The causes and consequences of missars), is a direct inspiration for their own model of development: building socialism in a very gradualist way; protection and extension of the private sector; deliberate support for the greed and the desire for private enrichment of large layers of the population; much greater recourse to market mechanisms; franker and more open encouragement of social inequality (this happened in a rather more illegal manner under Stalin and Brezhnev, but was clearly rehabilitation encouraged and stimulated by the bureaucratic dictatorship).
So, it is now politically useful for these reformers to politically rehabilitate Bukharin and his co-thinkers. And such political
A WHOLE series of factors contributed to the penal rehabilitation of the third Moscow Trial defendants by decree of the USSR Supreme Court on February 4, 1988. ERNEST MANDEL
A BOVE ALL, there was strong
pressure for a review of all the Moscow trials from two sectors of public opinion.
The first were survivors and descendants of Stalin's purge victims, who identify the cause of the accused in these trials with their own, that is, with unqualified condemnation of the purges. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of them. In contrast to the era of "de-Stalinization" under Khrushchev, they are no longer limiting themselves to individual, private, actions. They voice loudly their indignation and their demand for justice in public meetings, many of which have already brought together thousands of people. This pressure has struck a chord with the pro-Gorbachev liberal intelligentsia.
More and more, it is becoming an unavoidable problem for the resolute defenders of glasnost, of openness. For them, "openness" about the current situation is not credible, if not impossible, without "openness" about the past, without the reestablishment of the historic truth.
The second sector of public opinion that is on the same track is the young historians. The archives are now mainly - although not completely - open to them. Because of this they know the truth about the 1930s, and are, to differing degrees, determined to broadcast it. Here also, the difference of mentality and behaviour from the years 1956-62 is striking. This young generation is much more independent from the regime (but that does not mean totally independent) than the generation of Khrushchevian liberals.
We should remember that in the USSR, because of the still upheld dogma of the "leading role of the Communist Party", all questions concerning the history of this party are relevant to today. Study of this history is compulsory for millions of young people. By the same token, the content of history books is an eminently political matInternational Viewpoint • March 21, 1988 ter. All these text books are being rewritten. Once again, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do this and sidestep or minimize the question of the 1930s purges and the Moscow trials.
This pressure coincides with a demand by a strong sector of the middle layers of the bureaucracy for a much stricter application of the principles of "Soviet legality", in other words for restricting the arbitrary police manipulation of the juridical apparatus. Going far beyond the human rights campaign of a small layer of "dissidents", this demand expresses an evident desire for self-protection on the part of the bureaucracy's middle layers, which include millions people. Gorbachev is looking for political supbetween the "reformers"
and the "conservatives".
Gorbachev is hoping to win them over, among other things, by offering them protection against any threat of radical purges.
gations to denounce the illegal character of past
Alongside these not unimportant social forces there is the deeper political of Gorbachev's
"frontline supporters".
For the radical supporters of the perestroika (restructuring) of economy development supposedly advocated by the main defendants in the third Moscow Trial, Bukharin and Rykov (Lenin's rehabilitation is impossible without a juridical rehabilitation. Conservatives continue to hail Stalin period
Gorbachev — a pragmatic political leader worlds away from Khrushchev's impulsiveness — has long hesitated to heed the clamours of his own most committed lieutenants. This is not only to protect his back, or to ensure that there will not be too violent an opposition from the conservatives, who continue to hail the Stalin period. It is, above all, because he understands perfectly the inextricable contradictions of a juridical rehabilitation solely of the accused in the third Moscow Trial, without juridical rehabilitation of those of the second trial (Piatakov, Radek and their comrades), and those of the third trial (Zinoviev, Kamenev, their comrades and, explicitly, Leon Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov).
Juridically, the non-rehabilitation of all
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place with Krestinsky. We are confident that all those accused in the trials of 1936-38 will be shown to have been innocent. They should immediately be rehabilitated, their honour restored, their families compensated and their graves marked." * November 1, 1987 these Old Bolsheviks and of Trotsky is logically untenable in light of the rehabilitations of the accused in the third trial. Gorbachev and his associates are confronted with this problem today, after the decree of the Supreme Court in February. This decree, indeed, explicitly quashes the verdict of the third Moscow Trial.
But that verdict stated that practically all the main crimes attributed to the defendants had been carried out "under the instructions of the enemy of the people, L Trotsky". This applies notably to the accusations of collusion with foreign spy networks, of agreements to break up the USSR, terrorist activity, the decision to assassinate leaders of the state and the party, sabotage and other diversive activities and the assassination of Kirov, Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev and Gorky. Bukharin was also accused of having organized a conspiracy with Trotsky to overthrow Lenin's government in 1918, at the time of the Brestgal consequences for the Soviet regime. How could it oppose free access to the writings of Trotsky and the Opposition, once they were no longer regarded as "counter-revolutionaries" and "enemies of the people", but as honest communists who erred politically? How could it prevent in the future free access to these writings and their republication, even selectively?
But this is all political dynamite in the USSR today. Such republication would immediately expose the fact that not only the "criminal" charges of the Stalin period, even the political charges wheeled out today by Gorbachev and his cronies, are mostly slanderous and would not stand up to even a cursory reading of the documents These writings would show that, as early as 1923, the Opposition denounced the bureaucracy and called for socialist democracy in terms often identical to those used by
USSR Gorbachev today (something Bukharin by no means did). They would show that the Opposition was opposed to any forced collectivization of agriculture. They would show that the Opposition fiercely defended the rights and powers of workers against the bureaucracy. They would show that the Opposition demanded freedom for young people, women's rights, cultural pluralism.
All this immediately raises the question: is it accidental that Stalin made Trotsky and Trotskyism his number one enemies? All this cannot fail to awaken and stimulate widespread sympathy for Trotsky and Trotskyism among critical layers of the Soviet masses. This is an additional reason for us to expand our campaign and the action of the whole international workers' movement for a total and complete juridical rehabilitation for all the accused in the first and second Moscow Trials, including comrades Leon Trotsky and Leon Sedov! *
These accusations were to a large extent
Clear the names of the accused in the basis of the verdicts made in the first all the Moscow Show Trials!
and second Moscow Trials, and of the claim in the first trial's verdict that Trotsky and Sedov were guilty of crimes of terrorism, sabotage, assassination and so on.
The following is the text of the appeal to rehabilitate
They have now lost all juridical value.
the victims of the Moscow Trials. IV has regularly
Moreover, an attentive reading of the published signatures from around the world supporting
"debates" and verdict of the third trial conthe appeal. The campaigns is appealing for further firms that Trotsky was the principal signatories of individuals or organizations, and financial donations. You can contact the Moscow Trials
But politically, a rehabilitation of Trot-
Campaign c/o Michel Löwy, 34 rue des Lyonnais, sky and Sedov — indeed of Zinoviev, Ra-
75005 Paris, France.
dek and their friends - seems difficult to conceive of for Gorbachev's supporters, to say nothing of Gorbachev himself.
"IT IS NOW over fifty years since the infamous Moscow Show Trials. It is astounding that at a time when the Soviet govemment is at pains to emphasize its concern with "human rights' and proclaims the need for
Trotsky personified an glasnost (openness), the accused in these trials, with a few excepalternative to Stalin tions, are still considered guilty of being paid agents of Nazism and
Indeed, Trotsky and his friends in the
"Among these men were numbered several who played outstanding
Left Opposition and the United Opposition roles in the Russian revolution of 1917. The reputations of founders of personified an alternative to Stalin and the the Soviet state like Zinoviev, Radek, Trotsky and Bukharin were be
Stalinist dictatorship, with which the reformist wing of the bureaucracy has nothsmirched or expunged from the history books. Today, no-one doubts ing in common: an orientation to the that the 'confessions at the trials - the sole basis for the prosecution working class, nationally and international-
— were utterly false. Seven defendants in the third trial, Krestinsky ly, towards more power and rights for the and others, have been both judicially rehabilitated and politically exonworkers as against the managers; an orienerated. So have the military leaders, Tukhachevsky and others, whose tation to greater equality, based on the demmilitary trial in 1937 was held in secret. But the admittedly false eviocratic freedom of public inspection and dence against these men was inseparable from the charges against exposure; an orientation towards international revolution (not the "revolutionary
"None of the accused, of course, is alive today. Many were executed war" falsely attributed to Trotsky), based immediately after their trials. Others died in prison or camps. Leon on the possibilities and resources of the
Trotsky, the chief accused in all three of the trials, was murdered in proletariat themselves in each country, and not towards "socialism in one country" or exile in 1940. However, families of some of the defendants are still liv-
"campism", which subordinate the interests ing in the Soviet Union. Some have also suffered imprisonment and of the international revolution to those of exile. It is worth recalling that a review of all these cases was promised by Khrushchev, but this promise was broken.
Can Gorbachev grant juridical rehabilita-
"We therefore call on the Soviet government to re-examine the cas tion to Trotsky, Zinoviev-Kamenev, Piataes against all these victims of the perversion of Soviet justice, as took kov-Radek, while still condemning them politically? This is not impossible, but it is very difficult.
Juridical rehabilitation would lead to some extremely embarrassing practical leother crimes.
all the other accused.
March 21, 1988 • International Viewpoint
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