An Appeal For Assistance

At the moment I am trying to read some materials in preparation for an essay about the Moscow Show Trials and the Great Purge in Stalinist Russia in the 1930’s. As some people may be aware, as the first trial was taking place Trotsky was placed under house arrest in Norway and unable to immediately reply effectively to the allegations made at this trial against him. In his stead, his son, Leon Sedov wrote the The Red Book on the Moscow Trials to defend both of them. However, Trotsky did publish a book in 1937 called the Crimes of Stalin. However, it was published in French (as Les Crimes Des Staline), but to my knowledge it hasn’t been published in English. The individual articles of course should have been published in the Writings of Trotsky for that period by Pathfinder Press, and sure enough I’ve found some in there – however, an introduction to a PDF of one of them (The Thirst For Power) on the Marxist Internet Archive says there are twenty six chapters of the book, but I’ve only found 8 chapters and the preface. I list them below as articles from two other publications that are mentioned in the notes to Trotsky’s Writings which I’m don’t know whether they are related or not. Can anybody help me work out what other chapters belong to this book?

(By the way I have the second edition of both Writings 35-36 and 36-37 published in 1977 and 78 respectively.)

Les Crimes Des Staline (The Crimes of Stalin)

Preface (36-37, pg.353)
In Closed Court (35-36, pg. 455)
In ‘Socialist’ Norway (35-36, pg.21)
Why They Confessed To Crimes They Had Not Committed (36-37, pg.56)
Thirst For Power (36-37, pg.64)
Hatred of Stalin (36-37, pg.67)
Notes En Route (36-37, pg.72)
On Sending Terrorists Into the USSR (36-37, pg.75)
The Preliminary Inquiry at Coyocan (36-37, pg.264)

El Proceso de Moscu

Seveteen New Victims of the GPU (36-37, pg.110)
The Truth Behind the ‘Voluntary Confessions’ (36-37, pg.131)
The New Trial (36-37, pg.128)
The ‘Voluntary’ Confessions of the Defendants (36-37, pg.149)
The Conspiracy’s Financial Resources (36-37, pg.151)
Industrial Sabotage (36-37, pg.150)
Muralov (36-37, pg.153)
Appeal to the League of Nations (36-37, pg.163)
Prosecutor Vyshinsky (36-37, pg.164)
Will the Defendants be Executed (36-37, pg.165)
Thirteen Are To Die (36-37, pg.181)
Those Who Have Been ‘Spared’ (36-37, pg.182)
Kaganovich Anticipates My End (36-37, pg.184)
The ‘People’ Call for Punishment (36-37, pg.185)

The Truth (About the Moscow Trials)

A New Moscow Amalgam (36-37, pg.115)
Pyatakov’s Phantom Flight to Moscow (36-37, pg.154)
Pyatakov’s Story Vague on Time and Place (36-37, pg.166)
Romm Frequented Dark Paris Alleys (36-37, pg.204)
A Mockery of Justice (36-37, pg.245)

Review – The Red Book by Leon Sedov

There are few serious books that can make you laugh, and this one did which sort of makes me ashamed given the seriousness of the topic it discusses. But Sedov’s ridiculing of the ineptitude of those preparing the Moscow show trials and the glaring contradictions he reveals in the case the accusers are trying prove had me laughing in disbelief.

But the topic is deadly serious, Sedov writes about the first Moscow show trial which saw Zinoviev and Kamenev, two long-standing Bolsheviks shot for a crime they didn’t commit (the Kirov assassination) and the prosecutors trying to make some sort of case to argue that the assassination had been ordered by Trotsky (who was in exile) and Sedov, his son.

Dates are made up, people and places invented and the ‘terrorist network’ that Trotsky supposedly led appears to be the most incompetent in history, calling off all the assassinations they were supposed to be attempting at the last minute. The book leads one very well through the contradictions in the arguments and is well worth a read even today.

But it also got me thinking about whether show trials are not just limited to this period or whether you could group such trials together where the trial is really just a symbolic denunciation of someone done for mostly political reasons with the verdict fixed in advance. Despite Saddam Hussein being guilty of what he was tried for, I think his trial could fit into this category, due to all the things he could have been, but wasn’t, tried for.