Solow Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. II No. 4, 22 January 1938, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Soviet authorities have finally made formal admission that the couple variously known as “Robinson” and “Rubens” are in custody and under arrest.
The admission was made after many weeks of evasion, and two weeks of downright silence in the face of a cable of inquiry from the State Department at Washington.
Despite its fears that the “Robinson-Rubens” case is a botch the G.P.U. has found itself too deeply involved to withdraw.
With the acknowledgement of the fact that the “Robinsons” had been in a Soviet prison since early December – that is, some six weeks ago – came the announcement that the prisoners were being charged with espionage in behalf of a foreign power. A trial is expected shortly.
The trial – as we have predicted from the beginning of this case – will be another in the series of infamous frame-ups concocted by the Stalin regime and its G.P.U.
During the past weeks, of course, while hesitating as to whether to go through with the affair or scuttle it with an announcement that the missing couple had never been found, the G.P.U. has been preparing and rehearsing its instruments for a trial.
All circumstances of the “Robinson-Rubens” case point with deadly accuracy not only to frame-up in general, but to its particular nature and to the purpose it pursues.
The fact that the Moscow statement declares that Rubens was apprehended in the industrial region of the Urals, is additional emphasis.
From the very beginning, the Stalinist press has cautiously sought to connect the “Robinsons” with Leon Trotsky, the American Trotskyists and ... a Japanese spy plot in the United States and the Soviet Union. No doubt the G.P.U. will now attempt, by means of the customary “confessions,” to realize this despicable scheme in the open.
They started their newspaper campaign with inspired rumors (including a phony dispatch from Moscow via Warsaw, that the “Robinsons” had been to Mexico to confer with Leon Trotsky prior to their departure for Europe. To this they added the suggestion that the “Robinsons” or “Rubenses” had been to California prior to their departure for Mexico – without failing to tell their readers that California is the main center of Japanese espionage activities in the United States. A few days after they launched this story, a Vice-Commissar of the G.P.U. in Moscow wrote a sensational story for the Soviet press, reproduced in part in the American newspapers, calling the attention of the U.S. to activities, real or alleged, of unnamed Japanese spies in California and Panama.
All these deliberately disseminated rumors acquire significance in the light of the charges, completely refuted, to be sure, made in the Radek-Piatakov trial last year, to the effect that Trotsky had conspired with the Japanese Mikado to “give” Japan the Soviet Maritime Provinces and the island of Sakalin (and its oil) for the purpose of war against the Soviet Union and the United States.
It is quite apparent, therefore, that a systematic attempt has been made now for months to cook up a new frame-up, made particularly necessary for the Stalin regime because of the fact that the International Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials, headed by Dr. John Dewey, so effectively exploded the previous charges made by the G.P.U. in its “confession trials’” against Leon Trotsky as an agent of Hitler and Japan.
The curse under which the thick-skulled and clumsy police agents of Stalin operate is that they are compelled to continue an unending series of trials, in the latest of which they try to stuff up the gaping holes which are revealed in the preceding trials. The impending “Robinson-Rubens” case is of that type.
The frame-up obviously dates back to July of last year. At that time, the press was filled with reports of the action taken by the Soviet authorities in checking tourist ships from the United States for the purpose of barring from entry into the Soviet Union all persons by the name of “Robinson.”
Finally, at the beginning of December, a man registered at the National Hotel in Moscow under the name of “Robinson” suddenly disappeared. The woman registered as his wife was told by the Soviet authorities that her husband had been taken to a hospital. A few days later, Mrs. “Robinson’’ also disappeared – although the Soviet authorities systematically denied knowledge of their whereabouts. That, at least, was the first story. Now, the official account from – Moscow already contains a significant alteration. Now, it is the wife who told the Russian authorities that her husband had gone to a hospital! “About the middle of November,” reads the revised version of the disappearance, “the husband disappeared from the hotel. The wife informed authorities that he had become ill and had gone to a hospital, the name of which she did not know. A search of all hospitals in Moscow and the suburbs failed to reveal his presence, the officials said.” (World-Telegram, Jan. 18; 1938.)
This tiny forgery is but one of many, culminating in the monstrous frame-up being prepared for the purpose of blackening Trotsky and the American section of the Fourth International.
But, unfortunately for the frame-up artists, the whole case has been bungled miserably from the very beginning. Starting with the idea of having the “Robinsons” enact the role of intermediary between Trotsky and the Mikado, the G.P.U. is ending with an increasingly clear pattern revealing that the “Robinsons” have been associated throughout with the Stalinist movement. All the facts thus far brought forth show that, the “Robinsons” were connected at every point with the Communist Party and its members and institutions in this country!
We list here some of the salient disclosures thus far made which have caused the Daily Worker to maintain such an abysmal silence all during the affair:
1. Mrs. Rubens’ relatives regarded her and her husband as Stalinists, Mr. Rubens had no known occupation but plenty of money.
2. In applying for birth-certificates in the names of dead persons named Robinson, the Rubens used an address at which lived a number of Communist Party members, among them Julius Rosenthal (deceased). Lilian Paley, and apparently one other, formerly an official of Intourist, Soviet travel agency.
3. In applying for the Robinson passports, the couple worked through one Arthur or Aaron Sharfin. Sharfin is a member of the Communist Party; he was formerly assigned to the New York District, Section XV (mid-Bronx), Unit 12. He was active in unemployed work at the Stalinist Unemployed Councils at 1400 Boston Road, on East 171 Street, and elsewhere, and for a time lived in one of the Council headquarters.
4. Sharfin was linked with one Max or Mac Shaw. This Shaw is apparently the same person as Marshall Shaw, star subscription salesman for Soviet Russia Today, whose picture appears in that magazine, page 18, December 1933 issue. He is known to members of Local 338 of the Retail Clerks Union as a Stalinist. He apparently also goes under the name of Wershow. His wife, Muriel, is also a Stalinist supporter if not a party member.
5. Sharfin, having obtained the passport applications either from Rubens direct or through an intermediary, passed them on to Harry Zukerman. At this point the passport applications graduated from the G.P.U. level to the Tammany Hall level, and went through several Tammany stooges to Al Marinelli, County Clerk of New York, who certified them and sent them to Washington. The State Department made out passports.
6. The passports were sent, as ordered by the applicants, to an organization, called the Drama Travel League. Miss Isabel Walsh, worker in that office, has identified pictures of Mrs. Robinson as those of a nervous woman who once came into the office looking for Miss Helen Ravitch, the manager. Miss Ravitch, despite her denials, has been identified as the person who signed the receipt for the passports delivered to her by the Post Office Department.
7. Miss Ravitch is married to Dr. Solon Bernstein, physician to Stalinist William Z. Foster, and also connected with the Stalinist International Workers Order.
8. Before instructing the State Department to deliver the passports to the Drama Travel League, the Robinsons had asked that they be delivered to a mid-town address where lived one Mr. and Mrs. Harry Friedlander. The Appeal has been informed that the Fried- [Line of text missing] case, Mrs. Friedlander’s maiden name is Florence Oken. This is the; name of a known Stalinist supporter; the organizational tie-up, if any, is unknown at this writing. It may or may not be a coincidence that Oken is a well-known name in Stalinist circles, Helen Oken being the wife of an editor of the New Masses.
9. A well-known Stalinist in New York stated many weeks ago, when not a single newspaper knew anything about the “Robinsons” identity, that the couple had been “in California before going to Mexico.” This Stalinist obviously had inside information on the story which the G.P.U. had gotten up for the “Robinsons” to tell.
10. Several weeks ago the Freiheit, Stalinist Yiddish organ, declared that certain “Trotskyite” writers on New York Yiddish papers were aware of the real identity of the “Robinsons.” Needless to say, the Freiheit has not named names. The Appeal has inquired, not of Trotskyite writers (there are none) but of those Yiddish writers whom the G.P.U. “accuses” of Trotskyism. All deny knowledge of the “Robinsons.” The Freiheit was preparing to drag a few Yiddish anti-Stalinists into the frame-up – and incidentally gave away its own guilty awareness of the nature of the G.P.U. Plot.
11. Two months ago the national office of the S.W.P. complained to the Post Office that its mail had been rifled. We now learn that the Post Office Department has arraigned one Arthur Semle, a department employee, charged with stealing mail on the route which includes the office. Semle has signed a confession and will shortly be brought before a Federal Grand Jury. The Post Office Department has showen considerable anxiety to convince the press, including the Socialist Appeal, that the only motive in the thefts was to obtain money. The fact remains, however, that none of the mail orders or checks which are missing have been cashed – and that political documents are missing. Inasmuch as the C.P. has for many years made it a practice to steal political documents belonging to its working class opponents, we believe the theft of the mail had the usual political motive: to obtain a basis for forging documents useful to the G.P.U. Coming at the time they did, we naturally would not be surprised if these thefts had as their aim forgeries to be used in bolstering up the C.P.’s plans for the “Robinson-Rubens” case.
The C.P. may now be expected, under G.P.U. orders, to try to unload the Stalinists in New York who are in any way linked to the case, and perhaps to try to make them out to be Trotskyites. In addition, the G.P.U. may be expected to fish around in American liberal, Bohemian, and pseudo-radical circles in an effort to find somebody who can be bribed, blackmailed, or framed into playing the role of the indispensable link between the Rubens and American Trotskyites. The frame-up, moreover, will probably be stretched to cover not only Trotskyites but any liberal or left critics of Stalin’s plan for a People’s Totalitarian War Front.
For the last week there has been in session in New York a Federal Grand Jury investigating the passport racket whereby the mysterious “Robinson-Rubens” got their phony passports. The high political significance of the “Rubinson-Rubens” case is indicated by the fact that not a single New York newspaper has reported one bit of news concerning the Grand Jury proceedings. Either the reporters can get no information – or they are afraid to print what they get lest they be prosecuted for contempt of the Federal Jury. Moreover, United States Attorney Lester Dunningan has apparently hedged himself about with unusual protections against publicity, usually one of the chief delights of prosecutors.
The orders for silence and secrecy, in fact, come from the Department of State rather than from the Department of Justice.
For what is at issue here is not an affair of justice but an affair of state.
Early in December Secretary of State Hull asked Moscow for an explanation of the disappearance of the Rubens couple, then known only as the “Robinsons.” It is rumored in diplomatic circles in Washington that Troyanovsky told Hull not to yell too loud or he would be sorry. In any case, Moscow made no official answer for a week, apparently confident that it could play with the sensibilities of Washington with impunity. At the end of a week the State Department discovered that the “Robinson” passports were phony, issued a statement implying that the “Robinsons” were not American citizens, and thus unloaded the missing couple who thenceforth were suspect in American eyes.
Subsequently it was established that the phony Mrs. “Robinson” was really Mrs. Rubens and that, whatever she may have to do with a “Robinson” passport, she was an American-born citizen. Inasmuch as the Soviet government had never answered Washington’s inquiry – except indirectly by an equivocal Izvestia announcement that measures were being taken to apprehend the missing couple – Hull early in January felt compelled to address a new request to Moscow, this time for information about Mrs. Rubens only.
When a week went by without a reply from Moscow, a number of American newspapers commented on the amazing attitudeof the Soviet government toward a government whose friendship it has sought in a thousand ways to guarantee. Two weeks went by before the Soviet government answered. While using the passport disclosures, to deal a few blows to the G.P.U. in the United States, Hull made no public disclosures.
The Socialist Appeal is not a State Department gazette. It has established that at both ends of the chain which made it possible for the “Robinson-Rubens” to get their phony passports are Stalinist connections. We have charged that the “Robinson-Rubens’” affair is important because it casts light on the nefarious, reactionary political activities of Stalin’s G.P.U. both in this country and in the U.S.S.R.
No Stalinist organ or official has attempted to refute any of our charges.
In the United States there are powerful forces which, having an eye to imperialist war adventures in the Far East, desire not to cause serious embarrassment to Stalin. These forces have the ear of the State Department. Consequently, despite Mrs. Rubens’ American citizenship, despite the fact that a plot is afoot to use the “Robinson-Rubens” case for a frame-up by the use of “evidence” manufactured in Moscow, the State Department enters a conspiracy of silence. Instead of making available to the public all that its many investigators have learned in the last two months, it contrives to silence most of the press on the subject. While it does not dare to suppress openly the American political opposition, it protects Stalin’s “good name” before the public.
Hull may be expected to continue conniving with the Kremlin to hide the facts, unless forced to open the Robinson-Rubens-Yezhov dossier now in his possession.
The continuance of the Appeal’s investigation will bring more facts to light, making the Department’s situation more difficult.
If at the same time the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations demands the facts now in Hull’s possession, the State Department may have to do a great deal more talking than Hull or Troyanovsky would like.
Solow Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 30 July 2015