Read Online Trotsky by Bertrand M. Patenaude - Free Book Online
Authors: Bertrand M. Patenaude
Ads: Link
extended over eight days, usually divided into morning and late-afternoon sessions. Trotsky remained seated throughout, frequently turning to ask his secretaries for one or another pertinent document or publication.
Trotsky and Jean van Heijenoort inside the Blue House during the Dewey Commission hearings, April 1937.
Bernard Wolfe Slide Collection, Hoover Institution Archives
Trotsky’s testimony about his political career and his relations with the defendants in the Moscow trials ran along smoothly, until Goldman asked him to describe the fate of his children. His two daughters from his first marriage were both dead, one from sickness, the other by suicide in Berlin after the Soviet government stripped her of her Soviet citizenship. The younger of Trotsky and Natalia’s two sons had recently been arrested in the USSR. Goldman asked whether under Soviet law,the children of a traitor, or alleged traitor, were also considered guilty. Formally, no, Trotsky replied, but in practice, yes. “All the criminal proceedings, all the trials, and all the confessions are based upon the persecution of the members of the family.”
Dewey then asked if this statement would be verified by documentary evidence. “This is simply an opinion,” Goldman responded. “It is an opinion of the witness. I will ask him whether there is any documentary evidence—” “Excuse me, it is not an opinion,” Trotsky cried in anger. He stuttered, searching for the right words in English, his face twisted in anguish as tears welled up in his eyes. “It is my personal experience,” he said at last. “In what way?” Goldman asked. Trotsky replied, “I paid for the experience with my two children.”
When Goldman turned to the evidence presented in the two Moscow trials, Trotsky clearly relished the opportunity to expose the Soviet prosecutor’s sloppiness in cooking up evidence against him. One of the defendants in the first trial claimed to have had an incriminating meeting with Trotsky’s son, Lyova, in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen in November 1932—but the hotel had burned down in 1917. In the second trial, defendant Pyatakov confessed to having flown from Berlin to Oslo in December 1935 to receive conspiratorial instructions from Trotsky—when in fact no airplane had been able to land at the snowbound Oslo airfield in December, or for the remainder of the winter.
Everyone in the room, and Trotsky more than anyone, wished that a Soviet, or pro-Moscow, attorney could have been present to challenge his testimony and inject some drama into the proceedings. In fact, the commission had invited representatives of the Soviet government, the American Communist Party, the Mexican Communist Party, and the Confederation of Mexican Workers to present evidence and cross-examine Trotsky, but they all declined or ignored these invitations.
After an exhaustive review of the trial evidence lasting three days, Trotsky was questioned at great length about his ideological convictions and his political views. This aspect of his testimony was considered essential to his defense: Would a dedicated Marxist revolutionary like Trotsky, a man who had always repudiated individual terrorism as a political tool, and who even now championed Soviet socialism overWestern capitalism, be remotely likely to conspire with fascists against the USSR, to seek the restoration of capitalism there, or to plot the assassination of Stalin and other Soviet leaders?
Trotsky held forth on a wide variety of topics related to Marxist theory, Bolshevik politics, Soviet history, and Stalin’s treachery, sprinting ahead without concern for the hurdles of English vocabulary, grammar, and syntax he toppled along the way. Dewey was riveted, edified by Trotsky’s excursions into the theory and practice of communism, and entertained by his flashes of humor and wit. Halfway through the hearings, Dewey wrote to his future second wife in New York, “‘Truth, justice,
Trotsky and Jean van Heijenoort inside the Blue House during the Dewey Commission hearings, April 1937.
Bernard Wolfe Slide Collection, Hoover Institution Archives
Trotsky’s testimony about his political career and his relations with the defendants in the Moscow trials ran along smoothly, until Goldman asked him to describe the fate of his children. His two daughters from his first marriage were both dead, one from sickness, the other by suicide in Berlin after the Soviet government stripped her of her Soviet citizenship. The younger of Trotsky and Natalia’s two sons had recently been arrested in the USSR. Goldman asked whether under Soviet law,the children of a traitor, or alleged traitor, were also considered guilty. Formally, no, Trotsky replied, but in practice, yes. “All the criminal proceedings, all the trials, and all the confessions are based upon the persecution of the members of the family.”
Dewey then asked if this statement would be verified by documentary evidence. “This is simply an opinion,” Goldman responded. “It is an opinion of the witness. I will ask him whether there is any documentary evidence—” “Excuse me, it is not an opinion,” Trotsky cried in anger. He stuttered, searching for the right words in English, his face twisted in anguish as tears welled up in his eyes. “It is my personal experience,” he said at last. “In what way?” Goldman asked. Trotsky replied, “I paid for the experience with my two children.”
When Goldman turned to the evidence presented in the two Moscow trials, Trotsky clearly relished the opportunity to expose the Soviet prosecutor’s sloppiness in cooking up evidence against him. One of the defendants in the first trial claimed to have had an incriminating meeting with Trotsky’s son, Lyova, in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen in November 1932—but the hotel had burned down in 1917. In the second trial, defendant Pyatakov confessed to having flown from Berlin to Oslo in December 1935 to receive conspiratorial instructions from Trotsky—when in fact no airplane had been able to land at the snowbound Oslo airfield in December, or for the remainder of the winter.
Everyone in the room, and Trotsky more than anyone, wished that a Soviet, or pro-Moscow, attorney could have been present to challenge his testimony and inject some drama into the proceedings. In fact, the commission had invited representatives of the Soviet government, the American Communist Party, the Mexican Communist Party, and the Confederation of Mexican Workers to present evidence and cross-examine Trotsky, but they all declined or ignored these invitations.
After an exhaustive review of the trial evidence lasting three days, Trotsky was questioned at great length about his ideological convictions and his political views. This aspect of his testimony was considered essential to his defense: Would a dedicated Marxist revolutionary like Trotsky, a man who had always repudiated individual terrorism as a political tool, and who even now championed Soviet socialism overWestern capitalism, be remotely likely to conspire with fascists against the USSR, to seek the restoration of capitalism there, or to plot the assassination of Stalin and other Soviet leaders?
Trotsky held forth on a wide variety of topics related to Marxist theory, Bolshevik politics, Soviet history, and Stalin’s treachery, sprinting ahead without concern for the hurdles of English vocabulary, grammar, and syntax he toppled along the way. Dewey was riveted, edified by Trotsky’s excursions into the theory and practice of communism, and entertained by his flashes of humor and wit. Halfway through the hearings, Dewey wrote to his future second wife in New York, “‘Truth, justice,
Similar Books
