Trotsky’s lawyer for the Mexico hearings was Albert Goldman, who had joined the Communist Party of America on its founding in 1920. He was expelled from the party in 1933 for Trotskyism. Goldman was another Trotskyite who became a pro-US Cold Warrior.[198] The Dewey Commission’s ‘court reporter’ (sic) was Albert M Glotzer, who had been expelled from the Communist Party USA in 1928 and with prominent American Trotskyite Max Shachtman, had founded the Communist League and subsequent factions, including the Social Democrats USA,[199] whose executive Secretary had been Carl Gershman, founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy. Glotzer had also served as Trotsky’s secretary in Turkey in 1931, and had met him on other occasions.[200] The Social Democrats USA provided particular support for the Cold War hawk, Left-wing Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, and has produced other foreign policy hawks such as Elliott Abrams.
Under the façade of an ‘impartial enquiry’ and with a convoluted title that suggests a bona fide judicial basis, the Dewey Commission proceeded to Mexico to ‘interrogate’ (sic) Trotsky on the pretence of objectivity;[201] an image that was to be quickly exposed by the resignation of one of the Commissioners, Carleton Beals.
Although one would hardly suspect it now, at the time the Dewey Commission was perceived by many as lacking credibility, despite the prestige of John Dewey. Time reported that when Dewey returned from Mexico the ‘kindly, grizzled professor’ told a crowd of 3,500 in Manhattan that the preliminary results of the sub-commission justified the continuation of the Commission’s enquiries in the USA and elsewhere. Time offered the view that, ‘by last week the committee had proved nothing at all’, despite Dewey’s positive spin.[202] Time, in referring to the resignation of Carleton Beals, cited him as stating that the hearings had been ‘unduly influenced in Trotsky’s favor’, Beals having ‘resigned in disgust’.[203] The Dewey report appended a statement attempting to deal with Beals.[204] In a reply to Dewey, Beals wrote in The Saturday Evening Post that despite the publicly stated intention of the enquiry to determine the innocence or guilt of Trotsky the attitudes of the sub-commission members towards Trotsky were those of reverence:
‘I want to weep,’ remarks one commissioner as we pass out into the frowzy street, ‘to think of him being here.’ All, including Doctor Dewey, chairman of the investigatory commission, join in the chorus of sorrow over Trotsky’s fallen star◦– except one commissioner, who sees the pathos of human change in less personal terms.[205]
Beals observing Trotsky in action considered that, above all, his mental faculties are blurred by a consuming lust of hate for Stalin, a furious uncontrollable venom which has its counterpart in something bordering on a persecution complex◦– all who disagree with him are bunched in the simple formula of GPU agents, people ‘corrupted by the gold of Stalin.’[206]
It is evident from Beals’ comments◦– and Beals had no particular axe to grind◦– that the persona of Trotsky was far from the rational demeanour of a wronged victim. From Beals’ comments Trotsky seems to have presented himself in a manner that is suggestive of the descriptions often levelled against the Stalinist judiciary, making wild accusations about the supposed Stalinist affiliations of any detractors. Beals questioned Trotsky concerning his archives, since Trotsky was making numerous references to them to prove his innocence, but Trotsky ‘hems and haws’. While Trotsky denied that his archives had been purged of anything incriminating, important documents had been taken out. A primary insistence of Trotsky’s defence was his denial of having any communication after 1929 with those now being tried at Moscow. However Dr J Arch Getty comments:
Yet it is now clear that in 1932 he sent secret personal letters to former leading oppositionists Karl Radek, G. Sokolnikov, E. Preobrazhensky, and others. While the contents of these letters are unknown, it seems reasonable to believe that they involved an attempt to persuade the addressees to return to opposition.[207]
Unlike virtually all Trotsky’s other letters (including even the most sensitive) no copies of these remain in the Trotsky Papers. It seems likely that they have been removed from the Papers at some time. Only the certified mail receipts remain. At his 1937 trial, Karl Radek testified that he had received a letter from Trotsky containing ‘terrorist instructions’, but we do not know whether this was the letter in question.[208]
It can be noted here that, as will be related below, Russian scholar Professor Rogovin, in seeking to show that the Opposition bloc maintained an effective resistance to Stalin, also stated that a ‘united anti-Stalin bloc’ did form in 1932, despite Trotsky’s claim at the Dewey hearings that there had been no significant contact with any of the Moscow defendants since 1929. Beals found it difficult to believe Trotsky’s insistence that his contacts inside the USSR had since 1930 consisted of no more than a half dozen letters to individuals. If it was the case that Trotsky no longer had a network within the USSR then he and the Fourth International, and Trotskyism generally, must have been nothing other than bluster.[209]
Beals’ less than deferential line of questioning created antagonism with the rest of the Commission. They began to change the rules of questioning without consulting him. Beals concluded by stating that either Finerty, whom he regarded as acting like Trotsky’s lawyer instead of that of the Commission’s counsel, resign, or he would. Suzanne LaFollette ‘burst into tears’ and implored Beals to apologise to Finerty, otherwise the ‘great historical occasion’ would be ‘marred’. Beals left the room of the Mexican villa with the Commissioners chasing after him. Dewey was left to try to explain the situation to the press, while Beals countered that ‘the commission’s investigations were a fraud’.[210] In the concluding remarks of his article, with the subheading ‘The Trial that Proved Nothing’, Beals stated that:
Most of the evidence submitted was in the form of Trotsky’s articles and books, which could have been consulted at a library.
The Commission then resumed in New York, about which Beals predicted, ‘no amount of fumbling over documents in New York can correct the omissions and errors of its Mexican expedition’, adding:
From the press I learned that seven other commissions were at work in Europe, and that these would send representatives to form part of the larger commission. I was unable to find out how these European commissions had been created, who were members of them. I suspected them of being small cliques of Trotsky’s own followers. I was unable to put my seal of approval on the work of our commission in Mexico. I did not wish my name used merely as a sounding board for the doctrines of Trotsky and his followers. Nor did I care to participate in the work of the larger organization, whose methods were not revealed to me, the personnel of which was still a mystery to me.
198
In 1950 Goldman declared himself to be a ‘right-wing socialist’. In 1952 he admitted collaborating with the FBI, and stated, ‘if I were younger I would gladly offer my services in Korea, or especially in Europe where I could do some good fighting the Communists’. A M Wald, The New York Intellectuals, (New York 1987), 287.
199
‘British Trotskyism in 1931’, Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism Online: Revolutionary History, http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/glotzer.html Glotzer was another of the Trotskyite veterans who became an ardent defender of the USA as the bulwark against Stalinism. He was prominent in the Social Democrats USA, whose honorary president was Sidney Hook.
200
Gershman gave an eulogy at the ‘Albert Glotzer Memorial Service’ in 1999. http://www.ned.org/about/board/meet-our-president/archived-presentations-and-articles/albert-glotzer-memorial-service
201
John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, John J McDermot, op. cit., 641. Dewey is also shown here to have been in communication with American Trotskyite luminary Max Eastman.
203
It would be a mistake nonetheless to see Time as an amiable pro-Soviet mouthpiece. Several months previously a lengthy Time article was scathing in its condemnation of the 1937 Moscow Trial and the confessions. ‘Old and New Bolsheviks’, Foreign News Section, Time, February 1, 1937. See also: ‘Russia: Lined With Despair’, Time, March 14, 1938.
204
J Dewey, et al., The Case of Leon Trotsky: Report of Hearings on the Charges Made Against Him in the Moscow Trials by the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, ‘Point 6: The Resignation of Carleton Beals,’ 1937. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/report.htm
207
J Arch Getty, “Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International,” Soviet Studies, Vol.38, No. 1, January 1986, 24-35.
209
As will be shown below, Prof. Rogovin, a Trotskyite who has studied the Soviet archives, quite recently sought to show that the Trotskyites were the focus of an important Opposition bloc since 1932.