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| Title | World voices on the Moscow trials |
| Alternative Title | World voices on the Moscow trials: a compilation from the labor and liberal press of the world |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | Pioneer Publishers |
| Place of Creation (TGN) |
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| Date | 1936? |
| Subject.Name (LCNAF) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Extent | 64 pages: 1 illustration; 20 cm |
| Original Item Location | DK266.3.A45 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304404~S11 |
| Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | In Copyright: This item is protected by copyright. Copyright to this resource is held by the creator or current rights holder, and the resource is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without permission of the copyright owner. Users assume full responsibility for any infringement of copyright or related rights. |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Image 50 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_2774257_049.jpg |
| Transcript | may have been overwhelmed by remorse and have sought to ease his conscience by confession. But all sixteen? The inexplicable behavior of the accused before the court is the reason why the trial has failed to convince so many critical observers in Europe. In fact the behavior of the accused has awakened the fearful impression in the whole of Europe that the human dignity and self-respect of old revolutionists were broken before they were physically destroyed. As mysterious as were so many aspects of the Moscow trial, just as clear were its political meaning and purpose. It was not directed so much against the accused. It was directed against Trotsky. To paint him as the organizer of the conspiracy against the lives of the leading men of the Soviet Union, as a comrade-in-arms of the Gestapo, as a "counter-revolutionist," as a "bandit" and "fascist dog," to destroy him morally—that was the purpose of the whole proceedings. The trial itself became the signal of a wave of terror against all who were suspected of having any kind of relationship to the Trotskyists. Why? Because the cult of leadership, the abolition of the specific class privileges of the proletariat, the great differences in income in the Soviet Union, the development of a privileged class through titles, special powers, rewards, higher social status and income, the new evaluation of the family, the reactionary attitude to school reforms, the re-introduction of the law against abortions—all of these were in flat contradiction with party traditions of Bolshevism, evoked oppositional tendencies and reproduced the danger of the development of an opposition from the left against the Soviet government. The new political course of the Communist International carries this danger over into the international field. In France, the Communists have set up a demand to transform the Popular Front into a "French Front," to a front of all good Frenchmen against Hitler Germany. In Spain, the Communists have defended the view that the bloody struggle of the Spanish working class is not the dictatorship of the proletariat and has not socialism as its goal but is merely in defense of democracy against Fascism. In Italy, the Communists have proclaimed as their slogan "the union of Fascists and Communists, Catholics and Socialists" for a common struggle against the "200 families." This political course is in such a crying contradiction to the whole doctrine and tradition of Bolshevism that it must call forth a left opposition in the Communist ranks. But the symbol of any Communist left opposition is the name of Trotsky. That explains the savagery of the attack on Trotskyism. In the attempt to head off the danger of the development of any left opposition in their own ranks, they are attempting to depict every oppositionist as a Trotskyist, and every Trotskyist as a Gestapo-agent. 48 |