in the Opposition, and in my activity in particular. Romm makes no reference at all to any such interest on his part, and the prosecutor naturally asks him no questions about it. It follows that Romm terminated in 1927 his “anti-Party” work, which was known only to Radek – that is to say, if we admit for a moment that he had ever begun it. It must be borne in mind that it is not customary to send the first chance stranger as a Tass correspondent to Geneva or Paris. The GPU carefully hand-picks individuals, and, at the same time, makes sure of their complete readiness to cooperate. Small wonder, then, that Rommn, while abroad, did not evince the slightest “Oppositionist” interest in me or my activity!

But Vyshinsky is in urgent need of a contact man between Radek and myself. There is no candidate more suitable. That is why it suddenly turns out that in the summer of 1931, while passing through Berlin, Romm met Putna, who offered to “put him in touch with” Sedov. Who is Putna? A prominent officer of the General Staff, participant in the Civil War, and later military attaché in London. For a certain period of time Putna, as I learned even before my exile in Central Asia (1928), really did sympathize with the Opposition, and perhaps even participated in it. I had very little occasion to meet him personally, and then only on military matters. I never had any discussion with him on Opposition topics. I do not know whether he was later obliged to repent officially. At any rate, when I read in Prinkipo about Putna’s appointment to the important post of military attaché in London, I drew the conclusion that he had fully restored himself in the confidence of the authorities. In such circumstances, neither I nor my son could have had any connection with Putna abroad. From the report of the court proceedings, however, I learn, among other extraordinary things, that it was none other than Putna himself who offered to put Romm “in touch with” Sedov. To what end? Romm did not even bother to ask. He simply accepted the offer of Putna, with whom he had had no previous political connections – at any rate he mentions none. Thus, after a lapse of four years Romm, for reasons unknown, consents to renew his “Trotskyite anti-Party work.” Faithful to his system, he does not, in court, refer by so much as a single word to his political motives. Did he aim to seize power? Was he striving to restore capitalism? Was he consumed with hatred toward Stalin? Was he seduced by the connection with fascism? Or was he simply guided by his old friendship for Radek, who had, incidentally, contrived to repent and who had already been cursing the Opposition on all the highways and byways for more than two years? The Prosecutor, of course, does not annoy the witness with disconcerting questions. Romm is not in duty bound to possess a political psychology, His task is to effect a connection between Radek and Trotsky. and incidentally to compromise Putna, who is, meanwhile, being trained in the GPU prison for future “confessions.”

“I met Sedov,” continues Romm, “and in reply to his question as to whether I was prepared, if necessary [!], to serve as liaison man with Radek, I consented ...” When answering, Romm unfailingly gives his consent, without explaining his motives. Yet Romm could not but have known that for having met me in 1929 in Stamboul, and for having attempted to transmit a letter of mine to friends in Russia, Blumkin was shot. This letter, by the way, is at this very moment in the archives of the GPU, but it is so extremely ill-suited to the aims of Vyshinsky and Stalin that they would never even entertain the idea of publishing it. In any case, to have ventured, after the shooting of Blumkin, to take upon himself the mission of contact man, Romm must have been an extraordinarily self-sacrificing and heroic Oppositionist. Why did he keep silent for four years? Why did he wait for a chance meeting with Putna, and why did he wait to be “put in touch” with Sedov? And why, on the other hand, did a single meeting suffice for Romm to take upon himself, then and there, without any objection, this extremely perilous job? There is not a single element of human psychology in this trial The witnesses, like the accused, tell only of those “actions” which are needful to Prosecutor Vyshinsky. The connection between the fictitious “actions” is provided not by the thoughts and feelings of living men, but by the a priori pattern of the indictment.

In the spring of the following year, when Radek arrived in Geneva, Romm “handed him a letter from Trotsky which I [Romm] had received from Sedov not long before that in Paris.” So, in the Spring of 1931, Sedov had hypothetically posed the question of making contact with Radek – “if necessary.” Did Sedov, perhaps, foresee Radek’s coming to Geneva? Obviously not, because in the summer of 1931 Radek himself could not have foreseen his future journey. By hook or crook, three-quarters of a year after a conversation in Berlin, Sedov obtained the opportunity to avail himself of a promise made him by Romm. But what took place in the recesses of Romm’s mind in the interval between the summer of 1931, when he in principle took the path of “conspiracy,” and the spring of 1932, when he took the first practical step? Did he attempt, even then, to establish connections with me? Did he become interested in my books, publications and friends? Did he have political discussions with Sedov? Nothing of the kind. Romm merely took upon himself a minor commission, which might have cost him his head. As for the rest, he was not interested. Does Romm bear any resemblance at all to a confirmed Trotskyist? Hardly; instead, he is as like a GPU agent provocateur as one drop of water is to another, provided – provided he really did commit the acts he describes. As a matter of fact, all these acts were thought up retroactively. We shall have ample opportunity to become convinced of this.

In what circumstances did Sedov, in the spring of 5932, convey to Romm a letter for Radek? The answer to this question is truly remarkable: “A few days before my departure for Geneva,” says Romm, “while in Paris, I received a letter posted in Paris, containing a short note from Sedov asking me to convey a letter enclosed in the envelope to Radek.” And so, some nine to ten months after his one and only meeting with Romm – how many recantations, betrayals, and provocations were there during these very months! – Sedov, without any preliminary check-up, sends Romm a conspirative letter. For the sake of adding a second piece of giddiness to the first, he resorts to the services of the “city post.” Why not from hand to hand? Vyshinsky naturally refrains from raising this ticklish question, But we, on our part, have an explanation to offer. Neither the GPU nor Vyshinsky. nor, in consequence, Romm, knows with certainty Sedov’s precise whereabouts in the spring of 1932 – in Berlin or in Paris. Arrange the meeting in the Tiergarten? Choose Montparnasse as the rendezvous? No; it is safest to circumnavigate the submarine reefs. To be sure, a letter by city post somehow seems to hint that Sedov was in Paris. But “if necessary,” it will always be possible to say that Sedov sent the letter from Berlin to some Parisian agent of his, and that it was really the latter who used the city post to convey the letter to Romm. How careless, how impotent are these “Trotskyist” conspirators! But it may be that Trotsky wrote his letter in code and with invisible ink? Let us listen to the witness on this point:

“Romm: I took this letter with me to Geneva and handed it to Radek when I met him ...
“Vyshinsky: Did Radek read the letter in your presence or after you had gone?
“Romm: He glanced through it quickly in my presence and put it in his pocket.”

What inimitable detail! Radek did not swallow the letter, did not fling it into the gutter, and did not hand it over to the Secretariat of the League of Nations, but without much ado “put it in his pocket.” All the confessions abound in such “concrete” platitudes, of which the most incompetent writer of detective Stories would be ashamed. In any case, we do learn that Radek quickly “glanced through” the letter in Romm’s presence. It is impossible quickly to “glance through,” then and there, in full view of an intermediary, a letter that is in code – all the more so in the case of a letter written with invisible ink. Consequently the letter, which went by city post, must have been written in the same fashion as birthday greetings.

But perhaps this first letter at least did not contain any particular secrets. Let us listen further:

“Vyshinsky: What did Radek tell you about the contents of that letter?
“Romm: That it contained instructions about uniting with the Zinovievites, about adopting terrorist methods of struggle against the leaders of the CPSSU, in the first place against Stalin and Voroshilov.”

We perceive that the communication was not at all innocent in content. It “contained instructions” to kill, as a beginning, Stalin and Voroshilov, and then all the others. It was precisely this little letter that Sedov allegedly sent by city post to Romm, whom he hardly knew, ten months after his first and only meeting with him. Our perplexity, however, does not end here. Vyshinsky, as we have just heard, puts a direct question to the witness: “What did Radek tell you about the contents of that letter?” It is as though Radek was obliged to impart the contents of an ultra-secret letter to an ordinary contact man! The most elementary conspiratorial rule reads that each participant in an illegal organization must be informed only about that which relates to his personal duties. Inasmuch as Romm remained abroad, and was, obviously, not engaged in preparations to assassinate Stalin, Voroshilov, or any of the others (at any rate, he himself tells nothing about such intentions), Radek, if he was in full possession of his senses, did not have the slightest ground for informing Romm about the contents of the letter. There were no grounds – from the standpoint of an Oppositionist, a conspirator, or a terrorist. But the question appears in a totally different light when viewed from the standpoint of the GPU. Had Radek told Romm nothing about the contents of the letter, Romm could not have revealed the terrorist directive of Trotsky, and his entire testimony on this score would have been pointless. We already know that the witnesses, like the accused, testify not to that which flows from the conspiratorial nature of their activities and from their individual psychology, but to that which is needful to Mr. Prosecutor, whom nature has endowed with very sluggish brains. In addition, the accused and the witnesses are under instructions to concern themselves with the verisimilitude of the report of the court proceedings.

What happened, the reader will ask, to the Tass correspondent when he suddenly heard Trotsky’s directive to annihilate with the greatest speed imaginable the “leaders” of the Soviet Union? Was he horror-stricken? Did he swoon? Did he give vent to indignation? Or, on the contrary, did he pass into a state of exaltation? Not a word about all this. No psychology is demanded of the witnesses or the accused. Romm “incidentally” handed the letter to Radek. Radek “incidentally” informed him about the terrorist directive. “Then Radek left for Moscow and I did not see him until the autumn of 1932.” That is all! They simply passed on to their routine tasks.

But on this point Radek. perturbed by the vividness of the dialogue, incautiously corrects Romm: “In Trotsky’s first letter,” said he, “the names of Stalin and Voroshilov were not mentioned, since we never mentioned names in our letters.” For correspondence with me, it appears that at that time Radek did not yet have a code. “Trotsky,” he insists, “could not possibly have mentioned the names of Stalin and Voroshilov.” We ask: How did Romm come upon them? And if he invented such a “trifle” as the names of Stalin and Voroshilov as the first victims of terror, perhaps he invented the whole letter? The Prosecutor does not concern himself with this at all.

In the autumn of 1932, Romm came to Moscow on official business and met Radek, who did not fail to seize the occasion to inform him that “in pursuance of Trotsky’s directives a Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc had been organized, but that he and Pyatakov had not joined that center.” Again we perceive that Radek can hardly wait for the occasion to reveal some most important secret to Romm, not at all out of light-mindedness and altruistic loquacity, so peculiar to him in general, but rather for the sake of the supreme goal: The need to help Prosecutor Vyshinsky patch up the looming gaps in the confessions of Zinoviev, Kamenev and others. In fact, no one has been able to comprehend to this day how and why Radek and Pyatakov. who had already been exposed as “accomplices” by the accused during the preliminary investigation in the case of the sixteen, were not brought to trial at the proper time. No one has been able to comprehend how it happened that Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and Mrachkovsky knew nothing of the international plans of Radek and Pyatakov (expediting war, dismembering the USSR, etc.). People, not without some perspicacity, have reckoned that these grandiose plans, as well as the very idea of a “parallel center,” originated in the GPU only after the shooting of the sixteen, in order that one falsification might be propped up by a second. It turns out otherwise. Radek, well in advance, as far back as the autumn of 1932, had told Romm that the Trotskyite-Zinovievite center had already been formed but that he (Radek) and Pyatakov had not joined this center, saving themselves for the “parallel center on which the Trotskyites were to predominate” Thus, Radek’s talkativeness is providential. This does not mean, however, that Radek really did speak to Romm about the parallel center in the Autumn of 1932 as if in forecast of the worries which were to beset Vyshinsky in 1937. No; the matter is much more simple. In 1937, Radek and Romm, under the supervision of the GPU, constructed retroactively the schema of events for 1932. And, to tell the truth, they constructed it very poorly.

While telling Romm about the principal and parallel centers, Radek did not let slip the opportunity to add, then and there, that “he wanted to get directives from Trotsky on this matter.” Failing this, Romm’s testimony would not have had any real value. “In pursuance of Trotsky’s directives,” the terrorist center had been formed. Trotsky’s directives are now indispensable for the formation of the parallel center. These people are incapable of taking a single step without Trotsky – or rather, they seek to inform the universe through every channel that all crimes are committed only in pursuance of Trotsky’s directives.

Availing himself of Romm’s journey, Radek, naturally, wrote a letter to Trotsky.

“Vyshinsky: What was written in that letter? Did you know?
“Romm: Yes, because the letter was handed to me, and then [!] concealed in the cover of a German book before my departure back to Geneva ...”

The Prosecutor has no anticipatory doubts about Romm’s familiarity with the contents of the letter. After all, it is precisely for this reason that the ill-starred Tass correspondent has been converted into a witness! Nevertheless, there is more docility than sense in Romm’s reply. The letter was first “handed” to him, and later put in the cover of a German book. What does “handed” mean in such a context? And by whom was it put in the cover of a book?

If Radek had simply concealed the letter in the binding and instructed Romm to deliver the book to its destination – as was always done by revolutionists familiar with the ABC of conspiracy – then Romm would have been unable to tell the court anything except that he had delivered a “German book” to such and such address. This is naturally not enough for Vyshinsky. Therefore, the letter was first “handed” to Romm – so that he could read it? – and then inserted in the cover so that the Prosecutor would have no need to torture his faculties any further. In this way mankind learned without much trouble that Radek wrote to Trotsky not about spectral analysis but about the self-same terrorist center.

Passing through Berlin, Romm sent the book by parcel post to an address which Sedov had given him, “poste restante at one of the Berlin post offices.” These gentlemen have burned their fingers during the trial of the sixteen, and therefore proceed with caution. Romm did not pay a personal visit either to Sedov or any individual designated by Sedov, for in that case it would have been necessary to state the latter’s name and address, and that was far too risky. Nor did Romm send the book to the address of some German connected with Sedov. Such procedure, to be sure, would have been wholly in accord with conspiratorial tradition; but in that case, sad to say, one has to know the German’s name and address. It is, therefore, far more cautious (not from the standpoint of conspiracy, but from the standpoint of falsification) to send the book “pOste restante at one of the Berlin post offices.”

Romm’s next meeting with Sedov took place “in July 1933.” Let us make note of this date. We are approaching the central point in the testimony. And here I, too, am called to appear on the scene.

“Vyshinsky: What was the occasion, where and how did you meet again?
“Romm: In Paris. I had arrived from Geneva and a few days after Sedov telephoned me ...”

It remains unknown how Sedov learned about Romm’s arrival. At first glance, this remark might seem captious. As a matter of fact, it once again reveals to us the system of cowardly reticence. In order to have informed Sedov of his arrival, Romm had to know Sedov’s address or telephone number. Romm knew neither the one nor the other. It is safest to leave the initiative to Sedov. Romm is, in any case, acquainted with his own address. Sedov made an appointment for the meeting in a café on the Boulevard Montparnasse, and said that “he wanted to arrange for me [Romm] to meet Trotsky.” We know that Romm, while devotedly risking his life as a contact man, had not evinced, up to this time, the slightest desire either to meet me or to enter into correspondence with me. But in answer to Sedov’s proposal, he gave immediate consent. In exactly the same way, he went two years previously to meet Sedov on Putna’s proposal. In exactly the same way he consented to convey letters to Radek the moment that Sedov opened his mouth. Romm’s function is: Consent to everything, but display initiative in nothing.

He has obviously agreed with the GPU upon this “minimum” of criminal activity, in the hope of thus saving his life. Whether or not he will save it – that is another question.

A few days after the first telephone call, Sedov met Romm “in the same café” Out of caution, the café is not named. Suppose it suddenly turns out that the é had burned down on the eve of the meeting! The incident with the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen has been well assimilated by these people. “From there [from the nameless café] we went to the Bois de Boulogne, where I met Trotsky.”

“Vyshinsky: When was that?
“Romm: At the end of July 1933.”

Assuredly. Vyshinsky could not have asked a more unseasonable question! Romm, to be sure, had somewhat earlier assigned this episode to July 1933. But he might have been mistaken, or he might have qualified his statement. He might have been shot, and later one of the Pritts might have been entrusted with rectifying this error. But, upon the insistence of the Prosecutor, Romm repeats and states more explicitly that the meeting took place “at the end of July.” Here Vyshinsky throws caution to the wind! Romm specified a truly fatal date, which alone buries not only Romm’s evidence, but the whole trial. I must, however, ask the Commission to be indulgent. We shall deal shortly with the fatal chronological error and its sources. But, before doing so, let us investigate further the court dialogue – or rather, the duet.

Romm’s meeting with me in the Bois de Boulogne – the first time he had ever met me in his life, as follows from his own Story – should have left, it seems, an imprint on his memory. But we hear him tell nothing – either about the first moment of acquaintance, his first impressions, or the course of the conversation. Did we walk along the allée? Did we sit on a bench? Was I smoking a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe? How did I look? There is not a single living trace, not a single subjective experience, not a single visual impression. Trotsky in an allée of the Bois de Boulogne remains for Romm a phantom, an abstraction, a puppet from the folders of the GPU. Romm remarks only that the conversation lasted “twenty to twenty-five minutes.”

“Vyshinsky: For what purpose did Trotsky meet you?
“Romm: As far as I could understand [!], in order verbally to confirm the instructions contained in the letter I was taking to Moscow.”

Remarkable words these, “as far as I could understand”! The purpose of the meeting was, apparently, so indeterminate that Romm is only able to guess at it, and, indeed, only in retrospect. In fact after I had written Radek a letter filled with the ritualistic instructions about annihilating the leaders, wrecking activities, etc., I could not have had any grounds for conversing with a contact agent unknown to me. There are cases when oral directives are confirmed by letter. There are cases when directives given to a subordinate are confirmed through a more authoritative person. But it remains entirely incomprehensible why I should have had to confirm orally those directives which I had communicated by letter to Radek – through Romm, who was an authority for nobody. But while such behavior is incomprehensible from the standpoint of a conspirator, the situation becomes immediately transformed if we take into account the interests of the Prosecutor. Failing a meeting with me, Romm could only have testified that he had brought Radek a letter concealed in the binding of a book. This letter is, of course, not in the possession of Radek, Romm or the Prosecutor. Romm could not have read a letter concealed in a binding. Could it be that the letter was not at all from me? It may even be that there was no letter at all? In order to extricate Romm from a difficult situation, I, instead of conveying a book for Radek to a contact man through some invulnerable intermediary, say, a Frenchman – as would have been done by any conspirator over the age of fifteen – I, who have passed the age of fifty, took the diametrically opposite course, namely: Not only did I involve my son in this operation – which alone would have been the grossest error – but I appeared in person to consummate the performance, for the sake of drilling into Romm’s head, for twenty to twenty-five minutes, his future testimony at the trial. The methodology of the frame-up is not distinguished by refinement.

In the course of the conversation, I declared, of course, that I “agreed with the idea of the parallel center but only on the imperative condition that the bloc with the Zinovievites was preserved and also on the condition that the parallel center shall not be inactive but shall actively engage in gathering around itself the most stalwart cadres.” What profound and fruitful ideas! I could not, of course, have failed to demand “that the bloc with the Zinovievites [be] preserved,” for otherwise Stalin would not have had the possibility of shooting Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and the others. But I also approved the formation of the parallel center, so as to provide Stalin with the opportunity to shoot Pyatakov, Serebryakov and Muralov. Passing to the question of the necessity of applying not only terror but also wrecking activities in industry, I recommended disregard for the human victims. In reply, Romm declared himself “somewhat perplexed,” for, after all, this “would undermine the defense capacity of the country ...”! Thus, in the Bois de Boulogne, I supposedly bared my innermost thoughts to an unknown young man who did not even share my “defeatist” position. And all this on the basis of the fact that, in 1927, Romm supposedly agreed with Radek “on the Chinese question”!

The expeditious Romm, of course, delivered to its destination a letter which was never written, and, therewith told Radek about his imaginary conversation with me – so as to enable Vyshinsky to base himself upon at least two testimonies. At the end of September 1933 Radek entrusted Romm with his reply. This time Romm has nothing to say about the contents of the letter. There is, incidentally, hardly any need for that, since all the letters in this trial are as like one another as the exorcisms of Siberian sorcerers. Romm gave the book containing the letter to Sedov “in Paris in November 1933.” Their next meeting took place in April 1934, once again in the Bois de Boulogne. Romm arrived with the news that he was soon to receive an appointment to America. Sedov “expressed regret at this,” but requested him to bring back from Radek “a detailed report on the situation ...”

“Vyshinsky: Did you convey this message?
“Romm: Yes, I did ...”

How could Romm have failed to convey the message? In May, 1934, he delivered to Sedov in Paris an Anglo-Russian technical dictionary (what a wealth of detail!) containing “a detailed report from the active center, as well as from the parallel center ...” Let us bear in mind this precious circumstance! Not one of the sixteen defendants, from Zinoviev down to Reingold, who knew everything and “snitched” on everybody, knew anything at all in August 1936 of the existence of the parallel center. On the other hand, Romm, as far back as the autumn of 1932, was kept fully informed of the idea of the parallel center and its future realization. No less remarkable is the fact that Radek, who did not belong to the principal center, nevertheless did send out “a detailed report from the active center, as well as from the parallel center.” Romm had nothing to say concerning these reports, and Vyshinsky naturally refrains from annoying him. After all, what could Romm say? In May 1934 Kirov had not yet been assassinated by Nikolayev, with the closest participation of the GPU and its agent, the Latvian consul, Bisseneks. Romm would have had to say that the activity of the “active and parallel centers” consisted of requesting and receiving “directives” from me. But we already know this without him. Let us, therefore, leave Radek’s “detailed reports” in the recesses of the technical dictionary!

Further on, Vyshinsky becomes interested in the context of the conversation with Sedov in connection with Romm’s appointment to America. Romm immediately reveals a request from Trotsky, transmitted to him through Sedov, that Trotsky “be informed in case there was anything interesting in the sphere of Soviet-American relations.” The request appears at first glance innocent enough in itself. As politician and writer, I, of course, could not but be interested in Soviet-American relations – all the more so since I had had more than one occasion during the previous years to write articles in the American press and to issue statements in favor of the recognition of the Soviets by the United States. But Romm, who had expressed no surprise when instructions on terror and wrecking were conveyed through him, felt it his duty to become surprised over this point. “When I asked why this was so interesting [!], Sedov told me: ‘This follows from Trotsky’s line on the defeat of the USSR’.” Here is another dot on the letter “i.” In my articles, to be sure, I invariably came out for the defense of the USSR I publicly broke with all those alleged co-thinkers of mine who entertained doubts about the duty of every revolutionist, despite the Stalinist regime, to defend the USSR. Nothing else remains than to concede that my “defeatism,” which is in complete contradiction with my journalistic activity, has been kept a strict secret except from a handful of initiates. Needless to say, such a hypothesis is politically and psychologically absurd. In any case, the accusation rests wholly upon it, and must fall or flourish with it. But Vyshinsky, who is so “cautious” with regard to details (dates, addresses), is totally witless with respect to the fundamental problems of the trial. When Romm asks Sedov why I am “interested” in Soviet-American relations (the question is in itself nonsensical!) Sedov, instead of referring to my literary activity, with a rash haste blurts out: “This follows from Trotsky’s line on the defeat of the USSR” But if that is the case, it turns out that I never made a secret of my “defeatism.” Wherefore, then, my entire intense theoretical and journalistic work? Messrs. Accusers do not bother to think about this fact. They are incapable of thinking about it. Their frame-up unfolds upon a much lower plane. They manage to get along without psychology. They are satisfied with the inquisitorial machine.

To a subsequent question by Vyshinsky, Romm replies: “Yes. I agreed to send Trotsky information which interested him.” But Romm carried out his “last commission” in May 1934. After the murder of Kirov he resolved “to stop active work.” Precisely because of that he did not send me information from the United States. I must confess that it quite escaped my notice. Among my American friends there are men highly qualified in science and politics, ready at any time to supply me with information on all questions within the orbit of my interests. In consequence, I had no grounds for turning to Romm for information – provided one discounts, of course, my urgent need to tell him about my “defeatist” program.

This entire episode was apparently included in Romm’s testimony – and it may be that Romm in person was injected into the trial – only after it had become clear that I was migrating to America. The imagination of the GPU sought to overtake in its flight the oil tanker transporting me from Oslo to Tampico. In this way the United States Government received immediate warning that in Washington itself a “Trotskyist’ agent had been operating – Romm by name, who had “agreed” to send me information. What information? It is clear as noonday; such as threatens the vital interests of the United States. Radek deepened this warning. According to him, it was part of my program “to guarantee to supply Japan with oil in case of war with the United States.” (Session of January 23.) Obviously, it is for this reason that I selected as my means of transportation from Oslo to Tampico the oil tanker, an indispensable vehicle for further operations in oil. At the next trial, Romm will probably recall that I had instructed him to plug up the Panama Canal and divert Niagara to flood New York – all this during his hours off duty as correspondent of Isvestia. ... Can it be that all these people are so stupid? No; of course not. They are not stupid at all, but their minds have been totally demoralized by the règime of totalitarian irresponsibility.

Any careful reading will show that every question put by Vyshinsky discredits beforehand the answer of Romm. Every answer of Romm constitutes evidence against Vyshinsky. The dialogue as a whole blots out the trial. The series of these trials irreparably covers Stalin’s system with ignominy. But we have still not spoken of the most important matter. That Romm’s testimony is false is self-evident, from the testimony itself, to every one who is not blind and deaf. But we have at our disposal proofs that are apt even for the blind and the deaf. I was not in the Bois de Boulogne at the end of July, 1933. I couldn’t have been there. At that time I was a sick man living on the Atlantic coast 500 kilometers away from Paris. I have already issued a brief account of this fact to the New York Times (February 17th, 1937). I wish here to recount this entire episode in somewhat greater detail. It merits it!

On July 24, 1933, the Italian steamer Bulgaria, with myself, my wife and four associates (two Americans, Sarah Weber, Max Shachtman; the Frenchman, Van Heijenoort; and the German émigré, Adolphe) aboard, was about to dock in the harbor of Marseilles. After more than four years’ stay in Turkey, we were migrating to western Europe. Our coming to France was preceded by lengthy negotiations, and by solicitudes chief among which was concern about my health. In issuing the permit of entry, the Daladier Government proceeded, however, with caution. They feared attempts at assassination, demonstrations, and other incidents, especially in the capital. On June 29, 1933, Chautemps, the Minister of the Interior, wrote in a letter to Deputy Henri Guernut that I was “authorized on account of health to sojourn in one of the Southern departments and then establish residence in Corsica.” (I had myself tentatively suggested Corsica in one of my letters.) Thus, from the very outset, it was not the capital that was under consideration, but one of the distant departments. I could not have had the slightest motive for violating this condition, since I was myself sufficiently interested in avoiding during my stay in France any complications whatsoever. One ought, therefore, to reject in advance, as fantastic, the very idea that I could, immediately upon setting foot on French soil, have violated the agreement by disappearing from under the very eyes of the police and departing secretly for Paris – for an unnecessary meeting with Romm! No; what actually took place was altogether different.

Encouraged by Hitler’s victory in Germany, reaction in France was raising its head. Against my entry into the country a rabid campaign was waged by such newspapers as le Matin, le Journal, la Liberté, l’Echo de Paris, etc. In this chorus, the voice of l’Humanité rang most shrilly. The French Stalinists had not yet received orders to recognize Socialists and Radicals as their “brothers.” Oh, no! Daladier was at that time treated by the Comintern as a Radical-Fascist, Léon Blum, who supported Daladier, was branded as a Social-Fascist. As concerns me, I was, by special appointment of Moscow, fulfilling the functions of an agent of American, British and French imperialism. How short is human memory! The assumed name under which we booked our passage was naturally discovered en route. There was reason to fear demonstrations at the Marseilles harbor on the part of fascists, and all the more so on the part of the Stalinists. Our friends in France had every reason to be concerned lest my entry be accompanied by incidents which might complicate my further stay in the country. To evade the vigilance of enemies, our friends – among them my son, who had succeeded in getting to Paris from Hitler’s Germany – worked out a stratagem which was brilliantly successful, as proved by the last Moscow trial. By radio order from France, the Bulgaria was stopped a few kilometers outside the Marseilles harbor, to meet a motor boat in which were my son, the Frenchman Raymond Molinier, the Commissioner of the Sûreté Générale, and two boatmen. If I remember rightly, the sum of one thousand francs was paid for delaying the boat for three minutes. This incident is, of course, recorded in the ship’s log. Moreover, it was at that time remarked upon by the entire world press. My son came aboard and handed to one of my associates, the Frenchman Van Heijenoort, written instructions. Only my wife and I descended to the motor boat. While our four fellow-travellers continued their journey to Marseilles with all our baggage, the motor boat docked at the tidy little village of Cassis, where two automobiles and two French friends, Leprince and Laste, awaited us. Without a moment’s delay, we immediately proceeded westward from Marseilles, bearing in a northerly direction, to the mouth of the Gironde, in the Department of Charente-Inférieure, where a country house in the village of Saint Palais, near Royan, had previously been rented for us in the name of Molinier. On the road we stayed overnight at a hotel. Our registrations at the hotel have been verified and presented by me to the Commission.

I might add that, for the sake of preserving the secret of our identity, all our baggage was checked in Turkey in the name of Max Shachtman. His initials have been preserved to this day on the wooden boxes in which my books and papers arrived in Mexico. But in view of the discovery of our incognito, it could no longer have been a secret to the GPU agents in Marseilles that the baggage was really mine; and inasmuch as my associates, together with the baggage, headed toward Paris, the GPU agents proceeded on the supposition that my wife and I had also gone to the French capital, by automobile or airplane. It should be borne in mind that at that period the relations between the Soviet and the French Governments were still very strained. The Comintern press even asserted that I came to France on a special mission – to assist the then Premier Daladier, now Minister of War, in preparing military intervention in the USSR. How short is human memory! Between the GPU and the French police there could not, consequently, have been close relations. The GPU knew about me only that which was published in the papers. Romm could know only that which was known to the GPU. Meanwhile, the press immediately lost track of us after our landing.

After checking the dispatches of their own correspondent for that period, the editors of the New York Times wrote on February 17th last:

The ship that brought Mr. Trotsky from Turkey to Marseilles in 1933 docked after he had slipped secretly ashore, according to a Marseilles dispatch to the New York Times of July 25th, 1933. He had been taken aboard a tugboat three miles outside the harbor and landed at Cassis, where an automobile was waiting. At that time Mr. Trotsky was variously reported bound for Corsica, the curative waters of Royan, in the center of France near Vichy, or the latter place itself ...

This report, which does credit to the accuracy of the Times correspondent, completely confirms the foregoing account. As early as July 24th the press was lost in speculation as to what had happened to us. The position of the GPU, one must admit, was extremely difficult.

The organizers of the frame-up reasoned approximately as follows: Trotsky could not have failed to spend at least a few days in Paris, in order to arrange things and find himself a domicile in the provinces. The GPU did not know that all these details had been taken care of in advance, and that our country house had been rented prior to our arrival. On the other hand, Stalin, Yezhov, Vyshinsky feared to postpone the meeting with Romm to the month of August or thereafter. It was necessary to forge the iron while it was hot. In this way, these cautious and calculating men selected the end of July for the meeting, at a time when, according to all their suppositions, I could not have failed to be in Paris. But it was precisely in this supposition that they miscalculated. We were not in Paris. Accompanied by our son and three French friends, we arrived, as I have already stated, in Saint Palais, near Royan, on July 25th. As if in order to complicate further the position of the GPU, the day of our arrival was marked by a fire in our country house. An arbor burned down, also a section of the wooden fence, and a number of trees were scorched. The fire was caused by sparks from the smokestack of a locomotive. In the local newspapers for July 26th, accounts of this incident can be found. The landlords niece arrived a few hours later to check up on the consequences of the fire. Many neighbors saw me during the fire. The testimony of both persons who served us on the journey as chauffeurs, Leprince and R. Molinier, as well as the testimony of Laste, who accompanied us, describes the journey in minute detail. A certification issued by the fire department corroborates the date of the fire. The reporter, Albert Bardon, who wrote up the fire in the press, saw me in an automobile and made a deposition to this effect. The above-mentioned niece of the landlord also made a deposition. In the country house, there were waiting for us Vera Lanis, who assumed the functions of housekeeper, and Segal, who was helping us to get settled. They spent the last part of July with us, and were witnesses to the fact that I arrived in Saint Palais suffering from lumbago and high fever, and that I scarcely left my bed.

The Prefect of the Department of Charente-Inférieure was immediately informed of our arrival, by a coded telegram from Paris. We lived near Royan, as in France generally, incognito. Our passports were stamped only by the highest officials of the Sûreté Générale, in Paris. One can doubtless find there traces of our itinerary.

I remained in Saint Palais more than two months in a state of infirmity, under a physician’s care. I wrote in the New York Times that I received as visitors in Saint Palais more than thirty friends. Subsequent recollections and researches among documents indicate that I really had some fifty visitors – more than thirty Frenchmen (mainly Parisians), seven Hollanders, two Belgians, two Germans, two Italians, three Englishmen, one Swiss, etc. Among the visitors were men with well known names; for instance, the French writer, Andrè Malraux; the translator of my books, the writer Parijanine; the Dutch parliamentary Deputy, Sneevliet; the Dutch journalists, Schmidt and de Kadt; the former secretary of the British Independent Labor Party, Paton; the German émeigré, V.; the German writer, G.; etc. (I refrain from giving the names of the émigrés in order not to cause them any difficulties, but all of them, of course, will be able to testify before the Commission.) Had I spent the end of July in Paris, most of the visitors would not have had to undertake a journey to Royan. They all knew that I was not and could not have been in Paris. Of the four associates who accompanied us, three came from Paris to Royan. Only Max Shachtman went from Le Havre to New York, without having an opportunity to bid me farewell. I have presented to the Commission his letter, dated August 8th, 1933, in which he expresses his disappointment at having been separated from us on the way and being unable even to say good-bye. No; there is no lack of proofs.

Towards the beginning of October, my physical condition improved, and my friends brought me by automobile to Bagnéres in the Pyrenees, still further removed from Paris, where my wife and I passed the month of October. It was solely owing to the fact that our stay near Royan, like our stay in the Pyrenees, passed without any complications, that the Government agreed to permit us to settle nearer to the capital, but still recommended that we settle beyond the confines of the Seine Department. At the beginning of November we went to Barbizon, where a country house had been rented for us. From Barbizon, I did actually pay a few visits to the capital, always accompanied by two or three friends. Moreover, in every instance my day’s activities were rigorously arranged beforehand, and those few homes that I visited can be accurately established, together with the list of my visitors. All this, however, pertains to the winter of 1933. Yet the GPU arranged a meeting with me for Romm in July 1933. There was no such meeting. There could have been none. If, in general, there exists in this world such a thing as an alibi, then in the given instance it receives its most complete and consummate expression. The unfortunate Romm lied. The GPU compelled him to lie. Vyshinsky veiled his lie. For the sake of precisely this lie, Romm was arrested and included among the witnesses.

XVII. PYATAKOVS’S FLIGHT TO NORWAY[edit source]

Even on January 24th, the day following the opening of the last trial and Pyatakovs first statements to the court, when it was necessary to rely on the brief news dispatches. I wrote in a statement for the world press:

If Pyatakov traveled [to Oslo] under his own name, the whole Norwegian press would have been informed of it. Consequently, he traveled under a false name. What was it? All Soviet dignitaries, when abroad, are in constant touch by telegraph or telephone with their embassies or trade representations, and not for an hour do they escape the surveillance of the GPU. How was Pyatakov able to accomplish his trip unknown to the Soviet institutions in Germany and Norway? Let him describe the interior appearance of my apartment. Did he see my wife? Did I or did I not have a beard? How was I dressed? The entrance to my work room was through the apartment of the Knudsens, and all our visitors, without exception, were introduced to our host’s family. Did Pyatakov meet them? Did they see Pyatakov? These are some of the questions with the aid of which it would be easy to demonstrate before any honest court that Pyatakov only repeats the inventions of the GPU.

On January 27th, 1937, on the eve of the Prosecutor’s delivery of his summation, through the medium of the telegraph agencies, I addressed thirteen questions to the court at Moscow on the subject of Pyatakov’s pretended interview with me in Norway. I explained the urgency of my questions as follows:

Involved here is the testimony of Pyatakov. He stated that he met me in Norway in December 1935 for conspiratorial talks. Pyatakov was supposed to have come from Berlin to Oslo by airplane. The immense importance of this testimony is self-evident. I have declared more than once, and I declare again, that Pyatakov, like Radek, for the past nine years was not my friend but one of my bitterest and most treacherous enemies, and that there could have been no question of negotiations and meetings between us. If it were proven that Pyatakov actually visited me, my position would be hopelessly compromised. On the contrary, if I prove that the account of the visit is false from beginning to end, it is the system of “voluntary confessions” which will be compromised. Even if one were to admit that the Moscow court is above suspicion, the accused Pyatakov would still remain suspect. His testimony must be verified. That is not difficult. Pyatakov is not yet shot. He should immediately be presented with the following series of precise questions.

I note again that these questions, presented by me to the Commission, are based upon the first news dispatches, and that is why they are not exact in certain secondary details. But in the main, even now, they retain their full strength.

My first questions regarding Pyatakov were already at the disposal of the court on January 25th. No later than January 28th – that is, the day when the Prosecutor delivered his summation – the court had my later questions. Not later than January 26th, the Prosecutor had received telegraphic information that the Norwegian press categorically denied Pyatakov’s testimony about his flight. In the Prosecutor’s address, there is an indirect allusion to this denial. However, not one of the thirteen concrete questions posed by me was presented to the accused, for whom the Prosecutor demanded death. The Prosecutor did not make the attempt, obligatory for him, to verify the main testimony of the principal accused and thereby reinforce the accusation against me and all the others in the eyes of the whole world. If the telegrams from Oslo and my telegraphic questions did not exist, it would still be possible to speak of the remissness, negligence, and intellectual poverty of the Prosecutor and the judges. In the light of the above circumstances, there can be no question of a judicial error. The Prosecutor, like the President of the Court, consciously avoided posing questions which flowed inescapably from the very nature of Pyatakov’s testimony. They opposed the verification, not because it was impossible – on the contrary, it was exceedingly simple – but because, due to the whole rôle they were playing, they could not allow a verification. Instead, they hastened to shoot Pyatakov. However, the verification was made without them. It has completely and irrefutably demonstrated the falseness of the testimony of the principal accused in the principal question, and thus has demolished the entire indictment.

We now have at our disposal the so-called “verbatim” report of the trial of Pyatakov and the others. A careful study of the examination of Pyatakov and of the witness for the prosecution. Bukhartsev, demonstrates by itself that the Prosecutor’s task in this completely artificial, untrue and rehearsed judicial dialogue was to help Pyatakov present, without too obvious absurdities, the fantastic tale which the GPU had forced upon him. That is why we shall follow a double road in our analysis: First, we shall demonstrate on the basis of the official report itself the internal falseness of Pyatakov’s examination by Vyshinsky; then we shall present objective proofs of the material impossibility of Pyatakov’s flight and of his meeting with Inc. In this way we shall uncover not only the falseness of the principal testimony of the principal defendant. but also the participation of Prosecutor Vyshinsky and the judges in the frame-up.

“In the first half of December,” 1935, Pyatakov made his mythical flight to Oslo, via Berlin. Bukhartsev, Berlin correspondent of Isvestia, acted as a sort of intermediary in the arrangement of the trip, just as V. Romm, Isvestia correspondent in Washington, had served as intermediary between Radek and me. The Government paper, strangely enough, appointed “Trotskyite” liaison agents to posts as correspondents in the most important places. Would it not be more accurate to assume that they were agents of the GPU? Pyatakov’s declaration that Bukhartsev “had connections with Trotsky” is pure and simple invention. I never had the slightest knowledge, personally or from his writings, of either Bukhartsev or Romm. I rarely see Isvestia, and I do not as a rule read the foreign correspondence in the Soviet press.

There is no reason to doubt that Pyatakov was really in Berlin on December 10th, 1935, on the official business of his department. The fact is easy to verify through the German and Soviet press, which must have noted Pyatakov’s arrival in the German capital as well as his return to Moscow. The GPU was afterwards forced to adapt Pyatakov’s mythical trip to Oslo to his real trip to Berlin; hence the unfortunate choice of the month of December.

On arriving in Berlin, Pyatakov, according to his own words, immediately (“the same day or the next” – that is, the 11th or 12th) met Bukhartsev. The latter allegedly informed me in advance of Pyatakov’s impending arrival. By letter? By pre-arraNged telegram? How worded? To what address? Nobody embarrasses Bukhartsev with these questions. In this court room dates and addresses are generally avoided like a plague. Having received Bukhartsev’s information, I, in turn, immediately send a trustworthy messenger to Berlin with this note: “Y.L., the bearer of this note can be fully trusted.” The word “fully” was underlined. This not very original detail will, as we shall see, have to compensate us for the absence of other, more substantial information. The messenger sent by me, with a name “either Heinrich or Gustav” (Pyatakov’s testimony), took upon himself the arrangement of the flight to Oslo. The meeting between “Heinrich-Gustav” and Pyatakov took place in the Tiergarten (the 11th or 12th) and lasted altogether “literally for a couple of minutes.” The second precious detail! Pyatakov was prepared to go to Oslo, although, as he twice repeats, “for me it [The Berliner Tageblatt of December 21st, 1935, reports: “Among the current visitors to Berlin there is the first Vice Commissar of Heavy Industry of the Soviet Union, Mr. Pyatakov, and also the head of the import division of the Commissariat of Foreign Trade of the Soviet Union, Mr. Smolerisky.”] meant taking a very great risk of discovery, exposure and anything you like.” In the Russian report these words were omitted, and not inadvertently. The watch maintained over Soviet functionaries abroad is extremely strict. Pyatakov had no possibility of absenting himself from Berlin for forty-eight hours, without indicating to the Soviet institutions where he was going and at what address they could communicate with him; as a member of the Central Committee and of the Government, Pyatakov could at any moment receive an inquiry or be charged with a mission by Moscow. The rules which exist on this subject are well known to the Prosecutor and to the judges. Moreover, on January 24th, I already asked the court by telegraph: “How was Pyatakov able to complete his journey without the knowledge of the Soviet institutions in Germany and Norway?” On January 27th, I repeated: “How was Pyatakov able to conceal himself from the Soviet institutions in Berlin and Oslo? How did he explain his disappearance after his return?” No one, of course, bothered the defendant with such questions.

Pyatakov arranged with “Heinrich-Gustav” to meet “the next morning” (the 12th or 13th) at the Tempelhof Airport. The Prosecutor, who in questions which have no importance and cannot be subjected to verification demands sometimes a demonstrative display of precision, is entirely unconcerned about rendering precise a date of such exceptional importance! However, by means of the records of the Soviet trade representation in Berlin, it should be possible without difficulty to establish a day-to-day calendar of Pyatakov’s activities. But that is precisely what must be avoided.

“Early next morning, I went straight to the entrance of the airdrome.” Early in the morning? We should like to know at what hour. In matters of this nature, the hour is set in advance. But Pyatakov’s inspirers were evidently afraid of erring with regard to the meteorological calendar. At the airport Pyatakov met “Heinrich-Gustav”: “He was waiting at the entrance and led the way. He first showed me a passport which had been prepared for me. The passport was a German one. He saw to all the customs formalities himself, so that all I had to do was to sign my name. We got into an airplane and set off ...” No one so much as interrupted the defendant at this point. The Prosecutor – unbelievable though it may seem – is not even interested in the question of the passport. That the passport was “German” is enough for him. However, a German passport, like any other, is made out in a definite name. Precisely in whose name, in this instance? Momma sunt odiosa.

The Prosecutor is preoccupied with giving Pyatakov the opportunity to slide past this ticklish point as swiftly as possible. “The customs formalities?” “Heinrich-Gustay” took care of them. All Pyatakov had to do was “to sign [his] name.” One would imagine that at this point the Prosecutor could not possibly have failed to ask Pyatakov what name he signed. Presumably the name that was on the German passport. But the Prosecutor considers this none of his business. The President of the Court also keeps his silence. So do the judges. A collective oversight, due to fatigue? But I took timely steps to refresh the memories of these gentlemen. As early as January 24th, I asked the court under what name Pyatakov arrived in Oslo. Three days later I returned to this point. Of the thirteen questions posed by me, the fourth was: “With what passport did Pyatakov depart from Berlin? Did he receive a Norwegian visa?” My questions were reproduced by newspapers throughout the world. If Vyshinsky still did not question Pyatakov about the passport and visa, it was because he knew that it was necessary to keep quiet about them. This silence alone is entirely sufficient to allow us to say: We have before us a frame-up.

Let us, however, continue to trace Pyatakov’s steps: “We got into an airplane and set off. We did not stop anywhere, and at approximately 5 p.m. we landed at the airdrome in Oslo. There an automobile awaited us. We got in and drove off. We drove for about thirty minutes, and came to a country suburb. We got out, entered a small house that was not badly furnished, and there I saw Trotsky, whom I had not seen since 1928.” Doesn’t this narrative completely betray a man who has nothing to disclose? Not a trace of living reality! “We got into an airplane, and set off ... We got in and drove off....” Pyatakov saw nothing, spoke with no one. He is unable to communicate anything whatsoever about “Heinrich-Gustav,” who accompanied him from Berlin to my door.

What occurred when the plane landed at the airdrome? The Norwegian authorities could not have failed to evince interest in a foreign plane. They could not have failed to examine the passports of Pyatakov and his fellow travelers. However, on that subject, too, we hear not one word. The flight was made, so to speak, in the realm of dreams, where people glide noiselessly, untroubled by police or customs officials.

In the “small” and “not badly furnished” house, Pyatakov saw Trotsky, “whom [he] had not seen since 1928.” (In reality, since the end of 1927.) Immediately after these stereotyped commonplaces follows an equally stereotyped description of the interview, seemingly predestined to adorn police records. Does any of this bear any resemblance to life and to living beings? After all, according to the sense of the amalgam, Pyatakov flew to visit me as a cothinker, as a friend, after many years of separation. For several years, approximately from 1923 to 1928, he really was fairly close to me, knew my family, always received a cordial welcome from my wife. He must, evidently, have preserved an entirely exceptional confidence in me if, on the basis of a single letter from me. he became a terrorist, a saboteur and a defeatist and, at the first signal. flew to see me at the risk of his life. It would seem that in such circumstances Pyatakov could not, after a separation of eight years. have failed to manifest some interest in the conditions of my life. But there is not a trace of that. Where did the meeting take place? In my apartment or in another house? Nobody knows. Where was my wife? Nobody knows. To a question by the prosecutor, Pyatakov replies that absolutely nobody was present during the interview; even “Heinrich-Gustav” remained outside. And that’s all! Yet, even by the interior furnishings, the presence or absence of Russian books or newspapers, the appearance of the writing table, Pyatakov could not but have determined at a single glance whether he was in my work room or in someone else’s room. On the other hand, I could not have had the slightest reason for concealing such innocent information from my guest, to whom I confided my most secret designs and plans. Pyatakov could not have failed to inquire about my wife. On January 24th, I asked: “Did he see my wife?” On January 27th, I repeated my question: “Did Pyatakov see my wife? Was she at home that day?” (My wife’s trips to her doctor and dentist in Oslo can easily be verified) But, precisely in order to prevent a verification, Pyatakov’s mentors taught him elastic formulas and noncommittal modes of expression. That is less risky. However, this excess of caution betrays the frame-up from another angle.

The airplane landed at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon of the 12th or 13th. Pyatakov arrived at my house approximately at 3:30 p.m. The interview lasted about two hours. My guest must have been hungry. Did I give him something to eat? That, it would seem, was the elementary duty of a host. But I could not do that without the help of my wife or the mistress of the “not badly furnished” house. Not a word on that matter during the trial. Pyatakov left me at 5:30 in the evening. Where did he go from the country suburb, with the German passport in his pocket? The Prosecutor does not inquire about that. Where did he pass the December night? Hardly in the open air. Still less can one assume that he spent the night in the Soviet Embassy. Hardly in the German Embassy, either. In a hotel, then? In exactly which one? Among the thirteen questions which I put to the court was this one: “Pyatakov could not have avoided passing one night in Norway. Where? In what hotel?” The Prosecutor does not question the defendant about this. The President maintains silence.

If an old friend came to visit me – especially a fellow-conspirator – I, like anybody else similarly situated, would do everything to protect my guest from unpleasant surprises and needless risks. After the two-hour interview I would give him something to eat and arrange a suitable lodging. Such petty matters obviously could not have presented the slightest difficulty, since I had been able to send a “trustworthy person” to Berlin and to send a “special” automobile to the airport when the “special” airplane arrived. To avoid appearing in a hotel or in the streets of Oslo, Pyatakov would naturally have been interested in spending the night with us. Moreover, after a long separation, we would have had much to talk about! But the GPU feared that version, because Pyatakov would then have had to go into details concerning my living conditions. Better to slide over these prosaic details. As a matter of fact, I lived, as is known, not in a country suburb near Oslo, but in a secluded village; not thirty minutes’ travel from the airport, but at least two hours’, especially in winter, when chains must be put on the tires. No; better to suffer a lapse of memory about the food, the December night, the danger of meeting someone connected with the Soviet Embassy. Better to hold one’s tongue. Just as previously, during the trip, so now, in Norway, Pyatakov is like the immaterial shadow of a dream. Let fools take this shadow for reality!

Through the examination of the witness Bukhartsev, correspondent of Isvestia, we learn some not unimportant supplementary details about Pyatakov’s trip. “Heinrich-Gustav,” so he affirms, was Gustav Stirner. This name conveys absolutely nothing to me, although, according to Bukhartsev, Stirner had been my trusted man. In any event, my mysterious emissary deemed it necessary to reveal his exact identity to the Prosecutor’s witness. Shall we meet a Stirner, in flesh and blood, in some future trial? Or is he a pure product of the imagination? I don’t know. The German name, in any case, is food for some reflection.

At times, Pyatakov tried to picture the meeting with me almost as an unavoidable evil; the instinct of self-preservation timidly peeps through the confessions of the accused. On the other hand, according to Bukhartsev, Pyatakov, when apprised of my invitation, said that “he was pleased to hear this, that it fully coincided with his intentions, and that he would willingly agree to this meeting.” What needless expansiveness for a conspirator! But needful indeed to the Prosecutor. The task of the witness is to deepen the guilt of the accused, while the task of the accused is to shift the main burden of guilt on to me. The task of the Prosecutor, finally, is to exploit the lies of both.

From the standpoint of the conspiracy, and even the airplane trip to Oslo, Bukhartsev is an entirely superfluous personage; even Vyshinsky is forced, as we shall see, to recognize that. But Gustav Stirner, if such a person exists, is apparently inaccessible to the prosecution. However, if there is no Stirner, there is also no witness. The story of how Pyatakov got into and alighted from the airplane would in that case be based on Pyatakov alone. That is insufficient. While Bukhartsev, who was called to testify by the Prosecutor, did not take part in the march of events, at least he fulfilled the function of the “messenger” in a classical tragedy, who announces the events which are occurring behind the scenes. Consequently, Pyatakov did not fail to inform the “messenger” on the eve of his departure from Berlin for Moscow (on which date?) that “he had been and seen.” There was no reason to tell Bukhartsev any of this. In needlessly imparting such information to an outsider, Pyatakov was guilty of inexcusable lightmindedness. But he could not act differently without depriving Bukhartsev of the opportunity of serving as a useful witness for the prosecution.

At this point, the Prosecutor suddenly becomes aware of an omission. “Did you give your photograph?” he unexpectedly asks Pyatakov, interrupting the questioning of Bukhartsev. Vyshinsky resembles a school-boy who has skipped a line in a poem. Pyatakov answers laconically, “I did.” Apparently involved here is a passport photograph. A photograph is essential for every passport, even the German variety. While thus showing his alertness, the Prosecutor risks nothing. Naturally, he keeps quiet now, too, about the name and the visa. Whereupon the guardian of the law again goes to work on Bukhartsev. “Do you know where Stirner obtained the passport, where he obtained the airplane? How is it so easy to do this in Germany?” Bukhartsev answers to the effect that Stirner did not go into the details, but requested him, Bukhartsev, not to worry – one of the few answers that sound natural and rational. The Prosecutor, however, is not to be deterred:

Vyshinsky: And were you not curious about this?
Bukhartsev: He did not tell me anything, did not go into details.
Vyshinsky: But were you curious about this?
Bukhartsev: Since he did not reply ...
Vyshinsky: But did you try to ask him?
Bukhartsev: I did, but he did not reply.

And so on, in the same vein. But here we interrupt this instructive dialogue, to subject the Prosecutor himself to an examination.

“You just asked, Mr. Prosecutor, about a passport photograph. But does not the passport itself interest you? Did not the examining magistrate question Pyatakov about this? Have you, too, forgotten to fulfill your duty? Twice, on January 24th and on January 27th, I reminded you about it telegraphically. Did you pay any attention to my question? Were you, too, not interested in my address, my residence, my living conditions? Why have you not asked Pyatakov where he spent the night? Who recommended the hotel to him? How did he register there? Do not all these circumstances merit your attention? Bukhartsev at least could justify himself by saying that Gustav Stirner refused to let him into his secrets. You, Mr. Guardian of Justice, have not this justification, because Pyatakov keeps no secrets from the Prosecutor. Pyatakov maintains silence only as regards that about which he is forbidden to talk. But you, too, Mr. Prosecutor, did not accidentally shirk your plain duty to bring Pyatakov down from the fourth dimension on to this sinful earth with its customs officials, restaurants, hotels, and other troublesome details. You kept quiet about all this because you are one of the chief organizers of the frame-up!”

Vyshinsky is not to be mollified: “And the airplane?”

“Bukhartsev: I asked him [Stirner] how Pyatakov could travel and he told me a special airplane would take Pyatakov to Oslo and back.”

It is to be observed that Stirner is not at all reticent. After all, he could simply have told the obtrusive Bukhartsev: “That’s none of your business; Pyatakov himself knows what he has to do.” But Stirner apparently recalled that before him stood the messenger from a tragedy, and therefore told him that Pyatakov would travel in a “special” plane – in other words, implied that the plane would be provided by the German Government.

Vyshinsky utilizes this prearranged indiscretion of Stirner and Bukhartsev: “But it was not Trotsky who arranged for the flight across the frontier?” Bukhartsev answers with eloquent modesty, “That I do not know.”

“Vyshinsky: You are an experienced journalist; you know that a flight across a frontier from one country to another is not a simple matter?” (Alas, alas, that is something the Prosecutor himself completely forgets when it is a question of landing at an airport, obtaining a passport, a visa, a night’s lodging, a hotel, etc.) Bukhartsev takes another step to meet the Prosecutor: “I understood that Stirner was able to do this through German official persons.” Q.E.D.

But at this point Vyshinsky appears suddenly to regain his senses:

“Could they not dispense with you in this matter? Why did you take part in this operation?”

The risky question is put to give Bukhartsev the chance to tell the court how Radek. “some time before” (exactly when?) had forewarned him, a “Trotskyite,” that he would have to carry out various commissions, and at the same time told him that “Pyatakov was a member of the center.” As we see, Radek foresaw everything and, in any event, had armed the future witness with all the necessary data.

One way or another, thanks to Bukhartsev, we learn that Pyatakov not only flew to Oslo in a “special plane,” but that he also returned to Berlin in the same way. This remarkably important declaration implies that the airplane did not simply land for a few minutes, but that it remained the rest of the day and overnight – that is, at least fifteen hours – at the Oslo airport. Probably it was also refueled there. As we shall soon see, Bukhartsev’s declaration does us a greater service than it does the Prosecutor. We now arrive at the crux of Pyatakov’s testimony, and of the whole trial.

The conservative Norwegian paper Aftenposten, immediately after Pyatakov’s first day’s testimony, made an investigation at the airport and, in its evening edition of January 25th, carried the information that in December 1935 not a single foreign airplane landed in Oslo. This news immediately circulated around the world. Vyshinsky was forced to take into account the unpleasant news from Oslo. He did so in his own manner. At the session of January 27th, the Prosecutor asked Pyatakov whether he really landed at an airport in Norway, and if so, which one. Pyatakov answered: “Near Oslo.” He did not remember the name. Were there no difficulties in landing? Pyatakov, we were told, was so excited that he noticed nothing unusual.

“Vyshinsky: You confirm that you landed in an airdrome near Oslo?
“Pyatakov: Near Oslo, that I remember.”

The only thing lacking was that he should forget such a detail! Thereupon the Prosecutor read into the court record a document which many newspapers mildly characterized as surprising – a communication from the Soviet Embassy in Norway that “the Kjellere Airdrome near Oslo receives all the year round, in accordance with international regulations, airplanes of other countries, and that the arrival and departure of airplanes is possible also in Winter months” That is all! The Prosecutor asks to have this valuable document entered as an exhibit. Thus he considers the question closed!

No; the question is just opened. The Norwegian agencies did not at all assert that air travel is impossible in Norway in the Winter months. Why, then, is it the job of the Moscow court to compile a meteorological handbook for aviators? The question is much more concrete: Did a foreign plane land in Oslo during the month of December 1935, or not?

Konrad Knudsen, member of the Storting. on January 29th, 1937, sent the following telegram to Moscow:

To Prosecutor Vyshinsky, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, Moscow:
I inform you that today it was officially confirmed that in December 1935 no foreign or private airplane landed at the Oslo airdrome. As Leon Trotsky’s host, I also confirm that in December 1935 no conversation could have taken place in Norway between Trotsky and Pyatakov.
KONRAD KNUDSEN, Member of Storting.

On the same day, January 29th, the Arbeiderbladet, organ of the Government Party, undertook a new investigation of the “special airplane.” It may not be inappropriate to mention that this paper not only approved my internment by the Norwegian Government, but also published extremely hostile articles about me during my imprisonment. I give the report of the Arbeiderbladet textually:

PYATAKOV’S MIRACULOUS TRIP TO KJELLER[edit source]

No Foreign Airplane at Kjeller from September 1935 to May 1936[edit source]

Director Gulliksen Issues Categorical Denial[edit source]

Pyatakov insists on his confession to the effect that he arrived by airplane in Norway and landed at the Kjeller Airdrome in December 1935. The Russian Commissariat for Foreign Affairs has undertaken an investigation intended to confirm this evidence.

The authorities at the Kjeller Airdrome have already categorically denied that any foreign airplane landed there in December 1935 while Konrad Knudsen, Trotsky’s host and a member of the Storting, has issued a declaration that Trotsky received no visitors at all during that period.

A representative of the Arbeiderbladet made another inquiry today at the Kjeller Airdrome, and Director Gulliksen confirmed by telephone that no foreign airplane landed at Kjeller in December. 1935. During this month only one airplane landed there, and that was a Norwegian plane from Linkoping. But this plane carried no passengers.

Director Gulliksen examined the day-by-day customs register prior to issuing this statement to us, and in reply to our question he added that it is absolutely out of question for any plane to have landed without being observed. Throughout the night a military guard patrols the field.

“When was the last time, prior to December 1935 that a foreign plane landed at Kjeller?” our representative asked Director Gulliksen.

“On September 19th. It was an English plane, SACSF, from Copenhagen. It was piloted by the English aviator, Mr. Robertson, with whom I am well acquainted.”

“And after December 1935 when did the first foreign plane land at Kjeller?”

“May 1st, 1936.”

“In other words, according to the records kept at the airdrome, this would establish that no foreign plane landed at Kjeller in the interval between September 19th, 1935 and May 1st, 1936?”

“Yes.”

In order to leave no room for any doubt, let me introduce the official confirmation of the newspaper interview. In reply to an inquiry made by my Norwegian attorney, the same Mr. Gulliksen, Director of the only airport at or near Oslo, replied on February 14th as follows:

Kjeller, February 14th, 1937

Andreas Stoeylen,
Attorney-at-Law,
Owe Slottagt SV.
Oslo.

Sir: In reply to your letter of the 10th instant, I beg to inform you that my statement in the Arbeiderbladet was published accurately ...
Yours very truly,

GULLIKSEN, Director, Kjeller Airport.

In other words, even if we extend to the credit of the GPU not simply thirty-one days (December) but 224 days (September 19th to May 1st) for Pyatakov’s flight, even then Stalin could not save the situation. The question of Pyatakov’s flight to Oslo may consequently, I hope, be considered closed for all time.

On January 29th the sentence had not yet been pronounced. The statements of Knudsen and the Arbrielerbladet were of such extraordinary importance that they called for a supplementary inquiry. But the Moscow Themis is not the sort to permit facts to halt her movements. It is quite probable – almost certain – that in the preliminary negotiations Pyatakov, like Radek, was promised his life. The keeping of this promise to Pyatakov, the “organizer” of the alleged “sabotage,” was not at all easy. But if Stalin had any hesitation left in this respect, the news from Oslo must have terminated it. On January 29th I said to the press in my daily statement: “The first steps of the inquiry in Norway have enabled the Storting Deputy, K. Knudsen, to establish that in December no foreign airplane at all landed in Oslo ... I am very much afraid that the GPU will make haste to shoot Pyatakov in order to forestall further disconcerting questions and deprive the future international commission of inquiry of the opportunity to demand further clarification from Pyatakov.” The next day, January 30th, Pyatakov was condemned to death, and on February 1st, he was shot.

Through the medium of the Norwegian “yellow journal” Tidens Tegn, similar in character to the Hearst publications in America, the friends of the GPU are seeking to establish a new version of Pyatakov’s flight. Perhaps the German airplane did not land on a flying field, but on a frozen fjord? Perhaps Pyatakov did not visit Trotsky in a suburb of Oslo, but in a forest? Not in a house “not badly furnished,” but in a little hut in the forest? Not thirty minutes but three hours from Oslo? Perhaps Pyatakov did not come in an automobile, but on a sleigh or on skis? Perhaps this interview took place, not on December 12th or 13th, but on December 21st or 22nd? This creative effort is neither better nor worse than the attempt to pass off a Copenhagen confectioner’s shop as the Hotel Bristol. The hypotheses of Tidens Tegn suffer from this defect: They leave not a shred of Pyatakov’s confession, and at the same time they themselves crumble in face of the facts. These fantasies have long since been refuted by the Norwegian press, especially by the liberal Dagbladet, on the basis of an examination of the essential facts – i.e., the circumstances of time and place. The Storting Deputy, Konrad Knudsen, has subjected the belated fictions to a no less annihilating criticism in the columns of the same yellow newspaper, which in the meantime has become the oracle of the Comintern. If, for its part, the Commission deems it necessary to subject to an examination not only the data of the official report but also the literary versions brought forward by the friends of the GPU after the shooting of Pyatakov, I will place all the necessary material at its disposal.

I wish here to add that at the beginning of March the Danish author, Andersen Nexo, visited Oslo for a special lecture. By a happy coincidence Nexo (like Pritt, like Duranty, like several others) happened to be in Moscow during the trial and with his own ears heard Pyatakov’s confession. Whether Nexo knows Russian or not is inconsequential; it is enough that this Scandinavian knight of the truth “does not doubt” the credibility of Pyatakov’s confession. If Romain Rolland undertakes degrading assignments which testify to a complete loss of moral and psychological sensitivity, why shall not Mr. Nexo do the same?

The corruption introduced by the GPU among certain circles of radical writers and politicians the world over has reached truly frightful proportions. I shall not here inquire into the means the GPU may use in each individual case. It is sufficiently well known that these means do not always have an “ideological” character – the Irish author O’Flaherty has already revealed this, with his peculiar cynicism. One of the reasons for my break with Stalin and his comrades-in-arms was, incidentally, that they resorted to bribery of functionaries of the European labor movement from l924 on. An indirect but very important result of the work of the Commission will be, I hope, the cleansing of the radical ranks of “Left” sycophants, political parasites, “revolutionary” courtiers, or those gentlemen who remain Friends of the Soviet Union in so far as they are friends of the Soviet State Publishing House or ordinary pensioners of the GPU.

XVIII. WHAT HAS BEEN REFUTED IN THE LAST TRIAL?[edit source]

The agents of Moscow have lately resorted to the following argument: “Since his arrival in Mexico, Trotsky has not presented any evidence. There is no reason to believe that he will present any in the future. By that very fact the Commission is doomed beforehand to impotence.” How, I ask, can one refute a frame-up prepared and fabricated for a number of years, without examining the facts and documents? I really do not possess any “voluntary confessions” from Stalin, Yagoda, Yezhov or Vyshinsky – this I confess at the outset. But if I have not up to now presented a magic formula encompassing all the evidence, it is not true that I have not presented any evidence. During the last trial I issued daily statements to the press containing specific refutations. The newspapers published only parts of my statements, often in distorted form. I place at the disposal of the Commission the exact texts of these statements. I am also writing a book which will furnish the key to the most important political and psychological “enigmas” of the Moscow trials. I received the verbatim report of the second trial only two weeks ago. Under these circumstances it is, naturally, impossible to speak of an exhaustive refutation. However, despite the fact that I did not have at my disposal a daily or even a weekly paper in which I could freely express myself, I completely refuted those facts of the last trial which were directed against me personally, and thereby broke down the whole judicial amalgam.

Radek, defending himself in his final plea against the insults of the Prosecutor, who characterized the accused only as crooks and bandits (Prosecutor Vyshinsky, a cynical careerist, former Right-Wing Menshevik – what an incarnation of the régime!), obviously overstepped the previously fixed limits of defense, and said more than was necessary or than he wished to say himself. That is one of Radek’s distinctive traits! This time, however, he said things of exceptional value. I beg every member of the Commission to read with particular care the final plea of this defendant.

The terrorist activity and the connection of the “Trotskyites” with organizations of counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs are, according to Radek, fully demonstrated. “But,” he continues:

The trial is bicentric, and it has another important significance. It has revealed the smithy of war, and has shown that the Trotskyite organization became an agency of the forces which are fomenting a new world war. What proofs are there in support of this fact? In support of this fact there is the evidence of two people – the testimony of myself, who received the directives and the letters from Trotsky (which, unfortunately, I burned), and the testimony of Pyatakov, who spoke to Trotsky. All the testimony of the other accused rests on our testimony. If you are dealing with mere criminals and spies, on what can you base your conviction that what we have said is the truth, the firm truth?

One can hardly believe one’s eyes when one reads these cynically frank lines in the record. Neither the Prosecutor nor the President even tried to refute or correct Radek – it was too risky! Yet his astonishing words batter down the whole trial. Yes; the entire accusation against me rests only on the testimony of Radek and Pyatakov. There is not even a trace of material evidence. The letters which Radek allegedly received from me were “unfortunately” burned by him (nevertheless, the indictment was published in the Russian version of the court proceedings as if quoting my actual letters). The Prosecutor treats Radek and Pyatakov as unprincipled liars, pursuing only one aim – to deceive the authorities. The sum and substance of Radek’s reply is: “If our testimony is false (both Radek and the Prosecutor know well enough that the testimony is false!), then what other proof do you have that Trotsky concluded an alliance with Germany and Japan, with the object of precipitating war and dismembering the USSR? You have nothing left. There are no documents. The testimony of the other accused rests upon our testimony.” Not a word from the Prosecutor. Not a word from the President. Silent, too, are the “friends” abroad. A damning silence! Such is the true face of the trial – a face of shame!

Let us recall the factual side of the testimony of Radek and Pyatakov. Radek was supposed to have maintained communication with me through Vladimir Romm. The latter allegedly saw me the first and only time at the end of July 1933 in the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. By precise references to dates, facts and witnesses, including the French police, I have proved that I was not and could not have been in the Bois de Boulogne, since, being ill, I went directly from Marseilles to Saint Palais near Royan, several hundred kilometers from Paris.

Pyatakov testified that he flew in a German airplane to see me In Oslo in December, 1935. However, the Norwegian authorities have stated publicly that not a single foreign airplane landed at Oslo between September 19th, 1935, and May 1st, 1935. From this evidence there is no appeal. Pyatakov no more flew to see me in Oslo than Romm met me in the Bois de Boulogne. Yet Radek’s sole alleged contact with me was through Romm. The destruction of Romm’s testimony leaves nothing of Radek’s testimony. Nor does anything remain of Pyatakov’s testimony. However, according to Radek’s confession, confirmed by the court’s silence, the accusation against me rests exclusively on the testimony of Radek and Pyatakov. All the other testimony is of an accessory, auxiliary character, designed to bolster up Radek and Pyatakov, the principal accused – mare exactly, Stalin’s principal witnesses – against me. The function of Radek and Pyatakov was to demonstrate the direct connection between the criminals and myself. “All the testimony of the other accused rests on our testimony,” Radek confesses. In other words, it rests upon nothing. The main charge has been demolished. It has crumbled into dust. It is hardly necessary to demolish a building brick by brick, once the two basic columns on which it rests are thrown down. Messrs. Accusers, crawl on your bellies in the wreckage and gather up the chips of your masonry!

XIX. THE PROSECUTOR-FALSIFIER[edit source]

My “terrorist” and “defeatist” activity, as is known, was supposed to be a matter of the utmost secrecy, into which I initiated only those who were most trustworthy. On the other hand, my public activity, hostile to terror and defeatism, was supposedly only “camouflage.” The Prosecutor, however, does not maintain this position throughout, and sometimes succumbs to the temptation to discover terrorist and defeatist propaganda in my public activity as well. We shall demonstrate by certain cardinal examples that the literary frauds of Vyshinsky represent only an auxiliary to the judicial frame-ups.

I[edit source]

On February 20th, 1932, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, by a special decree, deprived me and the members of my family who were abroad of Soviet citizenship. Even the text of the decree, I note in passing, represented an amalgam. I was referred to not only by the name of Trotsky, but also by my father’s name, Bronstein, although this name had never before been used in any Soviet document. Moreover, they hunted up Mensheviks named Bronstein and included them in the decree of deprivation of citizenship. Such is the political style of Stalin!

I replied by an Open Letter to the Praesidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, on March 1st, 1932 (Bulletin of the Opposition, No.27). This Open Letter mentioned a series of frauds perpetrated by the Soviet press on command from above. for the purpose of discrediting me in the eyes of the toiling masses of the USSR. Recounting the principal errors of Stalin in the questions of home and foreign policy, the Open Letter branded his “Bonapartist tendencies.” “Under the lash of the Stalinist clique,” the Open Letter went on to say, “the sorry, confused, frightened, demoralized Central Committee of the German Communist Party helps with all its might – and cannot but help – the leaders of the German Social Democracy to hand over the German working dass to Hitler for crucifixion.” Less than a year later this prediction, unfortunately, was entirely confirmed! Furthermore, the Open Letter contained the following proposal: “... Stalin has led you into a blind alley. Without liquidating Stalinism there is no way out. You must trust in the working class, give the proletarian vanguard the possibility of reviewing the whole Soviet system and pitilessly cleansing it of the accumulated rubbish. It is time, finally, to fulfill the last urgent advice of Lenin – to remove Stalin.” The proposal “to remove Stalin” I motivated with the following words: “You know Stalin as well as I do ... The strength of Stalin was never in himself but in the apparatus; or, rather, in himself in so far as he was the most consummate embodiment of bureaucratic automatism. Apart from the apparatus, counterposed to the apparatus, Stalin is nothing, a mere cipher ... It is high time to abandon the Stalin myth.” It is plain that in question here is not the physical extermination of Stalin, but only the liquidation of his apparatus power.

Incredible though it seems, it is precisely this document, the Open Letter to the Central Executive Committee, that was to form part of the basis of the Stalin-Vyshinsky judicial frame-ups.

At the court session of August 20th, 1936, the accused Olberg deposed:

The first time Sedov spoke to me about my journey [to the USSR] was after Trotsky’s message in connection with Trotsky’s being deprived of the citizenship of the USSR In this message Trotsky developed the idea that it was necessary to assassinate Stalin. This idea was expressed in the following words: “Stalin must be removed.” Sedov showed me the typewritten text of this message and said: “Well, now you see, it cannot be expressed in a clearer way. It is a diplomatic wording.” ... it was then that Sedov proposed that I should go to the USSR

The “Open Letter” is called by Olberg, for the sake of prudence, a “message.” Olberg gives only a partial citation. The Prosecutor does not ask for details. The words “remove Stalin” are interpreted to mean that it was necessary to assassinate Stalin.

On August 21st, according to the record, the accused Holtzman testified that “in the course of the conversation Trotsky said that it was “necessary to remove Stalin.” Vyshinsky: “What does ‘Remove Stalin’ mean? Explain it.” Holtzman naturally proceeds to explain it according to the requirements of Vyshinsky.

Seemingly in order to dissipate all doubts concerning the source of his own fraud, Vyshinsky declared on August 22nd, 1936, in his summation: “... in March 1932, in a fit of counter-revolutionary fury, Trotsky burst out in an open letter with an appeal to “put Stalin out of the way” (this letter was found between the double walls of Holtzman’s suitcase and figured as an exhibit in this case).

The Prosecutor speaks flatly of an “open letter” written in March 1932 about withdrawal of my citizenship and containing the call “to remove Stalin.” This document is nothing else but my Open Letter to the Central Executive Committee! According to the Prosecutor, it was “found between the double walls of Holtzman’s suitcase.” It is possible that, returning from abroad, Holtzman concealed in his suitcase a copy of the Bulletin containing my Open Letter; such means of concealment are in accord with traditional practice among Russian revolutionists. In any case, the specific indications given by the Prosecutor: (a) reference to the name (Open Letter) (b) the date (March 1932) (c) the theme (decree depriving me of citizenship); finally, (d) the slogan (“remove Stalin”), point with absolute certainty to my Open Letter to the Central Executive Committee, and to the fact that the testimony of Olberg and Holtzman, as well as the Prosecutor’s summation in the Zinoviev-Kamenev case, revolved precisely around this document.

In his summation in the Pyatakov-Radek case (January 28th, 1937), Vyshinsky again turns to the Open Letter as the basic terrorist directive: “We are in possession of documents proving that Trotsky, at least twice, and, moreover, in a fairly open and undisguised form, gave a line for terrorism, documents which their author has proclaimed urbi et orbi. I refer, firstly, to that letter of 1932, in which Trotsky issued his treacherous and shameful call, “Remove Stalin ...” [In the English edition of the record of the second trial (page 507) it says: “Remove Stalin.” In the English edition of the record of the first trial (page 527) the same phrase is translated: “Put Stalin out of the way” In the French edition of the record of the second trial the phrase reads: “Supprimez Staline,” i.e., “Destroy Stalin” The great frame-up is shot through with hundreds of petty frame-ups, including even fraudulent translations.]

Permit me, at this point, to interrupt the quotation, from which we learn again that the terrorist directive was supposedly given by me openly or, as the Prosecutor puts it, proclaimed urbi et orbi. In a word, it is a question of the same Open Letter, in which, invoking Lenin’s Testament, I recommended the removal of Stalin from his post as General Secretary.

The situation is clear, esteemed Commissioners! In the two principal trials of the “Zinovievites” and “Trotskyites” the point of departure of the indictment on the question of terror is a consciously falsified interpretation of an article of mine published in various languages and accessible to verification by every literate person. Such are the methods of Vyshinsky! Such are the methods of Stalin!

II[edit source]

In the same summation (January 28th, 1937), the Prosecutor continues “... and secondly, to a later document, the Trotskyite Bulletin of the Opposition, Nos.36-37, of October 1933 in which we find a number of direct references to terrorism as a method of fighting the Soviet government.” Then follows a quotation from the Bulletin: “It would be childish to think that the Stalin bureaucracy can be removed by means of a Party or Soviet Congress. Normal, constitutional means are no longer available for the removal of the ruling clique ... They can be compelled to hand over power to the proletarian vanguard only by force.

“What else can it be called,” the Prosecutor concludes, “if not a direct call for terrorism? I cannot call it anything else.” In order to prepare this conclusion, Vyshinsky declares in advance: “An opponent of terrorism, and opponent of violence, should have said: “Yes, peaceful means [of reforming the state] are possible on the basis, say, of the constitution.’” Precisely so: “On the basis, say, of the constitution”!

The entire argument rests upon the identification of revolutionary violence with individual terror. Even the Tsarist prosecutors seldom stooped to such methods! I never passed myself off as a pacifist, a Tolstoyan, a follower of Gandhi. Serious revolutionists never play with violence. But neither do they refuse to have recourse to revolutionary violence if history does not permit of other methods. From 1923 to 1933 I defended the idea of “reforming” the Soviet state apparatus. That is precisely why, even in March 1932 I advised the Central Executive Committee to “remove Stalin.” Only gradually and under the pressure of irresistible facts did I arrive at the conclusion that the popular masses cannot overthrow the bureaucracy except by revolutionary violence. In accordance with the fundamental principle of my activity, I immediately expressed this conclusion publicly. Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, I think that the system of Stalinist Bonapartism can be liquidated only by means of a new political revolution. However, revolutions are not made to order. They spring from the development of society. They cannot be evoked artificially. It is even less possible to replace revolution by the adventurism of terrorist acts. When Vyshinsky identifies, instead of counterposing, these two methods – that of individual terror and that of mass insurrection – he blots out the entire history of the Russian Revolution and the entire philosophy of Marxism. What does he put in their place? A frame-up.

III[edit source]

Ambassador Troyanovsky, following Vyshinsky, did exactly the same thing: During the last trial he discovered, as is well known. that in one of my statements to the press I had admitted my terrorist views. Troyanovsky’s discovery was printed; it was discussed; it had to be refuted, Is this not degrading to human reason? It appears that, on the one hand, in my books, articles and statements on the latest trials, I categorically denied the charge of terrorism, founding my denials on theoretical, political and factual arguments. On the other hand. I am supposed to have given the Hearst papers a statement in which, contradicting all my other statements, I openly confessed to the Soviet Ambassador my terroristic crimes. Are there any limits to absurdity? If Troyanovsky commits, in full view of the whole civilized world, falsifications so unprecedented in their crudeness and cynicism, it is not difficult to imagine what the GPU does in its cellars.

IV[edit source]

Nor can Vyshinsky do any better as regards my defeatism. The foreign attorneys of the GPU continue to torture their faculties over the question of how the former leader of the Red Army became a “defeatist.” For Vyshinsky and the other falsifiers of Moscow, this question ceased to exist a long time ago – Trotsky was always a defeatist, they say, even during the period of the Civil War. A whole literature already exists on this subject. Educated on this literature, the Prosecutor says in his summation:

We must remember that ten years ago Trotsky justified his defeatist position in regard to the USSR by referring to the famous Clemenceau thesis. Trotsky then wrote: “We must restore the tactics of Clemenceau, who, as is well known [!!] rose against the French Government at a time when the Germans were 80 kms. from Paris.” [In the English edition these words are placed in quotation marks, which might lead the members of the Commission to mistake them for a quotation. In reality, the sentence is invented out of whole cloth by the Prosecutor. Vyshinsky’s judicial “citations” have the same authenticity as Stalin’s literary “citation”; in this school there is uniformity of style.] ... It was not an accident that Trotsky and his accomplices advanced the Clemenceau thesis. They reverted to this thesis once again, but this time advancing it not as a theoretical proposition, but as practical preparation, real preparation, in alliance with foreign intelligence services, for the defeat of the USSR in war.

It is hard to believe that the text of this speech was printed in foreign languages, including the French. One would imagine that the French were not unastonished to learn that Clemenceau, during the war, “rose against the French Government.” The French never suspected that Clemenceau was a defeatist and an ally of “foreign intelligence services.” On the contrary, they call him “the father of victory.” Exactly what is meant by the gibberish of the Prosecutor? The fact is that the Stalinist bureaucracy, to justify violence against the Soviets and the party, has, since 1926, appealed to the war danger – classic subterfuge of Bonapartism! In opposing this, I always expressed myself in the sense that freedom of criticism is indispensable for us not only in time of peace but also in time of war. I referred to the fact that even in bourgeois countries, France in particular, the ruling class did not dare, despite all its fear of the masses, completely to suppress criticism during the war. In this connection I adduced the example of Clemenceau, who, despite the proximity of the war front to Paris – or rather, precisely because of it – denounced in his paper the worthlessness of the military policy of the French Government. In the end, Clemenceau, as is well known, convinced Parliament, took over the leadership of the Government, and assured victory. Where is the “uprising” here? Where is the “defeatism”? Where is the connection with foreign intelligence services? I repeat: The reference to Clemenceau was made by me at a time when I judged it still possible to accomplish by peaceful means the transformation of the governmental system of the USSR. Today I can no longer invoke Clemenceau, because the Bonapartism of Stalin has barred the road to legal reform. But even today I stand completely for the defense of the USSR – that is to say, for the defense of its social bases, both against foreign imperialism and domestic Bonapartism.

In the question of “defeatism.” the Prosecutor based himself first on Zinoviev, then on Radek, as the principal witnesses against me, I am here going to cite Zinoviev and Radek as witnesses against the Prosecutor. I shall cite their free and unfalsified opinions.

Speaking of the revolting persecution of the Opposition, Zinoviev wrote to the Central Committee on September 6th, 1927: “It is enough to point to the article of the not unknown N. Kuzmin in the Komsomolskaya Pravda in which this ‘teacher’ of our military youth ... interprets Comrade Trotsky’s reference to Clemenceau as a demand for the shooting of peasants at the front in case of war. What is this, if not a downright Thermidorian, not to say Black Hundred agitation?”

At the same period as the letter of Zinoviev (September 1927), Radek wrote in his programmatic thesis:

... On the question of war, it is necessary to repeat in our platform things said in our various public speeches, and to bring them together; that is to say: Our state is a workers’ state, despite strong tendencies working to change its nature. The defense of that state is the defense of the prôletarian dictatorship. ... The question posed by Stalin’s group – by distorting Comrade Trotsky’s reference to Clemenceau – cannot be lightly tossed aside, but must be answered clearly: We will defend the dictatorship of the proletariat, even with the false leadership of the present majority, as we have declared; but the pledge of victory is in the correction of errors of this leadership and in the acceptance by the party of our platform.

These testimonials from Zinoviev and Radek are doubly precious. On the one hand, they establish in an entirely correct manner the attitude of the Opposition toward the defense of the USSR; on the other hand, they show that since 1927 the Stalinist group has distorted in every way imaginable my reference to Clemenceau, with the object of imputing defeatist tendencies to the Opposition. It is worth noting that this same Zinoviev, in one of his latter-day recantations, also docilely included in his arsenal the official falsification relating to Clemenceau. “... The whole party, as one man,” Zinoviev wrote in Pravda of May 8th, 1933, “will fight under the banner of Lenin and Stalin ... Only contemptible renegades will, perhaps, try to recall here the notorious Clemenceau thesis.” Undoubtedly, one could find similar quotations from Radek. Thus, this time also, the Prosecutor has invented nothing new. He has merely given a juridical twist to the traditional Thermidorian hounding of the Opposition. And it is of such shoddy tricks that the whole accusation is made up. Lies and frame-ups! Frame-ups and lies! Sum total – the firing squad.

XX. THE THEORY OF “CAMOUFLAGE”[edit source]

Some “jurists,” of the sort who swallow camels and strain at gnats, are fond of arguing that my correspondence can have no “juridical” value as evidence, because there always remains room for the possibility that it was conducted with the anticipated aim of camouflaging my real manner of thinking and acting. This argument, which has its roots in commonplace criminal practice, has absolutely no application to a political trial of vast proportions. For the purpose of camouflage, one can compose five, ten, a hundred letters. But one cannot carry on an intensive correspondence on the most diverse questions over a period of years, with the most diverse people, near and distant, with the sole aim of fooling them all. To the letters must be added the articles and books. One can devote to the task of “camouflage” the energy and time which remain over after one’s main work is done. But one can carry on an enormous correspondence only on the condition of a profound concern for its content and results. Precisely for this reason, the innumerable letters, which are permeated through and through with the proselytizing spirit, must inevitably reflect the true face of the author, and in no case a mask assumed temporarily. I hope that the Commission will estimate the letters, articles and books in their reciprocal connections.

When I appeared in Norway on December 11th, 1936, as a witness in the case which arose from the unsuccessful fascist raid on my archives, I tried to explain to the judges and jurors the meaning of my papers as a means of defense against false accusations.

You will perhaps permit me [I said], to give an example from a field in which the jurors are more at home. Let us imagine a religious, God-fearing man who strives to live his whole life in strict conformity with the teachings of the Bible. At some point, his enemies raise – with the aid of false documents and false witnesses – the charge that this man secretly carries on atheistic propaganda. What would the victim of the slander say? “Here is my family, here are my friends, here is my library, here is my correspondence of many years, here is my entire life. Read my letters, addressed to the most diverse people on the most diverse occasions, ask the hundreds of people who over the course of years have been in contact with me, and you will be convinced that I could not have carried on a work in conflict with my whole moral nature.” This argument will convince every intelligent and honest man.

Let us take another example from the field of art: Let us suppose that somebody were to declare that Diego Rivera is a secret agent of the Catholic Church. If I were to participate in an inquiry into such a slander, I would first of all propose to all the participants that they inspect Rivera’s frescoes. One could hardly find expressed anywhere a more impassioned or more intense hatred of the Church. Will some jurist try to object that perhaps Rivera painted these frescoes with the aim of camouflaging his real rôle? Serious people would only laugh contemptuously at such an objection, and proceed with their business.

For the purpose of camouflaging crimes (I speak now of the crimes of the GPU), it is possible, with the help of a venal apparatus, to fabricate an indictment, to exact a series of monotonous confessions, and at state expense to print a “verbatim” report. The inner contradictions and crudenesses of this concoction sufficiently expose. by and of themselves, this bureaucratic “creation” made to order. But one cannot without conviction and intellectual passion paint tremendous frescoes which in the language of art lash the oppression of man by man, or year after year under countless blows of enemies develop the ideas of international revolution. One cannot pour out “heart’s blood and nerve’s sap” (Börne) in scientific, artistic or political work, with the object of “camouflage.” People who know what creative work is, and all intelligent and sensitive people in general, will laugh derisively at bureaucratic and “juridical” casuists, and proceed to serious business.

Let us, finally, bring dispassionate arithmetic to bear on this case. According to the statements in both trials, the content of my criminal work was as follows: Three meetings in Copenhagen, two letters of Mrachkovsky and others, three letters to Radek, a letter to Pyatakov, another to Muralov, a meeting with Romm lasting twenty to twenty-five minutes, a meeting with Pyatakov lasting two hours. That is all! Altogether, the conversations and correspondence with the conspirators, according to their own testimony, did not take more than twelve or thirteen hours of my time. I do not know how much time was taken up by my conversations with Hess and the Japanese diplomats.

Let us add twelve more hours. Altogether, this totals a maximum of three working days. Meanwhile, I calculate that the eight years of my most recent exile comprise 2,920 possible working days, That I did not expend my time uselessly is proven by my books published during these years, by innumerable articles, and by the still more numerous letters which in size and content not infrequently are comparable to articles. In this way we come to a rather paradoxical conclusion: During 2,917 working days I wrote books, articles and letters and held conversations devoted to the defense of Socialism, the proletarian revolution and the struggle against fascist and all other forms of reaction. On the other hand, I devoted three days – three whole daysi – to a conspiracy in the interests of fascism. Not even my adversaries have denied that my books and articles, written in the spirit of the Communist revolution, possess some merit. On the other hand, my letters and verbal directives inspired by interest in fascism, are, to judge by the Moscow reports, distinguished by an extraordinary stupidity. Between the two branches of my activity, the public and the secret, there is observable an extreme disproportion. The public – that is, the “hypocritical” – activity, which served only as “camouflage,” surpassed my secret – that is. the “genuine” – activity almost a thousand times in quantity and, I venture to assert, equally in quality. One gets the impression that I built a skyscraper to “camouflage” a dead rat. No, it is not convincing!

The same thing applies to the testimony of my witnesses, Naturally, I lived in a circle of political friends, and associated chiefly, though not exclusively, with my co-thinkers. It is a simple matter, therefore, to try to discredit the testimony of my witnesses as coming from persons connected with an interested party (ex parte). Such an attempt, however, must from the outset be regarded as untenable. Today there are in some thirty countries smaller or larger organizations which were founded and have developed during the past eight years in close connection with my theoretical works and political articles. Hundreds of members of these organizations carried on personal correspondence with me, entered into discussions with me, and visited me whenever they could. Everyone of them afterwards shared his impressions with scores, if not hundreds, of other persons. Thus there is involved no closed circle, bound together by family pride or mutual material interests, but a broad international movement, nourished exclusively from ideological sources. To this it must be added that in all these thirty organizations, during all these years, there occurred an intensive ideological struggle, which not infrequently led to splits and expulsions. The internal life of each of these organizations was reflected, in its turn, in bulletins, circular letters and polemical articles. In all this work I took an active part. The question arises: Did the international organization of the “Trotskyites” know about my “genuine” plans and intentions (terrorism, war, defeat of the USSR, fascism)? If so, then it is altogether incomprehensible why this secret failed to leak out, either through carelessness or bad faith, especially in view of the numerous conflicts and splits. If not, that means that I succeeded in calling into existence a growing international movement based on ideas which were not mine, but which served me only as camouflage for directly opposite ideas. But such an assumption is really preposterous! I would like to add that I propose to call as witnesses dozens of persons who have broken with the Trotskyist organization or have been expelled from it, and have become my political opponents, sometimes extremely bitter ones. To apply the narrow term “ex parte” to such broad dimensions – the quantity here, too, passes into quality – means to ignore reality and clutch at a shadow.

XXI. WHY AND WHEREFORE THESE TRIALS?[edit source]

An American writer complained to me in a conversation: “It is difficult for me to believe,” he said, “that you entered into an alliance with fascism; but it is equally difficult for me to believe that Stalin carried out such horrible frame-ups.” I can only pity the author of this remark. It is, in fact, difficult to find a solution if one approaches the question exclusively from an individual psychological and not political viewpoint. I do not wish to deny by this the importance of the individual element in history. Neither Stalin nor I find ourselves in our present positions by accident. But we did not create these positions. Each of us is drawn into this drama as the representative of definite ideas and principles. In their turn, the ideas and principles do not fall from the sky, but have profound social roots. That is why one must take, not the psychological abstraction of Stalin as a “man,” but his concrete, historical personality as leader of the Soviet bureaucracy. One can understand the acts of Stalin only by starting from the conditions of existence of the new privileged stratum, greedy for power, greedy for material comforts, apprehensive for its positions, fearing the masses, and mortally hating all opposition.

The position of a privileged bureaucracy in a society which that bureaucracy itself calls Socialist is not only contradictory, but also false. The more precipitate the jump from the October overturn – which laid bare all social falsehood – to the present situation, in which a caste of upstarts is forced to cover up its social ulcers, the cruder the Thermidorian lies. It is, consequently, a question not simply of the individual depravity of this or that person, but of the corruption lodged in the position of a whole social group for whom lying has become a vital political necessity. In the struggle for its newly gained positions, this caste has reeducated itself and simultaneously re-educated – or rather, demoralized – its leaders. It raised upon its shoulders the man who best, most resolutely and most ruthlessly expresses its interests. Thus Stalin, who was once a revolutionist, became the leader of the Thermidorian caste.

The formulas of Marxism, expressing the interests of the masses, more and more inconvenienced the bureaucracy, in so far as they were inevitably directed against its interests. From the time that I entered into opposition to the bureaucracy, its courtier-theoreticians began to call the revolutionary essence of Marxism – “Trotskyism.” At the same time, the official conception of Leninism changed from year to year, becoming more and more adapted to the needs of the ruling caste. Books devoted to Party history, to the October Revolution, or to the theory of Leninism, were revised annually. I have adduced an example from the literary activity of Stalin himself. In 1918 he wrote that the victory of the October insurrection was “principally and above all” assured by Trotsky’s leadership. In 1924 Stalin wrote that Trotsky could not have played any special rôle In the October Revolution. To this tune the whole historiography was adjusted. This signifies in practice that hundreds of young scholars and thousands of journalists were systematically trained in the spirit of falsification. Whoever resisted was stifled. This applies in a still greater measure to the propagandists, functionaries, judges, not to speak of the examining magistrates of the GPU. The incessant Party purges were directed above all toward the uprooting of “Trotskyism,” and during these purges not only discontented workers were called “Trotskyites,” but also all writers who honestly presented historical facts or citations which contradicted the latest official standardization. Novelists and artists were subject to the same regime. The spiritual atmosphere of the country became completely impregnated with the poison of conventionalities, lies and direct frame-ups.

All the possibilities along this road were soon exhausted. The theoretical and historical falsifications no longer attained their aims – people grew too accustomed to them. It was necessary to give to bureaucratic repression a more massive foundation. To bolster up the literary falsifications, accusations of a criminal character were brought in.

My exile from the USSR was officially motivated by the allegation that I had prepared an “armed insurrection.” However, the accusation launched against me was not even published in the press. Today it may seem incredible, but already in 1929 we were confronted with accusations against the Trotskyites of “sabotage,” “espionage,” “preparation of railroad wrecks,” etc., in the Soviet press. However, there was not a single trial involving these accusations. The matter was limited to a literary calumny which represented, nevertheless, the first link in the preparation of the future judicial frame-ups. To justify the repressions, it was necessary to have framed accusations. To give weight to the false accusations, it was necessary to reinforce them with more brutal repressions. Thus the logic of the struggle drove Stalin along the road of gigantic judicial amalgams.

They also became necessary to him for international reasons. If the Soviet bureaucracy does not want revolutions and fears them, it cannot, at the same time, openly renounce the revolutionary traditions without definitely undermining its prestige within the USSR. However, the obvious bankruptcy of the Comintern opens the way for a new International. Since 1933 the idea of new revolutionary parties under the banner of the Fourth International has met with great success in the Old and New Worlds. Only with difficulty can an outside observer appreciate the real dimensions of this success. It cannot be measured by membership statistics alone. The general tendency of development is of much greater importance. Deep, internal fissures are spreading throughout all the sections of the Comintern, which at the first historic shock will result in splits and debacles. If Stalin fears the little Bulletin of the Opposition and punishes its introduction into the USSR with death, it is not difficult to understand what fright seizes the bureaucracy at the possibility that news of the self-sacrificing work of the Fourth International in the service of the working class may penetrate into the USSR.

The moral authority of the leaders of the bureaucracy and, above all, of Stalin, rests in large measure upon the Tower of Babel of slanders and falsifications erected over a period of thirteen years. The moral authority of the Comintern rests entirely and exclusively on the moral authority of the Soviet bureaucracy. In its turn, the authority of the Comintern as well as its support, is necessary for Stalin before the Russian workers. This Tower of Babel, which frightens its own builders, is maintained inside the USSR with the aid of more and more terrible repressions, and outside the USSR with the aid of a gigantic apparatus which, through resources drawn from the labor of the Soviet workers and peasants, poisons world public opinion with the virus of lies, falsifications and blackmail. Millions of people throughout the world identify the October Revolution with the Thermidorian bureaucracy, the Soviet Union with Stalin’s clique, the revolutionary workers with the utterly demoralized Comintern apparatus.

The first great breach in this Tower of Babel will necessarily cause it to collapse entirely, and bury beneath its dèbris the authority of the Thermidorian chiefs. That is why it is for Stalin a life-and-death question to kill the Fourth International while it is still in embryo! Now, as we are here examining the Moscow trials, the Executive Committee of the Comintern, according to information in the press, is sitting in Moscow. Its agenda is: The struggle against world Trotskyism. The session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern is not only a link in the long chain of the Moscow frame-ups, but also the projection of the latter on the world arena. Tomorrow we shall hear about new misdeeds of the Trotskyites in Spain, of their direct or indirect support of the fascists. Echoes of this base calumny, indeed, have already been heard in this room. Tomorrow we shall hear how the Trotskyites in the United States are preparing railroad wrecks and the obstruction of the Panama Canal, in the interests of Japan. We shall learn the day after tomorrow how the Trotskyites in Mexico are preparing measures for the restoration of Porfirio Diaz. You say Diaz died a long time ago? The Moscow creators of amalgams do not stop before such trifles. They stop before nothing – nothing at all. Politically and morally, it is a question of life and death for them. Emissaries of the GPU are prowling in all countries of the Old and the New World. They do not lack money. What does it mean to the ruling clique to spend twenty or fifty millions of dollars more or less. to sustain its authority and its power? These gentlemen buy human consciences like sacks of potatoes. We shall see this in many instances.

Fortunately, not everybody can be bought. Otherwise humanity would have rotted away a long time ago. Here, in the person of the Commission, we have a precious cell of unmarketable public conscience. All those who thirst for purification of the social atmosphere will turn instinctively toward the Commission. In spite of intrigues, bribes and calumny, it will be rapidly protected by the armor of the sympathy of broad, popular masses.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission! Already for five years – I repeat, five years! – I have incessantly demanded the creation of an international commission of inquiry. The day I received the telegram about the creation of your sub-commission was a great holiday in my life. Some friends anxiously asked me: Will not the Stalinists penetrate into the Commission, as they at first penetrated into the Committee for the Defense of Trotsky? I answered: Dragged into the light of day, the Stalinists are not fearsome. On the contrary, I will welcome the most venomous questions from the Stalinists; to break them down I have only to tell what actually happened. The world press will give the necessary publicity to my replies. I knew in advance that the GPU would bribe individual journalists and whole newspapers. But I did not doubt for one moment that the conscience of the world cannot be bribed and that it will score. In this case as well, one of its most splendid victories.

Esteemed Commissioners! The experience of my life, in which there has been no lack either of successes or of failures, has not only not destroyed my faith in the clear, bright future of mankind, but, on the contrary, has given it an indestructible temper. This faith in reason, in truth, in human solidarity, which at the age of eighteen I took with me into the workers’ quarters of the provincial Russian town of Nikolaiev – this faith I have preserved fully and completely. It has become more mature, but not less ardent. In the very fact of your Commission’s formation – in the fact that, at its head, is a man of unshakable moral authority, a man who by virtue of his age should have the right to remain outside of the skirmishes in the political arena – in this fact I see a new and truly magnificent reinforcement of the revolutionary optimism which constitutes the fundamental element of my life.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission! Mr. Attorney Finerty! and you, my defender and friend, Goldman! Allow me to express to all of you my warm gratitude, which in this case does not bear a personal character. And allow me, in conclusion, to express my profound respect to the educator, philosopher and personification of genuine American idealism, the scholar who heads the work of your Commission. (Applause)

DEWEY: Anything I can say will be an anticlimax. But I still have to repeat an announcement I made before, that in adjourning today we are only adjourning the sessions of the Preliminary Commission which might be regarded even as opening the investigation of the larger and complete Commission. I wish only to add that several members of the Commission will remain here for a few days – we have been so occupied that we have not had sufficient time to examine the archives and all the letters – and that one member of this Preliminary Commission has been appointed as a sub-commission and will remain to make a thorough examination of the documents, for the purpose of both the examination and the verification of the translations.

TROTSKY: The English, and including the Russian.

DEWEY: The hearings of the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry are now ended.

End of Thirteenth Session – eight forty-five o’clock p.m.

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