Trotsky
Page 52
After briefly recounting the pleasure of arriving in the new country, Trotsky in his letter to Lev soon passed on to business matters. While on board ship he had completed his book on the Moscow trials, which would eventually appear under the title Stalin’s Crimes, and he needed publishers. The main item of news he passed to Lev was that he had decided with his friends George Novak and Max Shachtman to organize a counter-trial at which the lies, slander and insinuations of the Moscow trials would be exposed. It was hoped the trial would be held either in New York or Paris, or as a last resort in Switzerland. He then gave Lev a string of orders, to find certain documents, contact his supporters, analyse the European press reaction to the Moscow trials, indicate what should go into the next issue of the Bulletin, and so on. He seemed to expect Lev to perform as if he had a large secretariat at his disposal, but he spared himself no more than he did his son. His subsequent letters were similar in content, except that he also reported that Natalya had contracted malaria, and described his own state of mind and the wonderful fruits and vegetables of Mexico.
During this first year, while enjoying excellent relations with the hospitable Rivera, Trotsky set about preparing the counter-trial. He hoped that with Rivera’s help he would be able to arouse world public opinion against Stalin’s tyranny. To each accusation levelled at him in Moscow, he scrupulously prepared factual, documentary or logical refutations. The work also occupied both his secretaries and an assistant he had been lucky to find. She was the daughter of a Russian, she had not lost her native language and she could type very well. She was also connected with the NKVD, and her job was naturally to pass on information about what was happening within Trotsky’s entourage. It has been suggested that she was also working for the FBI.149 The small team of assistants worked from dawn till dusk, and Trotsky was looking forward to staging a major event that would condemn Stalin.
Quite soon after arriving in Mexico, Trotsky became in effect the object of two diametrically opposed forces, both of them eminent artists. On the one hand, Diego Rivera, who had been one of the founders of the Mexican Communist Party but was no longer a member, was at first a cordial, attentive and concerned host. The other artist was David Alfaro Siqueiros, who wanted Trotsky expelled from the country. Trotsky had become used to being the centre of conflicting attention, and was therefore not particularly concerned by calls that were also coming from the head of Mexican trade unions, Vincente Lombardo Toledano, to ‘despatch the enemy of the socialist revolution from all four corners of the country’. Trotsky recognized the cautious and discreet concern the Mexican president showed by way of police protection, and expressed his gratitude on a number of occasions. But he did not meet Cardenas once in his three and a half years in the country, though he could understand that his presence had placed the head of state in an awkward position.
Trotsky had barely set foot on Mexican soil before secret agents from Moscow arrived there, among them a man whose testimony is of exceptional importance. Pavel Anatolievich Sudoplatov was a Soviet intelligence agent with enormous experience. His life was in a sense doubly wasted, for he was imprisoned for fifteen years when Beria was arrested in 1953, and he had pursued his grisly career in the sincere belief that he was carrying out the higher will of the proletariat. Sudoplatov described for me not only the details of the hunt for Trotsky on Stalin’s personal orders, but also the climate inside the NKVD at the time. The Secret Political Section of the NKVD Main State Security Administration, which from early 1937 had been strengthened by new cadres for its overseas work,150 like the Foreign Section, responded actively to Trotsky’s crossing the Atlantic.151 According to Sudoplatov, experienced undercover agents were despatched to Mexico to keep a watch on Trotsky and to carry out his extermination.
The preparation of the counter-trial was greatly helped by the vast amount of material sent from Paris by Lev Sedov.152 Some of the evidence took great efforts to prepare. Simply to prove that Trotsky had visited Copenhagen in 1932 for the sole purpose of giving lectures, his helpers were required to interview forty people and send their depositions to Mexico. The Social History Institute in Amsterdam contains eloquent evidence of the efforts made by Lev to assist his father’s campaign to repudiate the charges made against him in the Moscow trials.153
The American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky was a broad-based group comprising hundreds of members, many of them distinguished writers, trade union leaders, lawyers and journalists, naturally from the left of the US political spectrum. Its president was the eminent educationist and philosopher John Dewey, and it was assisted by a companion body in France, the French Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials, set up by Trotsky’s close friends the Rosmers and their circle, and comprising writers, lawyers and public figures from the front rank of the large and influential left wing of French politics. The Soviet embassy in Washington and the Communist Parties of America and Mexico were invited to send representatives to the counter-trial, thus giving them an opportunity to question Trotsky directly, but the Soviet ambassador ignored the invitation, and the Mexican trade union and Communist Party leaders, Lombardo Toledano and Hernan Laborde, sent abusive replies.154
Since a US visa for Trotsky was ruled out and his presence in Paris was already prohibited, the inquiry, which was launched by a preliminary commission under Dewey, was held in Mexico. Dewey opened the proceedings in Rivera’s Casa Azul on 10 April 1937 by declaring that ‘no man should be condemned without a chance to defend himself and that the Commission’s purpose was ‘to ascertain the truth as far as is humanly possible … If Leon Trotsky is guilty of the acts with which he is charged, condemnation cannot be too severe.’155 The hearing ranged over the entire list of charges against Trotsky, but under cross-examination he was able to refute every one of them with documentary and factual evidence. He proved false Goltsman’s claim that they had met in Copenhagen in 1932, Romm’s that they had met in the Bois de Boulogne in 1933, showed that Pyatakov could not have flown to Norway in December 1935, and so on. The officially notarized receipts and train tickets that he was able to produce for the Commission totally undermined the false testimony given in Moscow. As ‘Mack’ had reported to Moscow, Lev Sedov ‘had seen Pyatakov at the Unter den Linden in Berlin on 1 May 1931. Pyatakov had recognized him but turned away and did not want to speak to him. Pyatakov then went off with someone else, apparently Shestov.’156
Trotsky made a deep impression on the hearing when he declared: ‘If the Commission finds that I am in the slightest degree guilty of the crimes ascribed to me by Stalin, then I undertake beforehand to hand myself over voluntarily to the GPU executioners.’ He requested that his statement be published in the press. It was a brave move, since the Commission was not composed entirely of his supporters. If, however, the Commission did not corroborate Stalin’s accusations, ‘it would stand as an eternal curse of the Kremlin leaders’. The hearing lasted a week and Trotsky’s hour-long concluding speech was so passionate, and the Commission so profoundly moved by his rhetoric, that Dewey, when he finally found his voice, closed the hearing with: ‘Anything I can say will be an anti-climax.’
The Dewey Commission did not reach a formal verdict until 13 December 1937. It covered 247 points and the 627-page manuscript was eventually published by Harper Brothers of New York in a volume 600 pages long. Its conclusion was that Trotsky and his son were innocent of all the charges.157 Trotsky had expected that publishers would fall over themselves to publish the rich collection of material he had gathered for the hearings, and he had been convinced that both the counter-trial and his speech would find a ready outlet in the press. But the US coverage was less than universal, and the European press was preoccupied with the rising tension in international relations. The monumental labour carried out by the Dewey Commission, lasting almost 300 days, in effect gave Trotsky little more than personal satisfaction. The counter-trial was not going to influence either Moscow or the world, as he had hoped.
The effort involved and the res
ults obtained from the counter-trial left Trotsky feeling devastated and isolated. Apart from a small group of his supporters and some cultural figures and intellectuals, the world had shown indifference. Stalin, of course, had not been indifferent, and this only added to Trotsky’s sense of failure. All his efforts had not succeeded in pushing back the evil by so much as an inch. He had to accept that for some truths to be acknowledged, much time was needed. Moreover, most of the world had come to see that nothing good would come of a new revolution. For his part, Trotsky remained forever locked within the ‘magic circle’ of revolution, and for that reason the world had been uninterested in the counter-trial. Interest in him as an individual and revolutionary remained high, but not in his revolutionary illusions.
The Kremlin observed Trotsky’s activities in Mexico closely. The embassies in Washington and Mexico and the intelligence bodies sent regular reports on every aspect of his behaviour, not only to the ‘summit’ of Stalin, Molotov and Yezhov, but also to the Soviet ideological centres which were expected to mould propaganda accordingly. For instance, an article entitled ‘Trotsky in Coyoacan’ by the American journalist Joseph Freeman, which had been published in several US and Mexican newspapers in April 1937, was circulated to the following Central Committee departments: Stetsky, Head of Culture and Propaganda; Angarov, Head of Arts; Koltsov, chief editor of Pravda; Stavsky of the Writers’ Union; Yudin, Head of the Press Department. Freeman had written: ‘On his arrival in Coyoacan, Trotsky received a group of bourgeois journalists; they asked him about his differences with Stalin and his relations with the Gestapo. Trotsky let loose a torrent of frenzied abuse against the Soviet Union and Stalin, but said nothing about Hider and Mussolini.’ The article went into detail about ‘the day and night police sentries’ guarding Trotsky: ‘No one has ever attempted to do him any harm, although Trotsky never stops referring to the danger threatening his person … Trotsky’s statements bore the character of rabid attacks on his own country and the cause with which he has never been associated.’158 It is worth noting that soon Freeman would be writing reports from Moscow on the Bukharin trial which his New York newspaper, the Daily Worker, would find too frank to publish. He was soon expelled from the American Communist Party.
The leaders in the Kremlin, while monitoring Trotsky’s reactions to the trials, were also keeping a close watch on the American reaction. Soviet diplomats and intelligence agents across the ocean were reading dozens of newspapers and magazines and sending in their reports and prognoses. An entire volume of such reports was sent to Voroshilov in the first three months of 1937 alone. It contains cuttings from a wide range of the US press on Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico. However much they tried, these Soviet researchers could find nothing positive to say, and they were therefore compelled to send critical accounts to Moscow. ‘With Trotsky’s move to Mexico,’ they reported, ‘the Trotskyists in the USA stepped up their publishing activities. There have been recent announcements of the publication and writing of several Trotskyist books. Thus, Shechtman’s Behind the Scenes of the Moscow Trials is out; soon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed is to be published, as well as Stalin’s Crimes.’159
Such reports only succeeded in stoking up the fires of Stalin’s hatred for Trotsky, who even in his present position was able to land painful blows on the General Secretary’s feelings, and cast a shadow over his policies, but most of all show him in the most unpleasant light. Stalin became increasingly convinced that both the Foreign Section of the NKVD and its Secret Political Department were not doing their jobs. Yezhov obviously lacked proper control of the international part of his ‘mission’. The sources of information, to please their masters, were also twisting the facts and fabricating forgeries about Trotsky. In January 1938, for instance, the Washington embassy reported that Trotsky had said in one of his speeches that ‘Stalin has placed himself above any Party criticism and above the state. The only way to replace him is by murdering him.’160 Trotsky had said nothing of the kind, but such ‘evidence’ would figure in the 1938 trial of the ‘Right-Trotskyist Bloc’ as particularly telling.
On Stalin’s orders, the ambassador in Washington, Troyanovsky, and his counsellor, Umansky, published articles and gave interviews to American journalists with the aim of altering the negative US view of what was happening in Moscow. An extract from one such piece by Troyanovsky gives an idea of their general character:
After the tolerance that was shown to these people [the accused], after the Soviet leadership, and especially Stalin, showed themselves willing to help these people and to save them from falling into the abyss of counter-revolution, no informed person can believe that these people were accused without preliminary and careful investigation. I myself have personally witnessed the gentleness Stalin showed towards Pyatakov, Soklonikov, Radek and others. Any suggestion of personal vengeance and settling of scores from base feelings is not worthy of reply … Nearly all the accused enjoyed a cordial attitude and trust on Stalin’s part, even after Stalin knew they had once been ardent Trotskyists.161
In an interview with the New York Herald Tribune on 13 February 1938, Umansky declared that Trotsky’s demand for a dispassionate review of the charges that had been levelled at him ‘is so ludicrous that it’s not worth discussing … The Trotskyists are trying to force a war in order to seize power and carry out their plans for the restoration [of capitalism] … Two facts speak for themselves: the complete support the Soviet people is giving to the new Constitution, and the support Trotsky is giving Fascism and the support Fascism is giving Trotsky.’162
Soviet diplomats had become victims of ‘bureaucratic absolutism’, as had the population itself. The wild words to be found, for example, in Bolshevik reflect the blindness of a people deprived of conscience, memory and the capacity to think:
The sentence of the court is the sentence of the people. With unanimous approval the Soviet people greeted the sentence of the military collegium of the Supreme Court on the participants in the anti-Soviet Trotskyist centre. In factories and mills, on collective farms, at town meetings of workers a stormy wave of the people’s wrath rose up against the base traitors and betrayers of our motherland, against the murderers of workers and Red Army men, against the German and Japanese spies, the warmongers who were working under the direct orders of the ferocious enemy of the people, Trotsky … Enemy of the people Trotsky gave an undertaking to German Fascism that if he could seize power he would liquidate the state farms, disperse the collective farms, terminate the policy of industrialization and restore capitalist relations to Soviet territory … The Trotskyist bands were eager to repay their Fascist bosses in the bloody coin given them by the most sworn enemy of the people, L. Trotsky.163
Sad to say, people sincerely and for many years believed this delirium, as they believed Vyshinsky when he said at one of those monstrous trials: ‘I do not make these accusations alone! Alongside me, Comrade Judges, I feel as if the victims of these crimes and these criminals are standing here, on crutches, crippled, half-alive, perhaps with no legs at all, like the signal-woman of Chusovskaya Station, Comrade Nagovitsyna, who wrote to me today in the pages of Pravda and who at the age of twenty lost both legs; she warned of the destruction being planned by these people here.’164
The barefaced rabble-rousing did its work, and the population came to believe that Trotsky was indeed a ‘terrorist, spy and murderer’. Reading such material, Trotsky was shaken by the depths to which the Party and people could sink in barely a decade. Amazingly, he managed to retain his self-control and the will to fight.
Trotsky made mistakes of his own in this uneven contest. He was critical of the part played by the Popular Front in the Spanish civil war, and by dismissing out of hand the activities of the Communist Parties that did not accept his approach, only added to the difficulties already facing the defenders of the Republic. In the numerous interviews he gave to the press, he was not always discreet in his choice of words, condemning not only Stalin and his henchmen, but also the peop
le and the state as a whole, forgetting the part he himself had played in bringing that state into existence. None of this went unnoticed.
In 1938, at the height of the Moscow trials, many of Trotsky’s intellectual friends began asking themselves at what point and from what source the Stalinist terror and the violent, anti-democratic character of the Soviet regime had originated. For Max Eastman, Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine the rot had begun with the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt in March 1921.* They now publicly raised the question of Trotsky’s personal responsibility. Serge declared unequivocally that this use of force against those who thought differently from the Bolsheviks had signalled a shift to repressive policies in the Soviet republic while Lenin and Trotsky were still in power. Had Trotsky not led the punitive expedition himself? In what way was he superior to Stalin? Trotsky had never described the Kronstadt revolt: no doubt like others involved in crushing it he found it unpleasant to recall. But the criticism from his recent supporters was serious and required answering.
In an article entitled ‘Once More on the Suppression of Kronstadt’, Trotsky replied to his critics in characteristic style:
In his book on Stalin, that faded Marxist-turned-sycophant Souvarine claims that in my autobiography I purposely said nothing about the Kronstadt revolt: there are, he says ironically, feats one is not proud of … The fact is I took not the slightest part in the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt itself, nor in the repressions that ensued … As far as I recall, it was Dzerzhinsky who dealt with the repressions, and he (rightly) never permitted any interference in his work … However, I am willing to admit that a civil war is not a school of humanitarianism … Let those who wish to reject the revolution as a whole on these grounds (in their little articles) do so. I do not reject it. In this sense, I fully and entirely bear responsibility for the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt.165