The charges against Trotsky and his followers in the Moscow Trials

[daft punk]

I am interested to know if any Stalinists would care to describe the charges against Trotsky and his followers. As far as I know there are two main ones, that Trotsky wanted to overthrow the Stalinist regime, and that he collaborated with the Nazis somehow.

Now the first one is sort of true, or at least there is a grain of truth in it.

But the fascist thing, it just sounds so ludicrous, yet it still pops up in threads.

Please don't fill the thread with useless posts. I am interested only if someone has a fair bit of knowledge and/or is prepared to research it, and present a clear argument backed up by supporting evidence.

Please don't post vauge assertions. We need 'proof' from the Stalinists, rock solid 'proof'. A clear outline with links etc. If you are gonna post a link you should quote the relevant paragraph and/or paraphrase, nobody is gonna take a blind bit of notice otherwise.

So we need explanation, quotes, and links.

If you can prove that Trots collaborated with the Nazis, fair enough. If not, then please don't make the claim in future.

The other point is the Trots wanting to overthrow the regime. Well we admit that. It's there for all to see in Trotsky's writings*. But he said he wanted the workers, the mass of the people, to form a new party which had a programme of democratic socialism. You cant shoot people for that. Well you can, that's what happened. But to make it sound necessary there were all sorts of accusations of terrorism and coup plots etc.

This is perhaps a complicated area to get into, but again I ask, is any Stalinist prepared to write a clear summary with evidence?

Pleas don't quote Bolsheviks who cracked under torture, Marxists who were told that a false confession could spare many lives, or known NKVD agents who pretended to be Trotskyists, if you can help it. I don't want a basic thread full of simplistic rubbish.

Left coms- please comment if you have something objective, factual and interesting to say.

Trots, please give the Stalinists a chance to prepare their case first.

Stalinists, please make this good!

*In the summer of 1933, after the Nazis took power in Germany, Trotsky finally gave up on the Comintern. He was sickened not just by the terrible policies of the Communists in Germany, but by their failure to admit and discuss these horrendous mistakes. The Comitern was now 100% useless.

[daft punk]

nFB9G1HINXI

Interesting bit at the end of that, accusing Bukharin and Trotsky of plotting to kill Lenin and Stalin in 1918, break the treaty with the Germans, and form a new government!

[hatzel]

Yawn.

[daft punk]

Mods, please delete that useless post? And this.

[Astarte]

Just read some of the openings of the trials, and you will get an idea of what they were accused of.

http://art-bin.com/art/omoscowtoc.html
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/

See, especially the second link - there is also a book out there from 1988, published in the USSR called "Nikolai I. Bukharin Defendant, And Others. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites". It was released during perestroika while they were rehabilitating Bukharin and others.

Its interesting to note that in the late 1920's accusations against Trotsky and Trotskyites started as them being Labor Aristocrats and from there it eventually became fascist wreckers by the mid to late 1930s.

EDIT: Speaking of Deleting posts - I thought one word or one sentence posts were treated as spam or trolling or something of that variety...?

[daft punk]

I read that 25,000 were rehabilitated. Most people except Trotsky himself I think. I will have a look at the links, ta. I do have one from the CPGB (http://www.marxists.org/archive/arnot-page/1938/05/fascist-agents.htm) on the trials, and the stuff is incredible, Trotsky collaborating with Germany in 1921-3 and onwards!

Mind boggling.

Still, some Stalinists (not all) believe some of it even now.

[Astarte]

I read that 25,000 were rehabilitated. Most people except Trotsky himself I think. I will have a look at the links, ta. I do have one from the CPGB (http://www.marxists.org/archive/arnot-page/1938/05/fascist-agents.htm) on the trials, and the stuff is incredible, Trotsky collaborating with Germany in 1921-3 and onwards!

Mind boggling.

Still, some Stalinists (not all) believe some of it even now.

I don't know how much of this is bourgeois bullshit or not, but this website http://worldatwar.eu/index.php?esid=d08c6f1ed5a85c3572298f160d869978&location=article&sublocation=&lang=3&refcode=0&categoryid=&articleid=617&diaryid=0&boardpage=1 says, if you scroll down to the section about the "Rapallo Treaty";

The situation was very different in 1922 when the Rapallo Treaty was signed. Both countries were defeated nations a pariahs throughout Europe, the Soviets because of Communism and the Germans because of the War. The Rapallo Treaty was a step out of diplomatic isolation for the Soviets. For the Germans it offered a way to develop and test new weapons in secrecy. The Allied Control Commission had no way of investigating in the developing Soviet police state. Despite the benefits to the German military, German Foreign Minister Rathenau who negotiated the Treaty was assassinated by right-wing nationalists. Another less well understood impact of the Rapallo Treaty is the boost given the Soviet armaments industry by cooperating with German military and industrial experts. This also had major consequences in World War II.

I have always wondered whether it was true or not?

[l'Enfermé]

Did Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov, Krestinsky, Rakovsky sign pacts with Hitler to jointly invade other countries, or to divide weaker nations surrounding Germany and the USSR between themselves?

No. Stalin did. If this is not collaboration with Nazis? Actual collaboration with Nazis is not collaboration with Nazis, that's what the Stalinists tell us. Yet life-long communists who threaten Stalin's hold on power can be accused of being fascist spies, brutally tortured and executed; yet not a single objections from the Stalinists!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/MolotovRibbentropStalin.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H27337%2C_Moskau%2C_Stalin_und_Ribbentrop_im_Kreml .jpg/408px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H27337%2C_Moskau%2C_Stalin_und_Ribbentrop_im_Kreml .jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1984-1206-523%2C_Berlin%2C_Verabschiedung_Molotows.jpg

[Book O'Dead]

Another reliable source for understanding the motivation behind Stalin's attack of the old guard Bolshies and ex-Menshies is Isaac Deutscher's "Stalin" as well as his "Prophet" trilogy.

[daft punk]

I don't know how much of this is bourgeois bullshit or not, but this website http://worldatwar.eu/index.php?esid=d08c6f1ed5a85c3572298f160d869978&location=article&sublocation=&lang=3&refcode=0&categoryid=&articleid=617&diaryid=0&boardpage=1 says, if you scroll down to the section about the "Rapallo Treaty";


I have always wondered whether it was true or not?

Well the Treaty definitely is true, I dunno about the details. Basically I think Russia got a bum deal in 1918, but Lenin was more concerned with a quick end to the war. As far as I can tell the treaty was to sort of ratify that in 1922. The treaty was signed at the 1922 Genoa Conference in which 34 countries attended. This was Russia trying to end it's economic isolation, and was desperately needed.

Trotsky:

Leon Trotsky

The Revolution Betrayed



"During those years, the Soviet government concluded a series of treaties with bourgeois governments: the Brest-Litovsk peace in 1918; a treaty with Estonia in 1920; the Riga peace with Poland in October 1920; the treaty of Rapallo with Germany in April 1922; and other less important diplomatic agreements. It could never have entered the mind of the Soviet government as a whole, however, nor any member of it, to represent its bourgeois counteragents as “friends of peace”, and still less to invite the communist parties of Germany, Poland, or Estonia, to support with their votes the bourgeois governments which had signed these treaties. It is just this question, moreover, which is decisive for the revolutionary education of the masses. The Soviets could not help signing the Brest-Litovsk peace, just as exhausted strikers cannot help signing the most cruel conditions imposed by the capitalists. But the vote cast in favor of this peace by the German Social Democrats, in the hypothetical form of “abstention”, was denounced by the Bolsheviks as a support of brigandage and brigands. Although the Rapallo agreement with democratic Germany was signed four years later on a formal basis of “equal rights” for both parties, nevertheless if the German communist party had made this a pretext to express confidence in the diplomacy of its country, it would have been forthwith expelled from the International. The fundamental line of the international policy of the Soviets rested on the fact that this or that commercial, diplomatic, or military bargain of the Soviet government with the imperialists, inevitable in the nature of the case, should in no case limit or weaken the struggle of the proletariat of the corresponding capitalist country, for in the last analysis the safety of the workers’ state itself could be guaranteed only by the growth of the world revolution."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch08.htm

[Franz Fanonipants]

sorry i don't feel like burning ulcers over some dudes who said a Thing 70+ years ago is a revolutionary discourse

[daft punk]

Did Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov, Krestinsky, Rakovsky sign pacts with Hitler to jointly invade other countries, or to divide weaker nations surrounding Germany and the USSR between themselves?

No. Stalin did. If this is not collaboration with Nazis? Actual collaboration with Nazis is not collaboration with Nazis, that's what the Stalinists tell us. Yet life-long communists who threaten Stalin's hold on power can be accused of being fascist spies, brutally tortured and executed; yet not a single objections from the Stalinists!


The other one they like to ignore it the Communist-Nazi pact in 1931 in Germany.

Trotsky:

Leon Trotsky

Against National Communism!
(Lessons of the “Red Referendum”)

(August 1931)

Written in exile in Turkey, August 25, 1931.

"The mistakes of the German Communist Party on the question of the plebiscite are among those which will become clearer as time passes, and will finally enter into the textbooks of revolutionary strategy as an example of what should not be done."

"Is it true, however, that Thälmann entered a united front with Hitler? The Communist bureaucracy called the referendum of Thälmann “red,” in contrast to the black or brown plebiscite of Hitler. That the matter is concerned with two mortally hostile parties is naturally beyond doubt, and all the falsehoods of the Social Democracy will not compel the workers to forget it. But a fact remains a fact: in a certain campaign, the Stalinist bureaucracy involved the revolutionary workers in a united front with the National Socialists against the Social Democracy. If one could designate his party adherence on the ballots, then the referendum would at least have the justification (in the given instance, absolutely insufficient politically) that it would have permitted a count of its forces and by that itself, separate them from the forces of fascism. But German “democracy” did not trouble in its time to provide for participants in referendums the right to designate their parties. All the voters are fused into one inseparable mass which, on a definite question, gives one and the same answer. Within the limits of this question, the united front with the fascists is an indubitable fact.

Thus, between midnight and dawn everything appeared to be turned on its head."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1931/310825.htm

[daft punk]

Not one nibble?