Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials
1. The Commission has used the official records as published in English by The People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R.
2. Published by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1936.
3. Published by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1937.
4. Third edition, corrected and amplified, 132 pages. Published by OGIZ, Moscow, 1936.
5. For Trotsky’s testimony concerning the nineteenth accused who was known to him, V. Olberg, see Chapter XIII.
6. For discussion of the letter allegedly sent by Trotsky to Smirnov through Yuri Gaven in the autumn of 1932, see § 47.
7. Sedov mistakenly says that Dreitzer stated he had received this letter from his sister at Warsaw. According to the record of the trial, Dreitzer’s sister brought him the letter from Warsaw. The record does not show where Dreitzer was.
8. A pseudonym: being a political refugee the witness did not give his real name, which is in our possession.
9. We are informed that as a general rule the German officials did not stamp passports at this border.
10. The first name of “Eugene Bauer.” (§ 63.)
11. Although the Foreign Office supplied these copies, they have refused to certify them (CR 13; also letters in our possession). However, since they have been widely published and the Foreign Office has never denied their authenticity, the Commission considers itself justified in accepting them in evidence.
12. See §§ 17, 4a, and 177.
13. In 1927, the left wing opposition in the Communist Party of Germany was led by Ruth Fischer and A. Maslow and though supporting the Opposition Bloc in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adhered in actuality to the Zinovievist section of that bloc. The Trotskyist Opposition was organized at a conference in Berlin in 1930 as a result of the unification of the Minority Group of the Lenin League (Leninbund) and the so-called “Wedding Opposition.”
14. International Press Correspondence. Official publication of the C.I.
15. Open Letter to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Bulletin of the Opposition, No. to, April, 1930; The Militant (New York), May 24, June 7 and 14, 1930. (See $ 206.)
16. Sedov’s passport shows that the visa on which he entered France as a resident was dated March 23, 1933.
17. Official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany, formerly published daily in Berlin.
18. As we go to press we are in receipt of a deposition by Gunter Reimann, a German exile who was lately in New York. This deposition (PC Exh. 9, S 3), certified by the Secretary of the Commission, states that Reimann has never belonged to the Trotskyist movement; that he knew Berman-Yurin in Berlin; that Berman-Yurin was a Russian, former member of the C.P.S.U., and also an active member of the German Communist Party; that he returned to Russia in pursuance of an order from the Russian Party representative in Berlin, accompanied by a threat of expulsion from the Party in case of refusal; and that the reason for this order was the wish of the Soviet government to avoid embarrassment through the possible arrest of a Russian Communist doing anti-fascist work in Germany.
19. In the record of the trial his name is listed as “Lurye, Moissei Ilyich (Emel, Alexander).” (ZK 39, 179, 180.)
20. It is typical of the methods of the prosecution that Vyshinsky indulged in the following prejudicial question: “And you combined all this: member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and at the same time conspired with German agents, and read Trotsky?” (PR 250.)
21. See § 21 of this report.
22. One of the accused in the January trial, who was a witness in the trial of the Kemerovo engineers at Novosibirsk in November, 1936.
23. Radek began his political career in the Social-Democratic movement of Galicia (1901). From 1904 to 1908 he worked in the Polish Social-Democratic Party. His connection with the German movement dated from 1908. See App. II.
24. In checking this quotation we find that it appears as Trotsky gave it in Lenin’s Collected Works, State Publishers, 1925 (Vol. XV, pp. 131-2). In the Third Russian edition of Lenin’s Collected Works, published in 1935, the name of Riazanov has been substituted for that of Radek (Vol. XXII, p. 331). The editors neither explain the change nor even state that in earlier editions Radek’s name figured in place of Riazanov’s.
25. Since this physician lives in a semi-fascist country, we do not give his name or his nationality.
26. This date seems more probable than that of August 29, given by Mr. Paton, since if Mr. Paton and Mr. Schmidt had visited Trotsky on August 29 their visit would have coincided with that of Mr. Smith, who does not mention them and is not mentioned by them.
27. Submitted on October 15, 1923, to the C.C. of the C.P.S.U. by forty-six Communist leaders, including Pyatakov, Preobrazhensky, Sosnovsky, Byeloborodov, Sapronov, Muralov, Antonov-Ovseyenko, Kossior, Serebryakov, Raphael, etc. It supported, substantially, the views on workers’ democracy advanced by Trotsky in the dispute then current.
28. Director of the Technological Section of the NIU, teacher in the Military Academy in Moscow. – W-H.
29. Chemical engineer of long standing, of German-Baltic origin, leader of the phosphate section in Glavkhimprom (Central Administration of the Chemical Industry) , a division of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry in which Pyatakov was Assistant Commissar. Wolfsohn was arrested in 1933 for unknown reasons, and has not since been heard of. – W-H.
30. Professor, academician, Director of the Scientific Institute for Fertilizers (NIU). – W-H.
31. See footnote 29.
32. Director of Giprokhim. Old worker. Formerly active in the Chemical Workers’ section of the Profintern. Friend of Hrasche. – W-H.
33. Mentioned by the accused Rataichak as one of his associates in wrecking and diversion (PR 418, 420).
34. Also mentioned as a Trotskyist by Hrasche (PR 431). In an interview with Politiken, January 28, 1937, Mr. Lund said, “I am neither an engineer nor a Trotskyist, neither was I ever employed in any Russian factory.” He stated that he had never heard Hrasche’s name.
35. Since the documents reprinted in this book have been frequently and widely published, and their authenticity has not been challenged, the Commission considers itself justified in citing the book as a reference. The book was first published in Russian, in Berlin, in 1932. The first part, Trotsky’s Letter to the Bureau of Party History, was published in English in 1928 in “The Real Situation in Russia” (cf. § 181), pp. 199-315.
36. The interpretation obviously indicated by the text is that Stalin was dealing with two stages of socialist victory, the initial and the ultimate.
37. Trotsky’s theory, briefly stated, was that because of the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, and the peculiar contradictions in the Russian economy, the bourgeois tasks of the revolution could not be accomplished either under bourgeois leadership or under that of an independent peasant movement, but only under the hegemony of the proletariat; and that the proletariat could not but proceed immediately to undertake the socialist tasks of the revolution; but that the socialist revolution in one country could not succeed unless it was followed by a series of socialist revolutions in other countries. This perspective of the immediate assumption of power by the proletariat without an intervening period of bourgeois capitalism, was labelled Trotskyism by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike. (See Trotsky’s biography, App. 2.)
38. Annotation No. 74 concerning this pamphlet in Trotsky’s Collected Works, Vol. III, Part I says: The pamphlet ‘Program of Peace’ represents an elaboration of articles published by L. D. Trotsky in Nashe Slovo [Paris] during 1915 and 1816 (p. 387)
39. The trial predicted took place on March 2-13, 1937, in the interval between the transmission of the final revision of this report to members of the Commission and the receipt of their approval. There were twenty-one accused, among them N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and K. G. Rakovsky. Our investigation of the two preceding trials, and our conclusions, have made an investigation of the Bukharin-Rykov trial unnecessary.
It suffices to state that we were able to offer to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, for transmission to his government, evidence from our files impugning in vital points the testimony of certain accused against Leon Trotsky.
40. One member of the alleged “center,” L. G. Rubinovich, had been sentenced in the Shakhty trial. He was not “implicated” and tried in this trial because, in the words of the indictment, he “did not participate in the work of the counter-revolutionary organization during the last two years of its existence when the gravest crimes were committed.” (A similar situation did not save I. N. Smirnov in the August trial.) Another member, P. A. Palchinsky, had been previously shot by the GPU in connection with the alleged wrecking in the gold and platinum industry. A third, the engineer Khrennikov, “died during the preliminary investigation.”
41. An alleged Commercial-Industrial Committee abroad, composed of emigre capitalists. This was the “native” counter-revolutionary organization with which Ramzin and his colleagues allegedly maintained contact.
42. Note to the first edition of Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume XIV, part 2, page 481-2. Moscow: State Publishers, 1921.