In the courtroom, Radek’s performance was so brilliant and so perfect that many uninformed people believed his bullshit. When the other defendants confessed their crimes to the court, they were all breathless and miserable, as if they were reciting a long-forgotten lecture on ancient history. Radek, on the other hand, simply brought the play to life. He tried to infuse everything he said with real passion, as if what he said was the truth and had only recently happened.
A gifted actor and an outstanding psychologist, he began his statement by avoiding talking about the crimes that he allegedly conspired with the other defendants, or about the contents of the alleged secret letter from Trotsky to him. Indeed, he did not talk about them, but first listed to the court the list of doubts that confused him, the pains that disturbed him. He said that he had felt these doubts and pains as early as when the “doctrine of intra-party struggle” had led him step by step into the mire of crime from which he could not extricate himself.
In front of the entire audience in the courtroom, he cursed himself with his voice and cursed himself unmercifully. He now finally understood: what he had done was a complete loss of reason …… The means he had used would not enable him to achieve his ends …… He had long realized that even if he and his associates had helped Hitler achieve victory, Hitler would never Hitler would never have put them in power, but would have thrown them away like “dried lemons” ……
Radek told the judges that the brilliant achievements of the country under Stalin’s wise leadership had influenced him so much that he realized that he had committed a heinous crime at Trotsky’s instigation. He shouted angrily.
“Should the country go back to capitalism for the sake of Trotsky’s beautiful eyes? This is nonsense!”
Radek also denounced that it was Trotsky’s sinful directives that had pushed him and the other heads of the conspiracy to the brink of extinction. How could they, the old Bolsheviks who had worked faithfully for the revolution for decades, now suddenly become conspirators in the anti-Soviet underground? How does one go about explaining to the members of the opposition that they should now fight for the victory of fascist Germany over the Soviet people? Ah, this is a total loss of reason. The result of carrying out Trotsky’s instructions could only enrage the general members of the organization and prompt them to expose the whole conspiracy to the Ministry of Internal Affairs ……
“I feel like I’m in a madhouse!” Radek said.
“And did you take any measures to relieve yourself?” National Public Prosecutor Wisinski interjected and asked.
“The only way out should have been to go to the Party Central Committee, confess to the crime and give up all the participants. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t go to the State Political Security Directorate, but the State Political Security Directorate found me.”
“This confession is very convincing!” Wisinski responded.
“This confession was also painful,” Radek said clearly.
To save his life, Radek not only fulfilled, but exceeded, Stalin’s instructions. But Vyshinsky was not satisfied with this. The task of the prosecutor general, he thought, was to unleash one fatal blow after another on defendants who had already been knocked to the ground and were kowtowing for mercy in the courtroom. Wisinski subtly reminded Radek: Don’t forget that you had refused to voluntarily confess to the crime and confess your accomplices, and, for more than three months after your arrest, denied that you had participated in the conspiracy.
“Could these acts of resistance on your part make us take seriously the ‘doubts’ and ‘pains’ you have just described?”
This provocation by Wisinski angered Rachuk, who immediately snapped back.
“Yes, if you do not admit the fact that the plan of action for the conspiracy and Trotsky’s secret orders, of which you have been informed, came from my mouth alone, then you can certainly not take those words of mine seriously ……”
Here Radek deliberately gave a dangerous signal, threatening Velisky with the phrase “from me alone”: neither the Ministry of Internal Affairs nor you, the state prosecutor, have any evidence against me, Radek and the other defendants, except my confessions!
Radek had every reason to prove that the copyright of the so-called “Trotsky’s instructions” belonged to him. You know that he was the only one among all the accused who overturned the “confession” prepared for him by the interrogator Kedrov and “created” a new version of the “instructions” on paper with his own handwriting. This, of course, was after a separate conversation with Stalin. This sudden outburst of Radek’s anger and the implication of his special merits for the whole case made the court and the Prosecutor General panic-stricken and helpless. In order to avoid further trouble, presiding judge Mallikh hurriedly adjourned the court.
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