“If a lie can serve for a moment it is inevitably injurious in the long rum; the truth, on the other hand, inevitably serves in the end even if it may hurt for the moment.”—Diderot
Terrorism and the Marxian Tradition in Russia
The Accused and Their Revolutionary Records
What is the Meaning of the Mass Arrests?
The Character of the Testimony
When Was the “Terrorist Center” Organized?
The “Center” and the Kirov Assassination
The Plot of Dreitser-Schmidt and Co.
The Gestapo’s Plot Against Voroshilov
Lurye’s Abortive Assassinations
The Trial of the “Mensheviks” in 1931
Trotsky—The Target of the Trial
Trotsky and the Defense of the Soviet Union
Why Stalin Needed the Trial of the Sixteen
The Killing Off of the Old Bolsheviks
The Trial and the Revolutionary Socialist Movement
Appendix: Stalin’s Demand For Trotsky’s Deportation From Norway
Behind the Moscow Trial
On August 15, 1936, the press published the report of the official Soviet news agency that the Russian state prosecutor had arraigned Gregory Zinoviev, Leon Kamenev, I.N. Smirnov and thirteen others on charges of conspiring, together with the German Fascist régime, to assassinate the seven most prominent Soviet leaders, and of having murdered S. M. Kirov more than a year and a half ago. Four days later, on August 19, the first session of the trial of the sixteen accused opened before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. (the indictment being published in full in the Soviet press the day after) . Within five days the court heard the state prosecutor, A. Y. Vishinsky, make the indictment, heard all sixteen of the defendants and the two witnesses, heard the concluding statements of prosecutor and accused, and then retired to deliberate on the verdict. On August 24, the president of the tribunal read the verdict sentencing all the defendants “to the supreme penalty—to be shot, and all property personally belonging to them to be confiscated.” Less than twenty-four hours later, the press announced curtly that the appeal for mercy by the condemned had been summarily rejected by the Præsidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union; the same announcement reported: “The verdict has been carried out.”
With stupefying speed, the Soviet authorities had brought to an end a political trial no less startling than the blood purge conducted by Hitler and Göring on that fatal night of June 30, 1934 when they put to death scores of their most intimate colleagues of yesterday. In less than a fortnight after the first announcement of the terrorist plot, sixteen men were tried and executed. Among them were names inseparably interlaced with the whole history of the Russian revolutionary movement, the October Revolution, and the entire early period of the Third International. The sentence pronounced upon them also included the instruction to seize and bring before the court on the same charges, if and as soon as they set foot on Soviet territory—Leon Trotsky and his son L. L. Sedov.
In the very midst of the trial, the Soviet press announced the suicide of the noted Bolshevik, Michael Tomsky, the director of the State Publishing House, charged with being involved in the conspiracy. The prosecution further announced the preparation of a trial, for complicity in the same terrorism plot, of a group of thirteen others, among them a number of prominent old Bolshevists. At different times during the dramatic eleven days, the press announced the arrest, investigation and preparation for trial of numerous other former or present distinguished officials of the government, including Gregory Sokolnikov, V. Serebriakov, General Putna and, as late as October 7, Karl Radek. In addition, such men as A. I. Rykov, Nicolai Bukharin, M. Uglanov and G. Piatakov are in various conditions of custody pending the outcome of investigations into the extent, if any, to which they were involved in the alleged plot. Hundreds upon hundreds of other men and women have been arrested in every part of the Soviet Union during the period of the preparation and holding of the trial, also on charges of being connected with the “Trotskyist-Zinovievist assassins.” We thus have before us a case of such breath-taking magnitude and importance as commands the detailed attention of the working class throughout the world. For, involved in this comprehensive case is nothing less than the fate of the greatest event in human history—the Russian Revolution.
Of the thirty-five and more volumes filled with testimony by the accused during their examination prior to the trial itself, none has been published. Only the indictment, the prosecutor’s summing-up speech and the verdict of the court have been published in full. The testimony of the accused at the trial proper has been made public only in greatly abridged form. The Stalinist authorities have provided an absolutely unavoidable minimum for an examination and study of the case to arrive at an objective judgment. Fortunately the material at the disposal of the investigator suffices for an analysis of the trial and for a decisive conclusion. When all the material has been assembled and analyzed, only one conclusion will be possible:
The execution of the 16 men on August 24, 1936 was the result of the biggest frame-up known in history!
In the cases of Captain Dreyfus, Mooney and Billings, Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone or Sacco and Vanzetti, the frame-up involved only one, two or three men. In the present case, not only are dozens of individuals involved, but an entire section of the revolutionary movement as well.
In the historical cases mentioned, the artisans of the frame-up were confined to a small local dique. In the present case, the executors not only control one-sixth of the earth’s surface, but have at their disposal all the machinery of the most powerfully centralized régime in existence.
Our investigation of the frame-up will therefore also establish that the real criminals were not the men in the dock but the rulers of the Kremlin who sent them to their death. The indictment, trial and execution themselves will stand as the most damning indictment that has yet been made of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.
Terrorism and the Marxian Tradition in Russia
The principal charge against the accused was that, at least since the Spring of 1932, they had organized a widespread conspiracy to assassinate the eight most prominent heads of the Communist party and the Soviet government: Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Ordjonikidze, Kossior, Zhdanov, Postyshev, and Kirov; and that, on December 1, 1934, they actually murdered Kirov in Leningrad. To this is added the charge that, together with Trotsky and his son, the accused plotted the assassinations in connivance with the Nazi government, specifically with Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei—Government Secret Police) . Their common aim was the overthrow of the present Soviet régime and the establishment of a Fascist government with themselves at its head.
The accusation is indeed a grave one. If it could be proved true, the accused would merit the most violent condemnation of the international working class. But before we consider the evidence adduced concretely to support the charge, let us call to mind the unique relationship of individual terrorism to the development of the Russian revolutionary movement under Czarism.
When the Marxian socialist movement in countries like Germany, France, England or the United States asserted itself against the theory and practise of assassination, of individual terrorism as a means of advancing the working class cause, the assertion was little more than an academic statement of position. Save for one or two isolated instances of terroristic attempts, these socialist movements were not faced with very much of a concrete problem. They started off with a statement of the classic Marxian position, proceeded with their work and were very rarely obliged by events to interrupt themselves with a re-statement of their stand.
Entirely different was the course of development of the Russian social democratic movement, both before and after it divided into the factions of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, which, on this question, were of one mind. Czarism represented not only the most tyrannical despotism in Europe, but it ruled over a country where the toiling population was composed of an illiterate peasantry plus a very young and unorganized proletariat. The Czarist system precluded any legal socialist activity—given the complete absence in Russia of a parliament, or the right of free speech, free press, free assembly and the right to organize and strike which the Western capitalist democracies had been compelled to vouchsafe, to one extent or another, to the working class. Everything was ruled by the Czar, his court dique and a vast, corroded bureaucracy which stopped at no repressive measure to crush the least sign of progressive or radical thought.
This was the breeding ground—the natural and inevitable breeding ground—for those sensational terroristic movements that called the attention of the world to Russian despotism at the junction of the two centuries. One of the first of these organizations to acquire renown was the Narodnik (Populist) group. With a vague Populist socialism as its platform, it openly advocated individual terrorism against the Czar and his cohorts. Not a few despots were dispatched to the beyond by the revolver and bomb of the high-minded idealists and heroes who composed the fighting squads of the Narodniki. This movement reached its apex in 18 8 I when Grinevitsky threw the bomb which blew Czar Alexander II to atoms. Even later on, other attempts still were made, like the unsuccessful one upon the life of Alexander III, for which Alexander Ulianov, Lenin’s elder brother, was hanged on the gallows.
At the turn of the century, the dispersed Populist groups were reassembled into the “Union of Socialist Revolutionists” which finally became the Social Revolutionary Party. Developing a considerable influence among the advanced intellectuals and among sections of the peasantry, it distinguished itself from the Marxian social democratic movement by its open and tenacious advocacy of individual terrorism. This advocacy was never confined to theoretical dissertation, but was carried into practise. The party had attached to its Central Committee a highly conspirative organism called the “Battle Organization,” which planned and carried out a whole series of attempted and successful actions against particularly odious functionaries of the Czarist régime. Despite the terrific difficulties and hazards of such activity, not least of which was the inevitable presence of police spies and Provocateurs, the ‘Battle Organization” had a period of considerable success in its work, in which many of its members displayed a courage, a spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, a daring and ingenuity which is not to be found on many pages of the annals of the revolutionary movement in any part of the world. The Central Committee of the S.R.’s took public responsibility for the actions of its combat contingent.
It is of importance to note that in contrast to the bourgeois democratic countries, where terrorism, when it occurred, was a sporadic phenomenon which never attained the proportions of a national social movement, despotic Czarist bureaucratism produced a widespread movement of individual terrorism. The frequent assassinations in the Russian Empire were a constant reminder to the world that an autocratic bureaucracy seemed to leave social critics no other way of expressing their protest. In a word, the terroristic movement was engendered and nurtured by Czarism itself.
But it is also true that the terroristic movement, in its turn, helped Czarism and its bureaucracy, however involuntarily. If, in self-justification, the terrorists argued that Czarism left them no other way of fighting it except by bomb and bullet, the bureaucracy, to justify its régime of repression, argued that to loosen the bonds by even an inch would mean to give a free hand to common murderers from whom anybody had the right to protect himself by whatever means proved necessary.
Decisive in an estimation of this fight between the Czarists and terrorists is the fact that it was a duel from which the masses were excluded. The ranks of the duelling groups, on both sides, could not be exhausted (socially, indeed, they fed upon each other). While this Czar or that Czarist official might come and go, the state system of Czarism remained and the silent inactive masses remained oppressed by it.
Apart, therefore, from the heroism and devotion of the terrorists which earned them the honor and respect of every lover of liberty, the great significance of movements like that of the Narodniki of the 19th and 20th centuries lay in what they were symptomatic of: the crushing bureaucratic despotism which gave them birth.
At once the merit of the Marxian socialist movement and the sign of the maturing of the proletariat as a class for itself, was the fact that the former cut across the vicious circle of this duel and proceeded to organize itself as a vanguard inextricably bound up with the daily struggles of the masses themselves.
“It is not yet sufficiently known abroad,” wrote Lenin in 1920, “that Bolshevism grew, took shape, and became steeled in long years of struggle against petty bourgeois revolutionism , which smacks of, or borrows something from, anarchism, and which differs in all essentials from the conditions and requirements of the sustained proletarian class struggle. . . . At its inception in 1903, Bolshevism took over the tradition of ruthless struggle against petty bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism. This tradition had always existed in revolutionary social democracy, and became particularly deep-rooted in Russia in 1900-1903, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid. Bolshevism took over and continued the struggle against the party which, more than any other, expressed tendencies of petty bourgeois revolutionism, namely, the ‘Social Revolutionary’ party... . This party considered itself to be particularly ‘revolutionary’ and ‘Left’ on account of its recognition of individual acts of terror and attempts at assassination—tactics which we Marxists decidedly rejected.”
Why rejected? Not out of moral considerations, to be sure. No revolutionist ever lamented the death of a tyrant. However much he might disagree with the methods of a Khalturin, a Figner, a Gershuni, a Grinevitsky, the Marxist never shed a tear over the passing of their victims. Individual terrorism was rejected by the revolutionary Marxists on the objective grounds of expediency and political principle.
First, for every tyrant killed, another would take his place and continue as before. Secondly, and more important, the cultivation of the idea that to put this or that representative of Czarism out of the way would bring about the emancipation of the people, was equivalent to putting off that emancipation forever. Czarism (like capitalism in general) is a social system and not merely a collection of evil persons. To direct one’s blows primarily at the representatives of the system means to obscure the real target and, in effect, to in-sure it against being fired at. Furthermore, if the notion prevails among the masses that a group of dauntless heroes—ten, a hundred, a thousand—can destroy the social evil by killing off its prominent representatives, then they have no reason for getting into motion as a mass, for forming their mass trade unions, their large political party, their cooperative and cultural organizations. What need is there of all such organizations if a courageous handful of terrorists will gain our ends without them? By its nature, terrorism had no confidence in the masses and prevented the masses from acquiring confidence in themselves.
The systematic hammering home of these objections to terrorism, concretized and elaborated, marked the whole formative period of the revolutionary social democracy in Russia. Whoever passed through that period in its ranks was permeated to the marrow with this Marxian attitude. It was not merely a matter of intellectual conviction (as was necessarily the case with Western European or American Marxists) . It was a conviction organically assimilated in the course of the realities of daily struggle.
That is why, on the very face of it, the charge is so preposterous that men whose whole adult life was spent in the revolutionary Marxian movement, who were associated with the birth and growth of Bolshevism and constituted, with few exceptions, its broad general staff for more than two decisive decades, should now—in their fifties and sixties!—have abandoned their whole past. Who can believe that the men who literally taught the Russian proletariat the difference between Marxism and terrorism should now, under the workers’ state, have taken up (in company, moreover, with Hitler and Himmler!) a weapon which they had rejected even in the struggle against Czarism? That ordinary common sense which is the basis of all good philosophy and wisdom simply refuses to accept as genuine such a patent absurdity.
The Accused and Their Revolutionary Records
In 1922, the Soviets tried the twelve leaders of the S.R.’s for terroristic acts. The S.R.’s as a party, from its inception, advocated and practised individual terrorism. But can the defendants of 1936 be compared with the defendants of 1922 in this respect? Every single one of the accused is known as a life-long opponent of individual terrorism. With the exception of a small number who were not politically alive at the time, every single one of the accused is known as an un-reserved supporter of the Soviet republic from its very inception—not merely a supporter, but a most prominent founder and builder of the Russian Revolution. With the exception of Trotsky and his son, every one of the accused who was at one time or another in opposition to Stalin, finally capitulated to him and sang his praises in that extravagant tone and language which is obligatory to every Soviet functionary. Does ordinary human intelligence allow one to believe that men such as those whose records we list below, should have become, not only assassins, but Fascist opponents of the Soviet régime in the nineteenth year of its existence?
Leon Trotsky: more than two-thirds of his 57 years devoted to the organized revolutionary socialist movement; president of the first Soviet, in St. Petersburg, in 19o5; arrested or deported by the bourgeoisie of half a dozen countries; organizer of the Bolshevik revolution, of whom Stalin wrote on November 6, 1918: “One can say with full certainty that the rapid passage of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the skillful organization of the work of the Revolutionary War Committee, the party owes primarily and above all to comrade Trotsky”; founder and leader, with Lenin, of the Communist International.
Gregory Zinoviev: 35 years in the revolutionary movement; founder of the Bolshevik party; Lenin’s most intimate collaborator in Swiss exile before and during the war; chairman of the Petrograd (and later Leningrad) Soviet; member of the Bolshevik Central Committee since 1907; first chairman of the Communist International (on Lenin’s motion) and occupant of that post until 1925.
Leon Kamenev: joined the Social Democratic Labor Party of Russia in 1901, at the age of 18; Bolshevik from the very beginning, i.e., from 1903; special representative of Central Committee in 1914 and director of Bolshevik fraction in the Czarist Duma; sentenced, with latter, to perpetual exile in Siberia in 1915; chairman of Moscow Soviet from 1918 to 1925; vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense after Lenin’s death; member of the Central Committee since 1917, later of Political Bureau, where he acted as Lenin’s deputy during the latter’s illness; charged by party to head Lenin Institute and edit Lenin’s works.
Ivan Nikitich Smirnov: revolutionary socialist and then Bolshevik for almost 40 years; head of the famous Fifth Army during the civil war; leader of the Bolshevik party of the Northwestern territory, in which capacity he organized the Bolshevik revolution in the East, becoming known as the “Lenin of Siberia”; member of the Central Committee for years; sometime Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs.
Gregory Yevdokimov: one of the three principal Bolshevik agitators in Petrograd who mobilized the masses for the 16 October uprising; old member of the party and leader for years of the Leningrad organization; renowned orator and official party speaker at Lenin’s funeral; member of the Central Committee at the time Kirov was killed.
Vagarshak Ter-Vaganian: old Bolshevik, leader of the Armenian Communists and the Soviet revolution in Armenia; author of numerous works on the national question and other problems of Marxism; founder and first editor (under Lenin) of the party’s principal scientific review, Pod Znameniem Marxisma (Under the Banner of Marxism).
Sergei Mrachkovsky: born while his father was serving a sentence for membership in the revolutionary workers’ circles in the Urals; joined the movement at the age of 15; member of Bolshevik party since 19o5; arrested numerous times under the Czar, lastly during the war, for membership in the Ural committee of the party; under conditions of white terror, he organized the workers’ insurrection in the Ural region in 1918, forming a proletarian corps, passing Kolchak’s flank around the North; after the conquest of the Urals by the Soviets, he became commander of the military district, a post from which he was removed by Stalin in 1924 because he supported Trotsky.
Ivan Bakayev: old Bolshevik militant; sometime head of the Petrograd Cheka; member of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission before and after Lenin’s death.
Yefim Dreitser: former collaborator of Trotsky; hero of the civil war who was twice decorated with the Order of the Red Flag; imprisoned in exile by Stalin for support of the Opposition, and brought almost to the point of death by a hunger strike of protest by himself and 62 other prisoners against bad treatment; finally capitulated.
These are the most noted among the men who were executed. Among those who have already been imprisoned in connection with the “plot,” or are being held for trial, or are under some other form of custody, we find:
Alexis Rykov: revolutionary socialist from the beginning of the century; delegate from Moscow to the London party congress (1903) and elected to Central Committee, serving there uninterruptedly for almost 30 years; participant in the 1905 insurrection in Moscow; arrested, imprisoned, deported half dozen times by the Czar; director of Bolshevik fraction in Moscow Soviet; chairman of Supreme Council of National Economy in 1918; vice-chairman of Council of People’s Commissars in 1921 and chairman of Council after Lenin’s death; until recently Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs.
Georgy Sokolnikov: 30 of his 48 years in the Bolshevik party; one of organizers of Moscow uprising in 1917; editor of Pravda and other Bolshevik organs; elected to Central Committee at Sixth Congress; Commissar of Banks after revolution; chairman of Brest-Litovsk delegation in March 1918; noted civil war fighter; Commissar of Finance from 1921 to 1926 and creator of first stable Russian currency (”chervonetz”); former ambassador to London and assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
Leonid Serebriakov: 31 years in Bolshevik party; one of most active workers under Czarism; arrested 14 times and banished 5; organizer of Moscow uprising in 1917; civil war fighter at front; member of Central Committee under Lenin and secretary of party; after expulsion from party for “Trotskyism” in 1927, sent to U.S.A. to direct Amtorg; Russian head of Chinese-Eastern Railroad after his capitulation.
Karl Radek: revolutionary movement in Poland since 1902; outstanding Left winger and collaborator of Rosa Luxemburg in Second International before war; leader of Bremen (Germany) Left wing during war; prominent figure at Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences of anti-war socialists; director of Bolshevik Foreign Bureau at Stockholm in 1917; head of Central European Bureau of Foreign Office; arrested by Germans for helping Spartacans; released, and returned to Moscow to help build Comintern, one of whose most authoritative spokesmen he was throughout its first period; Oppositionist since 1923; capitulated 1929; until his arrest, editor of official Soviet government organ, Izvestia .
Georgy Piatakov: 25 years in the party; distinguished economist; chairman of Council of People’s Commissars of first Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1918; member of Central Committee; deputy chairman of Supreme Council of National Economy; Oppositionist since 1923, capitulating in 1928; later president of State Bank; later assistant Commissar of Heavy Industry.
Also arrested as agents of the “Trotskyist-Zinovievist assassins” are Gayevsky, Gertik and Karev, old Bolshevik militants of the Leningrad district; noted military men like General Putna, late military attaché of the Soviet Embassy in London, Klias Klavin, a chief of the Red Army during and after the civil war, Shoposhnikov, the director of the Military College of the General Staff, General Schmidt, head of the first Red Cavalry brigades in the Ukraine and one of its liberators from White Guard domination; government officials like Arkus, former vice-president of the board of directors of the State Bank and Professor Lieberberg, president of the Executive Committee of Biro-Bizhan, the Jewish Autonomous Republic; Kotsiubinsky, former first secretary of the Soviet legations in Vienna and Warsaw, and founder, together with Eugenie Bosh, Piatakov and Rakovsky, of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic; noted Marxian historians like Friedland and Seidel; literary men and women like Tarassov-Rodionov, author of Chocolate , Galina Serebriakova, author of Women in the French Revolution (her crime? she is the wife of the imprisoned Serebriakov!) , Ivan Katayev, and Selivanovsky, the editor of the Moscow Literary Gazette ; Tivel, the secretary of Radek and former secretary of Zinoviev.
Add to these, who are better known, the lesser known figures, some of whom we list here according to reports taken at random from recent issues of the Soviet press:
On August 3, Pravda announces the arrest of the editors of the Minsk Zvezda , Sternin, Rosenblum, Barkakov, Tsipkin, suspected of Trotskyism; the next day, Pravda reports the arrest of 15 Trotskyists in Kharkov. On August 6, Pravda communicates the arrest of the Trotskyist group in Dniepropetrovsk led by the agronomists Lentzner and Krassny; a day later, Pravda reports the arrest of a large group of “Trotskyists and Zinovievists” who had “seized the leadership” of the important Viborg (Leningrad) party district; other arrests at Orel and Kursk; “Trotskyist nests” uncovered in Kiev, Moscow, Leningrad, Rybinsk, Penza, Cheliabinsk.
On August 12, communist leaders of the German Volga Republic are reported arrested for “counter-revolutionism.” They include Lepeshev, secretary of the district committee of Palas; Fedotov, secretary of the district committee of Frank; Tatulov, secretary of the Krasnokut committee; Riss, a party official in Gnadenflur; Tsifrenovich, head of the republic’s propaganda department. On August 16, Pravda reports the arrest of the editorial secretary of the Kiev Visti; the same day, arrest of the editorial secretary of the party organ in Baku; same day, arrests of prominent officials in Minsk, including the heads of the censorship and educational departments. Three days later, the announcement of the discovery of vast “Trotskyist-terrorist” plots in government circles of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, among whom are numerous old Bolsheviks, including a cousin of Stalin! The same day, the press reports a counter-revolutionary plot in Tadjikistan. On August 17, Krasnaya Gazeta reports a “Trotskyist-terrorist” plot in Turkmenistan and a Trotskyist center in Tula. Two days later, announcement of the arrest of a Trotskyist group in Gorky; in Western Russia, the arrest of a former Commissar of the Northern Army and eight other conspirators.
In the same period, widespread “terrorist plots” and arrests in the various peripheral republics. Vecherni Tiflis announces the expulsion of its editor, R. Rosenfarb, as a “consistent Trotskyist”—which means arrest, imprisonment, exile. The Georgian Writers’ Union purges itself of a whole group of Trotskyists. Agirdavan, just returned from Siberian exile, is arrested again; so is the “Trotskyist-terrorist” Varnazov, in Tiflis; so is the director of the Hydroelectric Research Institute, Persenishvelli and his colleagues Opelsnigin, Chikalazan, Kakhanov and Marchaian. Chief editor Pelin and his assistant, Ghatishov, of the Bakinsky Rabochi , the principal paper in Azerbaijan, are arrested. Trotskyists are arrested in the transportation system, at the instrument works, in the refinery, at various manufactories.
Similarly in Soviet Armenia. The central party organ in the republic, Khorurtain Hayastan reports, on September 23, wholesale expulsions of “counter-revolutionists.” Heads of the government like Leon Vulibegian, Garo Madinian, Hamon Ovhanessian, Arshay Gogunze, Rosa Vinsberg, Haig Lilanian have fallen under the axe. So has the secretary of the party Central Committee, Agosi Kaloian. So has the former Commissar of Education and late director of the Marxism-Leninism Institute at Erivan, Neises Stepanian. So have numerous talented Armenian writers, like Trasdamad Simonian, Enzak Ter-Vohanian and Ato Atoian. Officials and workers in railroad shops, textile and rug mills, tractor stations, repair shops, planning directors—have been expelled from the party and arrested by the score.
We have listed here only a fraction of the arrests and expulsions listed in recent issues of the Soviet press. In turn, the Soviet press lists only a fraction of the arrests and expulsions that actually occur.
What is the Meaning of the Mass Arrests?
A mere listing of some of the men involved in this vast “terroristic plot,” the well-known among them as well as the obscure, is like a shattering blow delivered by the official accusers at themselves. For, by so extending the scope of the “plot” and by involving precisely those men whom they did involve, the prosecution has succeeded in indicting not the executed and the prisoners, but the bureaucracy itself! The widespread arrests, the very counts in the indictment, the trial, the executions—these constitute involuntary confessions by the Stalinist régime which are a death-blow to its standing.
The far-reaching ramifications of the “plot,” the large number of persons involved in it, are, especially if we accept the Stalinist version at face value, an admission of mass discontent-ment, if not of direct opposition to the régime. What other political significance could this have? Marxists never attributed any necessary significance to an assassination, planned or carried out, by one or two isolated individuals. Terrorism as a movement , involving hundreds and thousands of persons, was, however, at all times and everywhere regarded as profoundly symptomatic, as an inevitable, even if distorted, reflection of mass discontentment with the existing régime. The mere fact that so many hundreds, even thousands, must be arrested and imprisoned is eloquent indication of the apprehension fest by the bureaucracy at its growing insecurity and loss of prestige among the masses.
The labelling of oppositional movement—organized or unorganized, authentic or spurious, clear-headed or confused—as “Fascist” is just a contemptible bureaucrat’s device used for the purpose of frightening away prospective supporters. Volumes are said by the fact that among the accused there is not to be found a single former kulak, manufacturer, banker, Czarist, White Guard, Menshevik, Social Revolutionary, anarchist—or any other one-time political opponent of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet régime. Not a single one! All of them (we except, of course, the obvious G.P.U. agents) are tried old Bolsheviks.
The second conclusion that must be drawn at the very out-set strengthens the indictment—not of the accused, but of the bureaucracy that accused them. If men like Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Sokolnikov, Yevdokimov and hundreds upon hundreds of others, are not only against the party leadership but decide to resort to conspiracy and assassination in order to eliminate it, what does that say about the régime established by this leadership? Isn’t the accusation made against the “assassins” tantamount to an admission by the Stalinists that there no longer exist the normal, democratic, regular ways by which a minority, however small, can proceed to agitate for a change in the party’s policy or leader-ship? What a frightful régime of true ideological terror (supplemented by such not very ideological institutions as the G.P.U.!) must prevail in the party under Stalin! What should be said of conditions that compel men without whom the victory over Czarism and capitalism in Russia would have been inconceivable—that compel such men not only to refrain from putting forth their own political position but to assert vociferously that the official position, which they heartily condemn in private, is flawlessly right?
The indictment, on its very face, is an accusing finger pointed at the bureaucracy itself, at its unpopularity among the masses, at its despotic inner-party régime.
Finally, to conclude a consideration of the surface aspects of the indictment, the accusation that the defendants were in league with the Nazis for the purpose of assassinating the Soviet leaders and of establishing a Fascist régime in Russia, is not only an obvious impossibility, but is also a further condemnation of the Stalinist régime.
The official Stalinist view is that the classless society has already been established in the Soviet Union, that the victory of socialism is already irrevocable, that it is a “supreme joy” to live now, and so forth and so on. What possible reason could there be for any of these men, whose whole lives have been devoted to the attainment of socialism, suddenly to abandon all the ideals and aspirations of their past and turn to Fascism as a solution? An aberration, however astonishing, in one or two or three of these men, might be understood. But is it possible to believe that virtually the entire old leading stratum of revolutionary socialism should suddenly be converted (and at this late date!) to Fascism? Has the Nazi régime so strikingly proved its superiority to the Soviet régime, in the field of economic, political or cultural life, as to induce men with such revolutionary records and traditions to become its partisans? Surely, these men were not so utterly stupid as not to realize that, as soon as the Hitlerites had replaced the Stalinist government, they themselves, namely, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Smirnov and all their associates, would be the first victims of the Fascist counter-revolution. Is there, then, something so unspeakably horrible about life as a beaten minority under “Stalin’s socialism,” that this minority would rather take its chances in a Russia governed by the Brown Shirts?
Because it is not possible to draw any other intelligible conclusion from the indictment, then the latter, in this respect too, turns into another biting arraignment of the Soviet bureaucracy. Accept the latter’s version of the trial, and you must say: There is something so unmentionable about the régime that once great revolutionists like the defendants, who denounced themselves in the dock for having fallen to the base level of Fascist assassins, were driven in their despair and inability to live any longer under that régime, to the point where they preferred an alliance with Hitler to a life under Stalin.
Yet, insufferable as the Stalinist régime must have been—and was, in point of indubitable fact—to these men, it is entirely inconceivable that they had anything whatsoever to do with the Nazis, either directly or indirectly. The more closely one reflects on the official indictment, the more inclined he is to think that the whole affair is a horrendous nightmare, something so ghastly and incredible as to be quite unreal. The accusation of connivance with the Nazis only brings the rest of the indictment down to the nethermost level of absurdity. It is, so to speak, its own refutation. If nothing more were at our disposal with which to reveal the trial as a clumsy fraud, then this would suffice. In hysterical anxiety to prepare their victims not only for physical execution in a G.P.U. basement, but for moral execution by the world at large, the perpetrators of the frame-up over-reached themselves. In a frenzied endeavor to make the charges sound as grave as possible, they nevertheless ended by making them thoroughly ludicrous. And we might well enough laugh, were it not for the terrible tragedy that was enacted and has not yet come to an end.
The Character of the Testimony
“But the testimony of the defendants, the testimony of the defendants! Whatever else may be said, they did confess. They admitted their guilt on every count and gave voluminous details to corroborate the charges of the prosecution.”
This cry is heard on many sides, even from those who are ordinarily not so gullible. Let us therefore look a little closer into the “confessions” themselves, even before we answer the questions of why they “confessed” and how they “confessed.”
An examination of the court record—if it can be called a “record”—offers distinct difficulties. It has been made available by the prosecution in various forms, but in every case according to the familiar principle of Stalinist objectivity and justice: Of my side, I give you everything; of my opponent’s side, I give you everything that suits me. Three of the available editions of the court proceedings are divided exactly as follows:
The 41 _ pages of the report contained in the Comintern English paper, International Press Correspondence (Sept. 10, 1936) gives in full the indictment (7 pages) , the summary of the state prosecutor (12 _ pages) , and the verdict (2 pages), and gives 18 pages to the statements of the defendants and their answers to questions, directly quoted and more often summarized and condensed, with whole slabs of testimony obviously omitted, and finally 2 pages to the final statements of the defendants. Thus, a total, unabridged, for the prosecution of 21 _ pages, and a total, abridged, for the defense of 20 pages. And the defense includes 16 men and 2 witnesses!
The official report of the trial published by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. (Eng. ed., Moscow, 1936) is just as eminently fair in its division. The indictment, Vishinsky’s summary and the verdict are given almost verbatim, and take up, respectively, 31, 48 and 7 pages, a total of 86 pages for the prosecution. The actual hearing of the 16 defendants and 2 witnesses is given 74 pages and the final words of the accused 9, a total of 83 pages for the defense. Here too, what the defendants have to say is sometimes quoted directly, but more often summarized, paraphrased—or omitted.
What is called the “detailed report” of the German organ of the Comintern, the Basel Rundschau (Sept. 1, 1936) makes this division: 17 columns for the indictment, 27 for Vishinsky’s concluding speech and 4 for the verdict, a total of 48 columns. The defendants (16 accused and 2 witnesses) are given 41 columns of hearing and 5 for their final speeches, a total of 46 columns.
In none of the material published is the testimony of the accused given in full. And in none of the material published are there more than a hundred odd lines quoted from the thirty-six volumes (at least that many are referred to in the indictment) of testimony given by the defendants and other accused persons prior to the opening of the formal trial.
Despite the obvious difficulty created by such “impartial” publication of essential material, it is not difficult to record literally dozens of flagrant contradictions and discrepancies, and revealingly significant absurdities in the testimony. An analysis of the testimony makes it possible for an objective reader to dismiss it in toto as worthless. It has no validity. It was obviously concocted and distributed to the various actors by a clumsy perpetrator of frame-ups, by a man either too stupid or—what is more likely—too pressed for time to round off the awkward, tell-tale corners and straighten out the colliding lines.
Because the Rundschau version of the proceedings contains a little more material—it is scanty enough—than either of the other two editions, it is the one we shall employ to quote from. All quotations, unless otherwise indicated, will be from the Rundschau , the figure following each quotation referring to the number of the page on which it is to be found.
* * *
The “newly revealed circumstances establish without a doubt,” reads the indictment, “that at the end of 1932 the Trotskyist and Zinovievist groups united and formed a united center consisting of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yevdokimov, Bakayev (from the Zinovievists) and I.N. Smirnov, Ter-Vaganian and Mrachkovsky (from the Trotskyists). The principal condition for the union of these counter-revolutionary groups was their common recognition of individual terrorism against the leaders of the C.P.S.U. (b) and the Soviet government” (1589f ) .
And in his concluding speech before the Tribunal, prosecutor Vishinsky declares: “I consider it absolutely proved by the personal testimony of literally all the accused, including, on this score, that of Smirnov, that this center was organized on a terroristic basis, that the center worked with terroristic methods and did not shrink from the most sordid and cynical fighting methods.” (1627.)
Let us see if the “personal testimony of literally all the accused” proves any such thing. In reading, remember that all these men are on trial for their lives; that, therefore, the very least a prosecutor (and a Soviet prosecutor, at that!) owes the accused, if nobody else, is a scrupulous verification of every single assertion, a checking and re-checking of dates and places and individuals, until there is no doubt left in anybody’s mind that the charges are true.
At the very outset, therefore, the fact must be recorded that not one single piece of evidence was introduced at the trial—not a single document, not a single letter, not a scrap of paper—to prove the existence of the conspiracy that allegedly lasted for four years and directly involved scores of men and women in at least five countries. The prosecution claims the original existence of any number of documents, and if half or even less than half of them were produced in court, they might have proved the charges with infinitely more conviction that the mutually contradictory oral testimony of the 16 defendants and the two “witnesses” (Yakovlev and Safonova), both of whom are on trial for their lives in another case.
Take letters alone: “I admit,” says Smirnov, “that this position on terrorism was confirmed by L. Trotsky in 1932 in personal instructions transmitted to me by Y. Gaven.” (1591.) “According to the instructions of L. Trotsky received in 1931 by I.N. Smirnov,” testifies Mrachkovsky, “we were to kill Stalin, Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Stalin was to be the first.” (1592.) The indictment claims that “in 1934, the accused Dreitser personally received written instructions from Trotsky, through L. Trotsky’s son Sedov, on the preparation and carrying out of a terroristic act against comrade Stalin” (1592). The indictment adds: “In addition to the above-mentioned letter, Trotsky sent the Trotskyist-Zinovievist center a number of verbal and written instructions concerning terrorism.” (1593.) “A few days later,” testifies Berman-Yurin, “it became known that he [a German emissary bearing two letters from Trotsky] had arrived at the conspirative address, transmitted the documents, received the reply, as arranged.” (1611.) “We know,” concluded Vishinsky, “that while in prison Smirnov organized the contacts with his Trotskyists, for the code was discovered by means of which Smirnov, while in prison, got in contact with his comrades.” (1627.)
But no code is presented in evidence; and not a single one of the at least half a dozen letters from Trotsky. All of them were conveniently destroyed, or vanished in some other way. Nor is anything else made available by the prosecution, and that, we believe, for the very simple reason that there never was anything to be made available. However, if we have no documents, letters or other material evidence, how do matters stand at least with the oral testimony of the defendants?
When Was the “Terrorist Center” Organized?
Let us start with the question of when the plotters started plotting, of when the “Center” was actually formed. A momentous occasion, one would imagine. Not a date easily for gotten by one in any way connected with the event. Yet the accused are anything but united in their reports on this point.
“Further on in his testimony, Ter-Vaganian states that the negotiations of the Trotskyists concerning union with the Zinovievists and the ‘Leftists’ began in that period and that the terroristic line was perfectly clear.” (1616.) “That period,” in which Ter-Vaganian not only says that negotiations began but that the bloc was established, refers to “the Fall of 1931.”
“Vishinsky: When was the united Center organized?
“Zinoviev: In the Summer of 1932.” (1598.)
Bearing out the second version of the date, Kamenev testifies: “In the Summer of 1932, a meeting of our Zinovievist Center was held in our Ilyinskoye villa. I, Zinoviev, Yevdokimov, Bakayev, Kuklin and Karev were present. At this meeting, Zinoviev reported that the unification with the Trotskyists, who had received personal instructions from Trotsky to carry out terroristic acts, was an accomplished fact.” (1604.)
Mrachkovsky, however, gives still another date, which is just as indefinite, moreover, as the others: “The terrorist bloc of the Trotskyists and Zinovievists was formed at the end of 1932.” (1598.)
Still another version is offered by the “witness,” Yakovlev: Karev, one of the Zinovievist leaders, had told him that “in the Fall of 1932 the Zinoviev people organized the bloc with the Trotskyists; a united Trotskyist-Zinovievist Center was established” (1605) .
We thus have four distinct versions of the period (presumably nobody considered the event of sufficient importance to give anything like a date ) when the united Center was formed: Fall of 1931, Summer of 1932, Fall of 1932, end of 1932.
Who Were Its Leaders?
Who were the principals at the Center? The indictment names them as: “From the Zinovievists, G. Y. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev, G. Y. Yevdokimov, I. P. Bakayev, and from the Trotskyists, I.N. Smirnov, V. A. Ter-Vaganian and S. V. Mrachkovsky.” (1596.) Mrachkovsky’s testimony (1598) includes Lominadze as a member, but nobody else confirms this name, nobody else even mentions Lominadze as a member of the Center itself, not even the indictment. Kamenev’s testimony gives the three Trotskyists and four Zinovievists of the indictment, but adds (1604) another Zinovievist, Kuklin, as a member; here too, nobody else either confirms or even mentions the name of Kuklin as a member of the Center. Kamenev goes further, adds the name of Sokolnikov, and replies in the affirmative to Vishinsky’s question: “Who was a member of the Center, but a strictly secret member?” (1604.)
This version would give the Zinovievists in the bloc six men to the Trotskyists’ three. The least that can be said for the latter is that they certainly had no factional jealousy or fear of being outvoted! But why should Sokolnikov be a “strictly secret member”? Wherein did such a status differ from that of the other members? Wasn’t their membership “strictly secret” too? Or is something else involved besides this crude nonsense? Is it, perhaps, the fact that in the instructions given him concerning his testimony, Kamenev was also told to name Sokolnikov?
How Did the “Center” Operate?
Thus far, there is no agreement on such simple matters as the time of birth or the composition of the United Center. How do matters stand with regard to the functioning of this remarkable conspiracy, which was operated not only by secret members, but also by a “strictly secret” member?
Following upon Zinoviev’s testimony that the Center was founded in the Summer of 1932, Vishinsky asks: “During what period of time was it active?” and Zinoviev accommodatingly replies: “Actually up to 1936.” (1598.) Thus, a good three and a half years of terroristic activity which, it must be added, didn’t yield the plotters great results.
Reingold, however, who is a no less accommodating defendant—that is, a man who, though on trial himself, is indistinguishable from the prosecution, establishes a gap in this period of the Center’s activity: “Between the Fall of 1932 and the Summer of 1933 there was an interruption in our terroristic activities, caused by the collapse of Zinoviev and Kamenev in connection with the Riutin affair.”
But this “interruption” embraces the time which Vishinsky (elsewhere: he is referring to the date of May 8, 1933) calls “high point in the preparation of the terroristic acts” (1622) . The “high point” in terrorist plotting was thus reached months after the plotters had suspended their Center and months before they resumed their work. What is more, we learn that the Center decided to suspend its activities at about the very time that, according to other defendants, it was formed, namely, the Fall of 1932!
Matters grow worse and worse for this very terroristic Center the more closely its singular life-chart is examined. Its three principals are Zinoviev, Kamenev and Smirnov. It was formed, let us say, sometime between the Summer and Winter of 1932. But in November 1932, Kamenev was arrested and banished to Minusinsk (Siberia) and Zinoviev to Kustanai (Kazakstan) for “complicity in a plot to overthrow the Soviet government” allegedly organized by Riutin, Sliepkov, Eismont, Tolmachev and A. P. (not I.N.) Smirnov. They were not allowed to return to Moscow until the middle of 1933. Not even a Zinoviev or a Kamenev can function in a Moscow plotting center when they are imprisoned in Siberia or remote Kazakstan.
Take the case of the third of the “organizers and inspirers” of the Center, I.N. Smirnov. “I confirm the fact,” says the ever-ready Kamenev, “that Smirnov belonged to the bloc throughout the entire period.” (1609.) “In answer to the questions of the State Prosecutor, Zinoviev confirms the fact that he maintained an uninterrupted contact with Smirnov. Ter-Vaganian corroborates Smirnov’s rôle as leader of the Trotskyist section of the bloc, who pursued the job of organizing, consolidating and uniting both sections of the bloc.” (1608.) But unfortunately for all the accusers, confirmers and corroborators, Vishinsky himself is compelled to admit that “Smirnov sat in prison since January 1, 1933” (1627) . To be more exact, he was imprisoned on that date together with Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganian, Preobrazhensky, Ufimtsev, Lifshitz, Gruenstein, Perevertsev and numerous other former Trotskyists. When, if ever, the two other “conspirators,” Mrachkovsky and Ter-Vaganian, were released, we do not quite know; but we do know that between January 1, 1933 and August 24, 1936, the day of his execution, Smirnov did not draw a breath of free air, that is, he was never released from his 1933 imprisonment! And one does not need to know too many details of Soviet prison life, especially for such men as a Zinoviev, a Kamenev, a Smirnov, to realize the complete impossibility of suck prisoners conducting any political activity while incarcerated, much less of directing a highly conspirative assassination plot. History will record the fact that Stalin put a bullet through the head of a man for the crime of directing the work of a non-existent Center, engaged in a non-existent plot, while in the cell of a very much existent Stalinist prison.
Finally, the by no means reluctant witness Bakayev, gives still another version of the Center’s existence: “In the Fall of 1932, Zinoviev and Kamenev were expelled from the party. The question arose: what now? At that time, Bakayev had a meeting with Zinoviev, Yevdokimov, Kuklin, Sharov, Dreitzer and others [where were the three Trotskyist members?] and it was decided to suspend the terroristic activities for the time being. They were resumed in the Fall of 1934.” (1602.) Now, if we accept the Bakayev version, which was not challenged by the prosecution or by any witness, we get the following results:
Center formed around the Fall of 1932.
Center suspends activities in the Fall of 1932.
Center resumes activities in the Fall of 1934.
Center suspends activities at the end of 1934, never to resume them. For at the end of 1934, Smirnov has been in prison for two years, and Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yevdokimov, Kuklin and Bakayev (to name but a few) have been arrested in connection with the December 1, 1934 killing of Kirov. A month later, they are sentenced to long terms in prison from which they are released only to be tried for their lives in August 1936! This is the balance-sheet, even according to the formal testimony, of the “united Center,” this obvious creature of a limited police agent’s imagination!
Bear in mind in what has been written and what is still to be written: in not a single case did the Prosecutor call attention to the palpable discrepancies in the testimony, which kept colliding with contradictions to the point of utter absurdity. He did not give a fig for the absence of even elementary harmony in the evidence, so long as the accused continued to revile himself and his co-defendants, and above all, so long as they all continued to involve Trotsky in the plot. It didn’t matter if, as the Russians say, the white threads stuck out all over the thing and the finished product simply didn’t hang together; important was the fact that the defendants executed their commission. . . .
Let us now examine in more detail the functioning of this peculiar Center, and see how it was actually supposed to carry out its dastardly work. The prosecution is anxious to prove that the Trotskyist section of the bloc was, if anything, its most vicious and terroristic element. And the defendants, however clumsily, proceed to oblige.
“I must admit,” says Kamenev, with significant emphasis, “that before the conference in Ilyinskoye, Zinoviev informed me of the proposed decisions of the Center of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc on the preparation of terroristic acts against Stalin and Kirov. He declared that the representatives of the Trotskyists in the Center of the bloc, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganian, categorically insist on this decision, that they have a direct instruction on this matter from Trotsky, and that they demand that a start be made in putting these measures into practise in pursuance of those principles which formed the basis of the bloc.” (1595.)
“Was Smirnov persistent during these negotiations,” asks Vishinsky, “did he press for terroristic actions?”
“As I have already said,” answers Zinoviev, “Smirnov insisted on it passionately and sought to persuade us, although there was no need to persuade us; we were already convinced.” (1601.) Both Kamenev and Zinoviev refer to the 1932 period.
Now, if Zinoviev and his associates were already persuaded, why, in heaven’s name, did Smirnov find it necessary to persuade them, to insist on terrorism, to insist categorically and passionately? Isn’t it much more likely that, before the trial, the prosecution “insisted categorically” that Zinoviev and Kamenev tell just such a story? Why, we repeat, did Smirnov and the other Trotskyists have to insist so categorically and passionately? Were the Zinovievists reluctant to take the road of terrorism? Were they just then—at the time the bloc was consummated, whenever that was!—gradually coming around to the standpoint of terrorism, and needed only a little more persuading? Other testimony would indicate that Smirnov and his insistent friends were just wasting so much breath in trying to press the idea of terrorism to men who were already dyed-in-the-wool terrorists! Reingold, for example, testifies that “in 1932, Zinoviev, at Kamenev’s place, in the presence of a number of members of the Trotsky-Zinoviev Center, argued in favor of the need of applying terrorism” (1601). Even before the bloc was formed, in 1931, Zinoviev convinced Reingold of the need of uniting with the Trotskyists and “in this connection, the basis of the unity of the Trotskyists with the Zinoviev people—Reingold emphasizes—was terrorism” (1601) .
Not merely as early as 1931. Zinoviev and Kamenev—if we are gullible enough to believe it—were preparing for terrorism as far back as 1929! It appears that “Kamenev and Zinoviev charged Reingold with a number of responsible tasks, especially that of creating abroad a special fund for the financing the terrorist organization in the event of Kamanev and Zinoviev being deported.
“Vishinsky: Accused Kamenev, was there any such talk?
“Kamenev: That was in 1929. . . .” (1602) .
1929! Are these the men before whom Smirnov had to insist so passionately? But the prosecution, oblivious to the fact this has already passed beyond the ultimate in human credulity, tries to make its case more damaging, and puts into the mouth of Bakayev the following bit of evidence: “During this conference [of Zinovievists, on the eve of the bloc’s formation], Zinoviev said that the Trotskyists, upon Trotsky’s proposal, are proceeding to organize the murder of Stalin, and that we must take into our own hands the initiative in the matter of murdering Stalin.” (1599.) The Zinovievists, you see, were badly worried over the possibility of the Trotskyists assassinating Stalin before they could get to him. So, with a positively diabolical disloyalty and underhandedness, they decided in caucus to snatch the initiative from their prospective allies in the bloc, to rush in ahead of them, to be the first to kill Stalin, and thereby deprive the Trotskyists of the resulting credit. And, as we shall soon see, Trotsky was not one jot more loyal in dealing with his allies in the bloc, for he too, unbeknown to the Zinovievists, sent his own private assassins to the Soviet Union without submitting them to the joint discipline of the bloc or even coordinating his efforts with theirs. As with thieves, so, apparently, with assassins: there is no honor among them.
Let us, however, proceed with a few more characterizations of how this amazing Center functioned.
“According to the information conveyed to us by Reingold at the beginning of 1934,” stated Pikel, prior to the trial, “the united, counter-revolutionary [this is a defendant speaking!] All-Union Center of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc decided, with the efforts of the Trotskyists and the Zinoviev people, to strike a crushing blow at the C.P.S.U. (b) by means of a number of terroristic acts, with the aim of beheading the leadership and seizing power. The All-Union Center of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc at that time bluntly raised the question of the necessity of a ‘surgical intervention’ (terrorism was meant) in order to bring about a decisive change in the country’s situation.” (1591.)
From this it appears that only at the beginning of 1934 was the question of terroristic acts against the leadership “bluntly raised,” and Pikel informed accordingly. How does this fit in with the rest of the testimony? It simply doesn’t, and for all the prosecution cares, it doesn’t need to. It doesn’t even fit in with Pikel’s own testimony of a month later, namely, at the trial itself. There we learn that Pikel did not have to wait until 1934 to learn of a decision to assassinate the Soviet leaders, but knew about the decision and was already participating actively in preparing an attack as early as 1932! “Pikel admits that, as an active member of the Moscow Center of terrorists, he was aware of all the important decisions and terroristic measures of the united Center. In the Fall of 1932, Pikel belonged to the fighting organization of the terrorists, whose leader was Bakayev, and agreed to cooperate in the assassination of comrade Stalin.” (1603.)
The “Center” and the Kirov Assassination
Now let us take the aspect of the trial in which the attempt is made to connect the accused with the direct responsibility for the assassination of S. M. Kirov.
One notices immediately a number of gaping holes in the newly composed version of the assassination. On January 23, 1935, according to the official Soviet report of the time, Medved, head of the Leningrad Administration of the Commissariat of the Interior, that is, of the G.P.U., was sentenced to three years imprisonment; his deputy, Saporozhetz, to the same term; Baltsevich, in special charge of matters relating to terrorism and who “had at his disposal communications about an impending attempt on the life of Kirov,” to ten years imprisonment; and nine other G.P.U. officials to two years imprisonment each. They were charged with having known of the impending assassination and of having taken no measures to ward it off. Yet, none of these men is mentioned, referred to or even hinted at by so much as a word, by anybody or anywhere in the course of this trial.
On January 10, 1935, the official organ of the Comintern wrote: “The Lettish government is also one of the most active initiators of the assassination of our comrade Kirov. It has been proved that the Lettish Consul in Leningrad, Bisseneck, was in contact with the assassin Nikolaiev and aided him in preparing the assassination with 5,000 rubler. Bisseneck also took over the letter-writing contact of the Nikolaiev people with Trotsky. Although Bisseneck was recalled by the Lettish government on December 30, there can be no doubt that he acted with the knowledge and consent of his government.” ( Rundschau , Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 114.) Yet, neither Mr. Bisseneck nor the Lettish government, both of whom were so definitely stated to have participated in the assassination of Kirov, is mentioned, referred to or even hinted at by so much as a word, by anybody or anywhere in the course of this trial.
Immediately following the death of Kirov, the Soviet government sentenced to death and executed 103 persons charged with being guilty of the crime, apart from the 14 communists or former communists who were subsequently executed. These 103 were executed without a trial. Their names were never made public. All that appeared about them in the press was the official announcement that they were White Guards who had smuggled their way into the Soviet Union from Poland, Latvia and Finland for the purpose of assassinating Kirov and other Soviet leaders. Yet, the 103 White Guards, so definitely guilty of killing Kirov that they were summarily executed, are not mentioned, referred to or hinted at by so much as a word, by anybody or anywhere in the course of this trial.
Not even an attempt was made to establish any connection whatsoever between the sixteen accused of the 1936 trial, on the one side, and the Lettish government, the Lettish Consul, or the 103 White Guards, on the other. Now, it is patently out of the question for all of these to be guilty of having assassinated Kirov. Either the “Trotskyist-Zinovievist Center” committed the crime; or the White Guards or the Lettish government or both (we leave aside, for the moment, the possibility of some hitherto unmentioned criminal) . On the very face of it, the Stalinist régime committed a judicial murder either in the case of Zinoviev and his co-defendants, or in the case of the alleged White Guards, or in both cases.
Around these larger gaps in the new story of the Kirov assassination, is new material which is shot through with so many other holes—smaller, but no less revealing—that the fabric of falsification falls away at the first touch.
How was the assassination of Kirov prepared? “In the Fall of 1932,” testifies Zinoviev, “in my Ilyinskoye villa, in the presence of Kamenev, Bakayev, Yevdokimov and Karev, I gave Bakayev the order to prepare a terroristic act against Stalin and I ordered Karev to prepare a terroristic act against Kirov.” (1595.) Apart from this statement by Zinoviev, nothing else is said in any part of the court proceedings about Karev’s mission to kill Kirov in Leningrad. Did Karev do anything to carry out his orders? Didn’t he take the commission seriously? Did he merely forget about it? Or is the truth of the matter, here too, that he never heard of such a commission until he was brought before his jailors and executors?
What holds for Karev, holds also for Zinoviev’s former private secretary, Matorin. In passing, casually, without the slightest connected reference to anything else, without a mention of the fact anywhere else in the records, we learn that Matorin, too, was commissioned to kill Kirov. “Zinoviev told me that the preparations for the terroristic act must be speeded in every possible way and that Kirov must be killed by the beginning of Winter. Zinoviev reproached me for lack of determination and energy. He said that in the question of terroristic fighting methods, all prejudices must be thrown off.” (1596.) And that is the first and last we hear of Matorin’s mission.
Bakayev, however, is presented as the “practical organizer” of the Center, and the man directly in charge of the Kirov killing. We have read above that Bakayev was directed to murder Stalin, and Karev to murder Kirov, in accordance with a decision made in 1932. Then more than a year elapses in the record of the preparations for Kirov’s murder; nothing, literally nothing happens or is mentioned about this by no means trivial affair until 1934. We are told by Yevdokimov that “in 1934, Zinoviev, in the name of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist organization, gave Bakayev direct instructions to organize the murder of Kirov. Participating in the adoption of the decision to assassinate Kirov, there were, besides Zinoviev and Kamenev, myself, Yevdokimov, and Bakayev, and the representatives of the Trotskyists, in the persons of Mrachkovsky and Ter-Vaganian. In order to prepare the assassination, Bakayev proceeded to Leningrad in the Fall of 1934 and there made contact with the active participants of our organization, with Kotolinov, Levin, Rumiantsev, Mandelstamm and Miasnikov, who formed the so-called Leningrad terrorist Center” ( 1595)
The decision to assassinate Kirov, first taken in 1932, was, it now appears, adopted only in the middle of 1934. Bakayev went to Leningrad only in the Fall of 1934, just a few months before the assassination itself. He had to go there in order to establish contact with the local terrorists, which allows us to conclude that the Moscow Center of the “bloc” did not have this contact previously.
But Mrachkovsky’s testimony contradicts this account. “In the Summer of 1934 Mrachkovsky met Kamenev. ‘Kamenev,’ testifies Mrachkovsky, ‘confirmed to me the fact that a Moscow terrorist center had been organized. Kamenev expressed dissatisfaction with the slow pace at which the work of preparing terroristic acts was proceeding. During this conversation he also said that Bakayev was organizing in Leningrad—apparently very successfully, although slowly—a terroristic act against Kirov.’ ” (1598.)
Firstly, Mrachkovsky, a member of the same supreme terrorist center as Kamenev, does not know that a terrorist center has been established locally in Moscow and does not know that Bakayev is at work in Leningrad. He has to be told it by Kamenev at a chance meeting. Didn’t the “All-Union Center” meet regularly, with all members present? Did they not all hear the reports of how work was progressing? Didn’t they all participate in the sending out of agents, in the adoption of all other decisions? Secondly, contrary to Yevdokimov’s story, it now appears that Bakayev did not leave for Leningrad in the Fall of 1934, but had already been there, hard at work, by the Summer of that year. But it is only in that same Summer, Yevdokimov later testifies, that the decision to kill Kirov was adopted (1599) and only in the Fall that Bakayev left for Leningrad. And to make matters more hopelessly confused, the following dialogue should be considered as the supplement to previous testimony that Zinoviev instructed Bakayev to leave for Leningrad:
“Vishinsky ( turning to Kamenev ): Was it you who gave the order to prepare the assassination of Kirov?
“Kamenev: Yes, in the Fall.
“Vishinsky: Was it you, together with Yevdokimov, who instructed Bakayev in the Fall to proceed to Leningrad and to check up on how successfully the preparations of the Trotsky-Zinoviev group for the assassination of Kirov were proceeding? Is that right; do you confirm it?
“Kamenev: Yes, that is right. I confirm it.” (1599.)
But why did either Zinoviev, Kamenev. or Yevdokimov have to give Bakayev the order to go to Leningrad? According to the testimony of all four of them, given elsewhere, Bakayev was present at the meeting of the Center in the Summer of 1934 where it was decided to assassinate Kirov and where Bakayev was charged with the task. Was Bakayev asleep when the decisions were adopted, and did he have to be informed of them later, personally, by Zinoviev or Kamenev and Yevdokimov? Or, perhaps he was not present, despite the testimony, at the fatal meeting which, again despite the testimony, did not take place? Such a conclusion is dictated by still another piece of testimony, this time by Bakayev himself. We recall his evidence that the Center suspended its activities from the Fall of 1932 to the Fall of 1934; consequently no meeting could have occurred in the Summer of 1934. Bakayev then continues:
“Bakayev testifies that in October 1934 an attempt on the life of Stalin was prepared in Moscow under the direction of Kamenev, Yevdokimov and Bakayev, in which Bakayev himself took a direct part. The attempt failed. After this failure, Bakayev carne to Kamenev and reported it to him. ‘Kamenev,’ Bakayev continues to testify, ‘said: “Too bad, but let us hope that it will be more successful next time.” Then he turned to Yevdokimov with the question of how things stand in Leningrad. Yevdokimov replied that the situation in Leningrad ought to be checked up and that it would be advisable to send Bakayev there. I agreed to go.’ ” (1602.)
So the Center met in the Summer of 1934 to decide the death of Kirov and it didn’t meet. The Center commissioned Bakayev to go to Leningrad and it didn’t commission him. Zinoviev sent him in the name of the Center and he didn’t send him, Kamenev and Yevdokimov sent him in their own name. Mrachkovsky, Reingold and Sokolnikov were present at the Center’s meeting when the decision was made and they were not present. From the Summer to the Fall, Bakayev was working successfully on the Kirov killing, but at the same time he was working unsuccessfully in Moscow on the Stalin killing. He was ordered to go in the Fall, didn’t leave until some time in October, but already in the Summer he was working in Leningrad “apparently very successfully, although slowly” on the killing of Kirov.
Then, to make it all perfectly simple, after the testimony that Kamenev and Yevdokimov had sent him to Leningrad at a chance meeting of the three men in Moscow, October 1934, Yevdokimov suddenly forgets that he is supposed to have ordered Bakayev to Leningrad in October and to have arranged for Bakayev to meeting the local assassins, and testifies that he learned of the mission and the trip from . . . Bakayev! “I learned from Bakayev that in the Fall of 1934, he, together with a Trotskyist terrorist whose name I do not know, had traveled to Leningrad to establish contact with the Leningrad terrorist Center and to organize the assassination of Kirov.” (1595.) And as is so of ten the case with each piece of testimony, it simultaneously cancels another “confession” and introduces in its place a new one. This time it is the “Trotskyist terrorist” who accompanied Bakayev; and it is the first and last time we hear of him throughout the court records; Yevdokimov merely thought he would improve on the story with an embellishment that the others hadn’t thought of.
Although this would seem to be enough—even too much on the Kirov affair, it isn’t all. Although the “All-Union Center,” by the middle of 1934, has been working intensely for a good two years, and has reached its “high point” sometime in the Spring of 1933, it still, apparently, has not established any contact with the Leningrad terrorists. It must first try to make this contact in the Summer or Fall of 1934a month or two before the pistol is fired at Kirov. Thus, Bakayev does not even know how to get in touch with the Leningrad men, and Yevdokimov must promise to have a few of them meet Bakayev at the train and take him around the city. The promise is kept, according to Bakayev’s further testimony: “I left and was actually met at the station by Levin, who said: ‘So then, Grigori Yevseyevich [Zinoviev] doesn’t trust either Gertik or Kuklin, and not even Yevdokimov himself, and now he sends somebody here to check up on our mood and our work. Oh well, we’re not such a proud lot.’ ” (1602 f .) As to Kuklin’s visit to Leningrad, no other reference is to be found. Gertik, however, is mentioned. “In 1934,” testifies Zinoviev, “I cannot exactly remember the month, it was in the middle of the year, Yevdokimov told me of one of Gertik’s trips to Leningrad, during which Gertik established contacts with Kotolinov, as a result of which meeting Kotolinov told Gertik that he was taking a direct part in preparing the assassination of Kirov.” (1595.) So it was only during one of Gertik’s trips that he managed to establish contact (i.e., there had been no such contact previously!) with the Leningraders. And how did the chief director of the terrorist work, Zinoviev, learn about this so vital piece of information? Was Gertik assigned by Zinoviev or the Center to make the trips and establish the contacts? Did he report back faithfully to the Center? Not at all. Zinoviev learned of it in the course of a conversation with Yevdokimov.
There is still more to this madman’s tale. It seems that it wasn’t Gertik, or Kuklin, or Bakayev who established the Leningrad contact; it was none other than Kamenev himself. “The investigation established that in June 1934, after the united Zinovievist-Trotskyist Center had adopted the decision to assassinate comrade S. M. Kirov, Kamenev made a special journey to Leningrad in order to check up the progress made in organizing the terroristic act against comrade Kirov.” But it was precisely at this time that Kamenev, meeting Mrachkovsky in Moscow, told him about Bakayev’s excellent work in Leningrad! And if Kamenev did go there in June, why was there all this difficulty concerning addresses which Bakayev experienced in October 1934, when Yevdokimov and Kamenev ordered him to Leningrad? The truth is that the real difficulty of the accused lay in their inability to make a good, plausible story out of the complicated, contradictory farce written for them by the prosecution just before the trial and which they probably had little or no time to rehearse even under such stern auspices as their persecutors made compulsory.
The Plot of Dreitser-Schmidt and Co.
So much for the “Zinovievist-Trotskyist plot” to assassinate Kirov. The “plots” against other Soviet leaders are not one whit more credible—less so, if anything. Take the activities of Dreitser, a subordinate in the conspiracy by virtue of the fact that he was not a member of the directing Center. How often did this agent of the Center meet with his principals? “As far back as September and October 1931, I.N. Smirnov told Dreitser that a course must be adopted towards terroristic fighting methods. And in the Fall of 1932, I.N. Smirnov, at his home, gave Dreitser the direct instruction to organize terroristic acts against Stalin and Voroshilov. . . . In the Fall of 1933, Mrachkovsky repeated to Dreitser the instructions of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist Center on speeding up the carrying out of terrorism against the leadership of the C.P.S.U. (b) and the Soviet government.” (1600.)
Dreitser, resident in Moscow, and a highly important cog in the conspiracy, met with a representative of the terrorist Center only once a year to receive his instructions---once in 1931, once in 1932, once in 1933, and invariably, for some unexplained reason, in the Fall! Certainly not an actively functioning Center, this. And for persons within street-car reach for each other, they met with unbelievable infrequency, considering the nature of the job they were mutually engaged in doing. This isn’t enough. On one page of the indictment, we are offered three different versions of Dreitser’s activities, all of which are nonchalantly recorded by the prosecution without any attempt made to call attention to the gross discrepancies or to question the accused any further with the aim of reconciling the versions or establishing one of them as “standard.”
“I learned from Mrachkovsky and Dreitser,” testifies Reingold, “that in the Summer of 1933, a Trotskyist group of military men was organized under the direction of Dreitser, composed of Schmidt, commander of a Red Army brigade, Kuzmichev, chief of staff of a troop detachment and a number of other persons whose names I do not know.” (1596.)
“In the middle of 1934,” testifies Mrachkovsky, “Y. A. Dreitser reported to me that simultaneously he was organizing the assassination of Voroshilov, for which purpose Dimitri Schmidt, who occupied the post of commander of the army and against whom there was no suspicion in the party, was to be instructed.” (1596.)
And Dreitser himself declares: “For the purpose of committing the terroristic act, I recruited Estermann and Gayevsky and, in 1935, Schmidt and Kuzmichev. The latter two undertook to kill Voroshilov.” (1596.)
The plot of Dreitser-Schmidt-and-Co. to kill Voroshilov thus dates from 1933; it also dates from 1934; then again, it dates from 1935. The three pieces of evidence are not scattered throughout the record. One follows right on the heels of the other; they jostle each other and clamorously proclaim their discord. Astoundingly nonchalant prosecutor, he asks no further questions. He is content. He even has the effrontery to add: “The testimony of Mrachkovsky and Dreitser was also confirmed by the accused Reingold.” Why, under any other circumstances, in any other country, an attorney who called this a “confirmation,” who failed to pursue the questioning for the purpose of getting a straight story, who failed to ask those indicated, elementary questions which a lawyer would put to a defendant in a night court —charged not with a monstrous assassination plot, but with violating a traffic rule—would be forever barred from the practise of law!
The Gestapo’s Plot Against Voroshilov
There was another plot to assassinate Voroshilov, organized under the direct instructions of the Gestapo , through its Moscow agent, Franz Weiz, in cooperation with Moscow Trotskyists and a special emissary of Trotsky himself, who carne from Germany for the purpose. But although this group kept Voroshilov and his automobile under constant observation from September 1932 to the early part of 1933, and all three assassins were armed with revolvers, they just couldn’t manage it.
“President of the court: So that you would have committed a terroristic act had a more favorable moment offered itself? Why did you not succeed in doing so?
“N. Lurye: We saw Voroshilov’s car going down Frunze Street. It was travelling too fast. It is hopeless to shoot at a fast moving car; we decided that there was no point to it.
“President of the court: Did you manage to see comrade Voroshilov’s car?
“N. Lurye: I saw it and so did a second member of the group, Pavel Lipshitz.
“President of the court: Did you suspend further watching of comrade Voroshilov’s car?
“N. Lurye: Yes.
“President of the court: For what reasons?
“N. Lurye: Because we became convinced that there was no sense in shooting with a revolver.
“President of the court: What did you turn your attention to after that?
“N. Lurye: To getting hold of explosives.
“President of the court: What kind of terroristic act did you intend to commit?
“N. Lurye: A terrorist act with a bomb.
“President of the court: . . . Against whom?
“N. Lurye: Against Voroshilov.
“President of the court: On the street or in a building?
“N. Lurye: On the street.” (1614.)
And that’s the end of the Lurye-Weiz-Lipshitz-Konstant plot against Voroshilov. What enviable luck is Voroshilov’s in having a fast car and a fast driver at his disposal! How lucky for him that there wasn’t a single marksman among his would-be assassins! How lucky for him that they were unable to get the bomb! Or did they get it? And if not, why not? Didn’t they have both the Gestapo and the Center behind them? But whether or not they did, what became of the group from 1933 onward, whither it turned its frustrated intentions—the court record simply does not disdain to say. Highly placed army officers, who must have been close to Voroshilov in the three years since the plot was organized in 1933 (or was it in 1934? or in 1935?), men of daring and determination and resourcefulness, nevertheless failed even to aim a pistol at the head of the Red Army, and this despite the fact that they had such a host of qualified collaborators (including the by no means paralytic Gestapo ) at their disposal.
Lurye’s Abortive Assassinations
It is plain as a pikestaff that, like Mussolini, Voroshilov bears a charmed life against all terroristic attempts, in particular against those organized entirely and exclusively within the police brain of the G.P.U. Nor is he alone. All the other Stalinist chieftains are endowed with charmed lives. It seems that N. Lurye proceeded in July 1933 to Cheliabinsk, to practise his profession of surgeon, in which, we are ready to believe, he was far better qualified than in the profession of assassin. M. Lurye, Trotsky’s other agent, instructs him from Moscow to assassinate Ordjonikidze and Kaganovich, who are about to visit the Cheliabinsk tractor works. N. Lurye accepts the commission. How does it work out? The court record just states laconically: “This intention could not be realized.” (1614.) Not another word about this particular plot. Did Ordjonikidze and Kaganovich also have fast cars and drivers? Did N. Lurye plan to pick them both off by himself? Or, learning from his failure in Voroshilov’s case, did he plan to blow them up with a bomb? Had he finished his bomb, or hadn’t he got around to it as yet? We do not know, for nobody tells us.
We do learn, however, that from 1933 to 1936, N. Lurye doesn’t seem to have puttered around very much with terrorism. Had this much-thwarted assassin become embittered or discouraged by his failures? Or did he just dabble in assassination during his spare time? Whatever the case may be, the man sent to Russia especially for assassination work, does not appear to have lifted a finger between the time of his unexplained failure in Cheliabinsk and his return to Leningrad in 1936. En route , M. Lurye instructed him on January 2, 1936 to shoot Zhdanov, head of the Leningrad party organization, at the coming May Day demonstration. N. Lurye thereupon provided himself with a revolver (no bomb this time, either; he just refused to team from experience) and left for Leningrad.
“President of the court: When did you get this weapon?
“N. Lurye: In March 1936.
“President of the court: What make of revolver?
“N. Lurye: A Browning.
“President of the court: What size? Medium?
“N. Lurye: Yes.
“President of the court: Did you succeed in getting into the demonstrators’ marching ranks on Uritsky Square?
“N. Lurye: Yes.
“President of the court: Why didn’t you succeed in carrying out the attempt on the life of Zhdanov?
“N. Lurye: We were too far away from him when we marched by.” (1614.)
Lucky Zhdanov!
But see how scrupulously meticulous is the court in establishing not only the make but also the caliber of the revolver that was never used, how exacting it is in its questions on such unmistakably vital points. It is not a .22 or a .45 caliber; it is not a Smith & Wesson or a Parabellum; it is not an air rifle or a water pistol. It is a medium Browning revolver. What matter such questions as when (and if) a terrorist Center was organized, who was actually in it, who went to Leningrad and when, and a thousand other trivialities —once the court has triumphantly established the fact, so utterly and conclusively damning to all the accused, their forbears and their progeny, that N. Lurye had a medium Browning revolver. One may regret the distinguished jurist’s failure to establish also the fact that the weapon was loaded, and with a full clip of bullets—we are ready, however, to believe it!—but what he did establish so irrefutably, so painstakingly, so scrupulously, ought to give one an en- during picture of model Stalinist justice.
The Plots Against Stalin
If the lives of Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Ordjonikidze and Zhdanov are charmed, then Stalin’s is positively legendary in its invulnerability. Unlike Achilles, whose heel was fatally exposed when he was dipped into the magic, protecting water, there appears to be no part of Stalin that is not proof against the designs of assassins.
Any number of men were assigned to assassinate Stalin, the central object of the conspirators’ venomous personal hatred. As we have seen, Bakayev was specifically assigned to the organization of an attempt on Stalin’s life as far back as the Fall of 1932. Nothing seems to have come of it. Others were involved or assigned. We read: “In the Fall of 1932, Pikel belonged to the fighting organization of the terrorists, whose leader was Bakayev, and agreed to cooperate in the assassination of comrade Stalin. Pikel confirms the testimony of Reingold and Bakayev that Zinoviev directly guided the preparation for this attempt. . . . Pikel supplements the testimony of Bakayev and declares that in the Fall of 1933 Bogdan undertook another attempt to carry out the assassination of comrade Stalin. . . . Pikel goes on to report the preparations for a terroristic act against comrade Stalin in 1934. Pikel’s participation consisted in putting Bakayev in touch with Radin, who had been prepared by Pikel to carry out this terroristic act.” (1603.) Nothing seems to have come of these plots, either.
Further: “Questioned by the President, comrade Ulrich, as to his, Zinoviev’s, part in the preparation of the terroristic act against comrade Stalin, Zinoviev states that he took part in it and that he is aware of two attempts on the life of Stalin, in which Reingold, Dreitser and Pikel participated. Zinoviev also confirms that he proposed his personal secretary, Bogdan, to Bakayev, the leader of the terrorist groups, for the purpose of carrying out the murder of comrade Stalin.” (1607.) No results are yielded by this group of plotters, who are different in compositon from those already mentioned—a difference which the prosecution, it goes without saying, does not mention, or refer to, or seek to straighten out. Note, also, the fact that Bogdan was supposed to shoot Stalin in the Secretariat, which signifies that he had east’ access to that organism and to its chief, his proposed victim. Note, finally, that Bogdan is reported to have committed suicide rather than the assassination, despite the all-night urgings of his superior, Bakayev.
Further—and this is mentioned for the first time only in the prosecutor’s summation speech: “Reingold recruited two terrorists, Krivoshkin and Vigilansky, who were to carry out the assassination of comrade Stalin.” (1629.)
Add to all these, the more than half a dozen terrorists sent to Moscow independently by Trotsky, who evidently did not have sufficient confidence in the qualifications of the homebred assassins. “The investigation has established that at various times, the accused V. Olberg, Berman-Yurin, Fritz David (Krugliansky), Moses Lurye, Nathan Lurye and several others were sent from Berlin to Moscow, and were instructed directly by L. D. Trotsky and his son Sedov (L. L. Trotsky) to organize, at all costs, the assassination of comrades Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and other leaders of the party.” (1593.)
Yet, with all these men at work, singlemindedly, some of them for as long as four years, with resources ( Gestapo !) at their command such as the pre-war terrorists never dreamed of having, there was not so much as a scratch inflicted on Stalin. Couldn’t one of them gain access to him in all this time? Any number of the assassins saw him any number of times: David at the Comintern Congress, Mrachovsky at a private interview, Bogdan in the Secretariat—three out of three thousand opportunities. Was it because the assassins were timid, irresolute souls? Here is the description given of one of them—by no means untypical of the others—by Vishinsky himself: “Precisely Bakayev, who is known as a malicious hater, as a resolute man, as a persevering and persistent man with a very great will power, with a strong character and stamina, who would not recoil from any means to achieve the ends he has set himself.” Men like this, veterans of conspirative work, veterans of the revolution, veterans of the civil war, worked for four years, and except for the death of Kirov, nothing happened—nothing.
“Perhaps the most significant Moscow fact,” writes a cynical bourgeois review, “was that at the trial last week almost nothing came out which was not directly or indirectly to Stalin’s personal advantage. He emerged from the court records so great that even his worst enemies quarreled over the honor of killing him; so well guarded that would-bi assassins sat in his presence not daring to pull the trigger; so idolized that Zinoviev’s secretary, rather than kill Stalin, killed himself; so lucky that every plot against him failed; and finally so wise that a whole boxful of Bolsheviks intent on killing him did not try to justify themselves by uttering one critical or abusive word against the Perfect Dictator.” ( Time , Aug. 31, 1936.)
Nothing resulted from the conspiracy! And there were no results because there was no conspiracy.
How Confessions Are Obtained
“PARMENIO: Stop! Stop! You have won me quite already. Yes! I will do everything. I will, I will tell your father, that he shall not exchange you until tomorrow. But why only tomorrow? I do not know! That I need not know. That he need not know either. Enough that I know you wish it. And I wish everything that you wish. Do you wish nothing else? Is there nothing else that I shall do? Shall I run through the fire for you? Shall I cast myself from a rock for you? Command only, my dear young friend, command! I will do everything now for you. Even say a word and I will commit a crime, an act of villainy for you! My blood, it is true, curdles; but still, prince, if you wish, I will—I will—.”
—G. E. Lessing, Philotas , Sc.v.
The argument most frequently and triumphantly made by the Stalinists in order to make credible an otherwise incredible story, is that the evidence was voluntarily presented by the accused themselves, that they refused attorneys, that they admitted their guilt. The defendants confessed! The completely contradictory character of most of the “confessions,” we have already established; in what is still to be written, we shall establish that the other “confessions” have the same value, that is, no value at all. But the indisputable fact remains that the accused at least appeared to volunteer their self-indicting testimony.
Upon examination, the “confessions” so proudly referred to by the Stalinists prove to be another relentless condemnation of the régime which caused such a spectacle to be enacted. We have enough material at our disposal to enable us to form an exact picture of how the confessions were obtained.
First of all, the prosecution studiously avoids any reference to the manner in which the plot was discovered, or why it took the G.P.U.—the most efficient and ruthless police service in the entire world—so long to make its disclosure. Like so many other aspects of the trial, this one too is unprecedented. Who told the authorities of the existence of the Center and its plot, that is, who was the first to tell? Who was the man, or the men, who first gave the authorities the clue that led to uncovering the whole conspiracy? Of this, not a syllable anywhere. Yet it is the most elementary, and the customary thing in any trial at all similar to this one.
The unofficial answer to this question, already asked by others, is given in the organ of the Comintern: “It would have been the gravest mistake to make this known and thereby to aid the enemies of the Soviet Union to refine their methods and to guard themselves against being apprehended in the future.” ( Rundschau , Vol. V, No. 42, p. 1779.) This is sheer nonsense. If there was a plot, there are, it would seem, only three possible ways in which the authorities could have discovered it: by accident or some involuntary imprudence of a plotter, which is the same thing; by one or more of the plotters being overtaken by remorse and volunteering the information to the police; by a police agent, working under cover among the plotters, and rendering a report to his real superiors. In any one of these three—the only possible—cases, the explanation of Rundschau , however mysterious and impressive it is supposed to sound, is so much poppycock. If any of these three was the case, there is absolutely no reason why the prosecution would not make it known. If it does not—and it doesn’t—then it is only because the first news of the conspiracy was not conveyed from the ranks of the accused to the ranks of the prosecution, but the other way around. In other words, the prosecution invented the plot and compelled the accused to enact it at the trial for the first time of their lives.
Let us see how this explanation fits in with the actualities of the “confessions.”
Take the trial of the S.R. leaders in 1922. They were accused of having organized a fight, with arms in hand and in alliance with the Allies, to overthrow the Soviet government, and of having directed the assassination of the Bolshevik leader Volodarsky and the attempt on Lenin’s life by Dora Kaplan. The twelve men and women on trial were never partisans of the dictatorship of the proletariat or of the Soviet government. They had organized the armed struggle against the Soviets and for the so-called Constituent Assembly and had done it with the support of the Allied imperialists be-cause, they said, the “Russian Democracy” was still in alliance with England, France, Belgium, Italy and the United States. These facts were not brought out at the trial by means of those abject and suspicious “confessions” that marked the August 1936 trial; no witnesses were needed to prove them; nobody, anywhere, sought to deny them. In f act, summarizing the charges, Emil Vandervelde, the Belgian socialist attorney for the defendants, stated: “The Social Revolutionaries admit this fact and are proud of it. . . . The Social Revolutionaries admit this fact and are only sorry that they did not succeed in carrying this [the armed defense of the Constituent Assembly] to a successful conclusion. . . . The Social Revolutionaries admit this [the waging of an armed struggle against the Soviet government] as an undeniable, historic fact.” ( The Twelve Who Are to Die, Berlin 1922. P. 62.)
The defendants did, however, deny responsibility for the assassinations. But in this case, the accusations were, at the very least, historically and politically plausible, whatever one’s opinion might be of the conclusiveness of the concrete evidence adduced against the defendants. Every one of the twelve was not only an avowed and bitter opponent of the Soviet régime but also a long-standing defender of the theory and practise of individual terrorism against all despotisms, among which they included the Czarist régime and the Bolshevik régime as well.
But in the 1936 trial of the old Bolsheviks? Never have genuine terrorists, not even the most repentant, made such statements in court as carne from the lips of every one of the accused! They reviled themselves and each other; they cursed each other as “mad Fascist dogs”; they vied successfully with the Prosecutor in vilifying themselves, outdoing him—not an easy thing to do when one reads the lexicon of vituperation drawn on by Vishinsky; they cringed, they humiliated and flogged themselves in public in a positively inhuman manner; they even added charges that the Prosecutor hadn’t mentioned, volunteered information that was not requested. Not one of them, for years so permeated with an uncontrollable hostility to the Stalinist régime, so filled with a fierce hatred of the party leadership, had a syllable of criticism to offer of Stalin or his domination or his policies. On the contrary, they outdid each other in eulogy of his grandeur and the marvelous achievements made by the Soviet Union under his gifted and inspired leadership.
What person in his right senses can read the testimony of the defendants and conclude that it was normally given and represents even an approximation of the truth? A few examples:
“Vishinsky: What did its [the Center’s] activities express themselves in?
“Zinoviev: Its activity consisted mainly in the preparation of terroristic acts.
“Vishinsky: Against whom?
” Zinoviev: Against the leaders.
“Vishinsky: Does that mean against comrades Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich? Was it your Center that organized the assassination of comrade Kirov? Was the murder of Sergey Mironovich Kirov organized by your Center or by some other organization?
“Zinoviev: Yes, by our Center.
“Vishinsky: You, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky and Ter-Vaganian belonged to this Center?
“Zinoviev: Yes.
“Vishinsky: That means that all of you organized the killing of comrade Kirov?
“Zinoviev: Yes.
“Vishinsky: So then all of you murdered comrade Kirov?
“Zinoviev: Yes.
“Vishinsky: Sit down.” (1598.)
What do these dialogues inevitably remind one of? The questions of a severe schoolmaster and an errant pupil who has been compelled to learn his answers by rote, without necessarily understanding or believing them. Or this:
“Vishinsky: Accused Zinoviev, you too were an organizer of the murder of comrade Kirov?
“Zinoviev: In my opinion, Bakayev is right when he said that those really and mainly guilty of the scoundrelly murder of Kirov were primarily myself—Zinoviev—Trotsky and Kamenev, who organized the united terrorist Center. Bakayev played a big rôle in it, but by no means a decisive one.
“Vishinsky: The decisive rôle was played by you, Trotsky and Kamenev. Accused Kamenev, do you join in the declaration of Zinoviev that you, Trotsky and Zinoviev were the main organizers and Bakayev played the rôle of the practical organizer?
“Kamenev: Yes.” (1603.)
And this:
“Vishinsky: How are your articles and declarations to be evaluated, which you wrote in 1933 and in which you expressed your devotion to the party? As deception?
“Kamenev: No, worse than deception.
“Vishinsky: Perfidy?
“Kamenev: Worse.
“Vishinsky: Worse than deception, worse than perfidy; do you find this the word—treachery?
“Kamenev: You have found it.
“Vishinsky: Accused Zinoviev, do you confirm this?
“Zinoviev: Yes.
“Vishinsky: Treachery, perfidy, two-tonguedness?
“Zinoviev: Yes.” (1604f . )
And this:
“Vishinsky: So in your policy against the leadership of the party and the government you let yourself be animated by personal motives of a low nature, by the lust for personal power?
“Kamenev: Yes, by the lust for power of our group.
“Vishinsky: Do you not find that this has nothing in common with social ideals?
“Kamenev: It has as much in common as revolution and counter-revolution.
“Vishinsky: So you stand on the side of the counterrevolution?
“Kamenev: Yes.
“Vishinsky: Then you clearly perceive that you are conducting a fight against socialism?
“Kamenev: We clearly perceive that we are conducting a fight against the leadership of a party and a government that is leading the country to socialism.
“Vishinsky: Then you are against socialism?
“Kamenev: You draw the conclusions of an historian and a prosecutor.” (1605.)
If anything defies or obviates comment, is it not just such quotations? This is not the worst, for elsewhere, and often, the zeal of the defendants overcomes them entirely and, for-getting their rôle, they speak like so many prosecuting attorneys, until the distinction between those in the dock and those outside it becomes purely formal. For instance:
“Indignant at Kamenev’s wriggling in this question, Reingold says: Let Kamenev not play the angel of innocence here! He is a hardened politician who would make his way to power over a mountain of corpses. Would he really have hesitated to kill off one or two terrorists? Nobody will believe him!’ ” (1605.)
“Vishinsky: You belonged formally to the party?
“Holzmann: Yes.
“Vishinsky: At the same time you were a Trotskyist?
“Holzmann: A Trotskyist.
“Vishinsky: And?
“Holzmann: A counter-revolutionist.
“Vishinsky: And a double-dealer?
“Holzmann: Yes.” (1613.)
One cannot come to any other conclusion except that the “confessions” were made to order. The defendants must have felt themselves under some moral, mental or physical compulsion to make the kind of confessions they did. If they really made them of their own accord, they should have been turned over, not to the executioner, but to an institution for the treatment of mental aberrations.
Holzmann testifies somewhere that one of the conspirators’ code books was the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. We cannot say that the stories given so blandly and casually by the defendants were taken from the Arabian Nights, for it contains nothing to compare with the testimony for sheer fantasy.
How were the confessions obtained? We know by now how similar confessions were obtained in other trials, where the same kind of stupefying testimony was given with the same unanimity and zeal as in the August 1936 trial. All trials of political opponents, real and alleged, that is, all trials held in public, have been monotonously identical under the reign of Stalin: No documents, no material evidence, nothing written adduced, all the evidence confined to the “spontaneous” and “voluntary” confessions of the invariably penitent accused. This has been the case from the days of the Shakhty trial to the Zinoviev trial.
The Trial of the “Mensheviks” in 1931
Take the case of the trial of the so-called “Menshevik Bureau of the Union” in 1931. One of the central charges in the indictment, to which all the accused not only promptly and vigorously pleaded guilty but which they immediately set out to prove by detailed oral evidence, was that the Menshevik Bureau in the Soviet Union (nine-tenths composed of former Mensheviks who had turned Stalinist, like nine-tenths of all the Mensheviks in the Soviet Union) had plotted a counterrevolutionary sabotage campaign at a meeting with Rafael Abramovich, exiled Menshevik member of the Bureau of the Labor and Socialist (Second) International. Although somewhat vague, the approximate period of Abramovich’s illegal trip to Moscow was given by the prosecution and the “defendants”: between the middle of July and the middle of August 1928.
The clumsy dolts who had framed the details of the “plot” had neglected to watch Abramovich’s movements in Europe during the crucial month. The result was that Abramovich was able to prove a faultless alibi for the period he was supposed to be conspiring illegally in Moscow and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. From Berlin, Abramovich made public the following statement, which speaks for itself:
“I have already informed the Moscow tribunal and I have declared publicly that I passed the month of July at Plau (Mecklenburg), up to the 30th, inclusive, as I have now been able to establish, and not up to the 26th. This has already been confirmed in the press by Kurt Grossman, secretary of the German League of the Rights of Man. I am now in possession of a notarized declaration of the proprietor of the Wendenburg Hotel, in Plau, attesting that I resided in his house without interruption from July 9 to 30, 1928. I also possess a sworn statement of the former proprietor of the Strand Hotel, where I lived during the first few days of my stay in Plau, as well as a number of other testimonials of persons whose acquaintance I made in Plau at that time.
“The affair becomes worse for Krylenko [Vishinsky’s predecessor] with regard to the first half of August. In their haste, his agents took no note of the fact that precisely at that time an International Socialist Congress took place in Brussels. Anybody at all can establish, on the basis of the minutes of this Congress, that from August 1 to 12 inclusive I took part in various meetings of organs of the L.S.I. (commissions, Bureau, Executive), as well as in the sessions of the Congress. Whoever does not have at hand the minutes (they should certainly be found in the Marx-Engels Institute of Riazanov) can learn of them in Pravda of August 5, 1928 (No. 181) or in the Rote Fahne of August 7, 1928.
“It is thus established that I was not in Moscow in ‘the summer of 1928.” ( Le Procés de Moscou et l’Internationale Ouvriére Socialiste , Brussels, 1932, p. 33.)
One does not need to share the political views of Abramovich—the author does not, for example—to be able to recognize a frame-up when it is so obviously revealed. But Abramovich’s conclusive disclosure is but a prelude to further revelations of even greater importance, which throw a bright white light on the last obscure corner not only of the 1931 trial but the recent trial as well. Among the so-called Mensheviks who “confessed” so avidly at the 1931 trial was the not unknown Sukhanov. Some five years later, the details of the why and ho w of his confession and all others, was made known in the foreign organ of the Russian Mensheviks, by means of a letter smuggled out of the Soviet Union, the authoritative nature of which is not only vouched for by the editors, and substantiated by testimony from other sources, but is also clear to all who are in the least acquainted with the sinister methods of Stalin’s G.P.U.
“One of the Poale-Zionists who came out of the Verkhne-Uralsk solitary prison, has told the story of unfortunate Sukhanov. This story has caused a sensation among the exiles, and it has also become known through other sources. When Sukhanov, Groman and the others arrived at Verkhne-Uralsk, after their notorious trial, they were subjected to a boycott by all the socialist and communist groups in the solitary prison [ Isolator ]. Since there was discord even among themselves, their moral position became very onerous. Sukhanov applied for admission to the communist fraction but was refused. As time went on, and after several fruitless attempts in the same direction, he became more and more nervous, and finally reached the stage of highest irritability. He began writing, in an ever more categorical and irritable tone, declaration after declaration to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee; and he imparted the text of these declarations to other prisoners, aiming thus to justify and to rehabilitate himself. “In these declarations he refers to the services he performed for the régime, for the sake of which he had sacrificed even his conscience in agreeing to go through the farce of the ‘Menshevik trial.’ He relates in detail how this farce was staged and organized; how the G.P.U. dictated each rôle; how agreement was reached beforehand as to the testimony to be given, and so on. He asserts that there was not a syllable of truth in the words of the accused, but that they had agreed to play these base rôles because they were assured that this was demanded by the interests of the U.S.S.R. But, he adds, the G.P.U. promised to take this sacrifice into account, and solemnly pledged not to execute the sentence imposed by the tribunal. The accused kept their promises, whereas the G.P.U. violated its pledge. Now, Sukhanov demanded that the promise given him should be kept, or else he would declare a hunger strike to the death. This hunger strike lasted about fifty days, with an occasional interval extracted by the promises of the prison administration to get in touch with Moscow, etc. In the end, Sukhanov disappeared, and it remains unknown whether he was killed in order to put an end to his revelations, so embarrassing to the authorities, or he was simply transferred to another place.” ( Sotsialistichesky Viestnik , No. 9 [365], May 10, 1936, p. 15.)
Several days later, the substance of this horrifying account is repeated by one of the former leaders of the Yugoslavian Communist Party, Dr. Anton Ciliga, who spent a long period of time in Soviet prison because of his opposition to the Comintern leadership.
“In the Summer of 1931, the principal heroes of the so-called ‘Menshevik’ trial, the trial of the ‘Socialist Bureau’ (Groman, Sukhanov, Ikov, Sher, Ginsburg, Rubin and others, about ten in all), arrived in Verkhne-Uralsk. The G.P.U. kept this group in strict isolation from the other prisoners, and placed them in prison in such a manner that they would have the least possible contact with each other. The G.P.U. was obviously afraid of something—it was afraid lest these sorry heroes should reveal the secret of the trial.
“All of us, who were political prisoners and who already know how the so-called trials of ‘wreckers,’ of engineers and others were manufactured; who knew the political position of the Russian social democracy . . . did not have a single moment’s doubt that the entire trial of the Bureau was a monstrous machination; false self-accusation on the part of some, and shameless slander of others. We also knew that two of the men implicated, S. D. Braunstein, and the former old Bolshevik Bazarov [Russian translator of Das Kapital and a non-party man since 1917] refused point-blank to play the rôle of docile puppets in the hands of the Stalinist G.P.U. The latter did not dare to bring them to trial, but dealt with them instead in the usual summary administrative manner, without any trial. This circumstance alone was ample evidence to any impartial man, even one entirely unacquainted with the present situation in Russia, not only that the ‘caution’ of the G.P.U. was well calculated, but that the entire trial was fraudulent and vile in essence. How low must the revolution have fallen, and how alien to socialism is a society in which such trials are possible!
“But despite the watchfulness of the G.P.U., despite the fear of the victims themselves, some ties were established with the condemned of the Bureau trial. It is impossible to lit months and years in the same Isolator , completely cut off from the outside world and not seek to establish contact with other cells. Man is, after all, a social animal. . . . To the question of how they came out in the trial with such obviously false accusations and self-accusations, one of them gave me the following answer: ‘We do not understand ourselves how such a nightmare was possible. . . .’ From other comrades, I learned that there were among them those who wrote of physical tortures, applied by incarceration in cells the temperature of which was alternately raised to intolerable heat and lowered far below zero. More often than not, they were subjected to a combination of psycho-physical methods, so beloved by the G.P.U. ( Sotsialistichesky Viestnik , No. 10 [366], May 27, 1936, p. 8.)
We quote, finally, from another article by Ciliga which sheds light on just what arguments the sbirri of the G.P.U. employ to break down the resistance of prospective “confessors.”
“I also became acquainted here [in a Leningrad prison] with the methods by which certain trials of wreckers were prepared and organized. One of the men who ‘confessed’ spoke to me as follows: ‘They kept me in solitary confinement for five months, without newspapers, without tobacco, without my being allowed to receive packages [of food and clothing] or to see my family. I was starved and tortured by loneliness. They kept demanding that I confess myself guilty of acts of wrecking that never took place; I refused to assume responsibility for crimes I never committed—I was afraid of the consequences of such grave self-accusations, but the prosecutor kept assuring me that if I was really for the Soviet power, as I said I was, then I must prove it by deeds: the Soviet power was in need of my confessions and therefore I must give them. I need not be afraid of the consequences because the Soviet power would take my unreserved confessions into account, and give me an opportunity to work [he was an engineer], and enable me to expiate my sins through work. I would immediately be permitted to receive visits from my family, obtain newspapers and packages and go out for walks. But if I persisted in remaining stubborn and kept mum, I would be treated ruthlessly and not only find myself subjected to repressions but my wife and children would be persecuted as well. . . . For months, I refused to capitulate, but then things became so hard, I was so lonely, that it seemed to me that the future could hold nothing worse in store. In any case, I became indifferent to everything. Then I proceeded to sign everything the prosecutor demanded.’ The consequences? He was immediately permitted to receive newspapers, visits, books, packages and was transferred to a common cell. The G.P.U. kept its promises. His lot was improved by his false self-accusations (and his accusations of others, although he made no mention of them directly to me). . . . In this jail I later ran across many similar cases.” ( New Militant , Apr. 18, 1936.)
These disclosures provide an invaluable and perfectly fitting link in the chain with which the perpetrators of this ignoble frame-up can be made fast! Now we can understand, fully and clearly, just how the confessions were obtained from the prisoners. Now we can understand, fully and clearly, what was already implicit in all the circumstances of the trial, but which required, so to speak, external confirmation.
The sixteen accused were not oppositionists! Every single one of the known men—not including the obvious G.P.U. police agents—were capitulators to Stalin. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yevdokimov, Bakayev, Pikel, Holtzmann, Reingold, M. Lurye—these are all former Zinovievists; Smirnov, Ter-Vaganian, Mrachkovsky, Dreitser—these are all former Trotskyists. Between 1927 and 1935, all these men capitulated once, twice, and in the case of Zinoviev and Kamenev, five times to Stalin. They repeatedly declared their desire to “serve the party,” which now means, as they knew it meant, to serve Stalin and his dique; they repeatedly pleaded for an opportunity to serve.
The suspicious and jealous bureaucracy always kept a certain distance between itself and the groveling capitulators. It kept them for public display—as in the case of the obscene parade of vociferously penitent ex-opponents of Stalin at the 17th Party Congress. It hired them out for technical, administrative, journalistic jobs, but kept them at a safe distance from the possibi-lity of influencing political positions, and at a still greater distance from power. It held them in tantalizing reserve, as a source from which to select scapegoats whenever anything went wrong. Politically disemboweled, demoralized, most of them broken physically and all of them morally, they sank to the point where they were always ready to do Stalin’s bidding even when he had them imprisoned or deported. It became their distorted way of serving the Revolution.
Were they cowards? Not in the ordinary sense of the word; few of them in any case. If, by capitulation, they thought they could avoid prison terms and even worse, for most of them it was only because they thought that freedom, even under the Stalinist régime, would keep alive their contact with the party. They would be, they thought, of service to the cause in this way, whereas, dead or imprisoned, they could not be; and some day, when a crucial moment arrived, they might be of more signal service to the Revolution.
Knowing the history and the psychology of the capitulators, one can deduce what actually happened and how it happened. Knowing that their victims were entirely at their mercy—physically as well as politically—the G.P.U. told them (as they had told, we now know , defendants in similar trials before this) that if they were really loyal to the régime, really loyal to the party (read: Stalin), really penitent of their sins and ready to expiate them, they could show it “by deeds.”
There are terroristic moods abroad in the land, especially among the youth of the country. One has but to read the revealing report made by the chairman of the Communist Youth League, Lukianov, to the Plenum of the Nizhni-Novgorod district of that organization ( Komsomolskaya Pravda , Sept. 16, 1936) for ample evidence on this score. These moods must be counteracted. In addition, the danger of war against the Soviet Union by the Nazis becomes daily more imminent, and the country must be prepared for it. Let these spirit-broken ex-oppositionists “confess” to the crime of terrorism, and they will help dispel terroristic moods among the youth by virtue of their own horrible example. Let them implicate the Nazis, as assassins, and that will only strengthen Soviet and world opinion against the already hated Fascists. Let them, above all, involve Trotsky in the assassination plot, thereby helping to discredit further a “common enemy” and they will prove that they are not impenitent Trotskyists, that Trotsky is their enemy, too, by placing the stigma of murderer—Fascist murderer—upon him.
Thus was the pistol held to their heads. And these men, or creatures who once were men but whose spirits Stalin could boast that he had crushed completely, agreed to the wretched bargain. How faithfully they carried out their part of it, the testimony shows. But the very volubility of their answers, the unnecessarily excessive self-debasement, the off-hand manner in which the grossest crimes were admitted, the flagrant contradictions and exaggerations in the testimony was the way chosen by the defendants to convey to the world at large that their “confessions” were not to be taken seriously. One can detect that attempt throughout the testimony: sardonic admissions, admissions with obvious double-meanings, admissions which admit nothing. In one passage of the testimony after another, one gets the clear impression that, as subtly as the bargain with the G.P.U. will permit, the principal defendants, at least, are burlesquing their performance. Elsewhere, they talk as if they are humoring along the prosecution, indulging its imperious demand for favorable replies to questions.
Smirnov, for example, “turned to Ter-Vaganian, Mrachkovsky and Dreitser and said to them: ‘You want a leader? All right, take me.’ ” (1628.)
’ Again, after talking for minutes on end about the “Center,” the directives he gave it, his membership in it, and the like, Smirnov, asked when he resigned f