Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials
§ 1. This Commission of Inquiry into the Charges made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials was initiated in March, 1937, by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, acting for its own nation-wide membership and under mandates from the French Comite pour l'Enquete sur le Procès de Moscou, the English Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, and the Czechoslovak Internationales Komitee für Recht and Wahrheit. Since that time it has acted as an independent body, controlling its own membership and finances, authorizing sub-commissions to take testimony, and conducting its inquiry in pursuance of those methods which its members regarded as best calculated to further the purpose for which it was created.
§ 2. The reasons for its formation are generally known, and therefore need be stated only briefly. In the Moscow trials of August, 1936, and January, 1937, Leon Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov had been accused of serious crimes against the Soviet state and its leaders, and declared convicted without having been offered any opportunity to be heard. They had denied their guilt through the world press and in their turn accused the Soviet government of having based their “conviction” on framed-up evidence. At the time of the August trial, Trotsky had challenged the Soviet government to request his extradition from Norway, where he was living in exile from the Soviet Union, a procedure which would automatically have brought his case before a Norwegian court. He repeated this challenge from his Mexican asylum at the time of the January trial. In the absence of any attempt by the Soviet government to secure their extradition, and in the consequent absence of opportunity to answer the charges against them before any legally constituted court, Trotsky and Sedov had called for the formation of an international commission of inquiry to take their testimony and to consider documentary proofs of their innocence which they declared themselves ready to submit.
The August trial had precipitated a worldwide controversy, which the January trial had further embittered. There was widespread suspicion of political persecution in juridical form. An investigation was, therefore, justified and necessary in the interest of historic truth. The members of this Commission, holding widely divergent political and social opinions, and none of them being a political adherent of Leon Trotsky, have united solely for the purpose of investigating this issue and establishing the facts.
§ 3. The importance of its task and the gravity of its responsibility to public opinion have grown immeasurably during the months it has been at work. The continuing arrests and executions of Soviet officials and other citizens on charges of terrorism, wrecking, sabotage, “Trotskyism,” etc., have strengthened the suspicion of thousands of genuine friends of the Russian people that the present regime is seeking to identify political opposition to itself with criminal activity against the Soviet Union and people. Even outside Russia, charges of this nature have become a formula by which the ranks of labor everywhere have been divided. For example, in Spain Andres Nin, one of the leaders of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity (POUM), was arrested and later kidnapped and murdered, with others, in consequence of this division. Other leaders of the POUM are in jail. In China, oppositionists to the policies of the official Communist Party are accused in terms identical with those used against the so-called Trotskyites in Spain. The issue, even more than those involved in such historic cases as that of Dreyfus, Sacco-Vanzetti, or Dimitrov-Torgler, must therefore be regarded as international. It imperils countless human lives and compromises those standards of justice which mankind has painfully established to safeguard the individual against governmental oppression.
The Commission submits its report to public opinion in all countries, with a profound awareness of the historic and contemporary significance of the issue with which it has had to deal, and in the hope that this result of many months of painstaking investigation will clarify that issue.
§ 4. The procedure of this Commission has been similar to that of such bodies as Senate investigating committees, the National Labor Relations Board, and the unofficial international commission which investigated the Reichstag Fire case. Its sole purpose having been to ascertain the truth concerning the charges made against Leon Trotsky and Leon Sedov, it has been concerned with bringing to light all available facts in the case, whether favorable or unfavorable to Trotsky and Sedov. In accepting evidence it has been guided by the so-called “best evidence rule,” under which it has received only the best evidence which the circumstances made available. The action of the Soviet government in executing twenty-nine of the thirty-three defendants in the two Moscow trials has made it forever impossible to obtain through cross-examination the best evidence of the truth of their alleged confessions; and the Soviet government’s attitude of non-cooperation precludes the cross-examination of those four defendants who were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. This attitude also makes impossible an examination of the records of the investigations preliminary to the trials, or any of the secret documentary evidence which is allegedly in the possession of the prosecution. Other direct evidence, such as police records of Trotsky’s movements, is in the possession of foreign governments, and repeated efforts on behalf of the Commission to obtain access to it have failed. Nevertheless we have been able to amass a wealth of direct evidence and of corroborating indirect evidence. In view of the reiterated assertions made by partisan critics of the Commission, to the effect that no original documents were available to it, we emphatically assert here that we are in possession of a very large number of original and important documents submitted in evidence.
§ 5. Our inquiry has been furthered by three sub-commissions, the names of whose members are listed in Appendix No. 1 to this report. The first, generally known as the Preliminary Commission, held thirteen hearings in Coyoacan, D. F., Mexico, from April 10 to April 17, 1937, during which it took Trotsky’s testimony and that of his secretary, Jan Frankel, cross-examined both witnesses, heard Trotsky’s argument in which he answered the charges against him and made counter-charges against the Soviet government, and accepted, subject to verification, such documentary evidence as he had to introduce. Its report and the record of its sessions, in a volume of 617 pages, have been published by Harper & Brothers under the title, “The Case of Leon Trotsky.” A rogatory commission (Commission Rogatoire), created by the French Comité pour l'Enquête sur le Procès de Moscou, held eleven sessions from May 12 to June 22, 1937, in Paris, taking the testimony of Leon Sedov and four other witnesses, and accepting such documentary evidence as Leon Sedov had to submit. A sub-commission in New York held five hearings on July 26 and 27, 1937, three in public and two in closed session, during which it took the testimony of eleven witnesses. The records of all sub-commissions have been accepted by the Commission and included in the materials which form the basis of this report.
§ 6. Both the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry and the Commission Rogatoire invited the Soviet government, through its diplomatic representatives, to be represented at their hearings with the right to cross-examine witnesses and offer evidence in rebuttal of their testimony. The Preliminary Commission also requested that the Soviet government make available to its members the records of hearings preliminary to the two Moscow trials. The invitations and the request were ignored (PC, App. 3, p. 594; CR, Exh. 6). The Preliminary Commission also invited the Communist Party of the U. S., the Communist Party of Mexico, the well-known Communist lawyer of New York, Mr. Joseph Brodsky, and Mr. Lombardo Toledano, General Secretary of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México and outstanding opponent of Trotsky, to participate in its inquiry. The invitations were ignored or declined (PC, App. 3, pp. 594-5, 600-2). The Commission Rogatoire extended the same invitation to the French Communist Party, the Friends of the U.S.S.R., and the League for the Rights of Man, with the same results (CR, Exhs. 5, 7, 8, 11, 12).
In the absence of any representative of the prosecution, an increased burden of cross-examining witnesses fell upon the members of the sub-commissions and their counsel.
§ 7. The preliminary work of investigation having been completed, and the reports of all sub-commissions and documents submitted either to the sub-commissions or the Commission being in our hands, the Commission has met in New York City, and examined the evidence. Its final report follows.