Confessions and Objective Evidence
Trotsky The Traitor
Alex Bittleman
HEARST and Trotsky have been trying hard to invalidate the confessions of the defendants at the January trial. Trotsky and Hearst, and some others who trail behind them, have been talking of "torture" by the "Gay-Pay-Oo", promises of "leniency" to those who confessed, "confession gases", and what not.
The reactionary capitalist press in this country, taking its cue from the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, was using all the tricks of corrupt journalism in its editorials and comments to becloud the trial, to ridicule it, to throw suspicion upon its genuineness.
But to no avail. The correspondents of these papers, who were present at the trial, were telling in their dispatches one thing, while the editorials and comments were telling a different thing. The correspondents, most of them unfriendly to the Soviet Union and highly suspicious of it could not help but be impressed with the truth. They heard the confessions and testimony of defendants and witnesses, they saw them in Court, they listened (no doubt very critically) to the examination of the prosecutor and to his summing up speech, and the impression they carried away was: it was genuine and real from beginning to end. And this was what they wired to their newspapers.
Very revealing was the reaction of Walter Duranty (Moscow correspondent for The New York Times) to the confession of Radek. Duranty wrote:
"It is a sad and dreadful thing to see your friends on trial for their lives. And it is sadder and more dreadful to hear them hang themselves with their own words. . • • Radek taught me so much and helped me so often-how could I believe him guilty until I heard him say so? Stalin himself had confidence in Radek until the evidence and Radek's own confession made doubt impossible." (The New York Times, January 25.)
Of the testimony of Piatakov, Duranty wired that it "carried conviction to the most obdurate hearers". Listening to this testimony, a foreign diplomat told Duranty: "If this is lying, then I have never heard the truth."
Perhaps the opinion of l\fauritz Hallgren, a leading editorial writer on the Baltimore. Sun and formerly one of the editors of The Nation, who for a while was doubtful and even joined the so-called "American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky", from which he now resigned-perhaps the opinion of Hallgren should carry even more weight. And this was what he wrote of the testimony of the defendants in his letter of withdrawal from the Trotsky Committee:
"The very unanimity of the defendants, far from proving that this trial is also a 'frame-up', appears to me to prove directly the contrary. For if these men are innocent, then certainly at least one of the three dozen, knowing that he faced death in any case, would have bJ.urted out the truth. It is inconceivable that out of this great number of defendants, all should lie when lies would not do one of them any good. But why look beyond the obvious for the truth, why seek in mysticism or in dark magic for facts that are before one's very nose? Why not accept the plain fact that the men arc, guilty? And this fact, if accepted with regard to the men now on trial, must also be accepted with regard to the men who were executed after the first trial."*Why I Resigned from the Trotsky Defense Committee, p. 5,
Trotsky, sitting in Mexico, shouts ''frame-up" through the columns of the Hearst press and other papers. He claims to be in possession of "evidence" that would show him to be innocent. Yet, despite the fact that correspondents of numerous papers are at his service to broadcast far and wide his testimony, he has not yet disclosed any of his "evidence". What is he waiting for?
All fair-minded people expect him to go to Moscow and give his testimony there. The Supreme Court of the Soviet Union is the only competent tribunal to hear and judge Trotsky. Why doesn't he go to Moscow and face the Soviet Court?
While failing to disclose anything that would successfully contradict the evidence at the Moscow trial, Trotsky. and his agents shout for "objective evidence". The declarations and testimony of the defendants and witnesses are not enough for them.
State Prosecutor Vyshinsky, in his summing up speech, went into the question of objective evidence as follows:
"What proofs have we in our arsenal from the viewpoint of juridical claims? The character of the present case is such that specific proofs possible in the case are determined by its character. We have the plot. We have in front of us a group of people who prepared to carry out a coup d'etat. The question can be placed as follows: You speak of the plot, hut where are your documents? You speak of the program, but where is this program? Do these people anywhere possess a written program? You say that this is an organization ( they call themselves a party), hut where are their deciiions, and the material proofs of this plotting activity-statutes, protocols, seals, etc.?"
The question of evidence and its possible nature are placed here clearly. And what is the answer? Said Vyshinsky:
"I take the liberty to affirm, in accordance with the primary demands of the science of criminal ,law, that such claims cannot he made in cases of plotting. In the case of plotting of a coup d' etat it cannot be demanded that the matter be approached from a viewpoint such as: show us your protocols, decisions, membership cards and number of membership cards. Yes, we have a number of documents with regard to this. But even had we not possessed that, we would have all the same considered ourselves in the right to make the charge on the buis of the testimonies and declarations of the accused and witnesses, and, if you wish, on circumstantial evidence."
Is this something unheard of? Is it only the practice of the Soviet Union to indict and convict people, in cases of treason to the state, only, or largely, on the basis of the confessions of the accused themselves? That's what Hearst and Trotsky say. The truth is that nearly everywhere, this is the procedure, the only possible procedure in most instances of treasonable plots. And this is what Trotsky and his agents are accused of. The Nation, which certainly cannot be charged with "too much" sympathy for the Soviet Union, and which at first was rather doubtful about many angles of the trial, has this to say:
"Nor is there anything unusual, even outside Russia, in basing a conviction upon confessions. In both English and American law all that is needed to prove treason is two witnesses to the overt act or a confession in open court." ( The Nation, February 6.)All that is needed in American law to prove treason is two witnesses or, if there are no witnesses, a confession in open court.
Let's remember that. And let's also remember that the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union had before it: confessions in open court, and witnesses and documents and an overwhelming mass of circumstantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence, as most Americans know, is in most cases more decisive for proving guilt than is direct evidence. Experts are agreed on that. But the Soviet Court had circumstantial evidence and objective evidence. Said Vyshinsky:
"I spoke of the program and I showed you, comrades and judges, Trotsky's Bulletin in which he printed this very program. But identification here will be much easier than that which you carried out identifying certain persons from the German Intelligence Service from photographs. We are basing ourselves on a number of proofs which in our hands can serve to verify the statements of the accused.
"First of all, there are the historic connections, which confirm the thesis of the prosecution, on the basis of the past activities of the Trotskyites."
Recall "the historic path of Trotskyism"-the path of treachery to the people.
"We have in mind further the testimonies of the accused which in themselves are the greatest proof. In the trial, when one of the proofs was the testimony of the accused themselves, we did not restrict ourselves to the Court's hearing only statements of the accused: we used all the means possible and accessible to us to verify these statements."
But, if one should still contend that the testimony of the accused is not convincing enough, that would mean that the defendants were accusing each other falsely. And if that were so, one would have to find a reason for it. Why should they have accused each other falsely? What could they gain by it?
It should now be clear to every fair-minded person that, following the execution of the conspirators of the first trial in August, 1936 (Zinoviev, Kamenev & Co.), none of the defendants at the second trial could have had any expectations of securing gain or advantage by falsely accusing the other. The only reason they confessed their crime, and why their testimony agrees on the whole, is because they were guilty .
Soviet Democracy Vindicated
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