On January 23, 1937, Pidakov presented his “flying tour” in court. Only two days later, on January 25, the Norwegian newspaper Evening Post published an announcement that
Pidarkov’s visit to Oslo to meet Trotsky is not at all credible.
…… He seems to have flown into Heller Airport, but the airport officials affirmed that no civilian aircraft had landed there during December 1935 ……
This announcement came as a bolt from the blue to Stalin and his men, catching them off guard. They had to come up with a response in a hurry. But what countermeasures were there to be taken? To say that the plane landed at some other airport than Hryer? No. It was well known that this was the only airport near Oslo where civilian aircraft were allowed to land. Would it be possible to instruct Pidakov to change his story and say that he landed not at the airport at all, but on the water outside the nearby port? No, it was too late: he had already said that he had taken off from Berlin Tempelgaufer Land Airport.
To somewhat weaken the impact of that Evening Post notice, Vyshinsky presented the court with an official certificate from the consular bureau of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, which read.
“…… According to international agreements, the Hreil airport near Oslo is open to aircraft of other countries all year round, and aircraft can take off and land in winter. ……”
Here Vyshinsky avoids answering the explicitly stated rebuttal by the Norwegian newspapers and instead attempts to put a curtain of sand over what is already a very clear fact, but the card he plays is so feeble that it only proves that planes can land at Hriel airport in winter.
Moreover, this additional supporting material did not come from the Norwegian authorities (only an official certificate from the Norwegian authorities would be considered impartial), nor from the administration of Hreher airport, but was also taken only from the consular department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Moscow actually produced such a material with no probative value ……
As one might expect, the matter did not end here. On January 29, another Norwegian newspaper, the Norwegian Social Democratic Party organ, the Daily Worker, ran another story.
“…… Today, Gullickson, the director of the Heller Airport, replied by telephone to a reporter from the Daily Worker. Not a single foreign plane has landed at this airport during December 1935.”
The newspaper went on to write that, according to the official aviation logs, only one foreign plane landed at Hryer airport between September 1935 and May 1, 1936.
This is not, of course, the plane that Pidakov flew in, and it is not necessary to write much about it.
In this way, Stalin and Vyshinsky were once again caught by world public opinion as forgers.
Trotsky wasted no time in joining the debate. Using the world press as a mouthpiece, he advised Vyshinsky to ask Pidarkov carefully: On what date did he fly from Berlin to Oslo? Did he have an entry visa to Norway? If so, under what name?
Trotsky also asked the Moscow court to verify with the Norwegian government through official channels to see if Pidakov’s confession was true.
“If it turns out that Pidakov did come to me,” Trotsky wrote, “it will mean that my reputation will be completely finished. But if it turns out that the opposite is true, it will prove that the legend of our meeting was a lie from the beginning to the end, and that the so-called ‘voluntary confessions’ of the defendants were fabricated. Pidakov’s confessions must be verified without delay, before he is shot!”
In fact, without Trotsky’s reminder, Vyshinsky, as Prosecutor General, was obliged to verify Pidakov’s confession. However, he could not do so: he and others had not prepared this trial farce with great pains in order to expose it later.
Trotsky saw that the organizers of the trial were not going to verify it anyway, and that they would go ahead with it, ignoring the condemnation of world public opinion. In this situation, he resolved to take a desperate step – to challenge the Soviet government. He wrote a letter to Moscow asking it to intervene with the Norwegian government to extradite him to the Soviet Union for trial as a co-accused of Pidakov and others.
By this challenge, Trotsky in effect put up his own life as collateral. You know, if a powerful neighboring country did ask for extradition, the weak Norwegian government might not dare to refuse, let alone the fact that it was Trotsky’s initiative. But the point is that Stalin did not dare to extradite Trotsky. He knew very well that, according to the law, to extradite will have to let the Norwegian courts to examine Trotsky’s charges, then the Norwegian courts will thoroughly investigate whether Pidakov really went to Oslo, and perhaps also check the scandal about the “Hotel Bristoli”. Obviously, Stalin would never allow his forgery charges to be tried in a Norwegian court. For him, the best way was not to extradite Trotsky to his country, but to send assassins abroad – to silence Trotsky forever.
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