OUR REVOLUTIONARY CONTINUITY Moscow Trials: 50 years later

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"They were outstanding figures in Lenin's 'general staff '...co-founders of both the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International." 14 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1986 Last month was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Moscow Trials. These shameful proceedings were engineered by dictator Josef Stalin to erase the last vestiges of the leadership that had led the Russian Revolution to victory.

We are reprinting below excerpts from an article on the trials by Joseph Hansen, who was secretary to Leon Trotsky during the latter's final exile in Mexico. Hansen was a national leader of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party until his death in 1979.

The article was originally printed as a foreword to the pamphlet, Stalin's Frame-up System and the Moscow Trials, published in 1950 by Pioneer Publishers in New York and now out of print.

On August 19, 1936, the curtain rose on a scarcely credible scene in a Moscow court room. Among the prisoners sat Gregory Zinoviev, Leon Kamenev, I.N. Smirnov, S.V. Mirachkovsky, G. Yevdokimov, V Ter-Vaganyan, Ivan Bakayev, and Y Dreitser.

They were outstanding figures in Lenin's "general staff" which led the November 1917 revolution in Russia, co-founders of both the Bolshevik Party and the Com -munist International, men who had held the highest Soviet posts.

Against them as prosecutor stood Andrei Vyshinsky, a former member of the counterrevolutionary Menshevik opposition to Lenin's regime in the early days. This representative of Stalin accused Lenin's former comrades-in-arms of murdering Kirov, a top dignitary, more than a year and a half before-although some of them were in prison at the time.

Vyshinsky accused them of conspiring with Hitler's Nazi government to prepare "a number of terroristic acts" against Stalin and other high bureaucrats. Vyshinsky described these internationally famous lead -ers as "traitors, murderers, and bandits," as "liars and clowns," "mad dogs of capital -ism."

Leon Trotsky, the organizer of the Red Army and co-founder with Lenin of the first workers' state in history, was in exile in Norway; but he and his son Leon Sedov were accused of having initiated the conspiracy.

The trial ran for only five brief days, although a total of 16 defendants faced the prosecutor. On the sixth day the victims were sentenced "all to the supreme penalty—to be shot, and all the property personally belonging to them to be confis -cated." Within 24 hours the press announced rejection of an appeal for mercy. "The verdict has been carried out," continued the dispatch by way of obituary.

Nightmare of "confessions"

In this way, Stalin staged in Moscow the first of three trials designed to provide juridical justification for the purges that wiped out the leaders of the November 1917 revolution. To most people at the time, they appeared part of a nightmare world.

It was simply not credible that a revolutionary like Zinoviev, for example, who had spent 10 years as Lenin's collaborator before the Russian Revolution and played a leading part in overthrowing Czardom and establishing the basic foundations for socialism in the USSR, could have arrived at "fascism," as he "confessed," and helped set up a center that, according to Vyshinsky, "organized and established secret communications with the German fascists."

As a whole, however, public opinion [outside the Soviet Union] never accepted the Stalinist version of the trials. Today there is little mystery about the "confes -sions" after the many revelations from those who have managed to escape from the GPU [Stalin's secret police, now the KGB] and describe the psychological and physical • in:

MaYorada tortures used to bring a prisoner into court with his will to resist utterly crushed.

People interested in the truth turned to hear Leon Trotsky's answer to the charges. Trotsky more than any other person could expose the "confessions" if they were lies. The Stalinist regime responded to this danger by pressuring the Norwegian government to silence the exiled revolutionary.

Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, were placed under close police surveillance, his secretaries deported. All incoming and outgoing mail was censored. The Norwe -gian "democrats" prohibited Trotsky from answering the charges leveled at him in Moscow or from even taking court action against his defamers.

Revolutionary heroes accused The liberal Cardenas government offered Trotsky and his wife asylum in Mexico. They arrived at Tampico on January 9, 1937.

Two weeks later, on January 23, a second trial opened in Moscow. Facing the exMenshevik Vyshinsky and his collaborators on the judges' bench were figures of heroic stature in the early days of the Soviet Pyatakov, an outstanding figure in the Ukraine, was considered by Lenin one of the most competent administrators in the party. Serebriakov was a former secretary of the Central Commitee of the Bolshevik party. Muralov, a famous hero of all three insurrections in Moscow-1905, February and October 1917—served under Lenin as military governor of the city.

Sokolnikov, a member of the Central Committee and editor of Pravda in 1917, became People's Commissar of Finance, then ambassador to London. Radek was one of the most brilliant journalists the Soviet Union has produced.

These men were accused of conspiring to Executed L. Kameans Radek IN Bukharint ecuted Krestlesks bring back the capitalism they had helped to overthrow, of plotting to kill Stalin and his favorites, and of betraying the workers' state to Japanese and Nazi German imperi -alism.

Top Soviet leaders on trial A little more than a year later, March 2-13, 1938, the third great trial took place. Among the victims sat no less than eight former Soviet ministers, not counting Trotsky, who was in Mexico. Rykov, Bukharin, Rakovksy, Krestinsky, and Yagoda were among the former top Soviet leaders accused in this trial.

Among the treasonous acts these former heads of government allegedly committed on behalf of Hitler were some that sound more natural to a psychiatric ward than a criminal court: "Grinko has mentioned the wrecking work he performed in the sphere of taxation and in the savings banks, where he tried in every way to incense the public."

"Take Zelensky," said Vyshinsky in the apoplectic that has won him such high posts and emoluments under Stalin, "I shall only refer here to the most abominable practice of mixing glass and nails with foodstuffs, butter in particular, which hit at the most vital interests, the health and lives of our population. Glass and nails in butter! This is so monstrous a crime that, in my opinion, all other crimes of the kind pale before it."

While we pale at the glass and nails in this butter, Vyshinsky hints at one of the political motives in back of the trial: "It is now clear why there are interruptions of supplies here and there, why, with our riches and abundance of products, there is a shortage first of one thing, then of another. It is these traitors who are responsible for it."

Mussolini, without justification, able to remark about this trial in Popolo d'Italia: "Stalin renders a commendable service to fascism."

Victims in millions

Had Stalin confined his bloodletting to the men processed for exhibition, this alone would have entitled him to go down in history as one of the most sinister figures in the annals of tyranny. However, the trials provided only the most spectacular public incidents in the periodic blood purges that swept the Soviet Union from 1935 on.

Victor Kravchenko, a former high Stalinist official who survived the purges and escaped abroad, reports in his book, "I Chose Freedom," that the victims num -bered as many as "9 or 10 million, including 60 to 80 percent of the top leaders of the Party, the Comsomols, the armed forces, the government, industry, farming, and national culture."

The slave labor armies of the GPU swelled to unknown size. Some estimates of their number go as high as 15 to 20 million, and even more. These figures do not include those who died before the firing squad or in the cattle cars transporting them to Siberia. Nor does it include the tens of millions persecuted and cowed into silence by the terror.

The Red Army was decimated. Principal victims were the veterans of Trotsky's time who defeated the imperialist armies sent to crush the young workers' republic after the First World War. In 1937 the entire leading staff from Marshal Tukhachevsky down were shot without the pretense of an open trial.

The trials served to cover the debacle of Stalinist foreign policy which paved the way for Hitler's seizure of power in Ger -many. At the same time, they prepared the ground for official pacts with both Hitler and the Mikado. This was Stalin's way of getting ready for the oncoming World War II.

Workers' democracy smashed Another aim was to try to compromise Trotsky's program for the democratic rehabilitation of the Soviet regime and return to international revolutionary social -ism as practiced in Lenin's day. Stalin hoped to smear Trotsky and his followers with the Nazi brush. Trotsky was singled out for this attention because he represented the tradition of genuine Marxism.

The execution of all former companions of Lenin who enjoyed independent standing removed possible contenders to power. Such figures might become centers of mass opposition to the dictatorial regime even though they were not actually followers of Trotsky at all and kept their high positions, many of them, only in return for slander and vilification of Trotsky.

It would be a serious mistake, however, to hold Stalin alone responsible for these abominations. Stalin, no matter what his personal guilt, is a political figure representing social forces. He could do nothing unless a powerful segment of Soviet society stood behind him.

This segment is the bureaucracy that spreads its devouring cells throughout the USSR like a deadly cancer. It is this bureaucracy, estimated by Trotsky to embrace millions of upper-bracket person -ages, that found it necessary in pursuit of power, prestige, and special privilege to liquidate Lenin's regime of workers' demo -cracy.

Lacking genuine popular support, the Stalin regime has no long lease on life in the USSR. It is doomed. It is only a question of time until the people of the Soviet Union with the aid of their allies among the workers in other lands again take up the iron broom of revolution, sweep the Stalinist filth from the face of the earth, and resume their march to the free world of the socialist future.

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U.S. infant-mortality rates continuing far above statistics Dr. David Kessner, professor of community medicine at Georgetown University, analyzed 142,017 births in New York City. The results, published in "Infant Death:

An Analysis by Maternal Risk and Health Care" (1973), showed dramatically the influence of prenatal care on mothers placed in high-risk categories because of their Women with high social risks (low income/poverty, poor nutrition, unwed teenagers, lack of education, large families) were compared to women with medical risks (diabetes, toxemia, high blood pressure), and low-risk more non-profit hospitals are taken over by huge The results showed that infants of low-risk mothers corporations and run for profit rather than human need. who had received adequate prenatal care died at a rate of It is ironic that the richest country in the world should Recently in Oakland, Calif., one of the nation's only 8.7 per 1000 births, while for low-risk mothers have the highest infant mortality rate among the highest infant mortality areas, the last private hospital who received no prenatal care, deaths of new-born infants developed nations, but it is a testament to the priority willing to accept Medi-Cal canceled its Medi-Cal contract soared to 21. Among women who were considered to be after Republic Health Corp. of Dallas, one of the largest both social and medical risks, the infant death rate for profit-making hospital chains, bought the hospital from As early as 1968, Dr. George A. Silver, a top those who had received adequate prenatal care was 29.9;

Vesper Society, a non-profit organization. administrator in the U.S. Department of Health, The result is that in an area where the infant mortality for those who had not, the figure was 55.1. Education and Welfare, said: "We estimate that between According to an article in Science News, "if all the rate for Blacks is 21.1 deaths per 1000 live births 45,000 and 50,000 babies die unnecessarily [in the women in the New York City study had received adequate (compared to the national average of 10.7 deaths per United States] because of inadequate care." Silver care, infant deaths could have been reduced by a continued, "Our infant mortality in this country is worse 1000 live births), there is only one overcrowded county hospital to serve these high-risk women.

Dr. Clarence Avery, a surgeon at the county hospital, There is a solution to these needless deaths. We must And a crime it is: Many pregnant women are denied commented, "Doctors in the community now who eliminate the social inequalities which cause the Black adequate healthcare and are put at unnecessary risk to provide prenatal care are even less likely to do it if there infant mortality rate to be twice as high as that for both their own health and that of their infant. A blatant is no hospital nearby where they can perform the whites. Take the hospitals out of the hands of big example of the medical establishment's priorities is the deliveries. The point is, it is basically a deprivation of business. Healthcare is a right. Hospitals and clinics increase of private hospitals refusing care to low-income healthcare to a community that was already underserved." should be free and run according to the needs of their and poor pregnant women. And this trend is increasing as This deprivation of healthcare is a major reason for put on human life in our society.

than a scandal; it is a crime." in other developed nations. social conditions.

women. third-from 21.9 per 1000 to 14.7." communities, not profits.

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