A reconsideration of the Moscow Trials of the defendants Trotsky et al is important for more reasons than the purely academic. Since the scuttling of the USSR and of the Warsaw Pact by a combination of internal betrayal and of subversion undertaken by a myriad of US-based ‘civil societies’ and NGOs,[155]◦– after the Yeltsin interlude of subservience to globalisation◦– Russia has sought to recreate herself as a power that offers a hindrance to US global domination. A reborn Russia and a new geopolitical bloc with Russian leadership, is therefore of importance to all those throughout the world who are cynical about the prospect of a ‘new world order’ dominated by ‘American ideals’. US foreign policy analysts, ‘statesmen’ (sic), opinion moulders, and lobbyists still have nightmares about Stalin and the possibility of a Stalin-type figure arising who will re-establish Russia’s position in the world. For example, Putin, a ‘strongman’ type in Western-liberal eyes at least, has been ambivalent about the role of Stalin in history. Such ambivalence, rather than unequivocal rejection, is sufficient to make oligarchs in the USA and Russia herself, nervous. Hence, The Sunday Times, commenting on the Putin phenomena being dangerously reminiscent of Stalinism, stated:
Joseph Stalin sent millions to their deaths during his reign of terror, and his name was taboo for decades, but the dictator is a step closer to rehabilitation after Vladimir Putin openly praised his achievements.
The Prime Minister and former KGB agent used an appearance on national television to give credit to Stalin for making the Soviet Union an industrial superpower, and for defeating Hitler in the Second World War.
In a verdict that will be obediently absorbed by a state bureaucracy long used to taking its cue from above, Mr Putin declared that it was ‘impossible to make a judgment in general’ about the man who presided over the Gulag slave camps. His view contrasted sharply with that of President Medvedev, Russia’s nominal leader, who has said that there is no excuse for the terror unleashed by Stalin. Mr Putin said that he had deliberately included the issue of Stalin’s legacy in a marathon annual question-and-answer programme on live television, because it was being ‘actively discussed’ by Russians.[156]
While The Times’ Halpin commented that Putin nonetheless gave the obligatory comments about the brutality of Stalin’s regime, following a forceful condemnation of Stalin by Medvedev on 9 October, 2009, it is nonetheless worrying that Putin could state that positive aspects to Stalin’s rule ‘undoubtedly existed’. Such comments are the same as if a leading German political figure had stated that some positive aspects of Hitler ‘undoubtedly existed’. The guilt complex of Stalinist tyranny is supposed to keep Russia subservient like the guilt complex over Hitler in regard to Germany. The Times article commented on Putin’s opposition to Russian oligarchy, which has been presented by the Western news media as a ‘human rights issue’:
During the television programme, Mr Putin demonstrated his populist instincts by lashing out at Russia’s billionaire class for their vulgar displays of wealth. His comments came after a scandal in Geneva, when an elderly man was critically injured in an accident after an alleged road race involving the children of wealthy Russians in a Lamborghini and three other sports cars. ‘The nouveaux riches all of a sudden got rich very quickly, but they cannot manage their wealth without showing it off all the time. Yes, this is our problem,’ Mr Putin said.[157]
This all seems lamentably (for the plutocrats) like a replay of what happened in Russia when Stalin deposed Trotsky after Lenin’s death. Under Trotsky, the Bolshevik regime would have eagerly sought foreign capital.[158] As the Stalinists contended, Trotsky was an agent of foreign capital. It is after all why business, political and intelligence interests ensured Trotsky’s safe passage back to Russia from New York in time for the Bolshevik coup.[159] In 1923 the omnipresent globalist think tank the Council on Foreign Relations was warning investors to hurry up and get into Soviet Russia before something went wrong,[160] which it did a few years later. Under Stalin, even Western technicians were not trusted.[161]
The purging of Trotskyites and their allies from the USSR by Stalin constituted the first significant move against foreign aims for Russia. The subsequent Russophobia that continues among American foreign policy and other influential circles has an ideological and historical framework arising to a significant extent from that period. The Moscow Trials, and the reaction symbolized by the Dewey Commission, gave impetus to a movement that was to change from Trotskyism to post-Trotskyism and ultimately to the oddly named ‘neo- conservatism’ (necons) and led to the formation of organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, working for ‘regime change’ around the world in the interests of the USA. In the spirit of this legacy, the oligarchs, who were unleashed on Russia after the destruction of the USSR, are being defended in the West as victims of neo-Stalinism, and their trials are being compared to those of Stalin’s ‘Moscow Show Trials’. Hence, American Professor Paul Gregory, a Fellow of the Hoover Institution, and co-editor of the ‘Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and Cold War’, wrote of the trial of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky:
When the history of Russian justice is written fifty years from now, two landmark court cases will stand out: The death sentence of Nikolai Bukharin in his Moscow show trial of March 1938 and the second prison sentence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky expected December 27, 2010. Both processes teach the same object lesson: anyone who crosses the Kremlin will be punished without mercy. There will be no protection in the courts for the innocent, and the guilty verdict and sentence will be already predetermined behind the Kremlin walls. It also does not matter how preposterous or ludicrous the charges. Vladimir Putin was born in 1952, only one year before Stalin’s death. But Stalin’s system of justice was institutionalized and survived Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union, for use by apt pupils such as Putin…[162]
If Russia continues to take a ‘wrong turn’ (sic) as it is termed by the US foreign policy Establishment,[163] then we can expect the regime to be increasingly demonized[164] by being compared to that of Stalin. John McCain stated on the Floor of the US Senate, speaking of the ‘New START Treaty’ with Russia, that the Khodorkovsky trial indicated the flawed nature of Russia, although McCain admitted that he was ‘under no illusions’ that some of the gains of the oligarch might have been ‘ill-gotten’.[165] However, to those who do not like the prospect of a revived Russia, Khodorkovsky became a symbol of the type of state they hoped would emerge after the demise of the USSR, and criminal oligarchs are portrayed as victims of Stalin-like injustice.[166] Trotskyite veteran Carl Gershman, founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy, used the Khodorkovsky sentencing as the primary point for condemning Russia in his summing up of the world situation for democracy in 2010, when stating that:
155
K R Bolton, ‘Mikhail Gorbachev: Globalist Super-Star,’ Foreign Policy Journal, April 3, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/04/03/mikhail-gorbachev-globalist-super-star/
Russian translation: “Mikhail Gorbachev: Globalist Super-Star,” Perevodika, http://perevodika.ru/articles/18345.html
156
Tony Halpin, ‘Vladimir Putin Praises Stalin for Creating a Super Power and Winning the War’, The Sunday Times, London, December 4, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6943477.ece
158
Armand Hammer, Witness to History (Kent: Coronet Books, 1987), 160. Here Hammer relates his discussion with Trotsky and how the Commissar wished to attract foreign capital. Hammer later laments that this all turned sour under Stalin.
159
Richard B Spence, ‘Interrupted Journey: British Intelligence and the Arrest of Leon Trotsky, April 1917’, Revolutionary Russia, 13 (1), 2000, 1-28.
Spence, “Hidden Agendas: Spies, Lies and Intrigue Surrounding Trotsky’s American Visit January-April 1917,” Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 21, No. 1., 2008.
160
Peter Grosse, ‘Basic Assumptions’, Continuing The Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2006). The entire book can be read online at: Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/index.html
161
The 1933 charges against employees of Metropolitan-Vickers, including six British engineers, accused of sabotage and espionage. M Sayers and A E Kahn, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia (London: Collett’s Holdings, 1946), 181-186.
162
P Gregory, ‘What Paul Gregory is writing about’, December 18, 2010, http://whatpaulgregoryisthinkingabout.blogspot.com/2010/12/stalin-putin-justice-bukharin.html
163
Jack Kemp, et al, Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should do, Independent Task Force Report no. 57 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2006) xi. The entire publication can be downloaded at: http://www.cfr.org/publication/9997/
164
As was the case when Russia was condemned with Cold War-type rhetoric for going to the assistance of South Ossetia after the invasion by Georgia in 2008.
165
‘Senator McCain on Khodorkovsky and US-Russia relations’, Free Media Online, December 18, 2010, http://www.govoritamerika.us/rus/?p=17995
166
The same situation arose with the jailing of the ‘punk’ female group ‘Pussy Riot’ for staging a filth-ridden stunt against Putin in a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, their jailing having become a cause celebre among anti-Putin interests in Russia and around the world. This is a perfect example of ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ that continues to be used against Russia.