Hugo Dewar 1953

The Modern Inquisition

Source: Published in 1953 by Allan Wingate, 12 Beauchamp Place, London SW3. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers. Basic spelling errors have been corrected, and people’s names have (we hope) been correctly rendered.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter I: The Seed is Sown

Chapter II: The Heads are Harvested

Chapter III: The Inquisitors at Work

Chapter IV: Export to Europe

Chapter V: The Cardinal Conspires

Chapter VI: The Case of the Protestant Spies

Chapter VII: Yesterday’s Hero

Chapter VIII: ‘I Plead Not Guilty’

Chapter IX: America and Britain in the Dock

Chapter X: The ‘Chistka’ Continues

Chapter XI: The Great Prague Purge

Conclusion

Postscript

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Foreword

I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith. I curse and detest the said errors and heresies... that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the centre of the Universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the centre of the same, and that it does move. — Galileo, 1633

I voluntarily admit that I have committed the acts I am charged with according to the penal code of the state. — Cardinal Mindszenty, 1949

Lines are being drawn between devotion to justice and adherence to a faction, between fair play and a love of darkness that is reactionary in effect no matter what banner it flaunts. — John Dewey

In the years 1936-38 there took place in Russia a series of trials involving a staggeringly large number of leading political figures and Red Army and Navy chiefs. The scope of these trials, and the charges brought against the defendants, astounded all observers; but even more bewildering was the fact that all the accused who were tried in public pleaded guilty, did their utmost to get themselves convicted and used the dock as a platform to extol the virtues of Stalin and the glories of the regime against which they had allegedly plotted.

Since the extension of Soviet power to a large area of Eastern Europe, the world has again witnessed a spate of these ‘confession’ trials, involving such diverse personalities as Mindszenty, head of the Catholic Church in Hungary; the Communist leaders Rajk in Hungary, Kostov in Bulgaria, Sling in Czechoslovakia; the American, Vogeler, and the Britisher, Sanders, employees of Standard Electric, in Hungary; the leader of the Agrarian Union in Bulgaria, Petkov; and a host of others.

In spite of the wealth of evidence that has accumulated on the methods used to obtain these so-called confessions, an air of mystery still clings to them. Thus after the Sanders-Vogeler trial The Times could write that ‘the particular method of coercion or persuasion used on these occasions is unknown and speculations about it are fruitless’, and the Daily Herald agrees that ‘we cannot know with any certainty the means employed’. The persistence of this uncertainty is due only to the fact that the available evidence is scattered, has been examined by very few people, and so far assembled by no one. The purpose of this book is to piece together the evidence that has accumulated over the years, and thereby present a categoric answer to the question: ‘How are the confessions obtained?’ At the same time the aims served by these show trials will be demonstrated. This involves an historical survey of the major trials from their inception in Russia to their latest manifestation in Czechoslovakia. It is a record not simply of man’s inhumanity to man, but also of a fraud so colossal, perpetrated with such brazen assurance on so wide a scale, and supported by such powerful interests, that by comparison the Inquisition of the Dark Ages pales into insignificance. Without question this is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the modern age.

In addition to the evidence of those who have undergone interrogation there is the testimony of Soviet agents who broke with Stalin, the abundant material of the trials themselves, and the evidence contributed by the political aims avowedly pursued through the medium of these trials. While it may justly be argued that the testimony of one or two people affords no proof of the systematic employment of inquisitorial methods to obtain confessions, all the detailed evidence, drawn from many sources independent of each other, is irrefutable and conclusive.

As the three Moscow Trials, from which we have quoted at considerable length, took place many years ago, and will consequently be unknown to many readers, it is necessary to give some indication of the main accused and the charges brought against them.

These three great trials took place on 19-24 August 1936; 23-30 January 1937; and 2-13 March 1938. The principal accused in the first trial were GE Zinoviev, LB Kamenev, SV Mrachkovsky, GE Yevdokimov, IN Smirnov, IP Bakayev, VA Ter-Vaganyan and EA Dreitzer. In the second they were YL Pyatakov, KB Radek, GY Sokolnikov, LP Serebriakov and NI Muralov. In the third they were NI Bukharin, AI Rykov, NN Krestinsky, KG Rakovsky and GG Yagoda. To appreciate the astonishment caused by the trial of these men one must know something of their backgrounds, the roles they played in the Russian revolutionary movement and the establishment of Soviet power.

Grigori Zinoviev was a close collaborator of Lenin in exile; a collection of articles by the two was published in 1921 by the Communist International (hereafter referred to as the Comintern). He was elected President of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI) at its First Congress in 1919, and held this post for many years; he was a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau (Politbureau), the highest party organ; he was also Chairman of the Leningrad Soviet. Zinoviev was executed at the age of 52, after thirty-five years’ service in the revolutionary movement. Kamenev was also 52 years old when executed, and had spent thirty years in the movement. A close colleague of Lenin, he had been Vice-Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, a member of the Central Committee and Politbureau, and Chairman of the Moscow Soviet. Up to 1934 he was head of the Academia Publishing House in Russia.

Mrachkovsky, aged 53 at the time of his execution, had spent his life in the service of revolution, had been an outstanding leader of fighting detachments defending Siberia and the Far East during the Civil War. Yevdokimov, aged 52, member of the Central Committee and Organisation Bureau (Orgbureau), a Secretary of the Central Committee, and the orator at Lenin’s funeral on behalf of the Leningrad organisation. Smirnov, one of the founders of the Red Army, fought with Trotsky at the battle of Sviashsk, a foundation member of the party and a People’s Commissar; imprisoned in 1932 till his trial in 1936; executed at the age of 56. Bakayev, famous as a military man risen from the ranks of the workers, a member of the Central Control Commission and the Leningrad Soviet; shot, at the age of 49. Ter-Vaganyan, leader of the Communist Party of the Armenian SSR, editor of the review Under the Banner of Marxism; in prison from 1932 to his trial in 1936; shot at the age of 43. Dreitzer, officer in the Red Army during the Civil War, twice decorated with the Order of the Red Flag; shot as a traitor at the age of 42.

Pyatakov had been an anarchist in his youth, imprisoned and deported under Tsarism. Early adhered to Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party; a leader of the movement in the Ukraine; a member of the Central Committee from the first days of the Republic; a director of the State Bank; deputy People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry; Rykov’s deputy on the Supreme Economic Council in the 1920s. Radek, in the revolutionary movement from the age of 14; leading figure of the Comintern in Lenin’s time and Secretary of its Executive Committee in 1920; a leader in the German Communist Party; arrested in Germany, 15 February 1919; released December and returned to Russia. He was a member of Trotsky’s ‘Left Opposition’, was expelled from the party at the end of 1927; capitulated to Stalin in 1929 and was reinstated in 1930, working on Izvestia. He was arrested after the first trial and sentenced to ten years in 1937, but his subsequent fate is unknown.

Sokolnikov collaborated with Lenin in drawing up the programme of the party in 1917. He had been a Bolshevik since 1905, when he participated in the uprising of that year. Arrested in 1907 and deported, he escaped in 1909 and was in emigration till 1917. A member of the Moscow Committee, he was Chairman of the Soviet Peace Delegation at Brest Litovsk, and signed the treaty of that name — demonstratively, without reading its terms; Assistant Commissar of Finance, 1921; Commissar of Finance, 1922; Deputy Chairman, State Planning Commission, 1926; Ambassador to Great Britain, 1929; member of the Central Committee, 1917-19, 1922-30; Assistant Commissar of Foreign Affairs in 1934. He received a sentence of ten years at his trial, but nothing has been heard of him since.

Born in 1890, Serebriakov started work as a metal-worker at the age of nine, joined the revolutionary movement in 1904, was arrested in 1905. He became a ‘professional revolutionary’ in 1909, was arrested and exiled to Narym in 1912 and escaped in 1914, returning to Moscow; rearrested and sent back to Narym till his term of exile expired in 1916. After the Revolution Serebriakov held high posts in the movement, among them that of Secretary to the Central Committee. He was expelled from the party when Stalin triumphed in 1927, capitulated in 1929 and was reinstated in 1930, after which he served in various high posts, the last being that of Assistant Commissar of Communications. Sentenced to death at the age of 50.

Muralov, born in 1877, was one of the oldest Bolsheviks, with a legendary record of heroism in the Civil War. Commandant of the Moscow Military District, and member of the Central Control Commission, he was expelled from the party in 1927 and exiled to Western Siberia; shot at the age of 59.

Bukharin, in Lenin’s words ‘the favourite of the party’, was a member of the Central Committee at the time of his arrest. A former President of the Comintern (after Zinoviev’s fall from favour in 1927), he was the author of the Programme of the Communist International, and editor of Pravda. From 1923 to 1927 he collaborated closely with Stalin in the fight against the Left Opposition, but after the victory Stalin turned against his former ally. He was relieved of his posts in 1929, and expelled from the Politbureau in 1933, but served on Izvestia until his arrest; executed by Stalin after thirty years of service in the revolutionary movement.

Rakovsky was born in Bulgaria and became a leader in the Bulgarian and Rumanian revolutionary Socialist movements. Imprisoned by the Rumanian government during the First World War, he was liberated by Russian frontier troops and joined the Bolsheviks. He was one of the founders of the Comintern and head of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic; later becoming Soviet Ambassador to England, then France. He spoke six languages fluently and had a reading knowledge of several others. Expelled from the party in 1927 and exiled to a remote region of Siberia, he did not capitulate until 1934. Stalin then sent him on a mission to Japan, and his sojourn there later served as a basis for the charge of espionage relations with the Japanese. He was shot after almost fifty years of service in the revolutionary cause.

Krestinsky, a lawyer by profession, and an Old Bolshevik like all the others, was the General Secretary of the party prior to Stalin’s assumption of that post. He was for a time People’s Commissar of Finance and Ambassador to Berlin. Rykov was President of the Soviet of People’s Commissars after Lenin’s death and had spent nearly forty years in the movement when he was shot as a traitor.

Finally there is Yagoda, also an old Bolshevik, briefly sympathetic to the Right Opposition (Bukharin, Rykov) in 1928, but essentially a GPU man; one-time lord and master of the vastest slave-labour camps in the world, decorated for construction of the Baltic White Sea Canal, close confidant of Stalin when he schemed to break his opponents and make himself dictator; People’s Commissar for the Interior, member of the Central Committee and chief organiser of the first two Moscow Trials.

Other accused were Communists of long standing but internationally less well known and others of dubious background. An indication of the types involved in the latter category is obtained from the fact that one of them, a certain Arnold, was Molotov’s chauffeur, a man who had allegedly changed his name and nationality many times before entering Russia. Chauffeurs of high Soviet dignitaries are always chosen with great care from among meticulously vetted GPU personnel.

Before giving an indication of the charges laid against these men, it is well to note the government representative opposed to them in the person of the State Prosecutor, Andrei Vyshinsky.

Vyshinsky was born in 1883 and joined the Russian Social Democratic Party at the age of 19. He was sentenced to imprisonment in 1907. Up to 1920 he adhered to the Mensheviks, opposing the Bolsheviks (according to Victor Serge he was involved in sabotage of the food administration in the Ukraine in 1918), but in that year he climbed on the bandwagon, exhibiting the far-sighted shrewdness that appears to have never since deserted him. From 1920 to 1923 he was on the staff of the Commissariat for Food Supply; from 1923 to 1925 he was Attorney General of the Russian Soviet Federated Republics; from 1925 to 1927, Professor of Jurisprudence at Moscow University, then Commissar for Justice, President of the Court in the Industrial Party Trial, 1930, Public Prosecutor in the Metro-Vickers Trial of 1933, and in the Moscow Trials of 1936-38. He has latterly made a reputation for himself as Russia’s chief spokesman in the sphere of international diplomacy.

The accused, whose records we have briefly sketched above, were charged with many crimes, including sabotage, assassination, murder by poisoning, and espionage. It will be sufficient to give some extracts from the indictment in the third Moscow Trial to show the general nature of the charges in all three trials:

Indictment in the case of NI Bukharin, AI Rykov, GC Yagoda, NN Krestinsky, KG Rakovsky, etc..., accused of having on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states hostile to the Soviet Union formed a conspiratorial group named the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyists’ with the object of espionage on behalf of foreign states, wrecking, diversionist and terrorist activities, undermining the military power of the USSR, dismembering the USSR and severing from it the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Central Asiatic Republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Maritime Region of the Far East for the benefit of the aforementioned foreign states, and lastly, with the object of overthrowing the Socialist social and state system existing in the USSR and of restoring capitalism, of restoring the power of the bourgeoisie...

Thus the accused NN Krestinsky, on the direct instructions of enemy of the people Trotsky, entered into treasonable connections with the German intelligence service in 1921...

The accused KG Rakovsky, one of Trotsky’s most intimate and particularly trusted men, has been an agent of the British intelligence service since 1924, and of the Japanese intelligence service since 1934...

The investigation has established the fact that by direct agreement with the Japanese and German intelligence services... the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyists’ engineered and committed a number of terrorist acts against some of the finest people of our country...

The investigation has established that the vile assassination of SM Kirov... was... committed in pursuance of a decision of the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyists...

As the materials of the investigation show, Bukharin and other conspirators aimed at frustrating the Brest-Litovsk Peace, overthrowing the Soviet government, arresting and murdering VI Lenin, JV Stalin and YM Sverdlov... (From the Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists’ (Moscow, 1938), pp 5-35)

This report will hereafter be referred to as Trial III; The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre, Moscow, 1936, will be referred to as Trial I, and The Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre, Moscow, 1937, will be quoted as Trial II.

The indictment in all the three trials covers essentially the same ground, the only difference being that there is a progressive accumulation of crimes, the colours of which become more and more fantastically lurid. In the last trial, for instance, four of the Kremlin physicians enter into the plot (one of them was absent from the court-room; presumably he was not fit for trial). They are accused of poisoning the People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, Kuibyshev; the head of the OGPU, Menzhinsky; and the author Maxim Gorky. These crimes were allegedly carried out on the instructions of Yagoda, who was virtual chief of the GPU even when Menzhinsky, the actual head, was alive. (Menzhinsky had been a severely stricken man for years before his death and his occupation of the post was purely nominal.)

The murder of SM Kirov, referred to in the indictment, has been dealt with by the author in Assassins at Large (Alan Wingate, 1951), where the interested reader will find a detailed analysis of this mysterious affair. Here it is sufficient to note that some hundreds of people — none of whom had the remotest connection with the crime — were executed in retaliation for this one death.

The reader will now appreciate the effect of these trials on world public opinion. Outside of the USSR not a single commentator independent of the Russian authorities and competent to pass an opinion on these matters could be found to credit these charges and accept the ‘evidence’ against almost the entire General Staff of the Russian Revolution of 1917. And to add to the general amazement and incredulity there were the accusations against almost all the top-ranking officers of the Red Army and Navy. Tried in secret on charges of espionage relations with foreign powers, conspiracy to overthrow the regime and dismember the country, the heroes of the revolutionary era were hurried away to the place of execution. The élite of an entire generation was wiped out.

In spite, however, of a widespread disbelief in the genuineness of these ‘confession’ trials, the problem of how the accused were induced to plead guilty remained a matter of more or less vague speculation. The most widely accepted theory, advanced by Arthur Koestler in his Darkness at Noon, even if it could be accepted as valid for a particular type of accused, did not offer a solution for all the known cases, even before the export of these trials to Eastern Europe. With the extension of these trials to the European scene it became apparent — from such comments as we have quoted at the beginning of this foreword — that Koestler’s explanation had not provided the definitive answer. But the evidence set forth in the following pages leaves no room for doubt about the technique by means of which confessions can be extorted from all manner of opponents or heretics, no matter if they are Old Bolsheviks, Catholics, Protestants, leaders of peasant parties, technicians, scientific workers, or what have you.

Hugo Dewar 1953

The Modern Inquisition

Source: Published in 1953 by Allan Wingate, 12 Beauchamp Place, London SW3. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers. Basic spelling errors have been corrected, and people’s names have (we hope) been correctly rendered.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter I: The Seed is Sown

Chapter II: The Heads are Harvested

Chapter III: The Inquisitors at Work

Chapter IV: Export to Europe

Chapter V: The Cardinal Conspires

Chapter VI: The Case of the Protestant Spies

Chapter VII: Yesterday’s Hero

Chapter VIII: ‘I Plead Not Guilty’

Chapter IX: America and Britain in the Dock

Chapter X: The ‘Chistka’ Continues

Chapter XI: The Great Prague Purge

Conclusion

Postscript

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter I: The Seed is Sown

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.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter II: The Heads are Harvested

All these trials aroused, to put it mildly, very grave doubts in the minds of observers abroad. But what was to follow surpassed all previous human experience, not excluding that of the witchcraft trials of the Middle Ages. In a series of world-staggering trials, practically the entire Old Guard of the Russian Revolution publicly confessed to all the crimes in the Soviet calendar, and were duly despatched from this world by a bullet in the back of the neck in the cellars of the Lubianka, or else, in a few instances, hidden away in secret prisons from which they have never since emerged. At the same time, nearly the whole of the General Staff and many minor officers were tried in secret, condemned as traitors and shot, while hundreds of thousands of real or alleged opponents of the regime were executed without trial or exiled to remote regions of the country under conditions amounting for most of them to slow death from starvation and disease.

In 1934 a faint light of hope appeared on the Soviet horizon. The worst period of forced collectivisation was past; the last harvest had mercifully been excellent; the speeches at the party congress of that year appeared to give grounds for the belief that the terrible tension of the previous years would at last be relaxed.

A single shot shattered all these hopes and gave the starting signal for a new wave of ferocious repression worse than anything that had gone before. A certain Leonid Nikolayev, in circumstances never clarified and for reasons never divulged by the authorities (although Nikolayev left a letter stating the reasons for his action), shot down and killed the party boss of the Leningrad district, Sergei Mironovich Kirov.

An examination of this affair does not lie within the scope of this book. [1] Suffice it to say that the ‘realists’ in Russia utilised this assassination as the pretext for a final settling of accounts with all who had ever at any time had even the remotest connection with any opposition inside the party.

The Dewey Commission set up in Mexico to sift the evidence of the first two of the Moscow Trials (1936 and 1937), submitted it to an exhaustive and devastating analysis, see The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty (Secker and Warburg, 1937 and 1938 respectively), and demonstrated with irrefutable logic that in their confessions the accused contradicted themselves and one another, that certain key statements in these confessions were false, and came to the conclusion:

(1) That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no effort was made to ascertain the truth.

(2) While confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them.

In view of this very thorough investigation by the Dewey Commission, it is not here necessary to recapitulate the abundant evidence proving the bogus nature of the confessions. Our notice of these Moscow Trials will therefore be confined to two aspects: their purpose and the technique employed to obtain confessions.

The purpose of these two trials, and also the one that followed in 1938, was very simple. They destroyed all those within the party who had at any time in the past belonged to an opposition. They not only destroyed them physically, but they also sought to annihilate them morally; to deny their past services in the revolutionary cause, transform them into traitors, and render them for ever anathema to the mass of the Russian people. At the same time they constituted the ostensible motive for a purge, both at home and abroad, of the administrative apparatus and the armed forces, thus removing all who did not belong to the new generation of parvenus typified in the person of AY Vyshinsky, who, during the days of revolution, had been on the other side of the barricade — and as far away on the other side as possible. This process halted only with the fall and trial of Yagoda, chief of the GPU, accompanied by a cleansing of the police apparatus itself, thus silencing — by death or the threat of death — all those who knew too much about the inner mechanics of the purge.

This does not mean to say that all of the purged were innocent of any hostility towards Stalin. Many nursed in secret a passionate desire for a change in the regime. Stalin could not but know how much he was hated, and that was enough for him. This was treachery! Vengeful, almost (one hesitates over the qualification) pathologically suspicious, Stalin smelled treason everywhere; and, once launched, the purge acquired a momentum of its own, independent of its author, impossible to stop till at last it bogged down of itself in the blood and filth churned up in its path.

From a study of the trial records themselves we can obtain a glimpse into their shadowy background.

The chief accused in the 1936 trial had already been in prison for a long time before they appeared in the dock. Yevdokimov was asked by Vyshinsky: ‘Do you admit that the assassination of Comrade Kirov was prepared with your assistance?’ Yevdokimov admits it. Vyshinsky continues: ‘At the trial in Leningrad, on 15-16 January 1935, you emphatically asserted that you had nothing to do with that murder.’ So — he had been in GPU hands since before January 1935. Among others figuring in this trial of 1935 were Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bakayev. They had all been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for ‘moral complicity’ in the killing of Kirov. Now they all figured in this new trial in 1936. Thus they had all been in prison, at the disposal of the investigators, for a long time before they once again faced their judges.

The official report also gives us an indication of the length of interrogation necessary before the accused can be made to confess. V Olberg confessed ‘during examination on 21 February of this year’ (that is, 1936). But there is no date in the report indicating that any of the other accused confessed before July. It is reasonable to assume that had they confessed earlier, the report would have said so. It gives dates ranging from 3 July to 10 August, when ‘detailed evidence’, that is, when the required admissions were made by some of the principal accused (no dates are given for Fritz David and Berman-Yurin, who, like another accused, Olberg, rouse the very strong suspicion of being government agents). Thus we have a period of time from 21 February to 10 August: more than five months between the first confession and the last.

During these five months (at least) the accused were subject to interrogation. Again the trial record itself helps us to understand that these men (apart from Olberg, Fritz David and Berman-Yurin) did not give way easily. We quote from the report (Trial I): ‘After obdurate denials, the accused Zinoviev, convicted by the testimony of a number of other accused, had to admit that ...’ (p 31) (No date is given for Zinoviev’s first break, but from the text it is obviously after many of the others.)

After persistent denials of his participation ... the accused Bakayev, under the weight of evidence brought against him, testified... (p 33)

Comrade Vyshinsky reminds Kamenev that he admitted this only after Reingold had given his evidence; that at the preliminary investigation he did not admit this until he had been implicated by others. (p 57)

Gradually a picture of part of what takes place behind the scenes begins to form. Olberg confesses first, a long time before any of the others; his confession is shown to others, or they are confronted with him in person to hear his accusations; still others ‘confess’, perhaps at first only partially but at last they are completely broken; and finally the most obdurate fall into line ‘under the weight of evidence’.

Now, we already have a slight idea of the nature of the preliminary interrogation from the evidence of Monkhouse in the Metro-Vickers Trial. He admitted that he lost his nerve after only forty-eight hours of questioning. Only forty-eight hours! — but ‘under such conditions it was enough’ — he said in court. For these later victims, however, it was not a question of two days, but of at least five months. Vyshinsky sought to excuse the very long periods of each interrogation session to which the British engineers were subjected, on the grounds that the British government itself was urging that the case be speeded up. The investigation of Nordwall and Monkhouse would normally have taken weeks and they would have been questioned for only two or three hours at a time, he said. But what power on earth was there to prevent the investigators in the case of Zinoviev and Kamenev et alii from continuing each interrogation for more than two or three hours, for as long as the prisoners retained consciousness? And then reviving them, to continue the torture. What power on earth was there to stop them from keeping up this pressure day after day, week after week, and month after month?

The reports of the public trials, particularly the first (1936), are far from being verbatim, and appear to have been edited with some care. Still it is clear that of all the accused, Smirnov, even in court, was more difficult to hold in line than the others. It is not therefore without significance that before his turn comes for cross-examination by Vyshinsky the ‘witness’ Safonova is brought into court. We put ‘witness’ in quotes because ‘her case has been set aside for separate trial’ (Trial I, p 76), although she is manifestly just as much one of the accused as any of those actually in the dock.

After Safonova had affirmed that Smirnov said ‘Stalin must be assassinated, Stalin would be assassinated’, Vyshinsky turns to Smirnov and asks: ‘What were your relations with Safonova?’

Smirnov: ‘Good.’

Vyshinsky: ‘And more.’

Smirnov: We were intimately related.

Vyshinsky: ‘You were husband and wife.’

Smirnov: ‘Yes.’

Was Smirnov’s wife brought into court simply to report alleged conversations, or conversations about conversations, which added nothing to what other accused had already confessed? And why was her case ‘set aside for separate trial'? And why was she never tried in public after all?

Is it altogether unwarranted to suggest that some sort of bargain is here in question? We affirm nothing at this point, but the reader is asked to bear this incident in mind when reading later testimony regarding the methods employed at the preliminary investigations. Let us for the time being content ourselves with quoting the words of the 67-year-old accused Fyedotov in the Industrial Party Trial: ‘If at the present time I none the less beg... for leniency, it is not for myself... but for my family.’

It must also be noted that many others allegedly involved with the accused at this trial were also ‘reserved’. ‘The cases of Gertik, Grinberg, Y Gaven, Karev, Kuzmichev, Konstant, Matorin, Paul Olberg, Radin, Faivilovich, D Schmidt and Esterman, in view of the fact that investigation is still proceeding, have been set aside for separate trial.’ (Trial I, p 39 — my emphasis) What becomes of them? No one knows — or rather no one tells. They do not figure in the next great trial in 1937, or the next in 1938. Who are they, what were they? Just names, outlandish names. But nearly all of them were leading figures in the early Bolshevik movement, and men who had for years worked hand-in-glove with Stalin. The GPU has power, however, to deal with them ‘administratively’ — and it uses this power. Since men can be shot without trial, it rests with the preliminary investigation whether they ever appear at a public trial — or any trial at all. On the other hand, men are ostensibly condemned to death and yet later they reappear in public life. Ramzin, for a well-known example. His case might well be cited to men under interrogation as an example of the fact that the regime is not vindictive, is prepared to rehabilitate those who aid it by making a clean breast of their sins.

Listen to the evidence on Smirnov’s attitude during the preliminary investigations:

At first he denied everything: he denied the existence of a Trotskyite organisation, he denied the existence of a centre, he denied his part in the centre, he denied connection with Trotsky, he denied that he gave any secret instructions, even those which he gave in 1936, and we know that this great conspirator managed to organise the communication of criminal instructions to his adherents even while he was in isolation. He denied everything. The whole of his examination of 20 May consisted of the word: ‘I deny that, again I deny, I deny.'... On 21 July, you, Smirnov, gave somewhat different evidence... When confronted with Mrachkovsky you continued to deny... I want to remind you that at the confrontation with Safonova during the preliminary investigation, which, in the main, reproduced what we saw in this court... he says ‘I do not remember.’ ... But on 13 August he was compelled to admit that this conversation did take place in 1932... (Trial I, pp 158-60, my emphasis)

Note in the above the phrase ‘even while he was in isolation’: the prosecution could not ignore the awkward fact that Smirnov had been in prison from January 1933 until his last trial in 1936.

The 1936 trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev is their third. Twice before, in January and July 1935, they have been tried in connection with the Kirov affair, in conditions of almost complete secrecy. Clearly they were not at that time ripe for a public propaganda trial. At this, their third and last appearance in court, prospective members of the cast of other performances are mentioned. In addition to the list of names of those whose ‘cases are reserved’, others crop up during the court questioning. Since the accused only repeat in court what they have confessed behind the scenes, the mention of these names comes as no shock to the prosecuting authorities.

There is therefore nothing haphazard about all this. The second and third Moscow Trials are already in process of rehearsal before the first is launched. It is not enough for the accused to confess his own guilt: he must have had accomplices. Who were they? We get a hint of this aspect of the matter from the following:

Ter-Vaganyan explains to the court that Smirnov is afraid of telling the court the whole truth because he would then have to name a number of persons who were associated with terrorism. (Trial I, p 109)

Smirnov’s reluctance to go the whole hog is thus explained in part by his desire not to implicate others. Ter-Vaganyan then offers him a way out of the dilemma; he suggests that Smirnov should admit connection with the ‘Gruzian [that is, Georgian — author] deviationists’: ‘In particular, Smirnov does not want to say that beginning with 1928 he maintained systematic connections with Gruzian deviationists.’ Thus aided, Smirnov remembers that in 1929 he ‘met Okudjava’. No danger here, because Okudjava had already been sentenced in secret trial (if ‘trial’ is the right word) and shot, together with seven other prominent Georgian leaders.

While Smirnov is allowed this easy way out, not so for the others of lesser calibre. On 21 August 1936, Comrade Vyshinsky makes the following statement:

At the preceding sessions some of the accused (Kamenev, Zinoviev and Reingold) in their testimony referred to Tomsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Uglanov, Radek, Pyatakov, Serebriakov and Sokolnikov as being to a greater or lesser degree involved in the criminal counter-revolutionary activities... (Trial I, p 115)

I consider it necessary to inform the court that yesterday I gave orders to institute an investigation of these statements of the accused in regard to Tomsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Uglanov, Radek and Pyatakov, and that in accordance with the results of this investigation the office of the State Attorney will institute legal proceedings in this matter. In regard to Serebriakov and Sokolnikov, the investigating authorities are already in possession of material convicting these persons of counter-revolutionary crimes...

It goes without saying that the mere mention by the accused of these men is sufficient to condemn them. The prosecutor bears this statement out — an investigation will be instituted, but its findings are already known — for the ‘State Attorney will institute legal proceedings in this matter’. All the men whose names are mentioned know this. One of them, Tomsky, commits suicide rather than be forced to dishonour his name by public ‘repentance’. In the words of an exiled Oppositionist, ‘he throws his corpse in the face of Stalin’. Two are already ‘convicted'; they are due to appear at the following trial, which will serve only to publicise the conviction already decided upon.

The trial of the next batch of victims does not take place until January 1937. Among the accused are such famous figures as Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebriakov and Pyatakov. These men must have been under interrogation at least since the date of Vyshinsky’s statement on 21 August, that is, for five months. The trial report also in this case gives us evidence that the accused here too took some time to condition. Shestov says: ‘I did not surrender on the first day of my detention. For five weeks I denied everything, for five weeks they kept confronting me with one fact after another... (Report of the Court Proceedings in The Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre (Moscow, 1937), p 562; hereafter referred to as Trial II) Muralov declares: ‘And I said to myself almost after [sic] eight months, that I must submit...’ (Trial II, p 233) Norkin holds out for two months and then yields. Why? asks Vyshinsky. ‘Because there is a limit to everything’, replies Norkin. The reply is not good enough; it has a double meaning; Vyshinsky is suspicious. Isn’t that precisely what the accused intended to convey? ‘Perhaps pressure was brought to bear on you?’, he asks. Norkin still refuses a direct answer. ‘I was questioned, exposed, there were confrontations.’ Vyshinsky persists: ‘You were confronted with evidence, facts?’ Norkin: ‘There were confrontations.’ (Trial II, p 288) How revealing is Norkin’s refusal to accommodate Vyshinsky.

From this material we are in a position to gain a vague impression of the general circumstances of the accused during the preliminary investigation. Many are (at least as far as the three great Moscow Trials are concerned) proclaimed guilty even before the preliminary investigation is completed. They are all questioned for long periods of time (we shall later show how long each session can last). Those who prove obstinate are confronted with other accused who have yielded, or they are shown their depositions. Finally even the most obdurate are convinced that further resistance is useless.

But these preliminary investigations have a kind of ‘chain-reaction’ effect. It is not only a question of the men who formerly played a leading part in Soviet life, and whose destruction has already been planned. So many others are in addition inevitably involved, their families, their friends, their colleagues, and these in turn are compelled to involve others. So many investigators working on so many suspects, and all of them goaded to fulfil their ‘norm’. The Frankenstein monster thus created begins to run amok. There is no end to the nightmare. Yet eventually there must be an end, if the entire administrative machinery is not to fall apart. So finally the signal for a halt is given. In the third and last great trial Henry Yagoda, the Grand Inquisitor, is himself put in the dock! At the same time large numbers of his investigators are thrown into jail, side by side with the men whom they have put to the question! Finally — the truth is out! — GPU men themselves are tried on the charge of — having extorted false confessions!

On 2 August 1938, Pravda (no 211) reported a three-day trial of GPU men in Yaroslavl. BK Yurchak, former District Prosecutor, together with his assistants, is accused of ‘abusing his position’, using it to ‘sanction unmotivated arrests of citizens’, forcing them to confess that ‘accidental mistakes’ committed during the course of their work were ‘sabotage, wrecking, counter-revolutionary crimes’. Do we read aright? There is no doubt about it. Again on 22 October 1938, Pravda (no 292) reports the trial of GPU man Busorgin, and his assistant, Nikigorovsky, for ‘sanctioning illegal arrests’, holding ‘innocent workers’ for from three to five months. These GPU officials are sent for trial by none other than Vyshinsky, who affects great moral indignation at this state of affairs! What! — innocent men forced to confess to imaginary crimes! Who ever heard of such monstrous proceedings! Away with these ‘enemies of the people’ who have ‘penetrated into the leading district organs’ — that is, into the GPU itself! Vyshinsky did not know that such things were possible! If only he had known about it when he was prosecuting at the Moscow Trials!

Still another trial of scapegoat inquisitors, reported by Pravda (8 February 1939), results in the death sentence for Shlipniev, former deputy-chief of the Thirty-Ninth Militia Department, and in sentences of ten, seven, five and three years’ imprisonment for four others; all accused of ‘manufacturing’ cases and using false witnesses. Similar trials in various parts of the country marked the turn of the tide. These miscreants had been discovered as a result of complaints to the Public Prosecutor! So many crimes, so many victims, so many cries for justice unheard for so many years. And at last the great Leader deigns to hear, Vyshinsky gets his instructions — and a handful of underlings are sacrificed. All is well; justice has been done.

In the last great Moscow Trial Stalin makes a final clearance of his rivals; the remaining famous personalities of the Russian Revolution are removed for ever from the political scene — and from life.

Once again all the defendants are seen to have been in the hands of the interrogators for a long time. We shall cite only the following statement of Bukharin as typical for them all, including, of course, even those who played the role of agents of the prosecution among the accused: ‘I have been in prison for over a year, and I therefore do not know what is going on in the world.’ (Trial III, p 767)

The most illuminating incident during the course of this trial was when the accused Krestinsky tried to retract his confession.

Krestinsky made the usual confession before the trial, but as soon as he got into open court he withdrew it and pleaded not guilty. Vyshinsky asks him if he always tells the truth and he replies with one word — no. Upon this Vyshinsky retorts — to this man accused of treason and on trial for his life — that ‘there is no need to get excited’. One can well appreciate that Krestinsky was in a state of the highest nervous tension. The following exchange then takes place:

Vyshinsky: ‘Consequently, Bessonov is not telling the truth?’

Krestinsky: ‘No.’

Vyshinsky: ‘But you do not always tell the truth. Is that not so?’

Krestinsky: ‘I did not always tell the truth during the investigation.’

Vyshinsky: ‘But at other times you always tell the truth?’

Krestinsky: ‘The truth!’

Vyshinsky: ‘Why this lack of respect for the investigation, why during the investigation did you tell untruths? Explain!’

Krestinsky: (No answer.)

The process of accusation and denial continues. Then once more Vyshinsky asks: ‘But what about your admission?’ Krestinsky replies: ‘During the investigation I gave false evidence.’ [my emphasis] The State Prosecutor tries very hard to bring him back to a confirmation of his confession, but Krestinsky stubbornly persists in his denials. At one point he says that he does not feel well but that he has ‘only to take a pill’ and he will be able to continue. Further questioning takes place.

Vyshinsky: ‘You remember that I directly asked you whether you had any declarations or complaints to make against the investigator. Was that not so?’

Krestinsky: ‘It was.’

Vyshinsky: ‘Did you answer me?’

Krestinsky: ‘Yes.’

Vyshinsky: ‘Did I ask whether you had any complaints, or not?’

Krestinsky: ‘Yes, and I answered that I had no complaints.’

Vyshinsky: ‘If you were asked whether you had any complaints, you should have answered that you had.’

Krestinsky: ‘I had, in the sense that I did not speak voluntarily.’ (Trial III, pp 47-66 — my emphasis)

The afternoon and evening session of 2 March concluded with Krestinsky still denying his guilt. But at the evening session of the next day Krestinsky yields and says: ‘I fully confirm the testimony I gave in the preliminary investigation.’ (Trial III, p 157)

What happened to make Krestinsky give way again?

* * *

As indicated in the Foreword to this book, most of the defendants in the three great Moscow Trials had long records of devoted service to the Russian revolutionary movement. The charges against them were so incompatible with all that was known of their past, and the notion of them as men whom the threat of torture and death could not turn from the path of what they held to be their duty as revolutionaries was so generally accepted, that many observers explained their confessions by their devotion to ‘the Cause’. Krestinsky’s attitude helps us to estimate the validity of this theory.

Krestinsky first of all makes a complete confession during the preliminary investigation; then he retracts it in court; then he retracts his retraction. His denial of guilt in court is quite categorical. Four times the president of the court asks him if he pleads guilty; four times he gives him the opportunity to fall into line with all the other accused, but he remains firm:

I plead not guilty. I am not a Trotskyite. I was never a member of the bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, of whose existence I was not aware. Nor have I committed any of the crimes with which I personally am charged, in particular I plead not guilty to the charge of having had connections with the German intelligence service... I have never been a Trotskyite. I have never belonged to the bloc of Rights and Trotskyites and have not committed a single crime. (Trial III, p 36)

He alone of all the accused had the courage to make this point-blank denial of the charges made against him. What caused him to lose courage again? His final plea gives us the answer.

He begins his plea by evoking his revolutionary past:

I am one of those who have the longest records of active participation in political life. I began my revolutionary career as an 18-year-old youth, in 1901... The first stage in my revolutionary activities, 1901-06, was connected with the first revolution of 1905. I worked in practically every town of the North-Western Territory, was several times arrested... was deported... I removed to St Petersburg, where I established connections with Lenin, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya [Lenin’s wife — author] and Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin. At that time I worked on the Zvezda (Izvestia), and on Pravda.

And so on, up to 1921, when he says that he linked up with Trotsky in the ‘illegal Trotskyite work which he was then commencing’.

Having emphasised his complete loyalty to Lenin and Stalin he refers the beginning of his downfall to his agreement with Trotsky’s views in 1921; [2] views which were then freely expressed, published by the party press, but which he now calls ‘illegal’. However, in course of time this inner-party battle of ideas assumed ‘a purely conspiratorial’ character, eventually involving ‘terrorism, wrecking and diversion’. Then comes the key to his strange behaviour in pleading not guilty at the outset of the trial. ‘I consider it necessary’, he says, ‘to stress the fact that I had absolutely no knowledge of the terrorists’ acts enumerated in the second section of the indictment, and that I learnt about them only when I was handed a copy of the indictment.’ (Trial III, p 734) He continues:

The fact is that in the days just preceding the trial I was under the painful impression caused by the gruesome facts that I had learnt from the indictment, and especially from its second section... It seemed to me easier to die than to give the world the idea that I was even a remote accessory to the murder of Gorky, about which I actually knew nothing. (Trial III, p 736 — author’s emphasis)

Thus Krestinsky did not know the full charges against him until a few days before the opening of the trial (this gives a further insight into the preliminary staging), although he had been nine months in prison. At the end of the trial, in excuse for pleading not guilty, he said that it was the shock of learning that he was charged with being an accessory to the murder (so-called) of Maxim Gorky that made him deny everything he had previously admitted.

It seemed to him ‘easier to die’ than admit this charge. But this excuse is obviously not in accord with the words he used when pleading not guilty: for he did not then once mention the name of Gorky; instead he made a point of denying ‘in particular’ the charge of being a German agent. Had his retraction really been due to a feeling of revulsion on learning that he was to be implicated in the death of Gorky, he would have denied ‘in particular’ this charge and not a quite different one. So in reality it was the charge of treason to socialism and of counter-revolutionary activity that he found so hard to admit. Although Krestinsky says that he admitted ‘at the first interrogation’ his ‘connections with the German Military Intelligence Service’, it took a further four months before he could be made to accept the prosecution’s interpretation of these ‘connections’. The reason why he made this initial deposition with relative ease is clear: it meant no more than that he was Ambassador in Berlin when the 1922 Rapallo Treaty was signed between Germany and Russia. Secret military clauses of this treaty provided for exchange of information and cooperation between the two countries in building up their armed forces.

Since 1923 [Krestinsky testified during the trial] the agreement with Seeckt was carried out mainly in Moscow, and sometimes in Berlin. But, of course, as I was the person who concluded this agreement, inasmuch as I carried it out at times, and inasmuch as I was a member of the organisation on behalf of which this agreement was concluded [that is, a member of the government! — author], I naturally bear full political responsibility also for those acts which were committed in Moscow. This agreement did not remain unchanged: in 1926 the Reichswehr raised the question of repudiating this agreement. (Trial III, p 263)

Note here that he speaks of bearing full ‘political responsibility’, not ‘criminal responsibility'; also that he refers to ‘the Reichswehr’ not the ‘military intelligence service’. The change in 1926 probably is a reference to the new Treaty of Berlin of 24 April 1926.

The whole rickety structure of lies and half-truths which compose the confessions has a certain foundation in fact, but as we can see from Krestinsky’s ‘connections’ with German intelligence, any actual historical event mentioned in the course of the trial is given a completely false interpretation, and is sometimes so camouflaged that it cannot be recognised for what it really was except by the leading participants in the trial. Seen in retrospect, the policy of aiding Germany to rebuild her war potential was wrong. Up to 1933 the main enemy had been France, with England a step behind; but after Hitler took power it became clear to Stalin, although not immediately, that the main danger was Germany. Krestinsky accepts ‘political responsibility’ for supporting and carrying out this earlier policy, but he cannot be charged with treason on this account, so official ‘connections’ must be transformed into espionage. After four months of conditioning to acceptance of this, Krestinsky agrees. Will he stand up in court and say exactly what these ‘connections’ were — that they belonged to the secret agreement with Germany whereby she evaded the provisions of the Versailles Treaty? Will he tell the workers of the world that Russia helped to build up the military strength of Germany — now Nazi Germany? No, that he cannot do. He is persuaded to accept the false version, and take the blame on his own shoulders. And then there comes another five months’ waiting for the trial. And at the last moment comes an addition to the charges by implicating him in Gorky’s death. To this man, who up to that moment has tried to retain the illusion that he remains a political figure, with a past worthy of some respect, and that he is not to be treated as a common criminal, this additional charge inserted at the penultimate moment comes as a tremendous shock. It reveals his opponents as even more unscrupulous than he had imagined them to be. This single breach of faith brings back the doubts overcome by four months of ‘conditioning’. That Gorky’s quite natural death was thus dragged into the affair is not in itself important — for who can take this seriously? — but all this repellent penny-dreadful nonsense about poisoning causes him to review his confession. For the first time he admits to himself that he may have been motivated by the desire to save his life. The courage that it took four months to break down momentarily returns to him. No, ‘easier to die’ than admit to it. And, of course, it was not complicity in Gorky’s death that he found easier to die for than admit: for, let us once again repeat, he did not even mention this when he pleaded not guilty at the opening of the trial.

But his new-found courage lasted a short time only. Hear his last words:

I beg you to bear in mind that I did not take a direct part in the most acute forms of struggle — terrorism, diversion and wrecking — and did not specifically know about these actions. I beg you to remember my former really revolutionary work, to believe me when I say that during these nine months I have undergone a radical change, and, by sparing my life, to give me the opportunity to expiate my crimes in any way, even if only partially. (Trial III, p 736 — author’s emphasis)

It could hardly be put more plainly. Krestinsky is pleading for his life. In the final analysis it is the instinct to survive that motivates his submission, however much he may have rationalised. During the night following his categorical retraction of his entire confession, his inquisitors have once again placed the alternative brutally before him.

This basic aspect of the matter is important, because if one accepts the Darkness at Noon explanation of the confessions, according to which these revolutionaries sacrifice themselves in the larger interests of the Party and the Cause, then the confessions of others who had no such motives would remain a mystery. But already, long before the trial of the Bolshevik ‘Old Guard’, we had confessions whose essence was similar, given by persons with no allegiance to the Communist Party. And since these trials we have had Protestant and Catholic leaders and British and American employees of business firms all making confessions. Therefore for all of them there must be some common factor compelling their submission.

Just as it is clear that the ‘Russian soul’ has nothing to do with the matter, so it is clear that the ‘Marxist soul’ offers no solution to the problem.

It is not, of course, suggested by this that the Darkness at Noon theory in no way contributes towards understanding of the confessions. On the contrary, it raises an extremely important aspect of the technique employed: the ‘psychological approach’. During the preliminary investigation it is the task of the examiners to aid the accused to rationalise his motives for submission. According to the psychological make-up of the person concerned, the arguments employed will be more or less subtle, will combine physical with moral pressure in differing proportions. Something of this can be deduced from the case of a man like Bukharin, who would never admit to himself that he was motivated by the fear of death and whose resistance would only be strengthened by the bald threat of it. He gives the following reasons for his confession:

I shall now speak of myself, of the reasons for my repentance. Of course, it must be admitted that incriminating evidence plays a very important part. For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ‘If you must die, what are you dying for?’ — an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man’s mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the party and the country. And when you ask yourself: ‘Very well, suppose you do not die; suppose by some miracle you remain alive, again what for! Isolated from everybody, an enemy of the people, in an inhuman position, completely isolated from everything that constitutes the essence of life...’ And at once the same reply arises. And at such moments, Citizen Judges, everything personal, all the personal incrustation, all the rancour, pride, and a number of other things, fall away, disappear. And, in addition, when the reverberations of the broad international struggle reach your ear, all this in its entirety does its work, and the result is the complete internal moral victory of the USSR over its kneeling opponents... (Trial III, p 777)

In considering this statement we may leave aside the reference to ‘incriminating evidence’, since there was none apart from the confessions themselves; he almost seems to be saying; let us have done with the formalities and get to the real issue. Bukharin here is seeking to explain the apparently inexplicable in terms that may leave something of his past reputation unsullied. Here it is not the propaganda needs of the immediate moment that concern him so much as the verdict of History. He had lived for a Cause and now he wanted to persuade posterity that he was dying for a Cause — or what remained of it: ‘everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union’. Again the spectre of the ultimate and irrevocable — Death. The choice had been put before him: die in the dark alone or perform one last service, and perhaps not the last, perhaps there is a chance of rehabilitation; in any case there will be an opportunity, within certain limits, of defending yourself, of explaining why you are doing what you are doing. And he did defend himself, so well that he at times made Vyshinsky look like a not particularly gifted pupil.

He categorically denied that he was ‘connected with foreign intelligence services’, categorically denied complicity in the assassinations real or alleged, and categorically denied participating in the alleged conspiracy to murder Lenin. But still he accepted the role of a counter-revolutionary, because he had been convinced when he threw in his lot with Stalin years before that that was the only thing to do to save the country and the revolution; and because in spite of all vacillations and doubtings he ultimately returned to this conviction — since what else was there with all possible alternative leadership destroyed? — and because, finally, the ‘reverberations of the broad international struggle’ had reached his ear through his inquisitors — after a year without any knowledge of what was going on in the world. Be sure that his informants had coloured the picture to suit their aims. War threatened and the masses must be rallied to the only leadership there was; the leadership of which he had been a part, all whose crimes he shared, and whose positive achievements he could not deny without stripping himself of everything — the self within, the part that History would respect, not the outer man that the politically uninitiated would revile a short time and then forget. Yes, he convinced himself of this. But it took him and the investigators three months to do it; and did the fear of death play absolutely no part in his final yielding? Not just death itself, the physical end, but the uselessness of it, the senselessness of it. ‘Only a miracle’, he said, could avert it; clearly the thought of this miracle was ever present in his mind. For three months he could tell himself with truth that he would rather die than do this thing; and the mere threat of death would only have stiffened his resistance. But he was offered life, one chance in a million perhaps, but a chance.

War is coming, comrade, and all will be needed. Only a full confession will show whether you are truly devoted, whether it is possible to trust you. ‘Everything personal, all the personal incrustation, all the rancour, pride, and a number of other things’ must be cast aside... Yes, his inquisitors would help him to rationalise...

Against Bukharin’s case set that of Friedman. Ignace Reiss, the secret Soviet agent abroad who broke with Stalin and was shortly afterwards assassinated in Switzerland, tells the story of this man:

A case better known than the others is that of the aged Friedman, an old Chekist whom Stalin, for some reason, was bent on including in the Zinoviev trial... But old Friedman remained adamant. The story is that his last words were: ‘You can shoot old Friedman only once, but no one can make a whore out of him.’

Thus men of fundamentally differing mental and physical calibre, although their devotion to the Party and the Cause be equally profound, will choose opposite paths. In general it may be said that the more purely intellectual the character of the accused, the less difficult it is to persuade him to confess. But for the investigators each accused required for a trial is a separate problem, demanding individual treatment. However, while the ‘psychological approach’ is an essential element of the technique, this understanding must not be permitted to obscure the fact that this moulding of the individual psychology is only possible in certain conditions. Without these essential conditions the confessional trial is not possible; it is therefore their sum total of all the circumstances that makes confessions possible, and not one element of them alone.

* * *

It would be a mistake to underestimate the propaganda value of these displays. However fantastically remote from reality they may appear to most of us in the West, they are yet effective, even if only temporarily, for the peasant masses for whose benefit they are primarily staged. No study of ‘mass persuasion’ can ignore them, for in this process they have undoubtedly been of immense value. Even in the West there are those — otherwise normally intelligent persons — who shake their heads and knowingly remark that ‘there is no smoke without fire’.

There is another angle worth considering. Even for those in the country concerned who do not wholly credit the ‘evidence’ of these trials, there is still a considerable satisfaction to be obtained from the fall of those who once sat in the seats of the mighty. The worker on the bottom rung of the Soviet social ladder derives some compensation from the fact that those at the top are even less secure than he, that they can be plunged overnight to depths beneath even him. [3] The more culturally immature a people, the more effective is the appeal to the basest instincts, to envy, unreasoning spite and personal malice; and the stage managers of these political demonstrations know how to play on all the stops. For the time being at any rate, millions of politically uneducated workers and peasants are persuaded that these ‘agents of the enemy’ are the sole cause of all their misfortunes. Attention is temporarily diverted from the evils of the system itself to individuals. If there are grave shortages of food, clothing, houses; if the promises of an easier and happier life do not materialise — it is all the fault of these saboteurs, these enemies of the people. Glass in butter, potatoes allowed to rot, grain not sown, jerry-built dwellings, mining disasters and train wrecks, wages not paid out at the right time, high prices and shoddy goods — it is all due to sabotage, behind which lurks the foreign enemy awaiting the appropriate moment to strike.

So one must work still harder, tighten one’s belt in order to ensure the defence of the Fatherland.

If those responsible for the trials had not found them effective in this respect, they would not have exported them abroad.

In the trials that have taken place of recent years outside Russia the same essential propaganda purpose is evident. The Russian government finds it expedient to maintain the ‘interventionist atmosphere’ of the early years of the Russian Revolution, however much world conditions may have altered. This constitutes one of the strongest psychological props of the regime. And those who frame Soviet policy — are they not also infected by the interventionist phobia? We have already briefly noted that the confessions of the accused always tally with the diplomatic manoeuvres of the Russian government; let us now examine this side of the question in more detail.

In the Industrial Party Trial of 1930 and the Menshevik Trial of 1931 the accused were chiefly in league with French imperialism; after 1935, when the Popular Front was in full swing, the accused forgot all about France and confessed themselves agents of the Gestapo, Japanese and, to lesser extent, British imperialism. England for long played a more or less secondary role in Soviet diplomatic considerations, and the USA no role at all; but today the accused in the satellite countries are all primarily agents of US or British imperialism. In the Moscow Trials the arch instigator of intervention was Trotsky, who had allegedly been an agent of German imperialism since 1921, and of British imperialism since 1926 — but nothing was said about France, which had loomed so prominent in previous trials. In the trials in satellite countries, Tito has taken the place of Trotsky; it is in agreement and collusion with Tito, arch-agent of imperialism, that the accused admit to having conspired. In 1936-38 Japan and Poland are also involved with Germany in interventionist plots, just as today France, Belgium and even Sweden stand behind the USA and Great Britain in the organisation of espionage against the People’s democracies and their protector, the Soviet Union.

The fact that all countries maintain intelligence services is not disputed. What strikes one as peculiar, however, is that in their confessions the defendants never admit to being in the pay of countries that are considered ‘friendly’ to Russia at the given time. This is most strikingly brought out by the single fact that never at any time has anyone confessed to being an agent in the pay of Italy. Italy had never been regarded as a serious threat to Russian security and relations between the two countries, in spite of Fascism in Italy, have never been strained. (In September 1933 the two countries signed a pact of non-aggression.)

Thus no one confesses to being a spy for Germany and Japan when England and France are regarded as the main enemies; and this in spite of the fact that at later trials the majority of the leading men in governmental, administrative and army circles are alleged to have all been in the pay of Germany and Japan long before these earlier trials took place. Conversely, no one confesses to having been a spy of England and France when the Comintern, on instructions from the Kremlin, is pursuing the policy of a United Front against the Axis Powers. Nor does the fact that hundreds are executed for allegedly seeking an agreement with Germany and Japan prevent the Soviet government from concluding an agreement with these countries scarcely a year after the last batch of ‘German and Japanese agents’ have been executed. (The later excuse that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was entered upon merely to gain time is demonstrably pure humbug.)

While, therefore, what the accused have to say about external aid is dictated by diplomatic considerations of the moment, their selection is sometimes determined by the requirements of the domestic situation. Thus we have batches of industrial technicians and specialists, Mensheviks (or, rather, former Mensheviks), foreign and native technicians, and finally high-ranking members of the Communist Party itself together with GPU men.

In Russia the process of suppressing opposition went on over a number of years, gradually widening its scope to embrace more and more social categories. In the satellites this destructive process, clearing the ground for the construction of the totalitarian states, is being telescoped into a much shorter period, for the driving force behind this is Soviet Russia. So in quick succession we have seen the Catholic and Protestant churches, foreign specialists, the Agrarian opposition parties, the Social Democrats, and Communist Party members themselves, all involved in confessional trials in the comparatively short space of six years.

An early and little remembered attempt to export the technique of the Moscow Trial to Europe took place in Spain in 1938. This is of particular interest because it was a dress rehearsal, as it were, of the later, successful export of these trials to Eastern Europe. It furnishes additional strong evidence in support of the view that these trials are not concerned with bringing criminals to justice, but are organised in order to provide scapegoats and a platform for propaganda and to give a legal covering for the physical suppression of opponents. Moreover, by noting the circumstances that prevented this Spanish trial from blossoming into a confession trial proper, we shall assist our understanding of those trials that were successful.

Russia’s policy in Spain during the Civil War was in essence no different from that pursued in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. She hoped to see emerge from the fires of war a government that would be her puppet; she was not content that gratitude for military aid against Franco should forge a bond of friendship between her and Spain; she wanted to make sure that her own satraps should be in control of any government resulting from a victory of the Loyalist forces. To ensure that it was felt necessary, even before the Civil War had ended, to destroy the parties and personalities within the Spanish workers’ movement that were hostile to the Communist Party. As hopelessly unrealistic as this aim of dominating Spain through the Russian-controlled Communist Party may seem, the Barcelona trial in 1938, and the circumstances surrounding it, so strongly resemble postwar experience in Eastern Europe that there can be no doubt that such an ambition existed, and was not so unlikely of realisation as it may seem.

As early as December 1936, Pravda (17 December 1936) exposed this aim by stating that ‘so far as Catalonia is concerned the cleaning up of the Trotskyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements has already begun and it will be carried out with the same degree of energy as in the USSR’. The ‘Trotskyist’ elements referred to were the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers Party of Marxist Unity), commonly known by its initials, POUM. Its main strength was in Catalonia, the most industrialised part of Spain, and during the first months of the Civil War it had achieved a large following, representing the most serious challenge to the Communist Party. The POUM, whose leaders were mostly ex-members of the Spanish Communist Party, although in some respects the weakest party opposing the Stalinists, was at the same time the greatest potential danger to their plans. Unlike the Socialists and Republicans, it had no illusions about Russian policy, and it refused to soften its criticism of this policy. Soviet military aid increased the influence of the Spanish Communists, who had been a negligible handful at the outset of the Civil War. Seeking an alliance with the Socialists and Republicans, it toned down its social demands in order to create the impression of moderation. Manoeuvring on the basis of the popular desire for unity in the interests of the common struggle against Franco, the Communists in Catalonia succeeded in uniting with the Socialists to form the Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (PSUC). In spite of the numerical superiority of the Socialists in this new party, it was soon apparent that the Communists were in full control. This particular manoeuvre is now familiar to us from similar experiences in Eastern Europe.

The next step was to gain control of the armed police by placing Communists in all key positions. At the same time a propaganda campaign against the anarchists and the POUMists — and particularly against the latter — was waged, and the POUM was eventually forced out of the Barcelona Generalidad. In June 1937, six months after the Pravda directive had been given, the leaders of the POUM were arrested as ‘agents of General Franco’. Nin, however, was not among those officially arrested. He, like many others, had been seized by secret agents acting on Russian instructions, taken to a private prison, and murdered. His body was picked up in a Madrid gutter some time afterwards.

The leaders of POUM were not brought to trial until sixteen months after their arrest. But in spite of this long delay they had not been broken and did not make any confessions. A very lively interest in their fate had been aroused in the working-class movement abroad, and a widespread campaign was being waged on their behalf. The exigencies of the Civil War made the Spanish authorities susceptible to pressure of this nature, and, although Prieto had been manoeuvred and strong-armed out of office, the Stalinists were still not completely master of the situation. The POUM leaders’ place of detention was known; they could not in the circumstances be kept incommunicado. In an ‘unofficial’ secret Spanish prison men could be interrogated: as was the case with the Belgian ex-Communist Kopp, questioned twenty-seven times for a total of one hundred and thirty-five hours in an unsuccessful effort to make him ‘confess’. But these prisoners, held officially by a government containing men still hesitant to go as far as the Communists urged, although conscious of their dependence upon Russian support, could not be subjected to such methods. Nor, even if they had been so treated, is it likely that they would all have been broken, since they could not be isolated from the outside world and were well aware of the efforts being made outside on their behalf.

The considerable volume of protests aroused by the arrest of these men and the charges brought against them made the authorities reluctant to bring the case to court. Anxious as they were to please their Russian ‘advisers’, the manufactured ‘evidence’ purporting to show that the accused were Franco agents was a little too much even for them, and this main charge in the indictment was dropped. But heavy prison sentences were none the less passed on the defendants — for seeking to overthrow the existing Loyalist government by force. The moderate Socialists and Republicans who lent themselves to this Communist manoeuvre apparently saw no inconsistency in thus allying themselves with the exponents par excellence of the armed coup d'état. Nor did they have the slightest inkling of the fact that, should the Communists’ policy prove successful, they themselves would have eventually been in the dock, charged with attempting to overthrow the regime by armed force!

This attempt to export the Moscow Trial failed because the Communists were not in full command, could not make unrestrained use of every possible moral and physical pressure. Their opponents had been neither morally nor physically disarmed. World public opinion was still a power to which even the Communists at that time felt it expedient to make some concessions. Yet the Communists made the utmost possible use of the trial for propaganda purposes. Pravda — which translated means ‘Truth’ — even reported that the accused had confessed! In their reports they studiously ignored the findings of the court rejecting the charge of espionage; they continued to propagate this charge as though it had been proved; and to this day they have not ceased propagating it.

Unfortunately, as postwar events in Eastern Europe have demonstrated, the Socialist and Liberal movements never studied Russian methods in Spain. Had they done so they would have been better equipped to fight for survival.

Notes

1. See the author’s Assassins at Large, Wingate, 1951. [On the MIA at http://www.marxists.org/archive/dewar/assassins/index.htm — MIA.]

2. At the Tenth Party Congress (March 1921) Trotsky’s views on the role of the trade unions were supported by, among others, Bukharin, Krestinsky, Serebriakov, Pyatakov, Sokolnikov — all tried and convicted in the Moscow Trials (see Isaac Deutscher’s Soviet Trade Unions (Chatham House, 1950), p 42 and following).

3. ‘In a Serbian village we were discussing the Moscow Trials. Shortly before, the Yugoslav War Minister had resigned in somewhat dubious circumstances. A peasant said to me: ‘Russia must be a grand country. There the big people get punished when they do wrong, because the people rule.’ (H Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars (Cambridge University Press, 1945), p263)

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter III: The Inquisitors at Work

From the foregoing we have already an idea of the general situation of the accused during the preliminary investigation. They are held incommunicado; they either know nothing of what is taking place in the outside world, or only what their jailers think it expedient to tell them; they see no one but the warders, the examiners, other officials concerned with the preparation of the case, and fellow-prisoners who have already been broken; and in these conditions they are interrogated for many hours at a stretch.

The knowledge we have so far gleaned, however, is insufficient. The use of moral and physical pressures against accused persons is not unknown to countries other than Russia and her satellites. In prewar Bulgaria, for example, torture is known to have been used for the purpose of extorting signed confessions from political opponents of the regime. But these crude methods — crude even for Bulgaria — deceived only the most credulous sections of the population. Moreover, with these methods there is always at least a fifty-fifty chance of exposure, as experience has shown. Persons subjected to such treatment cannot always be relied upon to keep their mouths shut afterwards; and in any case mere physical torture and threats of death do not account for the phenomenon of confessions made by batches of accused persons — showing no signs of ill-treatment — in a series of trials over many years. ‘Third Degree’ methods alone offer no satisfactory explanation. To find anything comparable to the phenomenon under discussion one has to go back to the witchcraft trials of the Middle Ages, in which accused persons admitted to flying around at night on broomsticks, passing through keyholes, casting their enemies under a spell, and so on. In both instances the confessions obtained were demonstrably false, not to say absurd; and in both instances the technique employed is essentially the same, although the modem Inquisition has ‘refined’ and improved it. We are therefore confronted with the problem of a new, highly developed technique that breaks down the human will and remoulds it to a desired pattern. But — as we shall observe — this technique is dependent for its effective application upon certain definite external conditions, the ‘atmosphere’ created by the political situation in the country concerned. It is not possible to reproduce this technique in, as it were, laboratory conditions in a democratic country: for to find the required laboratory one would have to change the entire political conditions. It is therefore necessary not only to understand the mechanics of the technique itself, but also the conditions without which its application would be impossible.

In spite of all efforts of the Soviet government to seal its frontiers and prevent those who have knowledge of these matters from reaching the outside world, the numbers involved have been so great that it has proved impossible to prevent information from seeping through. Out of the hundreds of thousands caught up in the machine of Soviet justice, a few have succeeded in escaping. In addition to the evidence of these people from Russia, there is that of men who have been put to the question in the satellite countries, where general circumstances — primarily the need for speedy action imposed upon an imperfectly trained examining personnel — have resulted in some gross errors of judgement.

One of the first to bring out of Russia important information on Soviet interrogation methods was Victor Serge, the French author (since deceased). Arrested first in 1928, the treatment he then received was not severe; but in 1933, when he was arrested a second time, he ‘spent eighty-five days in a cell in the inner GPU prison without reading or occupation of any sort, without news of my people’: ‘I spent seventy of these days in total solitude, without even taking the air in the grey courtyard reserved for the more tractable prisoners.’ (From Lenin to Stalin (Secker and Warburg, 1937), p 128) Testifying before the French committee set up under the auspices of the Dewey Commission, he said:

During those three months I was questioned about ten times. Except twice, when they took place during the day, the interrogations took place at night... The questioning, in the beginning, assumed the aspect of a psychological conversation much more than of a judicial examination; that is to say, not only did they not give any information about the accusations, but they tried to establish an atmosphere now of confidence, now of menace, not in order to establish such or such a fact, but in order to lead me into a very general discussion of my life and ideas. They would say: ‘Describe your life in such a way that it will be possible to establish the truth regarding you.’ Naturally, when I resisted such a procedure, they reached the point of trying to excite pity for the situation of those dear to me, or of threatening me. But I wish to emphasise that never, during these interviews, did I have counsel at my side; never did I see a clerk take down a verbatim report. There was no clerk — a fact which does not preclude the probability that either in an adjoining room or elsewhere someone took very precise notes, for on one occasion the judge was able to remind me in detail of a previous interrogation...

Once, after other functionaries, I had to do with Rudkovsky, who greeted me by saying without mincing words that I was lost, but that he wished nevertheless to save me and offer me a life preserver. The life preserver consisted of this: he began to read a pretended statement of my sister-in-law, Anita Russakova, in which she, in the most nonsensical fashion, had purportedly enumerated a whole series of persons with whom I was supposed to be in contact, although I did not know any of them... It was then, restraining myself no longer, that I allowed my indignation to burst forth in harsh terms, refusing to listen to any further reading of this pretended examination. On the contrary, I demanded to be confronted with my sister-in-law. Rudkovsky understood that there was nothing to be got from me, offered me a glass of water, and urged me to calm myself. The questioning ended. (Not Guilty (Secker and Warburg, 1938), pp 366-67)

Serge did not get to see his sister-in-law, who was first released, then rearrested and sentenced to five years’ exile in Verka. There has been no news of her since. As a result of a vigorous campaign conducted on his behalf in the West and because the Stalinists were then seeking the support of ‘all men of goodwill’ for the Popular Front against Fascism, Serge himself was freed and expelled from the country after a term of deportation in Orenburg (now Chkalov). Whilst in the hands of the Soviet police, in a Leningrad prison, he met another prisoner, who told him that ‘they always tried to make him confess by the same method; that is to say, by making him believe that friends of his had confessed, and that there was nothing he could do henceforth but ratify these confessions’ (ibid, p 367).

Thus Serge was ‘ripened’ by a long period of solitary confinement without occupation or exercise of any kind; he was threatened that in any case he faced a long period of imprisonment and that only confirmation of his sister-in-law’s deposition could ameliorate his lot; he was not informed of the charge against him; and his examination usually took place at night, in the beginning taking the form of a ‘psychological conversation’.

Dr Anton Ciliga, who spent five years in Soviet prisons and Siberian exile, has this to say: ‘It is the general rule of the GPU to call arrested persons for examination during the night; a sleepy man is less concentrated, less prepared to resist. Psychology is the favourite science of the policemen of the GPU.’ (La Révolution Prolétarienne (Paris, 1937)). The fact that these examinations usually take place at night is also confirmed from another source, favourable to the GPU. A German engineer, Peter Kleist, writing of his experiences under interrogation by the GPU, makes his examiner say: ‘My wife’s been scolding me for weeks. Night work! Night work! Never at home! Night work!’ (GPU Justice (Allen and Unwin, 1938), p 95) The fact that this book is a cleverly constructed specious plea for acceptance of the Moscow Trials and GPU ‘justice’ gives this particular admission all the more weight.

Regarding the ‘psychological approach’, Ciliga also states that the favourite opening questions of the examiners are: ‘You know why you have been arrested? No, you don’t know? Well, then, why, do you suppose?’ He points out that these were precisely the questions put to arrested persons by the examiners of the Inquisition.

Ciliga has also written of a meeting in prison with one of the engineers convicted in the Industrial Party Trial. This man told him:

They kept me for five months in isolation without newspapers, without anything to read, without mail, without any contact with the outside, without a visit from my family. I was hungry. I suffered from solitude. They insisted that I should confess to an act of sabotage that had never taken place. I refused to assume the guilt of crimes that had not even been committed. But I was told that if I was really for the Soviet power, as I said I was, I should confess to the charge, as the Soviet power needed my confession; I was assured that I should have no fear of the consequences. The Soviet power would take into consideration my open-hearted confession and give me the chance to work and repair my mistakes with work. As soon as I confessed, I'd have visits from my family, correspondence, walks, newspapers. But if I remained obstinate and persisted in saying nothing, I should have to bear pitiless repression. Not only I, but my wife and children... For months I resisted. But the situation became unbearable. Nothing, it seemed to me, could be worse. At any rate, I actually became indifferent to what people might say. I signed every statement offered me by the examining judge. (The Case of Leon Trotsky (Secker and Warburg, 1937), pp 136-37)

We have already noted, from the official report of the third Moscow Trial, that Bukharin spoke of his complete isolation from the outside world for more than a year. This officially confirms the evidence of Serge and Ciliga that one of the means employed is solitary confinement. It will further be made plain in the course of this book that invariably the main, virtually the only, plea of the defence in these cases is that the accused has freely confessed and for this reason deserves some mitigation of his sentence. There is abundant and overwhelming evidence in the official reports that this consideration plays a large part in the accused’s motives for confession. A further striking example of this may be given here. A counsel for the defence in the Metro-Vickers trial said in the course of his plea:

I must say that in my capacity as counsel for Lobanov, Lebedev and Zivert I was lucky, lucky for the simple reason that all these three accused chose a correct method of self-defence. All of them, at the first examination at the OGPU as well as at the subsequent examinations and also at the questioning by the investigating Judge on Important Cases, repented and confessed all they had on their minds. (Wrecking Activities at Power Stations in the Soviet Union (Modern Books Ltd, 1933), pp 690-91)

Let us now consider the evidence of the former Communist Margarete Buber-Neumann. She and her husband, Heinz Neumann — a top-ranking member of the German party and once high in the councils of the international Communist movement — took refuge in Russia after Hitler’s conquest of power. The great purge associated with the Moscow Trials led to the arrest of nearly all foreign Communists in Russia; among those arrested were the Neumanns. Heinz Neumann simply vanished; there can be little doubt that he was executed, but where and when remains a mystery to this day. His wife, however, after a period of imprisonment, was handed over to the Gestapo, in accordance with the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and finally freed from the horrors of a German concentration camp by the Allied victory. In her book, Under Two Dictators (Gollancz, 1949), she throws further light on the problem under discussion. She has the following to say about the interrogation of one of her cell-mates, Tasso Salpeter:

There was no window in the cell and nowhere to sit down except on the floor. She was held in constant darkness on nothing but bread and water. There was a round hole in the door — as she thought, for air — but one day a cinema projection apparatus was set up on the other side and a film was thrown on to the opposite wall. It was a film largely of Russian and Caucasian folk songs. Then came a picture of children playing — and then suddenly a picture of children’s corpses. At that the film was switched off and a voice sounded: ‘Tasso Salpeter, you are lying.’

A little while after she was taken out of the cell for questioning. The examining judge called upon her to confess... her husband was brought in. ‘He was in a terrible state’, said Tasso. ‘His face was pale and worn and his eyes looked everywhere but at me. There were marks round his wrists as though he had been constantly in handcuffs. “Well,” said my examiner with a grin, “will you confess now?"’ (pp 42-43)

Margarete Buber-Neumann speaks also of the physical maltreatment of other cell-mates during their interrogation:

Again she was away for an hour or so and then back in the cell for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. And so it went on through the night. Each time she flung herself down on the mattress and tried to sleep, and each time she was called out again. I knew from the stories of others that this was a favourite GPU method — chain questioning, designed to break a suspect’s spirit. (p 29)

This so-called ‘conveyor’ system of questioning is also referred to by a Swiss national, Elinor Lipper, who spent eleven years in Soviet prisons and concentration camps before she succeeded in escaping to the West. She testifies:

Most shocking is the cynicism of the investigator, who knows perfectly well that most are innocent. When he, after the first few words of the preliminary investigation, says: ‘Why not sign? Why waste time? You know you'll sign. Everybody signs eventually.’ — the investigator knows that it is a game, not a question of proving guilt, but of demonstrating the infallibility of the methods. Both the investigator and the accused know that it is a pretence, but the prosecutor too has no means of extricating himself from the web, otherwise he too will suffer...

Moral and physical torture are the normal investigation methods. Most frequently the kind of torture employed is that known to the prisoners as the ‘conveyor’ system: the prisoner is not allowed to sleep. The investigators change every four hours; their task is to prevent the accused from sleeping. Over and over again the sleep-drunk victim is urged to sign a confession of his crimes. He refuses. His legs and feet begin to swell, he can no longer stand up. ‘Don’t go to sleep! Stand up against the wall!’ The accused staggers, drops unconscious. The investigator presses a button, a doctor appears and gives the victim an injection. He comes to. ‘Sign!’ He shakes his head; his eyes close; they shake him. Again he stands up against the wall. Again he collapses. Finally he is led away to his cell.

He hardly touches the cold soup that his cell-mates have saved for him. He is asleep as soon as he touches the planks of wood... Ten, fifteen minutes pass. The door opens. Again he is called for interrogation. His comrades shake him, wake him, support him, encourage him. He neither hears nor understands. With red, swollen eyes, half-crazy from lack of sleep, he staggers through the door... ‘Sign and you can sleep. Why resist? You'll sign anyway. Everybody signs. Don’t go to sleep! Stand up!’ (Elf Jahre in Sowjetischen Gefaengnissen und Lagern (Oprecht, Zurich, 1950), pp 39 and following)

Deprivation of sleep is undoubtedly one of the most effective means of persuasion used during the preliminary investigation. Vyshinsky himself, in the course of one of the trials, acknowledged that there were other means of torture than the directly physical — such, he said, ‘as depriving a man of sleep’. He was asking one of the accused if any pressure had been brought to bear on him (in the circumstances one suspects that he was also reminding him of something). The accused replied that he had not been subjected to any pressure. However, this was the reply of a man still in the hands of his accusers and awaiting sentence. Let us see what another accused, who escaped, has to say on this matter.

This witness, Zbigniew Stypulkowski, is a former member of the Polish underground movement against Hitler. Under pretence of reaching a political agreement with this movement, the Soviet government induced fifteen of its leading members to go to Russia for negotiations. Once on Russian soil, however, they were all arrested and charged with sabotage in the rear of the Red Army. Of the fifteen arrested, only Stypulkowski pleaded not guilty, although the pleas of his co-accused did not amount to full confessions, and a study of the official English version of the trial report shows an important difference in the attitude of the defendants here and that of others in confession trials proper.

According to Stypulkowski the investigators weaken the victim’s resistance by depriving him of adequate sleep, by under-nourishment, and by cold. These means of undermining his physical powers are supplemented by an alternation of threats and promises. Stypulkowski was held incommunicado for some seventy days, during which time he was interrogated very many times for periods ranging from three to fifteen hours. For the first month he was in solitary confinement in a cell lit by a strong light, which was left burning all night. The cell temperature was not freezingly cold, but was still low enough to cause acute discomfort. The food given him was insufficient and left him continually suffering the pangs of hunger. After a month alone, during which he continued to maintain his innocence, he was placed in another cell in company with a German SS colonel and a Russian Red Army officer. The latter, a hero of the war and many times wounded, appeared to be completely broken in spirit and ceaselessly urged Stypulkowski to ‘confess’, as the only way out of an impossible situation.

In spite of all pressure Stypulkowski did not give way, and he pleaded not guilty at his trial. It should be remembered, when considering why the stage managers of this trial were not able to make it a full-blown confession trial, that the arrest of these fifteen men had evoked strong protests from the British and American governments, and that the Soviet government was not at that time prepared to reveal too much of its hand, and risk the breaking off of negotiations then proceeding on the question of Poland and the complete exposure of its ultimate aim of sovietising that country. The lively interest aroused in the fate of these men made it impossible not to produce Stypulkowski at the trial, especially since another of the accused, Antoni Pajdak, was ‘unable to appear in court due to illness’. Two such would have been one too many. At the same time the Stalinists in Poland were following their usual tactic of combining trickery with terror; the trial itself served as a severe warning to the unshakably recalcitrant, but also, in the mild sentences given some defendants, gave apparent substance to the claim that the Soviet government was not vindictive, and was prepared to allow even those who had hitherto opposed it to play their part in the rebuilding of Poland, provided that they acknowledged the errors of their past. Only much later was the velvet glove, now worn threadbare, discarded.

Like other witnesses we have cited, Stypulkowski affirms that his first examination took the form of a very general conversation, aimed at extracting every possible detail of his personal history, information regarding his family, and so forth. Having thus probed the character of the accused, discovered his likes and dislikes, the direction of his ambitions, the chinks in his armour — he is subjected to a verbal hammering in which the same series of questions and accusations are dinned into his brain for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, by relays of inquisitors. He is deprived of sleep, kept hungry, alternately threatened and cajoled, stormed at and reasoned with; he is confronted with fellow-prisoners who have confessed and implicated him, told that his only hope lies in ‘making a clean breast of things’, promised leniency. The prospect is put before him of rotting for years in some concentration camp in the freezing hell of the Siberian north. No one is interested in his fate; there is no one can save him; the decision rests with him — he has only to repent and throw himself on the mercy of the authorities. If he repents, he may even be given a responsible post to aid in the rebuilding of his war-shattered country... If not — he may even be shot... And so the inquisitors condition his mind to completely unresisting acceptance of guilt. Where is the man whose nerves they cannot break, given sufficient time? And usually they have plenty of time at their disposal.

The most detailed and minutely circumstantial account yet given by any victim of the Soviet inquisitors is to be found in Alex Weissberg’s Conspiracy of Silence (Hamilton, 1952). A scientific worker of Austrian origin, he was arrested in Russia in 1937. He ‘confessed’ after seven days and nights of continuous interrogation; withdrew his confession twenty-four hours later; confessed again after a further four days and nights of ceaseless questioning; again retracted. After further attempts to render him completely and permanently malleable the Soviet authorities came to the conclusion that he was not suitable material for a public trial. There was, however, no question of their freeing him; he was not released from Russian captivity until 1940, when, under the terms of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, he was handed over to the Gestapo. To appreciate the full force of Weissberg’s evidence his account must be read as a whole. His book is not only fascinating, it is completely convincing and bears out all the evidence of other victims that has been here laid before the reader. However, in his concluding chapter he still imagines his readers asking: ‘Why did the members of the opposition make false confessions in the Moscow show trials?’

From all the evidence available it is clear that direct physical torture that would render an accused person unfit to appear in court is not used. It is only used when a prisoner is not required to figure in a public propaganda trial. In such cases it is simply a question of extorting a confession for the records. A signed statement of guilt covers the examiners in charge of the case, and the aim is merely to obtain this in the shortest possible time. But confessions extorted by direct physical torture may be, and are, used to exert pressure on those whom it is hoped to condition for public performance. This form of indirect pressure is referred to by another witness who escaped from the hands of the Russian inquisitors. This man, A Tarov, who escaped to Europe through Persia, submitted the following evidence to the Comité pour l'Enquête sur le Procès de Moscou (the Paris Committee assisting the work of the Dewey Commission in Mexico):

In the inner prison of Petropavlovsk, where the author of these lines remained for six months waiting for the sentence pronounced in contumacy in Moscow, the GPU shot the condemned in a special structure erected exactly in the centre of the courtyard where the prisoners took their daily walks. Generally when at night they dragged the victim along the corridors to the ‘slaughter house’ — as the prisoners called this place — they gave him the opportunity to cry out, howl, implore, beg for mercy, etc. This was done with the purpose of frightening the other prisoners. It was not until they reached the courtyard that they gagged the condemned man and the cries ceased.

The creation of an atmosphere of terror in this way naturally tends to weaken the resistance of all but the most firm. The knowledge that under Soviet law one’s fate may be decided administratively, without the necessity of normal court proceedings, gives considerable weight to any threats on the part of the examiners. Very telling admissions of the fear inspired by the GPU are to be found in the report of the third Moscow Trial. The accused, Dr Kazakov, a Kremlin physician, spoke of the former GPU chief, Yagoda (himself then on trial), in the following terms:

Yagoda went on to say: ‘I know how to appreciate people who submit to me. You cannot hide from me... Remember that if you make any attempt to disobey me, I shall find quick means of exterminating you.’ (Trial III, p 527)

Another accused, Dr Levin, testified:

He [Yagoda] said: ‘Have in mind that you cannot help obeying me, you cannot get away from me. Once I place confidence in you with regard to this thing... you must carry this out. You cannot tell anybody about it. Nobody will believe you. They will believe not you, but me.’ He reiterated that my refusal to carry this out would spell ruin for me and my family. I figured that I had no other way out, that I had to submit to him. Again, if you look at it retrospectively, if you look back at 1932 from today, when you consider how all-powerful Yagoda appeared to me, a non-party person, then, of course, it was very difficult to evade his threats, his orders. (Trial III, p 518)

This was the feeling of people not in prison, not under arrest but at liberty. What these two doctors say about the fear inspired by Yagoda rings true, but our argument is in no way affected even if they were lying on this as well as on every other point. The significance of their words lies in the very fact that they advanced such a plea — because they would do so only if they knew that everyone in the courtroom, and everyone in the country, would understand their fear, would know that it was possible. Levin and Kazakov were accused of poisoning the world-famous writer Gorky, and others, on Yagoda’s instructions. One has only to imagine a defendant in this country, accused of poisoning, saying that he murdered only because he was mortally afraid of what the head of the police forces would do to him and his family — one has only to imagine this, to appreciate the revealing nature of Levin’s and Kazakov’s words. Obviously neither of them thought that such an excuse would strike anyone as extraordinary. And neither did anyone else in Russia think it extraordinary.

As has been noted, the accused in the big show trials were not allowed to confess only their own misdeeds. They had also to implicate their ‘accomplices’. Thus all the accused are doubly isolated: morally as well as physically. They see their fellow-accused only when the trial opens — except the one or two they may have been confronted with during the preliminary examination. Before the trial they have not met for months, perhaps for years. In some cases an accused can say, as Bukharin said:

Yet I first learnt the name of Sharangovich from the indictment, and I first saw him here in court. It was here that I first learnt about the existence of Maximov, I have never been acquainted with Pletnev, I have never been acquainted with Kazakov... (Trial III, p 769)

(Here Bukharin makes nonsense of the prosecution’s case — ‘in order to be a gang the members ... must know each other and be in more or less close contact with each other’, he argues. It is an argument to which the prosecution finds no answer.) But to their physical isolation is superimposed the even heavier pressure of their moral isolation. Each of these men is alone, accused by all others, accusing all the others. And even before they appear in the dock a veritable hurricane of insult and abuse is hurled at their heads by the press, the radio, by means of ‘spontaneous’ resolutions from innumerable meetings of trade unions, factory meetings and so on. They are made aware of all this; it is impressed upon them that not a man, woman or child in the entire country but cries out for their blood. Their closest friends have joined in the general howl of execration; even their wives and children have been forced to spit on them. They do so in order to save their own skins — but they are rarely successful. And the few who have the moral courage to stand out against this colossal pressure of manufactured ‘public opinion’ are certainly doomed, beyond hope. The accused are all aware that there exists but one course open to them — to fling themselves on the mercy of their accusers. The very fact that they appear in court means that they have accepted this one chance of survival.

The propaganda trials staged in the satellite countries demonstrate that the police in all these states have benefited from the experience of the Moscow Trials. But there are some indications that they have not yet achieved a full mastery of the technique. In none of the confession trials in Russia has there been such a blunder as the one made by the Bulgarian Stalinists with their former idol Kostov. A certain lack of finesse — probably a hangover from the prewar methods of the Bulgarian police — has provided us with some interesting information. Thus there is the case of Peter Koev, Deputy of the Agrarian Party to the Bulgarian Parliament, who was detained at police headquarters for ninety days, put to the question, and then released. The well-known Agrarian leader Petkov, later hanged for treason (his trial is considered in the next chapter), read out in the Bulgarian parliament (3 December 1946) a declaration written by Koev on the subject of his treatment at the hands of the police. It is worth quoting from at length:

I shall first describe to you how the interrogation at the Militia Prison was carried out, so that you may have an idea of how ‘confessions’ are produced, and of how Communist charges are built up. You reach the stage of utter physical and moral collapse. You become completely indifferent towards your own life and fate, and you long only for an end, any end, which will bring reprieve from suffering. But the complete collapse comes only at the moment when you realise that you are defenceless, that there is no law and no authority to protect you, and that you are in the hands of your interrogators for ever. This is actually what they try to make you believe right from the very beginning.

The procedure is different from the one we have known so far. Now they first assert your guilt and then they ask confessions to prove it. The methods to obtain confessions are mainly three: physiological — hunger, thirst and lack of sleep; physical — torture; psychological — hints that your family have been arrested, will be tortured, etc.

But let me tell you exactly what happened to me. For two days after my arrest I was confined to a small dark cell and given no food whatever. On the third day I was taken to the office of the chief of the Department of State Security. There I met Ganev, the chief of Department ‘A’, and the militia inspector, Zeev. They told me that I had been found guilty of an act of sabotage... and that I had also taken part in the organisation of a planned coup d'état against the government by Generals Velchev and Stanchev... Then they read confessions written by several officers giving details of their own guilt as well as of my own ‘participation’ in the conspiracy.

Immediately after that I was sent back to my cell and was not bothered with any interrogations for twenty-one days. I was left to ‘ripen’. The first method used to achieve this was hunger — I was given only a little bread and water every day. On the twenty-second day, a Saturday, at eight o'clock in the morning, I was taken up to the fourth floor for the second interrogation. It lasted without a break until eleven o'clock of the following Thursday morning. The interrogation went on, day and night, for twenty-four hours round the clock, without a stop, the interrogators themselves being changed every three hours. During all this time I was left standing, without any sleep, without any bread and, what is worse, without any water... Every three hours the new interrogators asked the same identical questions, so that in the end I knew every question by heart.

No minister of the Bulgarian government denied the fact that Koev had been held incommunicado for ninety days, nor was any explanation given.

Koev was rearrested on 5 February of the following year. Before withdrawal of his parliamentary immunity was voted he made the following statement:

You now accuse me of having taken part in Fascist conspiracies. I, who fought for over twenty years against Fascism, now stand accused as a friend of the Fascists. And, of course, there are no proofs. There can be no proofs. The so-called ‘confessions’ of mine which I signed in the Militia Prison... were extracted in the way I have described in detail here in the Assembly. I now declare openly that the so-called ‘confessions’ which I am supposed to have given months ago in the Militia Prison were not freely given. As to the accusations of the officer Avramov, I can say only one thing: when he was brought to me in the Militia Prison he was in such a state that he couldn’t walk...

Of course when Koev eventually came up for trial he had once more ‘confessed’. But to which should one give credence: the declaration of innocence made when at liberty? — or the confession made in the question chamber when he was wholly at the mercy of his accusers? Let us now consider another case, that of Michael Shipkov, which provides further proof that the Bulgarian examiners, in seeking to acquire the Russian technique, have not entirely overcome a certain clumsiness inherited from their prewar confrères.

Michael Shipkov was a young Bulgarian employed in the American Legation. According to those who knew him well, he was a believer in gradualist Socialism and considered that state control of Bulgarian economy was inevitable and desirable. The fact that he worked in the American Legation, and had also formerly been employed in the British Section of the Allied Control Commission, inevitably brought him under suspicion. He was in due course arrested. The first question put to him at police headquarters was whether he knew where he was and why he was there. He replied that he did know, that he had been expecting it for a long time because he had refused to give up working for the US Legation. He was then informed that he had been arrested on the strength of undeniable proof and that he had now to complete their knowledge by a full confession and repentance of his guilt. He was ordered to describe his life history from 1930 on: his private life, friends, acquaintances, connections, hobbies, relaxations — in a word, everything about himself. The chief interrogator dwelt on the subject of his domestic affairs, ‘accepting the theory that I had nothing any more in common with my wife, that I had engaged in picking up mistresses here and there, and that I had not cared if my wife did the same — mentioning persons in the tennis club’.

There were in all seven functionaries concerned with his interrogation: four men working in relays of two, two higher rankers conducting the interrogation proper, and the chief examiner. They at first confined themselves to the usual gruelling questioning hour after hour, but eventually became impatient, and:

I was ordered to stand facing the wall upright at a distance which allowed me to touch the wall with two fingers of my outstretched arms. Then to step back some twelve inches, keep my heels touching the floor, and maintain balance only with the contact of one finger of each hand. And while standing so, the interrogation continued... This posture does not appear unduly painful, nor did it particularly impress me in the beginning. And yet, combined with the mental strain, with the continuous pressure to talk, with the utter hopelessness and the longing to go through the thing and be sent down into silence and peace — it is a very effective method of breaking down all resistance.

I recall that the muscles of my legs and shoulders began to get cramped and to tremble, that my two fingers began to bend down under the pressure, to get red all over and to ache, I remember that I was drenched with sweat and that I began to faint... And when the trembling increased up to the point when I collapsed, they made me sit and speak... After a time of this, I broke down. I told them I was willing and eager to tell them all they wanted...

After Shipkov had signed a confession to the effect that he had worked towards the ‘destruction of the regime through foreign intervention’, and after he had agreed to continue working at the legation as an informer, he was released. Whether the answers he gave to the questions put by the examiners were true or false did not appear to concern them, said Shipkov; they were satisfied by his apparent complete submission to their will.

The Bulgarian police made a mistake about Shipkov, however. He possessed more courage than they thought. On the day following his release he made a statement to Mr Heath, the US Minister, exposing the methods used to obtain his ‘confession’ and denying that he had at any time been instructed by anyone in the American Legation to engage in any subversive or espionage activity. This statement was eventually published in full by the US Information Service (March 1950) under the title Forced Confession.

Negotiations were then opened by the American Legation to obtain permission for Shipkov and his family to leave the country.

During the prolonged negotiations which Mr Heath conducted with the Foreign Office for the issuance of passports and exit visas... Mr Poptomov (then Foreign Minister, now also Vice-Premier and a member of the Politbureau) personally assured Mr Heath on 11 October 1949 that the maltreatment of Shipkov was altogether against the policy of his government. He went so far as to inform Mr Heath that he had personally recommended to the Interior Ministry that passports and visas be granted to the Shipkovs. (Forced Confession, pp 3-4)

Shipkov had taken refuge in the US Embassy, but after a time it was considered inexpedient for him to remain there, and so he made an attempt to leave the country and was picked up by the police. Although the US authorities were aware that a trial was in preparation, based on this ‘confession’ of Shipkov’s, no move was made to make his statement public. Even when it was known that he had been caught trying to get out of the country, it was still considered that publication of his statement would be prejudicial to his interests. On 20 February, the day before the Bulgarian authorities published the indictment in the forthcoming Shipkov trial, charging that the US Embassy was a ‘nest of spies’, the US broke off diplomatic relations. But it was not until 4 March, two days before the trial opened, that the US State Department released Shipkov’s exposure of the methods by which his confession had been obtained. The failure to give immediate publicity to his statement would now seem to have been an error of judgement. The Bulgarian authorities had obviously all along had no intention of granting a passport and visa so that he could leave the country legally, and since his statement was in any case eventually published, nothing appears to have been gained by the delay. One sympathises with those called upon to make a decision in such difficult circumstances, but the lesson to be learned from this affair is that reliance upon the good faith of Communist statesmen is useless, and adherence to the niceties of diplomatic conventions may be carried too far.

It came as a surprise to no one that at his subsequent trial Shipkov repented and denied that he had made any statement at all to the US authorities. There is another very informative piece of evidence regarding police methods in the satellite states. A trial of a number of people accused of currency offences, ‘uncovered in the course of the Mindszenty case’, took place in Hungary on 28 February 1949. One of the accused in this trial declared in court that he had been forced to ‘confess’ by physical ill-treatment, the marks of which, he alleged, could still be seen on his body. He retracted the confession he had made, stating that ‘no one could have been beaten up more’ and gave the name of the official responsible for this treatment. The presiding judge did not pull him up whilst he was making this charge, but the prosecutor subsequently emphasised that this stubborn denial of guilt must prejudice any plea in mitigation of his crimes. Another of the accused also alleged that after one month of solitary confinement he had furnished the names of four innocent friends as his accomplices, in order to comply with police wishes and bring his sufferings to an end. He did not, however, deny his own guilt, but insisted that he had involved innocent people because of his mental distress and confusion. Taking courage from these retractions, four others followed suit: one stating that after his sojourn at police headquarters he would have been prepared to say that he had murdered his own mother; and another stating that he had been promised by his interrogators that if he confessed he would only be interned for six months, and even this might be commuted on appeal to four.

Later in the trial, however, the man who had started all the trouble by making the first retraction — exercising his right of a ‘final plea for mercy’ — abjectly begged the court’s pardon for his attitude the previous day, saying that this had been due to two months of physical and mental strain. Following this, only one of the rest of the accused still maintained that his confession implicating others was false, although he did not deny his own guilt. This man received six years’ imprisonment, while the one who had reaffirmed his confession and fully withdrawn his charge of intimidation received only three years. The Hungarian press limited itself to the bare statement that some of the accused at this trial had complained of ill-treatment while in prison — complaints that were, of course, entirely without foundation. Since this trial was a minor affair no foreign correspondents were present, or at least none had gone to the trouble of obtaining official permission to attend, and it was therefore assumed that none had in fact attended. However, the news seeped out. It is information of this nature that the People’s Democracies are so anxious should not come to the notice of the West, and that the authorities therefore list under the general heading of ‘espionage information’. The New York Herald Tribune of 11 February 1949 reported a similar case. A defendant in a Czech trial by the name of Lubomír Pánek declared that:

... he was beaten over the head by police until his head was covered with blood. He asked that his cell-mate be called as a witness to the beating. The court refused the request and promptly granted a demand by the state prosecutor that Pánek be tried on the additional charge of ‘insulting the police’ as well as on other charges of plotting against the government.

The courageous stand of this young man touched off a series of similar charges by others among the twenty-nine accused. A guarded reference to the incident was made by Obrana Lidu, a Czech Army newspaper, which said that Mr Pánek had ‘falsely accused the security organs of abusing their official authority’, and would be therefore tried in a separate proceeding on the additional charge of ‘insulting the police’.

It is clear from all the foregoing evidence that the methods employed vary in accordance with the character and personal circumstances of each individual accused. But the basic condition requisite for the successful application of the technique is that the accused shall be completely at the mercy of the accusers, who must hold in their hands all the political, economic and social pressures that can possibly be applied to break his morale, and who can dispose of the accused’s person, and the persons of those near and dear to him, as they think fit. In other words, the technique can be effective only in the conditions of a totalitarian regime. On this essential basis the victim’s will to resist is broken down by a process of intense interrogation, more or less prolonged according to the physical and mental calibre of the person concerned. The examiners may rave, threaten, vilely abuse; or affect to be honestly concerned with the victim’s fate, reasoning with him, even pleading with him. There is in all this nothing personal; the accused is merely the object of a studied and highly developed technique. During these sessions of mental conditioning the accused may be compelled to stand or sit in such a position that what at first is mere discomfort becomes with the passing of hours acute torture. The victim’s powers of resistance are at the same time weakened by poor nourishment and lack of sleep.

There is, of course, nothing particularly mysterious or even new about the mere mechanics of this technique, which have been used elsewhere than in Russia and her satellites. But while the ‘Third Degree’ can sometimes successfully extort a confession and sometimes even ensure that the accused will maintain this confession in court, it is extremely limited in its application. Not only are there considerable risks attending the use of such methods in non-totalitarian countries, but there are numerous other factors preventing their widespread application, and certainly in no country with any semblance of democracy could even a single confession trial be successfully staged by such means. Only in certain peculiar circumstances can the elements of the ‘Third Degree’ be combined and quantitatively raised until a qualitative change is effected — resulting in what may be termed the ‘Fourth Degree’.

It may be argued that all the evidence here adduced on this question of the Soviet interrogation technique comes from witnesses necessarily hostile to those responsible for the confession trials. That is perfectly true. The only non-hostile testimony on Soviet interrogation methods given has been from the book produced under the auspices of Maurice Edelman (a work that is quite obviously less an account of experiences than a cleverly constructed defence of the Moscow Trials). The fact that this is so could, however, hardly be avoided; nor does it invalidate the evidence. But even if all of it be rejected as prejudiced, there still remain two considerations of overwhelming weight, entitling us to affirm that the confessions are not freely given and that undue influence is exerted to obtain them. First, the confessions have been proved false on points vital to the whole structure of the prosecution’s case. This was particularly so with the first two Moscow Trials of 1936 and 1937, which were, as we have already pointed out, minutely analysed by the commission that sat under the chairmanship of the American liberal and philosopher, John Dewey. The exposure of absurdities, inconsistencies, illogicalities and demonstrable falsehoods in the confessions made by the accused in these two trials has never been refuted. The second, and even more weighty, consideration, because it applies also to all subsequent trials, is the fact that the preliminary investigation is always surrounded by a veil of secrecy. We claim to have torn down that veil. The only way in which those interested to refute this claim can do so is to abolish this secrecy. So long as what takes place behind the scenes is a secret to be guarded with the utmost vigilance, so long as the prisoner can be held incommunicado until the trial opens, without the slightest possibility of discussing his defence with anyone independent of the authorities, so long we shall be entitled to maintain that the testimony we have cited above has not been, and cannot be, refuted.

It is therefore always with the above background in mind that one must consider the following record of the export of the confession trial to the territory of Europe.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter IV: Export to Europe

One of the shortest wars in military history was that waged between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union in 1944. The words ‘war’ and ‘waged’ are really inaccurate, for although the USSR declared a state of war with Bulgaria on 3 September, not a shot was fired by either side. On 8 September Bulgaria declared war against Germany and on the 9th the Fatherland Front seized power and proclaimed its readiness to sign an armistice with the Soviet Union, whose troops had entered Bulgaria without resistance.

However, this declaration of a state of war gave the Soviet Union the formal pretext for its troops to occupy Bulgaria. The presence of this military force had a heartening effect upon the Bulgarian Communists. The Bulgarian people were aware of the close ties between the Soviet government and the Communist Party, and they rightly assumed that the latter would enjoy the confidence of the Russian occupying authorities. In addition to this, Bulgaria’s past struggle against Turkish rule had inclined the people to look upon Russia as their historic liberator, since Tsarist Russia had aided them in this bid for freedom from an alien domination. The psychological effect of all this was of great value to the Communists. Behind the façade of the Fatherland Front — a union of Agrarians, Socialists, Communists and the Zveno Party — the Communists manoeuvred to occupy the key governmental positions and squeeze out their temporary allies from all but purely decorative posts.

Bulgaria became a Russian ‘sphere of influence’ as a result of the war. But there were forces within the country that strove for true national independence and did not want to see her colonised. Even within the Communist ranks there were men infected with the germ of ‘nationalism’, or — as their party enemies would later phrase it — ‘bourgeois nationalism’. The most immediate danger to Russia’s postwar aims, however, was the left wing of the Agrarian Party, led by Nicolas D Petkov. The Agrarian Party was an organisation of considerable political weight, since it enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry, in a land whose economy is 80 per cent agricultural. The Communist Party, whose strength rested partly on the industrial proletariat and partly on Russian military might, could not hope in a short time and by normal propaganda methods to break the influence of the Agrarians, particularly since no large landed estates existed in Bulgaria and the bulk of the peasants were quite small property owners. However, as both pre- and postwar experience of Russian policy has shown, the Russian government does not feel its position sufficiently secure to permit the existence of opposition parties, organisations, or even individuals. The first task to be tackled by the Stalinists — executing the Kremlin’s orders to eliminate all ‘hostile elements’ — was the destruction of the Agrarian Party. The leaders of the Agrarian Party, allies and colleagues of the Communists in the Fatherland Front Government and the Fatherland Front Committees throughout the country, were to be subjected to a systematic, steadily mounting offensive, which would end in their being labelled ‘enemies of the people’ and placed in the dock as criminals. The Moscow propaganda trial, somewhat adapted to the foreign market, was to be successfully exported to the territory of Europe.

With the trial in August 1947 of Nicolas Petkov, most outstanding leader of the one serious opposition to the Stalinists in the conglomeration of factions comprising the Agrarian Party, the only political force capable of putting up any kind of resistance to Russian domination ceased to exist.

The history of Bulgarian politics is a long and bloody record of incredibly ferocious assassinations, of torture of political opponents, of violence and kidnappings. Nicolas Petkov’s father and brother had both fallen to the bullets of assassins in the pay of reactionary forces. Petkov’s brother, Petco, had been a close collaborator of the Agrarian leader Stamboliisky, who was tortured, mutilated, made to dig his own grave and then murdered by members of the Macedonian terrorist organisation IMRO in 1923. Shortly after this atrocity, Petco Petkov himself was shot down and killed in broad daylight on a Sofia street. Large numbers of Agrarian Party members were massacred throughout Bulgaria in this 1923 coup d'état engineered by the Tsankovists. The Bulgarian Communists were subsequently called to account by the Communist International (that is, by the Russian leaders) for having followed a ‘sectarian’ policy and not having made common cause with the Agrarians against the bourgeoisie, the army and the monarchy, who had thus been able to triumph over a divided opposition. Thereafter the Stalinists sought to put into effect the policy of the ‘united front’ with the Agrarians.

It is interesting to note that in the political battles prior to 1923 Nicolas Petkov’s brother had been accused by his opponents of conspiracy with a foreign state (Yugoslavia) for the purpose of provoking internal dissension. ‘In April a “conspiracy” was discovered and forty peasants tortured to make “confessions”; but an unprejudiced Public Prosecutor declared this evidence worthless.’ (H Swire, Bulgarian Conspiracy (Robert Hale, 1939), p 178) As we shall see, there is a close resemblance between this charge against Petco and the one made by the Stalinists against Nicolas in 1947; but in 1947 there was no unprejudiced Public Prosecutor.

Petkov was a member of the extreme left wing of the Agrarian Party, known as the ‘Pladne’ group. It was deputies of this group who had been expelled, together with the Communists, from the parliament of 1938. This incident is a sufficient indication of the political views of these Agrarians. Petkov himself would be regarded by many people in this country as a ‘fellow-traveller’. He was so regarded by many Bulgarians, even within the Agrarian Party. At his trial both he and his defence counsel stressed the fact that he had always favoured a policy of collaboration with the Communist Party:

He was a man who, from that moment [formation of the Agrarian left wing — author] up to 9 September, has been in contact with the Communist Party. He is the man who, on 9 September, did not spare even his Agrarian comrades of the Mouraviev Cabinet, for he considered that they had followed a false path and did not hesitate to declare against them. (Le Procès Nicolas D Petkov (Sofia, 1947), p 349, officially published report of the trial)

Petkov asks a hostile witness why, if his — Petkov’s — ‘hypocritical, lying activity’ was so well known to everyone, was the Communist Party so anxious to secure his collaboration, begging him many times to join the National Committee of the Fatherland Front? In the first Fatherland Front government he occupied the post of Vice-President, and did not quit this post until August 1945, and only resigned then because his party demanded it. Although it is true that the political influence of his organisation was necessarily a weighty factor in his selection as one of the delegates who went to Moscow to sign the armistice, his immediate post-liberation role also followed logically from the political line that he had long pursued. Before Petkov grasped the full meaning of Communist policy vis-à-vis Bulgaria and broke with them as a consequence, he had never been attacked by them as a ‘reactionary’. Not all their remarkable skill in distorting the past to suit each new shift in their tactics can conceal the fact that Petkov and his group were acceptable allies for a considerable time. But in destroying the opposition both physically and morally it was necessary for the Stalinists to represent it as having always been ‘Fascist’. And one reason for this branding of their opponents as ‘Fascist dictators’ is the need to divert attention from their own totalitarian methods and their own totalitarian aims.

In this connection the Stalinists’ attitude towards General Stanchev is very revealing. It is a truly remarkable demonstration of the mental gymnastics they are able to perform at the crack of the ringmaster’s whip.

Extracts from General Stanchev’s deposition were read out at Petkov’s trial. Stanchev himself was stated to be in a prison hospital, too ill to leave his bed. He had been arrested in July 1946, but did not come up for trial until October 1947, after Petkov had been hanged. In his concluding speech at Stanchev’s trial the Public Prosecutor said:

You have heard that General Stanchev pleaded guilty, but this he did in very general terms. He did not confess nor did he bring forward any incriminating evidence. He, whom I regard as the centre of the conspiracy, could, if he wanted, implicate many people who are now at liberty, but he has not done so. He only says that he is guilty, but refuses to give us the names of other guilty persons. In this way he has saved a good many criminals. (Fatherland Front, 10 October 1947)

General Stanchev was evidently a tough nut to crack. He refused to play according to the rules laid down by his enemies — so he got a life sentence. To sentence him to death would have been a little too much, in view of his past record, about which the accusers observed a natural reticence. For it was of Stanchev that the Communist daily Zarya had this to say on 10 October 1944:

He was well known until recently as Major Stanchev. A distinguished officer and a really great man, his name became popular with the people during the 1935 trial of officers in the group attached to General Damyan Velchev. After that Stanchev spent five years in prison... Patient, honest, courageous, Stanchev was one of the most active organisers of the Fatherland Front during the heaviest days of the Fascist persecution. The victory of the Fatherland Front was largely due to him.

But there was more than this. In 1936, after Stanchev had been sentenced to death by the King Boris government, a group of British Members of Parliament had telegraphed an appeal for clemency. The appeal was successful. Among these MPs was DN Pritt, a man who has achieved something of a reputation by his readiness to champion the cause of the oppressed, with a bias in favour of those enjoying Stalinist endorsement. Having all this in mind, it would have been perhaps embarrassing for the Bulgarian Stalinists to do what the Boris government had flinched from doing in defiance of world public opinion. Had they sentenced Stanchev to death they might perhaps have received an appeal for clemency, again signed by the ever-vigilant Pritt. It is also more than probable that they had not entirely given up hope of extracting a ‘full confession’. So they contented themselves with a life sentence. But they thus condemned a man whom they had long held up to the people as a shining example of progressive thought and action. Stanchev stood in the way of Russian aims in Bulgaria and the Communists therefore did not hesitate an instant to contradict all that they had said of him in the past, to blacken his character and destroy him.

Nicolas Petkov, like many another, learned from personal experience that which history had been unable to teach him. As the supreme court stated in its findings, the opposition in Bulgaria was created as a result of ‘certain measures of the government, such as the People’s Courts and the arrests relative to them, the internment of families of those condemned by the People’s Courts, the institution of camps of re-education through work...’ (Le Procès Nicolas D Petkov (Sofia, 1947), p 477 — author’s emphasis). Petkov and his supporters found the trend of events alarming. The policy of suppressing ‘hostile elements’, a policy to which they themselves had necessarily been party, was now being used by the Stalinists to undermine their own positions. They not unnaturally fought back. The Communist prosecutor Petrinski interprets this fight as follows:

Nicolas Petkov and his acolytes employed all legal means — propaganda by the press, by speeches and later through the tribune of parliament — not in order to aid the popular power in its efforts... but to undermine, to sabotage, to provoke discontent, to incite the people, and to conspire against the power of the Fatherland Front. (Ibid, p 285)

Petrinski further complains of the following open attack on his party in the Petkov press:

Following 9 September 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, having succeeded in getting hold of all the key positions in the Cabinet, has established a dictatorship in the country. That dictatorial regime in no way differs from the regime known to the people from the years of Fascist dictatorship. (Ibid, pp 300-01)

Petrinski quotes these words and finds them ‘monstrous’. But monstrous or not, they show how Petkov and his followers viewed the course of events in Bulgaria. And it cannot be disputed that a central principle of Communist theory is the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat; a theory originally meant to apply to circumstances where the proletariat constituted the majority of the population, but applied to agrarian countries must inevitably result in the dictatorship of a police machine over the majority of the population. It was against this development that Petkov and his followers conducted their open, unconcealed political fight.

The reaction of the opposition to the general trend towards dictatorship is further indicated by Prosecutor Petrinski’s statement that the Petkov Agrarians demanded the following conditions for an agreement with the Communists: that the post of first President of the Cabinet must be given to them, and that the Ministry of the Interior — the truly key post — must be confided either to a political party other than the Communist, or to an independent.

It is thus clear that Petkov finally realised that his former Communist allies were aiming at concentrating all power in their hands and that the idea of loyally collaborating in a coalition was completely alien to them. Subsequent events in Bulgaria have fully confirmed the Communists’ totalitarian aims. It is also clear that Petkov and his co-thinkers reacted politically, that is, they conducted an open struggle to win the support of the people for their policy. The Communists could not allow such a state of affairs to long endure. Political opposition is for them always equivalent to criminal activity. It is of no importance if there is no objective evidence of criminal acts; subjectively their opponents are guilty of conspiracy, since they desire a change of regime, and the Communists are going to make sure that no normal constitutional means are left open to them for effecting such a change. The only methods left open to them are illegal, conspiratorial. Therefore, holding oppositional views, they must resort to measures interpreted by the Communists as conspiracy. The fact that they may not have yet done so does not matter. Hence the large amount of time taken up during the trial explaining that Petkov was a political opponent. The opposition ‘boycotted the 1946 elections on the pretext that they were not freely conducted'; Petkov ‘opposed everything new, progressive and democratic'; he was against the right to recall deputies; he was not a republican; he was opposed to the plans for ‘cooperative’ agriculture; he was against the Two-Year Plan of industrialisation. All these ‘charges’ that were made against him at his trial — whether true or not — are purely political. In no really democratic country would a man lay himself open to a charge of treason in holding the view that, for example, nationalisation of industries or collectivisation of agriculture was unsuitable for that country. The very fact that so much time is taken up by the prosecution in the Petkov trial to proving what was utterly irrelevant to the charges for which they were ostensibly being tried gives the unavoidable impression that the indictment against the accused is nothing more than a pretext and does not really cover their real crime. It aroused the very strong suspicion that their real crime was that they were political opponents of the Stalinists.

This suspicion is further strengthened when we note Petrinski admitting that: ‘It is true that at first everything went under the form of an expression of opinion, but that contained in itself a suggestion of action.’ (Ibid, p 291) It could hardly be more plainly put — political opposition implies action, otherwise it has no meaning; but in the eyes of the Stalinists ‘action’ means illegal conspiracy to overthrow the regime.

Our suspicion becomes certainty, however, when we hear the Communist leader Dimitrov threatening the Socialists:

From this rostrum, as you remember, I warned your allies from Nicolas Petkov’s group a number of times. They did not listen. They ran their heads against a wall. Their leader is under the ground. You must think over whether you want to share the fate of your allies — foreign agents and Bulgaria’s enemies. If you have not been wise in the past and do not try to gain wisdom, you will receive a lesson from the nation that you will remember until you meet St Peter. (Bulgarian National Assembly, 13 January 1948)

This warning was directed at the Socialist Deputies, led by Lulchev. The threat was duly carried out, Lulchev ‘tried’ and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, equivalent at his advanced age to a death sentence. Dimitrov is here warning the last remnants of the opposition that they must cease political activity. He is not talking about conspiracy, not accusing them of organising conspiracies, of engaging in espionage and so forth: he is simply saying that if they persist in conducting a political campaign against his party, in however modest a manner, then they will be ‘unmasked’ as ‘conspirators’ and share the same fate as Petkov. And to leave no room for any doubt at all, he added:

If they [Britain and the USA — author] had not intervened from abroad, and if some had not ultimately attempted to dictate to our sovereign court, Petkov’s head could have been saved. The death sentences could have been commuted to other punishment. But when it came to the question of blackmailing the Bulgarian nation and infringing on the right of our sovereign people’s court, the death sentence had to be executed. And it was executed.

No more cynical an admission could be made of the fact that Petkov’s execution was an act not of justice but of political vengeance. Coming from Dimitrov it is all the more revolting: for Dimitrov knew when he spoke that he owed his own life to foreign intervention at the time of the Reichstag Fire Trial. The purpose of the Petkov trial becomes obvious to any person prepared to look at the facts.

But Petkov was not hanged solely, or even primarily, because clemency would have looked like yielding to pressure from the West. Had he pleaded guilty, the Stalinists might possibly have commuted his sentence in spite of that pressure — for in those circumstances they would not have had to fear loss of face. Petkov’s unforgivable sin was his refusal to plead guilty.

The other four defendants at the trial did, however, ‘confess’, and their lives were spared. It was their testimony that constituted the ‘conspiracy’ evidence against Petkov. In his book Dimitrov Wastes no Bullets (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), Michael Padev has subjected these confessions to a close analysis and shown them to be worthless; they in no way prove that Petkov was even a member, let alone the inspirer, of any conspiracy aiming at a coup d'état. Without necessarily sharing any of Padev’s political views or conclusions, we can recommend this book to those interested in an exposure of the inconsistencies and illogicalities in which the confessions abound. It should be constantly borne in mind by the reader, however, that the public trial is the end-product of many rehearsals that have taken place behind the scenes during the preliminary investigation. Even if the final product should prove to have no observable flaws at all, that would not justify acceptance of them. And those naive, or interested, observers who report that these trials appear to conform to due legal procedure miss the essential point — which is that the real trial takes place beforehand, in the shadows. While, therefore, we shall from time to time point out the more salient absurdities and impossibilities contained in the confessions, our main interest will be concentrated on their political purpose and on such glimpses as they afford into the technique of the preliminary investigation.

The political nature and purpose of the Petkov trial has already been made clear. It remains to consider the question of the technique employed.

Of the four defendants who pleaded guilty, two, Colonel Marko Ivanov and Colonel Boris Gergov, had been in prison for a year before the trial opened. They had appeared as self-inculpatory witnesses in three previous trials: the ‘Neutral Officer’ trial in February 1947; the trial of General Ivan Popov in May 1947; and the Koev trial in June 1947. They were also to appear as witnesses in a trial subsequent to their own, that of General Stanchev and the so-called Military League, in October 1947. Ivanov and Gergov had been at the disposal of the preliminary examiners for six months before they were called as witnesses in the first trial. After giving evidence they were escorted back to their cells. If we recall the revelations of Koev regarding his treatment at the hands of his examiners we shall be able to appreciate the attitude of these two men. And if we further remember that Koev, sentenced to fifteen years in June 1947, was brought out of prison to ‘confess’ yet once more and implicate his friend and colleague Petkov, we come to the inescapable conclusion that all these ‘witnesses’, testifying in their confessions against themselves and each other, spoke under duress. Koev, who had confessed at his first interrogation, then retracted this confession after his release, then been rearrested and again confessed, had been given a sentence that was — in view of the ‘treachery’ of his revelations regarding the interrogation technique — comparatively mild: fifteen years. His life was spared, but he was required to testify against his closest friend. The authorities made a bargain with him, as they did with the others. They received ‘mercy’ in return for ‘repentance’. It is, however, unlikely that they will ever be heard of again.

Addressing Athanassov, another of the accused at the Petkov trial who confessed, the president said — before he made his deposition in court: ‘Bear in mind that even he who has committed the gravest crime, if he makes a sincere confession, and the court understands that the accused repents, it can give proof of indulgence towards him.’ (Ibid, p 46) It is not possible to mistake his meaning. Why, in spite of its revealing character, did the president feel it incumbent on him to make such a remark? There can be only one answer to that: to make sure that the accused kept to the bargain made beforehand. He was giving them both a warning and a promise. Even with Petkov, who had stood firm and asserted his innocence, he made a last effort. He told him: ‘There is a wise Latin inscription to be seen in the Palace of Justice, more than 2000 years old, which says that a sincere confession of guilt purifies the soul and softens the fate of the accused.’ (Ibid, p 121 — author’s emphasis)

But Petkov refused to plead guilty. And even this is taken as a sure proof — proof, mark you — of his guilt. For Prosecutor Petrinski says: ‘He does not admit his guilt and that is no accident. Confession is an act of bravery.’ (Ibid, p 310) It is a matter of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’. Yet how much at a loss for a convincing argument must this man have been to fall back on such ‘reasoning'; and how lacking in any decency — not to speak of logical sense — to follow this up with these despicable words: ‘The first proof is that Petkov is trembling, not with his hands alone but with his whole body... Innocent men do not tremble.’ The time may yet come when Prosecutor Petrinski will learn that a man may tremble and still be innocent (innocent of the charge laid against him, for there are crimes of which Petrinski can never cleanse his soul). But it is to be doubted that Petrinski, should he ever find himself in the dock facing his erstwhile comrades, will find the courage ‘never to submit or yield’. Perhaps he too will then tremble, even although he does not suffer from Petkov’s nervous complaint — of which we know Petrinski was aware.

All this throws a sharp light on the mechanics of the pre-trial process. No matter what crime an accused may have committed, there is always one still greater — the crime of not confessing. By this very fact of refusing to be the mouthpiece of his inquisitors he shows himself an enemy, according to the perverted logic of the Stalinists. ‘If you are really in support of the regime, really for the Soviet power, really a “patriot” — you would be prepared to make this sacrifice, to tell all you know.’ But if there is nothing to tell? No, there must be something: for those in power know well enough that they are not loved by the people. Where tyranny rules there will occasionally be spontaneous reaction against it: individuals here and there will try to strike back. And the authorities cannot believe that such actions can ever be those of isolated persons, cannot believe that they are not directed from a centre, part of a concerted plot. Such actions express the mood of the people, and to be a political opponent of the regime means to help generate, maintain and deepen that mood. More than that, it means to offer a rallying point, an organisational centre, and the possibility of making that opposition politically effective. Therefore these political opponents are morally responsible for any terrorist actions committed by individuals driven to desperation by oppressive government measures. And it does not even matter if no such actions have in fact been committed, because the authorities know that the people are opposed to them, know that they are thinking ‘dangerous thoughts’. So moral responsibility must at all costs be connected arbitrarily with some act of terrorism or sabotage, real or pretended, which from the propaganda viewpoint can be presented more effectively than the case for ‘moral responsibility’. For this, confessions, and compliant witnesses, are absolutely essential, otherwise there would be no ‘evidence’. Petkov died, therefore, not because he was guilty, but because he would not confess to being guilty.

A further insight into the technique employed to extort these confessions is seen from the case of the witness N Athanassov. On page 245 of the trial record it is stated that this man had been arrested after giving evidence, because the authorities considered his testimony ‘false and inexact'; for this, it was further stated, he would be tried. Athanassov’s ‘false and inexact’ testimony was, as the record shows, simply testimony that was altogether too favourable to the accused. Those of the witnesses who are not already sentenced, or who are not under arrest awaiting sentence, are thus forcibly reminded that but for the grace of the authorities they would also be standing trial. Justice here is not blind, nor does she bear aloft impartial scales: she carries only in one hand a hammer, and in the other the scythe of death.

Those responsible for the Petkov trial were not entirely satisfied with their handiwork, and therefore, eager to leave no infamy undone, they either forced or forged a Petkov ‘confession’ after sentence had been pronounced and the prisoner removed from the public gaze. This ‘confession’ they produced in facsimile in their published report of the trial; in facsimile, because they knew it would be said it had been forged. But look! — they cry triumphantly — it is in his own hand! Their sensibilities are too blunted to appreciate how indescribably despicable this kind of thing is, even if Petkov wrote it himself, even if they did not torture him before they choked him to death. And when they produced this ‘confession’ the man was already in his grave; they made a dead man speak — with the voice of his murderers.

In many respects the Petkov trial differed from the Moscow Trials — or rather, it resembled them only as the product of an apprentice resembles the model of the master. The principal accused did not confess or plead guilty; his counsel really tried to demolish, and succeeded in demolishing, the case for the prosecution; and there were witnesses speaking in favour of the accused in spite of the grave danger they courted in so doing. As time went by and the domination of the Stalinists became more secure, more absolute, the technique improved, as we shall see. The work of the apprentice approached more closely to that of the experienced craftsman. But our previous brief notice of ‘confessions’ extorted by torture in prewar Bulgaria reminds us that however much technique may improve, and however much more polished the finished article may appear, the essential background of inquisitorial terror remains unchanged, or changed only in its having widened its scope, become more all-pervading. Glancing at Bulgarian political life in the past, we find the following words of a journalist, writing of the difficulties encountered many years ago in gathering news in Bulgaria, to remind us that plus ça change, plus ça reste le même:

Then the seeker after truth should desist or better still leave Bulgaria, or the Swoboda (the government gazette) will denounce him as a Russian spy and stout-limbed sapages, political heelers who carry long sticks and use them ruthlessly, will dog his footsteps and then come forward to swear that he endeavoured by means of the traditional rouble notes to shake their allegiance to the throne. And then the Nadrodny Prava will publish his photograph under the caption ‘another traitor unmasked’ and demand his expulsion from the sacred soil. (Stephan Bonsal, Heyday in a Vanished World (Allen and Unwin, 1938), p 192)

If in this respect the situation has changed in Bulgaria, it would be a bold — and blind — man who would say it has changed for the better.

The Petkov case may be studied to advantage by those who still imagine that it is possible to work with the Communists without running one’s head into the noose. It ought to make it clear to them that breaches of faith on the part of the Stalinists are not occasional lapses from the path of virtue, dictated by expediency, lamentable and morally indefensible but capable of a certain justification by appeal to precedent in the game of power politics. In the first place they do not admit that their entire policy is dictated by considerations of power politics, brazenly denying what is crystal clear: that their policy is governed solely by the imperialist or military-strategic interests of the rulers of Russia. In the second place, the deception, hypocrisy and blatant lying by means of which they seek to forward this policy is deliberate, systematic and conscious. The means employed have no reference to anybody of social principles, they result from a complete lack of any principles whatever — unless expediency be called a principle. It is therefore useless to seek in a study of Marxism any clue to the broad strategic aims pursued, aims that are both concealed and revealed in the twists and turns of the tactical line at any given moment. The Petkov case may help to show the grave mistake made by those who think that the Stalinists have any other aim than the advancement of Russia’s national interests — that is, the interests of the Russian ruling clique, and not, of course, of the Russian people.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter V: The Cardinal Conspires

A great State Trial is in progress in one of the Iron Curtain countries. The eyes of the world are focused on the scene in the court-room where the defendants are on trial for their lives. The prosecuting authorities have spared no trouble and no expense to make this trial an indictment of the regime’s enemies that shall resound throughout the world. It is a great and solemn occasion, and all the resources of the state have been mobilised to impress its seriousness upon the public.

However, when the principal defendant has given his testimony the interest of the press representatives gathered there from the four corners of the world flags: what follows has the air of an anti-climax, its news-value is not very great, and is consequently not subjected to the same keen scrutiny as has been given to the earlier part of the proceedings. Yet the testimony of the three members of the ‘vast network of spies’ that brings the case to a close is an integral part of the evidence against the chief defendant, Cardinal József Mindszenty, Prince Primate of the Catholic Church in Hungary, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the democratic order, with high treason, and offences against the currency laws. The testimony of these three men, which we shall now examine, is the keystone of the case for the prosecution.

Astonishment grows as we read it in the official report of the trial. Is it possible that the highest legal authorities of a state should take this seriously, and expect the world to take it seriously? Is it possible that all this legal machinery should have been set in motion simply in order to present us with this fantastic rigmarole? Is it possible that men can be tried for their lives on the basis of such ‘evidence'?

Let us consider the testimony of these alleged members of Cardinal Mindszenty’s alleged ‘espionage organisation’.

The accused Ispánky admits receiving two letters from abroad through the medium of a certain Madame Pomrelot, who is described in the indictment as Italian, but who is said in the evidence to possess a French passport. When she visits Ispánky she places this passport and a ‘fair certificate’ on his table. Why she does so is not explained and no one bothers to ask what her purpose might have been. The incident is perhaps intended to create an atmosphere of ‘circumstantial evidence’. On the next page of the official report (The Trial of József Mindszenty (Budapest, 1949), p 130), Ispánky takes from the mysterious lady all the letters — not just the two that he first said she had brought. ‘One of these was addressed to...’ The prosecutor cuts in quickly with the words: ‘József Mindszenty, the first accused!’ This is a statement, not a leading question: the prosecutor is evidently afraid that the accused will forget something. Another letter was addressed to Dr György Eszterházy Member of the Hungarian Parliament, and this Ispánky ‘immediately burnt, according to instructions’. He says nothing about its contents, nor does he say who gave him instructions to burn it, or why. And nobody bothers to ask. Still another letter (now making three instead of the original two) is addressed to the accused Miklós Nagy. But the president is not interested in the contents of this letter either. ‘Let us go on’, he suggests. ‘What happened next, what was in the package?’ So now, in addition to the letters whose number steadily mounts, we have a package, although the accused has not mentioned any package. But Ispánky understands: this is the clue to his next line: ‘The package contained two sheets of paper treated with chemicals, one for Dr György Eszterházy, and another for Dr Miklós Nagy.’

The president then enquires: ‘What else was in it?’ (Not — was there anything else?) And Ispánky replies: ‘Some chemical substance for developing the writing, two tubes of it.’ The president is still not completely satisfied; he has a suspicion that there must have been still something else in the package. Yes, agrees Ispánky, there was — two hundred dollars.

So far, so good. The Italian, or French, courier of the spy ring comes from Rome to present Ispánky with two letters (which later become three, and later still four) and a package containing two sheets of chemically prepared paper, two tubes of some chemical substance for developing invisible writing, and two hundred dollars. The question arises: what was Ispánky to do with those two sheets of paper and those two tubes of chemical substance:

She told me that if the two above-named gentlemen should come to see me, I was to tell them to use these chemically treated sheets... ['Louder, please’, the president urges him at this point] which had been simply treated with wax, so that writing leaves no visible marks on it; they may cover the sheets with writing, and if they make a chemical solution of the pills in hot water, and rub the sheets with the solution, the writing will become apparent.

The phrase ‘if the two... gentlemen should come to see me’ is peculiar. It might be supposed that if they did not come to see him he would go to see them. But apparently this was not so, because, after having gone to all the trouble to bring this material from Italy for the two gentlemen in question, the courier tells Ispánky to burn it (p 131) if they should not ‘report’. Ispánky could keep the money himself, however.

It is now noticeable that the two tubes of chemical substance have become, ‘pills’, and the chemically treated paper has been transformed into paper ‘simply treated with wax’, on which writing leaves no discernible marks. In spite of this, we then get the following:

President: ‘How did you send reports abroad?’

Ispánky: ‘By regular mail.’

President: ‘By regular mail, but written in chemical ink.’

Ispánky: ‘To be exact, on this waxed paper.’ [Author’s emphasis]

President: ‘On waxed paper, so that if anyone looked at it, they merely saw a neutral text, under which the real, hidden text could be called forth by the process described by the lady.’

Ispánky: ‘If some official organ should have checked it and found it suspicious, it would have been enough to draw a line across the letter with any kind of dye or acid solution, and the writing would have been discovered.’ (Ibid, pp 132-33)

‘To be exact.’ On this waxed paper (the two sheets?). Moreover, he now has to write on this waxed paper in chemical ink (about which so far nothing has been mentioned), although previously it was the nature of this ‘chemically treated’ paper itself that made writing invisible. Still more puzzling is the fact that a neutral text can be written on this waxed paper, on which writing leaves no visible marks; and in addition to this, the two tubes of chemical substance, or pills (whichever it was), were really quite redundant, since any kind of ‘dye or acid solution’ (the juice of a lemon, for instance) would do the trick just as well as the ‘process described by the lady’.

Later on the president seems to have felt that there was something strange in all this, for he very obligingly alters the testimony. ‘You wrote it on an ordinary sheet of notepaper, with some neutral text on it’, he informs the defendant, who seems only too willing to accept this new version of the matter. Neither of them is worried by the fact that this contradicts Ispánky’s earlier evidence. After all, what is another small discrepancy among so many?

The president asks Ispánky if he made copies of the espionage material he received.

Ispánky: ‘I did not. I received it all written up.’

President: ‘All written up?’

Ispánky: ‘Yes.’

President: ‘Did you write the report in your own handwriting, or on the typewriter?’

So Ispánky is sure that he received the espionage material ‘all written up’, and that he did not make copies of it; he is quite definite about this here. It might be inferred from this that the reports were received all ready for despatch. But since he has already said before that he wrote the reports himself on the waxed paper, there must be something wrong here too. And why should the president now suddenly bring in a typewriter, when it seemed that they had managed to agree that the reports were written on waxed paper that made ordinary writing invisible (first version), or on ordinary notepaper in chemical ink (second version). However, in spite of the fact that Ispánky received the reports all written up and did not make copies of them, his accomplice, the accused Tóth from whom he received the reports, says in his testimony that they were not ‘all written up’, but that some were in writing and some were given verbally. Again there is a discrepancy — and again nobody bothers to attempt to straighten it out.

Now in the indictment it says that Dr Béla Ispánky, ‘evading legal postal communications, on chemically prepared sheets’ sent secret data of a political and economic nature abroad. And in his final speech the prosecutor says that ‘Ispánky received from Madame Pomrelot the invisible ink, the various instructions and chemicals to make the invisible ink visible again’. It is, incidentally, nowhere suggested that any of the accused received letters from abroad written in invisible ink — they allegedly received all communications through couriers and no suggestion is anywhere made that a code or invisible ink was used: so it appears that, for some unexplained reason, the accused wanted to make their own invisible writing visible.

Let us attempt to sum up the above testimony. We are told of two sheets of paper, which is at one time simply ‘waxed’ and at another time ‘chemically treated’, on which writing will not show, but on which a neutral text can be written. We have the accused Ispánky at one time stating categorically that he wrote — ‘to be exact’ — on this paper, and at another time that he wrote on ordinary notepaper; we have him writing up the reports and yet not writing them up; we have them all written up beforehand and not written up beforehand; we have two tubes of chemical substance, which later become pills, to be used in the preparation of a solution capable of making visible the invisible writing on this chemically prepared — or waxed — paper, on which writing left no marks, although it was not necessary to go to the trouble of preparing this solution because any acid solution would serve the same purpose; and finally we have the espionage reports simply typed, and then again they are not typed but written in invisible ink that was missing from the package brought by the Italian lady with the French passport and the ‘fair certificate’.

It must be admitted that, for fear of trying the patience of the reader, not all the absurdities and contradictions in this testimony regarding the ‘network of espionage agents’ has been given here. However, the above is sufficient to give a good idea of what passed for evidence at the trial of József Mindszenty and his ‘accomplices’. And we are expected to take all this rigmarole seriously!

Incredible as it may seem, this really was an integral part of the evidence upon which Mindszenty was condemned to penal servitude for life in February 1949.

Note the way in which the president has to put Mindszenty’s name into the mouth of the accused Ispánky. Note also that Mindszenty was not once questioned about the alleged activities of these three members — Béla Ispánky, László Tóth and Miklós Nagy — of the ‘espionage organisation’ acting under his instructions; and this in spite of the fact that the prosecutor in his final speech asserts that:

Mindszenty went so far that he was not deterred from actual espionage. He supported a systematic network of an information service working through hired agents... It is to this group that Miklós Nagy, Dr Béla Ispánky, László Tóth and all their accomplices belong.

Nor were any of these men questioned about their relations with Mindszenty.

The truth is, of course, that there was no network of spies, or if there was, it had no connection with the activities of these three accused or of Cardinal Mindszenty. A man known to Mindszenty, a member of the church hierarchy, had fled to Rome, where he set up a news agency. He wrote to Mindszenty, not with chemical inks or on waxed paper, but in the way people normally write to one another: a typewritten letter asking quite openly for news of the situation in Hungary. Undoubtedly this man Mihalovics was opposed to the new Hungarian regime and was in all probability engaged in spreading anti-Communist propaganda. He asked Mindszenty to send him information. ‘He asked for data, but I never sent him any’, said the cardinal (ibid, p 108). The prosecution accepts this denial, but tries to make out that Mindszenty did not reply because he knew that the letter had been intercepted by the police. ‘I wonder, if you had not suspected that, whether in that case the Mihalovics group would not have obtained the same kind of information that the American minister did obtain?’, says the prosecutor. However, the American minister is alleged to have received from Mindszenty information ‘on the Hungarian political and economic situation and on the democratic parties’ (ibid, p 26); that is to say, he received in essence precisely the same information that Mihalovics received through Ispánky, Tóth and Nagy, the members of Mindszenty’s ‘espionage network’. So according to the prosecution, Mihalovics both did and did not receive the same information as the American minister.

The only thing that emerges clearly from all this muddle is that Mindszenty expressed his views, verbally and in writing (the very naïveté of Mindszenty’s letters shows that he had not the remotest connection with any espionage activity), in the hope of obtaining support against the Hungarian Communists, who themselves leaned heavily on Russian support. For propaganda purposes — and in order to overawe and intimidate — it was necessary to picture his activities as espionage. All this nonsense about waxed paper, chemical substances, invisible inks and so on, was necessary to give some colour to the picture. It was felt that this ‘circumstantial evidence’ would have a really telling effect on the Hungarian masses for whom the trial was primarily staged. Subjected to sober analysis it leaves only the impression of a crudely written scenario. When such an obvious concoction is introduced as ‘evidence’ in a state trial how is it possible to take it seriously? — how is it possible to regard the whole as anything more than a political show for the edification of an audience regarded by the stage managers as not particularly bright? However well staged the rest of the show may be, the introduction of such manifest nonsense entirely discredits it.

* * *

What puzzled many observers of this trial was the attitude of Mindszenty. The world press reported that he stood up in court and ‘confessed’ to everything, and the general impression given was that he had accepted the justice of all the charges laid against him without any qualification whatever. Thus the official Hungarian propaganda report was able to quote The Times correspondent as writing that: ‘He pleaded that he had committed all the acts of which he was accused.’ (Ibid, p 10) Yet on page sixty-five of this report Mindszenty’s words are:

To the extent that I did commit a considerable part of the activities charged against me in the indictment... to that extent, I feel guilty... Of course, that does not mean that I accept the conclusions of the indictment. For example, with regard to the offences mentioned in Section A, I do not deny one or another part of it, but I do not subscribe to the conclusion that I might have been involved in the planning of the overthrow of the democratic state order and the republic, even less, as the indictment states, ‘that I might have played a leading role’.

In other words, Mindszenty admitted some of the acts ascribed to him, but denied the interpretation put on them by the authorities. He ‘feels guilty’ only to the extent that he did engage in certain of the activities set down in the indictment, but it was not true to say that these activities amounted to a conspiracy to overthrow the state order. He is thus in this statement denying the main charge against him. Nevertheless, Mindszenty’s attitude in the dock was so different from that expected of him by his friends abroad that it was generally interpreted as complete surrender. It was felt by his supporters that such an attitude could only be explained by reference to physical torture and possibly also to the use of some mysterious drug. In order fully to appreciate the profound shock that Mindszenty’s attitude administered his supporters it is necessary to cast a brief glance over Mindszenty’s role on the Hungarian scene prior to the trial.

Post-'liberation’ and postwar events in Hungary followed a familiar pattern. Just as in Bulgaria, the presence of Soviet occupation forces was the decisive factor in the rise to power of the Communist Party, acting as the native political representative of the Russian government. As an admirer of the People’s Democracies has put it:

Thanks to the Soviet Liberators the way was now open for the workers and their allies the peasants, and all democratically-minded people, to carry out the unfinished task of the 1848 revolution — the democratic transformation of Hungary — and to lay the foundations of something which was as yet only half-conceived: the people’s democracy. (Neil Stewart, Background to the New Hungary (Fore Publications, 1950), p 8)

In none of the Eastern European countries — with the sole exception of Yugoslavia — had the Communists sufficient strength to enforce their rule without the backing of Soviet military force. In Hungary the whole machinery of government and administration had broken down. Neither the Communist Party nor the occupying forces could by themselves find the necessary personnel for the task of bringing order out of this chaos. The first task was therefore to revive those political organisations capable of supplying the required personnel and of mobilising the people for the task of reconstruction. The Stalinists therefore immediately set about re-establishing those political parties that could be used for this purpose. A secondary consideration motivating this action was, of course, the need to conceal beneath a ‘National Front’ the ultimate aim of one-party rule and the permanent domination of the country by Soviet Russia. The controversy around the personality of the well-known Hungarian Marxist writer and literary critic György Lukács arose from Lukács’ inability fully to understand this manoeuvre. Worth studying on this question is the attack on Lukács by József Révai (Lukács and Socialist Realism, Fore Publications, 1950) which unwittingly exposes the double-dealing nature of the Stalinists’ postwar policy. It is enough for our purpose to quote the following words from this pamphlet:

We do not reproach him for having proclaimed a ‘literary united front’ in 1945-46 and for calling for the alliance of democratic Hungarian writers. The criticism levelled at Lukács’ views would be incorrect and a leftish deviation if it were to reproach him for not having announced the slogan of socialist realism in 1945. If the party did not put forward the slogan for an immediate political and economic struggle for Socialism in the political and economic fight it could not, of course, call Comrade Lukács retrospectively to account for not having fought directly for Socialism on the literary front in 1945. It is a question of perspective. The party, too, avoided provocation of the right wing of the Smallholders Party in 1945-46, and was not willing to declare in the 1945 elections... that the struggle was for Socialism, but at the same time it did not deny the struggle for Socialism, did not give up the perspective of this struggle for Socialism, and, in its everyday struggle, it increased its attack on the capitalist elements in politics and economics... It thus led the changing situation in Hungary in a socialist direction and developed the People’s Democracy into the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. (p 4, emphasis in the original)

If one translates, as one of course must translate, the words Socialism’, ‘socialist realism’ and ‘struggle for Socialism’ in the above extract into the ‘struggle for Stalinist dictatorship’, the point at issue will become even clearer to the reader. He will then understand why Lukács fell foul of the party machine, by failing to drop quickly enough the disguise of the ‘united front’ and address himself wholeheartedly to the task of making Soviet domination palatable to Hungarian writers and their public by proclaiming the cultural supremacy of the Soviet Union.

So — keeping ‘the question of perspective’ well in mind — the Stalinists first of all set up a ‘National Front’ of the four main political parties — the Smallholders Party, the Social-Democratic Party, the Peasant Party, and their own. Behind this façade of brotherly unity, the Stalinists, as soon as their immediate purpose had been achieved, proceeded to undermine the positions of their allies by the use of every possible combination of force and fraud (see Hugh Seton-Watson’s The Revolution in Eastern Europe for a detailed account of the methods employed).

The fact that in Hungary the Communist Party had been banned for many years was also of great assistance to it: for not only had this given its members a thorough training in underground activity, but it had also compelled it to use the Social-Democratic Party as a cover, and infiltration into this party had gone so far that its eventual elimination was already only a matter of choosing the appropriate moment. One by one the leading figures of the Social-Democratic Party, having served their purpose, were condemned as ‘right-wing’, squeezed out, compelled to resign, arrested or forced to flee the country. The same process broke the resistance of the Smallholders Party. An example of the pressure to which those who attempted to pursue an independent path were subjected is seen in the fate of Béla Kovács, leading member of the Smallholders Party, who was arrested by the Russian police and either executed or beaten to death — the exact circumstances of his end are not known.

While the process of virtually eliminating opposition parties was proceeding the Stalinists were faced with what they conceived to be a serious threat from another quarter: the Catholic Church, which had links with political parties, especially the Smallholders Party, since the majority of Hungarians were Catholics, but which was also itself an independent entity capable, so the Stalinists thought, of providing a rallying point for opposition elements. Cardinal Mindszenty, as the leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary, and as the most outspoken opponent of the Communists left in the field, was regarded as a dangerous enemy who had at all costs to be silenced, and if possible also morally destroyed. At the same time, the Communists were anxious to come to some agreement with the Catholic Church, since it represented a force that could not be eliminated overnight. In removing Mindszenty they were therefore removing the chief obstacle to an agreement between church and state, and giving a clear warning to any lesser opponents to such an agreement. The real victory of the Communists in the Mindszenty trial was the fact that they succeeded in making the cardinal withdraw his opposition to an agreement. How did they manage this?

Before his arrest Mindszenty had written a letter stating that in the event of his arrest no credit should be given to any confession he might subsequently make, since a confession would be no more than the result of human frailty. After his arrest, however, he withdrew this letter. On page 138 of the trial report the president refers to it. In reply to the question: ‘Were you influenced in your confession or forced to make statements?’ Mindszenty replies: ‘No, I was not.’ Later he adds:

When I wrote the letter just read [it is not reproduced in the report, only a few lines are cited] I did not see many things which I see today. My present attitude is expressed in the letter written to the Minister of Justice, read out by your honour at yesterday’s session. I consider the letter just read invalid.

Mindszenty’s letter to the Minister of Justice read:

I beg the Minister of Justice to consider my announcement, or rather my request. For some time, publicly and repeatedly there has been raised against me the complaint that I stand in the way of an agreement between the state and the church, and that my attitude is hostile to the present order of the state. As for the former, it is a fact that I always emphasised the prerequisites. Now I want to contribute to an improvement in the general situation. Before the trial, which is soon to open, I voluntarily admit that I have committed the acts I am charged with according to the penal code of the state. In the future I shall always judge the external and internal affairs of the state on the basis of the full sovereignty of the Hungarian Republic.

After this admission and declaration, the trial regarding my person does not seem to be absolutely necessary. Therefore, not because of my person, but considering my position, I ask that my case be exempted from the trial on 3 February. Such a decision, more than anything else, would facilitate a solution, even more than the wisest judgement of the court.

After thirty-five days of constant meditation, I also declare that apart from other reasons, it may have been due to me, to my attitude as described above, that reconciliation has been delayed; and also that I consider the establishment of a true peace between the state and church necessary as long as it has not been made. I, too, would take part in the realisation of this reconciliation, according to the teachings and laws of the church, were there not complaints against me in just this respect. But in order that I should not be an obstacle to reconciliation... I declare hereby, of my own accord, without any compulsion, that I am ready to withdraw for a time from exercising my office...

It appears from the above that Mindszenty was under the definite impression that his statement of submission was all that the authorities required of him, and that he would not be put on trial. If he regarded this ‘admission and declaration’ as a confession of espionage and high treason, how could he possibly have believed that ‘the trial regarding my person does not seem to be absolutely necessary'? During those thirty-five days of ‘constant meditation’, what arguments were put to him to make him support an agreement that he had hitherto opposed?

For unquestionably this statement marks a fundamental change of viewpoint on the part of a man who had at one time charged in a pastoral letter (18 October 1945) that it was ‘a disgrace for Hungary that last year our leaders, out of sheer weakness, assisted a foreign power of occupation to commit acts of violence in their own country’, and who had urged the people to vote against the Communists.

With our understanding of the technique employed, it will not be difficult to appreciate how Mindszenty’s thirty-five days of constant meditation (the words have a truly ironic ring) helped him to change his mind.

It seems to us incorrect to say that Mindszenty did not appreciate what he was doing in making this declaration and in acting as he did before his accusers. Nor do we think it correct to argue that he was simply afraid for his own skin — although, knowing the methods employed, we should not care to condemn anyone on this score. It is true that he argues above that he does not believe his trial necessary in the circumstances, but he adds — ‘not because of my own person’. And in the trial record we find justification for believing that he was quite sincere in saying this. When it was sought to make him implicate another person, not in the dock, he says: ‘Please, I am the accused... Please, in any case, I take the blame myself for all that has happened.’ (Ibid, p 110) It is, however, clear from Mindszenty’s letter to the Minister of Justice that he believed he was doing no more than making a concession, a compromise. His examiners tricked him into thinking that that was all they required. They gave him the impression that he would not be tried; made him think they agreed with him that a trial of his person would aggravate and not soften the conflict between church and state. They persuaded him that a compromise was in the best interests of all concerned; persuaded him that it was necessary to admit having committed acts contrary to the penal code, in order to ‘contribute to an amelioration of the situation’. But they did not tell him that these acts would be interpreted as ‘conspiracy to overthrow the state order’, did not tell him that he would be tried on such a charge. On the contrary they made him feel that he would not be tried at all. He was undoubtedly genuinely convinced that he was acting for the best in taking the blame on himself for the failure of the church to reach an agreement with the state. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind the circumstances in which he meditated. To enable Mindszenty to rationalise his submission, there must have been some strong arguments used by the examiners, other than the arguments of a general political nature.

If we turn to that part of the indictment concerning the alleged spy Ispánky we find a major clue to what these other strong arguments were. Ispánky is there found guilty of selling two hundred dollars on the black market, and thereby he is said to have ‘gravely damaged the interests of the economy’. This is rather a small sum to ‘gravely damage’ the economy of the country. But according to Decree 8400 of 1946, Article 20, Paragraph 2: ‘The penalty shall be death if the act has gravely damaged the interest involved in the stability of the Hungarian forint.’ (The same penalty applies under Article 17 of this Decree.) It is therefore clear why the words ‘gravely damaged’ are employed in the indictment, even although the sum is so small. (We leave aside the fact that in sending this two hundred dollars from Italy, Mihalovics apparently forgot that he had thousands of dollars at his disposal in Hungary, and that he told his alleged agents in Hungary that they could draw on this at any time — if one accepts the confession of another ‘agent’.)

The fact that even Ispánky was thus brought under threat of death is important to an understanding of Mindszenty’s attitude. There cannot be the slightest doubt that during his ‘thirty-five days of meditation’ the situation of his fellow-accused was forcibly brought home to him. ‘Please, I take the blame myself for all that has happened.’ But they were not prepared to let him do so. Upon the attitude he adopted depended the fate of these other men; he had to decide whether they lived or died. An argument of this nature would, we believe, prove decisive for a man like Mindszenty, who in no way gives the impression of a political fanatic indifferent to the fate of individuals so long as he achieved his objective. For, in fact, Mindszenty had no clearly defined political aims; his political views — if such they can be called — could hardly have been more muddle-headed and unrealistic. His sole concern was to preserve the influence of the Catholic Church. His idea that it would be possible to do this by restoring the Hapsburg Monarchy is the kind of pipe-dream that well indicates his naïveté, his complete divorce from the realities of the situation in Hungary and the rest of the world. On this score there is no evidence at all of a ‘conspiracy’. How could there be? The idea itself is politically so unrealistic that it is hard to believe it really was seriously entertained. Certainly Mindszenty displayed a remarkable lack of energy in furthering Legitimist aims. But in any case it is quite ridiculous to suggest that a man who could believe in the restoration of the Hapsburgs was ‘the last bulwark of reaction’ in Hungary. (The truly effective reactionaries, the Arrow Cross, had strongly opposed Legitimism.) As a political opponent Mindszenty was even less effective than Tikhon in Russia during the early years of the revolution; and Tikhon was permitted by the Bolsheviks to live out his days in peace. But of course the prosecution makes the most of this, not in order to show how simple Mindszenty was, but in order to remind the people of their situation under the Hapsburgs and make it appear that Mindszenty wanted a return to those conditions. It could hardly have been difficult for his interrogators to demonstrate to him the uselessness of continuing opposition along these lines, particularly when the fate of his fellow-accused depended upon his seeing reason. In these circumstances he could be convinced, and we believe that he was sincerely convinced, that it was necessary to yield to superior force, to effect a compromise that would permit the continued functioning of the church, although with a greatly restricted sphere of influence, until conditions were more favourable. He was therefore ‘ready to withdraw for a time’, as he says in his letter to the Minister of Justice. In those very words we have an indication of the bargain he believed had been made. As the Reverend Stanley Evans wrote in the Daily Worker (quoted from page 12 of the trial record): ‘He thought that even in the court-room, if he offered to make a deal, the government would accept it...’ He did not understand that it was not at all a question of ‘withdrawal for a time’, but his complete elimination as a factor in social and political life. Once the authorities had his declaration, once they had his partial admissions (which they could then proceed to puff up into a charge of treason, conspiracy, espionage), once they knew that he was not prepared to sacrifice his fellow-accused — then they knew that they need not be bound by any agreement, implied or explicit, on the part of the examiners. Yet the evidence that Mindszenty considered that such an agreement existed stares one in the face. And certainly Mindszenty could not have doubted his accusers’ readiness to inflict death sentences.

We are not here concerned with defending Mindszenty’s politics, any more than we are concerned with defending the politics of any of the accused in these trials. We are concerned with the purpose of these trials, and the technique employed to obtain the cooperation of the accused in that purpose. Those who are indifferent to the demands of justice in the Mindszenty case, simply because they consider the Catholic Church a reactionary force, are themselves reactionary: for to allow one of these frame-up trials to pass unchallenged is to be party to others, to condone totalitarian methods and to support totalitarian ‘justice’. Let those who are inclined to notice injustice only if it is on their own doorstep ponder the question: ‘If there breathe on earth a slave, are ye truly free and brave?’

That the trial of Mindszenty was motivated purely by political considerations has been admitted by the Hungarian authorities themselves. Mindszenty was regarded by them as one of the most outspoken opponents of their regime; he openly inveighed against the Stalinist policy, which was bringing Hungary under the iron heel of Russian despotism. Against the overwhelming weight of Russia and her fifth column, under which individual political leaders were being crushed and their parties smashed, he appealed for redress to America. But his real crime was that he inspired an organisation with nation-wide means of countering Communist propaganda; that he led an organisation thought capable of serving as a rallying centre of resistance. He had to be crushed, if only as a demonstration of Stalinist ruthlessness and as a lesson to others; and the manner of doing it had to strike terror into those who were left and create the atmosphere necessary to the process of subordinating the church to the state machine. Thus, immediately after the sentencing of Mindszenty, the Hungarian government announced that the way was now open to an agreement between church and state.

Before his arrest there was the usual preliminary campaign of ‘spontaneous’ resolutions, identical in content, attacking him. In response to this ‘expression of opinion on the part of the populace’ the Stalinist leader Rákosi stated:

This mass movement demands that we change our policy of tolerance in regard to the reactionary and fascist leaders of the Catholic Church, in the first place, in regard to Mindszenty. We must therefore modify the policy carried out by our party up to now.

In making this statement he admits that the policy of the party and the policy of the government are one and the same. Noteworthy, too, is the admission that the party is capable of ‘tolerating’ fascists and reactionaries.

The campaign against Mindszenty prior to his arrest was in accordance with the normal tactics employed in these manoeuvres. The flood of resolutions attacking him also reflected the Communists’ genuine, if grossly exaggerated, fear of this man, and it was obviously not on account of his Legitimist views that they feared him. They were perfectly aware that the conditions simply did not exist for the creation of an organisation based on such a platform. But they could not bring him to trial for the real reasons for which they feared him, which were, as the record shows, that ‘he for years has used his clerical activities (sermons, pastoral letters) to make open or covert attacks against the democratic order and the republic’. They could not openly admit the real basis for the attack on him, because they did not want at this juncture to make an open attack on the church as such. They followed the well-tried policy of all imperialisms: ‘Divide and conquer.’ But by dragging into the trial such ridiculous evidence on the ‘espionage network’ as we have examined earlier in this chapter, they not only discredited the whole of the proceedings, but also made plain their underlying motive. So thin is the conspiracy case against Mindszenty that they have also even dragged in the fact that he had at one time or another given expression to anti-Semitic views. This may, or may not, have been true, but it has absolutely no relevance to the charges brought against him. The prewar fascist Arrow Cross movement was also anti-Semitic, but it was equally definite in its opposition to the Hapsburgs. So whether Mindszenty was anti-Semitic or not has no bearing on his Legitimist views, or his activities in relation to those views; activities which, according to the evidence of the trial itself, amounted to no more than one or two conversations, and certainly never developed into any organised movement. He was not charged with having anti-Semitic views, nor was he, at any rate ostensibly, charged with holding Legitimist opinions. He was charged with organising a conspiracy to overthrow the regime and restore the Hapsburg Monarchy, and the evidence in support of this appeared a little less ridiculous than the evidence of the ‘agents’ of the spy ring only because Mindszenty, when under examination by the president, did not defend himself on the basis of his statement that: ‘I do not subscribe to the conclusion that I might have been involved in the planning of the overthrow of the democratic state order and the republic.’ We know the basic reason why he did not boldly challenge the purely arbitrary interpretation given to his actions by the president. There were the currency charges that, if the rest failed to stick, could be pressed home and bring death sentences for all of them.

There seems little doubt that from the purely legal standpoint the authorities had the whip hand here. Yet here, too, everything was not above-board. We have already noted the care taken by the prosecution to emphasise that the small sum of two hundred dollars exchanged on the black market came under the heading of actions ‘gravely damaging to the economy’. This fact alone suggests that the currency charges — of very minor importance from the propaganda viewpoint — were the cement holding the entire structure in place. However, it appears that the authorities had turned a blind eye to the matter two years beforehand. The attack from this angle came just before Mindszenty’s arrest. ‘Then in November last I asked my man about this when we were attacked for this reason... I think it was on 27 November. I was then reassured I need have no fear on account of the foreign currency.’ (ibid, p 109), says Mindszenty in his testimony. Is it not manifest that Mindszenty, knowing full well the precariousness of his position, would not have been party to transactions that would have given such a terrible weapon into the hands of his enemies? That he would not have countenanced any such transactions if he had not been given very solid and absolutely convincing reasons for thinking that everything was in order? The amount of money involved was in this instance sufficiently large and the persons involved numerous enough to make concealment from the authorities highly improbable. The Hungarian forint was extremely weak at the time, and the government’s need for foreign exchange was so desperate, that it is reasonable to believe that they would have encouraged every means of obtaining it. This is borne out by the statement to the International News Service by Finance Minister Nicolas Nyárády. According to Nyárády, the Supreme Economic Council gave permission in the spring of 1947 for different churches and their charitable organisations to change foreign currency at higher than the official rate of exchange. ‘The object of that decision, taken by the Communist majority, was to facilitate the influx of foreign currency to Hungary. This the Catholic Church, like the Protestant and Jewish Churches, could sell at rates equal to those of the black market.’ (Quoted from Témoignage Chrétien, 18 February 1949) Does anyone believe that it would not have been possible for the Hungarian authorities to bring charges of infringing the currency laws against members of the Protestant and Jewish Churches, had they so desired?

One has a strong suspicion that when Mindszenty was ‘reassured’ he fell into a trap. We repeat, it is impossible to believe that he was not aware that every activity of the church and of individual church functionaries was closely scrutinised; impossible to believe that he would in these circumstances have placed his cause in jeopardy by knowingly and deliberately engaging in black-market operations. He must have been absolutely certain in his mind that the transactions were in no way illegal. Who gave him that certainty, of which he speaks in his testimony?

But whether he fell into a trap or not, the fact remains that the authorities had in their hands a weapon they could use, bringing pressure to bear on him through the threat to his fellow-accused. It was this weapon that finally broke Mindszenty’s resistance during his ‘thirty-five days of meditation’. That is why he said at his trial that ‘although I did not give direct instructions for this, yet in face of the situation, I take the responsibility for it in the same manner as if I had given direct instructions’ (ibid, p 111). In this way he could save the lives of the others. But, as we have seen, his enemies required more than this: they also required him to give his blessing to an agreement between the church and the state, and not to ‘worsen the situation’ by defending himself against the prosecution’s interpretation of all his past actions. At the same time they held out to him the possibility that, if he would give them his cooperation, it might not even be necessary to bring him to trial. These are the basic elements of the preliminary interrogation technique — the threat and the promise, a great fear and a little hope. Mindszenty, just like the other accused, was a victim of this technique.

Space does not permit examination of the trial of Archbishop Grósz in June 1951; however, it did not differ in any essential from that of Mindszenty, its objective being the same — destruction of the social influence of the Catholic Church.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter VI: The Case of the Protestant Spies

Just as the former Nazi rulers of Germany could not tolerate the existence of any organisation not subject to strict control by the state, so the present Russian satraps in the Eastern European countries are equally resolved to permit no organisation to function independently of the state. We have already seen in the trial of József Mindszenty an example of the methods used in Hungary against the Catholic Church. This trial was, of course, simply a particularly outstanding expression of a process in operation in all the satellite states. It is a process that necessarily affects not the Catholic Church alone, but all religious bodies; and not religious bodies alone, but all groups of people organised for a specific purpose. Such organisations must either be destroyed, or transformed to serve the purposes of the Stalinists. A further striking example of the use of the confession trial in furtherance of this process of Gleichschaltung can be seen in the trial of the fifteen Protestant pastors in Bulgaria, the official announcement of which was made two days after the Hungarian court had passed sentence on Mindszenty and his fellow-accused.

On 10 February 1949, the authorities in Sofia announced that fifteen leaders of the evangelical churches — chief among them Ziapkov, head of the Congregational Church — would be tried on charges of espionage on behalf of Great Britain and the USA. Six of the accused would also be charged with currency offences. The Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister stated that the forthcoming trial was not an attack on religious freedom, which was guaranteed by the constitution; the accused were charged with specific crimes, to which they had all confessed. (On the same day it was announced that the Socialist and Liberal Parties considered their independent existence no longer necessary. Their members would henceforth work in the organisations of the Fatherland Front.)

On 11 February the British Foreign Office stated that most of the accused men had been under arrest since May of the preceding year, and that many official enquiries regarding their fate — under the clause of the peace treaty safeguarding human rights — had been addressed to the Bulgarian government, but that only evasive replies had been received.

The Bulgarian authorities made great play with the fact that before the trial the ‘American and British governments as well as various prominent individuals in the West’ immediately expressed disbelief in the guilt of the accused (The Trial of the Fifteen Protestant Pastors (Sofia, 1949), p vii).

To every thinking person [the government argument continued], it became immediately clear why these gentlemen, contrary to juridical logic and diplomatic ethics, made these declarations before even having had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the indictment, to see and check up on the material evidence and to wait for the results of the court enquiry and the materials which it subsequently produced. (Ibid, p vii)

The spokesmen of the West were thus severely taken to task for prejudging the case. This argument blandly ignored the fact that, as the Bulgarian government officials themselves stated, ‘the Sofia press printed daily letters from ecclesiastic boards and parishioners of the four Protestant denominations, denouncing the espionage activities of their erstwhile leaders...’ (ibid, p viii); that is, that the entire propaganda resources of the Bulgarian state (not to speak of other resources) were set in motion in order to prejudge the case. Just as in the Mindszenty case, and in all such cases, an atmosphere was deliberately worked up in order to make acquittal of the accused impossible. The Bulgarian government affected righteous indignation at the prejudgement of the British and American governments, while itself doing precisely the same thing; with this very vital difference: that the expressions of incredulity emanating from the West could in no way affect the course of the trial, could in no way offset the atmosphere of official hostility to the accused created by the very people who were to try them. Moreover, the British and American governments were fully justified by past experience of these trials, with their monotonously identical charges, in attaching no value to the alleged confessions of the accused, who had been held incommunicado for many months. The refusal of the Bulgarian government, in defiance of the peace treaty to which it had appended its signature, to give any information regarding the accused during this period also told heavily against it. Further, all experience fully justified the assumption that there would be in this case no more ‘material evidence’ than in any of the others. In these circumstances the reaction of the Bulgarian government to the protests of the West was sheer hypocrisy.

As usual, the authorities are much concerned to rebut the charge that pressure had been brought to bear on the accused. This constant presentation of good conduct certificates to the interrogators becomes a little wearisome: a general declaration on the part of all the satellites — possibly through the medium of the Cominform — that the police always treat their prisoners correctly, no matter how long they hold them incommunicado, might save us in the future any further spectacles of humbled men commending their inquisitors. The pastors, says the official report, ‘knew full well that many foreigners were present, yet they did not even attempt to retract one single word, and when asked whether physical or moral pressure had been brought to bear on them, they all answered in an unwavering voice, without the slightest hesitation, “no"’ (ibid, p x). Is there then no ‘pressure’ in the very fact of shutting a man in a prison cell, isolating him from the world for more than half a year? Is there no ‘pressure’ in the hired press and radio, the dragooned factory meetings, screeching their prefabricated resolutions, howling ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!’ day after day? As though trying to cover a mountain of filth with a pocket handkerchief, the report draws attention to the well-groomed appearance of the accused. There is Naumov, with his ‘well-tailored pastor suit, with a starched collar and meticulously combed hair’, and the others: ‘... clean-shaved, with pomaded hair and neatly pressed pants — the very picture of torture!’ What humour! What delicious irony! Yes, the tailor and the barber must have had some busy hours cleaning up. Only it was unfortunate for the general appearance of things that the authorities could not keep these broken men from constantly weeping throughout the ‘trial’.

It is emphasised that this is not an attack on religion. ‘Half an hour per week the pastors spent in the pulpit; the balance of the time was devoted to sorting and delivering strategic information on military, political, economic and other subjects...’ (Ibid, p xi) There is an almost humorous note about this — it depicts the accused as postmen, with preaching as a very spare-time occupation.

It is in addition necessary for the authorities to show that the accused have not become spies as a reaction against recent events; they have always been that way. ‘Many of them — Nikola Mihailov, Yanko Ivanov, Dimiter Mateev and others — had worked for the Gestapo in the past.’ Once again, the unmistakable trademark of the Moscow Trials — ‘Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Yet these hardened criminals, life-long agents of foreign and ignoble powers, suddenly repent. Why is this? The answer is very simple: it is ‘the granite-like pillar of our human justice’ that has induced them to make a clean breast of their sins, asserts the Bulgarian government. ‘Faced by it, even the criminal consciences of professional spies fold up. The pseudo-pastors came to realise the extent of their crime, its utter senselessness and futility.’ (Ibid, p xii)

Yet the accused hardly give the impression of men toughened by a life of secret crime. Over and over again the official report is compelled to record that the accused are in tears as they speak. Was it the ‘granite-like pillar of human [sic] justice’ that also reduced their nerves to this ragged state?

The report also tells us, with unconscious candour, something of what took place behind the scenes during the rehearsals:

The accused Mihailov declared that from his arrest up to the day of his appearance in court he went through a real political school, which made him realise the utter baseness of his activities and the greatness and invincibility of the new Bulgaria. It was before these that the accused capitulated. This explains the repentance of the accused.

So the granite-like justice was after all not quite enough; the greatness and invincibility of Bulgaria was also required — that is, they had to be convinced that Bulgaria did not care a fig for the human rights clauses in the peace treaty. But it still took more than half a year of ‘schooling’ to make them all see the light; and this schooling continued right up to the day of their appearance in court.

As an indication of how hard put to it the Bulgarian government was to find arguments in support of this trial, we find it quoting an article in the Economist, as a ‘clincher of the pastors’ guilt’. The quotation reads:

There is no doubt that some American and British officials had such cloak and dagger tastes in the years immediately after the war... If only five per cent of the allegations made recently against American agents in Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Bulgaria were true, that would be sufficient to cause serious anxiety and doubts about the efficiency and discretion of the persons involved. There is little scope for the amateur behind the Iron Curtain. (Ibid, p xiv)

In quoting this, the Bulgarian authorities ignore the fact that the commentator in the Economist is speaking of the inadvisability of employing ‘amateurs’, whereas the pastors were allegedly ‘professionals’. But this is a small point. What is most striking here is the use made of an expression of opinion on the part of a journalist writing in an independent foreign weekly. Why should the Bulgarian government, so sensitive on the subject of its sovereignty, have to look abroad for a final ‘clincher’ to justify its verdict? Why does it feel the need for this extraordinary ‘clincher of the pastors’ guilt’, if it already has solid proof?

We find also the following argument employed: ‘All the accused pleaded guilty. We shall not dwell here on the genuineness of their repentance, but at any rate it removes the last doubts as to their guilt.’ (Ibid, p xv) So without their confessions there would have still remained ‘last doubts’. Seeking with these words to give the impression that there was some other evidence apart from the confessions, they succeed only in admitting that without the confessions the rest of the ‘evidence’ (in fact, non-existent) was insufficient to sustain a verdict of guilty.

During the court proceedings the chief prosecutor was very anxious to impress observers with the policy of religious toleration pursued by the Stalinists. He makes a comparison between the then existing situation and the situation before 9 September 1944, in order to show how much more favourable the new regime is to the work of the churches. In support of his argument he quotes a report of the evangelical churches, signed by the principal accused, Ziapkov, dated 27 May 1947, and entitled The Fatherland Front and the Churches. Before 9 September, says this report, the churches functioned under great restrictions:

The pastors were submitted to incessant police supervision. No pastor could leave his parish for another place without permission from the police authorities. Outside the churches any activity whatever was prohibited. Every announcement of a religious service or printed invitations were interpreted as harmful propaganda. Some pastors were interned.

After 9 September conditions ‘basically changed’ (ibid, p 96). This extract makes the general tenor of the church report clear. It is highly favourable to the attitude of the regime to the churches. Consequently, the Bulgarian people are asking, says the chief prosecutor, ‘why they wanted to restore pre-9 September conditions...?’ Why, indeed? And not only the Bulgarian people ask this question, but everyone else. It is a puzzle to which not even the prosecutor himself can find an answer. Not even he can explain how the British and American governments were able to persuade the pastors to work for the restoration of conditions under which they would once more be subject to severe restrictions and even run the risk of internment for conducting ‘harmful propaganda’. Nor can he explain why these pastors, ‘many of whom had worked for the Gestapo’, were viewed with such disfavour by the Germanophile regime prior to 9 September. Nor can he explain why these pastors should care a brass farthing about restrictions upon church activities, if all they were really interested in was ‘collecting and sorting and delivering strategic information’. So his argument, advanced to demonstrate the policy of religious tolerance pursued by the Fatherland Front, serves only to make the charges against the pastors all the more incredible.

The chief prosecutor then refers to the cases of Mindszenty in Hungary and the Patriarch Tikhon in Russia, apparently unaware that analogies of this nature add nothing in proof of the guilt of the accused. ‘Both past and recent history’, he says, ‘show cases of imperialist intelligence digging its claws into ranks of prominent ecclesiastic officials who took advantage of their eminent religious positions to cover up their ignominious spying activities.’ (Ibid, p 98) Even if taken as seeking to establish that espionage on the part of ecclesiastics is possible, these analogies carry no weight. We have already shown the falsity of the charges against Mindszenty, and the Public Prosecutor is in an even worse situation with the Tikhon analogy, since Tikhon, arrested by the Bolsheviks in 1922, was never tried on a charge of espionage, or on any other charge. The evidence against him was not strong enough to offset the vigorous protests made on his behalf throughout the world, protests to which the Bolsheviks were at that time prepared to pay heed. So in spite of the fact that Patriarch Tikhon had been ten times more outspoken in his attacks on the Bolsheviks than Mindszenty had been against the Hungarian Stalinists, he was released from prison after admitting that his opposition had been mistaken. He lived in peaceful retirement and died a natural death some years later. We do not doubt that his admission of error, had it been made when the confession trial had become an established method of political propaganda, could have been worked up into a full-blown confession. But the fact remains that Tikhon was never made to confess to espionage and there was no evidence against him on that score. The Public Prosecutor’s reference to this matter was therefore completely irrelevant and made solely with the object of introducing prejudice, in the expectation that no one would recall the exact circumstances of the Tikhon affair.

As the statement quoted above indicates, the evangelical churches were at first by no means hostile to the Fatherland Front regime established immediately after 9 September. Indeed, there is support for the view that Ziapkov, leader of the Congregational Church, had illusions about the Stalinists’ policy right up to the time of his arrest, which took place sometime after that of the others. Ziapkov was known to many of his friends as ‘the Red’, and it is indisputable that he was sympathetic to socialist ideals, which he mistakenly assumed the Stalinists held. He was on terms of friendship with Dimiter Iliev, Minister of Cults (later relieved of this post), and other leading government officials, to whose homes he was a frequent visitor. He was regarded as sufficiently sympathetic to the regime to be chosen to attend the Peace Conference in Paris. Right up to the last he was unable to bring himself to believe that the numerous arrests of evangelical churchmen formed part of a concerted action aimed at the churches themselves, and were not just unconnected actions against individuals, arising from errors on the part of over-zealous officials or on the basis of minor, inadvertent infringements of the law. But Pastor Ziapkov was quickly disillusioned when he himself fell into the hands of the police.

All the actions of the pastors that were interpreted in the indictment as crimes against the state took place between the years 1944 and 1947, when Bulgaria was under direct control by the USSR, Great Britain and the USA. As if to underline the fact that the Bulgarian government considers Bulgaria as part and parcel of the Soviet Union, the accused were charged, among other things, with spying upon Soviet occupation troops. Thus Angel Dinev ‘through the accused Chernev, delivered information to the foreign intelligence concerning the location of Soviet troops in Sofia, the movement of Soviet troops in the district of Yambol’ (ibid, p 13), as well as information regarding the productive capacity of certain factories and so forth. This man Dinev, although he is unquestionably as much or as little involved in ‘espionage’ as the other accused, curiously enough received a sentence of only one year — and even that was suspended — together with a fine of 10 000 leva, confiscation of property to the amount of 10 000 leva and loss of political and civil rights for two years. Immediately after the trial he was permitted to resume his work as a pastor in the Pentecostal Church. A quite naive statement made by him after his release explains this clemency towards a ‘professional spy’ and also illustrates the effectiveness of the ‘political schooling’ given during the preliminary interrogation.

I was questioned for two months [he said], before I made my final statement. I was told in the beginning that I would get a lighter sentence if I confessed. I got better food and a softer bed after I made my confession. My statement in court that I was well treated was quite a sincere one. I was well fed and given plenty of books to read... At first I was questioned for quite short periods, but as time went on and they were in a hurry they kept at it for longer periods, sometimes late into the night.

In further explanation of the confessions, Pastor Dinev said: ‘We knew nothing about the Communists but we were really afraid of them. But they treated us as human beings. We saw they breathed the same air as us.’ (Report in The Times, 9 March 1949)

It is not suggested that Pastor Dinev is here being insincere, or at least that he was consciously so. Victims of the interrogation technique are more or less easily ‘conditioned’ in accordance with their varying moral and physical strengths. The very fact of being in prison may so undermine the resistance of some that they are ready to yield at the slightest pressure. The technique, as we have noted, varies in accordance with the individual psychology of the person concerned. Although it took Dinev two months to rationalise his desire to yield, it is not difficult to see that he really believed that he ‘confessed’ of his own free will, really believed that the prospect of freedom and permission to continue working had had nothing to do with his decision. For many people it is hard to admit, even to themselves, that they yield out of fear; they prefer if possible to put a less unflattering construction on their actions, and they are not necessarily insincere in so doing. Pastor AG Zahariev was another who proved useful to the prosecution for fabricating a case against those considered more important figures, and against whom the sentences were correspondingly severe. Zahariev himself received a sentence similar to Dinev’s in consideration of his services — there could have been no other reason for this mildness, since the ‘evidence’ against him was the same as that against those who were severely dealt with.

The fifteen men charged at this trial represented the Congregational, Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal Churches in Bulgaria. These churches were sharply divided from one another. Relations between the accused Yanko Ivanov and Vassil Ziapkov, representing respectively the Methodist and Congregational Churches, were particularly strained. The question of the union of the two churches had been under discussion for ten years without result. The doctrinal disputes between those four churches were a prominent feature of every annual conference, and there were also differences of opinion within each church, giving rise to factions rallied round one or another pastor. Yet in spite of these often very sharp dissensions, in spite of the lack of personal confidence between the leading members of these churches (particularly between Ivanov and Ziapkov, the two main accused), there was allegedly a harmonious unity in secret plotting and espionage activity against the regime; that is, in the kind of activity demanding the most absolute personal confidence between those engaged in it. The prosecution is forced to recognise this contradiction, since the disunity of the churches, and the personal squabbles between the leaders, was known to everyone concerned with religious affairs. ‘The churches were disunited’, says Prosecutor Tsakov, ‘but at the same time were they not united round the slogan — to collect information?’ (Ibid p 24) The accused Mihailov, thus questioned, replied that they were so united; but something a little stronger than his mere assertion is required to remove our doubts about it. Further evidence of the utter lack of confidence between the alleged ringleaders is given by Mihailov when he says:

In our conversation with Black [Cyril Black, Secretary to the former US Mission in Bulgaria-author] in 1946, the question of who should be our vital link was raised. Black smiled and said: ‘Vassil Ziapkov will be the vital link between us.’ I said: ‘Oh, Mr Black! In no case. Ziapkov is a double-faced man. We can put no trust in him.’ (Ibid, p 29)

Yanko Ivanov also ‘decisively refused to collaborate with Ziapkov’ (p 30). Yet in spite of this categorical disapproval of Ziapkov we find Ivanov saying, on page 36, that he ‘transmitted Black’s instructions to Chernev, Mihailov and Ziapkov'; Ziapkov, the ‘vital link’ who could not be trusted because he was ‘double-faced’, yet from whom Ivanov had received ‘information’ back in July 1945 — ‘for the third time’ (p 38), and to whom Ivanov ‘transmitted Black’s instructions’ in 1946. There is an unresolvable contradiction between this and Ivanov’s ‘decisively refusing to collaborate with Ziapkov’. They were thus not ‘united round the slogan to collect information’. Small wonder that the president of the court says to Mihailov before he leaves the dock to make way for the next accused: ‘... answer clearly and categorically — the court desires to know, was any pressure or violence of any kind exerted upon you by the organs of the enquiry?’ And the answer is, of course, as clear and categorical as any president of such a court could desire.

Ziapkov then enters the dock. ‘Mr President, I only wish to make a confession...’, he begins, and then bursts into tears.

Ziapkov confesses to a conspiratorial meeting with ‘Andrews and his brother’ in October 1944. But Stanley (formerly vice-consul in Sofia) and Charles Burt-Andrews (an officer in the RAF section of the British element of the Allied Control Commission) were at no time in Sofia together and Ziapkov could not therefore have had a meeting with them in October 1944. Stanley Burt-Andrews did not go to Sofia until 30 March 1946, and therefore the further meetings between him and Ziapkov in November and December 1944, and in February, April and October 1945, could not have taken place.

Although the report of the evangelical churches on the policy of the Fatherland Front on religious matters — signed by Ziapkov — was issued as late as May 1947, and was extremely favourable to the Fatherland Front regime, we find Ziapkov stating the following at his trial:

How did the hostile spirit of the Supreme Council manifest itself? In the first place, it was an indiscriminate criticism of all Fatherland Front initiatives and a negative attitude towards our liberator, the USSR. It also expressed itself in our criminal relations with the Anglo-Americans, espionage relations [weeps] under the veil of religion. (Ibid, pp 48-49)

Now, as has been pointed out, all the actions of the accused that were characterised as criminal took place between 1944 and 1947; it is in these years that the ‘hostile spirit’ allegedly expressed itself in ‘espionage relations’, and at the same time manifested itself in ‘indiscriminate criticism’. However, there is no evidence advanced regarding the specific nature of that criticism (other than that it was ‘indiscriminate’); no such evidence as it was possible to produce in the case of Mindszenty in Hungary who had openly inveighed against the Stalinist regime. On the contrary, the prosecution, far from producing evidence of this ‘indiscriminate criticism’, quotes only a report of the evangelical churches, issued as late as May 1947, which is eminently favourable to the regime, and which could only have the effect of rallying support for it among Protestants of all denominations. That, of course, was the purpose of this declaration. And Ziapkov himself was sent on an official mission with official blessing in 1946. Thus, although it is not excluded that individual members of the churches may have given expression to opinion hostile to the regime, the church organisations as such, and their leaders, were by no means indulging in ‘indiscriminate criticism’, nor was this at any time alleged against them during the period in question. It would indeed appear from this declaration of May 1947 that at least a large majority, if not all, of the representatives of the four churches believed it possible to work with the new authorities and considered it desirable to give them their support. The ‘indiscriminate criticism’ of which Ziapkov spoke was therefore, if it existed at all, confined to a small number of individuals and did not express the official viewpoint of the churches. Hence the impossibility of producing evidence of this at the trial. However, Ziapkov’s words once again show that in Stalinist eyes criticism, whether indiscriminate or not, is tantamount to treason. Worth noting also is the ‘loyalty to the USSR theme’ that occurs in all these trials. Ziapkov, too, makes his cringing acknowledgments to the ‘great liberator’, sings the praises of the regime, and does not simply confine himself to a confession of plotting against it. No one can blame him for that: for the preliminary interrogation has reduced him, like all the others, to a ventriloquist doll without a voice of his own.

It is not here necessary to examine the nebulous ‘evidence’ regarding the so-called espionage information allegedly passed by the accused to Western agents. A couple of examples of this evidence will alone suffice to demonstrate its nature. The witness Lobomir Tzanov, a former industrialist, spoke of the information on production at his factory that he passed to the accused, Pastor Michkov. This very secret information was available — up to the nationalisation of the factory in December 1947 — to anyone sufficiently interested to pay the concern a visit. For publicity purposes, it was customary to conduct such visitors on a tour of inspection of all the departments, to provide them with catalogues and any other data regarding production that they might want. The second example is taken from the examination of the accused N Michailev, head of the Baptist Church, who confessed to having sent abroad information on the number of pupils in the schools and on the incidence of sickness among the population. Michailev timidly objected that in the past this had never been regarded as espionage — a not unreasonable objection. But he was informed that in the existing situation the slightest and the most innocent information could profit the enemy. There you have it! Given such a conception of espionage, it is possible to manufacture spies ad libitum, and permit the chief prosecutor to make the ridiculous assertion that ‘the spy ring branches along the lines of every church and it included most of the evangelical pastors in Bulgaria’ (ibid, p 99). With such a conception of espionage information the World Council of Churches can be represented as having no other purpose than to serve as an espionage organisation for the West. ‘This World Council’, says the accused Mihailov, ‘is squandering large sums of money which is incomprehensible to us, the common people’ (ibid, p 30 — author’s emphasis). The implication is patent. But mark the peculiar reference to himself and his colleagues as ‘the common people'! And why should this ‘squandering’ be so incomprehensible to this leading member of the ‘Pastor spy ring'? The explanation of this absurd attitude lies in the absurdity of the whole affair. Mihailov has consented to play a role, believing that this is the only way in which he can save himself. He is required to depict the entire church organisation as nothing more than a vast espionage organisation. In order to do this, he must confess that he himself was a spy. At the same time he is unable to resist the impulse to defend himself indirectly with this reference to the ‘common people’, which, in the general context of his confession, makes absolutely no sense at all. It sounds ridiculous — and it is ridiculous: because it is an element of truth in a welter of lies. But no one questions him on this point. No one asks him what he means by referring to himself and his colleagues as ‘the common people’. It is thought better not to draw attention to this inconsistency. Earlier in his testimony he has stated that: ‘Up to this time I had no definite political outlook. I sympathised with the broad socialists whom I regarded as reformers.’ (Ibid, p 26) This is in complete accord with his view of himself as belonging to the common people, but it is at the same time in complete disharmony with his still earlier evidence depicting himself as an agent of the Gestapo up to 1939. Only a Stalinist lumps socialists together with fascists in ‘one reactionary mass’. The whole of the so-called evidence on espionage is shot through and through with contradictions of this kind, yet no attempt is made to get at the truth behind them: the stage managers had made sure beforehand that no one would be so foolish as to try it.

The main purpose of the Bulgarian government in staging this trial was to block one of the loopholes through which contact with the West could be maintained. The membership of the evangelical churches in Bulgaria embraces a quite insignificant proportion of the population, which is overwhelmingly Orthodox. As far as immediate popular influence was concerned, these churches therefore presented no danger to the regime; nor is there any reason to suppose that their influence could have so grown as to represent any danger in the future. Contributions from the membership of these churches had never been sufficient to meet the wages of the pastors, and all of them had been to a greater or less extent dependent upon outside financial aid, which derived primarily from fraternal bodies in the United States. This assistance dated from the very founding of these churches in Bulgaria, and was no secret to anyone. The Stalinists were well aware of it. They knew that the war had stopped this aid from the US, and they also knew that contributions to the upkeep of the churches had been resumed with the cessation of hostilities. Yet they did not question this during all the time when relations between the Fatherland Front and the churches were friendly. At no time since the foundation of the Communist movement in Bulgaria had its members ever charged that these contributions from abroad were payments for espionage services rendered. It was only when the Stalinists felt that their control of the repressive machinery of the state was sufficiently secure for them to throw off their temporary allies that this extraordinary charge was thought up. The trial of the Protestant pastors had propaganda value. This perfectly natural financial assistance was given an unnatural interpretation for a definite political purpose; together with the fact that one or two of the accused had at one time or another spoken with Petkov, or had been members of the Agrarian Union, this made the entire evangelical church an agency of the British and American intelligence services. The object of this was to offer a lesson that even the dullest could assimilate. All representatives of the West, no matter what their ostensible functions, are spies, and anyone having connections with them is open to more than the suspicion of being a spy himself; their influence is in every way pernicious; they are spiritual lepers, to be approached at one’s peril. Behind this exaggerated propaganda lies a very real fear of the influence exercised by Western ideas and ideals, and a genuine anxiety lest any information, no matter how trivial, on the internal political, social or economic situation should reach the West. The basis for this fear is both political and military. A knowledge of the true situation in Bulgaria would enable military observers to estimate her potential for aggression and it would enable Western political commentators and propagandists to counter more effectively the Stalinist propaganda representing the People’s Democracies as a kind of heaven on earth for the common people. These considerations of course apply to all the satellites. The driving force behind the policy of strict isolation from the West is the Soviet Union, or, more precisely, the privileged ruling class in that country. This policy reflects the interests of this ruling class, and springs partly from a real fear of the aggressive intentions of the West and partly from the need artificially to preserve this fear.

It is possible that the warped intelligences of many Stalinists made them really accept the argument that since the pastors had received financial aid from their supporters in the West, this was proof of their disloyalty. Stalinist functionaries could reach this conclusion from their own experience of financial dependence upon the Soviet government; for them it would be quite simply a question of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. But the initiated in whose hands the preparation and conduct of the trial was placed were well aware of the falsity of such an analogy. They knew that the accusation of espionage was ridiculous. No matter — it was an excellent method of ensuring that all intercourse with Western individuals and institutions would be cut off. This ‘isolationist’ purpose is well brought out in the following statement of one of the accused: ‘I would like to make a warm appeal to all Evangelicals. Stay far, far away from foreign influence.’ (Ibid, p 32) This was not an appeal, it was a warning, and it was addressed not to the evangelicals alone. There is no need to ask who put those words into the mouth of the accused.

Most of the witnesses brought forward to testify on the question of illegal dealings in foreign currency had already been in prison for some months, were still under arrest, and could naturally be expected to say what was required of them. Although for these offences no very severe penalties were prescribed by law (a fine and/or imprisonment — in serious cases as much as one year’s penal servitude) no news of their subsequent fate is available. But the currency charges occupied no prominent part of the proceedings in the pastors’ trial. The very long period during which the accused had been subjected to the Soviet interrogation technique had reduced them all to a state of complete malleability in the hands of the prosecution. The one possible exception to this was L Popov, who pleaded guilty only to the minor charge of infringing the currency regulations. A trial in which the accused were charged solely with currency offences would not have had anything like the same value as a trial of Western spies; moreover, these charges could be brought against only six of the fifteen accused. Those accused also on this count were the two Popov brothers, Chernev, Ivanov, Mihailov and MM Dimitrov. But the nature of the evidence on these matters is seen from the following statement of Mihailov: ‘... we decided to invest the money at the Moser Bank in order that we may receive a more favourable rate of exchange... a message was soon received that the Moser Bank has accepted the sum of seven hundred dollars at my disposal.’ (Ibid, p 31 — the reader will appreciate that errors in language are due to the official translation of the report from which we are quoting.) Exchanging dollars through a bank hardly gives the impression of black-market dealing. But apparently the general purpose of the prosecution was served here by the fact that the bank in question had a German name. It must be remembered that the propaganda material provided by these shows is directed primarily at the population of the country in which they take place. Demagogic crudities, although basic to Stalinist propaganda in all countries, may be more effective in one country, where the general political level of understanding is low, than in another, where the people are politically more educated. Thus at the pastors’ trial care was taken to see that one of the accused mentioned that some of the alleged black-market intermediaries for the exchange of currency were Jews. There was nothing inadvertent about this; it was part of the script. The prosecution simply allows the fact to register in the audience’s mind, without comment. In Hungary the Stalinists could try to create prejudice against Mindszenty by accrediting him with anti-Semitism; in Bulgaria they can use popular prejudice against Jews by associating the accused with them in black-market dealings. The Stalinists’ utter lack of principle allows them to assume whatever pose may appear most suitable to the circumstances.

The evangelical churches, disunited on points of doctrine and with their leaders at loggerheads with one another, somehow or other forgot all their differences, and put aside all personal distrust of one another — when it came to the question of espionage. No sooner did this question come up for discussion than all dissension ceased. The picture is somewhat marred by the fact that no one of the conspirators would trust the vital go-between, Ziapkov; but the prosecution airily ignores this. To give this picture a little more colour and make it seem more like the real thing, the prosecutor asks the accused Chernev: ‘Did you have a code?’ And Chernev replies: ‘Yes, our code word for one thousand dollars was “one bale.”’ (Ibid, p 59) Not exactly a complicated code, but apparently it satisfied the prosecutor — one can imagine the triumphantly significant expression with which he surveys all present and allows a moment’s pause for this telling item of information to sink in.

So the evangelical churches were not only united among themselves on this matter of ‘collecting, sorting and delivering strategic information’, but they were also working in unison with Petkov — and, yes, even with Tito! To the outsider this may seem crazy, but there is method in this madness. Petkov has been tried, found guilty, condemned. It is now a matter of the record that he was a traitor. There is no disputing it. The accused in this trial admit ‘connections’ with this man, ergo — they are also traitors. And just as in the Moscow Trials, the arch-agent behind all the accused was Trotsky, so now behind all the plots against the People’s Democracies is Tito, arch-agent of the Western imperialisms. Willy-nilly, Tito’s name has therefore to be dragged into the trial; but since Tito was unaware of even the existence of these pastors, the effort to do so is painfully clumsy. The witness Stratev is made to say:

Only recently, when the Tito treason [yes, ‘treason ‘ — a witness in these circumstances knows how to choose his words] was announced, Pastor Mihailov, filled with joy, told me: ‘Didn’t I tell you Tito would make a break?’ We asked him where he had gotten the information. Mihailov replied that the source did not matter, what counted was that Tito had done just what he, Mihailov, had predicted. (Ibid, p 90)

This is the sum total of the evidence connecting the accused with Tito; this is the proof that they were hand-in-glove with the arch-traitor. Well, what more do you want? All opposition to the Stalinists is ‘one reactionary mass’, represented as organisationally and politically homogeneous — Fascists, Zionists, Trotskyists, Socialists, Catholics, Protestants, Masons, etc, all working in close union for identical policies. This only seems absurd to those who are unable to realise that black is white, and white, black.

In the published report of the trial the part played by the defence is hardly mentioned. Only in the case of Mihailov are we informed that ‘the examination concluded with several questions put by the president of the court, the Public Prosecutor, and the defence’ (ibid, p 93). Nowhere else is any indication given that the defence was present, even formally. Of course, defence counsels were present, but the complete absence in this official report of any information on what questions they asked and how they conducted their cases is a very striking illustration of how little importance the authorities attached to them. In the overwhelming majority of these trials the defence is a mere formality; the Petkov trial alone provided an example of a defence counsel attempting to do his job (although there was no vigorous political defence put up, and the conciliatory tone was dominant). The defence in the Protestant pastors’ trial was so obviously a mere formality that it was not felt worthwhile mentioning in the report. One almost feels that the Public Prosecutor was being consciously ironic when he said:

No one can deny that as a result of the court proceedings carried out publicly... with full freedom for all defendants and the defence under the most meticulous verification of the charges, with examination of the defendants and witnesses and verification of the material evidence, the many and varied criminal activities... were found to correspond to the indictment. (Ibid, p 93)

Since the indictment was framed on the basis of the confessions extorted from the accused and the witnesses behind the scenes over a period of many months, and since the evidence was only an amplification of the indictment thus framed, and since everything had been painstakingly rehearsed beforehand, the correspondence referred to by the Public Prosecutor is hardly a matter for surprise. (Incidentally, there was not a single document produced in court — not even such a remarkable ‘document’ as the public telephone directory solemnly admitted into the evidence at the second Moscow Trial.)

The trial concluded with life sentences on the four principal accused: Pastors Ziapkov, Ivanov, Naumov and Chernev; nine others receiving sentences ranging from five to fifteen years, and two (neither more nor less guilty than the others) being freed after their sentences had been commuted. So ended another phase of Bulgaria’s incorporation into the Russian Empire.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter VII: Yesterday’s Hero

The so-called Rajk, Kostov and Slánský trials in Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia respectively are of exceptional interest, because they reveal so much about the relationship of the non-Russian Communist parties of the world to their ‘leading party’ in Russia. These trials also help us to understand that the Communist parties are mere instruments in the hands of those who wield real power. Just as the ‘leading party’ in the Soviet Union has long been stripped of any political power and the entire country brought under the control of a police apparatus, so in the satellite countries are the Communist parties, their initial work completed, brutally reminded that they exist to carry out orders, which in the final analysis emanate from the ruling clique in Russia. No plainer demonstration could be given of the complete subservience of the satellites to the Soviet Union than is provided by these trials. The native rulers of these states, boosted to power by the fear inspired by the Red Army, are dependent for survival on the goodwill of their masters in the Kremlin. This is the inescapable conclusion arising from the Rajk, Kostov and Slánský trials, which we shall examine in this and the following chapter.

On 18 January 1947, the leader of the Hungarian Stalinists, Mátyás Rákosi (he remains the leader up to the time of writing) spoke of László Rajk in the following terms:

Let me say a few words of appreciation of the activities of comrade László Rajk, Minister of the Interior, who was the object of so many attacks incurred as a result of the undermining work of the conspirators. It was not by chance that the fury of the reaction, organised underground, concentrated particularly upon his person. They knew that they stood in opposition to a man who had come from the Hungarian working people, the son of a ‘Szekfu-Székely’ family of twelve children, who was a courageous and intrepid fighter in the Hungarian workers’ movement, who fought in the Spanish Revolution and who with death-defying courage suffered in 1944 with Bajcsy-Zsilinszky at Kohida and who was forged like steel in the uncompromising battle against the Horthy reaction. Now we know that the conspirators had launched a systematic calumny campaign against him and against the democratic police and, as the results show, they knew what they were doing. And it was not their fault that their base plans failed. We trust Comrade Rajk and the democratic police to carry out, by thorough and good work, the consolidation and defence of democracy. (A Magyar Demokrácia (fourth edition, 1948), pp 407-08)

The man thus praised so highly as a staunch and well-tested Communist, the man thus commended for his work in uncovering the so-called Nagy Conspiracy when Minister of the Interior, is himself arrested in May 1949 and charged with high treason, accused of having been a police spy from the moment of his entry into the Communist Party. Think of it! László Rajk, the ‘courageous and intrepid fighter in the Hungarian workers’ movement’, who from his youth had suffered repeated arrests and imprisonment; who had at last been forced to flee the country and take refuge in Czechoslovakia; who had from there gone to join the Rákosi Battalion in the Spanish Civil War and immediately been appointed the battalion’s party Secretary; who had returned to Hungary and suffered years of internment; who after the Liberation had become Secretary of the Budapest Party Committee, and who finally came to occupy the key position of Minister of the Interior — this man is overnight transformed into the exact opposite of that which his comrades had always thought him. Every stage of his career as a ‘professional revolutionary’ is precisely the reverse of what it appeared to be; every arrest except the first is a mere blind, a manoeuvre to avert suspicion. His activity in the Communist Youth movement is directed by the police; he becomes a strike leader on the instructions of the police; it is the police who order him, and aid him, to leave the country; he goes to Spain at their orders; he works for the new enemies of the people taking the place of the old after the Liberation and all his actions as Minister of the Interior are dictated by these new enemies, whom he faithfully serves up to the very moment of his arrest. Yet no breath of suspicion had ever disturbed his reputation. No one could possibly suspect, listening to Rákosi’s unstinted praise of Rajk, that this man was a traitor.

An article in the Communist paper Szabad Nép (19 June 1949) says that ‘Trotskyism, Fascism, Zionism and anti-Semitism were the source and ideological swamp from which people like Rajk grew’. It was Rákosi and not Rajk who had directed the liquidation of the Nagy opposition, liquidated it in spite of ‘badly hidden opposition’ on Rajk’s part. But how Rákosi came to interpret ‘badly hidden opposition’ in the above-quoted terms of glowing praise is nowhere discussed; how Rákosi failed to notice before that it was he, and not Rajk, who had unmasked and destroyed the Nagy opposition is nowhere considered.

The Szabad Nép article went on to stress the need to eliminate ‘bourgeois nationalism’ and to train people to love and appreciate the Soviet Union. Relations to the Soviet Union, it said, provided the criterion separating friend from foe.

Here is the key to Rajk’s disgrace, and to that of Communist leaders in Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland, Albania and Czechoslovakia. Bourgeois nationalism — the accusation levelled directly or indirectly against all of them — is simply another way of saying that they harboured, or were suspected of harbouring, or were thought capable of harbouring, dangerous thoughts of independence, even if strictly limited independence, from the yoke of the Kremlin. ‘To love and appreciate the Soviet Union’ — another way of expressing complete servility to Stalin. It all stems back to the Russo-Yugoslav breach signalled by the Cominform resolution of June 1948.

The Yugoslav ‘declaration of independence’ (it may be justly so called, even although the break was compelled in the first place more by Moscow’s intransigence than by Belgrade’s active desire) was, and remains, a major threat to Russia’s entire postwar policy. The steadily mounting Russian-sponsored Cominform offensive launched against Tito is proof enough of the grave alarm this defection occasioned in the Kremlin. The continued existence of a non-Stalinist, yet professedly Communist, state is a standing challenge to Stalin’s authority, and the ideological repercussions of this are no less important than the military consequences. The revelation of Tito’s internal strength, his complete mastery of the Yugoslav state power, and the impossibility of overthrowing him through an inner-party revolt, administered a severe shock to the Russian government. Its immediate reaction was to institute a thorough investigation of the dossiers of all party members, and of the leading ones in particular, in the satellite states. The slightest hint of any ‘ideological deviations’ in the past, the smallest suspicion of ‘disloyalty to the Soviet Union’, had to be scrutinised with minute care. The questions were posed. Is there anyone in the party whose past conduct is open to suspicion? Is there no possible contact with the disease of Titoism? In these circumstances, how could the ‘leading party’ present the other parties with a clean bill of health unless a purge took place beforehand? Considering the prevailing atmosphere it would have been remarkable if no traitors had been ‘unmasked’. If no unhealthy elements had in fact been present in the parties investigated, then it would have been necessary to ‘manufacture’ them.

It is impossible to say with any assurance why this, that or the other leading Communist was chosen for the role of scapegoat. It is conceivable that Rajk may at some time or another have shown some independence, may have displayed a certain lack of reverence for the Kremlin masters. But experience of the purges in Russia teaches that almost all those who led the revolutionary struggle for power sooner or later fall into disfavour when power has been attained. It seems likely, therefore, that the choice of Rajk as the first sacrificial goat was the result of a rivalry for leadership within the Hungarian party, the details of which we do not know. Tito’s defection made the leadership of all non-Russian parties suspect in the eyes of the Kremlin, and every leading Communist was aware of this. Rákosi, switching overnight from lavish eulogy of Rajk to vituperative abuse, was taking this into account. It was the Moscow Trial experience repeated in miniature: those upon whom the shadow of suspicion falls seek to avert the blow by concentrating the anger of their masters upon a selected individual. The violence of their language against their erstwhile colleague is in direct proportion to their fears for their own skins. It is necessary to offer a scapegoat, to make amends for ‘lack of vigilance’ in allowing such a traitor as Tito to deceive them, and by this readiness to offer a blood sacrifice, to demonstrate that there is no limit to their subservience. Let us have convincing proof of your loyalty, demands the Kremlin. And the proof is given.

In accordance, therefore, with the political requirements of the Russian-Yugoslav dispute, a party purge was called for in Hungary. And also in accordance with these requirements, it was Tito, and not Rajk, who occupied the position of chief accused at the trial; and it was Rajk, nominally the chief accused, who played the role of Tito’s chief accuser. Once again we are confronted with this peculiar Moscow Trial technique; this apparently politically inexplicable contradiction between the attitude of the accused in the dock and the picture of him drawn by the indictment.

Rajk had been in the hands of his interrogators for three months. Knowing what we do of the methods of interrogation we are entitled to be sceptical about the truth of his confession even before we examine it in detail. The first question to be considered is: had Rajk really been a police agent? What is the evidence in support of this charge?

Once again the charge is unsupported by any documentary proof. In the circumstances this may be accepted as inevitable. But let us look at the only evidence there is — his confession; let us see if it convinces.

Rajk confessed that when arrested by the Hungarian police in 1931 he signed an agreement to work for them in order to secure his release. He was not, he says, at that time a member of the Communist Party. As a student in France he had come into contact with ‘progressive’ ideas, and on returning to Hungary he ‘tried to get in touch in Hungary with people of Marxist ideas without, however, being a member of the Communist Party or any other Communist Party organisation’ (László Rajk and his Accomplices before the People’s Court (Budapest, 1949), p 33). (Note that he still speaks of ‘progressive’ ideas — thus using a phrase quite out of character for a police agent.) The police thus signed him up before he had even become a member of the party. After this experience he could have reported to the police that he had been unable to join the party. But for some inexplicable reason he does not do this; he deliberately, of his own will, entangles himself in the police web. No one at the trial seeks to elucidate the reason for this strange behaviour. In spite of the unenviable position in which he says he was placed, he joins the party. As a result he is again arrested and receives a sentence of three months’ imprisonment. He is expelled from the university; his career as a teacher is over before it has begun. Yet at no point in the trial is there any suggestion that he received money from the police. The question of how he managed to live is nowhere raised.

Now it is not unknown for the police in some countries to put pressure on revolutionaries to betray their movement. It is, however, unusual for them to seek to make agents of men who have not yet been accepted into the revolutionary movement: they either try to get members of their own forces into the movement, or they try to subvert someone who is already a member. In the latter instance they can never be really sure of the reliability of the person concerned, since there is always the possibility of his revealing the police manoeuvre to the party. Sometimes the revolutionaries themselves turn the manoeuvre against the police by sending them a fake agent; this manoeuvre was practised by revolutionaries in Russia before the revolution. A man undertaking such a task always runs the risk of being regarded as a traitor by those of his comrades who are not ‘in the know’. In Rajk’s case it is even conceivable that he did agree to give information to the police, without ever intending to honour this agreement. There is nothing in a Communist’s book of rules that excludes such a deception. If this was the situation with Rajk, he would have told his immediate party superiors about it. Years later this would be recalled; it would form part of the psychological ammunition with which to rouse in him a feeling of guilt. You deceived the police — how do we know that you did not also deceive us? Of course the idea is absurd. Rajk knows it is absurd. But his interrogators do not think it absurd; or if they do, they take care not to show it. Rajk desperately seeks to convince them of his utter sincerity, his devotion... His record of service? They dismiss it with a shrug. But there is one way in which he can convince them... And Rajk’s psychological makeup may have been such that the only thing he cared about was to convince his party comrades of his devotion to the cause — what the rest of the world thought of him did not matter. Perhaps it came to the point when he no longer cared what even his comrades thought; perhaps all he yearned for was to convince himself...

But who can say by what twisted process of unreasoning logic Rajk’s dazed mind, under the relentless pressure of the interrogation technique, came to accept the inevitable sacrifice? Each individual victim has his own answer to the question: Why did you confess? And if each could speak from the tomb or the prison cell, the political or personal reasons each might give would only confirm the overriding common factor of terror motivating the submission of all. Leaving supposition aside, let us continue the examination of Rajk’s confession, and see if the facts at any rate make sense.

After his expulsion from the university Rajk becomes a leading member of the Communist Young Workers League, ‘where he had the task on the one hand of spying upon the central printing press of the Young Workers League and on the other hand of hindering the preparation, and in particular the dissemination, of propaganda material’ (ibid, p 35). He was, he says, unable to discover anything about the press, but it was a simple matter for him to hinder the dissemination of propaganda material, since he was the one who wrote it. ‘I hindered it partly by not forwarding the material for duplication, thus causing it to lie around for weeks so that it lost its timeliness and there was no longer any point in bringing it out. This was the main possibility for hindering.’ (Ibid, p 36) Now, anyone with the slightest knowledge of the way in which the Communist Party functions knows perfectly well that if Rajk had thus systematically held up propaganda material for weeks an enquiry into such conduct would very quickly have resulted. He might have failed to deliver the goods once, but even then he would have had to offer sound reasons for failure to carry out the task assigned to him. That he could have systematically sabotaged in this way is out of the question; and that he should have put forward such a paltry illustration of his alleged activities on behalf of the police only goes to show how hard pressed he was for incriminating material. Out of the recesses of his mind has been dragged some long-forgotten incident — a squabble over the right propaganda approach to some problem or other, or some technical failure preventing the timely dissemination of agitational material — and this is reflected in the distorting mirror of the confession... As if aware of how unconvincing this ‘proof’ of his police work sounded, Rajk continues: ‘Essentially I carried on no other activity within the Communist Young Workers League, for my work there lasted only a very short time.’ (Ibid, p 36) His first arrest was in 1931 (when he allegedly agreed to work for the police); his second in 1932, when he received a sentence of three months’ imprisonment; his third in 1933, when he was held for a time (we are not told how long), brought to trial and acquitted. After leaving the Young Workers League he joined the National Union of Hungarian Building Workers. This was ‘towards the end of 1934’. So, if he worked for the league for only a very short time he must have been held by the police in 1933 for many months. And if he had not been so held he must have worked for the league for well over a year. He worked there with ‘several Communists of long standing’ (but did not betray them to the police) and it would have been impossible for them not to have noticed sabotage carried out in the manner described by him. Rajk does not give the names of these ‘Communists of long standing'; and for good reason: that would have brought them also under suspicion, because the best way, in fact the only way, of explaining why they did not notice Rajk’s sabotage would be to make them also police agents. This was the way all such difficulties were ‘explained’ away in the Moscow Trials. But the purge in Hungary has not been so ‘total’ as it was in Russia, since the Kremlin still has need of some ‘Communists of long standing’. It is, however, by no means excluded that this phrase may not serve its purpose in some future trial.

As we have noted, nothing is said about Rajk’s financial situation. Is it not obvious that this is because after his expulsion from the university he became a ‘professional revolutionary’, paid by the party? But he says that he joined the building workers’ union on the instructions of the police. His ‘sabotage’ of the Young Workers League having gone completely unremarked by the ever-vigilant party, he now plays a leading role in the Communist fraction in this trade union. He speaks at a mass meeting of the strikers and recommends a street demonstration. This demonstration enabled the police to intervene, with the result that ‘approximately two hundred people were taken into custody’. The strike was broken.

This is manifest nonsense. If the police needed an excuse to intervene, they already had it in the mass meeting before the demonstration; because, according to Rajk’s own testimony, such meetings were at the time illegal. Further, police prohibition of mass demonstrations is quite often regarded by the Communists as a challenge, in the acceptance of which no time must be lost. If Rajk recommended a street demonstration at this mass meeting of strikers, can it be doubted that he did so on the instructions of the party? If he had acted purely as an individual this would have been contrary to the whole organisational set-up of the party. Immediately after the mass meeting he would have been called over the coals for advising a course of action without prior consultation with, and agreement of, the other party leaders of the strike. The view taken of such ‘anarchist individualism’ would have been all the more severe when it was seen that his recommendation had led to two hundred arrests (that is, assuming that such a mass demonstration could have been organised without the other leaders’ cooperation and even against their express desires). Further, Rajk says he ‘was able to establish contact with the leaders of the movement there, who were then underground'; he ‘reported on the movement and on the people’ (ibid, p 36). Yet the police did not act on this information and arrest these leaders.

After Rajk had succeeded in breaking the strike in this incredible manner, he was advised by the police to leave the country. He was ordered to go to Czechoslovakia. This was some time in 1936 (very rarely are any precise dates given in any of these confessions). He crossed the border illegally, with a detective of the political section as an escort to prevent his ‘being stopped or accidentally arrested by the Hungarian authorities on the Hungarian border’ (ibid, p 37). What might have happened is that he was expelled from the country by police administrative measure as a person whose citizenship papers were out of order. Or, much more likely, he left of his own accord and with full party approval, to fight in Spain.

In spite of the many gaps, inconsistencies and contradictions in Rajk’s confession, a well-known, and in some circles influential, political commentator in the West finds that ‘Rajk drove home every point against himself with merciless logic’ (Doreen Warriner, The Revolution in Eastern Europe (Turnstile Press, 1950), p 60). How any disinterested person seriously studying this testimony can find ‘merciless logic’ in it (not to speak of plain logic), is beyond comprehension. ‘It was a strange and enthralling story’, says this author. Strange, certainly; but enthralling only for one who has not read the same story over and over again in volume after volume, written in the same uninspired style, devoid of any human feeling, with the same crude plot, the same coarsely drawn characters speaking the same monotonous language, the same nightmare air of unreality... ‘It is internally consistent’, continues Miss Warriner, ‘it cannot be dismissed as lies.’ Yet even this peculiarly naive person cannot, with the best will in the world, entirely dismiss her doubts. ‘Yet if the earlier part of the story is true, how was it possible that Rajk should have become Minister of the Interior in 1946, and hold the key post in the Hungarian government during the most critical time?’, she asks. And her guess is:

The only possible explanation is that Rajk had played a part in the resistance which exonerated him from his past; but this the evidence does not mention. Ultimately it is the consistency and coherence [sic] of the confession which makes it puzzling, since it obviously omits so much. One explanation is that its motive was expiation, the last service in the cause; but it can equally well be interpreted as revenge. (Ibid, p 6o)

Another explanation is, of course, that his confession was all poppycock — but this does not occur to Miss Warriner. One could hardly wish for a better example of the muddle-headed innocent abroad.

Let us further examine this confession whose consistency and coherence Miss Warriner finds so puzzling, and which she can explain only on the basis of diametrically opposed motives.

Rajk went to Czechoslovakia in order to discover the channel through which illegal literature was being smuggled into Hungary. ‘This investigation was fruitless, but I did not even try very hard to make it fruitful. I did this not because of my convictions, but because that was how my circumstances developed.’ (Trial report, p 37) What these ‘circumstances’ were is left to the imagination. Nevertheless he says that he carried out an investigation, which shows that he must have had contact with the Communist organisation in Czechoslovakia. But nothing whatever is said of what he did during the time he was there: no word of whom he met, where he lived, how he lived, how long he stayed there. Since he presumably arrived there illegally he must have either gone into hiding somewhere or have acquired papers, or have been regularised as a political refugee through the medium of the Communist Refugee Committee then busy checking on all Communist refugees and displaying great energy in denouncing as Fascists all those who had come in any way to disagree with its politics. But the whole of this period of his stay in Czechoslovakia is left a blank. All we learn from his confession is that ‘circumstances’, and not his ‘convictions’, prevented him from trying very hard (just how hard did he try? — what exactly did he do to ‘investigate'?) to carry out his alleged task, and that at last he obtained ‘false documents’ with which he travelled to France, en route to join the International Brigade in Spain — once more on the instructions of the police.

Take this point about his ‘convictions’. Here he goes out of his way to emphasise that his failure was not due to any moral scruples about playing the traitor; he has no convictions that deter him from playing the role. But up to this point his excuse for being a police spy has been that the police had a hold over him by virtue of his having signed a declaration agreeing to work for them. Indeed, in the sentence coming immediately before this statement about the absence of any ‘convictions’ he says: ‘I could not have done anything else.’ And still later he returns again to this explanation of his conduct, by saying: ‘The Hungarian police could have exposed me at any time'; only to contradict this yet again by saying that when the Yugoslav leader Rankovic produced a photostat copy of his agreement with the police, Rajk told him that this threat was ‘entirely unnecessary’ because he ‘agreed with them politically’ (ibid, p 53). Thus at one and the same time he both has and has not ‘convictions’. Rajk’s defence counsel simply ignores all these contradictory excuses or explanations, and argues that Rajk said only that he acted as a police agent under duress. However, the contradictions simply arise from the fact that Rajk has first of all to give a plausible reason for his becoming, and continuing to be, a police agent; and secondly, to support the Stalinist thesis that any political opponent is ipso facto also a police agent and a spy of Western imperialism.

Practically every sentence in Rajk’s confession raises a query in one’s mind. He went to Paris with ‘false documents’. Where did he get them? In Paris he ‘avoided the central organ of the French party which supervised politically those leaving for Spain’ (ibid, p 38). Why? The implication is that he was already suspected by the party. But if this was so, when, and in what circumstances, did suspicion first arise? And why was it that this did not affect his position in the party when he got to Spain — as we shall see it did not. Again, the sending of volunteers to Spain required organisation. But all Rajk had to do was this: ‘I joined a group and I crossed the Spanish border with this group.’ (Ibid, p 38) Nobody turned round and said: ‘Hallo — who are you? — where do you come from?’ Of course Rajk did not do anything of the kind. He went through the organised party channels. But to have admitted this would have involved those responsible in the French party. This was outside the competence of the organisers of the trial. [1] (Note that in none of the East European trials have leaders of Western Communist parties been accused of treachery.)

In Spain Rajk was immediately made ‘party Secretary of the Rákosi Battalion’. This in itself is proof enough that he still enjoyed the full confidence of the party, and, even more important, of the Russian agents controlling behind the scenes; in spite of the fact that he mysteriously arrived in Spain one fine day, without any credentials from either the Hungarian, the Czechoslovak or the French party — that is, if we believe his unbelievable story.

His police assignment in Spain was ‘to find out the names of those in the Rákosi Battalion — this was the name of the Hungarian unit — and... through political disruption to bring about a reduction of the military efficiency of the Rákosi Battalion’ (ibid, p 38). The first part of his task was ‘not difficult to carry out, for we all knew each other’:

I fulfilled the second by artificially putting the political disciplinary case of one of the officers of the battalion, László Haas, on the agenda in 1938, before the Ebro battle, acting as party Secretary... I should add that besides this activity I also carried on Trotskyist propaganda in the Rákosi Battalion. This resulted in the exposure of my Trotskyist attitude by the Communist members of the battalion when the party leadership discussed the Haas case. So, in effect, the whole thing backfired: I was expelled from the party. (Ibid, p 38)

Now, we do not doubt that Rajk did go to Czechoslovakia, to Paris, and then to Spain, where he was made party Secretary in the Rákosi Battalion. As in all the confessions there is a skeleton framework of fact supporting the whole rickety structure. But the facts themselves are interpreted by the accused in the sense required by the indictment — the indictment that they have helped to draw up. Occasionally, however, we get a glimpse of something solid, some correspondence with real facts confirmed by independent experience. So here, from Rajk’s account of the Spanish episode, we find confirmation of the fact — reported by other participants in the Spanish Civil War — that Stalinists were more concerned with the supremacy of their political views, the imposition of their policy on the general course of events, than with the success of the military struggle. They wanted victory — but it had to be victory for them; they would rather see defeat than a Loyalist victory that did not also mean the dominance of the party over the new Spain. Hence the tendency for the Stalinists to give precedence to the political struggle for hegemony within the Loyalist ranks over the common military struggle against Franco. Thus Rajk — who calls himself the ‘party Secretary’ but who was probably better known as the Commissar — could be depicted as involving the Rákosi Battalion in a fierce political discussion on the eve of battle, a discussion that ‘very much weakened its efficiency’. We are left completely in the dark, of course, about the facts of the Haas case, and we have only Rajk’s word for it that he initiated it, that it actually took place, or that it took place when he said it did — but that does not alter the fact that at his trial none of the Stalinist officials in court thought it peculiar that the Rákosi Battalion could be involved in political warfare ‘just before one of the most decisive battles of the Spanish Republican troops’ (ibid, p 39). [2]

The strangest part of Rajk’s story is that all this led to his expulsion from the party for Trotskyist propaganda. From that moment on his effectiveness as a ‘police spy’ was ended. As he said, ‘the whole thing backfired’. This is the only case on record of a secret police agent exposing himself by indulging in propaganda hostile to the organisation in which he is working. Yet Rajk is not really to blame for this, for it was the Hungarian police chief, Sombor-Schweinitzer, who had thought up this brilliant idea of ‘bringing about a reduction of military efficiency by political disruption’. This tale is fully in accord with the Stalinist thesis that all political discussion carried on in Spain by opponents of Communist policy within the Republican camp was ‘disruptive, Trotskyist propaganda’. At no point in his confession does Rajk, this alleged police spy, depart from the Stalinist attitude towards this or any other aspect of political affairs. But — here is the strange part of Rajk’s story — his expulsion does not put an end to his activities. In spite of the fact that everyone knew each other in the battalion, in spite of the fact that many of its Hungarian Communist members returned to Hungary — no one ever subsequently raised the question of Rajk’s expulsion for Trotskyist activities. The indictment says that he was first barred from holding office in the party, and then expelled. But this does not prevent him from eventually being entrusted with the key post in the Hungarian Communist government. It is as though this expulsion never really took place. When we recall the number of Trotskyist and POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unity) people who were kidnapped and assassinated by the Stalinists in Spain, we can only wonder at Rajk’s survival, if the circumstances were indeed as he says. For according to his statement he was expelled in June 1938, but remained in Spain until February 1939. Where was he during those eight months? What was he doing? All we are told is that he deserted in February 1939. But here again there is something wrong, because the Ebro action was the last in which the International Brigade took part; in any case, they were officially disbanded in October 1938. On 26 January 1939, Franco’s mercenaries entered Barcelona and by February the war was already over. There was thus no question of Rajk ‘deserting’. Moreover, this is recognised in the indictment, where it says that he ‘escaped’ from Spain, and does not mention desertion at all. (But, naturally, Rajk’s defence counsel makes no effort to oppose his desire to show himself in the worst possible light.) Rajk therefore went to France with the last of the retreating Spanish Republican forces and together with them was interned. In the internment camp were some Yugoslav ex-International Brigaders. ‘Among the more important persons were Kosta-Nadj, Milic, Vukmanovic, who I think at that time was called Tempo, Stefanovic, Queber...’ (ibid, p 39). In response to this statement Svetozar Vukmanovic made the following denial:

Before the war I never left Yugoslavia and consequently I could not have been in Spain or in the internment camps in France; I could even less have made the acquaintance of Rajk, whom I have never seen in my life. During the war I went to Greece, to Albania and Bulgaria, and in 1948 I went to the USSR, via Rumania. Apart from Yugoslavia, those are all the countries in which I have been. (Ce Que Révèle le Procés Rajk (Paris, 1949), p 37 — the official Yugoslav reply to the trial charges against their party and government.)

Vukmanovic then proceeds to give a detailed account of his activities and movement from 1935 to 1941. In addition he also points out that he was not known by the name ‘Tempo’ until the Fifth Conference of the Yugoslav Communist Party, which took place in 1940. He also says that Bebler, Maslaric and Mrazovic were likewise never in any of these internment camps in France. The Yugoslav Communist Karlo Mrazovic also stated:

In the clumsily framed indictment the producers of the Budapest trial treat as spies, agents of the Gestapo and the Americans, 150 Yugoslavs, fighters in Spain who were interned in French camps. The indictment particularly mentions the most important among them. These are the Generals Gosnjak and Kosta Nadj, and Bebler, Maslaric and Mrazovic. All five were gravely wounded, and in the front line at that, where spies have no desire to go. Of these five, as all Spanish combatants who were in French internment camps know, Bebler (Spanish name Kobal), Maslaric (Felix), Mrazovic (Ortega) have never been in French camps. When this was published in the protest of the Yugoslav Association of Spanish Volunteers, the organisers of the trial immediately ordered the chief prosecutor, the accused and the judges to take care, during the hearing and when the French camps were in question, not to mention the names of the above-mentioned three persons. And, in fact, these names were not pronounced during that part of the trial. They were passed over in silence. Everyone respected the directives of the trial organisers. But the latter forgot to give the same directives to the journalists and to the five or six Hungarians who found themselves among the Spanish combatants, so that they should act likewise in the declaration that they published in the name of the Hungarian volunteers in the Spanish war. By this itself, the organisers of the trial, whether they wanted to or not, have admitted their lie, although the journalist and the five or six Hungarian volunteers continue to claim that Bebler, Maslaric and Mrazovic were in the French camps, in contact with spies, that they were fascist agents and imperialists. All the Spanish combatants who were interned in the French camps know that these three comrades were never among them. (Ibid, p 41)

This makes it clear that in mentioning these names in the indictment the trial organisers blundered badly. They made a clumsy effort to cover up at least part of the traces of bad workmanship by stating on the errata page of the trial report that the name ‘Vukmanovic’ should read ‘Vukomanovic’. That was the best they could do about it. It is precisely in order to avoid grave errors of this nature that the confessions are always so imprecise when it comes to a question of hard facts. In this way the producers try to make it impossible for anyone to check up on statements made and expose them as liars by demonstrating that such and such a meeting could not have taken place because the person or persons concerned were elsewhere at the time. But now and again, in an effort to bring the confession from the realm of fantasy down to solid earth, they do the kind of thing illustrated above — and trip up in consequence.

In internment in France, Rajk continued to ‘pursue Trotskyist activity’. Asked by the president what this meant, Rajk replied: ‘... it was a refutation and disruption of everything which is in the interests of the revolutionary working-class movement, on a political basis that completely lacked all principle’ (Trial report, p 39). The reply is that of a well-schooled Stalinist; it is dictated by the political propaganda requirements of the Soviet Union. It is certainly not the way in which a police spy would talk. Rajk is living up to his side of the bargain.

In the internment camps Rajk now worked for the French Deuxième Bureau. But the French did not have any hold over him that could make him do that. It would have sounded too thin for him to have said that they knew about his past and threatened to expose him, because he had already been expelled (according to his tale) from the party, and in any case he was carrying on Trotskyist work, which, under camp conditions, everyone would be aware of. So he simply said that even the French officer of the Deuxième Bureau knew he was a Trotskyist, and knew that ‘in general the Trotskyists always, and everywhere, internationally, worked in close contact with the police’ (ibid, p 40). So it was now an open secret that he was a police agent! The knowledge is indeed so widespread that the next thing we learn is that Rajk is enrolled by the Gestapo. The Horthy police, the French Deuxième Bureau, the Gestapo, and finally, as we shall see, the American ‘Office of Strategic Services’, are all well informed about Rajk. Only the Communist Party, which expelled him for Trotskyism (and everyone knows that the Trotskyists are ‘always and everywhere’ in close contact with the police), were still in the dark!

Now on to the scene steps the mysterious figure of Noel H Field, chief American agent of the OSS in Europe — according to the vivid imaginations of the trial producers. Rajk is interviewed by Field in one of the French internment camps. The date is again vague — ‘at the end of the Civil War’. Field:

... referred to an instruction he had received from Washington, that he should speak with me and help me to get out of the camp and return home to Hungary. He even told me that they would like to send me home because as an agent who had not been exposed I would, working in the party according to the instructions received from the Americans, disorganise and dissolve the party and possibly even get the party leadership into my hands. (Ibid, pp 46-47 — author’s emphasis)

This part of Rajk’s testimony was not given when he spoke at some length of his internment in France, immediately after the story of his expulsion from the party in Spain. It looks very much as though Rajk and the president had forgotten about Field, for it is some time after Rajk has left the subject of the French internment camps and is dealing with the period after his return to Hungary that he suddenly remembers the Field incident in the above-quoted words. A short time before he recalls this, there has been a fifteen-minute recess. How did it happen that Rajk completely forgot to mention such an important incident when he was testifying on his relations with the Deuxième Bureau and the Gestapo in the camp? Surely if the interview with Field was as he asserted, it would have stood out very sharply in his memory and would have been in the forefront of his thoughts precisely when he was speaking of this period. Yet it is only some time later that he fills in the picture with this piece of information about the mysterious Mr Field, who subsequently loomed so large in the case for the prosecution. Moreover, when he does speak of Field, Rajk has evidently forgotten that he, Rajk, had been exposed in Spain. Field, who apparently knew all about Rajk, who had no trouble in contacting him among the thousands of refugees from Spain interned in France, would also have known about his suspension from holding any office in the party, and eventually his expulsion from it, about his continued Trotskyist activity in the camp — yet in spite of all this he regarded him ‘as an agent who had not been exposed’. Even if the OSS — allegedly so well informed about Rajk that they sent instructions about him from Washington to Field — did not know of his exposure in Spain, would not Rajk himself have informed Field? Would they not have discussed the effect of this expulsion on the possibility of his being able to get back into the party, in order to ‘disorganise and dissolve’ it, even take over the leadership? (Note the ‘merciless logic’ of this — taking over the leadership of a dissolved party.) And if Rajk had not said anything to Field, would not Field have found out all about it through his other contacts?

Who is this Noel H Field? What evidence is there that he was in fact an agent of American Intelligence? The answer to the last question is — none at all, except the assertions of some of the accused at the Rajk trial. But let us assume for the moment that Field was such an agent. Does that mean that everyone with whom he came in contact was likewise an agent, or subsequently became one? No normally intelligent person will hesitate a moment over the answer to that. Yet recent events in Eastern Germany have shown (we shall consider these in the course of this chapter) that almost every political refugee associated with Field is thereby automatically labelled an American agent.

Noel H Field’s association with the Communist Party is not a matter for dispute, although this has only very recently been admitted, and then only with regard to a limited period, by his former associates. In the Alger Hiss perjury trial in the USA (see Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky, Seeds of Treason (Secker and Warburg, 1950), pp 66-67, 268-69; Alistair Cooke, A Generation on Trial (Hart Davis, 1950), pp 291-93) a letter from Hiss to Field was produced. It began ‘Dear Noel'; it contained no more than advice on where Field might possibly place articles in the US, and was dated May 1948. Field was at that time in Eastern Europe. Field’s connection with Hiss, tool and dupe of the Stalinists, is thus established. Mrs Hede Massing, formerly the wife of Gerhard Eisler, until recently chief of the Information Service in Eastern Germany, has stated that Noel Field was a member of the Stalinist undercover apparatus in the US in the early 1930s. His home was a meeting place for undercover members of the party, she affirmed at Hiss’s trial. German political refugees in Switzerland knew Field there as head of an American refugee aid organisation, the Unitarian Service Committee; but they also noted his close association with well-known Stalinists. One of these refugees has described how, on first entering Field’s office in Geneva, he saw that his secretary was a certain Mme Tampi, known as an avowed Stalinist ‘activist’ (see article in Confrontations Internationale, November-December 1949). He also on one occasion ran across Field in company with Leon Nicole, leader of the Communist Party of Latin Switzerland (since expelled). Field was likewise known to be in constant touch with Anton Ackermann and other prominent functionaries of the German Communist Party in emigration. (Today Ackermann is a member of the Politbureau of the East German Communist Party, or Socialist Unity Party — as it is now called. He is also, at the time of writing, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.) In addition to this evidence of Field’s association with the Stalinists, there is the statement of Jules Humbert-Droz, a foundation member of the Comintern who became disillusioned and rejoined the Socialist Party. Humbert-Droz states that when he was still a member of the Swiss Communist Party, he knew Noel Field very well:

He was a member of the Swiss Communist Party and an agent of the American churches to aid refugees in the South of France. He intervened, as an American and as a church representative, with the Vichy government to save a great number of German and Italian Communists who were under the threat of being given up to the Gestapo by the Pétain government. He helped hundreds of militants in the camps, distributing food and transmitting messages. He helped a large number to hide or to flee to the United States or elsewhere. He did this work in close connection with the Swiss Communist Party and the German and Italian émigrés. Field had previously rendered great services to the Soviet Union. (article in the Swiss weekly Travail)

All this puts a completely different complexion on the activities of Noel Field. Humbert-Droz’s testimony links up with that of Eisler’s former wife: the ‘great services rendered to the Soviet Union’ require no elucidation. Yes, he visited the internment camp at Vernet in France, but for a purpose exactly the opposite of that charged at the Rajk trial. No wonder that Rajk temporarily forgot the new role assigned to Field in the indictment!

But for some reason or other the Russians became suspicious of Field. Perhaps his usefulness had been destroyed as a result of the Hiss case. If this was so, they would try to ensure that he did not reveal anything of his activities on their behalf. Whatever the real reason for the Russian suspicion of Field, the fact is that he, his wife and his brother, Hermann Field, all vanished somewhere in Czechoslovakia shortly after Rajk’s arrest. And once Field was in the hands of the Russians it occurred to them that they could use him against Rajk and others. There will thus never be any possibility of any of these three giving the lie to the statements made about Noel Field by Rajk.

Subsequent developments in the Communist Party of Eastern Germany (the SED) would seem to indicate that the Russian espionage service really did come to regard Field as a ‘traitor’. Nothing that can be gleaned of Field’s past political activities offers the slightest evidence that he was not a loyal supporter of the Soviet Union — no doubt for the loftiest humanitarian reasons. But a man’s past services carry no weight with the Kremlin. The dominant characteristic of Stalin is his suspicion of everyone, even his closest associates (it is hardly possible to speak of friends). He distrusts everyone because he judges everyone by the yardstick of his own morals. He must really believe, to make the burden of his deeds supportable, that he alone is right, he alone is faithful. Everything he does, no matter how base, he justifies to himself by this belief. However vile the means, for him they justify the end of the national aggrandisement of Russia. This suspicion has permeated the entire apparatus by means of which he maintains his power; it has infected the entire Communist movement; it is itself a means of controlling the machinery of power. The ease with which yesterday’s lauded champions of the cause are today denounced as lifelong traitors is proof enough of this readiness to think the worst of everyone. So it would not have been difficult for the Russians to convince themselves that Field was playing a double game; particularly since he was, after all, an American. And it followed that those who had had contact with him when he worked for the Unitarian Service Committee must also require investigation. This is one aspect of the Prague trial and the purges in the East German Communist Party.

Once again it is not possible to estimate just how large a part personal rivalries, the inner-party struggle for leadership, played in these latest purges. No doubt this is always a factor; but it is of entirely secondary importance. It must be borne in mind that in the satellites the purges and trials are expressions of the process of Russification, whatever subsidiary purposes they may also serve.

On 24 August 1950, the Central Committee of the SED expelled from the East German party Paul Merker, senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture; Leo Bauer, news editor of the Communist radio in Berlin; Bruno Goldhammer, departmental head of the Information Service headed by Gerhard Eisler; Willy Kreikemeyer, general manager of the East German railways; Lex Ende, editor of Neues Deutschland; and Maria Weiterer, a leader of the women’s organisation. At the same time Bruno Fuhrmann, Hans Teubner, Walter Beling and Wolfgang Langhoff were relieved of all party functions. The former group was linked with the American spy Noel H Field; the latter had ‘indirectly aided the class enemy’. In proof of this there was the evidence produced at the Rajk trial. An article in the SED newspaper Neues Deutschland (1 September 1950), on the subject of this purge, makes out that Field first wormed his way into party circles in France and Switzerland, and affects ignorance of any earlier association in the United States. ‘Through Maria Weiterer, Field got into direct relations with the member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany, Paul Merker, and through him with the leadership of the Communist emigrants in Marseille.’ Already in 1939 Field had established contact in Switzerland. His relations with the refugees in France strengthened his position and by the ‘autumn of 1941 Field had pushed himself so far forward that the émigré leadership in Switzerland appointed him courier to the South of France’ (the report in this paper says nothing, however, of his close relations with the leader of the Swiss Communists or with Anton Ackermann, who has up to the time of writing escaped the purge). His political influence eventually grew so great that he dominated the German Communist émigré movement centred in Marseilles. He used this influence to prevent the German refugees from agreeing with the French party’s plan to draft them to Paris and other German-occupied areas for work in the resistance movement. This rejection of the French party’s proposals in the spring of 1942 came from Allan Dulles, ‘Chief of the Office of Strategic Services'; it was conveyed through Field to the émigré leaders. ‘It was all part of American imperialism’s policy not to build a Second Front... A possible overthrow of Hitler through German strength [durch deutsche Kräfte] would have... upset the plans of the USA.’ Without bothering himself about the French party’s ‘resolution’, the leader Paul Merker flew off to Mexico. In the summer of 1945 Field also went to Mexico to ‘re-establish the contact already made in Marseille’, and had a long discussion with Merker — ‘although the Central Committee of the USA party had given him no certificate of Field’s reliability’. ‘In connection with his sojourn in Mexico, Field turned up in Germany in the uniform of a Cralog officer’, accompanied by ‘the employee of the OSS, Erika Glaser, also in uniform, and the Trotskyist, Herta Hierr-Tempi’. (Erika Glaser, daughter of German political refugees, was a translator in the OSS headquarters in Wiesbaden and later became editor of the Communist monthly Wissen und Tat in Frankfurt. After the war she married an American citizen. She had stayed behind in Switzerland with the Fields (Noel and his wife Herta) when her parents went to England. When the Fields vanished in Prague in July 1949 she went to Berlin to seek them. She was passed through the customs at the Tempelhof aerodrome, but then herself vanished. No trace of her has since been discovered.)

All this information revealed by the first party purge in Eastern Germany adds to the evidence proving that Field was deeply involved in the undercover Stalinist organisation. But in explaining these expulsions from the East German SED, the Central Committee says that ‘it is simply unbelievable that these people connected with Field up to 1949 thought him no more than a friend of the workers and a benefactor of mankind’. We can fully agree with this: because they obviously accepted Field as a man enjoying the full confidence of the Russians. The SED Central Committee is compelled indirectly to recognise this, for its explanation continues: ‘But even if this were so, at the very latest in September 1949... the Rajk trial must have removed the scales from their eyes.’ In spite of this some of them did not ‘find their way back to the party’. Investigations showed that they did not want to be ‘helpful’. After the Rajk trial they gave no information to the party about their relations with Field, but had to be pressed for it, and even then it was clear that ‘they only admitted things that could be proved against them... Their silence was proof for the party of their insincerity.’

This shows us that the expelled members of the SED refused to admit that their relations with Field were other than normal relations between party members and an undercover agent of the international leadership. It is possible that those not expelled, but merely relieved of their party functions, were able to bring themselves to see things in a different light — they were more ‘helpful’. In the probable event of a confession trial in East Germany these people will perhaps figure as ‘witnesses’. The last sentence quoted above is an unwitting confirmation of the technique of extorting confessions: ‘silence is proof of insincerity’, that is, refusal to see matters as the inquisitors see them is proof of guilt. A true friend of the Soviet Union would make a clean breast of things; to persist in maintaining one’s innocence only means that one is an enemy of the Soviet Union. Because after all Rajk confessed everything about Field, and therefore they, too, must have known what Field was. Perhaps not all of them knew, but certainly some of them did. In any case they are all under suspicion, and even if only one is guilty they must all be presumed guilty in order to make sure of that one. And if a confession trial is considered advisable they will all be worked on by the methods of which we know, with the result that all but those of extraordinary mental and physical toughness will inevitably confess.

The purge in East Germany is the continuation of the action taken against German Communist refugees in Soviet Russia before the war. Some of these were shot, others were handed over to the Gestapo. In spite of all the efforts to ‘educate’ party members in the spirit of Stalinism — that is, blind obedience to the Leader — the many abrupt unprincipled shifts in Soviet policy inevitably raise doubts in the minds of party members abroad, who have to shoulder the burden of explaining things to the people whose confidence they are trying to win. Even some leading members, affected by these doubts, express themselves incautiously, or do not show sufficient zeal in their support of the change in policy demanded by the Soviet Union. Few, if any, Communist leaders have not at some time or other laid themselves open to suspicion by the Kremlin. Nowadays all those in the satellite states, and in Eastern Germany, who were thrown into contact with the West during the war years are distrusted. It is rumoured that even Gerhard Eisler is under a cloud and his dismissal at the beginning of 1953 from the post of head of the Information Service confirms this. (It will be recalled that Eisler jumped bail in the US, and was smuggled aboard the Polish ship Batory, en route for Europe. He was taken off the ship at Southampton by the British police, but the American request for his extradition was rejected. In thus releasing him and giving him the opportunity to flee to Germany, the British government may have done him a very bad service. Eisler is one of the few Germans who survived the purge of refugees in the Soviet Union, but it does not look as though he will be able to keep his head above water much longer.) Stalin is said to have expressed the opinion that ‘Communism will fit Germany as a saddle fits a cow’. This was during the war, when he was assuring the world that the Kremlin had no interest in ‘exporting revolution’. But the phrase has acquired a new significance today. For many reasons the German Communist Party is the one least likely to submit patiently to the Soviet yoke.

Each fresh mention of Field’s name in connection with Communist Party deviations sharpens the picture of him. The statement of the East German party corresponds with the testimony of ex-Communists in the West who knew him in Switzerland and America. He could only have exercised the political influence alleged in the East German purge statement if he had been accepted by the refugees in Switzerland and France as a top-ranking party member. But whether he exercised any political influence or not, the fact that he acted as a Stalinist courier makes it clear that he was highly trusted. Yet in the Rajk trial only a very oblique reference is made to Field’s party membership. The accused Dr Tibor Szonyi, one-time head of the vital ‘cadres department’ in the Hungarian Communist Party, testified:

I was leader of a Hungarian political émigré group which was formed at the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943... This group consisted of students, intellectuals and politically vacillating elements whom I educated in 1944 in a chauvinist and pro-American spirit... In this influence the theory of Browder, then leader of the Communist Party of the USA, played a great part. Printed copies of Browder’s books in French and German were distributed in great number by Lompar and Field both in Switzerland and France, on behalf of the American Secret Service... Lompar and Field were active ... with other political émigré groups, too. (Trial report, p 147)

This means no more than that Szonyi faithfully followed the international ‘party line’ of the period in question. Browder had written a book, Teheran, expounding the policy of Anglo-American-Soviet fraternal cooperation, which would ‘ensure peace for a generation’. The dissemination of his writings was fully in accord with Stalin’s manoeuvres of that period, which even went so far as to require the formal dissolution of the American party. Browder was unfortunate enough to have the job of announcing this manoeuvre and making it appear a genuine change of policy. When the line was changed from ‘cooperation’ to renewed open war, Browder’s views became ‘revisionist’. They were not, of course, Browder’s views, but Stalin’s orders. But since Stalin is infallible, someone has to shoulder the blame for ‘errors’. Had Browder been leader of an Eastern European party he would long ago have confessed to being a spy.

Thus Szonyi’s reference to Browder, implying that he was party to a deep-laid plot of the American Secret Service against the Soviet Union, does not correspond with the known political facts. However, this is typical of the manner in which these frame-ups are engineered. Field, as a man in the inner circles of the Stalinist apparatus and as an American having close contact with American officials through his ostensible profession, was the ideal person for portrayal as the go-between linking American Intelligence with Communist ‘traitors’. Rajk’s confession could then later be used as the starting point for purges and confessions in other parties. But the wider the circle of those involved in purges or trials through association with Field becomes, the clearer it becomes that he was accepted by them as a genuine Communist.

The salient feature of the Rajk trial is its use as a propaganda counter-measure against the Tito heresy. Tito’s rupture with Moscow made it once more necessary to rewrite history. The organ of the Hungarian party, Szabad Nép, had written:

The hand held out by Yugoslavia in the domain of economics will contribute to the political consolidation of our country. Apart from the Soviet Union, no other country has shown us so much friendship as Yugoslavia. More than anyone, Yugoslavia had the right to bear us a grudge. But she did not wish to take revenge upon a democratic Hungary for the crimes committed by the Horthyists. Equally at the Paris Conference Yugoslavia held out a hand to Hungary, breaking down the barrier between victor and vanquished. (4 January 1947)

The Yugoslav bid for independence changed all that. Expressions of gratitude and admiration such as the above — and they were the keynote of Yugoslavia’s relations with the People’s Democracies — had to be obliterated from all memories:

The misfortune of the working-class movement and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia [wrote the Cominform journal, For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy, on 15 September 1950] is that... over a period of thirty years [the Yugoslav party was founded in 1919] they were actually headed by bourgeois agents... Of the dozens of general secretaries which the party had, only one, Juro Djakovic, was not a traitor or an enemy of the working class.

And on 16 September, the opening day of the Rajk trial, Pravda carried an article by special correspondent B Polevoi.

The monster with the ministerial portfolio and his accomplices [he wrote] dreamt of disarming their people... and, having thrown their country at the feet of the new Balkan Duce, of turning the country into a Yugoslav colony... The people of Hungary await a just and stern trial of the traitors...

As usual, Stalin accuses his opponents of the crimes he himself has committed or schemes to commit.

Tito and his accomplices plotted the overthrow of Hungarian democracy — free, independent, nobody’s colony. Tito sent his secret agents into Hungary to sabotage and disorganise the economy of the country and to organise internal revolt. The proof? Confessions. Yet proof that the Stalinists are doing precisely the things of which they accuse Tito and his colleagues is hardly required: for it is openly admitted in the Cominform journal, official mouthpiece of the Kremlin:

The youth of Yugoslavia, guided by communist-internationalists, are rising in the liberation struggle against the Tito clique... Falling off in labour productivity and damage to machinery are becoming ever more widespread. Led by the underground groups of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, now being restored... They sabotage Titoite sowing ‘plans’, purchases of grain, fats, meat, wool and other agricultural produce... They refuse to carry out work organised by the Titoites... Soldiers are damaging arms and equipment. (For a Lasting Peace..., 17 November 1950)

The above is as much an instruction to agents as it is a report of facts.

The accused at the Rajk trial were, as is usual in these shows, a mixed bag. In addition to the three prominent Communists, there were a former police officer and an Army officer under Horthy; a Social-Democratic member of the National Assembly; another Communist, Secretary to the Federation of South Slavs; and a Yugoslav citizen who had disowned Tito (allegedly a calculated deception for espionage purposes). It was a nice selection, aiming at creating the maximum of prejudice against all the accused by the inclusion of former Horthyist Army and police officers, and personifying in the accused all the required propaganda points of the Hungarian government’s policy — that is, relations with the West, attitude to Tito and the Social-Democrats in the so-called Workers Party and so forth. Amalgams of this nature are part of the stage management. It is only necessary to recall Bukharin’s words at the third Moscow Trial, when he pointed out that he had never in his life even seen some of the accused together with him in the dock, to understand the purely arbitrary nature of these amalgams, and consequently the purely imaginary nature of the ‘conspiracy’ between the accused. It is a favourite trick to throw in with the political ‘criminals’ a non-political person of dubious background. One cannot help thinking that Zinoviev, too, was drawing attention to this in the first Moscow Trial, when in his final plea he made use of the following words, evocative of another trial and execution: ‘I felt and understood that my name will be associated with the names of those who stood beside me. On my right hand Olberg, on my left — Nathan Lurye...’ (Trial I, p 171)

So they did not forget at the Rajk trial to throw in a couple of officers who had served the Horthy regime.

Another striking example of the appeal to prejudice is seen in the prosecution’s final series of questions to Rajk, serving to elicit the fact that he was of German origin. This is the only point where Rajk departed from the unemotional, matter-of-fact tone in which he delivered his prepared speeches at the trial. Even the official report notes that he was ‘irritated’ when he was pressed until he gave the information that his grandfather wrote his name as Reich. One is reminded of the Nazis’ disgusting racialism. This appeal to anti-German sentiment, to the most retrograde instincts of a section of the Hungarian people, typifies the Stalinists’ lack of scruples. They shrink from no vulgarity that may serve to bias the less instructed members of a community against those they wish to destroy.

The Rajk trial ended with death sentences for the Stalinists Rajk, Szonyi and Szalai; with life imprisonment for Justus, the Social-Democrat, and Brankov, formerly chargé-d'affaires at the Yugoslav Legation in Hungary; and nine years for Ognjenovich, Secretary to the Federation of South Slavs. The ex-Horthy officers, Pálffy and Korondy, were handed over to a military court, duly sentenced and executed.

Thus, by the sacrifice of Rajk, Szonyi and Szalai from among the Hungarian Communist leaders, the suspicions of the Kremlin were lulled, its anger at Tito’s treachery appeased — for the time being.

Notes

1. The ‘treachery’ of the French party leaders, Marty and Tillon, had not then been ‘discovered’, otherwise Rajk would have confessed that Marty had arranged for him to get to Spain.

2. However, the Comintern journal International Press Correspondence (Volume 18, no 24, p 586) says: ‘One frequently finds cases of a Republican commander with a Socialist second in command, each coming from a different country. And yet there have never been political conflicts in the general staffs or in the units themselves.’ However, at that time every care was taken to cover up political conflicts, not to admit that they existed.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter VIII: ‘I Plead Not Guilty’

‘Do you plead guilty?’ ‘Yes, I plead guilty.’ One day after the other the defendants reply: Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty... But disturbing the harmony of this carefully conducted orchestra is the persistent echo of a false note. The chief accused has failed to support the rest of the performers. He has pleaded not guilty, and has refused to be shaken from that plea.

‘Citizen Judges! I plead guilty of having had an incorrect attitude towards the Soviet Union...’, begins the defendant. To the uninitiated this appears a quite satisfactory opening. But already the president and the prosecutor have an uneasy feeling that this is a departure from the prepared script. And as the accused continues the uneasiness increases, is communicated to the entire stage management personnel and to the remainder of the accused.

... expressed in the method of bargaining, adopted in our trade with the Soviet Union, in withholding certain prices in transactions with the capitalist countries, and also in my order concerning the application of the Law for Safeguarding of State Secrets and in my liberal attitude regarding anti-Soviet statements, made in my presence. All this created an attitude of insincerity and mistrust toward the Soviet Union and placed in difficult situation the Soviet representatives who went to different of our government offices, for information, which prior to that time, before the Law on State Secrets was enacted, they had freely received. This attitude towards the Soviet Union is the less excusable for me because I was aware of the colossal role of the Soviet Union in safeguarding the liberty and independence of our country, in building its economy on the basis of Socialism. I was aware that without the Soviet Union there is no free democratic Bulgaria; without the Soviet Union... [and so on]. I also plead guilty of my attempt at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, to place the Central Committee in opposition to the Politbureau, whereby I committed a flagrant factional act... My attitude about the Sixteenth Plenum was also incorrect, and after it, that towards the leader of the party and of the Bulgarian people — Dimitrov, whom I criticised sharply and without impartiality, and even allowed myself personal attacks on him...

The president has heard enough. The accused is deliberately avoiding the nub of the matter. The president puts a question designed to remind him of it. ‘I am proceeding to that’, replies the accused. And then the bombshell. ‘I do not plead guilty to having capitulated before the fascist police, nor to having been recruited for service in the British intelligence, nor to conspiratorial activities with Tito and his clique.’ (The Trial of Traicho Kostov and His Group (Sofia, 1949), pp 66-68)

These words are like a sudden electric shock running through all present. The whole atmosphere of the court abruptly changes; all eyes and all minds focus on the lonely figure of the accused who has had the incredible daring to cry — ‘Not guilty!’ Currents of hardly suppressed anger strike at him from the court officials, and the nervous anxiety of his co-accused is replaced by a bitter resentment at his unreasoning, hopeless folly, which threatens to undo them all. The court listens in tense silence to the exchange that follows.

President: ‘I am referring to your action after 29 April 1942. You heard it this morning and you have read it in the indictment.’ [This refers to his alleged recruitment as a police spy — author.]

Kostov: ‘If you will allow me, I wish to say a few words on my left-sectarian past, referred to in the indictment.’

President: ‘Your left-sectarian past does not date back to 29 April 1942, it is an earlier phenomenon.’

Kostov: ‘Exactly.’

President: ‘We say of 29 April 1942. According to the indictment you are accused of the collapse of the Central Committee.’

Kostov: ‘As the collapse of the Central Committee is connected with the influence of my left-sectarian past, I beg to be allowed to dwell on this question in a few words.’

President: ‘We shall go too far if we start explaining the nature of left-sectarianism; what is known of left-sectarianism is sufficient for the court. What have you to say under these concrete circumstances?’

Kostov: ‘I have no intention of explaining the whole question of left-sectarianism. I wish to make clear only the question of my participation in it... for I am treated in the indictment as an active participator in the left-sectarian faction.’

But the president is not going to allow us to peep into the esoteric mysteries of ‘left-sectarianism’. The situation is already bad enough, without risking an exposure of what ‘left-sectarianism’ really was and who really participated in it. Who could tell — the world might learn something new about the 1923 explosion in Sofia Cathedral. Better to keep to ‘concrete circumstances’. So the next question is:

President: ‘Do you confirm the deposition given by you in the inquiry and in your answer in which you refer to it?’

Kostov: ‘I do not confirm that deposition.’

The prosecutor takes over: ‘Were you tortured when you were detained in 1942?’

Kostov: ‘I beg your pardon? I did not catch that.’

Prosecutor: ‘Did you undergo an inquisition in the prison in 1942?’

Kostov: ‘I did.’

Prosecutor: ‘In spite of that you did not give any evidence as to your guilt?’

Kostov: ‘No.’

The prosecutor and the president then ask a series of questions aimed solely at establishing the fact that Kostov had met certain representatives of the West and other suspicious persons, including the Yugoslav Kardelj [1] and the famous — or infamous — Hungarian Communist Béla Kun (who vanished in the great Russian purge). But Kostov succeeds in also bringing in the names of other Communists with whom he had contact — Thorez, the French leader; Togliatti, the Italian; Ana Pauker of Rumania — all of them then persona grata with the Kremlin.

As hard as they try, neither the prosecutor nor the president can shake Kostov in his denial of the main charge against him, without which the rest of the charges amount to no more than that he had political disagreements in the distant past with other Bulgarian party leaders.

And here, perhaps better than in any other case, Stalin’s attitude towards political criticism within his parties is laid bare. In the final analysis the much-vaunted freedom of criticism ('criticism and self-criticism’) amounts only to the right to admit one’s errors and glorify the infallibility of the Leader. It may be used as a partial check on bureaucratic excesses, but its major purpose is to maintain uniformity of thinking. Tactical errors can be labelled ‘left-sectarian’, ‘right-opportunism’, ‘ultra-leftism’, ‘centrism’, and so forth; and in all this the insidious influence of the ‘class enemy’ brought to the light of day. Criticism and self-criticism keep up to date the dossiers of all members, and prepare the too ambitious, those with insufficiently supple spines, for branding as enemy agents in case of need. Kostov’s refusal to play the game according to the rules took the sting out of the charges; unless he were shown up as a police spy the case against him amounted to no more than that he had attempted to act in his relations with Soviet trade delegates as the representative of a sovereign, independent state. This would not do at all. Yet the more Kostov was questioned the greater the danger of stripping the veil of hypocrisy from the government’s case. His examination was therefore stopped. Instead of questioning him further, or allowing him to ‘explain’, the court proceeded to read the confession made by him under preliminary questioning. This forced deposition was eagerly ‘confirmed’ by all the other accused. The value of such ‘confirmation’ can be seen from the testimony of the accused Boris Khristov, formerly Bulgarian Commercial Counsellor in Moscow:

Then Traicho Kostov told me that my mission in Moscow was to be double-sided: official and unofficial. This communication of the First Secretary of the Central Committee surprised me very much... My confusion grew... Traicho Kostov began to talk about the international political situation... He stressed that... it was necessary for our country to keep to the course of an independent policy, that is, to begin the course of a gradual but certain detachment from the influence of the Soviet Union... I was extremely surprised... He noticed my confusion and hastened to tell me that ... he knew of certain awkward moments in my past... I gathered all my strength and told him that I did not understand to which awkward moments of my past he was referring. Then he told me clearly and openly, that I had been an agent provocateur and that I had rendered services to the fascist police. I was shocked at this communication. I was frightfully confused, frightened, astounded and upset. (Ibid, pp 187-88)

After this conversation Khristov goes to Moscow, where his work in the trade negotiations is directly supervised by Georgi Dimitrov, the well-known Bulgarian leader whom Kostov is later to be accused of ‘personally criticising’, indeed a grave crime. ‘At this meeting with Dimitrov’ (27 December 1944), continues Khristov, ‘at which he finally approved the report prepared by me for the Soviet Minister of Trade, Mikoyan, he gave me detailed instructions in regard to the line which I should follow in my contact with the Soviet representatives.’ Dimitrov speaks to him of Bulgaria’s difficult situation, of the help the Soviet Union can give her, of the need for the closest and friendliest relations, and so forth. Now was the time for Khristov to make a clean breast of his agreement with Kostov to sabotage the negotiations:

I listened to the wise words of Dimitrov, I saw and felt that this was the only correct way, that this was advice which corresponded to the real interests of our country. But even then, before the great son of the Bulgarian working class, before Georgi Dimitrov, I was not strong enough to reveal the secret intentions and instructions of Traicho Kostov... If I had done this at that time, I would have contributed much to the party, I would have freed myself too from the obligation I had taken before Traicho Kostov. My safety at that moment was assured. I was far from Traicho Kostov. I was in the Soviet Union, I was near Georgi Dimitrov. But I proved weak. I proved very weak. So I continued to travel along this criminal road. (Ibid, p 189, author’s emphasis)

From this it appears that the only reason Khristov could think of for not seizing the opportunity of denouncing Kostov and assuring his own safety was that he was ‘weak’. This is the only reason he can think of. But there was another, far more convincing reason. It was simply that Dimitrov would not have believed such an accusation against Kostov, at least not without more proof than Khristov’s mere assertion. But how could Khristov have told the court that, without calling everyone’s attention to the fact that the court itself was accepting his mere assertion as proof of Kostov’s guilt?

There is another aspect of these trade negotiations that throws doubt on Khristov’s testimony. This is the fact that although Dimitrov was in Moscow directly supervising the negotiations, they dragged on for nearly two and a half months (p 190): ‘The negotiations went on slowly and with difficulties, which we created and thought out daily.’ The agreement was not signed until 14 March 1945. What happened to Dimitrov’s great authority during all this time? ‘Dimitrov intervened’, but it was obviously a tardy intervention. And, moreover, nothing in the conduct of the Bulgarian negotiators had aroused any suspicions on his part. For the same representatives are present for the next negotiations in March 1946, with renewed and even more urgent instructions from Kostov to ‘sabotage’. Yet the second agreement was reached in less time than the first. On these second negotiations Khristov testified that ‘the two main questions on which the principal struggle was to take place in these hostile underground activities of ours, were the question of the quantities of tobacco which Bulgaria was then to offer the Soviet Union, and that of prices in general’ (ibid, p 192). As a consequence of this ‘underground activity’ — that is, trying to get the best possible prices for Bulgarian goods — ‘negotiations proceeded with great difficulty’, and ‘at this moment Georgi Dimitrov intervened again'; with the result that ‘our hostile plans and intentions were defeated by Dimitrov’, and ‘a trade agreement was signed which, in 1946, was estimated as most favourable for our country’ (ibid p 193). Khristov also says ‘I have omitted to point out that at the end of the negotiations, at the most difficult moment, Minister Neikov had fallen ill’ and Kostov came to Moscow to take charge of the ‘sabotage’ operations (ibid, p 193 — author’s emphasis). In spite of this the agreement was signed very shortly after Kostov’s arrival. Does this not rather look as though Kostov went to Moscow to break the deadlock — and succeeded?

All that this testimony shows is (a) that the Bulgarians wanted to drive as hard a bargain as they could; (b) that Dimitrov was not exactly pressing with his ‘intervention'; and (c) that Kostov also wanted to get the best possible terms. The attitude they adopted rankled in the minds of the Russians, was recalled after the Yugoslav-Russian break, with the result that the responsible Bulgarian negotiators appeared to be just the right men for a confession trial. It is, of course, even possible that in the poisonous atmosphere of almost pathological suspicion engendered by Tito’s defection the Russians saw treachery where there was only the desire to serve the interests of the Bulgarian people. In any case, after the Kostov trial any future negotiators would tread very warily, wouldn’t they?

This, then, is the kind of evidence advanced by the other accused to prove Kostov’s treachery. There is nothing in any of it that could possibly connect Kostov with the ‘fascist police’ or British intelligence. Nor does Kostov’s past record suggest that he would have been at all likely to work with the police.

At the time of his trial he was fifty-two years of age. A hard-faced man with — even for a Stalinist functionary — a more than usually one-track mind, he was noted for his ascetic habits, and was widely believed to be one of the few who had not cracked under torture by the Bulgarian police when the Communist Party was illegal or semi-legal. He had spent the whole of his adult life in the service of Communism. His tough, unyielding moral fibre was sufficiently demonstrated in 1924 when, under interrogation by the police, he threw himself from a fourth-floor window, sustaining severe injuries and barely escaping with his life. He bore the marks of this and other like experiences on his body (so that at his trial his former comrades were able to taunt him on his misshapen back). He was portrayed by party propagandists as a hero of the resistance during the war years (see Orlin Vasiliev, Suprotivata; quoted by Hugh Seton-Watson in his The East European Revolution (Methuen, 1950), p 93). He owed his rise to second-in-command of the Bulgarian party to his long record of devoted and courageous service and an intelligence that raised him above the average level of leading party members. Prior to his arrest there had never been any question of his loyalty to Stalinism, his reputation could hardly have stood higher among party members and he was generally regarded as the natural successor to Dimitrov.

There was absolutely nothing unwarranted in this. It was only after his arrest that his party career was construed as the artful manoeuvring of an ‘enemy agent’. However, so many Stalinist leaders have come to be denounced and denigrated in this manner by their erstwhile admiring followers that we must either conclude that all Communist parties are powerfully influenced and even controlled by ‘agents of the class enemy’, or that the accusations against these people are false, and motivated by considerations of political expediency alone. We are asked to believe that in Russia itself the only man among the old Bolshevik leaders (with the exception of those who died before it became necessary to ‘unmask’ them) who was not a traitor was Stalin. And in those countries now forced within the Soviet orbit almost as black a picture of treachery is shown us.

There is an extremely nauseating flavour to these internecine quarrels within the Communist parties. One recoils in disgust from the dreary catalogue of improbable crimes recurring with monotonous sameness in trial after trial after trial; one is repelled by the spectacle of humbled creatures denouncing themselves and their fellow accused and the appropriate enemies of the regime in the same stereotyped jargon, each striving to outdo the other. The obscene blood-lust of the government’s gutter press and radio; the unashamed struggle for self-preservation at all costs; the utter lack of any human feelings towards old comrades; the despicable hypocrisy of the upstarts elbowing their way to the cushy jobs; the lying and intriguing, the cringing, the subservience; the adulation of dead leaders like Dimitrov, who now are ‘safe'; and above all the Byzantine flattery of ‘the father of the peoples’ — all this squirming corruption sickens the heart. With what relief, then, do we turn to Kostov, who — even if he could not bring himself to see and openly admit the rottenness of the methods he had himself used and the politics he had himself furthered — at least refused to accept the final degradation offered in return for his life. He compels admiration. The words of his defence counsel (save the mark!) make his situation clear:

His fate is in his own hands. If from his last words you feel and understand, not from the content, not from the words, but from the tone of his words, of his confession, from the tremulousness of his voice that a completely sincere repentance has taken place in him, that he is wholly admitting his guilt, if you feel that this repentance is not only a mask and dissimulation, but his internal essence, this fact, which he is able to bring you with the sincerity of his repentance, is such that the court would have to take, is bound to take, into consideration. Such was also the warning [sic] of the president. (Ibid, p 572)

Does it need to be spelled out?

The stages leading to Kostov’s ‘liquidation’ are worth recording, for they follow in telescoped fashion the classic method of the Moscow Trials.

On 26-27 March 1949, the Central Committee of the party passed a resolution in which ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’ committed by Kostov are castigated in a relatively mild manner. On 4 April the official Bulgarian News Agency confirmed a report that he had been arrested, but on the 6th this was denied — he had only been removed from the Politbureau. On the 14th it was stated that he had been appointed Director of the National Library. On 27 May Kolarov, then Foreign Minister, explained that Kostov’s disgrace had been due to his mistrust of the USSR. Kolarov then warned all Bulgarian Communists to be on guard against every manifestation of anti-Sovietism, ‘the most heinous form of nationalist deviation’. Still nothing is said of his arrest. On 14 June Kostov’s expulsion from the party is announced, and at the same time it is stated that a report had been received from a Politbureau member, Mr Poptomov (later to become Minister of Foreign Affairs) on the ‘hostile and provocative activities of Tito’s clique against the Soviet Union, the People’s Democracy, and especially our country and the party’. The stage is being set, the props moved into position. On the 17th Kostov is deprived of his seat in the National Assembly — by a decision of the Communist Party Executive, on account of his ‘anti-Dimitrov and anti-Stalin activities’ (on 2 July it is announced that Dimitrov has died in the USSR). Only on 20 July was the world informed that Kostov had been arrested (on 25 June) on charges of economic sabotage, etc, etc. On 16 October the Yugoslav journal Borba predicted another treason trial in Sofia, with Kostov as star performer, but it was not until 30 November that this prediction was confirmed and the indictment against Kostov and ten others published. The trial opened on 7 December. Among the accused with Kostov were I Stefanov, ex-Minister of Finance, N Pavlov, former deputy Minister of Public Works, B Khristov, former Commercial Attaché in Moscow, B Panzov, former Counsellor at the Yugoslav Legation, and I Tutev, former Director of Foreign Trade. Following the first hint of Kostov’s fall from grace in the Central Committee resolution, we get the following political technique employed to prepare the atmosphere for his arrest and trial, and to prepare him for the preliminary interrogation that will take place in private.

After the relatively mild March resolution Kolarov presented a report to the Plenum of the Central Committee on 11-12 June. Since March, he told the comrades, ‘a number of new and very important elements in the anti-party activity of Kostov have been revealed'; there had been a general demand from party members for more stringent measures against him; it was evident that Kostov had become ‘a banner of international reaction’. Still it is mainly a question of his ‘mistakes’, although it is asserted that these mistakes caused great damage on the economic front and inflicted great harm to the reputation of the party, especially in the village. (The agricultural policy pursued by the government has led to widespread opposition in the villages; a temporary retreat is indicated, and also scapegoats required. This is another aspect of the trial in preparation.) The root of his error can be traced back to his ‘left-sectarianism’ years before the war, when he opposed any collaboration with the Agrarian Union and when he was on bad terms with the Dimitrov-Kolarov group within the party. ‘He attempted’, reports Kolarov, ‘by false information to mislead the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and to make use of its authority for raising his own prestige at the expense and prestige of the Central Committee of our party.’ (In other words, Kostov, aware of the manoeuvres to undermine his position in the party, appealed to Moscow. This is the normal procedure in cases of inner-party conflict. Whoever receives the support of Moscow is assured of victory, whoever is rejected by Moscow is doomed. Note that there is never any question of initiating a party discussion, calling District and Area Conferences, and finally a National Conference of the rank and file. Everything is decided at the top by a select handful of the élite; the most that the rank and file is permitted here is to vote for resolutions handed down to them and ‘discussed’ at carefully rigged meetings.)

Kolarov’s report continued: ‘... he criticised comrade Dimitrov most sharply, more sharply than was justified by facts or was judicious, for infringement of the collective principle in the leadership of the party.’ That means Kostov was accused, rightly or wrongly, of suggesting that Dimitrov was imposing his personal leadership on the party, which, since everyone was aware that Dimitrov was only the mouthpiece of Stalin, was an indirect attack on Stalin. The charge — whether he made it or not — is turned round against him: it is Kostov who seeks to impose his personal dictatorship on the party. From this it is apparent that a battle over the question of the party leadership was in process. Kostov had attacked the March resolution on the grounds that it was based on a Politbureau report reflecting only the ‘personal opinion of individual members of the Politbureau’. It was alleged that he had in this way sought to divide the party and create a faction in his favour. Failing to secure the support of Moscow, he had finally admitted his errors at the March meeting of the Central Committee (when the resolution condemning him was passed). But in this stifling atmosphere of mutual distrust and desperate intrigue in the struggle for survival, the fact that Kostov had even tried to defend himself meant that he was finished. His complete surrender was required as an example and a warning to others, and as an assurance to Moscow that the Bulgarian party was its utterly submissive tool. Kostov’s last declaration of submission was therefore ‘as insincere as all his preceding declarations. Far from disarming ideologically and politically before the party he only submitted to the inevitable.’ He voted for the Politbureau resolution submitted to the Central Committee, but this was simply a fresh attempt to deceive the party.

Thus Kostov was hustled down the slimy path to a traitor’s grave. He had already been forced to make admissions of ‘errors’. These had to be worked up and embroidered to a full confession. The political technique for the manufacture of confessions by party members is shown in the following further quotation from Kolarov’s June report:

For his disarming ideologically and politically before the party, his formal declarations and verbal acknowledgments of errors and guilt are far from being sufficient. After he has held such high posts in the party and the government, he should have concretely set forth all the harm he has caused to the party and state by his erroneous nationalistic conceptions, by his non-Bolshevik methods in the leadership of the party and the government of the state, and by his fractionism [sic — MIA] ... I have in mind the exceptionally important and decisive post of President of the Commission for Economic and Financial questions... [author’s emphasis]

The political recantation on the part of a party member already constitutes a certain ‘softening up’, a step towards a full confession of guilt. Recantation is confession in embryo, and each new recantation moves ever nearer to the inevitable end. This was how the Moscow Trial accused were prepared, and prepared themselves, for the final ‘conditioning’ of the preliminary interrogation. The process is well explained in the following words of Leon Trotsky:

The political recantations on the part of Oppositionists date back to 1924, and especially at the end of 1927. If we collate the texts of these recantations on the basis of the leading Soviet press... we obtain a geometric procession, the end terms of which are the nightmarish confessions... A political and psychological analysis of this accessible and unimpeachable material wholly and conclusively reveals the inquisitorial mechanics of the recantations. (The Case of Leon Trotsky (Secker and Warburg, 1938), p 486)

So Kostov, faced with a threat whose meaning he understood only too well, made his declarations of loyalty (to the Soviet Union, to the great Leader) and these ‘verbal acknowledgments of errors and guilt’. But that was only the first stage. It is now no longer a matter of errors and mistakes, but of criminal activity and guilt. Now details are required: he must ‘concretely set forth all the harm’ he has done, that is, he must accuse himself and others of working on behalf of the class enemy. The process by means of which Stalin assured his personal power in Russia must in the Iron Curtain countries be telescoped into the space of months. ‘Stringent measures’ have been demanded — ostensibly by the party members. But is it necessary to demonstrate the true source of this demand? Should there be any doubt about it, look at Kolarov’s own words: ‘The following question has also been raised almost everywhere: “Have Traicho Kostov’s errors no kinship with Titoism?"’

‘Almost everywhere’ is very good indeed!

Translate it into the language of real things and you get — ‘by Stalin’. In case there should be any mistake about it, Kolarov goes on:

There can be no doubt about kinship. Many party comrades ask: ‘Will not Traicho Kostov’s anti-Soviet conduct reflect badly on the attitude of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) towards our party?’ There is no doubt that it might have had a most fatal influence, had it not met with resolute resistance in the leadership of the party and among the members... The measures adopted against Traicho Kostov by the Central Committee manifested by the entire party have dispelled the last suspicions in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) with regard to our party and its leadership. [Author’s emphasis]

Could one ask for a more striking admission of the real, basic reason for handing over Kostov to the executioner? — the reason that accounts equally for the downfall of Rajk, of Xoxe, of Gomulka, and many other leading Communists.

Kostov’s ‘errors’ are of course traced back into the distant past. Back in 1933 he had pursued a ‘left-sectarian’ course, proclaiming the Agrarian Union the ‘vanguard of fascist counter-revolution’. It will puzzle the reader to hear Kolarov speak in this fashion after his party has hanged the Agrarian leader Petkov for being a fascist counter-revolutionary — or, more exactly, for not confessing to being one. But the intellectual level of Communist Party membership does not oblige the leaders to be reasonable. This rigmarole about ‘left-sectarianism’ and so on is for inner-party consumption; the members know that a ‘left-sectarian’ is way off the party line; they know that in the distant past the Comintern condemned the Bulgarian party leadership for ‘left-sectarian’ tactics (condemned them, of course, only after events had proved the tactics false), and they also know that ‘left-sectarianism’ merges very easily into Trotskyism, which means being a police spy and so forth. That was why Kostov, at the beginning of the trial, wanted to speak on the question, to refute the charge in the indictment that he had followed the ‘left-sectarianism’ course, or at least to prove that he had not been alone in following it and that the temporary collapse of the Bulgarian party had nothing to do with betrayal from within. One fully appreciates the president’s refusal to allow him to speak about it.

There is scarcely a single leading figure in any Communist party who could not be shown to have at some time or other strayed from the path of virtue, because the numerous twists and turns of policy dictated by the Kremlin always catches someone napping, and in any case they have necessarily been proponents of the old course and can, if political scapegoats are required to reaffirm the Leader’s infallibility, be shown as having been too enthusiastic in their advocacy of the outdated course. Hence the peculiar and nauseating sessions of ‘self-criticism’, at which leaders, in order to hang on to their positions, beat their breasts and humbly admit their sins against the Stalin ‘line’, which is, has been, and always will be infallible. And this self-criticism is itself only the recantation in miniature, just as the recantation is an embryonic confession. As one of the defence counsel put it: ‘After 9 September in our courtrooms was introduced a Fatherland Front Court tradition — self-criticism.’ (The Trial of Traicho Kostov, p 599) Between self-criticism and confession there is a difference only of degree. So we have Kolarov saying: ‘Instead of entering upon a true self-criticism of his weighty offences, he continued in his attempts to deceive the party.’

As an example of Kostov’s attempts to hoodwink the party he refers to the publication, as late as 9 March, in the official newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo, of an article by Kostov, in which he praises the economic achievements of the country and expresses heartfelt gratitude for Soviet aid. The Editorial Board of this paper had been caught napping. They paid the penalty for not having the true vulture sense, which smells the carrion even before the blow is struck. ‘It is regretted that this article was published’, Kolarov abjectly kow-tows to his masters, ‘through the insufficient vigilance of the editors of the party organ, for which penalties have been applied.’

Kostov twisted and turned in an effort to shake off the pursuing pack. He wrote two ‘repenting’ declarations to the Politbureau, but this body ‘did not enter in his game and did not print his declarations’. No, because they amounted, in spite of all admissions of error, to a political defence. They were not ‘honest confessions’. So Moscow gives the thumbs down sign and party democracy ensures that no avenue of defence shall be left open to him. He will not reach the ear of the membership. Henceforth everything he says in his defence, every concession he makes short of a ‘full and concrete confession’, is only an effort to delude the party. They want his blood. Kolarov’s report proceeds to its menacing conclusion:

Today his name is synonymous with everything hostile to our party... The miserable remnants of the defeated monarcho-fascist clique, all the reactionaries... [etc, etc] unite under him. We know the rebuttal of Traicho Kostov: In what am I to blame if they uplift me as a banner of reaction and proclaim me as leader of the enemies of the party? And who is to blame? Can it be that the guilt is with the party? [Author’s emphasis] The enemies have sensed in Traicho Kostov all the rottenness that he did not confess, and on which he did not choose to subject himself to sincere self-criticism.

He is speaking of Traicho Kostov, member of the party and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Sofia Youth organisation in 1920; participant in the 1923 battle; imprisoned from 1924 to 1929; in the USSR from 1929 to 1931, working as a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian party; back in Bulgaria in 1931 editing illegal party publications; appointed Political Secretary in 1940; a partisan in the anti-Nazi resistance, 1941-42; in 1942 arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment; freed by the Liberation, 1944; a member of the National Committee of the Fatherland Front, 1945-46; deputy Prime Minister in the second Kimon Georgiev Cabinet of 1946, and also in the first Dimitrov Cabinet of 1946-47, serving at times as acting Premier; President of the Commission for Economic and Financial Affairs; framer of the 1947 Constitution...

Together with Kostov onto the rubbish heap of discarded tools went a host of lesser figures, for the most part Communists of long standing, few of whom survived the investigation of their dossiers made by Moscow’s agents. V Chervenkov, the new leader appointed by Moscow, made the following remarkable admission in his report to the January 1950 Plenum of the Central Committee:

The enemy orientated himself in particular on former Trotskyists, rationalists, right oppositionists, left-sectarians and also on people who had resided many years in the Western capitalist countries. Such people must always be studied carefully. (For a Lasting Peace, 17 February 1950 — author’s emphasis)

Comment is superfluous. Let the functionaries in the Western Communist parties note the implication. (Some have recently done so. The defections in the Italian party are not the first of their kind; they will not be the last.)

In this same report Chervenkov asks the question already put to him by another: ‘How was it that in the economic ministries and organs, the anti-Soviet directives of Kostovism were circulated and that no signal of alarm came from the Minister of the Interior?’ The question has now become purely rhetorical. Everyone knows the answer. Anton Yugov, the Minister of the Interior, is also a traitor — away with him!

It is unnecessary to analyse in any great detail the so-called proofs of the charges against the accused men at the trial. We need only look at the ‘defence’ put up by Kostov’s counsel to understand the completely hopeless situation of the accused. Here are some points drawn from his speech for the defence (needless to say that neither he nor any of the other defence counsels have made any attempt to cross-examine throughout the whole of the case).

He begins with the extraordinary statement: ‘Comrades Supreme Judges! I must make a confession before you.’ (The Trial of Traicho Kostov, p 561 — the infection is catching!) He then proceeds to apologise for defending his client, goes into a legal explanation defending the right to defend, points out that, whatever one may say, it is after all part of the country’s ‘Dimitrov Constitution’. He then explains the difference between bourgeois defence counsels and those appointed by the People’s Democracies. ‘The court, the prosecution and the defence have one common goal; to establish the truth — the actual, real truth.’ (Ibid, p 563) Not just the truth, mark you, but the actual, the real truth. One could not find a more cynical confirmation of the assertion made and proved in the course of this study that the whole apparatus of the court works in harmony to a prearranged end. The only thing he forgets to mention is that the accused have also this ‘common goal’.

Speaking of the confessions he says:

At these disclosures one’s hair stands on end. This was my feeling. I trust that it was the feeling of every honest person following this trial. You recall, for instance, those two first-rate spies, both of them Serbian women... who under the cover of some confessions and self-criticism, almost attempted to deceive you [small wonder his hair stood on end]. You recall the other one too, Darina, the teacher who among other things when defining her identity stated that she was 35 years old while in reality she looked 45 or 50 (commotion).

No, gentle reader, this isn’t Alice in Wonderland — this is a courtroom in which men are on trial for their lives. What explanation can there possibly be for this nonsense? It appears at first glance utterly incredible that this man should only be able to find from ‘among other things’ that a woman looked older than she said she was! And the ‘commotion’ is not the invention of the author, it appears in the printed report. For this, it must be admitted, we can find no explanation, but for the defence counsel’s point we think there is an explanation. He was simply mortally afraid of mentioning any fact having real bearing on the case — so in his anxiety not to raise anything controversial he tells us that the hair stood on end because a woman deceived, or attempted to deceive, and but for his vigilance might have deceived, the court about her age!

So he rants on in a long diatribe about Anglo-American imperialism, carefully rehearsed from the columns of Pravda, arriving at the conclusion that:

The incriminating facts in this case can be completely explained from an international point of view, when compared with the facts revealed in Budapest at the trial of László Rajk and his accomplices. We find much in common, because the cast is the same: back-stage stand the same people... But in our trial the picture broadens. New figures enter... [among these he gives Cicmil and Vukmanovic] (pp 565-66)

The consciousness of his own ticklish situation has evidently confused him, for he flounders into a dangerous comparison of the trial with a stage performance and gives as new performers the names of two men who had already played their parts (off-stage) in the Rajk trial. He then goes on to explain what confessions are; they ‘are explanations which the defendant gives before the court concerning the facts brought up against him in the indictment’ (p 567 — author’s emphasis). The confessions of today are different, he says, from those of the Middle Ages:

... because today confession is considered as an ordinary proof, the veracity of which is to be checked by confronting it with other proof material. And especially at a trial where there are several defendants. If their explanations [sic] are not entirely identical, then the court discovers the truth by comparing, by confronting the explanations of one defendant with those of the other defendants. In the same way, the explanations of the defendants must be confronted also with the other oral or written proofs. (p 567)

And so that there shall be absolutely no doubt that his ‘argument’ on the value of confessions is taken word for word from Vyshinsky — the prosecutor at the Moscow Trials — this defence counsel then touches on the verbal duel between Shawcross and Vyshinsky at a UNO meeting, in order to defend Vyshinsky! (One must not let slip any opportunity to curry favour with the great and mighty.) After this Traicho Kostov’s counsel admits with a sigh of relief that he is:

... faced with this accumulated material of proof just as you are faced with it. The co-defendants, all of them, confirmed the indictment. They confirmed the written confessions of Traicho Kostov. The witnesses did the same. My task, as Counsel for the Defence, faced with this exposing material, becomes difficult. I must evaluate, confront, compare. I want to elucidate to myself the actual factual position. (p 569)

But instead of doing what he said he had to do — that is, ‘evaluate, confront, compare’ — he simply says in the very next sentence that ‘it is my duty to declare before you in accordance with my conscience [sic]... I admit that the facts of the indictment are proved’. Never once does this gentleman raise the not unimportant point that his client has refused to confirm his ‘written confession’. The only time there is even an indirect indication of this is when, in the statement we have already quoted, he pleads with his client to confess — ‘his fate is in his own hands’.

‘With this declaration’, he continues, ‘does my situation become entirely hopeless here? Am I entirely superfluous in this trial?’ And answering his own question he once again lets the cat out of the bag. ‘Defence is never superfluous, even in the most difficult situation. After all, it may have a moral meaning as well, even if it cannot yield procedural results.’ (pp 569-70) He might as well have said it in so many words: Defence is simply a formality; it cannot aid the accused, but it enables the responsible authorities to claim that they were tried according to the due process of law.

After a timid reference to the fact that Kostov had spoken strongly against Tito’s policy — which he then hastily counters by admitting that this could have been part of his tactic to deceive the party — he advances in his client’s ‘favour’ the fact that Tito had already denounced him as a spy before his arrest and trial! ‘You see, it is a fact, it is true that Tito himself attacks and exposes Traicho Kostov.’ The prosecution regards this as merely another attempt to cover up the deep-laid espionage plot between Tito and Kostov, but for the counsel for the defence this has another meaning. For him it is simply an exposure of Tito. For how could Tito know that Kostov was a spy if the agents of Western imperialism had not told him so? Thus Tito exposes his connections with Western imperialism! Kostov’s counsel does not, of course, mention Tito’s proofs of his charge against Kostov, because they are, if that is possible, even more airy than the Bulgarian government’s. The basis of Tito’s charge boiled down to no more than that Kostov had not been executed by the pre-Fatherland Front regime. The motive behind this denunciation has never come to light. It is highly probable that before the Yugoslav-Russian break the anti-Kostov faction in the Bulgarian party sought Tito’s assistance in preparing material for possible future use against Kostov. Shady manoeuvres of this kind are part and parcel of the technique of the inner-party struggle for supremacy. At that time Tito would have thought nothing of using these methods, although subsequent experience may have shown him that evil means cannot achieve good ends. The fact remains, however, that the Yugoslav government advanced no proofs in support of its denunciation and made no further reference to it when they saw that Kostov had refused to confess.

Kostov’s counsel for defence concluded his remarks with the significant admission that ‘the sentence of the court will also have a historical, educational and wholesale significance’ (p 572 — author’s emphasis).

The above is an excellent illustration of the role of the defence counsels at these so-called trials. Not once during the whole of the Kostov trial did any of them find the courage to ask a single question of their clients that might have raised a doubt as to the veracity of their statements, or might have in any way aided their clients to rebut the charges made against them. But then, why should they have done so? The accused did not want to rebut the charges. Everything was cut and dried. The ‘examinations’ did not for the most part take place on the basis of question and answer but consisted of long propaganda speeches — in one instance occupying eleven consecutive pages of the report without a single question from anyone. And where questions were asked they were usually leading questions or quite obvious ‘cues’ for the next spate of propaganda.

It is interesting here to recall that when Georgi Dimitrov was before the Nazi court in Leipzig in the ‘Reichstag Fire Trial’ he made much of the refusal of the authorities to allow him counsel of his own choosing. ‘I recall that all the candidates proposed by me (the counsel Dechev, Giafferi, Campinchi, Torrez, Grigorov, Leo Gallagher of America and Dr Lehmann of Saarbrücken) were one after another eliminated by the Imperial Court on one pretext or another...’ (Georgi Dimitrov: A Short Biographical Sketch (Sofia, 1948), p 58) (By a curious twist of fate, one of the lawyers cited by Dimitrov was later to be refused an entry visa by the Rumanian People’s Democracy when he desired to defend Gheorghe Maniu — see Chapter X.) The issue here raised by Dimitrov, and made the utmost of by Communist propagandists all over the world, applies with equal force to East European postwar trials even although the accused were not, like him, in a position to raise the demand for counsel independent of the government. And, as we shall see in the next two chapters, where such a demand was raised the reply was no different from that given by the Nazi court.

* * *

Mr DN Pritt, who has appointed himself chief defender of these propaganda trials, said in a broadcast by the BBC that: ‘Where deep feelings are aroused, naturally or artificially, it is not the best atmosphere for judicial objectivity.’ (The Listener, 27 July 1950) But Mr Pritt was here being sweetly reasonable about the trial of Dr Emil Fuchs, the atomic spy.

He has at no time suggested that this same consideration might also apply to the Moscow Trials or Eastern European trials, notorious for their artificially worked-up atmosphere against the accused. Only someone deliberately shutting his eyes to the facts could make a comparison between the atmosphere in this country at the time of the Fuchs trial and the atmosphere that invariably surrounds the confession trials. Thus in the trial of Kostov even his refusal to confess was made to appear as confirmation of his guilt. And not only was this so in Bulgaria. Newspapers like the Czechoslovak Lidové Noviny (8 December 1949) tried at first to conceal the fact that he had pleaded not guilty, by saying: ‘Kostov avoided the main point of the indictment, as the presiding judge had often to admonish him to speak to the point.’ He ‘attempted to deny’, says this paper, referring to his point-blank denial. When the truth could no longer be concealed there was a concerted howl about Kostov’s ‘impudence’, his ‘insolence’ and so forth. The Hungarian Szabad Nép of 9 December 1949 offers us another fine example of honest reporting:

Kostov made impudent denials; he avoided referring to his own written deposition and did not give straight answers! ... When he got mixed up in his denials he tried to get out of the mess by fresh false statements. ... Kostov further described how he was organised by the British espionage service in 1942.

During the course of the trial the official Soviet paper Pravda carried a dainty morsel entitled ‘The Vermin Squirms’, by special correspondent P Golubev, in which Kostov’s refusal to accuse himself becomes his ‘insolent and vulpine evasions’. He ‘set himself the task of confusing the court by every method’. The article was obligingly broadcast by the Sofia radio on 9 December. This was the first open admission in Bulgaria that Kostov had pleaded not guilty. Among other points made in this broadcast was the following:

From his very first words it became clear that the court was faced with a shrewd, experienced and determined enemy aiming at confusing the court in all ways, diverting attention from the essence of the matter and averting the blow... His lying distortions and attempts to deny his earlier confessions have caused a wave of indignation among those present at the trial.

One could continue citing this kind of thing at great length, but this is enough to convince a normally intelligent person — if not Mr Pritt — that the atmosphere surrounding this trial was no more conducive to ‘judicial objectivity’ than any of its counterparts behind the Iron Curtain.

The ‘judicial objectivity’ of the court itself is made clear from its refusal to take any notice of the US Minister Mr Heath’s denial that he had, as the indictment charged, visited Kostov in 1947. Even had Mr Heath visited Kostov at that time it by no means necessarily follows that there was anything criminal in the visit. But if it were admitted, as Mr Heath categorically stated, that he had not seen Kostov at that — or any other — time, the prosecution would have had no opportunity of embroidering the ‘visit’ to suit a prearranged purpose of the trial. Mr Heath went to see Professor Kamenov (Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) on 3 December, and drew his attention to the fact that the Bulgarian press was repeating the allegations made in the indictment, which he, Mr Heath, had categorically denied. Professor Kamenov promised to see if corrective action could be taken. But the Bulgarian authorities refused to publish the following press statement issued by the US State Department on 1 December 1949:

From the date of his [Heath’s] arrival in Bulgaria in October 1947 to the present he has never had an interview of any kind with Traicho Kostov. In fact he has never exchanged a single word, oral or written, with him. This single fact affords ample basis for judging the veracity of the indictment.

The refusal of the Bulgarian government to allow the Bulgarian press to publish this is by itself sufficient demonstration of the ‘judicial objectivity’ of the whole trial.

Kostov stuck to his guns to the last. In his final plea he said: ‘I consider it the duty of my conscience to declare to the court and through it to Bulgarian public opinion, that I have never been at the service of British Intelligence, that I have never taken part in the criminal conspiratory plans of Tito and his clique...’

According to the printed report that was as far as they allowed him to go. The president interrupts ‘What do you want of the court?’

Kostov: ‘... that I have always had an attitude....’

Again the president interrupts him: ‘What do you want of the court?’

Kostov tries to go on: ‘... of respect and esteem for the Soviet Union.’

It is pitiful. What did he want of the court? Justice?

* * *

Kostov was sentenced to death. The others, who pleaded guilty on all counts, got off with more or less lengthy prison sentences. Back in the cells the same thing happened to him as to Petkov, resulting in a plea for mercy:

I plead guilty to the accusations brought before the court and fully confirm the depositions written in my own hand during the inquiry.

Realising barely at the last moment... regretting sincerely this conduct of mine which was a result of extremely excited nerves and the morbid self-love of an intellectual... I beg you to revoke the death sentence... and to commute it to close confinement for life.

They had to print it in facsimile — just to ‘prove’ it was ‘genuine’. But the Kremlin kept its thumbs down.

God knows what he suffered, morally and physically, before they strangled him to death.

Notes

1. An article in Rabotnichesko Delo, published before the trial opened, made an undisguised acknowledgment of its political purpose: ‘The indictment is a powerful weapon in the hands of the Fatherland Front during the election campaign. All the data in the indictment must be conveyed down to the last citizen in the last rural hamlet. The country must manifest its unity in the Fatherland Front by a great election victory on 18 December which will close the lips of the slanderers in Belgrade and the Voice of America.’

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter IX: America and Britain in the Dock

Since over all these trials loomed the sinister shadow of Anglo-American imperialism, it must have often occurred to the producers that the cast of players assembled was incomplete. What an excellent stroke it would be if an American or an Englishman could be induced to play the part of spy in one of these shows! Representatives of every shade of opinion opposed to Soviet policy had recited their set pieces, but so far no genuine citizen of America or Britain had been found willing to beat his breast in public. Realising the educational value such confessions would have, the organisers looked around for suitable performers. But they searched for some time without finding the right material. British and American citizens were arrested, questioned for more or less lengthy periods (for instance, in the case of Mr Jacobson, US director of the American Joint Distribution Company, for as long as twenty hours without a break), found unsuitable, released and ordered out of the country. The most noteworthy example of this activity was the arrest of two employees of the oil company known as MAORT, in Hungary. These two men were Paul Ruedemann and George Bannantine, American citizens, respectively president and vice-president of the company, which was formerly American owned. They were arrested on 18 September 1948, after Hungarian employees under arrest had been ‘persuaded’ to make statements involving them in sabotage. Ruedemann and Bannantine, held incommunicado, were interrogated separately, shown the incriminating depositions of the Hungarians, and threatened with dire consequences if they refused to admit ‘the truth’. They took these threats sufficiently seriously to sign statements admitting that oil production had been deliberately retarded out of ‘political considerations’. However, no trial resulted. The charges could not be expanded to include espionage as well as sabotage, and the Hungarian authorities were not at all sure that these two men would adhere to their ‘confessions’ in a public trial. So they contented themselves with making what propaganda use they could of the statements extorted from them.

On 17 October the US Department of State issued a bulletin in which it was stated that:

With regard to the so-called ‘confessions’ which have been attributed to them by the Hungarian authorities, Mr Ruedemann and Mr Bannantine have affirmed that these statements were, in fact, prepared by the Hungarian police, that the contents of the documents are wholly false and that they copied and signed these ‘confessions’ only under duress. The two men were placed separately in solitary confinement in underground cells for the first four days and were subjected to long periods of questioning at all hours of the day and night. On various occasions they were required to stand with their faces against the wall and arms upraised until they collapsed. During this time, they were permitted very little food and drink.

These men were subjected to part of the technique now familiar to the reader. The treatment was of short duration, the interrogators apparently being satisfied that they could not get any more out of Ruedemann and Bannantine. The whole affair was in the nature of a try-out (the facsimile reproduction of their confessions contains a number of elementary mistakes in English — see Report of the Hungarian Ministry of Home Affairs on the MAORI Sabotage, Budapest, 1948). The difficulties confronting the stage managers when handling citizens of the West will be appreciated if one remembers that such persons have a government behind them concerned with their welfare, that it is not usually possible to bring economic pressure to bear on them or to threaten reprisals against their families. The field of selection — so vital in these affairs — is thus greatly narrowed. The number of Westerners living in the countries concerned is small in the first place, and in the second place few, if any, have the right background, that would give a charge of espionage a certain plausibility, and also the personal circumstances that would make it possible to bring all the pressures to bear on them. It was therefore no easy matter to find one or two persons with all the right qualifications; one essential qualification being intimate friendship with someone whom the authorities could handle in any way they liked.

After many tentative efforts and failures two suitable actors were at last found in Hungary. Robert Vogeler, 38-year-old employee of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, an American citizen; and Edgar Sanders, employee of this firm, a British citizen, born in Leningrad [sic — MIA] in 1906, were arrested on 18 and 21 November 1949, respectively. Long and careful study of the personalities of these two men, and of their relations with Hungarian citizens then in the hands of the secret police, had convinced the authorities that they could be broken. And even if they should prove wrong in their calculation, no particular harm would have been done by these arrests, since they had arrested others before and then released them without evoking any reactions that they were not prepared to risk. As events showed, however, they had not calculated incorrectly: the men could be broken.

Efforts made by both the British and US governments to have access to the imprisoned men were unsuccessful. On behalf of Sanders the British government drew attention to the ‘widely accepted principle that where a foreign national is arrested it is an obligation upon the government of the arresting country to grant him facilities of access’ to his consular authorities (The Times, 17 February 1950). So seriously did the British government view this matter that it was prepared to suspend trade negotiations with Hungary until its demand had been acceded to. On 19 December trade negotiations were therefore suspended. In a letter dated 24 November, Mr Berei, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had promised that he would give his close attention to the case, and that ‘when the visit of His Majesty’s Consul to Mr Sanders will be possible you will be informed without delay’. But such a visit never became possible. The same attitude was adopted to a similar demand made on behalf of Vogeler by the US government. In his case also no contact with the outside world was permitted. Every request to see them was refused on one pretext or another. Even when the preliminary interrogation had terminated, with the publication of the indictment, the situation remained unaltered. Both Sanders and Vogeler were thus held incommunicado for a period of some eighty days. This attitude of the Hungarian authorities adds one more weighty piece of evidence to that already advanced in proof of the fact that a special technique is employed to extort confessions and maintain the accused in the right frame of mind. Their anxiety lest anything should interfere with the ‘conditioning’ of Sanders and Vogeler is quite understandable.

On 25 December it was announced that Vogeler, Sanders and fourteen Hungarian citizens were being held on charges of forming ‘a large-scale espionage organisation’. Of the fourteen Hungarians, however, only five were due to appear as accused; the remaining nine were scheduled for the role of witnesses.

The British and American governments now made strenuous efforts to obtain the Hungarian government’s permission for independent lawyers to attend the trial on behalf of Sanders and Vogeler. Again they met with refusal. And again the attitude of the Hungarian authorities confirms our argument that a confession show cannot be properly staged without the full and harmonious cooperation of all members of the court, working together for a common purpose in accordance with a prearranged plan of action.

This question of independent counsel for the defence is worth dwelling on at some length, because in the other trials, where only subjects of the country concerned were on trial, it could not possibly arise in such an acute form as in the Sanders-Vogeler trial. The great anxiety displayed by the Hungarian government over this matter disclosed in a direct fashion what hitherto had been to some extent camouflaged, although it is true clumsily and not very effectively: that the organisers of these spectacles cannot afford to have any ‘uninitiated’ person present who might jeopardise the smooth running of the show.

An entry visa for a British counsel was refused by Mr Berei. Vogeler’s employers also retained a lawyer to act for him, but he, too, was refused a visa. This refusal to allow an independent lawyer even to appear in the courtroom contrasts unfavourably even with the attitude of the Nazi authorities on the occasion of the Reichstag Fire Trial, at which the Bulgarian Communist, Georgi Dimitrov, was the chief defendant. Dimitrov’s protest against the refusal to allow him foreign counsel of his own choosing has already been mentioned in a previous chapter. His defendants outside Germany at that time — among whom his fellow Communists were not the least vocal — quite rightly made considerable play with this, justifiably characterising it as a very telling admission of the weakness of the Nazi case against Dimitrov and his co-defendants. However, although continuing to adhere to the letter of the law in respect of counsel for the defence, the Nazis did yield to the extent of allowing non-Nazi lawyers to be present at the trial, to send communications to the court and to publish communications. The Hungarian authorities, however, would not relax their ruling even to this extent, because they were afraid of the effect the presence of such lawyers might have had upon Sanders and Vogeler.

The US State Department made the following comments on this aspect of the matter:

In the light of the theory and practice of justice which now prevail in Hungary, as well as of the duties towards the Communist regime now imposed on Hungarian lawyers and judges, there is grave doubt that, in the absence of American legal counsel, Mr Vogeler will be properly defended and his right adequately safeguarded by a Hungarian lawyer. [Mutatis mutandis, the same argument used in regard to Dimitrov’s situation at the Reichstag Fire Trial — author.]

Moreover, in view of Mr Vogeler’s present situation and the treatment experienced by other American citizens who have been detained by the Hungarian police, there is serious doubt that he is in a position to make free choice of Hungarian legal counsel for his defence...

Further, in United States courts the Constitution is interpreted to permit choice of counsel by the accused even outside of the bar of jurisdiction. It is in accordance with international comity, especially where the defence of basic human rights may be involved, for the court to permit a foreign lawyer to appear pro hac vice...

The government and people of the US are deeply concerned and indignant at the intolerable attitude and behaviour of the Hungarian government in the case of Mr Vogeler. They take an increasingly serious view of the treatment of this American citizen, wherein the Hungarian government has violated both its specific international obligation and generally accepted principles of humanity. (US Information Service, 16 February 1950)

The trial opened on 17 February 1950. All the accused pleaded guilty to having, ‘on the instructions of the intelligence service of the US, established a network of spies operating against the Hungarian People’s Republic’ and carrying out ‘acts of sabotage against the Hungarian planned economy’ (R Vogeler, E Sanders and their Accomplices before the Criminal Court (Budapest, 1950), p 8).

In these trials no one is charged with espionage alone; the accused always do a little sabotaging on the side, though this must make exposure almost inevitable. Thus they are not only spies, but always very stupid ones into the bargain. However strange this may appear, there is an explanation for it: the authorities concerned cannot let slip any opportunity to blame others for economic shortcomings.

It is here appropriate to recall the words of the defence counsel of one of the British engineers in the Metro-Vickers Trial in Russia in 1933. Speaking on the meaning of espionage, he said ‘what we in our country, in the land of planned economy, in the country of state trade, call economic espionage is, in the capitalist world... the ordinary, everyday, perfectly usual phenomenon of the competitive struggle within capitalist economy’. In the Iron Curtain countries the distinction between ‘economic’ espionage and espionage has been entirely obliterated. Espionage is nowadays so elastically interpreted there that the word ‘information’ is often used as a synonym. The following examples, taken from trial reports, of what is now regarded as spying, well illustrate this point:

* The number of patients in hospitals.

* The number of pupils in schools.

* Profit and loss account of an enterprise.

* All ‘concrete’ facts relating to commercial affairs with foreign countries (especially with the USSR).

* Information about Zionist organisations.

* State of mind of minorities.

* Events in connection with the Orthodox, Catholic and Uniate churches.

* Information on trade union activity.

* Mood of the population.

* Information published in a state Gazette (on sale to the public).

* Communist Party preparations for forthcoming elections.

It would be therefore no surprise to learn (the nerves of the authorities in these countries have become so jumpy) that disclosure of an outbreak of influenza is regarded as giving espionage information to the enemy.

With the above conception of what constitutes spying, it is not difficult to see how Sanders and Vogeler were, during the three months of ‘conditioning’, induced to accept their inquisitors’ viewpoint of their activities in Hungary, and confess to being spies. It is in this respect significant that Sanders was even made to describe his perfectly legitimate work as a member of the Allied Control Commission as espionage. Nothing better illustrates the weakness of the case against Sanders. Why did the Hungarian government feel it necessary to attempt to bolster up the case with such obviously irrelevant material? As pointed out by Major-General (retired) OP Edgecumbe, former British Commissioner of the Control Commission in Hungary:

Sanders was one of my staff officers with the British element of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary during the armistice period. He belonged to the military section of my mission, and it is untrue that his work was to organise espionage. One of the principal duties of the military section was to collect information for me regarding the Hungarian armed forces and also about the general situation throughout the country. This was necessary in order that I might endeavour to cooperate with the Russian and American elements of the Control Commission in ensuring that the terms of the armistice were being carried out... This whole matter in simplified form resolves itself into the question of ‘information’ as opposed to illegal ‘espionage’. It can be easily appreciated how a defendant accused of the latter can be ‘persuaded’ by prolonged police interrogation to admit that the seeking of information was ‘espionage’. (Letter, The Times, 20 February 1950)

A further important statement has been made by Mr JS Moggridge, who was Administrative Officer of the British Council in Budapest from October 1946 to August 1947. Writing to The Times newspaper he said:

In your story of the trial of Edgar Sanders... you quote Zoltán Radó, one of the Hungarian accused, as saying that he used to hand reports on political and economic matters to a Mr BS Mowbridge of the British Council... From the similarity of this name to my own, I have little doubt that I am the person referred to. I met Edgar Sanders a number of times in a social way, but I did not know him well enough to vouch for him. But I can state that I myself had absolutely no connection with intelligence or espionage of any kind; that nobody called Zoltán Radó ever had any dealings with me at all; and that statements attributed to him are the wildest fabrications. Is it not more than probable that the charges against Sanders and his fellow ‘spies’ are equally baseless? I cannot help feeling that had I still been in Budapest, I, instead of the unfortunate Sanders, might now have been suffering imprisonment and indignities at the hands of the Communist Hungarian police...

Would the court have accepted a request, had an independent foreign counsel been there to make it, that a duly notarised statement of Mr Mowbridge to this effect be admitted as evidence? To pose the question is to answer it.

Details of the ‘evidence’ relating to sabotage need not detain us. The basis of this charge was simply the not unnatural fact that the American owners of the concern for which Vogeler and Sanders worked did not view with a kindly eye the Hungarian government’s proposals with regard to its future. Since nationalisation could be foreseen as inevitable, it is very probable that the American owners were anxious to get all they could out of the business beforehand. The Sanders-Vogeler trial was in part used by the Hungarian government to justify nationalisation of all foreign-owned concerns.

Nationalisation of enterprises in the ownership of foreign capitalists is vitally important in the interest of the undisturbed development of our nationalised socialist industry. We must prevent these enterprises being used for undermining activity, spying and sabotage directed against our People’s Democracy.

Said Mr Gero, Minister of State Planning (speech of 28 December 1949). On 29 December a decree was passed nationalising all enterprises employing ten or more workers, or having foreign capital. The decree excluded enterprises handed over to a foreign country under the Peace Treaty (thus safeguarding the interests of the Soviet Union). Previous nationalisation measures had excluded foreign enterprises from their scope, but it was now made clear, said Gero, that most of these had been used by foreign imperialists ‘to mask their spy organisations and sabotage activities’. Gero’s words also show that the case against the accused had been prejudged. However, in regard to Vogeler’s participation in sabotage, his defence counsel was compelled to admit that not even ‘confession proofs’ had been advanced by the prosecution. Yet Vogeler was regarded — as his higher sentence showed — as the real ringleader, to whom Sanders was subordinate. Since the sabotage charge was, so far as Sanders and Vogeler were concerned, something in the nature of a little additional ballast, the admission of Vogeler’s defence counsel made no difference to the final issue, and, on the other hand, it gave him a chance of saying something in his client’s favour without running any risk.

The espionage case against Sanders and Vogeler had no other real basis than their confession. As Sanders’ defence counsel said, ‘his sincere confession including every detail of the case... sincerely exposed not only his own acts, but, one could say, the whole complex of the case’ (Trial report, p 265). This is advanced as a mitigating circumstance and is not, of course, meant as any reflection upon the strength of the case for the prosecution. Vogeler’s ‘contrite confession’ and his ‘manly statement which... showed sincere repentance’ were also pleaded in mitigation of his ‘criminal act’. Thus the usual Moscow Trial model was faithfully copied.

Had these two men withdrawn the depositions extorted from them during the preliminary interrogations and pleaded not guilty, there would have remained only the testimony of witnesses who had themselves confessed, accusing themselves in accusing others. Far from doing this, however, they acted as all accused always do in these trials (with the few exceptions we have noted). To all outward appearance calm and composed, both Sanders and Vogeler acted in a completely unnatural way. It was not simply that they were peculiarly eager to convict themselves, but that they were in addition so unhesitatingly willing to support the propaganda purpose of the trial. Into the recital of their ‘crimes’ they dragged the names of everyone they could think of from among the personnel of the British and US legations in Budapest, from the directing personnel of the company that employed them, and from the British Council, etc, picturing all these people as subordinate instruments of the British and US intelligence services. The company for which they worked was according to them no more than a cover for espionage; the entire vast industrial enterprise had its policy dictated by the US General Staff. The only occasion on which either of them made any attempt to spare anyone was when Vogeler said that the Countess Edina Dory (one of the Hungarian accused) had played only a minor role in the espionage network.

Did this outward composure of theirs correspond with their inner feelings? One may be permitted to doubt it very strongly. It is unreasonable to suppose that these two men suffered no inner turmoil in such circumstances. In the case of Sanders, at any rate, the officially published report offers evidence, in the frequent incoherence of his sentences, of an inner conflict. The very calm and composure with which they both rejected everything that had made them what they were, with which they both damned the policies of their countries’ governments and dragged the names of their friends and associates in the mud, suggests that they were repeating parts learned by heart. The very language used by Sanders is out of character with the picture of him presented by the prosecution. He uses phrases one would expect to hear from the lips of a Stalinist propagandist, but not from the lips of a British spy. He speaks of ‘right-wing reactionary parties’, of ‘the democratic government as led by the Communists’, of the ‘plot in 1947 against the republic’, of the ‘Anglo-American policy of war’. Vogeler also says that ‘our policy was to assist the reactionary elements’, speaks of America’s ‘aggressive policy’, and in his final plea expresses his ‘sincere sorrow for the subversive activities’ he had carried on, ‘especially as I was sent from a big country, America, to Hungary, a small country, to interfere and undermine its efforts in rebuilding and rehabilitating itself from the effects of war’. All this is quite out of character; it in no way corresponds with the role they allegedly had in Hungary. The convictions of a lifetime are not fundamentally altered in three months of ‘political schooling’. On the other hand, in those three months a man can be taught to play a part.

Remember that for three months these two men were held in complete isolation from the outside world. They would at first try to contact the representatives of their governments; the Hungarian authorities would ostensibly forward these requests, but in fact do nothing about them, and then they would inform the prisoners that their governments were not interested, had washed their hands of them, that they did not want to recognise spies that had been exposed. Sanders and Vogeler would have no way of knowing that this was a lie. And when they at last entered the court-room there would be no counsel from abroad to let them know that this was not true, that on the contrary the British and American governments were making every effort on their behalf. Day after day it had been hammered into them that they were without a friend in the world to whom they could turn for aid. They were admittedly hostile to the Communist regime, by the nature of their work they were the servants of Big Business, they naturally associated with members of the dispossessed class in Hungary, they had during the war worked for Army intelligence, they had welcomed every sign of opposition to the new regime in Hungary, passed on gossip to others and so forth... Out of this general background material a picture of a vast espionage network is somehow put together by the introduction, for example, of the following kind of material:

Prosecutor [says to Sanders]: ‘In your statement you made mention of the fact that at Lieutenant-Colonel Bisdee’s office you saw a map.’

Sanders: ‘Quite right.’

Prosecutor: ‘What was the purpose of those markings on the map which you mentioned you had seen?’

Sanders: ‘Well, at that time the Anglo-American policy was, as I said before, it was a policy of war and for that purpose naturally they wanted to find out the leading places such as telephone exchanges and radio transmitters for bombing raids. (Trial report, p 110)

The map in question was one that hung in Wing-Commander Bisdee’s office in full view of anyone entering it, including the Hungarian charwoman who came to clean it every morning. It was marked to show those air-lines open and those prohibited to civil aircraft. But the prosecutor wanted something more sinister than this — so...

Prosecutor: ‘How were these targets which were to be bombed, marked?’

Sanders: ‘He was marking them with... (omission or hesitation points in the report) some of them which I saw had rings round them with a blue pencil and some of them had little flags on them. What the difference was I am afraid I don’t know.’

It is a simple matter to deduce from the above how the pieces are selected and fitted together. No matter how normal and innocent an incident may be, it can be given the interpretation required by the prosecution. (There was a map in his office, wasn’t there? — they would know this from the charwomen or someone else who had had occasion to go to the office in question. Bisdee was marking the map, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he marking bombing targets? But he could have been doing this, couldn’t he? How do you know he wasn’t? Did he tell you he wasn’t? Well, then, he could have been doing that, couldn’t he?) It all sounds so childish, so easy to refute, to withstand... but imagine it going on for five hours, ten hours, twenty hours... and day after day... The horrible thing about this interrogation technique is that it does not aim at separating the innocent from the guilty, it aims at manufacturing guilt.

The Hungarian press and radio were instructed to soft-pedal propaganda against the accused during the trial, as a small concession to judicial appearances, since there were two foreigners on trial. None the less, on the very day the trial opened, Szabad Nép announced that: ‘... all of them are guilty of espionage and have committed acts of sabotage against the Hungarian People’s Republic.’ The case against the accused was as usual proved before they stood trial. An excellent appreciation of how the case was built up out of the flimsiest of materials will be gained from the following extracts from the testimony of the ‘witness’ Mrs György Zádor, who worked as secretary in the Budapest office of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, and who is described with unconscious irony as ‘not prejudiced’, in spite of the fact that her testimony could have been used, had the authorities so desired, to place her in the dock with the accused.

Asked if she happened to notice that Sanders and Vogeler were engaged in espionage, she replied: ‘In the course of my work in the office I soon became convinced that the American and British representatives succeeding each other used their activities concerning the business merely as a pretext to disguise their acts of espionage and sabotage.’ How did she so convince herself? The answer is given in the following exchange between Mrs Zádor and the president. The latter asks her: ‘Did you, for example, type reports on the capacity of Hungarian industrial plants, and the number of workers employed?’ And she replies: ‘Yes, I typed various espionage reports.’ [Author’s emphasis] This satisfies everyone concerned. All that Mrs Zádor is required to do is simply to put the adjective ‘espionage’ before the word ‘reports’, and the president turns with a smile of triumph towards the prosecutor whose works he is aiding, and the counsels for the defence throw up their hands in despair. Impossible to refute such solid evidence! After all, Mrs Zádor is an ‘unprejudiced witness’. What has she to gain by thus qualifying the reports as espionage reports? Nothing at all — except the approval of the authorities.

Then there was the matter of the sealed envelope given to Mrs Zádor by Vogeler in October 1949: ‘He pointed out to me that it contained some important material, and I was to keep it carefully. He added that if it was liable to get into the hands of the police or some other authority, I should destroy it.’ Vogeler is here made to behave like the villain of the piece in a cheap film, making quite sure that the not too intelligent audience realises that he is up to no good. After this the president’s next question — ‘Did he tell you what was in the envelope?’ — seems superfluous. However, it is all part of the script. No, she didn’t know then. But there is no need to worry; by hook or by crook the audience is going to learn from the lips of this ‘unprejudiced witness’ exactly what the envelope did contain. So the next extremely helpful series of questions is:

What happened to the envelope? Did it contain the layout of the Tungsram factory, that the American Air Attaché had given to Vogeler at the American legation with the request that he should mark on it the separate workshops of the factory? You say, you did not know what it contained?

Once more the final question appears a little unnecessary. Still, it must be borne in mind that the witness, however cooperative she may wish to be, might forget to mention certain things if not prompted beforehand. Mrs Zádor is undoubtedly grateful to the president for these ‘questions’, but for the time being she answers only the last one: she repeats that she did not know what was in the envelope. Then comes the following:

President: ‘Who else was there, when this happened?’

Mrs Zádor: ‘Edgar Sanders, too.’

President: ‘Was Imre Geiger also there?’ [Geiger was general manager of the firm and among those in the dock.]

Mrs Zádor: ‘He was not there at the time.’

President: ‘So he was not there when they handed you the envelope. Tell me, please, what happened to the envelope?’ [According to Vogeler’s testimony Geiger had been there when the envelope was handed over, but this contradiction, like all the others, is passed over in silence.]

Mrs Zádor: ‘According to the instructions I had received from Vogeler, when I heard of the arrest of Imre Geiger, I opened the envelope, and found in it a photostat copy showing the layout of the Tungsram factory.’

President: ‘Was that marked on it?’

Mrs Zádor: ‘"Tungsram” was marked on it.’

President: ‘What did you do then?’

Mrs Zádor: ‘I realised at once that it was an important proof of Vogeler’s espionage, and therefore I destroyed it. I noticed, however, that the print was made on unusually heavy paper of foreign make, and we did not have any similar photostatic copies in the Standard factory, so that Vogeler might possibly have received it from the American Legation.’

Upon which the president, anxious to display his impartiality, says: ‘All right, this is what you presume...’ And that concludes Mrs Zádor’s testimony on the ‘important proof of Vogeler’s espionage’.

Vogeler said that he received the photostat copy of the Tungsram plan in the US legation. He was asked by the Air Attaché, he said, to identify the individual buildings, but could not do so, as he had visited the factory only once. This does not say much for the abilities of this ‘trained specialist intelligence officer of the US armed forces’. Moreover, Vogeler had not toured this factory alone; Sanders, Geiger and a certain Cook had all been with him. Yet none of these expert observers had gained the slightest idea of the layout of the factory. In addition, it must be presumed that — if the factory was of military importance — its layout would be already known to the British, American and Russian elements of the Military Control Commission, who would have had ample opportunity and every right to inspect it thoroughly. Further, why did not Vogeler return the photostat to the US legation for safe keeping? Was it not a little rash for this highly experienced intelligence agent to give such an incriminating document to Mrs Zádor, with instructions that could only serve to arouse her suspicions? Such an action might perhaps be understood if Mrs Zádor had been regarded by Vogeler as a member of the ‘network’. But none of the three agents allegedly involved in this particular transaction testified that Mrs Zádor was ‘in the know’. Indeed, the only mention of her name comes from Vogeler, who testified that, on the occasion of a ‘secret conference’, they waited for Mrs Zádor to leave the room before they began to talk. So Vogeler gives this damning document — duly labelled so that there shall be no mistake about it — to someone not involved in the ‘network’, someone, moreover, whom he does not trust, and warns her in conspiratorial manner of the danger of its falling into police hands. And when Geiger is arrested on 10 November, Mrs Zádor does not discuss this serious development with Sanders (not arrested until the 21st), who is her boss, and who was present when the envelope was handed over. Nor does she simply destroy the envelope and contents as ‘instructed’, but first opens it, for the purpose of — noticing that the paper could have ‘possibly’ come from the American legation. And she does not then destroy it because Vogeler instructed her to do so, but because she ‘realised it was an important proof of Vogeler’s espionage’. In this matter her detective instinct was aided by the fact that someone had obligingly labelled the photostat ‘Tungsram’. And to make assurance double sure, the president was good enough to remind her of what the photostat was, where it had come from, and what it was required for.

It is on the basis of such evidence that two men are sentenced to death and others to long terms of imprisonment; and on the basis of laws passed by the ‘Fascist’ regime in 1930 and 1934. The Hungarian People’s Democracy found in this nothing inconsistent with their claim to have made a complete break with the evil past.

Among the accused — each separated from the other by an armed policeman — was a woman, the Countess Edina Dory, who had also been under arrest for three months, and whose chief crime appeared to be that she was a member of the former landed aristocracy. (Like the rest of the accused, Edina Dory had been spruced up for the trial; she had even been permitted a permanent wave.) All that the state prosecutor could say of her ‘espionage activities’ was that:

The information collected by her embraced the control of the data contained in the information obtained by Vogeler’s extensive network of spies. Edina Dory collected her data partly from conversations she overheard at the bar, partly from telephone conversations she listened to when working at the telephone exchange. (Ibid, p 241)

It is highly probable, although one cannot of course prove it, that she had been instructed by the Hungarian police to inform them of anything she might manage to pick up in the course of her work as a barmaid. She had, simply in order to live, been compelled to join the Communist Party. In staging their play it occurred to the authorities that she could usefully be rehearsed for a small part; all that was needed was to change matter round. Instead of the conversations overheard at the bar and when working at the telephone exchange being passed on to the police, they were passed on to Vogeler. The absurdity of her being able to ‘control data’ did not worry the stage managers. The relative lightness of her sentence showed that she was just thrown in as a makeweight, to provide a little additional colour as the ‘representative’ of the ‘former’ landowning class.

The trial resulted in death sentences for Imre Geiger and Zoltán Rádo; fifteen years’ penal servitude for Robert Vogeler; thirteen years for Edgar Sanders; ten years for Kelemen Domokos and Dr István Justh; and five years for the Countess Edina Dory.

On 27 April 1951, Robert Vogeler was released by the Hungarian government in consideration of some concessions by the US government — in effect he was ransomed, very largely as a result of the stubbornly persistent agitation of his wife, Lucile Vogeler. In a subsequently published account of his experiences (I Was Stalin’s Prisoner, Allen, London, 1952) he confirmed in minute detail the inquisitorial technique employed to force him to ‘confess’. His first interrogation lasted some sixty-five hours:

The toxins of fatigue [he wrote, p 141] are enough in themselves, I suspect, to account for my partial breakdown at the hands of No 1. Shortly before noon on Monday, 21 November 1949, I agreed to sign the fifth of the ‘confessions’ that he placed before me. It was so much less incriminating than the other four, which I had refused to sign, that it seemed to me, in my weakened state, to be hardly a confession at all.

He shows the important part played in this technique by the moral isolation of the prisoner. His inquisitors told him: ‘You've now been our prisoner for three days... So far, we haven’t been asked a single question by the American Legation...’ It was a deliberate lie, of course, and Vogeler did not believe it, but it sowed a tiny seed of doubt, which was its purpose. As the weeks and the months went by, the seed grew. ‘On the seventy-first day I surrendered to despair... Convinced at last that I had indeed been abandoned, I told No 2 that I would sign anything if he would only cease his merciless inquisition.’ (p 183)

After he had signed his final ‘full confession’ his diet immediately improved; he had entered on the ‘grooming stage’. Numerous rehearsals of the part he was to play were held, right up to the day before the trial. On occasions these rehearsals took the form of confrontations with the other accused, in order to ensure that there were no obvious contradictions between the confessions. Just before the trial Vogeler was told by one of the examining magistrates:

Your entire future will be determined by your behaviour at the trial. If you fail to answer the president’s questions in the proper spirit, you will be removed from the court-room and taken to a special hospital. There you will be given special treatment that will make you happy to come back and answer the president’s questions. But it will also make you a cripple for life. (p 192)

Vogeler’s balanced and objective account of his treatment at the hands of the Hungarian inquisition adds one more solid piece of evidence to that which we have here assembled. Those who reject the evidence of one man as insufficient proof that the Soviet world has revived in modern guise the barbarous Inquisition of the Dark Ages cannot reject the mass of cumulative evidence adduced in this book without convicting themselves of complete contempt for truth.

Robert Vogeler was released; the Englishman, Edgar Sanders, remains in prison although innocent of the crimes with which he was charged. It will perhaps seem to many strange, to put it mildly, that in these circumstances other citizens of this country should have attended a so-called Economic Conference in Moscow one ostensible purpose of which was to increase trade between this country and Hungary. There are apparently still Englishmen eager to ‘make peace with oppression’.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter X: The ‘Chistka’ Continues

The confession trials in Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia are outstanding examples of the use of the Moscow technique for the purpose of intimidation, propaganda and the legal assassination or other effective removal from politics of all who constituted a danger to the Russification of the Eastern European countries. It is hardly necessary to insist on the centrally directed nature of this campaign. As early as June 1945 Polish leaders representing various political parties were lured by false promises on to Soviet soil, there arrested, subjected to the interrogation technique and put on trial for directing ‘subversive activities against the Red Army and the Soviet Union, the perpetration of terroristic acts... the organisation of sabotage’ and so forth (Trial of the Polish Diversionists, Hutchinson, 1945). The testimony of one of the accused, Zbigniew Stypulkowski, regarding the ‘preliminary examination’ has already been quoted in an earlier chapter. The international situation at that time, the fact that Russia was not then prepared to reveal its final aims in Poland, created a less unfavourable atmosphere for the accused than has since been the case, and nearly all of them made reservations in pleading guilty to part of the charges, while one, Stypulkowski, pleaded not guilty. The accused did not lend themselves wholeheartedly to the propaganda requirements of the Soviet government, and the report of the trial gives a quite unusual impression of solidarity between them. All these accused had had long and recent experience of underground activity against the Nazis and it is obvious from the report that they were too tough, and too conscious of a common loyalty, to be completely broken in the time at the disposal of the examiners, which was limited by considerations arising from international negotiations then proceeding. This trial was therefore not a really finished example of a confession trial, although the methods employed were the same as in all other instances, just as was the aim pursued. [1]

In Rumania the Stalinist leader Gheorghiu-Dej gave a further indication of the common inspiration of this campaign. Returning from a visit to Sofia, he made a speech to his followers (17 July 1947), in the course of which he said:

We also decided at Sofia to intensify our fight against the enemies of democracy and for the liquidation of the remnants of fascism and of reactionary forces — both in Bulgaria and Rumania... The arrest of Maniu is not enough. We must strike mercilessly at all those who rallied round the flag of Maniu. The National Peasant Party, led by the traitor Maniu, must be dissolved and this step will be taken in accordance with the obligations to which Rumania affixed her signature in Paris.

(In passing, it may be suggested that Western diplomats were a little naive in not defining what was meant by ‘fascist’ or ‘reactionary’, or at least in not laying down what parties could not be so called.)

When Gheorghiu-Dej visited Sofia, Petkov was under arrest and awaiting trial. In Rumania Maniu had also been arrested; he was in due course tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. At his trial he was defended by one of his political adversaries, a Mr Paraschivescu-Balaceanu, founder of a Stalinist ‘front’ organisation, the National Popular Party (since dissolved). Whether Maniu was guilty or not of any of the charges against him, the authorities were as usual taking no chances. The well-known French lawyer Giafferi offered to defend Maniu, as he had once offered to defend Dimitrov at the Leipzig Trial, but he was refused a visa. Commenting on the case in a letter to the Rumanian Legation in Paris, M Giafferi wrote:

Maniu was given four days to study his dossier. This, you say, is a legal term; very well; but why not mention that this dossier consisted of eighteen volumes! I quote from my source, a telegram by France-Presse, no 90, dated 26 October. Maniu requests the time needed for the examination of such a bulky file. He was granted four days. This is a mockery... You say that five among the accused have themselves selected the attorneys for their defence. This is true: five out of fifteen. And even among these five, there was a son or a brother who did not hesitate to put on the robe on behalf of his relative. Must one require so much courage in the exercise of our ministry? And what is one to think of an environment where the fulfilment of the simplest of duties becomes an heroic act? Five of the fifteen. The other accused are compelled to accept defence attorneys appointed ex-officio because my colleagues in Bucharest felt repugnance [towards the accused]. It is you who pronounce this word. I pity those who agreed to invoke it as an excuse... You invoke reasons of state... but do not forget that in France the attorneys for the defence of Louis XVI were Malesherbes and Déséze and that during the most tragic hours of the Terror there was not a single accused who could not find a defender freely chosen and who was not able to speak freely.

The ‘son or brother’ above referred to was a Mr G Serdici, who defended his father. He was later compelled to flee from Rumania. Of his father’s confession at the trial he said:

His astounding confessions would have been undoubtedly better understood by you if you had been subjected yourself to examination by the MVD agents known at the Rumanian Security Police under the name of Petrescu and Misha. It was these two who were charged with the examination of Mr Maniu and my father... I would also remind you that the same examining agents were seated at the stenographers’ table during the trial, permanently facing the accused...

This Petrescu mentioned by Serdici was a war-time director of Rumanian prisons and concentration camps. Yves C Frank, former Bucharest correspondent of the Swiss Journal de Genève, wrote about this man in an article in the New York Herald Tribune (7 November 1947):

I was arrested in February 1941 for pro-Allied activity... Other men were there whom I scarcely knew, but the fact that their feet were chained made it clear to me that they had just been condemned to death, all accused of possessing explosives and of Communist activity. They were the so-called Paneth group, whose wives had been condemned with them. Their judge had been Colonel Alexandre Petrescu. The next time I heard of Petrescu was when he condemned to death a Greek named George Sarandos, accused by the Gestapo of the murder of General Doehring on 19 January 1941...

Not long afterwards Petrescu was appointed director-general of all prisons and concentration camps in areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Rumanian Army. A few weeks before 23 August 1944, when the coup d'état ousted Antonescu and put Rumania on the Allied side, Petrescu was removed from his post. Later Frank saw him in the antechamber of the Public Prosecutor, Alexandru Draghici. Draghici told Frank that he was investigating Petrescu’s past, in particular his part in condemning the Paneth group. Frank continues:

Not long after this meeting I received a telephone call from Dr Simion Oeriu, at that time Secretary-General of the ARLUS, the association for the improvement of relations between Rumania and the USSR. Oeriu told me that it was forbidden from that moment on for anyone to publish anything against Petrescu. I heard nothing more.

Shortly after this Petrescu became one of the instruments of Stalinist justice in Rumania. They know how to choose reliable men for this kind of work.

The argument sometimes advanced, that the measures of police repression taken in the Iron Curtain countries are an inevitable concomitant of revolutionary change involving the dispossession of the old ruling class and the establishment of the rule of the common people, does not hold water. The anger of an oppressed people in revolt against tyranny does give rise to excesses that are historically justifiable and humanly pardonable. However, in the countries in question the Communist Party was not swept into power on the flood-tide of popular revolt, it slipped into power by unscrupulous underhand manoeuvring, which was successful only because behind it stood the overawing might of the Red Army. That Russian military strength was the decisive factor in this conquest of power is not denied by the satellite spokesmen; on the contrary, they take pride in emphasising that but for the Soviet Union the ‘liberation’ of these countries would not have been possible. The Yugoslav Communists alone could boast that their power rested on a solid basis of wide popular support — their ability to defy the Kremlin is sufficient proof of their national strength. In all the other countries the ‘revolution’ was carried out from above, and events have shown the truth of the dictum that ‘those who would be free, themselves must strike the blow’. The People’s Democracies are neither popular nor democratic, and the measures of police repression carried out are not the expression of the people’s white-hot revolutionary anger against their former oppressors, but the coldly calculated policy of a foreign power operating through a native minority movement. The fact that the prewar governments of these countries had been more or less anti-democratic and reactionary and had consequently engendered varying degrees of popular opposition does not change the essential nature of the postwar policy pursued by the Stalinists. The overall pattern of events from the defeat of Nazi Germany to date makes it clear that the national interests of the Soviet Union constituted the touchstone for all political, economic and social changes. And running like a red thread through this pattern is the series of political trials, the scope of which continually widened, until they came at last to embrace even members of the Communist parties.

In the correspondence between the Yugoslav Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which preceded the rupture, there is a highly significant point touching on this question of political trials. It shows that already before Tito’s defection from the Stalinist camp an effort was being made by the Russians to extend confession trials to the Communist Party.

In the letter of 27 March 1948 (we quote from The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948) from the Central Committee of the CPSU, there is the following:

We cannot understand why the English spy, Velebit, still remains in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia as first Assistant Minister. The Yugoslav comrades know that Velebit is an English spy. They also know that the representatives of the Soviet government consider Velebit a spy. Nevertheless, Velebit remains in the position of first Assistant Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav party replied to this point on 13 April as follows:

As to Velebit and why he still remains in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The matter stands thus. Kardelj and Djilas once told Molotov that we are not at all clear about Velebit, we never had any proof then and we have none today. The matter is still under investigation and we would not care to remove and destroy a man on the basis of suspicion. What induces us not to be too hasty with Velebit is, first, that he has been a member of the party since 1933 and before that he did great services for the party. In 1940 Tito gave him the confidential task of renting a villa in Zagreb in his name in which to place the radio station of the Comintern, and in which Velebit lived with his wife as wireless operator. Velebit was at the same time a courier. All this continued some time under the occupation and of course represented a danger to his life. Upon the decision of the party, Velebit joined the Partisans in 1942 and conducted himself well. Later he received a task abroad and performed it well. We are now investigating his entire past. If the Soviet government has something concrete about him we beg it to give us the facts. [Author’s emphasis]

The Soviet government was unable to produce any facts, as can be seen from its reply of 4 May:

Actually, in their meeting with Molotov there was talk that Velebit was suspected of spying for England. It was very strange that Tito and Kardelj identified the removal of Velebit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with his ruin. Why could not Velebit be removed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without his being ruined? ... Why so much consideration for an English spy, who at the same time is so uncompromisingly hostile towards the Soviet Union?

In this disagreement over the question of Velebit it is the Russians who insist upon action. The Yugoslavs’ refusal to act against Velebit is regarded as a mark of insubordination. Those who are raised to leading positions in the satellite parties must have the approval of the Kremlin, which has the right to insist upon the removal of anyone it considers unreliable. The Yugoslavs were not deceived by the innocent-seeming question: why must Velebit’s removal automatically mean his ruin? Even if experience of Russian politics were not enough to show the hypocrisy of such a question, there is the menacing accusation that immediately follows it and cancels it out. Velebit is a spy — yet to accept this assertion and to act upon it does not mean the man’s ruin! How can one make sense out of this? From this alone it is clear that for the Russians the word ‘spy’ has a meaning very different from the one we give it. Velebit’s close association with the British government, as Tito’s liaison man during the Partisan struggle, necessarily transforms him into a spy for the English. But this is at once a serious matter and not a serious matter: the charge can be pressed home against Velebit or held in abeyance, according to the dictates of political expediency. But once the Yugoslavs had yielded on this question — even if Velebit had not been immediately ‘ruined’ — that is, tried and condemned as a spy — they would have admitted the right of the Russians to appoint and dismiss their leaders, they would have recognised their puppet status, opened their party to the corrosive influence of mutual suspicion, replaced the loyalty of members to one another by internecine intrigues aimed at currying favour with the Russian masters.

The Velebit incident also throws light on subsequent events in the other Communist parties. Velebit is called a spy. On what grounds? The Yugoslavs asked for the facts. The request is ignored. This was a matter of no importance to the Russians. Suspicion was enough for them. All one need do was to put Velebit through the interrogation mill and he would ‘confess’. Whether, as a consequence, he was to be tried and condemned would depend upon circumstances. But willingness to sacrifice him would be a mark of ‘loyalty to the Soviet Union’. This was the course followed in the Communist parties in all the other satellites. The guiding principle for the Russians was not whether there was any evidence against such or such a person, but whether he had given the slightest grounds for supposing that he might not be wholly subservient to Russian commands. If a Communist leader aroused the suspicion that he was not a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist the evidence against him could be manufactured easily enough. The Velebit affair makes this perfectly clear. The Yugoslavs’ refusal to sacrifice him was of course not a cause of the subsequent rupture; it was a symptom of the independence of the Yugoslav party.

Up to this point political events in Yugoslavia had justified the view that there was no difference between this country and the rest of the satellites. In 1947 and 1948 leaders of various opposition parties had been placed on trial and condemned to imprisonment, although no real confession trials comparable to those in Bulgaria took place. But in May 1948 it was announced that two Communist leaders, the Minister of Light Industry, Hebrang, and the Minister of Finance, Zujovic, had been removed from their posts. It subsequently transpired, however, that these two men had been arrested, not because they had a ‘Western orientation’, but because they had aided Soviet attempts to control the Yugoslav party. No confession trial resulted and one of the arrested men, Zujovic, made a statement on 23 November 1950 in which he admitted that he had ‘measured everything exclusively with a Russian yardstick, and that measure was not merely faulty, but was also a hostile one’. It can of course be argued that Zujovic was in jail for some eighteen months and the voluntary nature of his statement is therefore open to question; but no one who reads this most interesting and illuminating statement can fail to note a marked difference between it and the usual confessions in the show trials. Zujovic does not confess to treason, espionage, sabotage and wrecking, but simply to having mistaken Russian aims with regard to Yugoslavia; moreover his statement was accepted by the Yugoslav party and he was released from prison. Hebrang, however, did not change his views and died in jail. In passing, it must be pointed out that it would be a mistake to tar all Communists in Eastern Europe with the same brush and regard them all as mere bureaucratic careerists. These may now be the only ones to have survived; but there were once many genuine and sincere revolutionary fighters who displayed extraordinary moral and physical courage. They remained firm under the fiercest persecution during the prewar years, suffered torture, years of imprisonment, and even paid with their lives for their beliefs. Just as the careerists, but for different reasons, they saw in Soviet Russia their one true friend, a haven and a refuge, a source of material and — even more important for them — moral support. The hard logic of events disillusions them and they are consequently the first to become suspect in the eyes of the Kremlin. A man who is concerned only with his own personal interests is infinitely more valuable to them than a former hero and martyr dedicated to a cause. Yet even the careerist, becoming too ambitious or lacking sufficient manoeuvring skill, may also fall into disgrace.

The Yugoslav-Russian rupture did not initiate the Russian-dictated purges in the satellite parties; these would have come about in any case, following the Russian pattern of inner-party, post-revolution events. But the rupture gave the purge an urgency that it might not otherwise have had.

In Rumania, even before the Tito-Stalin dispute, the leading Communist Patrascanu, one-time Minister of Justice (relieved of this post in February 1948), was expelled for ‘nationalism’ and disappeared from the political scene.

Following the Yugoslav defection the Albanian leader, Koçi Xoxe, Vice-Premier and Minister of the Interior, Pandi Kristo, in charge of the important State Control Commission, and other leading Communists were tried in secret for plotting to incorporate Albania into Yugoslavia, for ‘anti-Sovietism’, ‘anti-Marxism’, and so forth. The Albanian authorities issued daily bulletins during the trial, purporting to contain the confessions of the accused. Xoxe was condemned to death and executed on 11 June 1949; and the others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

The Polish leader Wladislaw Gomulka was also found guilty of ‘nationalist deviations’. Formerly Secretary-General of the party and deputy Prime Minister, Gomulka was dismissed from office in September 1948. In an effort to rehabilitate himself, he wrote a letter to the Tribuna Ludu refuting the claim of Djilas, Yugoslav Minister without Portfolio, that he was a supporter of Tito. ‘In July of this year’, wrote Gomulka, ‘I learned that Djilas, despite my resolute condemnation of the traitorous Tito clique, is attempting to count me among his supporters.’ This letter was quoted by the Soviet Monitor of 8 September 1949, citing a Moscow radio report. This would appear to indicate some hesitation regarding the best policy to pursue with regard to Gomulka. Inside the Polish party, Gomulka tried desperately to climb back up the slimy slope into the good graces of the Russians. He humbled himself; admitted errors, mistakes; admitted his doubts about the justice of the attack on Tito, and condemned himself for them. The Rajk trial had changed all that, he said. However, his ‘self-criticism’ only caused him to slide further down into the mire. In November 1949 the die was finally cast against him and he was expelled from the party, shortly after the arrival in Warsaw of Marshal Rokossovsky, Russian-appointed chief of the Polish Armed Forces. Whatever considerations may at first have made necessary a cautious attitude towards Gomulka’s ‘deviations’, these considerations evidently now no longer weighed anything against the urgent need to make Poland secure as a Soviet vassal. With Gomulka into the shadows went General Spychalski and Zeno Kliszko (Chairman of the party in 1948) and many others. But to date Gomulka has not been put on trial; he has in all probability proved too tough a nut to crack, to take a chance on another Kostov fiasco would be too risky for the authorities.

In Czechoslovakia the purge of the party was slow in getting under way. The popular strength of the party in this country, considerably greater than in the other satellites, was a major factor in compelling the Russians to tread warily. But in October 1949 twenty members of the Czech Foreign Office were dismissed. Most of these men had been in the West during the war years. This cleansing naturally reflected on the loyalty of Dr Vladimír Clementis, the Foreign Minister, whose past made him particularly vulnerable. He had been expelled from the party for opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and Russia’s aggression against Finland, and had, moreover, been a refugee in Paris and London during the war. Among those dismissed at this time was the head of the Press Department, Evzen Klinger, with whom Clementis had been on terms of close friendship. Contrary to The Times statement of 11 October 1949, Klinger had never been ‘a prominent leader of the Czech Trotskyists’: he had never been a member of the Trotskyist group, let alone prominent or a leader. It is true, however, that he was a Marxist and an opponent of the Stalinists. A prey to nostalgia, he convinced himself that it was possible to work with the Communists (his poor health — he was a sufferer from tuberculosis — probably affected his outlook) and he returned home, to the inevitable fate that his friends had warned awaited him there. It will easily be understood how the mere fact of friendship with such a man could end in disaster for Clementis, quite apart from his own deviations in the past. Clementis made Klinger’s return to Czechoslovakia possible and secured him his post in the Press Department, a fact that would not be overlooked by the Russians, ever ready to put the worst construction upon the most natural actions — in this instance one motivated by friendship and compassion. The fate of Dr Clementis appeared for a long time to hang in the balance, but it was only a matter of time before the blow fell. He was dismissed from his post in March 1950.

Prior to his dismissal the editor of the Communist newspaper Rudé Právo, Vilhelm Nový, was expelled from the party (February 1950). On 2 March the death by suicide of Milan Reiman, head of the Czech Prime Minister’s chancery, was announced. No details of this affair were given by the authorities, but his death came shortly after he had been arrested, accused of improper possession of state documents. It may therefore be safely assumed that he died in prison under questioning. (Jan Masaryk, whom Clementis succeeded as Foreign Minister, also came to a violent end. His body was picked up on 10 March 1948 in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry. It was said that he had hurled himself from a top-storey window to his death.) The agent in charge of the cleansing, Kopriva, announced that ‘Tito agents’ had been unmasked in the party: Reiman had been an agent of ‘Western imperialism’ and had delivered important secret reports to a foreign intelligence agent. But no public trial resulted and for a long time no more was heard of the matter. But in November 1950 Otto Sling, Secretary of the party in Brno, was arrested. After this there was a further period of silence on the question of treachery within the party, although a large number of trials of Western espionage agents took place and many death sentences were meted out. Then in January 1951 Clementis vanished from sight. He did not turn up for work in the bank where he had been given a minor post, and no information on his fate was available until on 27 February it was officially announced that he and four other leading Communists had been arrested on charges of ‘bourgeois nationalism’, ‘Slovak separatism’, ‘espionage for the West’ and so on.

The four accused with Clementis were Dr Gustáv Husák, former Chairman of the Slovak Cabinet; Laco Novomeský, former Slovak Minister of Education; Otto Sling, Secretary of the party in the Brno region; and Mrs Marie Svermová, widow of the Communist resistance hero Jan Sverma, and former Deputy Secretary-General of the party. (Otto Sling is, by the way, a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist; he was Political Commissar in charge of all Czech volunteers in the International Brigade in Spain during the Civil War, and worked under the direct orders of Russian agents, ‘liquidating’ those suspected of political heresy.) Besides these principal accused, other unnamed persons were stated to be in jail, implicated in the ‘plot’.

The stage was being set for a propaganda trial in Prague.

Before proceeding to a consideration of the latest developments in Czechoslovakia, mention must be made of the disgrace of two out of three of the top leaders in Rumania, Vasile Luca and Ana Pauker, and a number of other leading Communists (leaving the nonentity Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as Stalin’s satrap, with no one near his throne). On 28 May 1952, it was announced that Vasile Luca, Minister of Finance, and Teohari Georgescu, Minister of the Interior, had been dismissed from their posts. On 30 May Ana Pauker, Foreign Minister, and Mr Radaceanu, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, were expelled from the Politbureau. At first it seemed that the attack was concentrated on the ‘right-wing deviationist’ Luca, for Pauker, although deprived of her party functions, remained Foreign Minister. Up to June 1952 she was still being referred to as ‘Comrade’, and it was stated that ‘she had admitted some of her mistakes and pledged the plenum to fight for the party line...’ (Cominform Journal, 6 June). But on 5 July she was dismissed from her post as Foreign Minister.

The events would appear to foreshadow a Moscow-staged trial in Rumania, too. If it has been possible fully to rehearse the roles assigned to the principal accused, and if it has been considered expedient, the performance may already have taken place by the time this is in print. However, the reader will appreciate the impossibility of keeping pace with these purges and trials, the latest of which (up to the time of writing) we shall now examine.

Notes

1. See Zbigniew Stypulkowski, Invitation to Moscow (Thames and Hudson, 1951).

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Chapter XI: The Great Prague Purge

THE first official statement following the arrest and imprisonment of Sling and Svermová was to the effect that they had plotted the murder of Rudolf Slánský, then General Secretary of the party. The very charge was a measure of the esteem in which Slánský was held and the high position he occupied in the hierarchy. In the Soviet world the honour of being the object of a murder plot is reserved — as we have seen from the Moscow Trials — for the ‘beloved leaders’ only. A couple of months later, however, the Czech radio broadcast an alleged confession from Sling that he had murdered his own mother. In the long run neither of these tentative scenarios proved to be acceptable to the stage managers of the trial in preparation. For Slánský himself was arrested just over a year after the arrest of Sling. Naturally it was then realised that Sling’s first confession was a mistake: for both Sling and Slánský had all the time been plotting to murder Klement Gottwald. In these circumstances Sling’s other confession — that he had actually murdered his mother — was forgotten altogether and never mentioned again.

It took three years to piece together the separate parts of the jigsaw, but at long last the stage was set, and on 20 November 1952 the so-called Slánský Trial opened in Prague.

The producers of this political show evinced a cynical contempt for probability and verisimilitude only surpassed by the producers of the Moscow Trials in the 1930s, and the crudeness of its presentation shocked even a world whose sensibilities have become somewhat blunted by successive performances of a similar nature. The Slánský Trial not only gave evidence of a deep-going party purge affecting hundreds of leaders and officials, and thousands of rank-and-file members, but it also reached a new low level of moral degeneration in its utilisation of anti-Semitic prejudice for political ends. This was the most perfect example of the methods of the Red inquisition seen since the Moscow Trials, and the fact that it took place in Czechoslovakia, formerly the white hope in Europe of democratic liberalism, made the spectacle all the more horrifying, the implications all the more alarming.

Fourteen high-ranking members of the Communist Party and the government stood in the dock, charged with sabotage, plotting to murder, plotting to overthrow the government, and espionage for Western powers. Of these fourteen, eleven were of Jewish origin. Some of those involved have already been indicated in the previous chapter; the positions and records of the others will be given in the course of our discussion of the trial proceedings. Let us first examine some of the more breath-taking crudities of the show.

One of the accused is André Simone, a member of the party for some thirty years, active for the Communist International in many countries; in Moscow from 1930 to 1932; fought in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War; during the war was in France, then in the United States, then in Mexico; returned to Czechoslovakia via France on the cessation of hostilities, and became an editor and diplomatic correspondent of the leading Communist daily Rudé Právo.

In the course of his testimony, or ‘confession’, Simone asserted that in March 1948 Rudolf Slánský had instructed him to write a book on the February events (the seizure of power by the Communists). ‘Slánský asked me to describe him as the chief personality of this period and told me to model my book on Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World’, which was ‘written in the Trotskyist spirit’. ‘By falsifying history Slánský wanted to gain popularity among the Czechoslovak people and to suppress the leading and decisive part played by Gottwald.’

To understand the purport of this the reader must know that John Reed’s book deals with the Bolshevik conquest of power in Russia in 1917, and that it depicts Stalin as playing hardly any part at all in those crucial events, while Trotsky is shown as playing a leading role. If, therefore, one substitutes in the above sentence of Simone the word ‘Trotsky’ for ‘Slánský’ and ‘Stalin’ for ‘Gottwald’, the meaning of the reference is clear. The trial organisers, through the mouth of Simone, are simply transferring the ‘ethics’ of the early inner-party struggle in Russia to the Czech scene. But either they were singularly stupid or — which is perhaps more probable — Simone was singularly acute. For if anyone could be proved by the example Simone gives to be falsifying history it is Stalin. One strongly suspects that Simone, who was a journalist, who had lived and worked in many countries, and who had been in the party for thirty years, knew perfectly well what he was doing; and one equally strongly suspects that the organisers of the trial do not know the history of their own movement. For John Reed’s book was given an introduction by none other than Lenin. And this is what he had to say of this book ‘written in the Trotskyist spirit’:

With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed but before one can accept or reject these ideas, one must understand the full significance of such a decision. John Reed’s book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the universal workers’ movement.

This makes it transparently clear that Simone’s confession was no confession at all; on the contrary it was damning evidence against Stalin through the person of Gottwald. The Prague inquisitors had only to look at a copy of Reed’s book with Lenin’s introduction to understand at once how dangerous any reference to it would be. But you may search every bookshop in every satellite state and in Russia itself, and you will not find a copy of this book. How dangerous it is to the Stalinist myth is shown by the fact that when the News Chronicle wished to serialise it some years ago the Communist Party refused to release the copyright unless all reference to Trotsky was deleted from the serialisation. (Today, of course, even this proviso would be unacceptable; Stalin has had history so thoroughly rewritten that it would now be necessary to go further and substitute Stalin’s name wherever Trotsky’s appeared. Incidentally, the book was reprinted in England as late as 1932, but it is a very rare item indeed.)

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Simone’s reference to Reed’s book was an attempt to utilise the ignorance of the stage managers to say covertly what he dare not say openly. In any case the effect is the same; it gives to his confession a meaning exactly the opposite of its apparent one.

The manner in which Simone described how he was recruited as a spy strengthens the view that he deliberately concocted a ‘confession’ that would pass muster with his inquisitors, self-hypnotised by their own spy mania and with a peculiarly puerile conception of Western intelligence methods, but that would not deceive any normal mind for one moment. After signing on as a spy with ‘the French Minister Mandel in Paris, a Jewish nationalist’, in September 1939, he met Noel Coward, ‘who at the time held an important position in the British intelligence service’. Coward told him he knew he was a spy for the French, ‘but pointed out that this method of collaboration did not meet present-day needs’. ‘He appealed to me’, said Simone, ‘to join him. I told him that I would think it over.’ The prosecutor evidently had never heard of Noel Coward, for he asked Simone who he was (alas for fame!). Simone described him as ‘a British novelist and playwright’.

In due course Simone decided to sign on with the British:

This happened later when I met Willert [one of Noel Coward’s henchmen] in the Café Marine. After a brief conversation I told him that I accepted his proposal to work for the British intelligence service. Willert replied that it was customary for every agent of the British intelligence service to pledge himself in writing.

So off they went to Willert’s office, where:

Willert sat behind the typewriter and began to write out the pledge for my collaboration with the British intelligence service. It was written in triplicate in English and the last copy was on blue paper.

Prosecutor: ‘Did any of these copies come into your hands?’

Simone: ‘Yes, all three.’

Prosecutor: ‘What were the contents of this written pledge?’

Simone: ‘In the document I pledged myself to supply the British intelligence service with reports on all questions in which it was interested. The document further stated that my pledge must be kept secret in all circumstances, that I pledged myself of my own free will and that I took upon myself the responsibility for all consequences. It further stated that in case of my apprehension, the British authorities would in all circumstances deny my statement and testimony.’

The following points are worth noting.

a) Simone’s unusual knowledge of British official procedure — the pledge was in triplicate and the last copy on blue paper; this is the first time in any of these trials that a spy has signed on in triplicate — and it had to be with the British government. b) Simone’s modesty — he was going to supply espionage reports on ‘all questions’. c) The British were farsighted enough to forestall Simone’s confession by putting their denial of it in writing.

Simone continued:

... one paragraph of the pledge stated that in case of loss or damage [sic] through my activities I was entitled to compensation. Afterwards I signed all three copies of the pledge, with the name of Otto Katz and André Simone in brackets, which was my pseudonym at the time. Willett also asked me to provide him with three passport photographs of myself which I handed to him at our next meeting. We then proceeded to Noel Coward’s office which was on the same floor of the building, only a few doors away. Noel Coward welcomed me as the new member of the British intelligence service. Willett then handed him all three copies of my pledge.

The remarkable cunning of British intelligence is here well brought out. After agreeing to pay Simone compensation (amount unspecified) in case of ‘loss or damage’, the wily old hand Coward took all three copies of the agreement and left the trusting Simone without any proof to back up a claim for compensation. All that was missing to make this picture perfect was for Simone to have confessed that the go-between for Noel Coward and the ‘well-known agent of British imperialism’, Zilliacus, was a well-known music-hall comedian.

It goes without saying that everyone from the West Simone met in the course of his duties as foreign editor of Rudé Právo was an espionage agent. Among those so characterised by him in his confession was Alexander Werth, who occasionally in his writings has almost, but not quite, lost his balance in leaning over backward to be fair to the Stalinists. In this particular instance, however, Simone had anticipated his confession by more than two years: for early in 1950 he had ‘exposed’ Werth in the columns of Rudé Právo as a ‘notorious spy’. After the trial Werth commented:

The interesting thing is that this phrase was then used in the indictment as a ‘fact’, although it had been coined by Simone, now a full-fledged ‘traitor’ and an ‘agent of American imperialism’. In short, any dirt about citizens of the Western democracies will do, even if it has been invented by the very people who are now being tried for their abominable crimes against the Communist state! (Letter to the Manchester Guardian, 28 November 1952)

Another British left-winger labelled ‘espionage agent’ was Konni Zilliacus. His name cropped up over and over again during the trial. As one who, up to the Tito defection from Stalinism, made no bones about his pro-Communist sympathies and who consequently was persona grata with most of the satellite leaders, he appeared to the Czech authorities admirably suited to the role of liaison agent between the plotters and the British intelligence service. With some care even this fantastic notion might have been made to bear a faint resemblance to real life for the politically unweaned in the Western democracies. But the manner in which the case was presented was so incredibly clumsy that it would be a compliment to call anyone who accepted it a half-wit. The evidence on this score reveals unmistakable signs of its origin in the inquisition chamber. A deposition on the score of Zilliacus’ alleged activities was taken from Mordechai Oren, the Israeli citizen arrested by the Czech authorities in December 1951, and held incommunicado ever since. A member of the pro-Soviet Mapam (may one now say ‘formerly pro-Soviet'?), it was apparently considered that he could be used to give colour to the picture of Israel’s involvement in the Anglo-American espionage network in Czechoslovakia. Listen to what he was made to say about Zilliacus.

In 1947 Herbert Morrison told him that ‘Zilliacus is a staunch champion of British imperialism and a veteran agent for British reactionary governments as well as a diehard enemy of the USSR and the People’s Democracies’. In addition Morrison informed Oren that ‘Zilliacus told me in confidence in 1947 that great political changes were afoot in Yugoslavia and that Tito already had one foot in the US camp’.

The stupidity of putting such language into the mouth of Herbert Morrison is at once apparent. Oren — or rather, the inquisitors — make Morrison himself confess and speak in the jargon of the Stalinists. Nothing could serve more clearly to show the automatic nature of the responses of the accused and witnesses. Everyone speaks in the same way, uses the same adjectives and epithets, and this applies not merely to the accused and witnesses, but even to persons whom they quote. They are unable to alter the record imprinted on their minds. And even the inquisitors themselves cannot for a moment escape from the set phrases they have been screaming and shouting at the accused for days and weeks and months beforehand.

Because of Zilliacus’ marked admiration for the Soviet regime and his approval of its postwar expansion into Eastern Europe, he had entry to all the top-ranking Communists in the satellites. Why should such an allegedly old hand at the espionage game have sacrificed this incomparable vantage point just for the sake of adding one more voice to the chorus of approval for Tito in his fight against the Kremlin? Oren stated that Morrison told him that ‘thanks to Zilliacus’ visits to Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria influential friends had been placed in important government and party posts’. Observe what tremendous power lay in Zilliacus’ hands! He had only to make his wishes known and they were granted. Yet this allegedly hard-bitten, hard-headed ‘imperialist agent’ threw all this power away with a single gesture. In what way did his support of Tito aid his work as an agent? The question answers itself. And yet no one at the Slánský Trial bothered about such an elementary matter.

Is it not crystal clear that if Zilliacus had never come to his belated understanding of the true aims of Stalin his name would then never have been mentioned in any of the confessions?

The next example of the trial’s crudities has a truly comic opera aspect. It concerns the accused Dr Vavro Hajdu, a close associate of Clementis and formerly Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hajdu pleaded guilty to having been, among other things, a spy in British service from 1941 until his arrest. This was established by the following testimony:

Prosecutor: ‘Now tell us about the circumstances, how you were enrolled by the British for espionage services.’

Hajdu: ‘In 1941 I was called to the police station in Wiveliscombe to give some information about my past. I was led to the head of the police. When he knew that I had been in Slovakia in 1939 he asked me about some industrial undertakings there. I gave him information about some factories in the neighbourhood of Bratislava. He was satisfied with my information and asked me to supply similar reports in future.’

Hajdu did not mention that the population of Wiveliscombe is around two dozen. In the circumstances one feels that ‘the head of the police’ must have been closely related to Robb Wilton. [1]

Hajdu was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and there he met Sir Gladwyn Jebb. [2] ‘In the course of conversation he told me that he knew that I had signed on with the British police at Wiveliscombe and suggested that I should therefore continue my espionage connections with him.’

What unsuspected depths have our village constabulary, who instantly realise the significance of Slovakia to the war effort, who in a flash recognise good espionage material, and lose no time in getting the signature on the dotted line!

So what was the espionage information passed by Hajdu to Jebb?

Hajdu: ‘Jebb asked me a few general questions... I informed him in detail about conditions in the Ministry... I told him, at his request, what the Czechoslovak delegation’s views were on the progress of the Peace Conference and what preparations we were making for further negotiations. At the end of our talk Jebb was highly satisfied with my espionage information...

And what was Hajdu’s excuse, or reason, for betraying all this top secret information? The only answer he gave was: ‘Because I had been enlisted.’ By the village constable in Wiveliscombe.

At this point in the proceedings the prosecutor produced a ‘document’ worthy of the Moscow Trials themselves. He showed Hajdu a photograph and asked him to identify the person shown with Masaryk. And who should it be but Gladwyn Jebb! Which proved? That Masaryk also was a spy in British service? Or that Gladwyn Jebb was — Gladwyn Jebb? On the basis of such comic ‘documents’ it would be claimed that the case against the accused had been ‘proved by the testimony and the documents’ (remember the telephone book in the Moscow Trial).

In Slánský’s confession there were in particular two remarkable absurdities. The presiding judge called his attention to the fact that he had not ‘yet mentioned another very serious crime’ he had committed, and requested him to describe the death of Jan Sverma. Slánský then made the following statement:

It happened on 10 November 1944, during a march from the Chabenec Mountain in the Low Tatras. On that day I failed to do all I could have done to save Sverma’s life. Before the beginning of the march I had not given Sverma, whose constitution was weak, sufficient cover. I had failed to make arrangements to help him. At the beginning of the snowstorm Sverma walked slowly and was frequently forced to rest. This was also due to the fact that his boots were too small. He had been forced to put on these boots after he had lost his own pair. When the snowstorm arose Sverma fell behind and I did not arrange for assistance to him. I feel, therefore, that I am responsible for Sverma’s death and I admit this responsibility.

In order to clinch Slánský’s ‘feeling of responsibility’ the judge then produced a pocket watch which had been stolen from Sverma by a certain Sebasta, one of the partisans who had been present when he died. Sebasta and other participants of that particular march ‘confirmed Slánský’s responsibility for Sverma’s death’.

Thus the principal witness for the prosecution, apart from Slánský himself, was a self-confessed petty thief who stooped to pick the pocket of a fallen comrade. For something like seven years no one thought of connecting Sverma’s death with Slánský. Slánský himself only speaks of a feeling of responsibility, which the prosecution translates into a ‘very serious crime’. The tale carries not the slightest conviction, but apparently the authorities thought that it would help to give some support to the equally fantastic tale that followed later.

Slánský deposed:

I knew that the obstacle to the realisation of our final plans was Klement Gottwald, who would never consent to the restoration of capitalism; and I was aware that if I came into power it would be necessary to get rid of Klement Gottwald. I admit that I arranged for Dr Haskovec to attend the President of the Republic. Haskovec was a Freemason, and therefore an enemy, a fact which I hid from the President of the republic. Dr Haskovec, being an enemy, did not provide proper medical care for the President, and thus caused the shortening of the President’s life. I could have used Haskovec for the liquidation of the President for the purpose of my full usurpation of power.

It is at once obvious that this part of the scenario has been lifted holus-bolus from the 1938 Moscow Trial, where Yagoda allegedly also made use of doctors to get rid of inconvenient persons. Only in Moscow they managed to get the doctors concerned to confess — after all, in that case, the alleged victims were actually dead. But neither the elaborate Moscow version nor the sketchy Prague copy will stand the test of close investigation. In Moscow Dr Levin in his final plea said that he had really had not the slightest intention of harming anyone, and was pulled up by the president: ‘Cannot you refrain from blaspheming in your last plea?’ (Trial III, p 781) In Prague they either cannot or do not want to produce the doctor. And Slánský says both that he was going to get rid of Gottwald after usurping power, and that he could have usurped power by ‘liquidating’ Gottwald — but did not do so. All that he did was to ‘shorten Gottwald’s life’ — no one will know by how much until Gottwald actually dies, always presuming, that is, that he does not come to an unnatural end by confessing himself. It almost seems that Gottwald will have to come to an early grave just to prove that his life actually was shortened.

One could fill a volume with similar examples of the crude manner in which the script of the trial was prepared, but let us now proceed to examine a particularly repellent aspect of the trial.

As has already been noted, eleven out of the fourteen accused were of Jewish origin. Here, for the first time in any confession trial, a calculated appeal was made to anti-Semitism, which is deep-rooted in Czechoslovakian soil. In the official broadcasts of the proceedings in the Czech language (these were given out some hours after the daily sessions, thus allowing time for the necessary cutting and editing) the word ‘Jewish’ crops up dozens of times. It is not enough for an accused to be described as a ‘bourgeois nationalist’, it must be over and over again emphasised by the prosecution that he is Jewish into the bargain. Thus the accused Fischl, asked why he is hostile to the regime, replies that he could not be otherwise. This answer is not in accord with the script prepared beforehand, so the question is repeated. And Fischl then replies to the satisfaction of the court: ‘Because I am a Jewish bourgeois nationalist.’ So marked is this feature of the trial that one recalls some words written by Stalin many years ago and dismissed as a joke, although admittedly in very bad taste. Reporting on the Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1907, Stalin informed his readers that most of the Bolsheviks were pure Russians, whereas a large number of the Mensheviks were Jews. ‘With reference to this’, he continued, ‘one of the Bolsheviks (I think, Comrade Alexinsky), jokingly made the observation that the Mensheviks are a Jewish, but the Bolsheviks a pure Russian, fraction, and that it would not be bad if we Bolsheviks organised a pogrom in the party’ (first published in Bakinski Proletarii, nos 1 and 2, 20 June and 10 July 1907, under the pen-name of Koba Ivanovich, and not expunged from the Collected Works). When one considers subsequent events in Russia these words would appear to have a bearing on Stalin’s character. Certainly no student of Freud could dismiss them as a ‘slip’. Now with the Prague trial they seem to acquire an added significance.

The accused Slánský had this to say of his fellow conspirators:

I deliberately shielded them by abusing the campaign against so-called anti-Semitism. By proposing that a big campaign be waged against anti-Semitism, by magnifying the danger of anti-Semitism and by proposing various measures against anti-Semitism — such as the writing of articles, the publication of pamphlets, the holding of lectures, etc — I criminally prevented the waging of a campaign against Zionism and the revelation of the hostile character of Zionists and Zionist organisations.

Thus a campaign against anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia is unequivocally equated with treason. ‘It is not an accident’, said the prosecutor in his summing up, ‘that of the fourteen accused eleven are the product of Zionist organisations... Zionism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism are two sides of the same coin, which was minted in Wall Street.’ The authorities, however, knew perfectly well that not one of the accused had ever been a Zionist. Any support they may have given to the state of Israel was strictly in accord with the policy of the party at the given time. In deliberately concealing this fact, those responsible for the trial were for the purpose of their propaganda equating Jew with Zionist. They were in effect implying that simply because a man was of Jewish origin, he must be regarded as a Zionist; all Jews, therefore, are tarred with the same brush.

The anti-Semitic character of the Slánský trial has created alarm and despondency in the Communist parties of the West. They have sought to argue that this anti-Semitism exists only in the fevered imagination of Cold War propagandists. But, to turn their own favourite method of reasoning against them, even if anti-Semitism was not subjectively intended, what was the objective result of such statements as the following:

Sling then said that as a Jewish bourgeois nationalist...

In the second half of 1945 Sling said he had been visited by Boris Kopold... a Jewish bourgeois nationalist...

Sváb stated... that Slánský had entrusted the Jewish bourgeois nationalist Bedrich Reicin...

Since his childhood [said Bedrich Reicin], he had been brought up in a bourgeois and religious spirit in the Jewish Zionist Scout organisation Tekhelet Lavana, which had brought up young people in the spirit of Jewish bourgeois nationalism. (Rudé Právo, 26 November 1952)

The entire proceedings were studded with similar references. What is the objective result of this? Without question it is to foster and encourage all those primitive instincts founded on prejudice and superstition. And anyone seeking to combat the spread of anti-Semitism by educative articles, speeches, pamphlets — does he not immediately lay himself open to the same charge that was levelled against Slánský of seeking to cover up his treachery by ‘magnifying the danger of anti-Semitism'? Of course he does. The truth of this particular, inevitable effect of the Prague trial is inescapable. And, as though deliberately seeking to leave no room for doubt as to their intentions, the authorities made sure that constant reference should be made at the trial to the ‘Jewish financiers’, Morganthau, Mandel, Rothschild, Baruch, recalling the Nazi propaganda of an ‘international conspiracy of Jewish finance’ of infamous memory.

Objectively, then, there can be no doubt of the effect of this aspect of the trial. But can there be much doubt that it was also calculated to have this effect? The very fact of the constant use of the adjective ‘Jewish’ strongly suggests, to put it mildly, that this is precisely what was intended.

Geminder speaks of the spy and Jewish bourgeois nationalist Otto Sling. Clementis (Gentile) says that the people who joined forces with the English reaction were ‘above all, the Jewish bourgeois nationalists...’. Löbl says that he ‘began to work along these lines during his London exile, ‘with the direct support of the Economic Commission, whose members were also Jewish bourgeois nationalists’.

The witness Oskar Langer (himself naturally a self-confessed traitor) refers to this matter, saying that he had written to Slánský about organising a campaign against anti-Semitism but had destroyed his reply, because ‘it would have been dangerous to keep letters which would have incriminated Slánský in his anti-state activities’ (author’s emphasis). Could the equation of anti-state activities with propaganda against anti-Semitism be put more clearly?

In the report of the trial proceedings given in the English edition of the Cominform journal (For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy) the word ‘Jewish’ is used only once. It is plain from this that the anti-Semitic aspect of the trial was intended for internal purposes; outside the satellite states it has proved a source of considerable embarrassment for the Stalinists.

Reaction of organised Judaism to the Prague trial was sharp and immediate. The American Zionist Council issued the following statement on 26 November:

The injection of a classic libel of an international Jewish conspiracy has been built up on elaborate trumped-up ‘evidence’ in order to stir up the dark currents of anti-Semitism throughout Eastern Europe... There is not a scrap of objective evidence to substantiate the charges. (New York Times, 27 November)

Speaking at a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (21 December) Dr A Cohen said: ‘This is the first time that Zionism has been declared a crime against the state outside the Arab countries and we dare not ignore it.’ At the annual meeting of the Anglo-Jewish Association on the same day, its president, Ewen Montagu, QC, referred to the trial as the ‘writing on the curtain wall’ of Europe and asked: ‘What of the mass of Jewish people lying in the prison of Eastern Europe without even that means of escape which at least some of the German Jews had.’ What had happened in Prague, he went on, was no surprise to them, since information received had indicated clearly that sooner or later the Communists would require a Jewish scapegoat.

Jewish people, after the savage atrocities inflicted on them by the Nazis, are naturally and rightly sensitive to anything that serves to perpetuate or to foster anti-Semitism. Jewish alertness to any hint of a recrudescence of this moral disease in Europe is not only understandable, it is also fully justified. This would be hardly worth affirming were it not for the fact that the organisers of the Prague trial not only did not even take this into account, but, on the contrary, went out of their way to ignore it in a manner that can only be characterised as calculated. From the whole tenor of the proceedings the Jewish people could do no other than conclude that it aimed deliberately at utilising anti-Semitic prejudices for the political purposes of the regime.

Alarmed at the repercussion within its own ranks of the whole sordid affair, the Communist Party of Great Britain advanced the following defence (Daily Worker, leading article, 22 December):

Anti-Semitism, to our minds, has two features. It seeks to prove that most of the evils of society are due to the machinations of Jews and that, therefore, there must be legal and social discrimination against Jewish people.

There was no suggestion of any such thing in the Prague trial.

Gentiles and Jews stood in the dock together accused of hostile acts against the people’s democracy of Czechoslovakia.

The essence of this Stalinist argument is that anti-Semitism could not have been present in the Prague trial simply because no one in Czechoslovakia, at the moment, demands the passing of laws that specifically discriminate against Jews as such. This is obvious nonsense. If the trial fostered, as we have shown it must have done, the idea that most of the present economic difficulties experienced by the Czechoslovakian people are due to ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalists'; if it encouraged the belief, as it did, that a Jew, simply by virtue of his race, must necessarily be a Zionist, therefore — a traitor; and if it further spread the view that propaganda against anti-Semitism is merely a cover for Zionists’ efforts to subvert the authority of the state — then it is manifest that all this amounts to very much more than a ‘suggestion’ of anti-Semitism. What, in these circumstances, must be the feelings of any Jewish person in Czechoslovakia? Is it of any comfort to him to know that there are at the moment no laws discriminating against members of his race?

Referring to the meeting of protest called by the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Daily Worker leader continued:

Some very extraordinary statements were made at yesterday’s meeting.

‘It was a mistake’, Professor Brodetsky said, ‘to try so many Jews at a time.’ The authorities in Prague, he said, should have cut down the number of Jews in the trial.

Really! The number of Jews involved was decided by the number who participated in the anti-state conspiracy and not by the authorities at all.

The Stalinists are here attempting to pull the wool over their readers’ eyes. In the first place they state that ‘Gentiles and Jews stood in the dock together’ — a half-truth worse than a lie. For they pointedly refrain here from calling attention to the fact that only three of the fourteen were Gentiles. In the second place they studiously avoid dealing with Professor Brodetsky’s argument. He may have been naive in referring to a ‘mistake’ on the part of the authorities, but he here clearly seized on a vital matter that requires explanation. Was or was not the disproportion of Jews against Gentiles deliberately arranged by the authorities? No, reply the Stalinists, it was ‘decided by the number of Jews who participated in the anti-state conspiracy’. The argument, as we shall show, does not hold water for a single moment.

The editor-in-chief of Rudé Právo, Vilem Nový, under arrest and in prison as a member of the ‘conspiratorial centre’, appeared at the trial only as a witness, while his subordinate, André Simone, stood in the dock. Who selected André Simone, the Jew, and ‘reserved’ Vilem Nový, the Gentile? Of two equally ‘guilty’ deputy ministers of defence, Reicin, the Jew, was put on trial and Lastovichka, the Gentile, was not. Who arranged this? Who arranged also that Mária Svermová (a Gentile), self-confessed arch-accomplice of the traitor Sling (a Jew), should not stand in the dock? All these were willing, if not eager, to confess to anything required of them. In choosing Gentile instead of Jew the authorities would not have had minor figures in the dock, for both had held positions of high trust in party and government. The proportion of Jews to Gentiles would then have been reduced from eleven against three to eight against six. Moreover, there was a host of other high-ranking party and government officials from among whom the authorities could, had they wished, have found many more Gentiles to stand in the dock with the others. That they did not do so is clear and irrefutable evidence that they preferred to select Jews.

In addition to its utilisation of anti-Semitism for purposes of internal propaganda, the Czechoslovak government’s attack on Zionism had another objective. This was to court the favour of the Arab states. For it is in the troubled waters of the Arab countries that the Soviet agents are now busy fishing. Accounts of the proceedings were used extensively in Moscow’s radio propaganda to the Middle East and have not been without a measure of success. Damascus radio made eager use of these accounts, accepting them without question at their face value. The Czechoslovak treason trial, it said, ‘clearly illustrates the criminal activities of the Zionists... shows how the Zionists prosecuted their aggressive policy and the imperialisation of the Middle East’. Haj Amin al Husseini, Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, made use of the trial to say:

What Zionists did to Czechoslovakia, which helped them and supplied them with arms and ammunition before and after the Palestine War, they did likewise to Great Britain and America, both partial to Zionists and eager to assist them, when some Zionists of those two states handed over atom secrets to an Eastern country.

He went on to justify Hitler’s campaign of extermination against the Jews. One more example of the encouragement the Prague trial has given to racial enmity.

The plainly pro-Arab, anti-Israel character of the Prague trial shows beyond question that its organisers were briefed by the Soviet government — for a matter of policy so important for the latter could not have been decided upon by the Czechoslovak government alone. The ‘confessions’ of the accused proclaimed publicly for the first time what is now the policy of the Kremlin towards the Middle East. The former policy of aid to, and encouragement of, the state of Israel failed in its purpose of binding Israel to support of the Soviet government. Those who were responsible for giving practical effect to this now discarded policy — for it was to the Czechoslovak government that Israel largely turned in its search for arms and ammunition during the Palestine War — were thrown to the wolves.

The Prague trial was not, however, concerned solely with fostering anti-Semitism, nor was this even its main purpose. The bulk of the defendants were not only of Jewish origin, they were also, and this was more important for the Kremlin, top-ranking members of the party and the government. Their condemnation, and the arrest and imprisonment of scores of others of like standing, was condemnation by the Soviet government of all the efforts of the Czechoslovak Communist Party to deliver the goods, to bring order and stabilisation to the economy of the country.

Let us note who the defendants at this trial were.

At their head stood Rudolf Slánský. On the occasion of his fiftieth birthday (31 July 1951) the government organ, Rudé Právo, said of him:

Rudolf Slánský’s outstanding feature is loyalty. Loyalty to the principles of Marx-Leninism. Loyalty to the Soviet Union, the foundation stone of socialism in the whole world, loyalty to the teaching and achievements of the great Stalin. And he shows the same unshakable loyalty and devotion to our working class, to our whole people, our Communist Party and its pilot, Comrade Gottwald. Comrade Slánský has been a close and faithful adjutant to Klement Gottwald for twenty-five years.

At the same time the Presidium of the Central Committee of the party sent Slánský the following message:

Dear Comrade. Our whole party and our entire working people greet you as its faithful son and champion inspired by love for the working people and loyalty to the Soviet Union and the mighty Stalin.

This message was signed by none other than Gottwald himself, together with the Premier, Zápotocký.

Less than two months later Slánský was dismissed from his post of General Secretary of the party, and on 27 November of the same year his arrest and imprisonment was announced.

On Slánský’s fiftieth birthday the workers of Czechoslovakia were persuaded to pledge themselves to work extra shifts in his honour. When he was condemned to be hanged by the neck until dead they were again persuaded to pledge themselves to work overtime, to forgo their Sunday rest and holidays — in order to ‘clear the name of the party'!

Slánský joined the Communist Party at the age of 21 and at a time when the possibility of the Communists ever coming to power in Czechoslovakia was, to say the least, remote. He was on the staff of Rudé Právo when he was 23; editor of Delnicky Deník (Workers’ Daily) in Ostrava at the age of 24 (1925); became Regional Secretary of the party in Ostrava in 1926; went to Moscow in 1938, where he worked in the Czech section of Moscow Radio; in 1944 was on the General Staff of the partisan movement in Kiev and in September of the same year took part in the Slovak uprising at Banská Bystrica against the German occupation. With the defeat of this uprising he escaped to join the Red Army in Russia. He was appointed General Secretary of the Czech Communist Party, a post he held for six years, on the recommendation and with the full support and approval of his friend, Klement Gottwald.

Yet it is now said of this man, and he himself confirmed it in his confession, that he had never in his life been a Communist. If he was never a Communist, if he, to quote his own words, ‘prepared war, yet talked of peace, talked democracy and socialism and prepared for Fascist dictatorship’, what, then, of Pollitt, of Togliatti, Duclos, of every Communist leader in every country of the world? May not the whole of their active lives in the service of Stalin also one day prove to be a mere sham, a cover for treachery? The case of the two French Communist leaders, Marty and Tillon, gives us the answer to that question. Like Slánský, these two men have during their entire political careers been held in high reverence by their party and its supporters as prototypes of the Stalinist revolutionary; now their names are dragged in the mud by that same party. But, unlike Slánský, Marty and Tillon refuse to confess. No one can doubt, however, that if France were Czechoslovakia they would be made to toe the line and confess. (The titular head of the French Communist Party has been in Moscow for the last two years, allegedly too ill to return home. It looks as though he may die there — like Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist leader.)

On the same high level of devotion to Stalinism as Slánský stood also these other accused: Otto Sling, Secretary of the party in Brno, controller of the political trustworthiness of the Czech volunteers in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War; Bedrich Geminder (also known as Bedrich Vltaysky), head of the foreign affairs department of the party, member of the Executive Committee and the Secretariat of the party, editor of its journal Funkcioner; André Simone, a member of the party for thirty-odd years, in Moscow from 1930 to 1932, active for the Communist International in many countries, particularly in Spain during the Civil War, was in Mexico during the war, returned to Czechoslovakia via France and became an editor and diplomatic correspondent of Rudé Právo; Josef Frank, deputy Secretary-General of the party, spent five and a half years as prisoner of the Nazis, became a member of the Executive Committee in 1946 and held various high party posts, including head of the Propaganda department; Ludwig Frejka (formerly Freund), a member of the party from the 1920s, became economic adviser to Gottwald in March 1948, was a member of the Economic Planning Commission, editor-in-chief of the economic weekly Hospodár (now extinct), was in England during the war and worked on the Daily Worker; Bedrich Reicin worked for Communist newspapers in Prague before the war, took refuge in the Soviet Union in 1939, where he became a corporal in the Czech Brigade, promoted to officer, trained in military intelligence, in 1948 appointed head of the counter-intelligence department of the Czech General Staff and finally promoted to major-general; Karel Sváb, with the vital post of Deputy Minister of National Security (little is known about him but he clearly comes in the Slánský-Sling category of highly trusted Communists); Artur London, served in the International Brigade and in the French underground movement until captured by the Gestapo in 1942 and held in various concentration camps for some years, appointed to the Czech embassy in Paris after the war, and at the beginning of 1949 to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; Evzen Löbl, also a party member of long standing, escaped to Poland with the help of Field in 1939 and eventually came to Britain, where he spent the war years, at one time Secretary of the British-Czechoslovak Friendship Club, became one of the four Deputy Ministers of Foreign Trade after the Communists took power; Dr Rudolf Margolius, spent the war in German prison camps, became a top official in the Ministry of Foreign Trade after February 1948; Otto Fischl, foundation member of the party, became a Deputy Minister of Finance in 1949 and in December of that year went to Eastern Germany as head of the Czech Diplomatic Mission, recalled in June 1951.

The purge of the Czech party, of which the Slánský trial was the high spot, has been the most thoroughgoing of any that has taken place since 1946. It has not been a matter of removing just one or two top leaders, but of a whole host of leaders great and little, and vast numbers of the rank and file. It reflects the most profound dissatisfaction of the Russian government with the work of the party in every sphere. Among the accused at the trial were not only those suspected of having been contaminated by contact with the West, but also those hitherto regarded as enjoying the confidence of the Kremlin. The fact that Gottwald, who now reigns supreme as the little Stalin of Czechoslovakia, was for long regarded as a ‘moderate’ Communist has led some to the conclusion that Gottwald has utilised the technique of the confession trial to put one over on Moscow by removing its staunchest supporters. This is no more than wishful thinking. However much the choice of who is to be a scapegoat and who is to survive may depend on superior manoeuvring ability within the party and the government bodies, the purge itself is dictated by Moscow, and its effect is to strengthen and not weaken Russia’s hold over the country, to accelerate and not retard the process of economic integration into Russian economy.

When one examines that aspect of the trial dealing with the accused’s sabotage of the country’s economy, it is again evident that Russian interests were the dominant motive for the trial.

The accused Frejka deposed that in the autumn of 1950, during trade negotiations with the USSR, he ‘pressed... for the USSR to buy from us light industry products which the USSR did not need...’. He had previously said that the implementation of the plan for the development of heavy industry had been postponed from 1950 to 1952, thereby creating a problem that it was impossible to tackle. (Yet later he says, that the ‘acts of sabotage’ were put right, ‘in particular after the report made by the President to the February conference of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1950 and 1951.) The accused Frank contradicted Frejka’s statement by saying that in 1950 the Soviet Union had of its own volition, in order to help Czechoslovakia, increased its orders for consumer goods, but some members of the conspiracy had refused such orders. He further stated that another method of sabotage practised was to over-price these goods, so that the Soviet Union refused to buy them. Both Frank and Frejka agreed that the aim was to make the country dependent on the West. The accused Löbl also confessed that in collaboration with Slánský, and in particular with Margolius and Frejka, he had pursued a policy of ‘tying Czechoslovak economy to the capitalist West’, and that they had obstructed the development of heavy industry. They had sold goods at a loss in the West and offset this by charging exorbitant prices to the USSR and other friendly states. Margolius characterised as ‘damaging’ agreements made with Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Iceland, etc, because these agreements called for the import of large quantities of fish, although Poland could easily have met all Czechoslovakia’s demands for fish. He had also not only agreed to, but actively supported, the export of television valves to Great Britain, thereby adding to the war strength of the capitalists. He had, further, been responsible for the reintroduction of bread and flour rationing in February 1951, because he had honoured agreements to export grain made with Holland, Switzerland and Belgium, with the excuse — obviously regarded as paltry by the court — that if he did not do so those concerned would be sued for breach of contract. But when it came to the USSR: ‘We did not adhere to contractual conditions; in particular we did not abide by delivery time limits, and finally we conducted a hostile price policy.’

Many similar points could be adduced from the trial proceedings, but there is space only for one final quotation, this time from the prosecutor’s summation:

To do away with dependence on capitalist countries [he said], it would have been necessary to promote cooperation with the USSR and the People’s Democracies. This would have required a change of structure, particularly increased productive capacities of plants, chiefly in steel production.

All of this boils down to the fact that the Soviet government was acutely dissatisfied with Czechoslovakia’s contributions to Soviet economy. Incidentally, this aspect of the trial exposes as a fraud the so-called Economic Conference held in Moscow from 3 to 12 April 1952. This conference claimed to have as its objective the increase of trade between East and West. Dr O Pohl, Director-General of the Czechoslovak National Bank, speaking at this gathering, deplored the fact that Czechoslovakia’s ‘trade with the Western countries was 32 per cent less than in 1938’, and stated that ‘if normal conditions in international trade were established Czechoslovakia would be able to achieve a total trade turnover of 40 or 50 milliard crowns per year with capitalist countries in the next two or three years’ (News from Czechoslovakia, Volume 2, no 14). Dr Imre Dégen, head of the Hungarian delegation, echoed the wishes of the other satellites’ representatives when he said: ‘As we wish to put international economic relations on a normal basis we propose to increase our trade with Western countries to a considerable extent in the present year.’ (Hungarian News and Information Service, 17 April 1952) And the Moscow English-language News quoted (15 April 1952) the communiqué of the conference: ‘The conference revealed vast potentialities for enlarging trade between the countries of Western Europe, the United States...’ In an appeal to the United Nations General Assembly this conference even had the gall to refer to ‘the disruption and shrinkage of economic relations between nations caused by all kinds of artificial restrictions and obstacles...’.

One of the countries ‘represented’ at this Moscow propaganda meeting was Israel.

Although we know that a Prague purge was decided on at least as long ago as the Rajk trial in Hungary, its wide scope and deep-going nature was determined by the grave economic situation of the country, resulting in general unrest as well as a failure to deliver the goods demanded by the Soviet Union. Economic failure is not confined to the Soviet plans to develop Czechoslovakia’s heavy industry, but extends also to agriculture. Czechoslovakia’s severe economic difficulties constitute the solid ground of fact on which the fantastic propaganda structure of the trial was built. The failure of the party to cope with the economic difficulties and to pacify the country widened the purge from Clementis and Sling to Slánský and every single government body. It is worth noting that during all the time the so-called Slánský conspirators were in the saddle, not a single month passed without one or more trials of ‘espionage agents, saboteurs and traitors in the pay of the West’. The sentences meted out were savage, including very many death sentences. If so many martyrs are forthcoming it is evident that opposition to the regime is considerable. One of the crimes of the accused Communists is that they have failed to overcome this resistance in spite of the most savage measures of repression. They thus serve as scapegoats for more than one failure of the regime. But the very frequency of espionage trials when the Slánský faction controlled the state security organs is in itself a conclusive refutation of the charge that they were agents of Anglo-American imperialism — unless the authorities now suggest that all those sentences of death and life imprisonment were also part of the Slánský gang’s criminal activities!

Another proof, if one were needed, that the Prague show was a Moscow creation is the involvement of leading Communists in Eastern Germany in the ‘conspiracy of the Western imperialists’. Paul Merker would not have been referred to in the confessions unless this had been arranged beforehand by those whose authority extends over all the Communist parties. This obviously was intended to prepare the ground for a further purge in Eastern Germany, a matter which does not come within the competence of the Czechoslovak authorities. Sure enough the Slánský trial was followed by a fresh purge in Eastern Germany; fresh names were added to the list of those already disgraced and awaiting their fate (by the time these lines are in print a confession trial may already have taken place). There is clearly nothing haphazard about these purges; they are directed in the final analysis from one centre, with one aim. Long before the Slánský trial the accused at the Rajk trial specifically referred to the relations of the ‘notorious American spy’ Noel Field with Czechoslovak Communists.

Another point worth noting is the virulent attack on the International Brigade. Beginning with the Rajk trial, this attack has now so sharpened that for the Stalinists the term ‘International Brigades’ is an insult second only to ‘Zionist’. The International Brigade is now depicted as having been no more than a training ground for Anglo-American espionage agents. How many Communists or fellow-travellers at the time of the Spanish Civil War would have believed such a transformation possible? But here, too, is seen the directing hand of the overseers, whose job it is to keep a tight rein on all the parties. It is necessary for them to destroy the popularity, or the reputations (real or false), of men who have ceased to be useful or who refuse to be used. The attack on the International Brigade aims at former cardboard heroes, Communist-created, like the Frenchman André Marty (a narrow- and evil-minded fanatic if ever there was one), as well as at ex-Communists like the Englishman Fred Copeman (a truly sincere man).

It would take another volume to discuss all the ramifications of the Slánský trial; there is space here only for a few further points of particular interest.

It has been noted that Mária Svermová was not in the dock with her fellow conspirators. In a statement made by the Minister of Information, Václav Kopecký (News from Czechoslovakia, 9 March 1951), it was stated that after the arrest of Sling she:

... had refused to see his guilt and had tried to defend him. She claimed to be surprised that the owner of the forest chalet at which she had secret meetings with Sling was caught hiding a secret transmitter for broadcasting abroad. [She]... now stood exposed as Sling’s leading fellow conspirator and therefore was responsible for the full weight of his crimes as well as her own.

In spite of this categorical assertion she was not tried, but she was none the less given a role to play in the court scene (this was undoubtedly her side of the bargain; whether the authorities will keep their side of the bargain with her remains to be seen). She said nothing about the alleged wireless set for sending messages abroad (this matter was ‘forgotten’). She painted her erstwhile comrades in the most lurid colours, and then she grovelled before the great Gottwald — the unsleeping, ever-vigilant father of his people. In an hysterical, tear-choked voice she spoke her lines and was led away behind the scenes. Somehow the wide-awake Gottwald had got separated — ‘isolated’ was the word she used — from his flock. The conspirators saw to it that access to him was denied to honest party workers. The ever-vigilant Gottwald did not realise what was going on. But at last he learned the terrible truth — the highest party and government bodies, the party press, the army, the state security bodies were all chock-a-block with traitors and espionage agents. His eyes once opened to this state of affairs he struck — mercilessly. Just like the hero of an old-time film serial Gottwald miraculously escapes when the odds seem hopelessly against him.

How was it possible for these traitors to infiltrate everywhere and remain undetected for so long? The same question was asked after all the other trials; it will be asked again after the next trial, with each fresh discovery that these parties are rotten through and through with intrigue, corruption and treachery. But it will never receive a sensible answer, because the situation that raises the question is too absurd for a sensible answer. According to the indictment in the Slánský trial the Western powers held Czechoslovakia in the hollow of their hand for something like three years. The Czechoslovak people are themselves puzzled, and are asking how it is possible that it took so long before Slánský and his accomplices were exposed although they had been sabotaging so obviously, writes Mr Roman Kalisty in the Bratislava Lud (28 November). ‘It was a very well organised conspiracy’, Mr Kalisty explains; it avoided exposure because it had ‘seized the most important positions even in the control and security organs'; they were ‘exceptionally clever people'; moreover Slánský was Secretary-General of the party; in addition ‘the Western espionage agencies recruited’ from among ‘Jewish bourgeois émigrés’, who naturally appeared reliable to an anti-Fascist regime. In other words — they were not exposed because they were not exposed. Gottwald was temporarily ‘isolated’ and there was no one left whose eyes were wide enough open to see the ‘obvious acts of sabotage’.

The same problem was mentioned by the Minister of Education, Professor Nejedlý, in a broadcast on 14 December. ‘People in Czechoslovakia were asking themselves two questions’, he said. ‘Why had the conspirators not been unmasked before, and why had they confessed?’ He dismissed the first by saying that it displayed a bourgeois mentality unworthy of the Communists who asked it; but to the second he gave a startling response.

This question, he said, indicated a belief either that the conspirators had hoped to save their lives by confessing, or that force or drugs were used. Neither of these explanations was correct. The building up of the confessions had been a long process. Some people said it was a psychological process; that was near the truth, because the accused had been broken down by overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that was gradually accumulated against them.

This is a surprising reply because it comes so close to the real truth demonstrated in the abundant evidence collected in this book. Nejedlý used the stock argument current ever since the Moscow Trials — ‘irrefutable evidence gradually accumulated'; but by his reference to ‘a long process’, ‘psychological process’ and his use of the term ‘broken down’, the ghastly reality suddenly looms up through the fog of lies.

Notes

1. Robb Wilton (1881-1957) was a popular British comedian whose characters often parodied incompetent officials and other figures of authority, including in one notable sketch a policeman. Wiveliscombe is a very small town in the depths of rural Somerset, its population is currently 2670 — MIA.

2. Gladwyn Jebb (1900-1996) was a British career diplomat and was the acting Secretary-General of the United Nations during 1945-46, and the British ambassador to the UN during 1950-54 — MIA.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Conclusion

The mopping-up operations in the Communist parties of the satellite states mark the beginning of the end phase of a process aiming at the Russification of the Soviet Union’s postwar territorial acquisitions.

The liquidation of so-called ‘extreme’, or Zhdanovite, Communists in Czechoslovakia, Rumania or elsewhere does not imply any change of policy on the part of the Soviet Union. That policy cannot change without a fundamental change within the Soviet Union, of which there are as yet no observable signs. The domestic policy of the Soviet Union is inevitably mirrored in its foreign policy; the iron control of the regime over the people at home is reflected in the iron control of its subject people abroad.

To what lengths of repression the Soviet government is prepared to go is most strikingly seen in its measures against members of the religious sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses; most strikingly, because it is apparently meaningless repression for the sake of repression, against a body with little following and no political or social influence. If the trials involving these people were not for them so tragic, they would cause only astonished derision. For the anti-war, anti-militarist attitude of this sect is too well known to require emphasis. It is these people that the Russian government, through the instrumentality of its East German puppets, puts on trial as warmongers and espionage agents of the West! Reading accounts of these events, one finds it hard to believe one’s eyes. Yet there it is, in black on white. On 31 August 1950, a statement of the East German Ministry of State charged the Jehovah’s Witnesses with ‘war propaganda, criminal activities against peace and cooperation with secret services of a foreign power. The previous day this sect, of which there are estimated to be about 50 000 in Eastern Germany, was banned by the government. A major count against them was their refusal to sign the Communist-organised Stockholm ‘Peace Appeal’. On 3 September a trial of nine young Witnesses took place and savage sentences were meted out to all the accused: penal servitude for life for Willi Heinicke and Friedrich Adler, sentences ranging from eight to fifteen years for the seven others. They were all found guilty of conducting ‘war propaganda on orders from American imperialism’. There were many other trials of members of the sect, resulting in equally savage sentences. Meaningless as these repressive measures seem, they are not really so. In the countries where Stalin’s writ runs the pacifist speaks with the voice of the government — or he does not speak at all.

Thus there is no single path along which the contraband of independent thought might flow that the Russian government does not seek to block with barbed wire and to command with bullets.

A record of all the political trials that have taken place in Russia’s postwar territorial acquisitions would fill hundreds of volumes. Most of those tried are hostile to the dictatorship imposed by Russia, and they are drawn from all classes of society. No one would suggest that among them are no agents of foreign powers; in the given international situation it is inevitable that there should be, just as there are Russian agents operating, in vastly more favourable circumstances, in the West. But with the systematic tightening of the stranglehold on all free political life in the Soviet sphere all opposition to the regime, of whatever character, is forced into ‘illegal’ channels, and every oppositionist, no matter what his or her political views, is castigated and mercilessly persecuted as an espionage agent of the Western imperialists. And there is now no longer any need for us to ask: why do they confess? The ferocious sentences meted out for the slightest sign of anti-government activity — even for a suggestion of non-conformist thinking — are designed to terrorise opponents into silence, resignation, apathy. These draconian punishments are symptomatic of the insecure foundations on which the structure of Soviet power rests.

There are sincere, but extremely short-sighted, persons (we here, of course, exclude the Stalinists) who manage to see in all this a revolutionary change sponsored by the Russian government for the benefit of the common people of Eastern Europe. They can come to such a conclusion only through ignoring reality. The following statement contains Stalin’s own explanation of Soviet policy with regard to these countries:

The Germans made their invasion of the USSR through Finland, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The Germans were able to make their invasion through these countries because, at the time, governments hostile to the Soviet Union existed in these countries... And so what can be surprising about the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, is trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries? (Soviet News pamphlet, 1947; text of Stalin’s interview to press correspondents, etc; author’s emphasis)

It could not be put more bluntly. Stalin’s frank statement, never since repeated and now almost forgotten, confirms our analysis of the basic purpose of the confession trials in the countries concerned.

Yes, the Soviet government ‘is trying to see to it that governments loyal... to the Soviet Union should exist in those countries’. And by what incredibly monstrous means it pursues its objective!

Stalin’s Inquisition takes hold of its victims — his own creatures among them — bends and binds them to its will by inhuman psychological torture, prepares the stage, and presents to the entire world its gruesome, repulsive show. By speech and article, in the press and on the wireless, by book and by pamphlet, it spreads to the world through countless channels the confessions of its victims, knowing these confessions false, knowing the means by which they were obtained. Without pity, without conscience, without honour, without even the most elementary human decency, it does not shrink from compelling a wife to demand the death of her husband, a son to demand the death of his father, knowing them innocent of the crimes with which they are charged.

And this modern Inquisition has the brazen effrontery to present its macabre productions to the world as the dispensation of justice. Not just here and there a dull-witted fool, a miserable hireling, but governments, their entire legal professions, their orators, writers, artists, intellectuals — proclaim this lie to be the truth. One stands appalled at the magnitude of the fraud they seek to impose on the world, the iniquity, the degradation of it. Do they really imagine it possible to make people believe in these enormities, the confession trials?

Yes, they believe it is possible — they know it is possible. Not all of the world is living in the twentieth century.

The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953

Postscript

Hardly had the Prague trial ceased to occupy the front pages of the world press than the Soviet news agency, Tass, announced the ‘unmasking’ of yet another ‘plot’, this time in the USSR itself. The details made public on 13 January, though scanty, once more gave evidence of the inspirational source of all these incredible affairs. It was as though the Soviet government itself was determined to leave no room for doubt that it held the copyright in these scripts. At the same time the Tass announcement confirmed that the anti-Semitism of the Prague trial was not a mere local variation on the general theme but, on the contrary, had been featured at the direct instigation of Moscow.

Tass reported the ‘arrest of a terrorist group of physicians, uncovered by the state security organs of the USSR’. Among those arrested were GI Mayorov, and the professors MS Vovsi, VN Vinogradov, [1] MB Kogan, BB Kogan, PI Yegorov, YG Etinger, AI Feldman and AM Grinshtein. Most of the members of this terrorist group were allegedly in the pay of the American intelligence service and received their instructions through the medium of Joint, described as ‘an international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organisation'; others were long-standing agents of the British intelligence service. Their aim had been ‘first of all to undermine the health of Soviet leading military cadres, to disable them, and to weaken the defence of the country. They tried to disable Marshal AM Vasilevsky, Marshal LA Govorov, Marshal IS Koniev, Army General SM Shtemenko, Admiral GI Levchenko and others.’ They had failed in this purpose, but had succeeded in murdering AA Zhdanov and AS Shcherbakov, ‘outstanding leaders of the Soviet state...’.

This announcement naturally gave rise to speculations as to whether a purge comparable in its fury to those of the 1930s might not be getting under way. Was this so-called Doctors’ Plot symptomatic of a deep-going struggle among the Soviet leaders? And would the circle of those involved be later expanded to include prominent figures of the regime?

Pravda of 13 January stated that the fact that this ‘group of cheap monsters recruited among “scientists” was able to go about unpunished shows that some of our Soviet authorities and their heads have forgotten about vigilance’, and there was also direct reference to ‘shortcomings’ in the state security services. In some quarters this was taken to indicate an attack on LP Beria, who had become head of the NKVD in 1938, after the removal of NI Yezhov. However, the simultaneous prominence given in the Soviet press to the public appearance of Beria with Stalin and other leaders would seem to have been designed to scotch any such rumours and to emphasise the unity of the top leadership. It must also be remembered that Beria relinquished his post in the NKVD in 1946. Sometime in 1945 the organisation had again been split into two departments, the MVD (Ministry of Internal Security) and the MGB (Ministry of State Security). Thus, although Beria may have continued to exercise a behind-the-scenes control over these organisations, the persons officially responsible are SN Kruglov and VS Abakumov, heads of the MVD and the MGB respectively. (To date, there has been no official confirmation of the rumour that Abakumov has been shot.) Further expansion of the circle of those involved in the Doctors’ Plot would therefore be more likely to include one of these two men rather than Beria.

The existence of rivalry for the succession to Stalin’s throne cannot, of course, be discounted entirely; but there is no immediate evidence that the story of the Doctors’ Plot is an element of such a rivalry, while there is considerable evidence that it has been motivated by quite other considerations.

The idea of involving Kremlin doctors in a plot against the regime derives, of course, from the Moscow Trial of 1938, which, in the final analysis, was an expression of fundamentally opposed political viewpoints; but today the entire political circumstances are quite different from those prevailing in 1938. The trial of the ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists’ gave the death-blow to the last of the ‘Old Guard’ around which, given certain conditions, a political opposition might have crystallised. At the same time it eliminated all those who had prepared and carried through the previous purges and trials. Then the great and dreaded Yagoda, thanks to whose vigilance the enemies of the people had been unmasked, was himself unmasked by the even more vigilant Yezhov. In due course Yezhov was also unmasked and executed. Beria’s appointment as head of the NKVD marked the end of an epoch, the final stabilisation and consolidation of the new bureaucracy around Stalin. It was henceforth in the common interest of all members of this bureaucratic caste to stand together, to display a united front to the Soviet people and the world. The ground for fundamental political divisions among them no longer existed; if any divergences arose they were tactical and not strategic.

The problem confronting the Soviet bureaucracy today is not therefore the former one of a divided leadership, part of which, however much it might ostensibly have reconciled itself to the Stalin course, still looked back for its inspiration to the revolutionary past. No, the problem confronting it is: how to justify the sacrifices required of the common people for war preparedness; how to channel the discontent of the great mass of the non-privileged workers and peasants away from the bureaucracy; how to combat the more blatant abuse of party and state office for personal ends — a disease endemic to the very system; how to stimulate ‘criticism from below’ and yet to hold it within the limits inevitably imposed by a regime essentially authoritarian; and how to hold on to, strengthen and consolidate its vast empire.

In the common interest of the bureaucratic caste the leadership must be prepared from time to time to sacrifice individual members of that caste, but only an internal crisis of major proportions and long duration could call forth a political opposition necessitating a purge comparable in scope to that of the 1930s.

Subsequent Soviet comment on, and developments with regard to, the Doctors’ Plot have all tended to confirm the view that its ‘discovery’ was inspired by considerations already revealed at the Nineteenth Congress of the party in October 1952. Then Malenkov spoke of ‘such ugly features as bureaucracy and degeneration, and even corruption in some sections of the party apparatus...'; of ‘a spirit of negligence [that] has penetrated our party organisation'; and demanded that a ‘decisive stop’ be put to ‘violations of party and state discipline’, and that it be made ‘possible for all honest-minded Soviet citizens to come forward boldly and fearlessly and criticise shortcomings in the work of our organisations and institutions’ (G Malenkov, Report to the Nineteenth Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B) (Moscow, 1952), pp 114, 116, 121, 131). Although Malenkov — moved by the need to face the facts and yet to proclaim the unceasing vigilance of the party — blew alternately hot and cold on this theme, it is clear from his speech that the Soviet leaders are deeply concerned at the existing state of affairs in the country. The greater part of the pre- and post-congress discussion was concentrated on the subject of mismanagement, nepotism, corruption and so forth. It is evident that the national leadership has decided that the entire state apparatus needs an extremely severe shaking up. The seriousness of the situation must be brought home to everyone by some striking object lesson. What better method than the time-honoured one of a confession trial? There can be little doubt that the Doctors’ Plot has been devised precisely for this purpose of administering a therapeutic shock to the party activists and the entire administrative apparatus.

After the first news of the ‘discovery’ had been published and briefly commented on, the Soviet press was silent on the matter for four days. Then on 18 January [2] came a Pravda editorial, which referred to the ‘fight for the fulfilment of the tasks laid down in Stalin’s work of genius Economic Problems of the USSR'; called for the strictest discipline, high political vigilance, an irreconcilable attitude towards shortcomings; and quoted the new party statutes obliging all members to ‘keep party and state secrets’ (author’s emphasis). ‘A carefree, smug and complacent mood’, it said, ‘has penetrated the party ranks'; vigilance had been blunted and such ‘unpleasant facts as capitalist encirclement and plots have begun to be forgotten’ (author’s emphasis):

They are losing sight of the fact that the imperialists, especially the American developing preparations for a new war, attempt to send into our country and other countries of the socialist camp twice and three times more agents, spies, diversionists, than into the rear of any bourgeois country.

It is surely unnecessary to look further for an explanation of the motives behind the ‘discovery’ of the Doctors’ Plot.

These nine doctors will confess in court, not to any real crimes that they may have on their consciences, but to crimes concocted by their inquisitors to conform to a determined pattern of propaganda, for the purpose of educating the party and the people. That men can be tortured, degraded, ruined, crushed out of existence like flies, simply in order to provide an object lesson, to tighten up the administrative machine, and to bring home the ‘unpleasant fact of capitalist encirclement’ — this is horrible even to think of. Yet it has been done, as we have seen, over and over again in the Soviet world — systematically, cynically, with cold-blooded calculation.

Nor will the forthcoming Moscow trial (public or private) be the first occasion on which eminent Kremlin doctors have been obliged to ‘point a moral and adorn a tale’. In the light of present events in the Soviet Union it is worthwhile to glance back at that aspect of the 1938 Moscow Trial that concerned the three Kremlin doctors, Levin, Kazakov and Pletnev, accused and found guilty of the murder of the former GPU chief, Menzhinsky; the Politbureau member, Kuibyshev; the world-famous author, Maxim Gorky, and his son, Maxim Peshkov. The last named was a confirmed alcoholic who, after a particularly heavy bout of drinking, lay out in the snow, caught pneumonia, and died. The others were all chronic invalids liable to die at any moment (only one-third of Gorky’s lungs were functioning at the time of his death). Yet the doctors, all of them in the top ranks of their profession (Levin had even treated Lenin) all confessed to having murdered them by ‘wrecking methods of treatment’, on Yagoda’s orders.

The confessions of the Kremlin doctors were required in order to make out a case against Yagoda, who could not be charged with the many real crimes he had committed without accusing his accusers. [3] Thus it was necessary to charge him with purely imaginary crimes.

The testimony of the doctors as to why they had done Yagoda’s bidding is particularly instructive. Dr Kazakov said:

I was dazzled by the power of the representative of the OGPU [changed to NKVD in 1934 — author]; he seemed to me to be an omnipotent person, in whose hands a tremendous amount of power was concentrated. And if this man said I must do this, then I did it. Psychologically, I explain it by a sort of cowardice — not for my own life, that I say in all sincerity. What frightened me was his threat to destroy my family. (Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’, p 546)

The force of this admission is not diminished by the fact that Yagoda denied ever having met Kazakov. For the force of it lies in the fact that Kazakov’s fear of Yagoda was accepted by the court as perfectly natural. Pletnev, questioned on the same point by Vyshinsky, replied that: ‘After all, he was the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs.’ Levin also pleaded that Yagoda had threatened to ruin him and his family if he disobeyed his orders. All the doctors obviously thought that everyone would appreciate the situation. And everyone did appreciate it.

Thus both in 1938 and now, with the Doctors’ Plot, the alleged victims are men who have been dangerously ill for a long time. In both instances the physicians’ treatment is said to have undermined their patients’ health and so caused their deaths. But whereas in 1938 the doctors played a minor role, now they are apparently to be given leading parts. Then they received instructions from the head of the GPU and had no direct connection with any foreign intelligence service, while now they are in the pay of the US and the British. In 1938 the doctors committed their imaginary crimes through fear of Yagoda. The fear no one thought imaginary, since it corresponded to Soviet reality. Today, however, the doctors — nine of them, all highly paid and highly privileged — allegedly sold themselves for dollars and pounds, a charge that is absurd on the face of it. Will the Soviet authorities not try to make their case in this respect appear less feeble? And if so, will they not fall back again on the 1938 script? Should they do so, it is clear that either Kruglov or Abakumov is indicated for Yagoda’s role, rewritten to accord with present requirements and circumstances. If it is true that Abakumov has already been executed, then he would be the ideal person for the purpose, since there would be no question of his making even the limited denials made by Yagoda. Either Kruglov or Abakumov could be expended without calling in question the stability of the national leadership. The inclusion of a security chief would also demonstrate that the government was really trying to square the circle in order to realise Malenkov’s demand that the ‘honest-minded Soviet citizen’ should be able to come forward and criticise without fear of the consequences.

In 1938 the foreign intelligence services involved with the ‘plotters’ were the German and the Japanese, with the British lying well back in third place. It was not easy to make this connection seem in any way plausible, and no attempt was made to show the doctors as directly connected. Even their indirect connection through Yagoda appeared obviously ridiculous after Yagoda had said: ‘I am not jesting when I say that if I had been a spy dozens of countries could have closed down their intelligence services...’ (Ibid, p 786) But today the doctors have somehow to be shown as agents of the US and British intelligence services. This is to be established through the ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalist’ Mikhoels and a certain Moscow physician, Shimeliovich, who were allegedly the liaison agents between the doctors and the Jewish charitable organisation Joint. Mikhoels (he is said to be a brother of the accused Professor Vovsi) is dead, having been mysteriously murdered in Minsk in 1947. Whether Shimeliovich is alive or dead is not known. In addition to these two it is almost certain that the former US Ambassador, Mr Kerman — recalled last October at the request of the Soviet government — will be dragged into the affair. The Soviet inquisitors’ means of connecting the doctors with the British intelligence service is even more tenuous. Possibly the ubiquitous Konni Zilliacus will again come in useful. It may also be established that the accused had at some time or other had contact with members of the medical profession in the West.

Another point of interest requires to be noted. In the 1938 trial there was a Professor VN Vinogradov among the panel of medical experts called upon by the prosecution to bear witness against their accused colleagues. And among the doctors under arrest today there is also a Professor VN Vinogradov. This may be merely a coincidence: there may really be two Professors Vinogradov, with the same initials, and both members of the Kremlin Medical Service. But perhaps it is the same old story once again — the accusers of one trial becoming the accused of the next. There was also in 1938 a Dr AI Vinogradov, allegedly implicated in the murders but not brought to trial. His subsequent fate was never disclosed. Whatever bearing these facts may prove to have on the present case, it seems clear that the Doctors’ Plot will somehow be made to stem back to 1938 and before. The fantastic ramifications and nightmare logic of these affairs are such that nothing is impossible.

How were these doctors selected for their confessional roles? In the first place, of course, because they had had the so-called victims under their care. But it does not follow that Zhdanov and the others were not also given treatment by other physicians, who have not been arrested, who, on the contrary, will testify against their accused colleagues. This is what happened in 1938 — and here another nauseating aspect of this business has to be noted.

The accused Dr Kazakov testified in 1938 that ‘... most of the physicians in the Medical Service were my scientific opponents. I thought that a time might come perhaps when I would be able to work freely, that Yagoda would perhaps be able to curb them.’ (Ibid, p 602)

Vyshinsky’s violent reaction to this ‘slander’, as he called it, showed that he was touched on the raw. A fleeting glimpse of another sombre corner of Soviet reality had been unwittingly afforded. The moral degeneration in the upper circles of Soviet society had reached such a point that even controversy on matter of science was made the subject of appeal to the ‘thought police’, and the methods of the informer, the police spy and the provocateur resorted to in order to win the day against an opponent. On each side there were those who sought to show that their opponents held views hostile to the regime, were class enemies, deviationists, etc, etc. They did this knowing full well that it could, and did, lead to not merely dismissal of the defeated, but to their degradation, utter ruin, imprisonment, even death by shooting. Is the situation today any better than it was then? The answer to that has already been given. For shortly after the announcement of the Doctors’ Plot the Order of Lenin was awarded to a woman doctor, Lidya Fedoseyevna Timashuk, for ‘her assistance in the matter of exposing the doctor-assassins’. Something moves upwards from the murky depths, a monstrous, obscenely repellent shape...

* * *

There is still to be considered another problem raised by the Doctors’ Plot. Since the basic elements of all these judicial frame-ups have necessarily to be derived from events that actually did take place, is it not possible that the poisoning of professional or political rivals was in fact resorted to? Clearly the possibility cannot be excluded. The judicial frame-ups themselves prove that the Soviet rulers are not deterred by any moral scruples from the blackest iniquities. It is therefore quite possible that ‘incorrect treatment’ has been used to get rid of awkward persons who could not conveniently be disposed of by direct police methods. The number of persons coming in such a category would inevitably be very small, however; a man like Gorky, too world-famous to be arrested, might conceivably have been dealt with in this manner. Yet in the 1938 trial there was no solid evidence that Gorky or any of the other alleged victims had really been murdered; on the contrary, the doctors’ confessions, when they went into details, were calculated to disprove the charges rather than substantiate them. In the absence of any positive evidence other than confessions, extracted by the means described in the minutest detail in this book, and confronted with the contradictions and absurdities of those confessions, the only conclusion any reasonable person can come to is that the charges were false in the past and are false today. The suspicion that the particular crime of political murder has been committed in the Soviet Union must, however, remain strong; but precisely who the victims were will never be known, the real instigator never be brought to trial (we do not, of course, refer to those murders carried out under the guise of juridical proceedings). Confessions extorted by psychological and physical tortures do not constitute evidence of guilt — they constitute only evidence of the lack of evidence. And if one suspects that behind these charges of murder there does in fact lie, at a remote distance, some trace of the truth — the confessions have nothing to do with this truth.

Zhdanov, a sufferer from angina pectoris, died suddenly, as sufferers from this infliction often do. The Bulgarian Communist leader Dimitrov, his constitution seriously weakened long before he went to Moscow for treatment, also died. Marshal Choi Balsan, Premier of the Soviet Mongolian Republic, likewise went the way of all flesh. All of these men were under the care of Kremlin doctors now charged with murder. And how many others...? The scope of the trial involving these men may thus be widened indiscriminately at the discretion of the government. It may even be that the failure of the French Communist leader Thorez to recover in Russia from his illness will be attributed to the Doctors’ Plot, and thus linked with the disgrace of the Communist leaders Marty and Tillon in France. There is no fantasy beyond the imaginative powers of the Moscow show trial producers.

It would be a mistake to minimise the propaganda effect of these trials, however nonsensical they may seem to reasonable people. Even in the West, relatively politically mature, there are still many who are fooled by them. But with each successive trial the truth marches forward to conquer new ground. It is to the politically backward areas of the globe, however, that this propaganda is mainly directed. The Kremlin has noted the steady deterioration of the position of the Communist parties in the West, and while it has by no means written these parties off, it is, on the international field, concerned principally with consolidating its position in its Eastern European empire, and in China. The crude, highly coloured propaganda of ‘plots’ is well calculated to be effective in these areas. The anti-Semitism of the Prague trial and the Doctors’ Plot, while it loses supporters here, will win them there. It has not failed to find approval in the neo-Nazi movement in Germany, or among the rabidly anti-Israel elements of the Middle East.

In the Soviet Union itself the Doctors’ Plot serves the purpose we have indicated. There its effect is calculated to terrorise party and state officials as much as to convince the masses of the reality of ‘capitalist encirclement’. And that such a method must be resorted to in the ‘land of socialism’, thirty-five years after the Revolution promising an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity to the people of Russia, is in itself a sufficient commentary on the true state of affairs in that unhappy country.

29 January 1953

* * *

No sooner is the last line written than news comes of fresh charges and arrests. The former deputy Minister of the Non-Ferrous Metal Industry, SM Petrov, has been ‘guilty of impermissible carelessness and gullibility in losing a series of important secret documents’. The ‘traitor SI Orlov, taking advantage of the carelessness of the workers in an institution’, stole a secret document, ‘which he intended to transmit to a foreign intelligence service’. A certain IG Khanovich wrote books, which were published, containing top secret information. GL Zaslavsky, an official in the Ministry of Geology, showed secret material to outsiders. The heads of four Ukrainian Ministries are attacked... important documents have been poorly guarded. The campaign around the party statute obliging all members to ‘keep party and state secrets’ is launched on a nation-wide scale. All except the very top leaders are quaking in their shoes... wondering fearfully... will they, too, be made to confess that they are espionage agents of the US and British intelligence services?

And in the West the dark foreboding grows. Does all this herald a fresh thrust of aggression on the part of the Soviet Union?

1 February 1953.

Notes

1. On 27 February 1952, Pravda published the following item: ‘For outstanding services in the field of practical medicine and development of Soviet medical science, Professor VN Vinogradov, member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, has on the occasion of his seventieth birthday been awarded the Order of Lenin.’

2. On the same day the arrest was announced of I Korshun, a consultant in the Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy, implicated in the ‘disappearance of an important document’. Also reported was the ‘unmasking’ of B Suleimenov, a ‘bourgeois nationalist’ member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakhstan Republic, who had ‘deceitfully wormed his way into the ranks of the party’.

3. ‘I directed vast construction jobs — the canals’, he pleaded in mitigation; and when he wanted a simile to describe his membership of the ‘Right-Trotskyist underworld’ the one that he thought of was — ‘chained to this underworld as a convict to his wheelbarrow’ (Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’, p 785).