Yemelyan Yaroslavsky - The Meaning of the Soviet Trials — Including the Official Text of the Indictment of the Bukharin-Trotskyite Bloc

by E. Yaroslavsky

Introduction

by William Z. Foster

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The sound and the fury set up by the enemies of the Soviet Union around the Trotskyite-Bukharin trials should confuse no one. The first workers' and farmers' government is today bringing to justice the last of the leading groups of pro-fascist plotters, promoters of war, and sabotagers of socialist progress. The Soviet people are building a great, new, free society, instead of the old society where the rich exploit the poor; they are uniting the nations of one-sixth of the earth's surface into a single classless commonwealth. Those who are trying to stop this progress by treason and assassination, to betray the Soviet people into the hands of the fascist barbarians, must expect to pay the price of their treachery when caught.

When Aaron Burr, one-time Vice-President of the United States, together with some army officers and about 2,000 co-conspirators, attempted to betray the young United States republic and was properly crushed, Thomas Jefferson declared concerning the ensuing furore:

"On the whole, this squall, by showing with what ease our government suppresses movements which in other countries requires armies, has greatly increased its strength by increasing the public confidence in it."

This well applies to the Soviet government today. The crushing of the Trotskyist-Bukharinist unprincipled and careerist plotters is a gain for humanity. To yield to the misguided liberals who, under the illusion that they are demanding democracy, want to give a free hand to these wretched conspiracies:would be to endanger the safety of 173,000,000 Soviet people, not to speak of the peace of the world. The terrible toll of lives in Spain today; where the plotters did have a free hand, will convince all except the mentally blind and the friends of the plotting murderers of the correctness of the Soviet government's action.

No matter what their possible liberal pretenses, those who in any way aid the fascist Trotskyite-Bukharinite plotters are merely uncovering their enmity to the first Workers' Republic. Such a situation is not new. Aaron Burr's betrayal similarly forced the hand of the Federalists. Jefferson wrote on April 20, 1807, that:

"The Federalists, too, give all their aid, making Burr's cause their own, mortified only that he did not separate the Union, or overturn the Government, and proving, that had he had a little dawn of success, they would have joined him to introduce his object, their favorite monarchy, as they would any other enemy, foreign or domestic, who could rid them of this hateful republic for any other government in exchange."

The mass of the American people should not be moved by the lying, slanderous ravings of the capitalist press against the U.S.S.R. Nor should we be confused by a few erstwhile liberals who, under pressure from reaction on a thousand issues, gave way at this point and were stampeded into the anti-Soviet lynch mob. The people and government of the U.S.S.R. are our friends. The Trotsky-fascist-Bukharinite plotters are our enemies. The latter, by their own confessions, wanted to give to Japan the Far Eastern provinces of the Soviet Union, which would give Japan a better base from which to attack the U. S. We also know that if their betrayal of the U.S.S.R. had been successful it would have been a terrible defeat for world democracy and socialism.

The capitalist press is overselling its falsifications. For what reason are these trials being held? In the earlier trials the anti-Soviet slanderers said it was to make the defendants the culprits in covering up economic failure of the U.S.S.R. But time has shown that there was no such economic failure. The Soviet Union is making the greatest economic advances of any country in any period of history. Then the reactionaries said the trials were to give more power to a few individuals and take it away from the Soviet peoples. This was also shown as false by the adoption, at the initiative of Stalin himself, of the most democratic constitution in the world. Now they shout that it is all "incredible" that such crimes as charged could have been committed. May we again borrow Jefferson's words in a similar situation?

"Burr's enterprise is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote. It is so extravagant that those who know his understanding, would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt."

Herein are published two documents the legal indictment against the criminals in the March, 1938, trial, and a descriptive article by Comrade Yaroslavsky showing the long record of reactionary and stool-pigeon plotting of the defendants and its purposes. While the notorious United States tory press pours out its lies and slanders against the noble people of the U.S.S.R., every American can serve peace and progress by spreading the truth here contained.

William Z. Foster

March 4, 1938

By E. Yaroslavsky

Members of a criminal conspiratorial group of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists are appearing today before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R.

Among the accused listed in the statement of the office of the Public Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R., the first five names Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Henry Yagoda, Nikolai Krestinsky and Christian Rakovsky are more widely known. Trotsky is not listed among the accused. He has long since been condemned by the Soviet people, and only the protection of the fascists saves this scoundrel from being brought to justice.

In the prisoners' dock sits Rykov, one-time leader of the "Left Communists," who later, together with Bukharin, Tomsky and other traitors, became an organizer of the Rights who sought to restore capitalism in the U.S.S.R.

In the dock sit the bourgeois-nationalists Ikramov, Faizulla Khodjayev and others; former Mensheviks like Chernov and former S-Rs* like Grinko; the past and present agents-provocateurs of the tsarist secret police, Zelensky and Ivanov; and people who took advantage of their diplomas as doctors and professors to poison some of the best people of the proletarian revolution Valerian Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky, Maxim Gorky.

* Members of the party of so-called "Socialist-Revolutionaries."

Trotskyism links up with any group whatsoever as long as it is a foe of Bolshevism, of the Soviet power, of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of Communism. ('Lefts" seeking to restore capitalism, Right traitors, bourgeois-nationalists, S-Rs and Mensheviks, ordinary criminal elements, provocateurs in the service of the tsarist secret police who betrayed many persons under tsarism and wormed their way into the ranks of the Communist Party in order to betray the land of Soviets to fascism all these are suitable material for the espionage, bandit and diversionist organization of the Trotskyists; for the ringleader of this organization has himself long been an agent-provocateur linked to foreign secret services, going back as far as the period of the Civil War and very probably under tsarism as well, for this super-traitor has not hesitated to resort to the most monstrous crimes to serve his masters.

All of these people are united by their hatred of the Bolshevik Party, their belief in the might of the bourgeoisie and their hatred of the young Soviet state which over a period of twenty years has fulfilled in the most difficult conditions a gigantic historical task by maintaining the integrity and the mighty development of the land of socialism over one-sixth of the globe.

It is no accident that they united, for long before the proletarian revolution all those participants in the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists fought in one way or another against Lenin, against Bolshevism, and defended views alien to the interest& of the proletariat, expressing the interests and outlook of classes and groups alien to the proletariat.