Stalinists and the Moscow Trials

process.

To cover up the sharp turn to the right involved in Stalin's treacherous •Popular Front' policy, they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the campaign of slander against the Marxist alternative, Trotskyism.

It is now three decades since the first of the big Moscow show-trials, on which this campaign was based. For the men ot King Street, these have been 30 years of lies and betrayal on behalf of the Soviet bureaucrats.

Ten years ago, Khrushchev made his denunciation of his former master, Stalin.

John Gollan, Andrew Rothstein, R. Palme Dutt, J. R. Campbell and the rest have tried hard since then to sweep their Stalinist past under the carpet.

Once, they justified and glorified Stalin's regime of murder and falsification. Now they must evade responsibility for these actions, it they are to appeal to their new middle-class, liberal public.

But we shall never let them forget.

The working class cannot go forward to power without understanding how the first workers' state gave rise to the monstrosity of Stalinism.

"Very grievous consequences, especially in reference to the beginning of the war, followed Stalin's annihilation of many military commanders and political workers during 19371941. ..?

According to many reports, Khrushchev's remarks caused some members of his audience to have seizures, so great was their consternation and shock. • What astonished them, however, was not the events reported, but the fact that they were officially admitted by the Party Secretary.

Narrow limits Khrushchev's 'revelations' and the results of the investigation of some of the cases of false accusation, could not go beyond very narrow limits.

Although certain of Stalin's victims have been declared innocent, the chief objects of his slander machine have never been referred to-Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov.

The new leaders of the bureaucracy, the latter-day Stalinists, had to try to disentangle themselves from Stalin's corpse.

Nobody in King Street is actually reported to have had a it in 1956, but, as with the Electrical Trades Union ballot-rigging scandal, everyone pretended that the actions reported by Khrushchev were unknown in the British Communist Party.

This is clearly a lie.

Only the most naive of individuals could read the widely publicised verbatim reports of the Moscow Trials without seeing at once that they were crude and gigantic frame-ups.

Whatever accusations we shall make against the Communist Party leaders, naivity is not one of them.

Kamenev

THE the rest of the British Isles.

problem. • ing class.

rested upon its domination of Ireland.

supporters.

Rule'.

the same religious prejudice.

the bourgeoisie.

liberty'. founded a new denomination, the Free Presthe self-styled 'Moderator'. MURDERER AND HIS VICTIMS: Stalin (left) with The first trial IN AUGUST, 1936,, Linoviev, Kamenev and other leaders of the October revolution, • Confessed in open court to the most fantastic crimes. They had joined with Trotsky and Sedov in a conspiracy with Hitler to murder Stalin and some of his associates.

They were responsible's. M. they Kirov in 1934. All the other assassinations, however, failed to come off.

Let us leave aside the utter improbability of these life-long fascism and enemies of the Sovie Union they had helped to establish.

To read the testimony of the accused (there were no witnesses and no evidence to speak of) is to encounter a thousand contradictions.

For example, no two of the defendants gives the same date for the formation of the 'Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre'.

One of those who 'confessed', Smirnov, had been in prison from January 1933 and Zinoviev and Kameney from December 1934.

The most famous absurdity in the trial was the Hotel Bristol. This was the establishment in Copenhagen where Holtzmann 'confessed' he met Sedov and Trotsky in November 1932. and Irish polities these events only something peculiarly Irish, separate from their own struggle. In many ways, the situation in Northern Ireland is an anticipation of the coming problems in Since the last World War, despite an annual emigration of 9,000 people, the unemployment rate has averaged 7 per cent. Considerable state intervention and favourable conditions for foreign investors have failed to make any impression on this One reason for this is the extremely parasitic character of the capitalist class Northern Ireland, which invests the major 'militant Protestants' claim that the governpart of its profits outside Northern Ireland.

One of the main weapons of the ruling class in Northern Ireland has always been the Catholic-Protestant division in the workAs Marx insisted, the British bourgeoisie, ever since the revolution of 1640-1648, has In the name of the Protestant Reformation, enormous tracts of land were swallowed up by the British capitalists and their When, in 1914-1922, the independence movement reached the proportions of Civil War, it was the 'anti-Popery' cry which was used by the Unionists (Tories) to raise a 'loyalist', pro-British army against 'Home Many thousands of these Protestant workers met their death in the battle of the Somme when recruited into the British Army.

The partition of Ireland, with Catholic Eire in the South and Protestant-dominated Ulster in the North, was imposed with the help of Many Protestant workers were deluded into thinking that their 'freedom' was guaranteed only by a religious alliance with The Protestant 'Orange Order', founded long ago as 1795, claims as its basic principle 'the maintenance of civil and religious Paisley was almost unknown outside Belfast until recently. Some 15 years ago he byterian Church of Ulster, of which he is Trotsky was in Copenhagen in November 1932. The world's newspapers reported the fact. But, despite all his efforts, and those of his wife, Trotsky was unable to persuade the German authorities to allow their son to meet them there. In fact, Leon Sedov was able to prove conclusively that he was in Berlin at the time.

in any case, another defendant, Sedov Olbert' in Berlin at the same 'confessed' to meeting moment.

Finally it was discovered after the trial that the Hotel Bristol had been demolished in 1917.* * For a detailed examination of the 1936 trial, see Max Shachtman's 'Behind the Moscow Trials' Pioneer Publishers.

The second trial an introductory Most people heard of him when, with his collaborators, he was expelled from Rome for demonstrating against the moves for Anglican unity with the Vatican.

These moves towards church unity, the recent talks between Lemass (Prime Minister of Eire) and O'Neill (Ulster Prime Minister), and the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, which came into force on July 1, this year, were the incidents immediately preceding the emergence of Paisley's movements as a political force this year.

Besides his religious denomination, Paisley is chairman of a body known as the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee. These ment and the Presbyterian fathers are compromising with the Roman church and with the Catholic South to destroy the political and religious settlement which rules in the North, established by various stages from the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 to the Ireland Act of 1949.

The economic, religious and political factors behind the Paisley movement reflect the problems of the capitalist class in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the British ruling class.

The principal function of Paisley is to divide the working class along religious lines in order to the more easily smash its resistance to big business in the present crisis.

ASSURE DISUNITY

But here is also a basis for Paisley's movement among small business and middle-class people who are being squeezed out by the monopolies.

In the first place the working class in Southern Ireland has for two years at least been in buoyant and militant mood.

The employers have been severely shaken up by unofficial strikes of great determination and strength. As the preparation for the European Common Market goes ahead, with the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement as a preliminary rationalisation, it becomes necessary to assure the continued disunity of the working class.

Big business, Catholic and Protestant, moves towards monopolisation and mutual advantage, but the workers must be divided IN JANUARY 1937, months after the defendants in the Zinoviev trial had been shot, the second trial opened.

Piatakov, Radek and others were charged (and, of course confessed) to belonging to another fascist conspiracy.

This was the 'parallel centre', quite independent the Zinovievite one, but with tar wider aims.

Thus the fantasy was intensified and the contradictions multiplied in the new trial. The 'confessions' at the earlier trial contained not a single word about the 'parallel centre'.

Sabotage These men 'confessed' to plotting the overthrow of the USSR with the aid of Nazi Germany.

To this end, they planned widespread industrial sabotage, they said.

Trains were wrecked, coal mines blown up, nails were put in the butter. In addition, the assassination of Molotov was attempted, but without success. (Molotov's name had been omitted from the list of would-be victims in the 1936 trial. He was relieved to see it restored in 1937)

Piatakov described in detail between Catholic and Protestant.

For example, recently militant Protestants were successful in disaffiliating an Electrical Trades Union • branch in • Belfast from the Trades Council, because of the latter's participation in the Easter Commemoration of the 1916 Dublin uprising against British imperialism.

Secondly, the major investments Northern Ireland in recent years have been by big monopolies like ICI and Courtaulds. These, together with big chain stores, have been accelerating the squeeze on the middle business classes and self-employed people. Now, the Free Trade Agreement takes a certain amount of protection from Southern competition away from these firms, e.g., a meat-processing plant in Belfast last week announced that 1,000 jobs were in danger because lowered tariffs benefitted Southern competitors who are in any case subsidised by the Eire government.

These moves towards the Common Market Will be made even worse for the 'small man' by the recession, in which big companies always have an advantage.

And so we have the classic conditions for fascist movements.

The monopolists and the banks prepare to take on the working class on a bigger scale.

Fascist movements divide the class along national and ideological lines. The forces for this hysterical attack on the unity of the working class are normally recruited from the disoriented middle classes in town and country.

As always, the false 'leaders' of the working class are utterly incapable of answering the threat.

The Communist Party and the Northern Ireland Labour Party have both stated that religioovernment action, and laws forbidding answer Paisley (the Northern Ireland government is, of course, a Tory (Unionist) government).

Mr. Finton Kennedy, president of the Irist Congress of Trade Unions, addressing delegates to the annual conference at Galway on July 19, turned to pay special respect to the Tory Prime Minister O'Neill:

'You have shown yourself and your government worthy leaders, men of integrity and The went to see Trotsky in in December 1935. 'We got into an airplane and set off. We did not stop any, where and at approximately 3 p.m. we landed at the aerodrome in Oslo. There an automobile awaited us.' But it was later proved that in that whole month not a single foreign plane landed at Oslo.

The defendants at both the Zinoviev and Radek-Piatakov trials spoke their lines as directed. The prosecutor, Vishinsky, had no trouble in securing their co-operation. At the end they asked to be punished.

The third trial QUITE DIFFERENT was the third and last of the Moscow trials in 1938. Bukharin, the chief defendant, certainly did confess to the most amazing crimes. But he did it in such a way as to signal his innocence and the guilt of his accusers.

The defendants in 1938 confessed to being spies for Germany, Britain and Japan since 1921. Krestinsky, tor example, a Bolshevik since 1903, explained how in 1922 the German General Seekt had promised him 250,000 marks per annum in return espionage work.

However because of the inflation rampant in Germany at that time, this sum was the price of one box of matches.

Bukharin's treatment of Vishinsky was, by itself, quite sufficient to discredit every charge made against the defendants in the three trials. With wit and courage he demolished his entire testimony, without denying a word of it.

Dialogue

For example, consider this dialogue:

Vishinsky: Accused Bukharin, is it a fact or not that a group of your confederates in the North Caucasus was connected with White Guard emigre circles abroad? Is that a fact or not? Rykov says it is, Slepkov says it is.

Bukharin: If Rykov says it is, I have no grounds for not believing him....

Vishinsky: Answer me 'No'. Bukharin: I cannot say 'No' anc I cannot deny that it did take place.

V.: So that the answer is neither 'Yes' or 'No'?

B.: Nothing of the kind, because facts exist regardless whether they are in anybody's mind. This is a problem of the reality of the outer world. I am no solipsist. arti that technique and investment is retated to work force' leaders for the great struggles already antican be forged.

of Europe. answer to Paisleyism.

letter.)

Bukharin

One of the defendants at the 1938 trial, incidentally, was Yagoda. This man had been the head of the GPU at the time of the 1936 trial. Now he 'confessed' to poisoning Maxim Gorky, in league with the victims of the earlier trial.

Own members How could men like Gollan and Rothstein pretend that they believed all this rubbish? They had personal knowledge, not only of many of the defendants in the trials, but also of two members of the British Communist Party who were engulfed in the accompanying purges.

Rose Cohen was an old cadre of the Communist Party, manager of the Labour Research Department office, and wife of the Comintern agent Petrovsky.

In 1937 while working in Moscow she was arrested as a spy and never heard of again.

Len Wincott was a leader of the Invergordon naval mutiny and a leader in the International Brigade in Spain. He was imprisoned in 1939 in Moscow and not released until 1957.

The CP leaders have never explained these events to their followers.

In other words, these lackeys of bureaucracy decided quite consciously to protect the murderer Stalin and slander his victims. While he dragged the name of Communism in the mud and weakened the USSR, they did all they could to cover up his crimes.

No wonder today that they are ready to split and weaken opposition to the Labour and trade union bureaucrats.

To be continued