Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 11:03:17 +0100 (MET)
Subject: Re: M-G: Eyewitness to the Moscow Open Trials



	
	Dear M-G listers

On Sun, 16 Mar 1997 detcom-AT-sprynet.com wrote:

> ===================================================================> ANNA LOUIS STRONG over a span of more than 4 decades reported on wars,
> revolutions and social upheavals that have transformed maps and
> made history.  Born in 1885 in Nebraska, she went to Russia with
> the American Friends Service in 1921, bringing the first foreign
> relief to the Volga famine sufferers.  As founder and editor of
> "Moscow News," she had the unique opportunity of visiting every
> corner of the vast Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and of
> witnessing at first hand the epic of Socialist construction which
> hurled that country from medievalism to the front rank among 
> modern nations.  In the course of many visits to the USSR and China,
> she met the foremost leaders of those countries face to face --
> Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, Molotov, Mme. Sun Yat-sen, Voroshilov.
> She is the author of more than 15 books about Russia and China.
> Here is an excerpt from one entitled; "The Stalin Era" where she
> describes her eyewitness account of the Moscow Open Trials:
> 
> 
> "The most important cases were tried in a large hall to which were
> admitted the Soviet and foreign press, the foreign diplomatic corps
> and a changing stream of representatives from factories and government
> government offices.  I sat in the court and watched the tale unfold.
> Zinoviev and Kamenev, once friends of Lenin and eminent theoreticians,
> told the judges, the audience and the world that, having lost power
> through the rise of Stalin, they had conspired to seize power by
> assassinating several leaders, presumably including Stalin, through
> agents who, if caught, would not know the identity of the top
> conspirators, but would appear to be ordinary agents of the German
> Gestapo.  The chief conspirators, with reputations intact, would
> then call for "party unity" to meet the emergency.  In the confusion
> they would gain leading posts.  One of them, Bakayev, slated to 
> become head of the GPU, would liquidate the actual assassins, thus
> burying all evidence against the higher ups.
> 
> That was the tale I watched unfold in the court day after day.  The
> defendants were vocal; they bore no evidence of torture.  Kamenev
> said that by 1932 it became clear that Stalin's policies were
> accepted by the people and he could no longer be overthrown by
> political means but only by "individual terror."  "We were guided
> in this," he said, "by boundless bitterness against the leadership
> and by a thirst for power to which we had once been near."
> Zinoviev stated in court that he had become so used to giving 
> orders to large numbers of people that he could not endure life
> without it.  Minor agents gave testimony connecting the group with
> the Gestapo.  One of them, N. Lurye, claimed to have worked "under
> guidance of Franz Weitz, personal representative of Himmler."
> Some of the lesser lights apparently first learned in court of the
> fate their chiefs had reserved for them; this added to the venom
> with which they attacked those chiefs.
> 
> "Let him not pretend to be such an innocent," cried the defendant
> Reingold against co-defendant Kamenev.  "He would have made his
> way to power over mountains of corpses."
> 
> Was the story credible?  Most of the press outside the USSR called
> it a frame-up.  Most people who sat in the court-room, including
> the foreign correspondents, thought the story true.  Ambassador
> Davies says in his book Mission to Moscow, that he believes the
> defendants guilty as charged.  D. N. Pritt, eminent lawyer and
> British Member of Parliament, was similarly convinced.  Edward
> C. Carter, Secretary-General of the institute of Pacific Relations,
> wrote:  "The Kremlins case is...terribly genuine.  It makes sense
> ...is convincing."  Even Khrushchev's comprehensive attack on 
> excesses of this period, does not say that any of the open trials
> were a fraud.
> 
> For me, as I listened to the defendants, often from only a few
> feet away, the process by which once revolutionary leaders became
> traitors seemed understandable.  They began by doubting the Russian
> people's ability to build socialism without outside help; this was
> the open discussion in 1924-27.  Their doubt deepened through the
> contrast between Russia's inefficiency--which even brought the land
> to famine in 1932--and the efficient German organization they had
> known.  Was it hard to believe that Russia might profit by German
> discipline, impressed by the iron heel?  Plenty of irritated people
> in those days made such remarks.  Eventually there would be a 
> German revolution; they themselves might promote it from within.
> =====================	Well, this is pretty well written, but does not stand the logic
test. The fact that she was in the close vicinity of the accused does not
prove or disprove anything. What' s more, the fact that she quotes some
foreign diplomats saying that they, in turn, believe the whole trial to
have been true, is in no way convincing. I could quote a lot more who were
sure that what they were witnessing was a gigantic fraud. And the fact
that she was travelling all over the USSR, again, doesn't prove anything
conclusive.
	What should be done, IMHO, is to rely not on eyewitnesses from the
audience, or the judges, but rather on the accused and on their memoirs,
should such still exist. Of course, to rely on what they said not DURING
the trial, but after it was over and they were lucky enough to survive. I
believe that the most important anti-Soviet plotters were prompty
executed, but some minor ones did survive to tell the truth about Moscow
Trials long after them. It stands to reason, then, that if such minor
plotters were so severely tortured and made to tell what their oppressors
wanted them to tell, what must ahve happened to people like Kamenev or
Zinoviev?

===========================================> Jay:
> Anna Louise Strong wrote with a proletarian outlook.

	And, Jay, sorry for this remark, but it really doesn't matter
whether the book was written with a proletarian outlook or not. What does
matter here is historical truth, i.e. facts.	

  Look for the
> whole book; "The Stalin Era" in your favorite big used bookstore.
> I was fortunate to find two copies last summer when the CPUSA bookstore
> went out of business.  I went home with bushels of books that day.
> I will soon post from another Chapter: "THE PACT THAT BLOCKED HITLER."
> 
	Sorry, again, for the irony, but I'm dying to see the above
mentioned chapter.

				Leszek Smutek


> Jay Miles / Detroit
> 
> 
> 
> 
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