NEWS BULLETIN22 East 17th Street, Room 511, New York CityAMERICAN COMM'ITTEE FOR THE DEFENSEOF LEON TROTSKY

Telephone: GRamercy 7-6025

~t~reB~~er SUZANNE LAFOLLETTE, Treasurer ~i3;Y'b.s~c~dderPaul F. Brissenden Benjamin StolbergJames Burnham Harvey Fergusson Sam Jaffee Joseph Wood Krutch Margaret De Silver Norman ThomasJohn Chamberlain Lewis Gannett .Oscar jaszi Harry W. Laidler Freda Kirchwey Carlo TrescaSarah Cleghorn Martha Gruening Horace M. Kallen William Ellery Leonard John Dos Passes John Brooks WheelwrichtJohn Dewey Louis M. Hacker Dorothy Kenyon Ludwig Lore' Burton Rascoe Edmund WilsonMax Eastman MaDdlz • lialll:~ William H. Kilpatrick Ferdinand Lundberg James Rortyl Charles ErskineJames T. Farrell Sidney Hook Manuel Komroff Max Nomad Edward AyleswortD Ross Scott Wood

This Committee Exists (1) To Safeguard Trotsky's Right to Asylum and (2) to join in the Organization of an Impartial Commission of Inquiry .

BULLETIN No.2. JANUARY 27, 1937

For an Impartial Commission of Inquiry!For an Impartial Commission of InquirylTo the millions of workers and honest liberals all over the

world bewildered, confused and demoralized by the successionof trials in Moscow, this is the one demand that holds forthsome hope of clarification and release from the doubts andquestions these trials have aroused everywhere.

Let a group of prominent figures, drawn from liberal andlabor ranks, of unimpeachable integrity, weigh all the evidence,hear the testimony of those witnesses who have not yet beenheard, and come to a conclusion that the whole world will beable to comprehend.

Leon Trotsky, the chief defendant in these trials, has repeat-edly offered to appear before such a commission, to lay, beforeit the documentary record of his whole political career. Onlyin this way will he get the day in court to which he is entitled.

In support of this demand committees have come into exist-ence in Europe, similar in composition and purpose to theAmerican Committee for the Defense of Leon 'I'rotsky, Thedemand for a commission has been issued independently orsupported by such organizations as the Socialist Party U.S.A.,Independent Labor Party of Great Britain, the C.N.T. andP.O.U.M. of Spain, the Queensland Federation of Iron Workers(Au~ti'&~iah tne Seine SOCIalist Youth of France, The Bund andthe Central Trades Union Committee of Poland, the SocialistWorkers Party of Germany and others.

In England the Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotskyincludes H. N. Brausrord, J. F. Horranin, of the SocialistLeague, Rowland Hul, chairman of the Bradford 'I'rades Coun-cil, Conrad Noel, Stuart Purkiss of the Railway Employes'Union, Irene Rathbone, and others.

In France the Committee of Inquiry into the Moscow Trialand For the Defense of Freedom of Opinion in the Revolutionhas issued a commission appeal signed by Andre Breton, JulesRemains, Felicien Challaye, Maurice Dommanget, Goudchaux-Brunscnvigg, Marcel Marnnet, lieorges MIchon, .t'lerre Monatce,Magdeleine z-az, Georges Proch, Henri Pouiaiue, Alfred Rosmer,Vrctor-Serge, lieorges Durnouun, Leon Werth, VIctor Mar-guerite, ana more than a score or others with special statementsissued by Gaston Bergcry, Georges Izard, and others.

A Committee of nearly 100 leading intellectuals and laborfigures has been organized in Czechosiovakra. Other committeesexist m Canada, Australia, Denmark.

The American Committee, of which only a partial list ap-pears at the top of this bulletin, is taking active steps to furtherthe formation of the proposed Commission.

These committees call unitedly upon all liberals, progressivesand labor mnnants to support the tormation ot this commission,morally and materially.

Send in your contribution to the American Committee for theDerense or Leon 'l'l'otSky, Room 511, 2z East 17 Street, NewYork City.

Let the truth be known! For a Commission of Inquiry!

CAPITAL NEWSMEN DEFEND ROMMWASHINGTON, Jan. 26-Twelve leading Washington corre-

spondents called on Soviet Ambassador Troyanovsky today andtold him they could not believe in the guilt of their former col-league, Vladimir Romm, of Izvestia, who is supposed to haveacted as intermediary between Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek,and upon whose testimony the whole "case" against Leon Trot-sky depends.

Romm "confessed," but the Washington newspaperment re-fused to credit the "confession." "In view of our experiencewith him," they told Troyanovsky, "it will be extremely difficultfor us to believe that he is guilty of any deliberate act of dis-loyalty to the Soviet government."

.... 357

For a Day in CourtBy LEON TROTSKY

(T hue telegraplud statements appeared in theManchester Guardian on Jan. 25 and 26)

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 25-It is unnecessary to state that since1928 I have had no relations whatever with Radek and Piatakov,who have periodically insulted me in the official press. Piatakovnever visited me in Oslo and I have never been to Oslo exceptin company with the Knudsen family and my own secretaries. Ihave never known Vladimir Romm, who is alleged to have playedthe part of intermediary between myself and Radek. I haveabundant documentary evidence to prove the impossibility ofany meeting or personal relations between myself and the menwho-are now accused in Moscow.

I shall bring forth this evidence in a book I am at presentwriting on the crimes committed by the G.P.U. It is difficult toput my case to the public at a moment's notice but there aretwo or three fundamental questions which neither State Prose-cutor Vishinsky nor his distinguished defender" D. N. Pritt,will be able to evade.

First, how can one accept the fact that all the men whocarried through the revolution, with one exception, Stalin, havebecome terrorists, enemies of socialism, agents of the Gestapo,ready to dismember the U.S.S.R.?

Second, how is that these "criminals," who for nearly tenyears have been committing terrible crimes can suddenly repentand after having demanded death for others, suddenly demandit for themselves?

Third, how is one to explain that Zinoviev, Kamenev, andother leaders of this alleged 'Trotskyist' group, knew -nothingabout this grotesque plan to dismember the U.S.S.R. for thebenefit of Hitler and the Mikado, while Radek, whom none ofus ever took seriously, suddenly reveals himself at the headof a world conspiracy?

If there is any conspiracy, it is the conspiracy of the G.P.U.If there is any leader, his name is Stalin. Stalin's totalitariandictatorship has come into ever more serious conflict with theeconomic and cultural development of the country. He is theembodiment of the bureaucracy. The spirit of daring which helearned in the school of the revolution is now applied only tomaintain his own omnipotence and his own privileges bymethods that are fantastic in criminal ingenuity.

This last trial shows that a terrible political crisis is ap-proaching in Russia.

I am ready to denounce Stalin before any impartial andauthoritative international commission. I make this appeal toall men or good WIll and to all that section of the press whichis honest and independent and I know full well that the Man-chester Guardian will be one of the first to serve the truth andhumanity.

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 26-The charges in the present Moscowtrial are framed with one object-that of exploiting interna-tional relations in order to suppress internal enemies. Stalinhas invented nothing new. He is merely repeating several pre-vious cases in an exaggerated form.

It is alleged, for instance, that in 1935 I wrote throughVladimir Romm (ex-correspondent of Izvestia in Washington)of whom I have never heard, to Radek, with whom I have hadno relations since 1928, telling him it was necessary to restorethe capitalist system ill the Soviet Union.

But this is exactly what is now being done by the newaristocracy of which Stalin is the head. Stalin is thereforemerely trying to attribute to me through the person of Radekthe very policy which I publicly accuse him of putting intopractice.

For a fuller statement of this see my last book, "The Revolu-<tion Betrayed," already published in France, and which willsoon appear in English.

Then it is also alleged that I insisted in secret letters whichcannot be seen, that German and Japanese capital should beadmitted to Russia. In actual fact, I urged in the press at the

NEWS BULLETIN

very moment when Hitler was stretching out his hands toseize power, that the Red Army should be mobilized on thewestern frontiers of the Soviet Union as a demonstration inorder to support and encourage the German proletariat. In theinternational press I denounced Stalin, who began tu seek Hit-ler's favor immediately after his triumph. In arficles which Iwrote on the Red Army in 1934 and which ere published inseveral papers, I prophesied that Japan would come to grief inthe plains of Eastern Siberia.

For the last several years, second place in the list of allthoseinternational associates who rail against me belonged to Goeb-bels, who comes only after Stalin himself. In 1934 billsdenouncing Trotsky and all Trotskyists covered the hoardingsin Berlin. Those workers in Germany who thought as I do arenow serving terms of hard labor in concentration camps. TheNazis in Norway, who are closely connected to the GermanNazis, broke into the house where I was domiciled on Aug. 6last year and like the Stalinists themselves, demanded my ex-pulsion from the country.

Only in the totalitarian state of Stalin, where the Soviets,the workers' organizations, the press and the Bolshevik Partyare all stifled, only in that state where the bureaucracy alonecan speak-a privilege that has been established as a monopolyof falsehood--only there could a trial so obviously staged asthis one. take place. .

What could I hope to gain from an alliance with the Mikadoand Hitler? Power? To what end? Why even the most stubbornWhite Russians exiled by the revolution have abandoned theidea of intervention.

As a result of the defeat of the proletariat throughout theworld, my views are represented only by a tiny minority inevery country. These circumstances cannot now be changed,either by assassinating the Soviet bureaucracy or forming analliance with Japan and Germany.

In attributing such aims to me Stalin wishes, among otherthings, to compromise me before public opinion in democraticcountries, and in this way deprive me of finding asylum any-where.

1 reject all the statements concerning me made by thedefendants. Not a single word is true. 1 consider that mypolitical task is, before everything -else, to destroy the controlwhich the Soviet bureaucracy now has over an importantsection of the working class of the world. This political andtheoretical work, which is not secret and which anyone mayinspect and criticize, gives me every satisfaction because it isdevoted to mankind of the future.

1 do not know if Stalin dreams of a crown, but 1 do know thathis rule already has the imperial atarnp Tn his ctrugg le tvdominate the new caste, Stalin is crushing all progressivethinkers and is exploiting the anti-Semitic prejudice which isone of his characteristics. In place of the generation of therevolution, he is putting civil servants ready to anything aslong as they are ordered to do so. He is bringing about thedownfall of Soviet Russia.

DEMANDS PIATAKOV GIVE DETAILSMEXICO CITY, Jan. 24-Alluding to the trip which Gregory

Piatakov claims to have made to Oslo in Dec. 1935, Leon Trot-sky here today demanded that the Moscow defendant give moreprecise details.

"How could a man like Piatakov journey to Oslo without be-ing observed? How could he have escaped the notice of thefamily with whom 1 lived there.?" the exile asked. He demandedthat Piatakov describe how Trotsky looked, how he was dressed,if he had a beard or not, and to offer more convincing details.

"Stalin is using the trial to throw responsibility for all kindsof accidents in factories, excesses and crimes of his bureaucracyand other catastrophes on the Trotskyists," he said.

Citing the vastnesa of the alleged conspiracy, Trotsky askedhow it would have been possible for such activities to go on,unnoticed, in a country with one of the most vigilant policeorganizations in the world.

The chief defendant rejected as inadequate those \.lxlmmatiollB.of 'the '~(fonfeSsions" based uponlpurely psychological analysesor upon references to Dostoievsky.

"These men are not convinced terrorists," he said, "but ter-rorists by order of the, G.P.U., who have been persuaded byvarious means that the interests of the Soviet Union demandedthat they show that Hitler was plotting' with the Trotskyists.

"The G.P.U. said to them: 'Hitler seeks to mobilize the worldbourgeoisie against us. We must prove to the British, Frenchand American bourgeoisie that Hitler himself does not hesitateto form an alliance with Trotsky. You alone, ex-Trotskyists, canhelp us to discredit Trotsky'."

NO RECORD OF PLANtE VISIT,OSLO REPORTS

OSLO, Jan. 25-The liberal newspaper Dagbladet todayflatly contradicted testimony given by Gregory Piatakov, one ofthe Moscow defendants, who claimed he had flown to Oslo inDecember, 1935, in a special plane from Berlin.

"This declaration is false," said the Dagbladet, which an-nounced that it had investigated and found that "no airplane ofthis type arrived from Berlin during December, 1935."

STROILOV DECORATED WHILE"SABOTAGING"

NEW YORK, Jan. 26-M. S. Stroilov, chief engineer ofthe Kuzbas Coal Trust now on trial in Moscow on chargesof industrial sabotage and espionage, was decorated for hisservices irrraising coal production four months after he sup-posedly began Ius "sabotage," a study of the Pravda filesrevealed here today.

Stroilov, who was supposed to have begun his "sabotage"in June, 1935, was decorated in July with the order of theRed Labor Banner for over-fulfilling the plan. Four monthslater he was again decorated for his work in the Kuzbasmines, although according to the indictment the "sabotage"was already well underway.

Pravda of Oct. 8, 1935 published a picture of Stroilov to-gether with a prominent Red Army commander and V. 1.Kachalov, Russia's foremost artist, with whom he was pnl)-licly decorated at the session of the All-Russian Executive tCommittee in Moscow on Oct. 7.

BRITONS DENOUNCE TRIALSLONDON, Jan. 26-British labor and liberal circles today

were unanimous in denouncing the new trials in Moscow as aheavy blow to the world-wide labor movement.

"The Moscow trial is totally incomprehensible to the averageBritish subject," said Rhys Davies, prominent British laborleader. "First of all the obvious desire of the defendants to con-fess their guilt is so contrary to all human experience, that weare led to believe almost automatically that something musthave happened to them when they were in prison to compelthem to adopt such an extraordinary attitude before the court."

"The most disturbing effect of the trial," Davis told an inter-viewer, "is on the future of British socialism, because theaverage worker in Britain is beginning to question whetherSocialism implies all that is happenjng in Moscow.

"To that extent, the propagation of socialist principles inGreat Britain is being made more difficult to those of us whohave been proclaiming those principles for a lifetime," hedeclared.

Similar stpteme~t:: came ["vi" other indivlduals, all of whomhave been prominent adherents of cooperation between Britainand the Soviet Union in international affairs.

Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal opposition,declared that "to a liberal, it seems like a horrible, fantastic,macabre perversion of justice. No victim of the Bolsheviks couldhave devised a worse fate for his persecutors that that whichhas now befallen nearly all the creators of the Communistrevolution in Russia."

At its conference in Glasgow last week the' Scottish DivisionalConference of the Independent Labor Party adopted a resolutionon the last Moscow trials as follows:

"The Moscow trial and execution of 16 prisoners, includingsome of Lenin's colleagues in the October, 1917, revolution,created dismay here among large sections of the working classand there are tendencies in Soviet Russia, such as the growingdifferentiation in incomes and the reintroduction of rights ofinheritance, which are tending away from the classless society,rather than toward it."

HE MIGHT HAVE TALKED!PARIS, Jan. 26.-Dimitri Navachin, former chief Soviet bank-

ing representative in Paris, was murdered here today by anunknown assailant who stabbed him to death while he waswalking on the street. ,.'

Navachin, formerly a subordinate of Gregory Piatakov, ex-State Bank head now on trial in Moscow, reportedly broke offrelations with' the Soviet Emabssy here.

Police working on the case declared to newspapermen thatNavachin evidently had documentary evidence which wouldhave 'proved the innocence of the men now on trial in Moscow.

The crime was linked to the same persons, believed to be inemploy of the G.P.U., who last Fall broke into the Paris of-fice of the Netherlands Historical Institute and stole severalcases of letters and documents belonging to Leon Trotsky.

(According to an A.P. report from Mexico, Leon Trotskyexpressed fear that his son, Leon Sedov, now in Paris, would bethe next victim.

"Navachin knew too much about the Moscow trial," saidTrotsky, "1 have fears for my son, who is considered enemyno. 2 and may be the next victim.")

BRUSSEoLS, Jan. 25-"This time again the accused con-fessed themselves guilty of the most unlikely misdeeds," saidthe Socialist Party organ Le Peuple here today. The paperdeclared itself "bewildered" by the latest trial in Moscow.