Justice for Leon Trotsky!
1988 1988-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 8 →
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1187 Franklin (at Geary), San Francisco For information and tickets call (415) 821-0458 8 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1988 Last month, the Soviet Supreme Court annulled the treason convictions of four leaders of the Russian Revolution who were imprisoned and executed following the Moscow Trials of the 1930s. "The state which they were creating 50 years ago is giving them back their name," the government newspaper Izvestia commented as it announced the "rehabilitation" of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Karl Radek, and Yuri Pyatakov.
Earlier this year, several other victims of the frame-up trials, most notably Nickolai Bukharin, were cleared of their "crimes." The Moscow Trials were engineered by dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate any opposition to his rule. The defendants were charged with a number of improbable activities, including work as agents of Nazi Germany and Japan.
Worn down by torture, Zinoviev and Kamenev confessed at their trial that they had participated in a plot to kill Stalin. The leader of the alleged murder ring was said to be Stalin's most implacable opponent, Leon Trotsky, who was in exile in Mexico. The Moscow News points out in its issue of June 26-July 3: "The main defendant at the trial—in absentia, to Stalin's great dismay—was Trotsky, whom Stalin hated bitterly. Trotsky called Stalin the Revolution's gravedigger in 1926." But the Moscow News fails to that, as the Soviet bureaucracy begins a timid "reevaluation" of its history, the name and the work of Leon Trotsky remain "in absentia." Trotsky, second only to Lenin in prominence as a leader of the revolution, remains little more than a "non-person" in the official history books.
Trotsky's great "crime," in the eyes of the Soviet officialdom, is that he fought Stalin's counterrevolutionary acts without surrender. Stalin's heirs, who remain in power under Gorbachev, can never forgive him for that. To fully exonerate Trotsky would be to reveal his unceasing work for world revolution-which is anathema to Gorbachev and company.
An international campaign is being waged to demand that Leon Trotsky be restored to his rightful place in history and to obtain justice for all the victims of the Moscow Trials. Notable political and intellectual figures from around the world have endorsed the campaign.
This campaign will be the topic of a special presentation at the Aug. 6 Fourth International Celebration in San Francisco. Speakers will include Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov, who has been working to clear Trotsky's name.
Paul Siegel, noted author and cochairperson of the Moscow Trials Campaign Committee in the United States, will also speak at the Aug. 6 event. 7:30 P.M.