The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953
It began in Russia, in May 1928. This was the first great propaganda trial at which many of the accused not only confessed their guilt but also expressed their repentance and spoke ardently in favour of the regime against which they had allegedly plotted. This was the affair of the Don Basin mining specialists, known as the Shakhty Trial. It was accompanied by a nation-wide publicity campaign and ended in seven death sentences.
However, this was not only a beginning; it was also the culminating point in a process that had begun long before. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in October 1917 they were a tiny minority of the population. For a time, it is true, they had the support of the great masses, but it was support, not for Communism (or Socialism), but for the policy summed up by the slogan: ‘Peace, Land, Bread’. The peasants took the land themselves, but peace was short-lived, and bread — especially for the industrial workers, where lay the real strength of the Bolsheviks — was scarce indeed. Beset on all sides by enemies and with their popular support ever lessening as the revolutionary wave ebbed, they fought desperately to retain their hold on state power. The Marxist idea that ‘force is the midwife of the old society pregnant with the new’ had no validity here — for no infant Socialism waited in the womb of semi-feudal Russia. And the anticipated revolution in the industrial West did not materialise. For the Bolsheviks, therefore, it was not a question of the ‘midwife’ force, temporarily employed; force had to be the permanent basis of their rule.
‘The basis of all government’, said Saint-Simon, the true precursor of Marx, ‘is force and fraud.’ The Bolsheviks, who had taken power in a land not ripe for Socialism, were wholeheartedly in favour of using force (as a means of eventually abolishing force in social relationships). Among them began a struggle between the ‘idealists’ and the ‘realists’. This simplification is open to misconstruction, but it expresses the essence of the division, which must necessarily be referred to, although considerations of space prevent it being adequately discussed. It does not follow from the use of these terms that any particular individual always approached all the many practical problems exclusively from either the one or the other viewpoint; nor is it implied that the ‘idealist’ viewpoint was less related than the ‘realist’ to the objective situation.
Almost from the very beginning of the revolution, state trials played an important part as a means of propaganda aiming at rallying the masses round the Communist Party.
The element of fraud in these trials, while not absent, was at first relatively mild — one is almost tempted, in view of what was to come later, to write harmless. In the trial that opened on 8 June 1922, the Social Revolutionaries, who were the main accused, made no confessions; still less did they sing the praises of their enemies. They defied the court, declared that they did not recognise its right to try them, and spoke out boldly in defence of their political views. The accused were thirty-two in number; divided into two groups: twenty-two prominent members of the Social Revolutionary Party, and ten others, avowed renegades from that party acting in collusion with the prosecuting authorities. These ten ‘confessed’, but their role was obvious, and it was equally obvious that the real accused were the twenty-two others who defended themselves so stoutly. They were enemies of the Communist regime, and they made no bones about it. The defending counsel, too, put up a real battle. All of which did not prevent a verdict of guilty and the passing of death sentences on twelve of the defendants. It should also be borne in mind that this trial took place in an atmosphere of civil war and followed the physical attack on Lenin by the Social Revolutionary Dora Kaplan (he was seriously wounded, but pleaded against her execution). Whatever one may think of the evidence put forward at the trial, and the manner in which it was conducted, there was nothing inherently improbable about the charges. Moreover, in response to widespread agitation in the West, the twelve death sentences were not carried out. There is a fundamental difference between this trial and the confession trials that began with the Shakhty case of 1928.
Between the 1922 and the 1928 trials was the period of transition. It is instructive to note here an incident bearing on the process of change from the propaganda state trial to the ‘confession’ trial proper, and showing how this change was bound up with the inner-party struggle between Stalin and his ‘realists’ and the Old Guard of revolutionary ‘idealists’. Within the Communist Party this struggle culminated in the party congress of October 1927, when the Opposition suffered a decisive defeat. This congress was preceded by police action against many less prominent members of the Opposition. The ostensible ground for this action was the alleged discovery of a ‘military conspiracy’ in which members of the Opposition were said to be involved. On 13 September 1927, the GPU issued a communiqué, from which the following excerpt is taken:
On 12 September 1927, the GPU learned that one of the former officers in the Wrangel army had been approached with the proposal that he obtain a duplicator by a certain citizen, one Sherbakov, son of a former manufacturer, and a non-party man and a civil employee who turned out to be intimately connected with Sherbakov and who had information concerning the organisation of a military overturn in the USSR in the immediate future. Acting upon the said information on that very night of the 12th, the GPU raided Sherbakov’s apartment; and the search revealed an illegal printing plant which was publishing the anti-party documents of the Opposition prohibited by the party... In view of the extraordinary nature of the case (the organisation of a military conspiracy)... the GPU was compelled to raid without delay the homes of a number of those party members who as the search revealed were directly concerned with the illegal Sherbakov-Tverskoi organisation.
A further communiqué of the GPU, on 17 September, stated that:
The testimony of the arrested non-party men has confirmed the existence of a group which sets as its aim the organisation of the above-mentioned military conspiracy.
At first glance all this seems straightforward enough, but closer inspection reveals the mechanics of a frame-up. Here are some of the stage props that will be met with again and again. The central figure here turns out to be a GPU man, although there is little doubt that he had really at one time been an officer with Wrangel (which gives a hint of the GPU methods of recruiting personnel). At that time the GPU intervened in party affairs with some caution; Stalin (representative of the Politbureau on the GPU) was not yet completely sure of his ground; and the Opposition was not yet completely intimidated. So the GPU was compelled to admit that this ‘Wrangel officer’ was in fact one of its men. Had things gone otherwise he might well have figured at a trial as the ‘military’ element in an amalgam containing also ‘the son of a former manufacturer’ (the ‘social origin’ angle), and non-party and party men. Note the ‘testimony of the arrested non-party men’ who confirmed the existence of a military conspiracy. Note the search ‘revealing party members’ as ‘directly concerned’ with the activities of the two men Sherbakov and Tverskoi, although the GPU, when challenged by the Opposition, could produce none of the ‘details’ or ‘material’ it claimed to possess in evidence of this.
We have a conspirator, Sherbakov, asking a GPU man to get hold of a duplicator for him; and the duplicator becomes ‘an illegal printing plant’. Almost at the same moment another conspirator, Tverskoi, reveals the existence of a ‘military plot’ to this same GPU man. Tverskoi’s ‘revelation’ consists, as the GPU communiqué stated, of the fact that a certain Citizeness N told him that a certain Citizen M had told her... And out of this we get ‘the illegal Sherbakov-Tverskoi organisation’.
It all sounds very crude, and it never developed into a trial; but crude as it is, it illustrates the essential methods that are to be employed with increasing vigour and frequency, at first against the ‘open class enemy’ and finally against the ‘concealed enemy’ within the party itself. Already in 1927 the GPU has begun to intervene in party matters, and in time this intervention was to become general and all-pervading, to the point of complete domination over the whole of party life. Already in 1927 the Opposition had been forced into ‘illegality’ and the mere statement of its views branded as ‘anti-party activity’.
As has been noted, the year 1928 marked the beginning of the confessional trial proper. In 1930 a further step forward was taken with the ‘Industrial Party Trial’. Eight men who had for many years occupied high posts in Soviet industry were charged with sabotage and wrecking activities, and all eight not only pleaded guilty but used the dock as a platform for propaganda in favour of the regime against which they had allegedly plotted. The chief accused, Professor Ramzin, expressed his conversion to the faith in the following words:
I unreservedly admit my guilt. I do not intend to defend or justify myself before the Supreme Court and the country as a whole. For how can I defend myself or justify the tremendous crimes which I have committed? I can only succeed in mitigating my guilt by frank and truthful testimony and by sincerely admitting my crimes and my mistakes. Therefore, by making here my full and wholehearted repentance, by undertaking to cut off all my connections with the anti-Soviet circles both in the USSR and abroad, by fully disarming myself and discontinuing forever my struggle against the Soviet government, I wish to reveal with merciless clarity the whole truth before the Supreme Court and before the wide masses in our Union as well as the proletariat the world over. (The Wreckers on Trial (Modern Books Ltd, 1931), p 6)
The purpose of this trial was indicated by Andrew Rothstein in a foreword to the book quoted above. He wrote that ‘while the Soviet Union is surrounded by imperialist powers there is, and always will be, a menace of war against the first workers’ state’, and ‘the efforts of the wreckers had been powerless to arrest the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan, although they were strong enough to delay it in certain respects’.
This is the essential theme of all subsequent trials, both in Russia itself and in the Eastern European countries under Russian domination. These trials seek to present any economic failures as due to the work of ‘anti-Soviet’ agents working within the country on behalf of the enemy without. All internal shortcomings are always the result of ‘wrecking and sabotage’ and never the result of genuine mistakes. The leadership, which in the last analysis is Stalin alone, is infallible. Those who fall do so not because they make mistakes but because they are ‘class enemies’. By means of these show trials it is hoped to divert the attention of the masses from the real evils and failures of the system and the real enemy at home, towards an imaginary, or, if existent, an ineffective, ‘enemy’ within aided by ‘foreign interventionists’. In no instance is the internal ‘enemy’ represented as acting independently: for this would run counter to the official assertion that there exists no popular basis for opposition within the country. In the Industrial Party Trial ‘all the threads of this scheme were concentrated and directed by France, that being the only country which could organise military intervention based on the border states’ (ibid, p 143).
At the next trial the accused will confess to conspiring with the Second International and French imperialism; later with German and Japanese imperialism, to which British imperialism is joined; still later with American and British imperialisms alone; that is, the accused at each trial are always in step with the given line of Soviet foreign policy at the time. The confessions always tally with this line.
In the Industrial Party Trial the real truth behind the charges of ‘planned wrecking and sabotage’ (not now simple wrecking and sabotage, because this was the era of the first Five-Year Plan) peeps out here and there in the trial report. Thus, for example, the accused Ochkin says that they ‘were in favour of reducing the rate of industrialisation’ (ibid, p 101); and Ramzin is even more explicit:
Towards the end of 1929 a new method was adopted, consisting of excessively speeding up the fulfilment of the plan, and this also was meant to create a crisis, but arose out of the recognition of the energetic application of the general line of the Communist Party. (Ibid, p 34)
There is a contradiction between the two statements, of course; but what is expressed by both is the known fact that there were differences of opinion regarding the objectively possible rate of industrialisation. All that Ochkin says is that they, as technical experts, agreed with the inner-party Opposition that the rate of industrialisation planned was too high. All that Ramzin says is that they carried out the official policy, sloganised in the phrase ‘The Five-Year Plan in Four’. That the accused were required simply as scapegoats for shortcomings in the operation of the plan, and also to assert the supremacy of the party over the technical specialists, is evidenced by the fact that the five death sentences passed were not carried out. The very next day, ‘taking into consideration that the condemned not only confessed and repented of the crimes committed by them, but by their testimony at the preliminary and court investigations disarmed and disclosed their counter-revolutionary organisation...’ (author’s emphasis), the death sentences were commuted to ten years of imprisonment, and the sentences of ten years passed on the other three defendants reduced to eight years. Moreover, it was not long before the chief accused, Ramzin, was again occupying a high position in Soviet industry, even being decorated in recognition of his services.
The official admission of the grounds for not carrying out the death sentences has been italicised above, because this is an important clue to the technique whereby the accused are induced to confess. In discussing all subsequent trials this vital admission must always be borne in mind.
A further interesting aspect of this particular trial was the appearance in court of ‘an old man with the face of a scholar’ (ibid, p 116), escorted by members of the GPU. His appearance, says the report, caused a sensation in court; understandably enough — for this was none other than Professor Osadchy, ‘the same man who in 1928 was himself with Krylenko and Chayanov a Public Prosecutor in the Shakhty case...'! And Osadchy, one of the Public Prosecutors in a case resulting in seven death sentences, comes forward to confess that he had all the time been a member himself of the Industrial Party, linked with those men he was trying for their lives! ‘His eye-glasses in the middle of his nose, his clear eyes meeting Krylenko’s stony stare’ (did Krylenko have a premonition then of his own fall?), he confesses his sins, pleads for mercy, and is led away between his guards, back into the shadowy wings of the stage. Why was he too not on trial? And the other Public Prosecutor in 1928, Schein, who later in the report was also said to have been a member of the Industrial Party... what of him? Had he, like another of the accused, Engineer Khrennikov, ‘died during investigation'? Or had he, like still another of the accused, Palchinsky, been shot? (It was rumoured that Palchinsky had slapped his examiner’s face during the preliminary interrogation.) So in the persons of Osadchy and Schein the very stage-managers themselves are warned, and their zeal assured.
Like Osadchy, all the other ‘witnesses’ were in custody, and just as he did, they all made self-inculpatory statements. Also worth noting is the fact that two of the accused, Larichev and Fyedotov, are officially admitted to have been in custody of the GPU at least eight months before the opening of the trial. Ramzin also speaks of ‘months of imprisonment’ before the trial. It may safely be deduced from this that all the accused were ‘interrogated’ for more or less long periods before the public proceedings opened. Further evidence in support of this deduction will in due course be given from other official reports.
Just as in this trial there was no evidence against the accused except their own statements, so against the alleged French interventionists no other ‘evidence’ could be advanced. Feeling the need of some ‘documents’ on this latter point, the prosecution went to the absurd length of producing, and demanding that the court admit as evidence, articles by Poincaré in l'Excelsior, an article by the Bucharest correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, a statement in the White Guard journal Za Svobodu, and so on. All these ‘documents’ were no more than openly published expressions of individual opinion, but the court solemnly accepted them as evidence of the existence of a group of secret plotters acting in collaboration with the French government. Unfortunately the shoddy material of this trial was evinced by the fact that two Russian exiles named in the indictment as implicated in the plot, and as prospective members of the government to be set up after the interventionary overthrow of the Soviet state, had both been dead some time! One, Riabinsky, had died in 1924; the other, Vyshnegradsky, in 1925!
Before leaving this case, let us note that the Soviet authorities, too, were well aware of the need for some explanation of the mystery of the confessions. Prosecutor Krylenko himself broached the question, and answered it in the following terms:
Let us leave the question of torture aside. But even if the vilest assumptions are granted in this respect, they would still not explain how it is that such diverse detailed and technical evidence... should be fully corroborated by the official statements regarding the results of wrecking activities in each of these branches of industry.
But why do they confess? I, for my part, ask: What else should they do? The hope that perhaps somehow, somebody will get them out of the mess, is a poor hope indeed... A wretched, isolated handful of men... who are even regarded by the masses as the enemy of the people — on what could this wretched group count?
These words reveal more than was intended. The emphasis upon ‘diverse detailed and technical evidence’ — when absolutely no such evidence was advanced — is common to all the trials; it is based upon the assumption that critical judgement will be swamped by the glib recital of a mass of apparent ‘detail’, not one single item of which is ever subjected to a serious examination by the counsel for the defence or anyone else in the court. Yet there is a still more significant indirect admission in the above-quoted statement. As in most of the subsequent trials, the authorities concerned are compelled to defend themselves against the suspicion that torture was employed to extort the confessions. The prosecutor here raises the pertinent question: What else could they do? He refers to their ‘isolation’, their helplessness, their lack of popular support within the country, and the impossibility of their receiving aid from abroad. All of which, mark well, is in direct contradiction with the actual picture drawn elsewhere by the prosecution: because none of these trials stands alone; they are all organically connected with those that went before and those that follow, thus involving not mere isolated handfuls of men and women, but hundreds of thousands from every walk of life and occupying key posts in every branch of industry and the administrative machinery — including the armed forces, and even the GPU itself. They are likewise pictured as having the wholehearted support of powerful forces — not excluding the governments themselves — in France, England, Germany, Japan, the United States and so on... Where does the truth lie? Have the accused really a powerful nation-wide organisation? Have they really the support of the capitalist powers in their alleged plotting? Or are they, as the prosecutor here says, men standing absolutely alone, not even able to count on the solidarity of their fellow conspirators, without the slightest hope that a single effective voice will be raised in their defence?
The Metro-Vickers affair of 1933 showed that if one of the essential conditions of these trials is lacking, the defendants cannot be relied on to make confessions during the preliminary investigation, or if they do, cannot be relied on to maintain them in court. Let us see what was the essential condition lacking in this particular instance.
The trial in question was the first to involve non-Russian citizens as defendants. Six British engineers, employees of Metro-Vickers engaged in installation work at power stations in Russia, were accused together with a number of Russians of wrecking, sabotage and espionage. Only one of the Britishers pleaded guilty, but all of the Russian accused admitted all the charges against them and also, of course, implicated the Britishers. Two of the accused, Thornton and Monkhouse, had signed statements of partial guilt during the preliminary investigation, but they repudiated them in open court. It is not necessary to look far in order to discover the reason for the fundamental difference in the behaviour of the two groups of accused. With one exception (MacDonald) all the Britishers pleaded not guilty; with no exception all the Russians pleaded guilty. Now this had nothing to do with the ‘Russian soul’ — it was simply that the one group was wholly at the mercy of the authorities conducting the trial, while the other group was not. That fact stands out in bold relief.
The difference in the attitude of the Russian government at that time and its attitude today will be clear from the following extract from the report of the Metro-Vickers Trial:
The arrests were made on 11 March, and already on 12 April the work, which resulted in the material which took us five days to examine, was finished. Quite naturally, the work had to be done quickly and persistently, we had to work very hard. Comrade Litvinov was quite right when he said that we had worked so quickly because of the insistence of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs which did all it possibly could to meet the wishes of the British Embassy. In Comrade Litvinov’s note we read that under normal conditions the examination of Nordwall and Monkhouse would have taken several weeks, but we managed to get this done in the course of three days. Hence it must be borne in mind that if an examination took place throughout the whole of 12 March, lasting approximately from seven to eight hours, or even ten to twelve hours, and if on 13 March, although with three recesses, Monkhouse or Thornton were subjected to examination three times, it was because, properly speaking, our organs of investigation did this under the direct pressure, as Litvinov says, of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, who urged us to get this case finished as quickly as possible in the interests of the arrested persons themselves. And, what is most material for us, as can be seen from this note, none other than Sir Esmond Ovey insisted upon the investigation being completed as quickly as possible... (Wrecking Activities at Power Stations in the Soviet Union (Modern Books Ltd, 1933), p 664)
It is clear that the Russian authorities at that time found it expedient to show some regard for the British government’s efforts on behalf of its subjects. As a result of this pressure Monkhouse and Nordwall were released after three days. The others, however, remained in custody. The above statement seeks to throw upon the British government the blame for the long duration of each interrogation as though such methods were abnormal. However, we shall prove in the course of this book that excessively long, mentally and physically exhausting, periods of interrogation are part of the normal technique employed. Even from the official records of this case it is seen that Thornton, for example, was interrogated every day over a period of twenty-one days. But the statement he was induced to sign was repudiated by him once he came before the public. Monkhouse, who had signed a compromising statement after an interrogation of at least ten to twelve hours (he claimed it was eighteen hours), also repudiated his ‘confession’. An interesting sidelight on the ethics of the Russian authorities is supplied by the following exchange. Vyshinsky had started to read from Monkhouse’s deposition and Monkhouse interrupted him: ‘Wait a moment, I retracted that deposition.’
Vyshinsky: ‘I didn’t hear that.’
Monkhouse: ‘I told you when I was with you at the Public Prosecutor’s office.’
Vyshinsky: ‘I don’t remember that.’
Monkhouse: ‘You yourself agreed. I said that I gave my evidence after being examined for eighteen hours, when I was very tired.’
The sentences passed on the British accused were as follows: Thornton, three years’ imprisonment; MacDonald (who confessed to everything), two years; Monkhouse, Nordwall and Cushny — expulsion from the country; Gregory, acquitted — ‘in view of the inadequacy of the evidence’, although Thornton’s ‘confession’ implicated him in espionage as much as anyone else, and the prosecution refused to accept Thornton’s retraction of it.
Shortly after the ending of the trial the two British prisoners were released. The British government had imposed an embargo on Russian goods and the Russians had retaliated in kind.
On returning to England, Monkhouse wrote a book on his experiences in Russia and, in particular, on the method used during his interrogation:
The method of cross-examination employed [he wrote] never included physical torture. Hypnotism and drugs were not used on me, but my examination was continued uninterruptedly from breakfast until approximately 2am the following morning. I had two meals brought in, which Belogorski [the examiner — author] himself shared with me, and we continued talking during the meals. These meals were good... Towards late evening I began to get very tired. Belogorski obviously knew this and endeavoured to persuade me to write a statement regarding the behaviour of certain machines which the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company had supplied... After midnight I felt that my nerve was going. I was dead tired after the previous night’s search and arrest, and a very long day’s intensive interrogation. I felt my tongue and mouth so dry that they gave me considerable discomfort. My lips twitched in a way I never knew before. It was a hard mental effort to resist writing exactly what Belogorski dictated, and, in my case, before I left the room that night, I wrote one or two paragraphs which I greatly regret having consented to write... In my case, threats were definitely used, although, during the first day of my examination, Belogorski pretended that he was not threatening me at all... (Allan Monkhouse, Moscow, 1911-1933 (Gollancz, 1933), p 11)
It is clear from this that even a relatively short period of intensive interrogation can result in the extraction of some kind of incriminating statement. But if the accused has any strong feeling that he does not stand alone, that he has powerful and effective forces working on his behalf, he will be likely to repudiate any statement extorted under such conditions once he comes up for public trial. Admittedly, the case of MacDonald seems a puzzle. Why did he not repudiate his ‘confession'? It might be reasonably supposed that he, like his compatriots, would also feel strengthened by the support of his government. But a possible explanation for his conduct is hinted at by Monkhouse in his book. ‘In the majority of OGPU investigations by secret agents’, he says, ‘women are brought into the scheme in one way or another.’ Whether something of this nature accounts for his conduct, however, the fact remains that only one out of the six British accused could be made publicly to ‘confess’, and the reason for this is abundantly clear.
Here a further aspect of these trials needs mentioning. According to the Russian press at the time, forty-two persons had been arrested in connection with the affair. Of these forty-two, only eighteen were actually charged, and one of these did not appear in dock. (This man, Vivitsky, was in hospital; certified as ‘too ill to appear'; but his ‘confession’ none the less was used against the others.) Thus it is evident that the authorities were in a position to select from these forty-two persons those most suitable for public appearance; but they could not have selected only one — MacDonald — from among the British accused. As we have seen, the situation at that time did not permit the Russian authorities to act in a purely arbitrary fashion. Having already arrested the men, and being confronted with the immediate, very vigorous reaction of the British Ambassador, Sir Esmond Ovey, they could not draw back and openly admit an error of judgement.
It is only in recent years, in the satellite countries, that non-nationals have been arrested, held for a month or so without being charged, and then released, presumably because they were not suitable for a public trial. (Since 1933 Soviet indifference to world public opinion and disregard for the elementary decencies of civilised conduct in international relations have grown apace.) This ability on the part of the authorities concerned to select an appropriate cast is a most important aspect of the matter under examination.
Contrasting the 1930 Industrial Party Trial with the 1933 Metro-Vickers Trial, we have seen that there can, in certain circumstances, be a different answer to the prosecutor’s query: What else could they do? To make this contrast, we have skipped the so-called Menshevik Trial of 1931. Let us glance briefly at this.
The purpose of this trial fitted perfectly into the ‘general line’ of the Communist parties of the world, laid down by the Comintern, in accordance with the requirements of Soviet foreign policy. This was during the so-called ‘Third Period’, when the British and French imperialisms were regarded as the main enemy and when the Second International was their ‘chief ally in the ranks of the working class’. The Labour leaders were then dubbed ‘social fascists’, and all efforts were concentrated on destroying their influence among the workers. German Nazism was discounted as a negligible force. Hence this Menshevik Trial, which primarily provided a sounding-board for anti-Second International propaganda.
Although this political demonstration in juridical form was directed mainly towards propaganda abroad, it would be incorrect to assume that the Mensheviks had lost all influence inside Russia, or had severed all contact with their colleagues in exile in Europe. However, of all those in the dock, only one, Ikoff, was actually a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Party (Mensheviks). The Mensheviks abroad freely admitted that he carried on ‘illegal’ activity on their instructions, but, as they argued, ‘the decisive question in this case is whether he received any instructions according to which the old guiding principles of the party were to be abandoned and its activity... to be directed towards increasing sabotage work for the purpose of actively supporting intervention’ (The Moscow Trial and the Labour and Socialist International (Labour Party, nd), p 9). In confessing to sabotage for this purpose, Ikoff spoke of communications from another Menshevik in Russia, a certain Braunstein; but Braunstein himself was not in the dock. Here too, it may be deduced that the process of selection was at work. Braunstein evidently could not be relied upon to back up Ikoff’s assertions — that is, if Braunstein was physically capable of appearing.
The most interesting part of this trial from our point of view is the evidence purporting to show that one of the leaders of the Mensheviks abroad, Rafael Abramovich, had paid a secret visit to Russia in the summer of 1928 in order to organise the sabotage activity. Statements of the accused at the trial made it clear that this alleged visit could only have taken place at some time during a period for which Abramovich had a complete alibi. The organisers overlooked an important fact. At the time when Abramovich was categorically alleged by the accused to have been in Moscow, he was in fact attending an International Socialist Conference in Brussels! Once again, as with Riabinsky and Vyshnegradsky in the 1930 trial, the GPU had slipped up badly. And in this particular instance the whole fabric of the prosecution’s case rested upon this visit of Abramovich to Moscow — which could not have taken place! Which did not, of course, prevent the accused from ‘freely confessing’, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that it did take place.