C OMRADES TROTSKY and Se-
• dov, with a small nucleus of co-thinkers and sympathizers, utterly isolated from the international labour movement (with the honorable exception of Friedrich Adler, the then secretary of the Second International), were practically the only ones in the years 1936-38 to denounce the three Moscow Trials as based upon lies, slanders and crude falsifications. They denounced the method of extorting confessions from the accused by whatever means (we know today that torture was used on a wide scale), and then using these confessions as the main basis for condemnation. This is a method that the infamous Vishinsky even elevated to the level of a general theory of jurisprudence taught in Soviet universities for two decades.
It is probable that, in the very long run, truth would have triumphed even without Trotsky's efforts. But thanks to these efforts the mechanism of the Stalinist lies and slanders quickly exposed for all those who were not blind or cynical, so the time for the restoration of historical truth was much
Khrushchev's "secret report" to the 1956 Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) prepared the way for the February 4, 1988, verdict of the USSR Supreme Court which cleared all the names of the accused of the third Moscow Trial over 30 years later. That verdict is a vindication of the greatest political importance for the struggle which Trotsky and Sedov started in the summer of 1936, to defend the honour of their comrades, the Old Bolsheviks, who had led the young Soviet state from the days of its creation in October/ November 1917.
One million communists died in Stalin's purges
By declaring that all the accusations of "spying", "terrorism", "assassination" and "conspiracy" against the Soviet state and the leadership of the party advanced in the third Moscow Trial were false, the Supreme Court has not only rehabilitated Bukharin, Rykov and their co-accused. It has also branded Stalin, Vishinsky, Yezhov-Beria (the then heads of the GPU) and their accomplices and henchmen as mass murderers. These criminals used the false accusations of the three Moscow Trials for a mass purge of the CPSU, in which probably as many as one million communists were killed outright or died of the consequences of their unjust imprisonment. Stalin will go down in history branded with the mark of Cain, as one of the most sinister figures in the long and tragic story of humanity's inhumanity.
So much blood, so much mud, so much human suffering heaped upon innocent men, women and children — finally all to no avail! Truth has triumphed, in spite of lies spread in tens of millions of books, pamphlets and newspaper articles circulat-
A
historical
victory
THE PENAL (juridical)
rehabilitation by the USSR Supreme Court on February
4 of all the accused of the third Moscow Trial of 1938with the exception of the ex-GPU chief Yagoda -represents a great victory for the Soviet people, the Soviet proletariat and the international working class. It is above all a great victory for our movement.
### ERNEST MANDEL ed to suppress it. What a lesson for the cynical-naive devotees of Realpolitik, raison d'Etat and opportunism! What a confirmation of our unshakable political and moral conviction that in the long run it always pays to stick to principles, under all circumstances, and against the greatest of odds. The only regret we have is that so many of the courageous handful of 193638 have not lived to see the moment of triumph that they never doubted.
Those who, for whatever reasons, have repeated the lies and slanders against the Old Bolsheviks against our movement, against all oppositionists, for years and decades, stand today in the shameful position of apologists and accomplices of murderers of communists. Those who have
USSR continued to educate their members and sympathizers by means of the infamous Short History of the CPSU, which codified the lies and slanders of the Moscow Trials, are guilty of poisoning and destroying the critical minds of two generations of communists. The least one can ask of them is a clear and open self-criticism, a clear and public statement that all the epithets like "Hitlero-Trotskyists" — used innumerable times by L'Humanité and other Communist Party and Maoist papers — were slanderous through and through.
Campaign must continue for rehabilitations
But this is only the beginning of victory. The Supreme Court of the USSR has only juridically rehabilitated the accused of the third Moscow Trial, not those of the first and second trials.
This is not accidental. The combination of pressure by critically-minded people and of the ideological affinity of the Gorbachev followers with Bukharin makes the rehabilitation of the third Moscow Trial defendants less problematic for the Soviet leaders. But the political identity of the Left Opposition and the United Opposition makes the penal rehabilitation of the first and second Moscow Trial defendants, including Trotsky and Sedov — a rehabilitation which involves the right to reprint, circulate, study and publicly discuss their writings — into a formidable problem for the ruling bureaucracy.
It is true that among those rehabilitated now are Krestinsky, a close friend and cothinker of Leon Trotsky, a member of the first politburo after the October revolution, although never a formal member of the Left Opposition. Especially relevant to our further endeavours is the fact that among those rehabilitated on February 4, 1988, is our great comrade Christian Rakovsky, who was the closest friend and the second most important political leader of the Opposition, after Leon Davidovitch himself.
In the light of that rehabilitation, we have to pursue with the utmost intensity our campaign for a full juridical rehabilitation of all those indicted by the three Moscow Trials, including comrades Trotsky and Sedov, who were charged and condemned in the verdict of the first trial.
We have to pursue with the utmost energy our struggle to ban once and for all from the labour movement the methods of lies, slanders and unfounded accusations, and the use of violence for settling ideological differences.
We are the only communists today in the world who can proudly say: our banner is clean. In the darkest days of the twentieth century we saved the honour of communism. Let us go forward in the spirit of the slogan of May 1968 of which we shall soon commemorate the 20th anniversary: "This is only the beginning, we will continue the fight!" * February 22, 1988 • International Viewpoint
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3
Sandinistas continue their hard fight
NICARAGUA ship, and therefore their cases cannot be compared with those of political prisoners in El Salvador or in Guatemala
La Prensa, the voice of the reactionary opposition, has been able to resume publication, and a series of radio stations were authorized to begin broadcasting. (In early January, there were in total 20 state radio stations, 21 private ones and three of mixed