*IN THE TIME OF THE STALINIST GREAT PURGE TRIALS OF THE 1930s

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's article by Leon Trotsky from March 1936 titled "Stalin Plans Wholesale Persecution".

Commentary

On the 70th Anniversary of the Great Stalinist Purge Trials

An October 5, 2007 Associated Press news item out of Moscow concerning discovery of some long buried bodies that had been shot caught my eye. It seems that some workers on a reconstruction site in that city had unearthed a few dozen bodies buried since the 1930’s, many of them showing signs of having been shot in the head. The newsworthy point is that this building was adjacent to the infamous KGB headquarters at the Lubyianka Prison, site of many political executions during the time of the Stalinist reign of terror at that time. The unearthed bodies are presumed victims of those purges. It brought to my mind that this is the 70th Anniversary of the height of that madness. This is hardly an anniversary occasion for celebration, except for those few unreconstructed Stalinists who are muttering in their mush about Trotskyite conspiracies, agents of Hitler and the Mikado and other such babble. It is an appropriate time, however, to make a few comments about what all that evil time meant politically and on the destructive nature of Stalinism as the ‘face ‘of socialism that still has ramifications for the international working class these many years later.

Many years ago I read British historian Robert Conquest’s study The Great Terror that vividly describes the arbitrariness of the prosecutions and executions, their extent and the chilling atmosphere on the political life, such as it was, of the times. The book is still worthwhile reading, with the following caution, in order to get a partial flavor of the bleakness of the times and the extent of the political freeze placed on Russian society. Conquest had his own axe to grind and was using his study as prima facie evidence that Stalinist ‘socialism in one country’ was a retrograde step in the fight for human progress. He thus comfortably took his place as an active anti-communist agent on behalf of Western imperialism. Alas, he was not alone in such endeavors. A virtual cottage industry grew up around that premise, especially at the height of the Cold War in the 1950’s and especially by the ‘god that failed’ crowd of former Stalinist devotees. I would only add that anti-Stalinist, pro-communist militants, led during the 1930’s by the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky and others, did, and today can, quote chapter and verse the crimes, high and low, of Stalinism with the best of the anti-communist cottage artisans. The difference, and no small matter, is that we did not, and do not, ‘outsource’ this fight to international imperialism.

One cannot mention the Stalinist purges without mentioning the name of Leon Trotsky, a central figure in this drama. Yes, there was a general mopping up of any and all previous political oppositions, including a significant number of former Stalinist factionists (particularly from the so-called “Congress of Victors” of 1934). Yes, anyone conceivably political, or who knew anyone conceivably political, or who just ran afoul of the KGB was rounded up. And beyond that anyone who, for the most bizarre and arbitrary reasons, including wrong nationality was suspect. However, in the end it was the three well-known political trials that not only captured the headlines but that can also serve today as an explanation for the rationale, if that is the word, of those events. And at the center was the hated figure of Trotsky, who also faced the Stalinist executioner’s blade later. I might add that the vaunted Western press of the times, notably in America, the "New York Times" and the liberal "Nation" magazine took the accusations at the trials as good coin. They were more than willing to give Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor, and a passing grade on his outrageous conduct at the trials. Of course, those were the ‘popular front against fascism days’ of blessed liberal memory and they were all good fellows and true- Stalinists included. Oh well, the names, individual and political, change but some things never change.

Let us be clear Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Rykov, Bukharin and the other lesser prisoners in the dock for the most part were at that time political opponents of Trotsky’s and who, for the most part, had capitulated more than once to Stalin. But they also formed the core of the Bolshevik Party that made the revolution in 1917. To suspect that cadre who had spent their whole lives in the service of the revolution to have really spent that time trying to destroy the revolution defies description. Even the editors of the Nation, in their more lucid moments, should have been able to fathom that. But here is the point- those in the dock may not have been our people, but they were our people. It may be not be important today to most people but these cadres were in no need of good conduct medals by a later generation of Stalinists, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Particularly not Trotsky, who fought Stalinism to the end.


During much of the Cold War the ‘face’ of Stalinism to the Western public was the Gulags, the labor concentration camps. To those of us with a greater political focus the ‘face’ of Stalinism was the purge trials and political murders of the 1930's. Under either understanding we are very, very far away from the promises held out by the socialist vision. The sad political fact is, however, that Stalinism was never politically defeated by anti-Stalinist, pro-socialist militants. Rather the demise of the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European states run by Stalinist bureaucracies imploded. The various causes of that implosion are beyond the scope of what I want to comment on here. However, we have, and we continue to pay a huge political price for the fact that we were unable to do that task of politically defeating Stalinism. As a result the general political consciousness of the vast majority of the international working class has turned against socialism as a solution to the pressing human problems of the day. In short, we have been left with the Promethean task of putting socialism as a societal solution back on the agenda. If there is one more reason to hate the Stalinist betrayal of socialism that, my friends, says it in a nutshell.

Note: December 13, 2007. A later report from Moscow indicated that these bodies were not victims of the purges in the 1930’s but had been killed sometime in the 19th century. The political points discussed in the commentary, however, are still relevant.