One of Stalin’s goals was to make an example of the discontented workers and to intimidate the Communist Party members who were still sympathetic to the opposition. He wanted them to understand that whoever dared to oppose Stalin’s dictatorship would be doomed. In keeping with this purpose, he also wanted the defendants to personally send an unmistakable warning to the entire party.
The defendant Boguslavsky said, “I begin with a little thing that at first glance seems innocent …… If one day you go astray and make mistakes and persist in them, then, as the prosecutor said yesterday, you can and will fall into the fascist counter-revolutionary to go into the mud, as we are doing now.”
Stalin’s threat was mirrored in the words of the defendant Rosenholz: “Whoever deviates even slightly from the general line of the Party will meet a sad and unfortunate end!”
Stalin could not restrain his frenzied impulse for self-aggrandizement in defining the lines of the trial farce. That is why. It was natural for each actor to express his or her love and hate, intellect and emotion during the trial.
For this reason, Velicki loaded his indictment with praise, such as “great,” “genius,” “wise,” ” Most beloved” and so on. On one occasion, he ended his speech like this.
“We and our people, as always, under the leadership of our beloved leader and mentor, the Great Stalin, will go forward, forward to communism, along the bright road that sweeps away all the remnants of the old times!”
Bukharin was overwhelmed with emotion in court: “He (naturally, Stalin – the author) is the hope of mankind! He is a great creator!” Another defendant, Rosenholz, shouted: “Long live the Bolshevik Party and its glorious tradition of unyielding, heroic, self-sacrificing courage! Let us continue this unique and glorious tradition. To a glorious future under Stalin’s leadership!”
The defense attorneys were not to be outdone by the prosecutor and the defendants. Kommudov, the attorney, said impassionedly: “Speaking of a conspiracy against Stalin’s leadership, I would like to say that 170 million people will build a brass wall of love, respect, and loyalty to protect their leader, which no force can break down! It will never, ever be broken!”
All this nonsense, propaganda slogans, and self-aggrandizement is Stalin’s so-called objective and impartial trial!
Everyone who has read or even perused the official stenographic records of the Moscow Trials has probably noticed that they are mainly directed at Trotsky. Stalin had a particular hatred for Trotsky, a hatred that became even more frenzied after Trotsky’s expulsion abroad in 1929 and after Stalin felt that he could not be whipped.
Unable to execute this outstanding leader of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions at the same time as Lenin’s other old comrades, Stalin had to force all participants in the Moscow trials – the defendants, the prosecutor general, and the lawyers – to curse Trotsky to death, to make him the culprit, the moral degenerate, and to temporarily satisfy his thirst for revenge.
In order to portray Trotsky as the organizer and leader of all “counter-revolutionary underground organizations,” Stalin invented a “network of conspiracy links” that he said extended from Denmark, France, and Norway to the Soviet Union. Because Trotsky had lived in these countries, Stalin made up Trotsky’s story.
Stalin made up the story that there were two kinds of contacts between Trotsky and the “counter-revolutionary underground”: first, Trotsky corresponded secretly with the Soviet leaders of the underground, and second, these leaders left the Soviet Union specifically to report to him and to receive new orders.
As we already know, in none of the three Moscow trials was the state prosecutor able to produce a single so-called “secret letter,” even though he said that the correspondence lasted for several years. What is more, the court was required to prove that the “conspirators” did meet with Trotsky many times, not just once, in secret. In order to substantiate this claim, the head of the Ministry of the Interior instructed the three defendants, Goltzman, Pidakov and Rohm, to confess in the courtroom that they had met Trotsky abroad at different times and had received orders from him to the underground. Stalin thought that the confessions of the three defendants would be turned into whiplash material after they came out, which must have had a significant effect. However, it turned out to be completely beyond Stalin’s expectations, and all the important details of these meetings with Trotsky did not stand up to any scrutiny. Thus, the “confessions” of the three defendants regarding the meetings with Trotsky were rendered legally useless.
The reason for Stalin’s disastrous failure in this case is very clear. Since his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1929, Trotsky had been living abroad in the diaspora. As a result, he was able to meet with conspirators only abroad. Stalin was so obsessed with the idea of fabricating these meetings that he overlooked an extremely important fact: the power of the Ministry of the Interior had not yet been extended abroad, and it could not deprive foreign countries of the right to clarify facts and ascertain the truth. To direct a farce of a trial under such circumstances, with the meeting of the “conspirators” with Trotsky as the background, was a huge risk.
Sure enough, a campaign to expose the Stalinist rumors was launched in the West.
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