Constant Reader Background to a Crime

Since my paragraph of December 19 mentioning that August will see the 20th anniversary of the murder of Trotsky (and recalling how the Daily Worker treated the news of that murder), a friend has told me of a remarkable book recently published in America (and due to come out here soon) which has appeared very timely for this anniversary—and all the more so because the murderer is due for release from his Mexican prison about then.

The book is “The Mind of an Assassin’, by Isaac Don Levine, whose life of Stalin (1931) was described by Philip Grierson, in his invaluable ‘Books on Soviet Russia, 19171942’, as ‘the best of the early biographies, despite the hostility of the author, an able American journalist’. Levine has put together the evidence regarding the murderer’s identity and the pre-history of the crime which has been assembled since Gorkin and Salazar brought out their ‘Murder in Mexico’ ten years ago.

A great deal of information about the prisoner’s personal record has been uncovered. Of considerable political interest are the details of how this man, whose real name is Ramon Mercader, was recruited to the Soviet secret service in his native Spain in 1937, by the political policemen operating there under cover of Soviet aid to the Republican side in the Civil War.

When Trotsky moved from Europe to Mexico in that same year, the Stalinist murder-squad was faced with a new problem in accomplishing its task of destroying him. The young Spaniard Mercarder was assigned the responsibility of making his way into the Trotsky household and finding the opportunity to kill his host. He spent two years of methodical work on this, beginning by cultivating the friendship of an American girl supporter of Trotsky’s who was living in Paris!

Characteristically, the passport (in the name of ‘Frank Jacson’) which Mercader used during one stage of his ‘expedition’ had been taken by the Soviet political police in Spain from a Canadian volunteer killed fighting with the International Brigade.

According to the prison criminologist’s report, quoted by Levine, Mercader (who calls himself Jacques Mornard) ‘does not feel any repentance for his crime’— for which he was secretly awarded by Stalin the order of Hero of the Soviet Bevan Inevitably, in these recent days when Aneurin Bevan’s health has been a centre of attention, people interested in the on the political situation.’

How the revived industrial militancy which began in 1933, led by rank-and-file movements, was defeated and brought to naught is a story which also has its relevance to today’s problems. A first glance at this story forms the concluding part of the Socialist Labour League pamphiet ‘Some Past Rank-. . and-File Movements’ which I mentioned last week.

‘