To the Attention of Thinking People

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

On March 2, through the press, I warned public opinion in the United States as follows: "In this new trial we can expect some improvement over those preceding it. The monotony of the breast-beating confessions of the accused in the first two trials produced a suffocating impression even among the rubber-stamped 'friends of the USSR.' That is why it is possible that this time we may see some of the defendants, in obedience to their assigned roles, deny their culpability, in order to confess their guilt later under cross-examination. We can predict, however, that not one of the accused will raise difficulties for Prosecutor Vyshinsky by obdurate recalcitrance."

At the first session of the trial the defendant Krestinsky categorically repudiated the testimony which he had given during the preliminary investigation and denied his guilt. In response to this I announced in the Mexican press: "It is necessary to be very cautious in our predictions. . . . What will Krestinsky say tomorrow if he discovers that his wife and daughter can become the first victims of his boldness?" The latest Moscow dispatches state that at the following session Krestinsky hastened to reaffirm his "guilt." Yesterday I conditionally made allowance for the possibility that Krestinsky's rebellion was genuine. Until proved wrong I did not consider that I had the right to assert that in my opinion this unfortunate prisoner of the GPU was merely playing out a comedy upon command. Today there can be no doubt of this. Krestinsky belongs precisely among those defendants about whom I wrote three days before the trial started: "In obedience to their assigned roles they will deny their culpability, in order to confess their guilt later under cross-examination. We can predict, however, that not one of the accused will raise difficulties for Prosecutor Vyshinsky by obdurate recalcitrance." Permit me to add that the sedative medicine was prepared in advance by the GPU.

The prosecutor asserts that I am in secret agreement with the general staffs of various imperialist countries. No one, however, will say that I am in secret agreement with Vyshinsky himself. Then how do I know these secrets? Though thinking people can find the solution without aid, I nevertheless hasten to explain: the structure of the Moscow frame-up is so crude, the creative imagination of Stalin, Vyshinsky, and Yezhov so barren, that with the very faintest effort of the mind one can almost always foresee the type of falsification they will resort to tomorrow.