Radek groveled to Stalin and did his best to help the Prosecutor General in court, thus creating the impression that he had completely degenerated into an unscrupulous villain who did not care what the outside world made him out to be. However, if one carefully analyzes Rachuk’s speech in court, it is easy to see that behind this crazy self-revelation he hides a contrary purpose: to make the world realize that the prosecution is groundless and that the court lacks any real evidence that could prove the guilt of the accused.
Until the end of this trial farce, its directors did not seem to perceive the cunning Radek’s true intentions. He had been pandering to and paralyzing the prosecutor and the judges with self-defamation and fierce attacks on Trotsky, preventing them from discovering his cleverly disguised, yet dangerous, “entrapment” that would overturn the entire charge.
It was not until his closing statement that Radek finally raised the curtain and revealed a bit of his own shenanigans. At the beginning of his statement, he remained unambiguous in his admission of guilt.
“There is no excuse for a sensible adult who commits treason. I have tried in vain to find mitigating circumstances to excuse myself. A man who has devoted himself to the workers’ movement for thirty-five years, having admitted that he has betrayed his country, can no longer justify his crime in any way. I cannot even say that it was Trotsky who dragged me down; this is no excuse, bearing in mind that when I knew Trotsky I was already an adult, already with fully defined convictions.”
In this way, Radek offered up the confession that he had promised the investigators, thus paralyzing the prosecutor general’s vigilance. He played a tactic that earned him the opportunity to make it possible for himself to speak aloud something completely unexpected to the trial organizers. Radek then went on to announce to the court that, although he agreed with the main charges the attorney general was accusing, he would protest against Wisinski’s intention to present the defendants as genuine bandits.
“I protest against the Attorney General’s statement that the men sitting in the dock are pure bandits and spies! There is evidence from two people: my own confession, in which I admit to having received instructions and letters from Trotsky (unfortunately I burned them all); and Pidakov’s, in which he admits to having spoken to Trotsky. The confessions of the other defendants were based on the statements of both of us. Since all those who dealt with you were real bandits and spies, what makes you sure that we are telling the truth?”
Radek’s words were a slap in the face to Stalin.
But in spite of these short but powerful attacks, Radek did an invaluable service to Stalin in orchestrating the farce of the trial. On the whole, he successfully completed the task entrusted to him by Stalin.
In the early morning of January 20, 1937, Radek, together with his comrades, rose from the dock to hear the verdict. All the defendants were so focused that they stopped breathing while Ulrich read out the verdict. After reading the conviction section of the verdict, Ulrih began to announce the sentence for each defendant in turn: “…… death penalty,” “…… death penalty.” When it came to Radek, he announced, “…… deprivation of liberty for ten years.”
Radek immediately smiled. After the sentence was pronounced, he turned to the other defendants and shrugged, smiling guiltily, as if a little embarrassed by his success. It was the same guilty smile that he sent to the audience.
Chapter 18 The Reveal
When Stalin learned that the clumsy lie about Pidakov’s flight to Oslo to meet Trotsky had been exposed, he immediately realized. His carefully planned farce of a trial would inevitably lose its deceptive character, and in the future the world would not believe him, nor the NKVD, no matter what more he said or what means he employed to fabricate the Trotskyists’ crimes.
But Stalin also thought that the bad reputation of the Moscow trials could be remedied to some extent if he could get the police of the capitalist countries to rise up and expose the crimes of the Trotskyists as spies for Fascist Germany as well.
Therefore, without waiting for the conclusion of the second Moscow trial (in which the myth of Pidakov’s flight to Trotsky came out), Stalin ordered Yerev to inform Slutsky, the head of the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was on duty in Czechoslovakia at the time, that he must create a case of espionage among the local Trotskyists and then induce the Czechoslovak police to expose it.
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