File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-18.151, message 36


From: detcom-AT-sprynet.com
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 22:41:05 -0800
Subject: M-I: Eyewitness to the Moscow Open Trials


===================================================================ANNA LOUIS STRONG over a span of more than 4 decades reported on wars,
revolutions and social upheavals that have transformed maps and
made history.  Born in 1885 in Nebraska, she went to Russia with
the American Friends Service in 1921, bringing the first foreign
relief to the Volga famine sufferers.  As founder and editor of
"Moscow News," she had the unique opportunity of visiting every
corner of the vast Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and of
witnessing at first hand the epic of Socialist construction which
hurled that country from medievalism to the front rank among 
modern nations.  In the course of many visits to the USSR and China,
she met the foremost leaders of those countries face to face --
Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, Molotov, Mme. Sun Yat-sen, Voroshilov.
She is the author of more than 15 books about Russia and China.
Here is an excerpt from one entitled; "The Stalin Era" where she
describes her eyewitness account of the Moscow Open Trials:


"The most important cases were tried in a large hall to which were
admitted the Soviet and foreign press, the foreign diplomatic corps
and a changing stream of representatives from factories and government
government offices.  I sat in the court and watched the tale unfold.
Zinoviev and Kamenev, once friends of Lenin and eminent theoreticians,
told the judges, the audience and the world that, having lost power
through the rise of Stalin, they had conspired to seize power by
assassinating several leaders, presumably including Stalin, through
agents who, if caught, would not know the identity of the top
conspirators, but would appear to be ordinary agents of the German
Gestapo.  The chief conspirators, with reputations intact, would
then call for "party unity" to meet the emergency.  In the confusion
they would gain leading posts.  One of them, Bakayev, slated to 
become head of the GPU, would liquidate the actual assassins, thus
burying all evidence against the higher ups.

That was the tale I watched unfold in the court day after day.  The
defendants were vocal; they bore no evidence of torture.  Kamenev
said that by 1932 it became clear that Stalin's policies were
accepted by the people and he could no longer be overthrown by
political means but only by "individual terror."  "We were guided
in this," he said, "by boundless bitterness against the leadership
and by a thirst for power to which we had once been near."
Zinoviev stated in court that he had become so used to giving 
orders to large numbers of people that he could not endure life
without it.  Minor agents gave testimony connecting the group with
the Gestapo.  One of them, N. Lurye, claimed to have worked "under
guidance of Franz Weitz, personal representative of Himmler."
Some of the lesser lights apparently first learned in court of the
fate their chiefs had reserved for them; this added to the venom
with which they attacked those chiefs.

"Let him not pretend to be such an innocent," cried the defendant
Reingold against co-defendant Kamenev.  "He would have made his
way to power over mountains of corpses."

Was the story credible?  Most of the press outside the USSR called
it a frame-up.  Most people who sat in the court-room, including
the foreign correspondents, thought the story true.  Ambassador
Davies says in his book Mission to Moscow, that he believes the
defendants guilty as charged.  D. N. Pritt, eminent lawyer and
British Member of Parliament, was similarly convinced.  Edward
C. Carter, Secretary-General of the institute of Pacific Relations,
wrote:  "The Kremlins case is...terribly genuine.  It makes sense
...is convincing."  Even Khrushchev's comprehensive attack on 
excesses of this period, does not say that any of the open trials
were a fraud.

For me, as I listened to the defendants, often from only a few
feet away, the process by which once revolutionary leaders became
traitors seemed understandable.  They began by doubting the Russian
people's ability to build socialism without outside help; this was
the open discussion in 1924-27.  Their doubt deepened through the
contrast between Russia's inefficiency--which even brought the land
to famine in 1932--and the efficient German organization they had
known.  Was it hard to believe that Russia might profit by German
discipline, impressed by the iron heel?  Plenty of irritated people
in those days made such remarks.  Eventually there would be a 
German revolution; they themselves might promote it from within.
=================================================================Jay:
Anna Louise Strong wrote with a proletarian outlook.  Look for the
whole book; "The Stalin Era" in your favorite big used bookstore.
I was fortunate to find two copies last summer when the CPUSA bookstore
went out of business.  I went home with bushels of books that day.
I will soon post from another Chapter: "THE PACT THAT BLOCKED HITLER."

Jay Miles / Detroit





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