Moscow Trials And Trotskyite Terror

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AgentSonya
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Moscow Trials And Trotskyite Terror

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The Moscow Trials
=================
Sources
John Gunther - Inside Europe
George Sava, War Without Guns: The Psychological Front, 1943,
-Quentin Reynolds, Only The Stars Are Neutral, 1943, p.93 https://ia902908.us.archive.org/9/items ... eutral.pdf
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### Trials Took place in Open Court with experienced correspondants
Let us dismiss at outset some of the fairy tales. Stalin, some whisperers had it, was mortally ill, and was extirpating the last remnants of opposition while he was still alive ; according to other "reports" he had suddenly gone "insane." It was said that the prisoners were tortured, hypnotized, drugged (in order to make them give false confessions) and -a choice detail-impersonated by actors of the Moscow Art theater I But the trials occurred soon after the preliminary investigations were concluded, and they ·took place before hundreds of witnesses, many of them experienced correspondents, in open court.
The prisoners testified that they were well-treated during the investigation. Radek, indeed, says that it was he who tortured the prosecutor, by refusing to confess month after month. Pressure there certainly was, in the manner of police investigation all over the world, but no evidence of torture.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 576

### Trotskyites Lie About The Trials Being A "Frame Up" And Confessions a Product of Torture
The trials, the Trotskyists assert, were a colossal frame-up. The prisoners were induced to confess, they say, on a promise of immunity and a pardon after the trial-if they talked freely-and then double-crossed and shot. This is hardly conceivable from a dose reading of the testimony. It could not easily have occurred in the second trial, whom the defendants must have known that the first batch despite their confessions, were sentenced to death and duly executed. On the other hand, the defendants probably hoped that whoever behaved best might get off with a light sentence.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 576

With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants… Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment…
I am still impressed with the many indications of credibility which obtained in the course of the testimony.
To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in stage production. The historical background and surrounding circumstances also lend credibility to the testimony.
The reasoning which Sokolnikov and Radek applied in justification of their various activities and their hoped-for results were consistent with probability and entirely plausible. The circumstantial detail… brought out by the various accused, gave unintended corroboration to the gist of the charges.”
(Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow)

Very soon after the first trial, Zinoviev and his associates were executed. It has been asserted that they had been promised lenient treatment if they would for their part publicly accuse Trotsky of having conspired with them to overthrow Stalin and the Soviet government. In truth, it was largely upon this supposition that rested the contention that the first trial was a “frameup”. But now that the men were put to death Trotsky and his adherents declared that they, the defendants, had been “double-crossed”. To the Trotskyites this was further proof of their contention that the first trial had been “framed”. To the disinterested student, however, it might be just as easily have proved the contrary. After all, it is one of the simplest rules of logic that one cannot use a premise to prove a thesis and then use the denial of that premise to prove the same thesis. Logically, therefore, one should have looked elsewhere for an explanation of the executions, and the only other possible explanation was that the men were actually put to death in the regular course of justice and for the single reason that they were guilty of the crimes charges against them. Still it was possible, despite the rise of this counter-doubt, that they have been “double-crossed”.
Now we have come to the second trial. What is the situation? the men now on trial cannot possibly be under any delusion as to their fate. They must know and they do know that they will be put to death. Despite this they do not hesitate to confess their crimes. Why? The only conceivable answer is that they are guilty. Surely it cannot and will not be argued this time as well that there has been a “deal”, for men like Radek are obviously not so stupid as to believe that they are going to save their lives in that manner after what happened to Kamenev and Zinoviev. It has been said that they have been tortured into confessing. But what greater and more effective torture can there be than knowledge of certain death? In any case, the men in the courtroom have been shown not the slightest evidence of having been tortured or of being under duress. It is said by some that they have been hypnotized into confessing, or that the prosecution, working upon its knowledge of Slav psychology, has somehow trapped these men into confessing deeds of which they are not guilty. For example, the unamity with which the men have been confessing is taken as proof that the confessions are false and have been obtained by some mysterious means. Yet these assertions rest upon no tangible or logical proof whatever. the idea that some inexplicable form of oriental mesmerism has been used is one that sound reason must reject as utterly fantastic. The very unamity of the defendants, far from proving that this trial is also a “frame-up”, appears to me to prove directly the contrary. For if these men are innocent, then certainly at least one of the three dozen, knowing that he faced death in any case, would have blurted out the truth. It is inconceivable that out of this great number of defendants, all should lie when lies would not do one of them any good. But why look beyond the obvious for the truth, why seek in mysticism or in dark magic for facts that are before one’s very nose? Why not accept the plain fact that the men are guilty? And this fact, if accepted with regard to the men now on trial, must also be accepted with regard to the men who were executed after the first trial.
-Why I Resigned From the Trotsky defense Committee, by Mauritz A. Hallgren

We were all horrified by that purge. We forgot the very meaning of the term. The dictionary defines "purge" as to "make physically and spirtually clean".
That purge eliminated Russia's Fifth Column. I found no British or American correspondent in Russia who thought that the famous confessions made by Radek, Tukhachevsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinky, Pletnov, Rosengoltz and the others had been extorted by torture.
Under Soviet law these and other thousands who had been affiliated with them had been guilty of treason and deserved the death penalty.
Had only the Low Countries and Poland and Norway and the other slave states eliminated their own traitors how much happier their fate would have been
-Quentin Reynolds (American journalist and ww2 correspondent), Only The Stars Are Neutral, 1943, p.93 https://ia902908.us.archive.org/9/items ... eutral.pdf

We may not understand the intricacies of Marxism, but we should have known that the grave Hitler has been digging for conservatives and democrats alike was intentionally made big enough to bury the Russians as well. Fortunately, unlike out diplomats, the Russians did realise the dangers and that is the reason for their ruthless suppression of fifth columnists.
The executions which so horrified us and were termed enigmatic and barbaric, should have been seen in a different light by an intelligent diplomacy, particularly if they considered the fate of Norway and France and the role of the fifth columnists played in those two countries.
A clever diplomat could have willingly admitted that a little well-directed shooting in France and Belgium on the Russian model might have saved Brussels, Oslo, Amsterdam and Paris.
George Sava, War Without Guns: The Psychological Front, 1943,


### Russian Legal System
An important point to keep in mind is the peculiarity of Russian legal procedure. It differs drastically from ours, and resembles to some extent the French system, where the real "trial" is the preliminary investigation; the final court session does not so much determine guilt as decide what penalty shall be attached to the guilty. In Russia, a prisoner is not brought to what we call a "trial" until he has confessed. Within the circumscriptions of Russian procedure the trials were fair enough. The defendants had the right of legal defense ; they had the privilege of crossexamining witnesses ; they talked with the greatest vivacity and freedom. The attitude of the court was severe but not coercive. The closing speeches of the prosecutor, A. Y. Vyshinsky, were violent, but during the testimony he treated the defendants with reasonable consideration.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 577

### Trots Held out for Months before confessing
The confessions, in both the first and second trials, bewildered observers because it seemed literally inconceivable (a) that men like Sokolnikov Smimov, Radck, Serebryakov, and so on could possibly be traitors, and (b) that they should have so meekly gone to conviction without a struggle. Point (a) we shall come to later on. As to point (b), the defendants did struggle. It lasted during all the preliminary examination which was prolonged. Radek held out two and a half months. Muralovv, an old Trotskyist, held out eight months. Radek says. of him, "I was convinced he would rather perish in prison that say a single word".
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 577

### Surrender of Ukraine to Germany As Price for Non-Intereference
The defendants were accused of sabotage and wrecking, of selling information of military importance to Japan and Germany, of plots to murder Molotov and other members of the government, and of conspiracy with Germany and Japan whereby, if the plotters usurped power in the Soviet Union, the Ukraine was to be surrendered to Germany and the Maritime Province to Japan, presumably as a price for non-interference while Stalin was being overthrown. Nothing more sensational or-at first sight-incredible could be imagined.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 579

### Pyatakov Details How Trots Defrauded Soviet Industry To Finance Their Terrorism and Sabotage
Pyatakov revealed-according to his testimony-how, among other things, the Trotskyist movement outside Russia was financed. For instance: in his official capacity as assistant commissar of heavy industry, Pyatakov (incidentally Lenin in his will called Pyatakov one of the ablest men in Soviet Russia), gave orders for machinery to German firms and promised to pay more than the normal price; the difference went to the Trotskyists, through Sedov and other agent,. But Pyatakov says the plot was not engineered "purely for the sake of Trotsky's beautiful eyes."
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 580

Sabotage did occur. Trains were wrecked, soldiers killed. Details came out in testimony that make the flesh creep; officials of the railroads deliberately slowing up car loadings, disrupting freight schedules, stalling trains ( the chief trainwrecker, Knyazev, confessed to getting 15,000 rubles from a Japanese agent) ; engineers ruining chemical factories by burning out their furnaces and sabotaging work in the mines; one defendant, Shestov, described how he ordered the murder of an honest official who suspected sabotage in the coal industry.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 581

### Every Important Defendant Was a Trot
Every important defendant in the first and second trials was a Zinovievite or a Trotskyist. Radek, Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, had been Trotskyists for years. Radek joined the Trotsky faction in 1923, went into exile, and only recanted in 1929; he was readmitted to grace in 1930. Their opposition to Stalin was ingrained and inexpungeable ; they were Trotskyists to the bone ; when they saw things gQing badly according to their lights, it was perfectly reasonable for them to ,um back to their old leader. Moreover, these old revolutionaries, quite apart from the fact that they were Trotskyists and therefore dissidents, were conspirators by nature, conspirators born and bred. From their very earliest days they had breathed the air of plot and counterplot. The day of their eminence passed ; Stalin wanted engineers and administrators ; they were naturally disgruntled. In a police-run state like Russia, one should remember, discontent can be expressed only by conspiracy. And Radek and company were congenitally incapable of giving conspiracy up.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 581

The Trotskyists-outside Russia at least-made no effort to conceal their violent hatred of the Stalinist regime. They were far beyond such "bourgeois" considerations as orthodox patriotism. They were world revolutionaries, and they no longer regarded tht U.S.S.R. as a revolutionary or communist state. They had the same aim as pre-1939 Germany and Japan, to overthrow the Stalinist regime. Stalin was as much ill enemy to them as Hitler. And they were willing to cooperate even with Hitler, at that time an obvious ally, for their supreme goal-Stalin's destruction.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 582

### Defeatism Was The Motivation Of Trotskyites
Radek. and the others testified over and over again-the central issue of the trial - that they felt war to be inevitable in 1933 or 1934 andthat the Russians would be defeated. They thought that things were going very badly, and that when the crash came the Soviet Union would not survive it. Therefore, as good world revolutionaries, they deemed it their duty to get to work and perfect an underground organization that would survive the war, so that revolutionary communism would not altogether perish. Also, if war came, they might themselves have had a chance at getting power in Russia, and therefore an attempt to buy the Germans off, buy the Japanese off, was natural.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 582

### Trotsky Eager For a German War Against USSR
(a) Trotsky was actively eager for a German war against the U.S.S.R., and he hoped that the U.S.S.R. would lose-therefore he sought to weaken it by sabotage; (b) his ambition and his lust for office were such that he was quite willing to give up the Ukraine and the Maritime Provinces as a price for power. One should not forget that Trotsky fought the Tsar during the Great War much as he fights Stalin now, that Lenin crossed Germany with German aid in a German sealed train, and that Trotsky signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk giving an immense amount of Russian territory to Germany.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 583

### Tukhachevsky Wanted Power For Himself
But investigation, so far as investigation was possible, began to disclose a number of enlightening details. Tukhachevsky, brilliant and ambitious, wanted power for himself ; he and Voroshilov were on bad terms, it was said ; a general impression in military circles is that Tukhachevsky planned a "palace" coup d'etat to get rid of Stalin and set up a dictatorship himself. Stalin got him first.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 584

Few people think that Tukhachevsky could have sold out to Germany, or promised the defeat of his own army in the event of war; but it is quite possible that he envisaged some arrangement with the Reichswehr independently of Stalin. He wanted the Red Army and the German army to work together; politics prevented this. He was known to be an opponent of the Franco-Soviet pact, and the French distrusted him. One suggestion is that the Reichswehr planned to overthrow Hitler just as Tukhachevsky wanted to overthrow Stalin, the two armies to refrain from interference with each other.
John Gunther - Inside Europe, p 584
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Charlotte
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For spreading quickly in shitty formats like twitter :Lpoint
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Joseph Davies,US ambassador
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