Trial Seen as Reply to Dewey Commission

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The new Moscow trial is designed to bolster with more impressive arguments shaken world confidence in Stalin's "justice." One cannot doubt that to a significant degree the trial is Joseph Stalin's dramatized answer to the verdict of the inquiry commission headed by John Dewey. We shall speak of this in future articles. At the moment we are concerned with the prehistory of the trial.

The investigation was of course conducted in impenetrable secrecy. However, some very important episodes in this investigation have become known, partly from the Soviet press, partly from the revelations of Soviet representatives who have broken with the Kremlin (Reiss, Barmin, Krivitsky, and others), and partly from other sources.

In his testimony at the January 24, 1937, session of the Moscow court, Karl Radek designated Nikolai Bukharin as a "conspirator." Bukharin has been in prison ever since. The GPU arranged a meeting between Bukharin and Radek, who has played the role of agent for Attorney General Andrei Vyshinsky. Radek appealed to Bukharin, with whom he had once been on friendly terms: "Confess everything they demand of you, and your life will be spared. I am living tranquilly in a villa, I have my library, I am only forbidden to meet other people." These arguments had no effect upon Bukharin.

At one of the sessions of the February 1937 plenum of the Central Committee, Bukharin, former head of the Communist International, and Alexei Rykov, former head of the Soviet government, were brought from prison – an unprecedented occurrence in the history of the Bolshevik Party! They were ordered to make "voluntary confessions" and thus help to crush the enemies of the party (Trotsky and his partisans).

Rykov wept at the session of the Central Committee. Gentle Bukharin, on the contrary, behaved aggressively, accusing Stalin of judicial frame-ups. Both of them refused to assume the shameful role. Stalin shouted: "Take them back to jail. Let them defend themselves from there!!!" Bukharin and Rykov were taken back to the prison by agents of the GPU waiting at the door. Thanks to the great number of members at the plenum, Moscow bureaucratic circles learned of this scene the very same day.

The accused Rakovsky, former head of the Ukrainian government, later ambassador to London and Paris, was arrested in February 1937. The first questioning in his apartment lasted eighteen hours without interruption. His inquisitors worked in relays, but the sixty-four-year-old Rakovsky was held for eighteen hours without food or water. Rakovsky's wife wished to give him tea, but they forbade her, stating that she might poison her husband!

Hour after hour of incessant questioning under the hypnotic glare of special spotlights constitutes the GPU's ordinary system of weakening resistance. Mrachkovsky, who was shot in the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, was questioned for ninety hours at one stretch, with but short interruptions. This seems incredible, but the methods of the GPU in general are "incredible." Among others, Reiss revealed the above-mentioned fact, based on information received from Slutsky, one of the central figures of the GPU. The fact is also known to some American journalists.

Meanwhile, the so-called "purge" continued, its main objective during the past year the preparation of the principals for the third trial. Dozens and hundreds of relatives, friends, collaborators, and colleagues of the defendants were arrested. With these arrests the GPU aimed to enclose every one of the accused within a ring of false depositions made by people closest to him.

Those candidates for the defendants' bench not broken by ceaseless inquisitions and by dozens of false depositions were executed during the investigation itself, without any trial, simply by decision of the GPU, which means, plainly, on the personal order of Stalin.

Last December 19, Moscow dispatches revealed that the eminent Soviet diplomat, Karakhan, and the former secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, Abel S. Yenukidze, had been executed as "spies." In all their political activity, Karakhan and Yenukidze were closely connected with the defendants in this new trial. They were denounced as perpetrators of the same crimes.

Why are they not on the defendants' bench? Only because the GPU did not succeed in breaking them during the preparation of the case. They were executed in order to give a last and definitive warning to the others.

We must add that those who have been arrested not only are without benefit of defense attorneys, but also are denied interviews with close friends and relatives. The exceptions to this ironclad rule are individuals like Radek, who are used exclusively to cajole the prisoners into making the demanded confessions. It is in this manner that the accused were "educated" during the past twelve months, some of them after undergoing years of preparatory persecutions and repressions.

Last January 19, the world press announced that the January plenum of the Central Committee in Moscow had ordered a letup on the mass purge. World public opinion hastened to conclude that a new, more moderate course was beginning. In reality, the mass purge was halted only because its immediate purpose had already been gained; that is to say, the will of the important defendants had been broken and the possibility of a trial assured. Such was the course of the investigation.

Moscow's foreign agents have hastened to call the new mockery a "public" trial. As if the legal machinery becomes "public" just because the inquisition at a chosen moment raises the curtain over a small part of its work! The trial opens on March 2. However, Pravdahad already declared on February 28 that the accused would not escape execution.

Pravda is Stalin's personal newspaper. What significance does the trial bear if Stalin, through his newspaper, dictates the verdict before the opening of the trial? Only such lackeys as have recently declared Stalin's constitution to be "the most democratic in the world" can call this trial "public."

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.

Another innovation is also possible. In the preceding trials we were astounded by the complete absence of all material proofs – documents, letters, conspiratorial addresses, guns, bombs. All letters mentioned in those trials invariably had been "burned." It is very likely that this time the GPU has decided to fabricate a few false documents in order to give at least a semblance of support to the friendly foreign lawyers and journalists. The risk is not great – who in Moscow can check up on the work of the GPU?

Is it possible during the coming trial, despite everything, to expect from the defendants some surprise disagreeable to Stalin and the GPU? Will an indignant outcry break in upon the rushing torrent of confessions: "All this is a frame-up from beginning to end!"?

Such a surprise is not excluded. But at the same time it is scarcely probable. The courtroom will be crowded with well-drilled agents of the GPU capable of creating the proper atmosphere, both for the accused, already morally broken, as well as for the journalists, judiciously selected.

Moreover, each of the defendants has been secretly promised his life. The image of Radek and his comfortable villa will continually flash before the eyes of these tortured victims. An even stronger brake unquestionably is the thought of their families and people near to them who will inevitably perish in case of an open protest. But no matter how smoothly the trial proceeds in its outward aspects, it will explode in mid-air as political, moral, and psychological nonsense. We will speak of this in due time.