Published: Socialist Appeal, Vol. 1 No. 19, 18 December 1937, p. 1.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2014. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
The commission condemned nobody to death or to prison. Yet it is impossible to imagine a more terrible verdict. The commission says to the rulers of a great country:
“You committed a, frame-up for the purpose of justifying the extermination of your political adversaries.
“You tried to deceive the toilers of the world.
“You are unworthy to serve the cause which you invoke.”
The commission, which includes people of different political views, could not follow our political aims. But its verdict has an immeasurable political importance. The methods of lying and blundering frame-ups which contaminate the inner life of the U.S.S.R. and the workers’ movement of the whole world received today a terrible blow.
Let the official friends of the U.S.S.R. and the other pseudo-radical bigots say that the verdict will be used by reaction. This is untrue. Nowhere and never did the truth serve the cause of reaction.
And nowhere and never is progress fed on lies. The commission, it is true, delivered a blow to the bureaucracy, but this bureaucracy has become the main brake upon the progress of the Soviet Union.
Aiming to serve the truth, the commission served the liberating struggle of all mankind. From now on the work of the commission as well as the names of its participants belong to history.
Last updated on: 21 November 2014