TROTSKY— CHIEF OF THE TERRORIST GANG
Trotskyism and Fascism
TROTSKY— CHIEF OF THE TERRORIST GANG
TROTSKY, in his turn, taking advantage of the freedom to carry on his counter-revolutionary struggle against the Soviet government which he enjoyed in capitalist countries, had no need to resort to the same amount of camouflage as that resorted to by that section of the Trotsky-Zinoviev gang which operated on Soviet territory. Of course, Trotsky, too, did everything he could to conceal the organizing role he played in the murder of Comrade Kirov, and in the terroristic acts against the other leaders of the Communist Party and of the Soviet government. He was. and is still, afraid of the wrath of the workers of all countries that would pour down upon his head as soon as they became convinced that he is the miscreant and murderer who sent to their death those whom the international proletariat honors and loves as its wise leaders and great champions of socialism.
Nevertheless, even while desperately denying responsibility for these frightful crimes, Trotsky wrote eulogies in praise of individual terror in the Soviet Union. It is true that he did this in the Jesuitical way, masked from the juridical point of view, but in a way that was sufficiently understood by his counterrevolutionary gang. As Fritz David stated at the trial:
“Trotsky said . . . that talk about individual terror not being compatible with Marxism was a subject for the philistines of Marxism.” (Ibid., p. 114.)
These were the lessons in disgusting provocateur work that Trotsky gave in intimate conversations with his fellow bandits.
It is precisely “philistines of Marxism” whom Tr tsky was addressing when, while extolling Nikolayev and the other murderers, he made hypocritical reservations to the effect that “individual terror in general is inexpedient”. The provocateur meaning of such statements can leave no doubt whatever. Their object was to make the ordinary man in the street believe that TrotskY was not in the least implicated in the murder of Comrade Kirov, and at the same time it gave Trotsky’s secret protectors, who understood perfectly well what he was driving at, the opportunity of saying that officially they had no information about Trotsky inciting terrorists to murder Soviet leaders.
In the light of Comrade Kirov’s murder it became quite clear what signals Trotsky gave his henchmen when he wrote—in well- paid articles which the Hearst and other fascist newspapers willingly published—that it was necessary “to remove Stalin”, “to perform a surgical operation on the Stalin leadership”, “to pierce the Bolshevik ulcer with a lancet”, etc.
Only a few months before the publication of the indictment, in the recent case of the terrorist center, Trotsky published an article in the New York New Militant of May 9, 1936, entitled “The New Constitution of the U.S.S.R.”, in which, with exceptional cynicism, he extolled the employment of individual terror in the Soviet Union. In this article he wrote:
“. . . At the dawn of the Soviet power the terrorist acts were perpetrated by S.-R.’s and the Whites in the atmosphere of the still unfinished civil war. When the former ruling classes abandoned all their hopes, terrorism disappeared as well. Kulak terror, traces of which are observable even now, was always local in character, and was an accompaniment of the partisan war against the Soviet regime. This is not what Molotov had in mind. The new terror does not lean upon either the old ruling classes or the kulak. The terrorists of recent years are recruited exclusively jrom among the Soviet youth, jrom the ranks of the Y.C.L. and of the Party. While utterly impotent to solve those tasks which it sets itself, individual terror is, however, of the greatest symptomatic importance, because it characterizes the sharpness of the antagonism between the bureaucracy and the wide masses of the people, especially the younger generation. Terrorism is the tragic accompaniment of Bonapartism.” (Our italics.)
Trotsky pretended that he was condemning the “old” White- Guard, S.-R. terror, which the exploiting classes supported. Why does he indulge in this farce? Because, while heaping abuse on the “old” terror he at the same time eulogizes the “new”, Trotsky- Zinoviev, terror, concealing from his readers the fact that it is supported by the same exploiting classes, now, however, utterly routed by the toilers of the Soviet Union in open class struggle.
Inciting his followers to anti-Soviet terror, Trotsky asserts that the “terrorists of recent years are recruited exclusively from among the Soviet youth, from the ranks of the Y.C.L. and of the Party”. If that is the case, why did he not go to the Soviet court and prove that he had recruited the agents and allies of the Gestapo, Olberg, Nathan Lurye and Co., whom he has sent to the U.S.S.R., “exclusively from among the Soviet youth”? Why did he not try to prove that Zinoviev, Kamenev and Co., who treacherously “crawled into the Party on their bellies” for the purpose of striking a death blow at its heart and brain, were genuine members of the Bolshevik Party? Instead of appearing at the trial Trotsky made desperate attempts as soon as the indictment was published to disavow the whole of his gang. He declared that he had no connection whatever with his followers in the Soviet Union, that he gave no terroristic instructions whatsoever, and that “being a Marxist, he was on principle opposed to individual terror”.
The arch-provocateur Trotsky hoped that by means of these bare denials of his crimes he could save his own skin and retain the possibility of sending fresh bandits to the U.S.S.R. for the purpose of committing murder, sabotage and espionage.
But now his diabolical game has been utterly exposed. The trial revealed to the whole world the central points in the whole of Trotsky’s counter-revolutionary work which no honest man will ever forget. The trial tore the mask from Trotsky’s face. It showed the whole world that he was the ally and ward of the Gestapo.
It is characteristic that in condemning the “old” terror, Trotsky carefully concealed that side of it which helped particularly to expose the Right Socialist-Revolutionary, White- Guard terrorists who killed Comrades Volodersky and Uritsky, and who shot at Comrade Lenin. Trotsky admits that the Russian counter-revolution backed the “old” terrorists, but he does not say a word about the international counter-revolution, the General Staffs of the interventionists, and the secret police of the various countries who guided the hands of the White-Guard and SocialistRevolutionary provocateurs. Why does Trotsky avoid mentioning this point? Because there is nothing that Trotsky fears so much as the exposure of the fact that the international secret police support all acts of terror against the Soviet leaders, that behind the Trotsky-Zinoviev gang stands the Gestapo.
In sending terrorists to the Soviet Union Trotsky, either per-sonally or through his son, Sedov, warned them that if they are arrested they must conceal their connections with the Trotskyists and particularly must they conceal the fact that he, Trotsky, had sent them to commit terroristic acts. This was mentioned at the trial by Olberg who, in his evidence, stated:
“He [Sedov] said if I were arrested by the organs of state security of the U.S.S.R. I was under no circumstances to say that this terroristic act was carried out on Trotsky’s instructions, and at all events, I was to try to conceal Trotsky’s role.” {Ibid., p. 91.)
In an intimate conversation in his apartment with Fritz David, Trotsky made the latter pledge himself in the event of arrest not to betray his connection with the Trotskyists. At the trial Fritz David stated in evidence:
“He [Trotsky] proposed that I go to the U.S.S.R. and personally commit a terroristic act, without the aid of others, without any organization, without contacts with other Trotskyites. . . . Trotsky told me that this affair involved risk and that there was no point in exposing the Trotskyite organization in the U.S.S.R. to that risk.” {Ibid., p. 113.)
When instructing Berman-Yurin to kill Comrade Stalin under such circumstances that “the shot at Stalin shall ring out at a large assembly”, Trotsky imposed the same condition upon him. At the trial Berman-Yurin stated in his evidence:
“Trotsky said that I should not have contact with any Trotskyites in Moscow, and that I should carry on the work independently. I replied that I did not know anybody in Moscow and it was difficult for me to see how I should act under these circumstances. I said that I had an acquaintance named Fritz David, and asked whether I might not get in touch with him. Trotsky replied that he would instruct Sedov to clear up this matter and that he would give him instructions to this effect.” {Ibid., pp. 95-96.)
In concealing his connections with the bandits he sent to the Soviet Union to commit murder, Trotsky was first of all concerned about concealing his own position as chief of the terrorist gang. But Trotsky’s instructions about secrecy pursued another no less, if not more important, purpose, to conceal his collaboration with the Gestapo. This collaboration proceeded along various channels.
According to Olberg’s evidence at the trial, Trotsky “sanctioned the agreement between the Berlin Trotskyites and the Gestapo, and the Trotskyites were in fact left free”. In other countries, also, the Trotskyite groups teem with counter-revolutionary adventurers, political spies and secret service agents. But in those cases where Trotskyites, and not Trotsky himself, are exposed as having contacts with the bourgeois secret police and the Gestapo, Trotsky can still hope to remove the traces leading from him to the back door of the Gestapo by insolently posing as a “Marxist” and trading on his short-lived participation in the revolution. But all these fraudulent evasions prove utterly useless as soon as the direct and close collaboration between the Trotsky - Zinoviev terrorist center and the fascist organizations is revealed, for here Trotsky is obviously the central figure in selecting, sending and guiding the work of the Gestapo hooligans in their terroristic crimes. Consequently, the discovery of any of these terrorist scoundrels must inevitably reveal the collaboration and distribution of roles between Trotsky and the Hitler police. Trotsky strongly exhorted the terrorists he sent to the U.S.S.R. not to mention his name precisely because he knew that their arrest would immediately lead to their exposure as agents of the Gestapo.
But Trotsky was not quite sure that his Gestapo terrorists would keep their promise to “maintain secrecy”, that is to say, to shield Trotsky. That is why he took other measures to compel some of his myrmidons to answer for the crimes committed by the whole gang. He instructed the chiefs of the gang in the Soviet Union completely to disavow the acts committed by the terrorists and that “a position should be taken up analagous to that taken up by the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionaries toward Madam Kaplan” who shot at Lenin. This instruction was accepted and carried out by the terrorist center. On this point Reingold stated in his evidence at the trial:
“. . . In 1933-34 Zinoviev told me when I was alone with him in his apartment that: \ . . The principal practical task is to organize the terroristic work so secretly as to preclude our being compromised in any way. . . .
“ ‘. . . When under examination the main thing is persistently to deny any connection with the oiganization. If accused of terroristic activities, you must emphatically deny it and argue that terror is incompatible with the view of Bolsheviks-Marxists.’ ” {Ibid., p. 19.)
The relations within the Trotsky-Zinoviev gang were based on the same principle; each “instance” tried to ensure its own safety at the expense of the group, or persons, who were most directly connected with the terrorist acts.
For example, Bakayev, the leader of the terrorist groups in Moscow, ordered Bogdan to make an immediate attempt on the life of Comrade Stalin, and when he suspected that Bogdan was wavering and was becoming unreliable, he put to him the alternative: “Commit suicide, or we kill you.”
The leaders of the Leningrad terrorist groups who killed Comrade Kirov were treacherously deserted by Zinoviev and Kamenev on whose direct instructions they committed the murder. In the above mentioned hypocritical “obituary article” on Comrade Kirov, Zinoviev not only disavowed the perpetrators of this foul crime, but branded them as “miscreants”.
And, finally, Trotsky disavowed the whole of the captured gang, including Zinoviev and Kamenev. He resorted to every sort of subterfuge and forgery to avoid coming before the court of the Soviet people, in order to throw the whole blame upon the members of his gang for crimes which they committed in conjunction with him, and under his direction.
But the chiefs of the Trotsky-Zinoviev terrorist center were not sure that they would be quite safe even after they had disavowed the executors of their bloody crimes. In order to be able peacefully to enjoy the fruits of their crimes they considered it necessary to do away with those who had directly committed them, and who might expose them as having had connections with the Gestapo in their nefarious work. In his evidence at the trial Reingold stated:
“Zinoviev and Kamenev were both of the opinion, and they told me about this, that on the morrow of the coup d’etat, after the seizure of power, Bakayev should be put at the head of the G.P.U. in the capacity of chairman of the G.P.U. By the use of the G.P.U. machinery, he was to assist in covering up the traces, in doing away with, in killing, not only the employees of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs—the G.P.U., who might be in possession of any threads of the conspiracy, but also all the direct perpetrators of terroristic acts against Stalin and his immediate assistants. By the hand of Bakayev the Trotsky-Zinoviev organization was to destroy its own activists, its own terrorist gunmen, who were involved in this matter.” (Ibid,., p. 58.)
But these diabolical provocateur plans of the chiefs of the Trotsky-Zinoviev gang were frustrated. Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky were exposed before they could carry out their designs to seize power and to restore capitalism in the great Land of Soviets and to enslave it to the imperialists. Bakayev did not become the president of the G.P.U. The dream of the Trotsky- Zinoviev provocateurs of destroying the workers of the G.P.U. they hated so much was shattered, nor were they able to do away with the direct perpetrators of the terroristic crimes. The latter, agents of the Gestapo, together with the chiefs of the gang, found themselves in the prisoners’ dock, brought to book for their nefarious crimes. Nathan and Moissei Lurye sitting beside Zinoviev and Kamenev, Olberg, Berman-Yurin and Fritz David sitting beside Smirnov and Mrachkovsky served to illustrate the collaboration between Trotsky and the Gestapo.
Was there a single one of the accused who, after the judicial investigation had come to an end, dared to deny, or even to throw doubt upon, the collaboration between Trotsky’s terrorists and Hitler’s terrorists? No, there was not one. In his last plea Kamenev said:
“I ask myself, is it an accident that alongside of myself, Zinoviev, Evdokimov, Bakayev and Mrachkovsky are sitting emissaries of foreign secret police departments, people with false passports, with dubious biographies and undoubted connections with the Gestapo. No! It is not an accident. We are sitting here side by side with the agents of foreign secret police departments because our weapons were the same, because our arms became intertwined before our fate became intertwined here in this dock.” {Ibid., p. 170.)
Another of the accused, Holtzmann, at the beginning of the trial more persistently than any of the others carried out Trotsky’s instruction to deny his personal responsibility for the terroristic murders. Towards the end of the trial, however, he realized that it was useless trying any longer to conceal the connection Trotsky, and consequently the whole of his gang, had maintained with the fascist secret police. In his last plea Holtzmann said:
“Here, in the dock beside me, is a gang of murderers, not only murderers, but fascist murderers. I do not ask for mercy.” {Ibid., p. 172.)
The stench of the Gestapo pervaded the prisoners’ dock at the trial of the Trotsky-Zinoviev center.
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