The men who sit in the dock today have been in the Tsar’s court many times and know the basic principles of criminal law well. They understand that they are not obliged to prove their guilt, but rather that the burden of proof lies with the state prosecutor. The most sensible response for them was to remain silent and wait for the “case” investigation to fail completely. But now, to the surprise of the world, the defendants, instead of their usual silence, unanimously confess to having committed all the crimes imposed on them. This inexplicable strange phenomenon was repeated again and again during the three Moscow trials. These party members, who were in prison, knowing that the investigating authorities had no evidence against them, were willing to provide the prosecutors with the only damaging and indispensable basis for a trial: their own confession of guilt!
Not only that, but they took it so seriously that jurists and psychologists all over the world wondered: What is going on here? At every public trial, the defendants did not hesitate to confess to committing horrendous capital crimes. They called themselves traitors to socialism and lackeys of fascism. They helped the Prosecutor General find the most vicious and despicable words for him to use to evaluate their character and integrity. They managed to outdo their co-defendants in this self-defeating contest, saying that they were the most rampant conspirators and the culprits, and that they were the ones responsible. In short, they play the role of self-indictment with an unbelievable psychology.
In this way, the defendants admitted to whatever the prosecutor said, and even when the prosecutor distorted the facts of their lives, they did not refute it in the slightest. For example, Zinoviev, unable to withstand Vyshinsky’s pressure, said that he was not a real Bolshevik at all. More typical is the dialogue between Vyshinsky and Christian Rakovsky. Rakovsky had been in the revolutionary movement since 1899. After the victory of the revolution, Lenin sent him to be the leader of Soviet Ukraine.
Velisky: What was your official occupation while you were in Romania? How do you make your living?
Rakovsky: I am the son of a rich man. My father was a landlord.
Wieliński: So you lived off the land and collected rent?
Rakovsky: I’m an agriculturalist.
Wyszynski: That is, a landowner, right?
Rakovsky: Yes.
Wyszynski: That means that not only was your father a landlord, but you were also a landlord, an exploiter, right?
Rakovsky. Yes, I am an exploiter. I collected rents, and these rents, as you know, were obtained from surplus value. It is obtained from surplus value.
……
Wicinski; OK. The most important thing for us is to figure out where your income comes from.
Rakowsky: And the most important thing for me is to show what business I’m using my income for.
Wyszynski: That’s another thing. Are you still associated with all sorts of landowner organizations?
The prosecutor just doesn’t budge from Kofsky’s explanation of what he did with his father’s estate. Why did the prosecutor do this? Not only because Vyshinsky knew it well, but also because many other party members knew it too. Rakovsky contributed his entire inheritance to fund the revolutionary movement. The Romanian Socialist Party, which he founded, and the daily socialist newspaper, which he edited, were both sustained with his money. In addition, Rakovsky sponsored revolutionary organizations in several other countries and supported the revolutionary movement in Russia with material resources.
The court, however, forbade him to state that he had given his entire inheritance to the party: the most important thing for Vyshinsky was to highlight by all means that Rakovsky had a “history of landlordism”.
Even the Encyclopedia of the USSR has to point out that from the age of sixteen the man became a professional revolutionary, actively involved in the international workers’ movement, and was arrested several times. It should be noted that this encyclopedia was published after Rakovsky was expelled from the U.S.S.R. for joining a faction against Stalin. The book also states that in May of 1917, Russian soldiers rescued him from prison in Iasi, Romania, because he had taken part in the revolutionary struggle in Russia.
It is certainly doubtful that the old Bolsheviks were willing to defend themselves in the slightest. What is even more surprising is the fact that the defendants, while displaying the oddest indifference to self-defense, were also desperate to sing the praises of Stalin and the wisdom of his rule. They defended the Moscow trials that Stalin had concocted to persecute them.
In his final statement, Zinoviev said: “The Party found out that we were degenerating and warned us about it. In one of his speeches, Stalin emphasized that the ideological tendencies of the opposition would make us hot-headed and impose our will on the Party …… but we did not heed this warning.”
In his closing argument, defendant Gaminev said.
“I am standing in front of a proletarian court for the third time …… the first two saved my life. But there is a limit to the tolerance of the proletariat, and we have reached that limit now.”
See, this is a bizarre thing in the wilderness! The old Bolsheviks, who were on the verge of death and were guilty of a lot of crimes, did not give first aid to Stalin. On the contrary, they did their best to help Stalin, as if they were not the ones threatened with death. You know, even out of self-defense instinct, they should have been desperate to defend themselves and save themselves in their final statements. But instead of doing so, they spent the last moments of their lives bragging about their executioners. They wanted to convince the people around them that Stalin had been too patient and tolerant with them, and that now he had the right to destroy them. ……
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