Grover Furr- Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan.
Source: Cultural Logic, 2009.
“If an objective
research project on the events of those years were to be done, free
of ideological dogmas, then a great deal could change in our attitude
towards those years and towards the personalities of that epoch. And
so it would be a “bomb” that would cause some problems. . . .”
Col. Viktor Alksnis,
2000.
“. . . it is essential
for historians to defend the foundation of their discipline: the
supremacy of evidence. If their texts are fictions, as in some sense
they are, being literary compositions, the raw material of these
fictions is verifiable fact. Whether the Nazi gas ovens existed or
not can be established by evidence. Because it has been so
established, those who deny their existence are not writing history,
whatever their narrative techniques.” – Eric Hobsbawm, 1994, p.
57.
“. . . we can demolish
a myth only insofar as it rests on propositions which can be shown to
be mistaken.” – ibid., p. 60.
This essay is an inquiry
into the evidence that Leon Trotsky may have collaborated with German
and/or Japanese officials, whether governmental or military, during
the 1930s. Trotsky was charged with and convicted in absentia of such
collaboration at the three Moscow “Show,” or public, Trials of
1936, 1937 and 1938.1 Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov2 were absent
defendants and central figures in all these trials. Trotsky himself
proclaimed the charges false, but they were widely though not
universally credited until 1956.
In February of that year Nikita
Khrushchev delivered his famous “Secret Speech” to the 20th
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Aside
from much other matter that will not concern us here Khrushchev
hinted, without expressly affirming, that at least some of the
defendants in these trials were punished unjustly. In succeeding
years most of the defendants, along with thousands of others, were
“rehabilitated” and declared to have been innocent. Under
Khrushchev’s successors between 1965 and 1985 the wave of
“rehabilitations” almost ceased. Subsequently, during Mikhail
Gorbachev’s tenure between 1985 and the end of the USSR in 1991, an
even larger flood of “rehabilitations” took place. Later in the
present essay we will discuss the essentially political, rather than
juridical, nature of “rehabilitation.”
By the late 1980s almost
all the defendants at all the Moscow Trials, plus the defendants in
the “Tukhachevsky Affair” of May-June 1937 and a great many
others had been declared to have been innocent of all charges. The
chief exceptions were figures like Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Ezhov,
two heads of the NKVD3 who were certainly responsible for massive
repressions, and many of their subordinates. Virtually alone among
the non-NKVD oppositionists Trotsky and Sedov have never been
“rehabilitated.” But the dismissal of charges against their
codefendants and the declarations that all the conspiracies were
fabrications means that they too have been declared innocent in fact
though not “rehabilitated” legally. Meanwhile there is a
scholarly consensus that the Moscow Trials were fabrications, the
defendants all innocent victims of frame-ups, and all the
conspiracies inventions either of the NKVD or of Stalin himself.
This
consensus is a constituent part of the model, or paradigm, of Soviet
history that is dominant within Russia itself and beyond its borders.
However, no significant evidence that the trials were fabricated and
the confessions faked has ever been published, while the vast
majority of investigative materials relating to the trials is still
top-secret in Russia, unavailable even to trusted scholars.
The
Soviet Archives “Speak”
During the existence of the USSR and
especially since Khrushchev’s accession to power in 1953 few if any
documents concerning the Moscow Trials and repressions of the late
1930s were published in the USSR or made available in the archives to
researchers. Khrushchev and authorized historians and writers made a
great many assertions about this period of history but never gave
anyone access to any evidence about it. Here is one example. At an
historians’ conference in December 1962, after many presentations
by speakers promoting the official Khrushchev position about
questions of Soviet history the convener, Presidium member Piotr
Pospelov, spoke the following words: Students are asking whether
Bukharin and the rest were spies for foreign governments, and what
you advise us to read.
I can declare that it is sufficient to study
carefully the documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU to say that
neither Bukharin, nor Rykov, of course, were spies or terrorists.
(Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie 298). While Pospelov’s words are
literally correct, they create a false impression. In the 1938 Trial
Bukharin and Rykov were not convicted of carrying out espionage
themselves, but of being leaders in the “bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites” that did engage in espionage activities.
Likewise both
Bukharin and Rykov were convicted of recruiting others to engage in
acts of violence against others – the best Russian translation here
of the word “terror,” which means something quite different in
English – but not of engaging in it themselves. So Pospelov’s
words are correct in the sense most readers will understand – that
a “spy” is someone who himself spies, and a terrorist someone who
himself commits acts of violence. But Pospelov is incorrect insofar
as he wishes his audience to understand that their confessions and
the verdict against them were wrong. Furtherrmore, the question was
about “Bukharin and the rest” – presumably, all the other
defendants in the 1938 Trial, whereas Pospelov restricted his answer
to Bukharin and Rykov only.
In the passage that immediately follows
the quotation above Pospelov clearly told his audience that the only
materials historians should read are the official speeches made at
the 22nd Congress: “Why is it not possible to create normal
conditions for working in the Central Party archive? They do not give
out materials concerning the activity of the CPSU.” I have already
given you the answer. In effect Pospelov was saying: “We are not
going to give you access to any primary sources.” That situation
continued until the USSR was dissolved.
Thanks to documents published
since the end of the USSR we can now see that some of the speeches at
the 22nd Party Congress contained blatant lies about the
oppositionists of the 1930s – a fact that fully explains Pospelov’s
refusal to let anyone see the evidence. As one example of the degree
of falsification at the 22nd Party Congress and under Khrushchev
generally we cite Aleksandr Shelepin’s 4 quotation from a letter to
Stalin by Komandarm 1st rank (= Full General, the rank just below
Marshal) Iona E. Iakir, accused of collaboration with Nazi Germany.
In Shelepin’s quotation from Iakir’s letter to Stalin of June 9,
1937, the text read by Shelepin is in boldface. The text in the
original letter (published in 1994) but omitted by Shelepin is in
italics.
“A series of cynical
resolutions by Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Malenkov and Voroshilov
on the letters and declarations made by those imprisoned testifies to
the cruel treatment of people, of leading comrades, who found
themselves under investigation. For example when it was his turn
Iakir – the former commander of a military region – appealed to
Stalin in a letter in which he swore his own complete innocence.
Here is what he wrote: “Dear, close comrade Stalin. I dare address you in this manner because I have said everything, given everything up, and it seems to me that I am a noble warrior, devoted to the Party, the state and the people, as I was for many years. My whole conscious life has been passed in selfless, honest work in the sight of the Party and of its leaders – then the fall into the nightmare, into the irreparable horror of betrayal. . . . The investigation is completed. I have been formally accused of treason to the state, I have admitted my guilt, I have fully repented. I have unlimited faith in the justice and propriety of the decision of the court and the state. . . . Now I am honest in my every word, I will die with words of love for you, the Party, and the country, with an unlimited faith in the victory of communism.”5
As Shelepin read it the letter is
from an honest, loyal man protesting his innocence. In reality Iakir
fully admitted his guilt. (There is also the matter of the two
ellipses. Some of Iakir’s text has been omitted even in this
published version. Since Iakir confessed to treason to the state it
is possible that he refers to collaboration with Germany, with
Trotsky, or perhaps with other intelligence services. This is
suggested in a tantalizing quotation in the case of Uritsky
which we discuss briefly
later in this essay. Iakir was one of the military figures involved
both with collaboration with Germany and with Trotsky.) The
falsification goes far beyond the speeches at the 22nd Congress.
Archival evidence now available permits us to see that Khrushchev,
then later Gorbachev, and the historians who wrote under their
direction, lied consistently about the events of the Stalin years to
an extent that is scarcely imaginable.
A large number of documents
from formerly secret Soviet archives have been published since the
end of the USSR. This is a very small proportion of what we know
exists. Especially as regards the oppositions of the 1930s, the
Moscow Trials, the military “purges,” and the massive repressions
of 1937-38, the vast majority of the documents are still top-secret,
hidden way even from privileged, official researchers. Yet no system
of censorship is without its failures. Many documents have been
published. Even this small number enables us to see that the contours
of Soviet history in the 1930s are very different from the “official”
version.
The Question of Trotsky And Collaboration With Germany and
Japan.
During the past decade a lot of documentary evidence has
emerged from the former Soviet archives to contradict the viewpoint,
canonical since at least Khrushchev’s time, that the defendants in
the Moscow Trials and the “Tukhachevsky Affair” military
conspiracy were innocent victims forced to make false confessions.
We
have written a number of works either published or in the process of
publication pointing out that we now have strong evidence that the
confessions were not false and Moscow Trial defendants appear to have
been truthful in confessing to conspiracies against the Soviet
government. That work has led us to the present study.
Hypothesis.
Leon Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov were indicted but absent
defendants at each of the three Moscow Trials. If the charges against
and the confessions of other defendants were basically accurate, as
our research has suggested so far, that has implications for the
charges voiced at those trials that Trotsky was in league with
fascist Germany and militarist Japan. Such considerations led us to
form the hypothesis for the present study: that a thorough search of
published documents from the former Soviet archives would turn up
more evidence of Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany and Japan
other than that given at the three Moscow Trials.
We came to adopt
this hypothesis in much the same way Stephen Jay Gould describes how
his colleague Peter Ward decided to test the “Alvarez hypothesis,”
the socalled Cretaceous-Tertiary catastrophic extinction that
contradicted the hitherto widely accepted theory of the gradual dying
out of so many life-forms about 60 million years ago.6 In the course
of reading many documents from the former Soviet archives for other
research projects we had identified several that appeared to provide
additional evidence that Trotsky had indeed collaborated with
Germany. It seemed to us that more such documentary evidence might
well be found if we actually set out to look for it. We also realized
that, if no one ever set about looking for it, it would probably
never be found and we would never know. The fact that we have formed
this hypothesis does not at all mean that we have predetermined the
result of our research. Some hypothesis or “theory” is a
necessary precondition to any inquiry.
Gould reminds us of Darwin’s
perceptive statement made to Henry Fawcett in 1861: How odd it is
that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or
against some view if it is to be of any service! 7 The present study
is a “test” in Gould’s sense: “a fine example of theory” –
Gould means “hypothesis” here – confirmed by data that no one
ever thought of collecting before the theory itself demanded such a
test. We have also been mindful of Gould’s caution that a test does
not prejudice the inquiry itself:
Please note the
fundamental difference between demanding a test and guaranteeing the
result. The test might just as well have failed, thus dooming the
theory. Good theories invite a challenge but do not bias the outcome.
It is in principle impossible to prove a negative. If Trotsky did not
collaborate with the Germans and/or Japanese there would be no
evidence of his having done so. Unlike the situation with natural
history, however, with human history there arises the possibility for
fabricated or faked evidence. In the present essay we devote a lot of
attention to this problem. We set out to see whether we could find
more evidence that Trotsky had collaborated with the Germans and
Japanese.
At a certain point in our research, when we had gathered a
quantity of such evidence, we decided to study it and see what it
amounted to. The present article is the result. There exists a good
deal of evidence concerning clandestine involvement on Trotsky’s
part with oppositional activities within the USSR during the 1930s
quite aside from any collaboration with Germany and Japan. In
addition to the testimony by defendants at the Moscow Trials, we also
have archival evidence in the form of investigative interrogations to
confirm such activity.
To review all of it is far beyond the scope of
this or any article. The present work concentrates solely on evidence
of Trotsky’s collaboration with German or Japanese governmental or
military officials. We leave the other charges leveled against
Trotsky unexamined. The charges of German and/or Japanese
collaboration were the most shocking. They have always been regarded
with far more skepticism. For the most part we only cite and analyze
direct evidence concerning Trotsky and the Germans or Japanese. This
is a very narrow approach that excludes a great deal of other,
corroborating evidence which tends to add credence to the direct
evidence of Trotsky’s guilt in collaborating with the fascists. For
example, Nikolai Bukharin heard details from Karl Radek about
Trotsky’s negotiations and agreements with Germany and Japan.
Bukharin never directly communicated with Trotsky or Sedov about
this. However, there is no reason whatever to doubt that Radek did
tell him about Trotsky’s collaboration.
By corroborating Radek’s
testimony on this point – Bukharin agrees that Radek did tell him
this, as Radek himself had testified, so Bukharin attests to Radek’s
truthfulness here – Bukharin also tends to indirectly corroborate
what Radek said about Trotsky and what Radek claimed to have gotten
at first hand, from Trotsky himself. That is, Bukharin’s testimony
confirms that Radek was telling the truth in one instance, and that
increases the credibility of Radek’s testimony on other matters,
including of his contacts with Trotsky and what Trotsky communicated
to him. But here we will examine only Radek’s, not Bukharin’s
testimony. We refer the interested reader to our previous study of
Bukharin (Furr and Bobrov 2007). In a few places we do cite some
corroborating evidence, mainly for the sake of providing context for
the direct evidence.
NOTES:
1 These trials are often called the “Show Trials.” Often too they are identified by the names of the one or
two most famous defendants. Thus the trial of August 19-24, 1936 is often called the “Zinoviev-Kamenev
Trial”; that of January 23-30, 1937, the Piatakov-Radek Trial”; that of March 2-13, 1938 the “BukharinRykov”
Trial. The formal names for these trials are as follows: August 1936: “The Case of the TrotskyiteZinovievite
Terrorist Centre”; January 1937: “The Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre”; March 1938:
“The Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.’”
2 Leon Sedov died on February 16 1938, shortly before the third Moscow Trial. He continued to figure
prominently in the confessions of some of the defendants, as did his father.
3 People’s Commissariat (= Ministry) of Internal Affairs, which included national security and political
police functions.
4 Head of the KGB (= State Security Committee), the successor to the security and political police
functions of the former NKDV.
5 Shelepin’s remarks are from his speech to the 22nd Party Congress of the CPSU, Pravda, October 27,
1961, p. 10, cols. 3-4. XXII S”ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza. 17-31 oktiabria 1961
goda. Stenograficheskii Otchet (Moscow, 1962). II, 403. The parts Shelepin omitted, here in bold text, are
in the fuller version in the “Spravka” of the Shvernik Report of 1963-4 first published in VoennoIstoricheskii
Arkhiv 1 (1993), p. 194, now normally cited from the volume Reabilitatsia. Kak Eto Bylo
[“Rehabilitation. How It Happened”] vol. 2 (2003), p. 688.
6 Stephen Jay Gould. Dinosaurs in the Haystack. Natural History 101 (March 1992): 2-13. Online at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_dinosaurshaystack.html and http://www.sjgarchive.org/ .
