Trial in the Pyatakov case. Trial in the case of a “parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center. Organization and commission of sabotage and sabotage

The trial in the case of the “parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center” The Kemerovo trial became a dress rehearsal for the second Moscow show trial, which began on January 23, 1937. Almost half of the accused - G. L. Pyatakov, N. I. Muralov, Ya. N. Drobnis, M S.

Trial of the Trotskyite-Zinoviev Center After the assassination of Kirov, the party was purged of Zinoviev's supporters. There was no mass violence and cruelty. The next few months were devoted to a new Constitution based on the principles of socialist

Karl Radek was arrested September 16, 1936; he surrendered after 79 days spent at the Lubyanka, and not only began to give the required testimony, but also took the initiative into his own hands and became a creative co-author of a fantastic scenario for the future trial (he discussed its details personally with Stalin). The trial in the case of the "parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center", where Radek, along with Pyatakov And Sokolnikov, was the main figure, began on January 23, 1937 and lasted a week.

On January 25, 1937, a meeting of the Presidium of the Union Soviet writers, dedicated to the process that has begun; on it the blood of the defendants was demanded by Vs. Ivanov , B. Pilnyak, K. Fedin ...

The resolution of the meeting read: “One of the urgent tasks in the light of the circumstances that have become clear is, on the correct instructions of comrades. Bezymensky, Selvinsky, Surkov, and others, a comprehensive exposure of the capitulatory literary concepts of Radek and Bukharin, which brought a lot of harm to Soviet literature, concepts that give a distorted idea of ​​​​the proletarian literature of the USSR and the West and orient the literary youth in a direction that is clearly hostile to the Marxist-Leninist understanding of art » .

January 26, 1937 "Literary newspaper" published an editorial titled "No Mercy for Traitors!" and a lot of writers' responses to the Moscow process - articles by A. Tolstoy, K. Fedin, Yu. Olesha, A. Novikov-Priboy, M. Shaginyan, Vs. Vishnevsky, M. Kozakov, L. Leonov, V. Shklovsky, I. Babel, A. Karavaeva, M. Ilyin and S. Marshak, N. Ognev, A. Platonov, G. Fish, L. Slavin, V. Lugovsky, K. Finn, D. Mirsky, B. Lavrenev, R. Fraerman, A. Malyshkin.

Against the impressive backdrop of heated literary journalism ("To the wall!" - demanded Vishnevsky, "Terrarium" - Leonov nailed the dock), Babel's short note was forcedly restrained ("We do not want such a" program ", - it was said about the one named in the indictment fascist program of the defendants). The writers spoke of the defendants as if they were dead. N. Ognev called Radek "a cosmopolitan buffoon and scoundrel", L. Slavin - "a bloody vulgar", A. Platonov denied the defendants the right to be called people and called on to say, the form - lends itself to the image"), since "there is no certainty that we will never in the future meet with even more ugly fascist monsters." A. Karavaeva could not be consoled by the impending executions, because "the seasoned, rabid wolf of fascism, Judas-Trotsky is still alive." Poets spoke about the same in verses. V. Gusev connected Radek's "sabotage" with Ukraine:

Schoolchildren of Kiev region in notebooks

Write poems about their country

This is their happy childhood Radek

I wanted to burn on fascist fire.

Another opus was called "Masters of Death", which recalled the recent years when

Vile spies and bandits

The Radeks rubbed themselves against us.

Maybe not all finished yet -

Stronger hands and sharper eyes!

This poetic find began the year 1937 promising Evgeny Dolmatovsky.

January 28 public prosecutor Vyshinsky demanded the execution of all the accused. He quoted with delight Radek's article "The Trotskyist-Zinoviev Fascist Gang and Its Hetman Trotsky": "Destroy this reptile! This is not about the destruction of ambitious people who have reached the greatest crime, it is about the destruction of agents of fascism ... "- and summarized:" So wrote Radek. Radek thought he was writing about Kamenev and Zinoviev. Little miscalculation! This process will correct this mistake of Radek: he wrote about himself!”

On January 29 Radek delivered a lengthy last word; he devoted it entirely to "exposing" Trotsky. carried away, Radek blurted out in the middle of the speech “comrades of the judge”, but was interrupted by the vigilant Ulrich: not “comrades”, but “citizens”. Finally Radek fulfilled Stalin's last demand and called on Bukharin, who had not yet been arrested, to "lay down his arms" and confess to terrorist activities. Radek did not ask the court for indulgence: he believed that this was guaranteed to him.

Lion Feuchtwanger captured Radek on trial in the infamous book: “I will hardly ever forget the writer Radek either. I will not forget how he sat there in his brown jacket, nor his ugly thin face, framed by an old-fashioned chestnut beard, nor how he glanced at the audience, most of whom he knew, or at other accused, often grinning, very cold-blooded, often deliberately ironic, nor how, at the entrance, he laid his hand on the shoulder of one or another of the accused with a light, gentle gesture, or how, speaking, he posed a little, slightly laughing at the rest of the accused, showing his superiority as an actor - haughty, skeptical, dexterous, educated in literature... Of the seventeen defendants, thirteen—among them close friends of Radek—were sentenced to death; Radek and three others - only for the conclusion. The judge read out the verdict, we all - the accused and those present - listened to it standing, not moving, in deep silence. After reading the verdict, the judges immediately left. The soldiers showed up; they first approached the four who were not condemned to death. One of the soldiers put his hand on Radek's shoulder, apparently inviting him to follow him. And Radek went. He turned around, raised his hand in greeting, shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, nodded to the rest of the condemned to death, his friends, and smiled. Yes, he smiled.

The verdict was read January 30, And Radek received 10 years. The writers who demanded his execution may have been surprised, but, of course, they did not protest (not out of humanism, but purely out of caution). They did not know that instead of 120 months, Radek would serve 32 months, after which he would be executed by the hands of criminals sent to the cell. This will happen in May 1939, when Stalin's conspiracy with Hitler begins to take on quite tangible features - a conspiracy to which, according to some estimates, Radek was directly involved.

On January 30, 1937, an all-Moscow meeting of writers was held, dedicated to the results of the process. A. Lakhuti was the chairman, Stavsky, Kirpotin, Fadeev, Vs. Ivanov, Serafimovich, Novikov-Priboy, Markish, Leonov. The report was made by Fadeev; about Radek he said: “What is Radek? Radek is a man without a clan, without a tribe, without a root. It is a product of the backyards of the Second International, foreign cafes, the eternal flâneur, the migrant to and fro. The Russian working class, which came to power, tried to remake it, but Radek preferred to rot alive and went into the Trotskyist underground.”. Then K. Fedin, Vs. Ivanov, V. Stavsky, L. Nikulin, A. Novikov-Priboy, V. Gerasimova, V. Kirshon, A. Bezymensky, F. Berezovsky, V. Inber 120 , Sun. Vishnevsky, as well as foreign comrades Johannes Becher and Martin Andersen-Nekse. Radek was directly remembered by Vs. Ivanov (“Radek, this most chatty bandit of the whole gang, constantly pushing himself forward in the first place - whether by tricks, or by the make-up of a mediocre clown, or by verbosity ...”), L. Nikulin (“I saw another meeting at the late A. M. Gorky, when that same Radek was clowning around, grimacing and denouncing our French friends that they misunderstood the revolution... Vyshinsky had before him a brilliant talker, such a master of anecdotes with an anti-Soviet flavor as Radek He let Radek speak. But in the end he overwhelmed him with merciless remarks, and Radek drooped and fell silent ...”) and A. Bezymensky, who took the opportunity to settle personal scores with the political dead, he could not forgive them for the murderous irony addressed to his muse, and although Bukharin was still at large, Bezymensky spoke of him and the condemned Radek as equal saboteurs: apadu" 121 .

A similar meeting was held in Leningrad, where Zoshchenko, Lavrenev, Marvich, Chumandrin, Libedinsky, and Kozakov spoke.

On February 1, 1937, Literaturnaya Gazeta published articles about the completed trial - Trenev, Lidin, Sobolev, Tynyanov, Bergelson (by telephone from Birobidzhan), poems - by D. Bedny, Markish, Isakovsky ... Five pages were not enough to satisfy everyone wishing, - in the archive of "LG" corrected materials have been preserved that were not included in the issue: an article by Bruno Yasensky "Blacksmiths of War" (it contained such a passage about Radek: “In his last speech, Radek, still trying to get out of the dirt and scum on the stilts of high politics, called Trotskyism the forge of war. We have no reason not to trust the veracity of this testimony. This was clear to us - without the highly authoritative recognition of the Trotskyist "Minister of Foreign Affairs"") , articles by E. Zozuli “There is no place for murderers in the Soviet country”, P. Antokolsky “Ruthless Lessons”, P. Yashvili “Contempt for the Motherland” (it also contained the following words: “The unprecedented, Stalinist flourishing of our country is associated with the name of Beria” ). Agniya Barto in an article dictated by telephone, she said: “I am particularly indignant at Radek. Write articles against fascism and “in parallel” negotiate with the fascists to satisfy their predatory appetites in “one form or another”. This is the most terrible degree of human fall.". The Leningrad poet Wolf Erlich wrote about the defendants: “We also know one of these people as a journalist. Radek's book about Comrade Stalin came out not so long ago. This is a trifle compared to the rest, but what a scoundrel you need to be in order to write this book! Poor Azef! He looks like a selfish child next to these people.". (These “tactless” lines, of course, were blacked out, poor Erlich!) The mass of cuts in Yuzovsky’s article (the political ineptitude of the future cosmopolitan, the inadequacy of his vocabulary in 1937) forced the editors to reject the following phrases: “The people trusted these people. The people instructed them to manage the centers on which life, health, and the future depended”; “Most of all, they swore in love to those two people whose names - the names of Lenin and Stalin - are sacred to the people. It was a smart move. They wanted to flatter the people, to enter deeper into their confidence, to win their good attitude towards themselves. Therefore, their names sounded quite impressive: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov”; “Trotsky cannot forgive that in this great “dispute” before the world Areopagus, it was not he, the noisy and most brilliant Trotsky, who turned out to be right, but this modest man in a soldier’s overcoat”).

Finally, two essays are dedicated personally Karl Radek in prose and verse.

prose pamphlet "Traitor Radek" was created by a German anti-fascist writer living in Moscow Friedrich Wolf; he suffered from the same complex as Bezymensky:

“A week before the opening of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, all delegates to the congress received the text of Maxim Gorky's report... Several times we asked Radek to give us the opportunity to get acquainted with his report on international literature in a timely manner. Radek promised to do this, but in every possible way avoided fulfilling the promise. Two days before his speech at the congress, his article appeared in the press, where he devoted much space to the theoretical method of Joyce, but completely passed over in silence the work of young revolutionary writers in Germany and France. A day after the opening of the Congress, I accidentally met Radek(Of course, only by chance! -B. F.) and told him: “I have read your article. Is that all you have been able to say about international literature? It does not take wisdom to prove that Homer, Shakespeare, Wat Whitman, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann are great artists. But perhaps you will also give your opinion about such young gifted revolutionary writers as Ludwig Renn, Johannes Becher, Willy Bredel, Bert Brecht, Adam Scharer, Gustav Regler - if, of course, these names are familiar to you? (This is how a Soviet-supported émigré, and even a law-abiding German, allegedly spoke to a high-ranking Soviet figure! — B.F.) — “Is it really necessary to know all these brethren?” Radek asked casually. "If you do not know German revolutionary literature, then your report will be amateurish." “Calm down! I will study all revolutionary German literature before morning, I can read an entire library in a night!” Radek's cynical, mocking tone, his rude, emphatic suppression of the revolutionary literature of Germany and France, drew attention not only to me. .

The poetic pamphlet "Radek" was created by Ilya Selvinsky; its text has been preserved in the archives of K. Zelinsky. The pamphlet has an epigraph - lines from " last word» Radek in court: “When I entered the organization, Trotsky did not hint in his letter about the seizure of power. He felt that this undertaking would seem too adventurous to me. ”. Selvinsky's stanzas - "the last forgive" to Radek:

Which are "left", which are "right" -
One criminal rainbow
But even a bandit can be fixed
Well, try Radek.

Here he is, playing neither less nor more
Ideas, lives, guns,
In black whiskers - not without a hint -
Made up by Pushkin.

Blown glass in the reflection of pathos;
How many claims - take a look:
From inspiration, the gates are unbuttoned -
And it's not prose. Oh no, absolutely!
We haven't listened yet
So classically perfect
Poetry of double-mindedness...

Page 9 of 10

In 1933, on the direct instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, along with the existing so-called United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center consisting of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and others, an underground so-called parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center was created in Moscow, which included Yu. L. Pyatakov, K. B. Radek, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, and L. P. Serebryakov.

In the anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization, which acted under the direct leadership of this "center", as was established by the investigation. also included those involved as defendants in the present case Livshits Ya. A., Muralov N. I. Drobnis Ya. N., Boguslavsky M. S., Knyazev I A., Rataychak S. A., Norkin B O., Shestov A. A., Stroilov M. S. , Turok I. D., Grashe I. I., Pushin R. E. and Arnold V. V.

The preliminary and judicial investigation established that, on the basis of the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center set its main task to overthrow Soviet power in the USSR and the restoration of capitalism and the power of the bourgeoisie through sabotage, sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities aimed at undermining the economic and military power of the Soviet Union, hastening a military attack on the USSR, assisting foreign aggressors and defeating the USSR.

In full accordance with this main task, the enemy of the people, L. Trotsky abroad, and the parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center in the person of Radek and Sokolnikov, in Moscow, entered into negotiations with individual representatives of Germany and Japan. The enemy of the people L. Trotsky, during negotiations with one of the leaders of the National Socialist Party of Germany, Rudolf Hess, promised, in the event that the Trotskyist government came to power as a result of the defeat of the Soviet Union, to make a number of political, economic and territorial concessions in favor of Germany and Japan at the expense of the USSR up to the concession of Ukraine - Germany, Primorye and Amur - Japan. At the same time, the enemy of the people, Leon Trotsky, undertook, in the event of a seizure of power, to liquidate the state farms and dissolve the collective farms. abandon the policy of industrialization of the country and restore capitalist relations on the territory of the Soviet Union. In addition, the enemy of the people L. Trotsky pledged to provide all possible assistance to the aggressors by developing defeatist agitation, wrecking, sabotage and espionage activities both in peacetime and, especially, during their military attack on the Soviet Union.

Members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov, in pursuance of the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, repeatedly received by Radek, and also personally received by Pyatakov during his meeting with the enemy of the people L. Trotsky in December 1935 near the city of Oslo, deployed a wrecking sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities.

For the direct management of anti-Soviet activities on the ground, local Trotskyist centers were created in some large cities of the Soviet Union. In particular, in Novosibirsk, on the direct instructions of Pyatakov, a West Siberian Trotskyist center was organized consisting of N. I. Muralov, M. S. Boguslavsky and Ya. N. Drobnis.

Sabotage and wrecking work in industry, mainly at enterprises of defense significance, as well as in railway transport, was carried out on the instructions of the enemy of the people Trotsky and on assignments and with the direct participation of German and Japanese intelligence agents and consisted in disrupting production plans, in deteriorating product quality, in organization of arsons and explosions of factories or individual workshops and mines, organization of train wrecks, damage to rolling stock and railway track

When organizing acts of sabotage, they proceeded from the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky - “to deliver sensitive blows to the most sensitive places”, supplemented by the instructions of Pyatakov, Livshits and Drobnis - not to stop at human casualties, because “what more casualties so much the better, as it angers the workers.”

In the chemical industry, on the instructions of Pyatakov, the defendants Rataychak and Putin carried out wrecking work aimed at disrupting the state production plan, delaying the construction of new plants and enterprises, and substandard construction of new enterprises.

In addition, in 1934-1935 Rataichak and Pushin organized three acts of sabotage at the Gorlovsky nitrogen-fertilizer plant, two of them with explosions, which led to the death of workers and caused great material losses.

At the suggestion of Ratajczak, acts of sabotage were also organized at the Resurrection Chemical Plant and the Nevsky Plant.

In the coal and chemical industry of the Kuznetsk basin, the accused Drobnis, Norkin, Shestov and Stroilov, on the instructions of Pyatakov and Muralov, carried out wrecking and sabotage work aimed at disrupting coal mining, delaying the construction and development of new mines and a chemical plant, and creating faces and mines by gassing , harmful and life-threatening working conditions, and on September 23

In 1936, on the instructions of Drobnis, members of the local Trotskyist organization organized an explosion at the Tsentralnaya mine of the Kemerovo mine, which resulted in the death of 10 workers and severe injuries of 14 workers.

In railway transport, the sabotage and sabotage activities of Serebryakov and members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization Boguslavsky, Livshits, Knyazev and Turks, in accordance with the instructions of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center, were aimed at disrupting the state loading plan, especially for the most important cargoes (coal, ore, bread), damage to rolling stock (cars, steam locomotives), railway tracks and the organization of train wrecks, especially military ones.

Knyazev, on the instructions of Livshits and on the instructions of the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X., in 1935-1936 organized and committed a number of wrecks of freight, passenger and military trains with human casualties, and the collapse of a military echelon at the Shumikha station on October 27, 1935, resulted in death 29 Red Army soldiers and wounded 29 Red Army soldiers.

On the direct instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov and Serebryakov, in the event of a military attack on the USSR, prepared a number of acts of sabotage in industry of defense importance, as well as on the most important railway lines.

Norkin, at the direction of Pyatakov, was preparing the arson of the Kemerovo chemical plant by the time the war began.

Knyazev, on behalf of Livshits, accepted for execution the task of the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X., during the war, to organize explosions of railway structures, arson of military depots and food points for troops, the collapse of military trains, and also to deliberately infect the echelons supplied under the troops with bacteria of acutely contagious diseases, and as well as food and sanitation units of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army.

Along with sabotage and sabotage activities, Livshits, Knyazev, Turks, Stroilov, Shest?, Rataychak. Pushin and Grashe, on behalf of the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center, were engaged in the collection and transfer to agents of the German and Japanese intelligence services of secret information of major national importance.

Ratajczak, Pushin and Grasche were connected with German intelligence agents Meyerowitz and Lenz, who in 1935-1936 were given highly secret materials on the state and operation of chemical plants, and Pushin in 1935 gave German intelligence agent Lenz secret information about the production of products at all chemical plants. enterprises of the USSR for 1934, the program of work for all chemical enterprises for 1935 and the construction of nitrogen plants, and the defendant Ratajczak handed over to the same Lenz top secret materials on products for 1934 and the program of work for 1935 for military chemical plants.

Shestov and Stroilov were associated with agents of the German intelligence Shebesto. Fless, Floren, Sommeregger and others and gave them secret information on the coal and chemical industries of the Kuznetsk basin.

Livshits, Knyazev and Turok systematically passed top secret information about the technical condition and mobilization readiness to the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X. railways USSR, as well as about military transportation.

On the direct instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center created several terrorist groups in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Rostov, Novosibirsk, Sochi and other cities of the USSR, which were preparing terrorist acts against the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government - Stalin's comrades , Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Ordzhonikidze, Zhdanov, and some terrorist groups (in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ukraine, Transcaucasia) were directly led by members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov and Serebryakov.

Organizing terrorist acts, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center tried to use for this purpose the visits of the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government to the places.

So, in the fall of 1934, Shestov, at the direction of Muralov, tried to carry out a terrorist act against the chairman of the Soviet People's Commissars USSR Comrade V. M. Molotov during his stay in Kuzbass, for which a member of the local Trotskyist group Arnold tried to make a disaster with a car in which Comrade V. M. Molotov was driving.

In addition, at the instigation of Shestov, Arnold was preparing a terrorist act against comrade G. K. Ordzhonikidze.

The defendants were put on trial under Art. Art. 581a, 588, 589 and 584 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.

This case was heard in Moscow on January 23-30, 1937 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The defendants were defended by: Knyazeva - a member of the bar of defenders I. D. Braude, Pushchina - a member of the bar of defenders N. V. Kommodov and Arnold - a member of the bar of defenders S. K. Kaznacheev. The rest of the defendants declined to defend themselves.

FEATURES OF THIS PROCESS

Comrade judges, members of the Supreme Court of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! As I enter upon my last duty in the present case, I cannot fail to dwell on some of the highly important features of the present trial.

These features, in my opinion, primarily consist in the fact that this trial in a certain sense sums up the criminal activities of the Trotskyist conspirators who fought for many years, systematically and with the help of the most disgusting, most vile means of fighting against the Soviet system, the Soviet state , against the Soviet government and our party. This process sums up the struggle against the Soviet state and the party of these people, who began the struggle long before our time, even during the lifetime of our great teacher and organizer of the Soviet state - Lenin; people who fought under Lenin against Lenin, after Lenin - against his brilliant student, the faithful guardian of Lenin's precepts and continuer of his cause - Stalin.

The peculiarities of the present trial lie also in the fact that it was precisely this trial that, like the beams of a searchlight, illuminated the most hidden corners, secret nooks and crannies, disgusting corners of the Trotskyist underground.

This process showed and proved with what stupid tenacity, with what serpentine composure, with what prudence of professional criminals, the Trotskyist bandits waged and are waging their struggle against the USSR, not retreating before anything - not before sabotage, nor before sabotage, nor before espionage, nor before terror, nor before treason.

When a few months ago in this very hall, on these very docks, members of the so-called united Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist center were sitting, when the Supreme Court, represented by the Military Collegium, tried those criminals, each of us, at the sight of the crimes that took place in a nightmarish picture before our eyes, could not help but recoil with horror and disgust.

Every honest person in our country, every honest person in any country in the world could not help but say:

Here is the abyss of falling!

Here is the limit, the last line of moral and political decay!

Here is the diabolical immensity of crimes!

Every honest son of our country thought: such heinous crimes cannot be repeated.

There are no more people in our country who have fallen so low, such vilely betrayed us.

And now again we are seized by the feeling we recently experienced! Once again, terrible pictures of monstrous crimes, monstrous betrayals, monstrous betrayals pass before our alarmed and indignant consciousness.

This trial, where the defendants themselves confessed to their guilt; this trial, where next to the leaders of the so-called parallel Trotskyist center - the accused Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Radek, Serebryakov - are sitting on the same dock such prominent Trotskyists as Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Livshits; where simply spies and spies sit next to these Trotskyists - Rataychak, Shestov, Stroilov, Grashe - this trial showed what these gentlemen have sunk to, into what a whirlpool finally and irrevocably sunk counter-revolutionary Trotskyism, which has long since become the foremost and worst detachment of international fascism .

This process revealed all the secret springs of the underground criminal activity of Trotskyism, the whole mechanism of their bloody, their treacherous tactics. He once again showed the face of real, genuine Trotskyism - that age-old enemy of the workers and peasants, the age-old enemy of socialism, the faithful servant of capitalism.

This process showed once again who Trotsky and his henchmen serve, what Trotskyism is in reality, in practice.

Here, in this hall, before the court, before the whole country, before the whole world, a string of crimes committed by these people passed.

Who benefits from their crime? In the name of what goal, in the name of what ideas, in the name of what political platform or program did these people act? In the name of what? And, finally, why did they become traitors to their homeland - traitors to the cause of socialism and the international proletariat?

The present process answered, in my opinion, with exhaustive completeness to all these questions, answered clearly and precisely why and how they came to such a life.

Like a cinematographic tape launched in reverse, this process reminded us and showed us all the main stages of the historical path of the Trotskyists and Trotskyism, which spent more than 30 years of its existence in order to finally prepare its final transformation into an assault detachment of fascism, one of the branches of the fascist police.

The defendants themselves spoke about whom they served. But their own deeds, their dirty, bloody, criminal deeds speak of this even more eloquently.

Many years ago our party, the working class, our entire people rejected the Trotskyist-Zinovievist platform as an anti-Soviet, anti-socialist platform. Trotsky was thrown out of the country by our people, his accomplices were thrown out of the ranks of the party, as having betrayed the cause of the working class and socialism. Trotsky and Zinoviev were defeated, but they did not calm down, they did not lay down their weapons.

The Trotskyists went underground, throwing on themselves the mask of repentant and supposedly disarmed people. Following the instructions of Trotsky, Pyatakov and other leaders of this gang of criminals, pursuing a double-dealing policy, disguising themselves, they again penetrated into the party, again penetrated into Soviet work, some even crept into responsible government posts, hiding for the time being, as it is now clearly established, their old Trotskyist anti-Soviet cargo in their safe houses, along with weapons, ciphers, passwords, connections and their own personnel.

Starting with the formation of an anti-Party faction, moving more and more to sharpened methods of struggle against the Party, becoming, especially after being expelled from the Party, the main mouthpiece of all anti-Soviet groups and trends, they turned into an advanced detachment of fascists, acting on the direct instructions of foreign intelligence services.

The trial of the united Trotskyist-Zinoviev center has already exposed the connections of the Trotskyists with the Gestapo and the Nazis. The present process has gone further in this respect. He provided material of exceptional probative force, once again confirming and clarifying these connections, fully confirming and clarifying in a procedural and evidentiary sense and in full the treacherous role of Trotskyism, which completely and unconditionally went over to the camp of enemies, turned into one of the branches of the "SS" and the Gestapo .

The path of the Trotskyists, the path of Trotskyism is completed. Throughout their shameful and sad history, the Trotskyists tried to hit and hit on the most sensitive and dangerous places. proletarian revolution n Soviet socialist construction.

The directive that Pyatakov spoke of here, which he received from Trotsky, was “to strike with the most sensitive methods at

the most sensitive places,” this directive represents the robe, the old Trotskyist attitude towards Soviet power, towards socialist construction in our country.

The period that coincided with the final victory of socialism in the USSR is distinguished by special activity, special determination, stubbornness, and perseverance of the Trotskyists in the struggle against the Soviet regime. And this is quite natural. This victory was given to us not without overcoming enormous difficulties. Difficulties and, in particular, those that we met on our way in the period 1929-1931, especially in the countryside, these difficulties inspired the Trotskyist-Zinoviev underground, which began to stir, set its tentacles in motion, trying, at the direction of Trotsky, to strike at the very sensitive place.

Sensing their imminent death, the remnants of the exploiting classes destroyed by the proletarian dictatorship and their agents switched to new tactics, to new forms, to a new course of struggle against the Soviet regime, which the defendants set out here in sufficient detail and spoke to the court.

The growth of resistance of classes hostile to the proletarian dictatorship inspired the Trotskyist-Zinoviev gang, which, moreover, was inspired and incited to commit crimes against the USSR by the capitalist encirclement of the USSR that still exists.

Counting on the weakening of the Soviet rear, the international counter-revolution hastened the preparations for intervention. It is known, after all, that the interventionists are preparing a strike against the Soviet Union every year. The fragments of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-Zinoviev group knew that other defenders of the restoration of capitalism, other detachments of capitalist agents in our country, were operating alongside them. The Industrial Party, Kondratiev's Labor Peasant Party - the kulak party, the Allied Bureau of the Mensheviks, whose activities were considered at one time in the court hearings of the Supreme Court - all these organizations were opened as organizations of wreckers and groups of saboteurs who welcomed Trotsky's struggle with our party, with the Soviet government, knowing that in the person of the Trotskyists they really have people like them, but more cynical, more brazen defenders of the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

What is the restoration of capitalism in our country? In 1932, the Trotskyists intensified their consolidation with the counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet groups, they established ties with the right opposition in order to jointly fight against the party, against the Soviet regime. Comrade Stalin exposed the real content of this connection at the 16th and 17th Party Congresses, showing that the counter-revolutionary Trotskyists and Zinovievites, as he put it, are united by the desire to restore capitalism in the USSR. Comrade Stalin then called this program a program of contemptible cowards and capitulators, a counter-revolutionary program for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

In the light of today, it is especially clear what an enormous historical deed Comrade Stalin did when in 1931 he showed the true essence of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist counter-revolutionary organization in its "new" quality. Comrade Stalin wrote in a letter to the editors of the journal Proletarian Revolution: "In fact, Trotskyism is the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, waging a struggle against communism, against Soviet power, against the building of socialism in the USSR." Comrade Stalin denounced Trotskyism as the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, which received from the hands of the Trotskyists spiritual, tactical and organizational weapons for their struggle against Bolshevism, against the building of socialism.

In the light of the current process, it is especially clear what an exceptional historical meaning has this indication. In the light of the present process, the role of the underground anti-Soviet Trotskyist groups appears especially vividly - this is the main channel of all anti-Soviet sentiments, hopes and aspirations, the main lever, the battering ram, with which the enemies of the Soviets are trying to make a breach in the walls of our state, to crush the fortress of socialism we have erected.

This role of the vanguard of the anti-Soviet fascist forces was by no means accidental. The departure of Trotskyism into the anti-Soviet underground, its transformation into a fascist agent, is only the completion of its historical development.

The transformation of the Trotskyist groups into groups of saboteurs and assassins, acting on instructions from foreign intelligence services and the general staffs of the aggressors, only completed the struggle of Trotskyism against the working class and the party, the struggle against Lenin and Leninism, which lasted for decades. Trotskyism began its path with a disgusting struggle, and Trotskyism is on this path even now, and therefore way goes further and further, not knowing any limits of hatred and malice in the struggle. Whole story political activity Trotskyists is a continuous chain of betrayals to the cause of the working class, to the cause of socialism.

In 1904, Trotsky, as you know, came out with a vile pamphlet entitled Our Political Tasks. This pamphlet was filled with dirty insinuations about our great teacher, the leader of the international proletariat

Lenin, the great Leninist doctrine of the ways of the Bolshevik victory, the victory of the working people, the victory of socialism. In this pamphlet, Trotsky spatters with poisonous saliva, spitting on the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism. He is trying to poison the proletariat with this poison, he is trying to turn the proletariat off the path of an irreconcilable class struggle (5y, he slanders the proletariat, slanders the proletarian revolution, slanders Bolshevism, Lenin, calling Lenin "Maximillian" - the name of Robespierre - the hero of the bourgeois French revolution, wishing thereby humiliate the great leader of the international proletariat.

This gentleman allowed himself to call Lenin the leader of the reactionary wing of the working-class movement, knowing no limits in his impudence and political shamelessness. While Lenin and Stalin took away the best people By educating them in political battles with the autocracy, with tsarism, with the bourgeoisie, shaping them into the core of the Bolshevik party, Judas-Trotsky rallied a united front of lackeys of capitalism to fight against the cause of the proletariat. In 1911-1912, Trotsky also organized a bloc, just as he later organized the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc, organized the so-called "August bloc" from the servants of capital, from the Mensheviks, from those thrown out of the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, from the demagnetized intellectuals and the dregs of the labor movement. Of this bloc, Stalin wrote: "It is known that this patchwork 'party' pursued the goal of destroying the Bolshevik Party."

Lenin wrote that this bloc was "built on unscrupulousness, hypocrisy and empty phrases" 3 . Trotsky and his henchmen responded with a stream of dirty slander, vilifying Lenin and the Bolsheviks, calling them "barbaric", "sectarian-violent" Asians. Of Trotsky, Lenin wrote: “Such types are characteristic, like the wreckage of yesterday’s historical formations and formations when the mass working-class movement in Russia was still dormant...” 4 . Against such a "type," as Lenin called Trotsky at that time, he warned the party and the working class 20 years ago. In the article "On the Violation of Unity Covered by Cries of Unity," Lenin wrote: "It is necessary that the young working generation should know well with whom it is dealing..." 5 .

Our process is helping millions and millions of young workers and peasants, the working people of all countries, to imagine clearly and distinctly who we are really dealing with. Of course, the despicable Trotskyist bloc failed to destroy the Bolshevik Party, but the Trotskyists did not stop attacking the Bolshevik Party as best they could after the failure of the bloc. The entire period from 1903 to the very eve of the revolution in the history of our working-class movement is filled with the struggle of Trotsky and the Trotskyists against the revolutionary mood of the masses that is growing stronger and growing in Russia, the struggle against Lenin and against his party.

In 1915, Trotsky spoke out against Lenin's teaching on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, having already capitulated more than 20 years ago, thus completely capitulating to capitalism.

Trotsky alternately serves Economism, Menshevism, Liquidationism, Kautskyism, Social Democracy and National Chauvinism in the struggle against Lenin, just as he now serves imperialism and fascism in the struggle against the USSR.

Is it a coincidence that the Trotskyists eventually turned into a nest and hotbed of degeneration and Thermidorism, as Comrade Stalin used to say about this in his time? Is it accidental that Trotsky, finding himself in the ranks of our party after the revolution, again broke loose, slipped into counter-revolutionary positions, found himself thrown out of our state, out of the Soviet Union? Was Trotskyism accidentally turned into an assault detachment of capitalist restoration?

It is no coincidence, because this has been going on since the very birth of Trotskyism. It is no coincidence, because before October revolution Trotsky and his friends fought against Lenin and the Leninist party in the same way that they are now fighting against Stalin and the party of Lenin-Stalin.

Comrade Stalin's predictions have completely come true. Trotskyism has really turned into the central rallying point for all forces hostile to socialism, into a detachment of simple bandits, spies and murderers who have placed themselves entirely at the disposal of foreign intelligence services, have definitively and irrevocably turned into lackeys of capitalism, into restorers of capitalism in our country.

And here, at the trial, precisely this vile essence of Trotskyism was revealed with exceptional fullness and clarity. They came to their shameful end because for decades they followed this path, glorifying capitalism, not believing in the successes of socialist construction, in the victory of socialism. That is why they finally came up with a comprehensive program of capitalist restoration, that is why they went to the point of betraying and selling our homeland.

Things were already moving towards this when Trotsky, as was the case in 1922, proposed to allow our industrial enterprises, trusts to pledge our property, including fixed capital, to private capitalists in order to obtain loans that the Soviet state really needed at that time.

This proposal of Trotsky was even then a stepping stone towards the return to the power of the capitalists, towards making the capitalists, financiers, factory owners again the owners of our factories and plants and depriving our workers of the rights they had won under Soviet power. These gentlemen asserted that the Soviet economy was "more and more merged with the capitalist economy", that is, it was turning into an appendage of world capitalism. They assured that "we will always be under the control of the world economy", that is, they asserted what the capitalist sharks dreamed of.

Comrade Stalin then exposed this wrecking position of Trotskyism, saying: “Capitalist control means, first of all, financial control ... Financial control means planting branches of large capitalist banks in our country, this means the formation of so-called “subsidiary” banks. But do we have, - said Comrade Stalin, - such banks? Of course not! And not only not, but never will be, as long as Soviet power is alive.

Capitalist control, which was then talked about, dreamed of and demanded by the Trotskyists, and these leaders of the Trotskyist bloc sitting here on the dock, is the right of the capitalists to dispose of our homeland, our markets. "Capitalist control means, finally," said Comrade Stalin, "political control, the destruction of the political independence of our country, the adaptation of the country's laws to the interests and tastes of the international capitalist economy."

This is what this so-called capitalist control meant, which Trotsky and some part, the head of the so-called anti-Soviet Trotskyist center sitting here on the dock, yearned for.

Comrade Stalin, exposing the anti-Soviet essence of such proposals, said: “If we are talking about such real capitalist control, ... then I must declare that we do not have such control and will never have it, as long as our proletariat lives and as long as we have Soviet Power" 8 . That is why it is not accidental, why these two tasks are so organically linked - the preparation of capitalist restoration with the struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is it a coincidence that, starting with capitalist control, these people descended to an open platform of capitalist restoration, to an open struggle, in the name of realizing this platform, in alliance with the capitalists against the dictatorship of the proletariat!

It is well known that at the turning points of our struggle, at the steep upswings of our proletarian revolution, the Trotskyist leaders always, as a rule, found themselves in the camp of our enemies, on the other side of the barricades.

The denial of the socialist character of our revolution, the denial of the possibility of building socialism in our country determined and predetermined the hostile position of the Trotskyists towards the cause of socialist construction in the USSR.

This, however, did not prevent the Trotskyists from hiding behind the name of socialism, just as it did not and does not prevent at present many enemies of socialism from hiding behind this name.

This has always happened in history. It is known that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, those worst enemies of socialism, always hid behind the name of socialism. But that didn't stop them from wallowing at the feet of the bourgeoisie, the landowners, the white generals.

We remember how the Mensheviks in the Petliura Rada called the troops of Wilhelm II to Ukraine, how they traded in the freedom and honor of the Ukrainian people;

how the interventionists operated in Arkhangelsk under the guise of Tchaikovsky's Socialist-Revolutionary government;

how the so-called "socialist" "government of the committee of the constituent assembly" brought Kolchak to power;

how the Menshevik government of Noah Zhordania faithfully served the foreign interventionists!

All these gentlemen called themselves socialists, they all hid behind the name of socialism, but everyone knows that there were and are no more consistent and more cruel, brutal enemies of socialism than the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Trotsky and the Trotskyists have long been capitalist agents in the labor movement.

They have now become a vanguard fascist detachment, an assault battalion of fascism.

In 1926-1927, they switched to the path of open anti-Soviet, already punishable crimes. They took to the streets - they tried at least to do this - their struggle against the leadership of our party, against the Soviet government. It was a difficult and difficult time in the life of the Soviet state. It was a time of transition from a period of restoration to a period of reorganization of our industry and agriculture on the basis of high technology. During this period, there could not have been a number of serious difficulties, reflecting the complexity of the struggle between the capitalist and socialist elements of our economy.

The "opposition bloc", the so-called "new opposition", headed by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, with the participation of almost all the defendants sitting here - the accused Pyatakov, Radek, Serebryakov, Sokolnikov, Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky - then tried to use these difficulties to to once again try to stab the Soviet state in the back, and, moreover, as hard as possible.

The Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc of 1926 was a bloc that turned the entire edge of its struggle against the cause of socialism in our country, for capitalism. Under the guise of false, sometimes outwardly “leftist” phrases about “super-industrialization,” etc., the Trotskyist-Zinoviev gang put forward such proposals from 1926-1927 that undermined and frustrated the alliance of workers and peasants, undermined the foundation of the Soviet state. It put forward such demands as increased pressure on the peasantry, as "initial socialist accumulation" through the ruin and robbery of the peasantry, it put forward a number of demands that were supposed to lead to the disruption of the bond between town and country and thereby disrupt the possibility of real industrialization. These were, in essence, the same sabotage and wrecking measures. In essence, between the wrecking and diversionary measures of 1926-1927 and the present, the difference is only in form. And then the opposition bloc tried to break the link between the working class and the peasantry with their supposedly "left", but in fact counter-revolutionary proposals, in a form that corresponded to the conditions of the class struggle of that time. This, too, was a special form of sabotage, a form of subversive acts directed against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the cause of socialist construction. These proposals of the then opposition were only a special form of struggle against the Soviet state, corresponding to the then historical situation. Ten years have passed, and we see that they are embarking on the path of direct sabotage, the path of sabotage, the path of subversive work, but in much more acute forms, corresponding to the new conditions - the conditions of a fierce class struggle against the remnants of capitalist elements.

The “new opposition,” as this bloc was called, did not accidentally unite such a “super-industrializer” as Trotsky was with such an opponent of industrialization as Sokolnikov was 10 years ago and as he remains to this day. The “new opposition” essentially stood for a definite political and socio-economic program, which could not but lead, inevitably had to lead to the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in turn inevitably had to lead to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

Comrade Judges, when we now hear at trial in the testimony of the leaders of this gang, the leaders of the Trotskyist underground organization, confessions that they really received from Trotsky the instructions for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, accepted these instructions and, in the name of their implementation, carried out wrecking, sabotage, reconnaissance work, - the question may arise, which some people have: how can these people who fought for socialism for so many years, people who blasphemously called themselves Bolshevik-Leninists - how can they be accused of these monstrous crimes? Isn't this proof that the accusation was wrong, that these people are accused of what they cannot be accused of by the very essence of all their past socialist, revolutionary, Bolshevik activities?

I answer this question. The defendants in this trial have been charged with the fact that they really tried by all sorts of the most disgusting and dishonorable measures to return our country under the yoke of capitalism. This is the accusation of these gentlemen that they are traitors to socialism. We justify this accusation not only by what they have committed today - this is the subject of the accusation - but we say that the history of their fall begins long before they organized the so-called "parallel" center, this offshoot of the criminal Trotskyist-Zinoviev united bloc. There is an organic connection. The historical connection is obvious. And it would be enough to confine ourselves to what I said so that there would be no doubt that the main accusation brought by the state prosecutor's office to those sitting here in the dock of trying to restore in our country the capitalist system that was overthrown nineteen years ago is fully substantiated, documented, and by this accusation the criminals sitting here are nailed to eternal disgrace and eternal damnation on the part of all honest workers, honest people of our country and the whole world.

From the platform of 1926, from anti-Soviet protests in the streets, from illegal printing houses, from an alliance with the White Guard officers, to which they also then went, to sabotage, to espionage, to terror, to treason in 1932-1936 - one step. And they took this step!

We have already seen this in the example of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev united bloc, in the example of the political fate of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganyan and others, who shamefully ended their lives with the stigma of foreign intelligence hirelings.

We see the same thing now in the fate of the defendants in the present case, most of whom for many years, both before and after the October Revolution, fought against Lenin and Leninism, against the party of Lenin-Stalin, against the building of socialism in our country.

Pyatakov, K. Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, Drobnis, Muralov, Livshits, Boguslavsky, Shestov - all of them fought for a number of years against the cause of socialism, against the cause of Lenin-Stalin.

These gentlemen already at that time were directing their forces to, as Comrade Stalin said, "breaking the back of the party" and at the same time breaking the back of the Soviet power, the death of which all the counter-revolutionary crows never tired of croaking.

In this struggle against Soviet power, these gentlemen fell as low as no one seems to have ever fallen before.

Lenin foresaw the inevitability of such a shameful end, to which the accused came, to which everyone who takes the path that they have taken must come. In the resolution of the Tenth Congress of our Party, then still called the Russian Communist Party, adopted at the suggestion of Lenin, there was a formidable warning that anyone who insists on his factionalism and his mistakes under the Soviet system must inevitably slide into the camp of the enemies of the working class, into the camp of whites and imperialists. These gentlemen proved with all their activity the entire validity of this historical prediction.

HOW THEY FIGHTED AGAINST LENIN

What are the members of the center in their political past? Pyatakov and Radek, Serebryakov and Sokolnikov, Boguslavsky and Drobnis, Muralov and Shestov for many years cultivated hatred for the Soviet system, for socialism. They knew how to disguise, they knew how to hide their real feelings and views, they double-dealed, deceived, which they all admit now. Some claim that at some time they had a break from Trotskyism. Hard to believe. We know that all activities of the defendants in the present case were highly consistent. Such, I would say, honored figures of Trotskyism, like Pyatakov, Radek, Drobnis, Serebryakov, Boguslavsky, disguised themselves, blackmailed, cheated both their own and others. Only in such an environment created by the Pyatakovs and Radeks - these most unprincipled, completely outcast people who used their highly responsible position in the Soviet state system to perpetuate their shameful, dirty and bloody crimes - could such adventurers and rogues like the Rataichaks, Knyazevs, Shestovs, Arnolds, Stroilovs, Grashe.

You, Comrade Judges, have seen these gentlemen here, you have listened to them, you have studied them. Here is Ratajczak, either a German or a Polish intelligence officer, but that he is a scout, there can be no doubt about this, and, as he is supposed to, is a liar, a deceiver and a rogue. A man, in his own words, having an old autobiography and a new autobiography. The person who falsifies and recomposes these autobiographies, depending on the circumstances. A person who, being the deputy chairman of the provincial council of the national economy in Volyn, not only covers the robbery, theft and speculation of his subordinate, but together with him participates in direct mercenary crimes. In his own words, he is supported by this thief, embezzler and speculator. And so, this Ratajczak, with all his remarkable qualities revealed by the investigation and the court, becomes Pyatakov's closest assistant in the chemical industry. Chemist is great! (Movement in the hall).

Pyatakov knew whom he was choosing. It can be said that the beast runs to the catcher. Ratajczak makes his way to the big ranks. He is silent about the motives that move him and does not speak as talkatively as Arnold, who admitted that he was tormented by "a craving for the upper strata of society." (Laughter, movement in the hall.) Ratajczak is silent about this. He is, of course, smarter than Arnold. He knows that speech is silver and silence is gold. And this Ratajczak, with all his moral qualities, turns out to be a man who managed to achieve certain degrees. He is the head of Glavkhimprom! You just need to think about what these words mean: the head of the main department of the entire chemical industry of our country!

If Pyatakov did not have any other crimes, then only for the mere fact that he let this man get closer than one kilometer to the chemical industry, he should have been brought to the most severe responsibility.

In the responsible post of head of Glavkhimprom, Rataychak, this chief pest, deploys his criminal talents, embarks on a wide criminal voyage, inflates the sails with might and main, blows up, destroys the fruits of the people's labors, destroys and kills people.

Or take Drobnis, the old professional Trotskyist, this exterminator of the workers according to the formula - "the more victims, the better." Or take Knyazev, a Japanese intelligence agent who derailed more than a dozen routes. Or Livshits, the former Deputy People's Commissar of Railways and at the same time Pyatakov's deputy for criminal cases in transport. Part-time employment was in use with this company ... Finally, the Trotskyist "soldier" Muralov, one of Trotsky's most devoted and inveterate adjutants, also admitted that he was a pest and saboteur. And nearby - Arnold, aka Ivanov, aka Vasiliev, aka Rask, aka Kulpenen, and what else he was called there - no one knows. This scorched rogue, who went through fire, water and copper pipes, a swindler and an adventurer, also turns out to be a Trotskyite trusted person... And the first bandit. Or Grachet, a man not only of three dimensions, but at least of three nationalities, who himself defined his main profession very eloquently, although not in a particularly pleasant word, - a spy, and added that he, as a spy, was not supposed to have convictions by position. .. (Laughter in the hall.)

Here is a cursory description of those cadres who paraded here before the court, before the whole country, before the whole world - the cadres who were gathered by the "parallel" center, the army, which was organized by this very "parallel" center on the instructions of Trotsky, brought up and thrown into the Trotskyist struggle against Soviet power and the Soviet state.

Speaking of these cadres, of course, it is necessary to say especially about their leaders, about the chieftains. Let's start, of course, with Pyatakov - after Trotsky, the first chieftain of this bandit gang. Pyatakov is not an accidental person among the Trotskyists. Pyatakov, who until now has stubbornly and skillfully disguised himself, has always been and is the old enemy of Leninism, the enemy of our Party and the enemy of Soviet power. Follow Pyatakov's political path.

In 1915, together with Bukharin, he came forward with an anti-Leninist platform on the question of the right of nations to self-determination, a question of the utmost fundamental importance in determining the position of Bolshevism, by the way, scolding Lenin on the go as a “Talmudist of self-determination.”

In 1916, the same person, under the pseudonym of P. Kievsky, appeared as the already established ideologist of Trotskyism. He proves that a social upheaval (he says a social process) can only be conceived as a united action by the proletarians of all countries, destroying the frontiers of the bourgeois state, demolishing frontier posts. Outwardly ultra-"left", in reality - a purely Trotskyist formulation of the question. Pyatakov here repeats in full the Trotskyist thesis about the impossibility of building socialism in one country. He opposes Lenin. Lenin exposes the anti-Marxist character of this speech by Pyatakov. Lenin already qualifies this article as an article capable of inflicting a most serious blow to our "trend - and our party", as an article that could compromise the party from within, from its own ranks, would turn it, as Lenin wrote, "into a representative of caricatured Marxism" 9 .

1917 Pyatakov again opposes Lenin's thesis about the right of nations to self-determination. He calls this right "an empty right" that leads the revolutionary struggle onto a false path. He speaks out against the possibility of building socialism in one country. Pyatakov in 1917 - against Lenin's "April theses".

In 1918 he again opposed Lenin. It was a difficult year of the heroic struggle of the workers and peasants of our country, who defended their independence in incredibly difficult and difficult conditions, with weapons in their hands. It was the year in which, in the words of Lenin, we first "entered the heart of the revolution." It was the year when Lenin called for “... it is better to endure and endure, to endure infinitely greater national and state humiliations and hardships, but to remain in their post, as a socialist detachment that broke away from the ranks of the socialist army due to events and was forced to wait until the socialist revolution in other countries will come to the rescue.

Pyatakov's position, together with Radek, is against this thesis, against Lenin. They - these "left" communists - are even ready to go to the loss of Soviet power. Back in 1918, having sat down in the bureau of the Moscow Committee of the Party, these gentlemen spoke of the need, at least at the cost of the loss of Soviet power, which, as they said, had become a formal concept, to disrupt the Brest Peace. Stalin rightly called the conclusion of the Brest peace a model of Lenin's strategy, which gave strength to prepare for the repulse of the gangs of Denikin and Kolchak.

Pyatakov, Radek and their like-minded people already thought and acted in the way that Felix Dzerzhinsky later aptly and firmly called them, throwing the Trotskyists and Zinovievites at the address - "Kronstadters"! The Pyatakovs and Radeks did not value Soviet power. In their struggle against Lenin they reached such a frenzy that they talked about replacing the then existing Council of People's Commissars and replacing it with the Council of People's Commissars from people who were part of a group of "Lefts". It was Pyatakov and his company in 1918, at the moment of the most acute danger for the Soviet country, who were negotiating with the Socialist-Revolutionaries on the preparation of a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat, on the arrest of Lenin so that Pyatakov would take the post of head of the government - chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Through the arrest of Lenin, through a coup d'état, these political adventurers paved the way for themselves to power! Now what are they doing? Through attempts to overthrow Soviet power, through terrorist acts against the leaders of our party and the Soviet state - against Comrade Stalin and his comrades-in-arms - they pave the same way to the restoration of capitalism with the help of foreign interventionist aggressor bayonets, with the help of terror, sabotage, espionage, sabotage and all possible serious state crimes. There is a historical continuity. Together with Trotsky, Pyatakov rebelled against Lenin during the difficult days of Brest for our country. Together with Trotsky, Pyatakov rebelled against Lenin in the days when the party was making the most difficult turn towards the New Economic Policy. Together with Trotsky, Pyatakov fought against the Leninist plan for building socialism in our country, against the industrialization and collectivization of our country, carried out under the brilliant leadership of our leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin.

15th year, 16th year, 17th year, 18th and 19th, 21st and 23rd, 26th and 27th - for more than a decade Pyatakov has invariably defended the Trotskyist positions, has been waging an open struggle against Lenin, against the general line of the party and against the Soviet state.

1926-1936 is the second decade of Pyatakov's almost continuous, but already secret, underground struggle against the Soviet state and our party, a struggle that he waged systematically and tirelessly, until, finally, he was caught red-handed, was caught, was not put on this dock as a traitor and a traitor!

Such is Pyatakov and his portrait.

Much of what I have said about Pyatakov can also be repeated in relation to the accused Radek. Radek opposed Lenin more than once, both before and after the revolution. This Radek in 1926, at a debate at the Communist Academy, giggled and mocked the theory of building socialism in our country, calling it the theory of building socialism in one county or even on one street, calling this idea Shchedrin's idea.

On this occasion, Stalin said: “Can this vulgar and liberal giggle of Radek about the idea of ​​building socialism in one country be called otherwise than a complete break with Leninism?” eleven .

Radek is one of the most prominent and, to be fair to him, talented and stubborn Trotskyites. Under Lenin it goes to war against Lenin, after Lenin it goes to war against Stalin. In direct proportion to his personal abilities, his social danger, his political danger, is great. He is incorrigible. He is a curator at the anti-Soviet Trotskyist foreign policy portfolio center. On Trotsky's instructions, he conducts diplomatic negotiations with certain foreign persons or, as he puts it, "gives a visa" for Trotsky's mandate. He regularly, through his own, so to speak, diplomatic courier, Romm, corresponded with Trotsky, receiving from him what they pompously called "directives" here. He is one of the most trusted and close to the main ataman of this gang - to Trotsky - people.

Sokolnikov. In 1918 he was also against Lenin. He even that year one by one political conflict threatened Lenin with resignation. In 1921, he signed the anti-Leninist Bukharin trade union platform. In 1924 he signs the "cave platform", the one that was painted in a cave near Kislovodsk. In 1925, Sokolnikov, slandering the Soviet state, asserted that our foreign trade, our domestic trade enterprises are state-capitalist enterprises, the State Bank is in exactly the same way a state-capitalist enterprise, that our monetary system is imbued with the principles of capitalist economy. Apologist and ideologist of capitalist economic policy!

Comrade Stalin then pointed out that Sokolnikov was a supporter of the Dawesization of our country. Sokolnikov was a genuine supporter of the preservation of the economic backwardness of our country, that is, the enslavement of our country by the capitalist countries, "the transformation of our country into an appendage of the capitalist system." As you can see, Sokolnikov has not gone anywhere from this position to this day.

Sokolnikov, being a People's Commissariat of Finance in 1925, complained and slandered our party and the Soviet government that they were preventing him from defending the dictatorship of the proletariat and fighting the kulak, that they were preventing him from curbing the kulak. And now Sokolnikov admitted to the whole world that the Trotskyist center, of which he is one of the bosses, was counting on the kulak, or rather, on the remnants of the kulak. At the trial, he himself said: “We understood that in our program settings we need to return to capitalism and put forward a program for the restoration of capitalism, because then we will be able to rely on certain layers in our country.”

“Question: Specifically, what forces did you count on inside the country? To the working class?

Sokolnikov: No.

Question: To the collective-farm peasantry?

Sokolnikov: Of course not.

Question: To whom?

Sokolnikov: Speaking without any embarrassment, it must be said that we counted on being able to rely on elements of the peasant bourgeoisie ...

Question: For the fist, for the remnants of the fist?

Sokolnikov: Yes.

So Sokolnikov came to a frank kulak program, to a frank defense of kulak interests, completing the path of his fall. From the position of Sokolnikov in 1925-1926 to the program of the Trotskyist center in 1933-1936, the transition is quite natural.

Two words about Serebryakov - the fourth member of this anti-Soviet Trotskyist center. He signs the Bukharin program during the trade union discussion of 1920, he is an active participant in the opposition of 1923, he is an active participant in the opposition of 1926-1927, he, in essence, as he himself admitted here in court, never broke with Trotskyism. It is clear that he had every reason to claim a leading position in this anti-Soviet Trotskyist center.

As old Trotskyists we know N. Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Livshits. We know that they devoted a number of years to the struggle against Lenin and socialist construction in our country. Is it not clear that the participation of these people in anti-Soviet underground Trotskyist work, participation in Trotskyist sabotage, sabotage and terrorist groups, their betrayal of their homeland were prepared and were a direct consequence of all their past Trotskyist activities, were the direct result of their many years of struggle against the USSR, against the Soviet people. This had to be acknowledged by the defendants themselves. They long, stubbornly and vilely waged their struggle against socialism. Now they've been caught red-handed. Their last mask has been torn off. They are exposed as enemies of the people, as an insignificant vile bunch of people who have become agents of foreign intelligence.

NOT A POLITICAL PARTY, BUT A GANG OF CRIMINALS

These gentlemen tried to present themselves as some kind of political party. Pyatakov at the trial spoke of his accomplices as a "fraction", spoke of the "political distrust" of his "fraction" in the Zinoviev section of the bloc. He spoke of "own organization", using this concept in a political sense; even about "his own" policy, which Trotsky was going to conduct. Radek also spoke of his accomplices as political leaders. Speaking of Trotsky's criminal sabotage demands received by Pyatakov in a personal conversation between Pyatakov and Trotsky, the accused Pyatakov spoke of them as an integral part of Trotsky's policy.

Radek also spoke in a high style - one of those "real politicians" who really betrayed their homeland, promised real and territorial concessions to the enemies. Speaking even of such prosaic things as ordinary criminal sabotage, Radek tried to speak in a lofty style, as if it were a political matter. At the court hearing on January 24, Radek said: “It was clear that I was being asked about the attitude of the bloc. I told him that real politicians in the USSR understood the significance of the German-Soviet rapprochement and were ready to make the concessions necessary for this rapprochement. This representative understood that since I was talking about real politicians, it means that there are real politicians and unreal politicians in the USSR: the unreal ones are the Soviet government, and the real ones are the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc. Here they are, these real politicians, sitting here under guard ... only three Red Army soldiers! (Laughter in the hall). It is not difficult to be convinced that all this high style was, in fact, woven here from some old memory. It is not difficult to be convinced that this is not a political party at all, that this is simply a gang of criminals, nothing or, at best for them, little different from the bandits who operate with a flail and a Finnish knife on a dark night on a high road.

This is not a political party. This is a gang of criminals who are simple agents of foreign intelligence. To the question directly put to Pyatakov: "Were the members of your organization connected with foreign intelligence services?" - Pyatakov answered: "Yes, they were." And he spoke about how this connection was established on the direct directive of Trotsky. This was also confirmed by Radek, the "parallel" center's specialist on "foreign affairs." This was confirmed by Livshits, Knyazev, Shestov, and a number of other defendants - direct and direct agents of these intelligence services. This is what this company is, which called itself a “political force”, which it wanted to appear, but in reality was not a political party, but a gang of intelligence officers, bandits, terrorists and saboteurs.

The roots of this group are not in the masses of our country, whom this gang is afraid of, from whom it runs like the devil from incense. From the masses of the people, this gang hides its face, hides its bestial fangs, its predatory teeth. The roots of this company, this gang, must be sought in the hiding places of foreign intelligence agencies who bought these people, took them on their pay, paid them for their faithful servile service. You have seen these full-time and freelance police spies and intelligence officers.

Pyatakov convinces his henchmen of the need to organize explosions and sabotage, primarily with human casualties. Drobnis argues that "the more victims, the better" for the Trotskyists. Shestov organizes the murders. Livshits, Knyazev, Turk organize train wrecks. And Radek is engaged in " foreign policy”, the meaning of which is that, just as Livshits and Knyazev derailed trains, derail the cause of socialism, open the gates to a foreign enemy, an aggressor enemy. Each of them is before your eyes, mired in this bloody criminal mess. Take separate groups: they are intertwined with foreign intelligence agents who buy them with promises of support, or even just for cash.

They blow up mines, burn shops, smash trains, maim, kill hundreds of the best people, the sons of our country. Through the newspaper Pravda, 800 workers of the Gorlovsky nitrogen-fertilizer plant reported the names of the best Stakhanovites of this plant who died from the treacherous hand of saboteurs. Here is a list of these victims: Lunev, a Stakhanovite, born in 1902; Yudin, a talented engineer, born in 1913; These are the dead. More than ten people were injured. Maksimenko, a Stakhanovite, died, fulfilling the norm by 125-150%, Nemikhin, one of the best strikers, who went down into the face at the Tsentralnaya mine, sacrificed his 10 days of vacation, and there he was ambushed and killed, the igniter Yuryev was killed - one of the participants fighting with the White Chinese, killed Lanin - participant civil war, an old miner. And so on and so forth.

Fellow Judges! Their killers are sitting right here in front of you! ..

Shestov organizes a bank robbery. Shestov organizes the gangster murder of engineer Boyarshinov, who seemed to him capable of exposing their criminal activities.

Arnold is an international vagabond who seems to have traveled to all countries of the world and left traces of his fraudulent tricks everywhere. In Minsk, he forges a document. In America it turns out to be a sergeant american army and goes to prison, by his own admission, on suspicion of embezzlement of state property. I think that if this person has ever stumbled upon state property, then this state property will not do well. (Laughter). This is a man who, through the Masons, tried to get into the "higher strata of society" in America, and through the Trotskyists - to power, for which he secretly and lustfully sighed, under the skillful guidance of such an educator as the hanged man Shestov ...

In the literal sense of the word, a gang of bandits, robbers, forgers, saboteurs, spies, murderers! Only the medieval Camorra, which united Italian nobles, tramps and criminal bandits, can compare with this gang of murderers, arsonists and bandits. Here is the moral physiognomy of these gentlemen, morally corroded and morally corrupted. These people have lost all shame, including in front of their accomplices and in front of themselves.

It cost nothing for these "political" figures to unscrew the rails, to put train on train. It cost nothing to gas the mine and lower a dozen or several dozen workers into the mine. It cost nothing to kill an honest engineer from around the corner. Set fire to the factory. Blow up in the dynamite pit the children who climbed there.

Good, nothing to say, political party! If it were a party, it would not hide its program from the masses. Political parties do not hide their programs, their political views. The Bolsheviks - this genuine political party, the party in the truest and highest sense of the word - never hid from the masses and never hid their program.

At the dawn of the Russian revolution, Lenin wrote about the tremendous importance that revolutionary Social Democracy attaches to the open propaganda of its ideas, the open declaration of its goals, the open mass agitation for its programmatic, tactical and organizational views and principles. The consignment Lenin-Stalin has grown, strengthened and turned into an enormous and powerful force, as a party based on the masses, a party organically linked with the masses. This is the hallmark of a true political party. Not only does it not hide its views from the masses, but it tries to disseminate these views among the masses as widely as possible. And this "party", as they call themselves, was afraid and is afraid to tell the truth about itself to the people, is afraid to tell about its programs.

Why? Because their views, their program are hated by our people, just as capitalist bondage is hated, how capitalist oppression is hated, which these gentlemen want to return, to impose on the neck of our people, because they have become a group of renegades that has become detached from the people. a gang of criminals headed by ataman Trotsky, with sub-tamans Pyatakov and Radek and other bandit "fathers". This is not a plant of the Soviet country. This is a plant of foreign origin, and on Soviet soil it cannot grow, it cannot bloom ...

It is strange to hear these gentlemen here talking about some kind of agreement between this "party", but simply a gang of criminals, with the Japanese and German fascist forces. With a serious air Pyatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov talked about the "agreement" that Trotsky had concluded or that Trotsky had negotiated with Germany and Japan. These gentlemen said with a serious air that they expected to use these countries in their own interests. But how can one seriously talk about this when this very “parallel” center is just an unfortunate goat compared to a wolf.

Agreement! They would simply say: "Surrendered at the mercy of the winner." This, of course, is not an agreement, but surrender to the mercy of the winner.

You see, Radek and Pyatakov "endorsement" of Trotsky's mandate for Trotsky's negotiations with foreign states. But this is not the main thing. Nor is it important that the center approves of these negotiations. The main thing is that I am Karl Radek, block minister of foreign affairs of the center - I personally approve that Trotsky - this bloc prime minister - is looking for contact with foreign states. This, of course, would sound very funny if the position of Pyatakov and Radek were not so tragic. But for anyone who has not completely lost his head, for anyone with a minimum of reason, it should have been clear that this agreement, which Piatakov spoke about with Trotsky and Radek, is not an agreement, but an embellished capitulation, the surrender of the Trotskyites to the mercy of the victor, that this is bondage, that to reach such an agreement meant climbing into the wolf's mouth, consoling himself in the fact that the wolf is not evil and will not swallow it.

This agreement reminds me of Krylov's fable "The lion on the trap". The fable says how a dog, a lion and a wolf with a fox entered into an agreement among themselves - “put a covenant” - to catch animals together. The fox caught a deer, began to divide. Here one of the “contracting parties” says: “This part is mine according to the agreement, this part belongs to me, like a lion, without a dispute, this part belongs to me because I am stronger than all, and only one of you will stretch out its paw to this one, he will not get up from his place alive. (Laughter.)

This "covenant" is very similar to your agreement, gentlemen of the defendants, gentlemen of the officers of German and Japanese fascism! So it happened with you, with the only difference, perhaps, that in your agreement the lion appears in the roles of a chained dog. That is why I assert that there is no political party here - there is a gang of criminals, there are morally insignificant, morally corrupt people who have lost both conscience and reason.

MORALLY VOIL, MORALLY DECORATED

After what we have heard here in court from these people, can there be any doubt that these are really and completely decomposed and morally fallen people?! No, there can be no doubt.

While the Soviet people, under the leadership of our Party, were working to strengthen their new, socialist positions, our enemy - and this is his advanced detachment - slowly, treacherously tried to break through the front of our victories, outflank us and strike from the rear. Foreign intelligence officers are working tirelessly, searching for and finding, unfortunately, allies in our country, assistants among people who are, it is true, decomposed and hostile to the Soviet system, and, as has now been proven completely and with accuracy, primarily among the Trotskyists.

Why do foreign intelligence agencies find their agents among the Trotskyists? Because the Trotskyists, past and present, have proved their irreconcilable hostility to the Soviets, their readiness to serve capitalism not out of fear, but for the last remnants of their conscience, they have proved their ability to act by the most vile and vile means of struggle, stopping at nothing.

Even at the 15th All-Union Party Conference, Comrade Stalin emphasized that the Trotskyists and the bloc organized by them at that time were distinguished precisely by "promiscuity in means and unscrupulousness in politics." This indiscriminateness in means, in political struggle has now outgrown all limits, reached monstrous proportions, increased a thousand times.

Do not the articles of Pyatakov and Radek, dedicated to their accomplices, Zinoviev and Kamenev, the most vile traitors, real bandits, who killed the unforgettable Sergei Mironovich Kirov, speak of the extreme limit of moral decay? Are not the height of cynicism and mockery of the last remnants of human conscience, of the last concepts of morality, the articles in which Radek and Pyatakov, with a feigned air of indignant righteous people, demanded the execution of their own allies, like-minded people and accomplices?!

Do you want to know what is the moral face of these gentlemen? Read their articles, which separate today from the day they are published in our newspapers by only a few months.

Here Radek exposes in the 3rd issue of Bolshevik for 1935 - what would you think? The double-dealing of Zinoviev and the entire head of the Zinoviev faction, as he puts it. Radek, a specialist in this field, shows great knowledge here. He talks casually about what double-dealing is...

Allow me to cite Radek's testimony on the question of what double-dealing is... Radek. He's writing:

“Having rolled down from the counter-revolution, the former leaders of the Zinoviev-Trotskyist bloc used this method of intervention spies, subversives and wreckers. Double-dealing turned out to be a camouflage tool that made it possible to fire at the proletarian headquarters.

We know that when Radek wrote this article, he had already been informed for a long time about the planned villainous murder of Sergei Mironovich Kirov. We know that he, Radek, was in conspiracy and conspiracy with Zinoviev and Kamenev, who killed Comrade Kirov, who was doomed to death by this same Radek and his friends sitting next to him.

And so, sweeping away the traces of his complicity in this heinous villainy, Radek tells of the exposed double-dealers, handed over into the hands of the law, "knowing how to deal with those who are trying to shake the foundations of the proletarian revolution."

Yes, Defendant Radek, you are right! Soviet law knows how to deal with double-dealers and traitors like you and your friends.

On the eve of the trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev and others, on the eve of the trial of traitors exposed in the anti-Soviet criminal struggle - what did this Radekh write? He wrote about the “Trotskyist-Zinovievist fascist gang and its hetman Trotsky” (this is his own expression), that from the hall where the trial and the analysis of this case took place, he carried a “cadaverous stench”, and exclaimed with pathos: “Destroy this reptile! This is not about the destruction of ambitious people who have reached the greatest crime, it is about the destruction of agents of fascism who were ready to help ignite the fire of war, facilitate the victory of fascism, in order to get at least the specter of power out of its hands.

So wrote Radek. Radek thought he was writing about Kamenev and Zinoviev. Little miscalculation! This process will correct this mistake of Radek: he wrote about himself!

Double-dealing and grimacing, he then wrote about how in 1928 he - Radek - was tempted by Trotsky to flee abroad and how he - this Radek - "was horrified at the thought of actions under the protection of bourgeois states against the USSR and sabotaged an escape attempt." In 1929, according to Radek, “he, Trotsky, having persuaded the Trotskyist Blumkin to organize the transport of literature to the USSR, sent his son Sedov to his hotel with instructions to organize an attack on the trade missions abroad in order to extract the money Trotsky needed for anti-Soviet work. From exes, which Trotsky prepared in 1929, in 1931 he moved on to preparing terror, about which he gave a direct directive to Smirnov and Mrachkovsky, people who had been associated with him for eighteen years. Smirnov and Mrachkovsky, raising arms against Stalin and the party, trampling on the trust placed in them, fell so low that it is impossible to recall their names without disgust.

Fellow Judges! At that time Radek had not yet been tried and was not in the dock. It wasn't in 1936, it wasn't even in 1935, it was in 1929. And here Radek testifies how Trotsky gave him orders to organize the robbery of our trade mission. Then Radek was free, he was not held by any Cheka, GPU or NKVD, he was not bothered by interrogations by an investigator or prosecutor, he was a free citizen, he was a journalist, he freely smoked his pipe everywhere and everywhere, blowing smoke into the eyes not only of his interlocutors . What did he write then? He wrote that he had received instructions from Trotsky to organize an attack on the trade missions in order to extract the money Trotsky needed for anti-Soviet work. I think it is impossible not to believe this authoritative confession made before the Soviet public, made not in the dock, but in the Soviet press. History, as you can see, repeats itself. And when we are now told that Trotsky, in 1935, persuaded Pyatakov, or rather did not persuade, but proposed to organize the theft of Soviet money with the assistance of the Demag and Borziga companies, when Sedov was establishing a connection with the Deilman company for the same purposes, We see history repeating itself...

Further. When Radek wrote then: “From the exes ...” (what is an ex? In Russian, it’s simply a robbery), ... “from the exes that Trotsky prepared in 1929, in 1931 he switched to terror, about which he gave a direct directive to Smirnov and Mrachkovsky - people connected with him for eighteen years, ”we thought that Radek was writing on the basis of official investigative documents. It turns out that what Radek wrote was, so to speak, an authentic interpretation, that is, an interpretation from the lips of the author, as one of the co-authors. He writes further: "Smirnov and Mrachkovsky ... have fallen so low that it is impossible to recall their names without disgust." Did Radek write like that or didn't he? Wrote. Alas, I wrote! Radek then attacked frankness, he pretended to repent, he spoke sincerely. He was indignant, scolded, cursed, swore, assured, repented ... From a pure heart? No, he was lying... Remembering the year 1929, when Trotsky was preparing to rob our trade missions abroad, he pretended to speak from the bottom of his heart. No, he lied, he only pretended to be telling the truth, cursed his friends in order to avert his eyes from himself, so that, as he puts it here in his thieves' jargon, "not to fall asleep." And yet he fell asleep. He resorted to the reception of hardened criminals. “Stop the thief!” he shouted in order to escape from the hands of justice himself. This is a well-known technique of those who speak the language - "fall asleep" and "sew". He tried to evade, elude responsibility. He, this Radek, over the corpses of his friends and accomplices, was trying to get out of that stinking, bloody and dirty pit in which he was already sitting up to his ears. He exclaimed with artificial and deceitful, deliberate affectation:

“The proletarian court will pass on a gang of bloody murderers the verdict that they deserve a hundredfold. People who have taken up arms against the lives of their beloved leaders of the proletariat must pay with their heads for their immeasurable guilt. Trotsky, the main organizer of this gang and its affairs, has already been pilloried by history. He cannot escape the verdict of the world proletariat.”

Do you remember, Radek, you said then that these people, such people, must pay with their heads for their guilt? Radek wrote:

"The main organizer of this gang - Trotsky - has already been pilloried by history, he cannot escape the curse of the world proletariat." It's right. Traitors cannot escape the verdict of the world proletariat, just as they cannot escape the verdict of our Soviet court, the court of the great socialist state of workers and peasants!

And Pyatakov? Pyatakov also speaks in the press about the exposure of the bandit-terrorist united Trotskyist-Zinoviev center. Piatakov rages and thrashes about vile counter-revolutionary activity, activity shrouded, as he wrote, in an unbearable stench of double-dealing, lies and deceit. What will Pyatakov say now to stigmatize his own moral fall, his own "stench of lies, double-dealing and deceit"? Will Pyatakov find these words, and if he does, what is the price of these words, who will believe these words?

Pyatakov wrote:

“There are not enough words to fully express my indignation and disgust. These are people who have lost the last features of their human appearance. They must be destroyed, destroyed, like carrion that infects the clean, cheerful air of the Soviet country, dangerous carrion that can cause death to our leaders and has already caused the death of one of the best people in our country - such a wonderful comrade and leader as S. M. Kirov " .

Pyatakov wept bitterly over the corpse of Kirov he had killed. Sobs. “The enemy in our country of victorious socialism is evasive,” writes Pyatakov, looking in the mirror. "Adapts to the situation," Pyatakov preens in front of the mirror. "He's pretending," Pyatakov thinks to himself, "and I'm clever at pretending." "Lie". Hm, - thinks Pyatakov, - how not to lie in such a situation? “Sweeps up traces” ... “Runs into trust” ...

Here is what Pyatakov writes, covering the bloody traces of his crimes.

“Many of us, including myself, with our mouthiness, complacency, inattentive attitude towards others, without noticing it, made it easier for these bandits to do their dirty work.” Amazing trick! Pyatakov had little vigilance! (D moving in the hall). That's what, it turns out, is Pyatakov's fault. This is again an old trick of criminals. When a person is accused of robbery with murder, he pleads guilty to robbery. When a person is accused of burglary, he pleads guilty only to theft. When he is accused of theft, he pleads, at worst, guilty only of possession or buying stolen goods.

This is an old tactic of career criminals. Pyatakov is afraid of being caught, exposed, and he appears in the press, smashes the enemy and does not spare himself. Oh, you, says Pyatakov, the mouth-watering one, you don't notice what's going on around you. But after all, something is not done around you, it is done by you!

Pyatakov wrote: "It's good that the NKVD bodies exposed this gang." (Laughter in the hall). True, good. Thanks to the NKVD authorities for finally exposing this gang! "It's good that it can be destroyed." That's right, Defendant Pyatakov, it's good that it is possible, not only possible, but must be destroyed. "Honor and glory to the workers of the NKVD." You are blaspheming, accused Pyatakov!

About whom did Pyatakov write on August 21, 1936? Pyatakov wrote about himself. Pyatakov got ahead of the inexorable course of events.

What do these articles by Pyatakov and Radek say? Don't they talk about the extreme, boundless, in the literal sense of the word, the moral fall of these people, about the moral insignificance, about the corruption of these people? Insignificant, rotten alive, having lost the last remnant of not only honor, but also reason, vile little people who were going on a campaign against the Soviet state, Malbrooks, shabby politicians, petty political cheats and big bandits.

The United Zinoviev-Trotskyist Center and its leaders stubbornly tried to prove that they had no political programmatic demands, that they had only "bare thirst for power." It is not true. It was an attempt to deceive public opinion. There can be no struggle for power without some kind of program, without a program that must formulate goals, tasks, aspirations, means of struggle. Even then we did not believe that the united Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist center did not have any kind of program. We knew that they stubbornly concealed it, and indeed: they had a program, just as this Trotskyist terrorist center had a program. It amounted to a frank recognition of the need for capitalist restoration in the USSR. Sokolnikov confirmed that, in fact, it was the old anti-Soviet Ryutin program. And that's right. Sokolnikov said:

As far as program guidelines are concerned, back in 1932 the Trotskyists, the Zinovievites, and the Rights agreed mainly on a program that had previously been characterized as a program of the Rights. This is the so-called Ryutin platform; as early as 1932, it expressed to a large extent precisely these programmatic principles common to all three groups.

As regards the further development of this program, the leading members of the center believed that as an isolated revolution our revolution could not hold out as a socialist one, “that the theory of Kautsky’s ultra-imperialism and the theory of Bukharin’s organized capitalism, akin to it, proved to be correct. We believed that fascism is the most organized capitalism, it wins, captures Europe, strangles us.

Therefore, it is better to come to an agreement with him, it is better to make some kind of compromise in the sense of retreat from socialism to capitalism.

But how do you "talk"? Will fascism want to "conspire"? Wouldn't he prefer to act without any collusion, since he acts everywhere, all over the world - impudently, leaning on, crushing and destroying the weak? Radek said that it was clear that "fascism would be the master of the situation - German fascism, on the one hand, and the military fascism of one Far Eastern country, on the other."

This, of course, was understood no worse than they and their teacher Trotsky, it was understood by the entire Trotskyist center. They went to this with their eyes open. This was the second point of their "wonderful" program.

The third point is the question of the war and the defeat of the USSR.

Fourth, the question of the consequences of the defeat: not only the concession of important industrial enterprises for the imperialist states, but also the sale into private ownership of important economic objects that they have outlined; these are the loans that Radek spoke of; it is the admission of foreign capital to those factories that will only formally remain in the hands of the Soviet state. The fifth point, as they said, is the agrarian question. This agrarian issue was very simply resolved at the "parallel" center, exactly the same way as Famusov solved the cultural issue - "to take away all the books, but burn them." This is how they solved the agrarian question: to burn the gains of the proletarian revolution - to dissolve the collective farms, to liquidate the state farms, to transfer tractors and other complex agricultural machines to individual farmers. For what? It is frankly said: "For the revival of the new kulak system." Is it "new"? Maybe just old?

The sixth question is the question of democracy. Radek related what Trotsky had written to him about this. This is very important for us to know, especially now that our country has reached the highest development proletarian socialist democracy, the expression of which is the great Stalinist Constitution recently adopted and approved by our people. How was the question of democracy raised in the Trotskyist program? What does K. Radek say on the question of democracy, having received a letter from his teacher?

“In the letter, Trotsky said (I quote Radek’s testimony):

“There can be no talk of any democracy. The working class has lived 18 years of the revolution (now it is already 19. - A.V.), and it has a huge appetite ... "

This is right. Such a huge appetite that he eats, as he has already eaten more than once, any of his enemies.

“... And this worker will have to be returned partly to private factories, partly to state factories, which will be in a state of severe competition with foreign capital. This means that there will be a sharp deterioration in the position of the working class.

And in the village?

“The struggle of the poor and middle peasants against the kulaks will resume in the countryside. And then, in order to hold on, strong power is needed, regardless of what forms it will be covered with. If you want historical analogies, then take the analogy with the power of Napoleon I and think over this analogy.

Well, probably Radek thought it out very well.

And, finally, the seventh question is the foreign policy program, the division of the country: “Give Ukraine to Germany; Primorye and Amur Region - Japan. We were further interested, but what about any other economic concessions?

Radek replied:

Yes, the decisions I have already mentioned have been deepened. Payment of indemnity in the form of supplies of food, raw materials and fats extended over many years. Then - at first he said without figures, and then more definitely - a certain percentage of the winning countries to ensure their participation in Soviet imports. All this together meant the complete enslavement of the country.

I asked: Was it about Sakhalin oil?

Radek: With regard to Japan, it was said that it was necessary not only to give her Sakhalin oil, but to provide her with oil in case of war with the United States of America. It was pointed out that it was necessary not to interfere with the conquest of China by Japanese imperialism.

What about the Danubian countries?

Radek: Regarding the Danubian and Balkan countries, Trotsky said in a letter that German fascism was expanding and that we should not hinder this fact in any way. The point was, of course, to terminate all our relations with Czechoslovakia, which would be protection for this country.

These are the seven main questions of this so-called program of the center, which sought the violent overthrow of Soviet power in order to change the social and state system existing in the USSR and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie in our country, seeking to strike a blow against democracy, against the cause of peace, against peaceful democratic countries - in assistance to bloodthirsty imperialist aggressive countries of the fascist type.

What did this program mean and what does it mean for the working class, for the peasants, for the cause of peace, for the interests of the Soviet people?

This program means a return to the past, the liquidation of all the gains of the workers and peasants, the liquidation of the victories of socialism, the liquidation of the Soviet socialist system. The socialist system is a system without exploitation and exploiters, it is a system without merchants and factory owners, without poverty and unemployment, it is a system where the workers and peasants are the masters, a system where all the exploiting classes have been destroyed, where the working class, the class of peasants, the intelligentsia have remained.

The Trotskyists are unhappy with this. They want to change the social order that we have today. They want to destroy the working class, which, thanks to the victory of socialism, has become a completely new class, the working class of the USSR, to return it to the position it held before the October Revolution, to the position of slaves chained in capitalist chains.

This is what the Trotskyite platform of capitalist restoration in the USSR means for the workers of our country and for the workers of all countries of the world.

Our Soviet peasantry is a new, collective-farm peasantry, it is not at all like the peasantry of the capitalist countries. In the capitalist countries the peasantry drags out a poor, half-starved or even starving existence. Scattered across the face of the whole country, as Comrade Stalin said, they "dig alone in their small farms with their backward technique, are slaves of private property and are exploited with impunity by landowners, kulaks, merchants, speculators, usurers, etc."

“We no longer have such a peasantry,” Comrade Stalin said at the Extraordinary Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets ... We no longer have landowners and kulaks, merchants and usurers who could exploit the peasants. Consequently, our peasantry is a peasantry liberated from exploitation... As you can see," said Comrade Stalin, "the Soviet peasantry is a completely new peasantry, the like of which has not yet been known in the history of mankind."

The Trotskyists do not like this, and they want to change this situation as well. They want to return the kulaks and landlords to the countryside, to reassert kulak power, to restore the owners, kulaks, to the countryside, to hand over the peasants to kulak bondage, to deprive our collective-farm peasantry of the rights won by blood.

This is what the Trotskyist program of capitalist restoration means for the peasants of our country, the return of our country to the hands of the capitalists, kulaks and landlords.

Finally, Trotskyists are dissatisfied with the fact that the victory of socialism in the USSR has turned the intelligentsia from a servant of capital into an equal member of Soviet society. The Trotskyists are dissatisfied with the fact that our intelligentsia "together with the workers and peasants, in the same team with them, is building a new classless socialist society" (Stalin). They are also unhappy with it. They want to change the socio-political system in the USSR. This means changing the socio-political position and role of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia in our state and returning them to the position they occupied in the old capitalist society, throw them into the maelstrom of exploitation, unemployment, hard labor, hopeless and stupid labor, eternal poverty and hunger.

This is what those seven points of the program for the restoration of capitalism, about which I spoke above, mean.

Therefore, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other leaders of the anti-Soviet united Trotskyist bloc concealed this program, stubbornly denying its existence. This program was also concealed by the leaders of the "parallel" center - Trotsky, Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and others.

As Radek pointed out, Trotsky pointed out that “it is not now necessary to put program questions to the fullest before the rank-and-file members of the bloc. They'll be frightened..." Radek declared:

“It was clear to me and to Pyatakov that the directive had brought the bloc to the last line, that by summing up the results and outlining the prospects for the work of the bloc, it eliminated all doubts about its bourgeois character. It is clear that we could not admit this aloud, because this put us before the necessity - either to recognize ourselves as fascists, or to raise the question of liquidating the bloc ... (vol. V, case sheet 147).

Isn't that why, by the way, Radek failed to call a conference? What would they talk about at this meeting?

About the restoration of capitalism? About the dismemberment of the USSR? About the division of the territory of the USSR? About territorial concessions? About the sale of our territory to the Japanese and German invaders? About espionage, sabotage? They concealed these points of their program, which are the main points of their program. But it is known that there is nothing secret that would not become obvious. This shameful program of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist bloc also became clear.

This program was recognized here by Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, and they themselves spoke about it here in court.

But maybe it's fiction? Maybe they just say that because they want to play the comedy of repentant sinners? Once you repent, you need to talk about something, you need to expose something. Perhaps Trotsky never gave such directives?

But, comrade judges, you know, everyone knows that abroad Trotsky publishes the so-called Bulletin of the Opposition, and if you take No. 10, April 1930, of this Bulletin, you will see what is printed there in essence the same:

... “Retreat is inevitable anyway. It needs to be done as soon as possible...

Suspend "solid" collectivization...

Stop the prize races of industrialization. To reconsider, in the light of experience, the question of rates...

Abandon the "ideals" of a closed economy Develop new version plan, designed for the widest possible interaction with the world market ...

Make the necessary retreat and then strategic rearmament...

It is impossible to get out of the current contradictions without crises and struggle...”

In 1933 "L. Trotsky demanded: a) the dissolution of most of the collective farms, as inflated; b) the dissolution of state farms as unprofitable; c) abandoning the policy of eliminating the kulaks; d) a return to the concession policy and the leasing of a number of our industrial enterprises for concession as unprofitable.

This program not only expressed the views, hopes and aspirations of the Trotskyist counter-revolutionaries, but, as established by the investigation, it also served as the basis for an agreement between the Trotskyists and foreign aggressors who would set their sights on Soviet soil. After all, the investigation established that on the basis of this program Radek, Pyatakov and their accomplices entered into and negotiated with foreign aggressors, with their representatives, expecting military assistance from them and promising them various economic and political benefits, up to the cession of part of Soviet territory. The traitors did everything, even the sale of their native land. They went to the blackest betrayal, they fell below the last Denikin or Kolchak. The last Denikin or the last Kolchak is higher than these traitors. Denikin's, Kolchak's, Milyukov's did not fall as low as these Trotskyist Judas, who sold their homeland for 30 pieces of silver, and even then fake ones, who tried to give our country into bondage to foreign capital. These are facts. This has been established by the investigation, and it cannot be shaken.

Is it any wonder that such a program of betrayal is rejected by our people, that if this program were to go to our factories, factories, collective farms, to our Red Army barracks, the agitator would immediately be seized and hanged at the first gate that came across. And rightly so, for, apart from the gallows, there can be no other fate for traitors. This is a program of black treason. We oppose it with our program - the program of the Soviet government. It would be in vain to portray the matter as if there is a struggle going on here, a dispute between two factions, one of which was lucky and came to power, and the other was unlucky, "not lucky", and it did not come to power.

Here there is a struggle not for life, but for death between two programs, two opposite systems of principles, directions hostile to each other, views that reflect these principles. To this black program of the Trotskyists we oppose our own program for the liquidation of capitalism, the liquidation of all remnants of capitalism in our country. The entire Soviet country, workers, peasants and intelligentsia, under the leadership of our great party, the party of Lenin-Stalin, under the leadership of our great leader (and teacher Stalin heroically fights for this program, works tirelessly to strengthen our state independence, independence and inviolability of our borders and our land.

In one great impulse, not seen in the history of tsarist Russia and in any other capitalist state, in the impulse of Soviet patriotism, our new, socialist fatherland is being built by the heroic hands of the working people of the USSR.

All the peoples of our country are seized by an enthusiasm unprecedented in history that works wonders. Mighty love for our homeland, for our fatherland! ..

“In the past, we did not and could not have a fatherland,” said Comrade Stalin in 1931. "But now that we have overthrown capitalism, and the power is with us, with the people, we have a fatherland and we will defend its independence" 13 .

Our whole country loudly, to the whole world, repeats these words of Comrade Stalin and is ready, at the first call of the Party and government, as one, to rise in defense of the fatherland.

Comrade Stalin said: “Our policy is a policy of peace... We will continue to pursue this policy of peace with all our strength, with all means. We do not want a single inch of foreign land. But we will not give our own land, not a single inch of our land to anyone.

May our enemies remember this well.

Our great Russian people, our great peoples - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Uzbek, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Tatar and all other multi-million peoples of the USSR stand guard over our borders like a living wall, guarding every inch, every inch of our sacred Soviet land!

“We are full,” Lenin wrote, “with a sense of national pride, for the Great Russian nation has also created a revolutionary class, has also proved that it is capable of giving humanity great examples of the struggle for freedom and socialism, and not only great pogroms, rows of gallows, dungeons, great hunger strikes and great servility to priests, tsars, landowners and capitalists” 15 .

And here before you, Comrade Judges, sit people who were going to plunge our country into capitalist slavery with the help of foreign bayonets. At one time, Lenin wrote about these people and their ilk that they were lackeys and boors, evoking a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt and disgust. These people, these lackeys and boors of capitalism, tried to trample into the dirt the great and holy feeling of our national, our Soviet patriotic pride, they wanted to mock our freedom, the sacrifices made by our people for their freedom, they betrayed our people, went over to the side of the enemy , on the side of the aggressors and agents of capitalism. The wrath of our people will destroy, incinerate the traitors and wipe them off the face of the earth...

THE DEFEATIVE POSITION OF THE TROTSKIST CENTER IS A WAR PROVOCATION

As established during the preliminary and judicial investigations, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center had one of the points of its program aimed at accelerating the war and defeating the USSR in this war. And through war and defeat - coming to power, seizing power and using it for capitalist restoration.

The Trotskyist center, consisting of Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov, understood, of course, the whole hopelessness of their criminal plans to overthrow the Soviet power and seize this power in the conditions of the peaceful existence of our Union, the peaceful development of the USSR. They understood, of course, that within our country there are no forces that could be counted on as really real forces. Therefore, the leaders of this center placed their main stake on the coming war, on the inevitability of a military attack on the USSR by the aggressor, on the inevitability of starting a war, on the need to ensure the victory of our enemy and our defeat in this war.

In a conversation with Pyatakov in December 1935, Trotsky, according to Pyatakov, spoke directly about the inevitability of war in the very near future. We have tested this as far as possible. The date was called - 1937.

I cannot but mention here one circumstance that was considered yesterday in a closed session. Namely, in connection with the installation of Trotsky and, obviously, the corresponding circles and institutions competent in this matter of one foreign state with which Trotsky negotiated, the installation for 1937 was conditioned by the need for a number of such measures that should have really prepared for this time the inevitability of the defeat of the USSR . Yesterday, at a closed court session, Pyatakov and Ratajczak gave detailed explanations of what they had done to ensure our defeat in the event of a war in 1937, and, in particular, in supplying our army with the necessary means of defense. They showed us yesterday how deep and how monstrously vile was their plan to betray our country into the hands of the enemy.

They showed how, by their plan, they wanted to disarm our Red Army, our country, our people in the most important and dangerous period of time for us in the event of hostilities.

Now it becomes clear why their plans were adapted to put us in a difficult position in 1937 precisely in the field of certain defense measures.

It was precisely by 1937 that the monstrous crime that was established yesterday in a closed court session was brought up. It was in 1937 that the main bet was placed on defeat.

It must be remembered that even 10 years ago Trotsky justified his defeatist position in relation to the USSR, referring to the well-known thesis about Clemenceau. Trotsky then wrote: it is necessary to restore the tactics of Clemenceau, who, as you know, rebelled against the French government at a time when the Germans were 80 km from Paris.

Comrade Stalin maliciously ridiculed Trotsky - this "opera Clemenceau" and his "Don Quixote Group". Trotsky and his accomplices put forward the thesis about Clemenceau not by chance. They again returned to this thesis, but now not so much in the order of theoretical as practical preparation, preparation in practice, in alliance with foreign intelligence services, for the military defeat of the USSR.

L. Trotsky and the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center tried in every possible way, by all means available to them, to hasten the attack of the aggressors on the USSR.

"To accelerate the clash" - to provoke a war, to prepare the defeat of the USSR - that was what the program of the Trotskyist "center" in the field of, so to speak, foreign policy boiled down to.

This is a "program" of foreign spies, agents of foreign intelligence, who, if they succeed, get into the very thick of the enemy's ranks and try to blow up the enemy's ranks from the inside. This is what the program of the Trotskyist center boiled down to, so to speak, in terms of foreign policy.

Two programs - irreconcilable, like mortal enemies, stand one against the other. Two programs, two camps. On the one hand, cut off from the people and hostile to the people, a miserable bunch of people who have become agents of foreign intelligence services; on the other hand, the Soviet government, which has the support of the entire population of the USSR. Two programs, two fundamentally opposite lines of struggle.

It is quite clear that, proceeding precisely from these fundamental attitudes towards war, defeat, disorganization of our state, betrayal of its interests to militant fascism, a number of other practical steps and measures followed that the Trotskyist organization carried out under the leadership of its Trotskyist anti-Soviet center .

ORGANIZATION AND PERFORMANCE OF DIVERSIONS AND WRECKING

Radek and Pyatakov confirmed in court that the main method in preparing for a military defeat in the hands of traitors from the "centre" was sabotage and sabotage.

Pyatakov testified that Trotsky, when meeting with him, explained that one of the points of the agreement reached by Trotsky with representatives of the German National Socialist Party was the obligation "... during the war of Germany against the USSR ... to take a defeatist position, to intensify sabotage activities, especially on enterprises of military importance ... to act on the instructions of Trotsky, agreed with the German General Staff.

Fulfilling the obligations assumed in this way, the "parallel" or simply anti-Soviet Trotskyist center in a number of enterprises of our Union actually organized, as established by the investigation, a wide system of sabotage actions and even sabotage carried out through sabotage and sabotage groups specially organized by it. Not only in the field of our industry, but also in the field of railway economy, the "parallel" center placed its people in accordance with this. We have seen how it was done. If it is bad or insufficiently satisfactory, from the point of view of the center, wrecking and sabotage work unfolds in Western Siberia, Pyatakov hurries there, sends Drobnis specifically for the gogo, in order to strengthen the West Siberian center, which directs sabotage and wrecking work.

We know that the alignment of forces was carried out and proceeded according to a certain plan not by chance. There were special people to whose addresses the scouts who arrived from abroad were sent. These scouts were also placed according to a certain plan, they were sent exactly where it seemed necessary to deliver the most sensitive blow, as Pyatakov and Trotsky said.

Pyatakov reserves the leadership of sabotage and wrecking work in the center. The leadership of sabotage and sabotage in railway transport is entrusted to Serebryakov, together with Knyazev, Turok, Boguslavsky.

Naturally, the criminal center paid great attention to Kuzbass, in particular to Kemerovo. It is no coincidence that a fairly strong regional center is being created in Western Siberia, consisting of experienced Trotskyists: Muralov, Drobnis and Boguslavsky. Pyatakov pulls up to him as his closest assistants - Rataychak, Norkin; Muralov and Drobnis rely on Shestov and Stroilov.

The main wrecking and sabotage forces are deployed quite skillfully and according to a definite plan. The main sabotage and sabotage asset is not scattered, it is concentrated. These forces are concentrated with all the necessary requirements imposed by secrecy. These forces are concentrated on the largest, most important enterprises, which are primarily of defense importance. This also takes into account a number of such naturally occurring difficulties that are associated with the organization of a new business, such as, for example, the organization of a powerful Kemerovo combine. Everything is taken into account. We can say that every little thing is taken on a strict account. Everything is weighed "in a businesslike way", if this word is used with a mockery of the concept of "master". Pyatakov appears here precisely as the owner, as the organizer of this wrecking economy.

This is a Man who lives a double life. He approaches everything, even a sabotage and sabotage act, with calculation, with calculation, understanding what's what, what and when, acting not just like that, like a partisan. Pyatakov is the enemy of the partisan movement both in the realm of terror, and in the realm of sabotage, and in the realm of sabotage. He acts according to strict economic calculation: he harms there, then, and as much, where, when, how and how much circumstances help and assist him in this. Accounting for circumstances is in his hands, accounting for the situation is in his hands, accounting for forces is in his hands, accounting for means is in his hands. The means of disguise are also in his hands. Hence the rather broad, systematic, ramified wrecking, sabotage activity, the enormity of which can sometimes simply lead to a shudder. During the preliminary investigation, Pyatakov testified:

4 “I recommended to my people (and I did it myself) not to be scattered in their wrecking work, to concentrate their attention on the main large industrial facilities of defense and all-Union importance. At this point, I acted on Trotsky's directive: "Deal sensitive blows in the most sensitive places."

We must give Pyatakov justice, he knew how to deliver sensitive blows in really sensitive places.

We saw at the trial what this Trotskyist-Pyatakov formula meant in action: it meant damage and destruction of machines, units and entire enterprises, arson and explosion of entire workshops, mines and factories, organization of train wrecks, death of people. Our history knows many crimes against the power of the workers, against the proletarian dictatorship. Disgusting pages of outrageous conspiracies against the Soviets are inscribed in our history. We remember the “Shakhty case” and, as living witnesses of the trials that took place before our eyes, we remember the case of the “Industrial Party”, the case of the “Union Bureau of the Social-Democratic Party”. Mensheviks." But it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that in the art of wrecking, cynicism and vile subversive practices, the Trotskyists far left their predecessors behind them, that in this area they outdid the most hardened and notorious criminals.

If we compare Pyatakov with his predecessors in this field, then I think that the figures of his predecessors will fade before the strength and depth of those treacherous, criminal actions that Pyatakov managed to carry out, covering his criminal activities with his high position in the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry.

By organizing acts of sabotage and sabotage, the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center essentially solved two tasks at the same time: one task was to undermine the economic might of the Soviet state and the defense capability of our country, the other task was to arouse in the workers, among the working people, among the population, anger against the Soviet regime, incite the people against the Soviet regime. . This second problem they solved with the help of the most savage crimes. Not only did they not stop before these crimes, they, on the contrary, tried to organize these crimes on the largest possible scale, tried to increase the number of victims as much as possible. And Pyatakov is wrong when he says that he accepted "this" as inevitable. Here he does not have the courage to tell the whole truth that Drobnis, sitting behind him, said.

The system of explosions, arson, crashes with human casualties was not accepted by the center as necessary and inevitable. The organization of this kind of crimes was included in the plan of the center, being its integral part. Drobnis said:

"It's even better if there are casualties at the mine, as they will undoubtedly cause bitterness among the workers, and this is what we need."

Knyazev said that Livshits gave him an order:

“Prepare and carry out a number of acts of sabotage (explosions, crashes or poisonings), which would be accompanied by big amount human sacrifice."

Fellow Judges! At the trial, several painful pictures passed before our eyes, which I will now have to restore in your memory. Must restore the explosion at the Tsentralnaya mine, which resulted in the death of 10 workers and severe injuries of 14 workers. I will also have to recall the crash at the Shumikha station, which resulted in the death of 29 Red Army soldiers and the wounding of 29 more Red Army soldiers.

It is characteristic that, in committing crimes, the conspirators very coolly and thoughtfully covered their tracks, tried to cover up these tracks. We saw how, in connection with the poisoning of workers in December 1935 at the 6th section in the area of ​​Severny Khodka in Kemerovo, members of the wrecking Trotskyist organization Peshekhonov and others drew up a special act that concealed the deliberate nature of this poisoning. Here, at the trial, Knyazev and Turk had to confirm that a number of railway wrecks organized by them remained unpunished, because they, with cynical art, quite successfully hid the ends in the water.

We know that these people did not stop at deliberately falsely, deliberately wrong to inform the investigating authorities about the perpetrators of the crashes they organized, that they knew how to shift the blame on completely innocent people, as was the case with the switchman Chudinova.

A monstrous bandit system operated here, which spares no one, stops at nothing, directs its blows not only against those with whom the struggle is directly waged, but also against all those who generally meet on their criminal path.

It must be said that the organization of sabotage and wrecking acts and their implementation were greatly facilitated by the criminals because a number of command positions in industry and transport were seized by these people who managed to deceive us. The expert technical commissions, which gave their opinion here, established with perfect accuracy and concreteness that all the so-called accidents, explosions, fires, which at first they tried to portray as the result of accidents, were in fact deliberately and deliberately carried out by pests. It has been established that at the Gorlovsky nitrogen-fertilizer plant, under the leadership of the defendant Rataychak, three acts of sabotage were organized in a relatively short period of time, including two explosions, which resulted in human casualties and inflicted heavy material damage to our state.

Fellow Judges! In order to fully appreciate the immeasurable enormity of these crimes, one must not lose sight of not only the fact that these crimes were committed, but also the fact that they were committed by people who were entrusted with protecting the interests of our state from any kind of encroachment on them. . Ratajczak, who was primarily supposed to protect our chemical industry from any kind of encroachment on it and protect it from any kind of damage, this man is betraying. He acts like a direct traitor: for such crimes in a military situation, he would be subject to execution on the spot, immediate destruction.

Similar acts of sabotage, on behalf of Ratajczak, are carried out by the Trotskyist organization at other chemical enterprises of the Union. The sabotage nature of these explosions was established and recognized both by the defendants and the testimonies, and, finally, by a special technical examination, which here put an end to the “and” and left no doubt that we were really talking about sabotage.

I would like to dwell briefly on these expert data. I asked the experts to answer us a number of questions about the explosion that took place in November 1935 at the Gorlovsky fertilizer plant in the hydrogen synthesis shop. To a direct question whether it was possible to prevent this explosion, the experts answered: “Undoubtedly there was.” What should have been done to prevent these explosions?

It turns out a little. To do this, it was only necessary to follow the instructions for safe work. The manual ensures normal and safe operation. It wasn't done. Hence the explosion. And when we put the question to the experts: maybe this explosion is still random? When we checked the testimonies of the defendants, the examination answered: "The fact of malicious intent is undeniable."

We have verified the testimony of the defendants themselves with the help of an expert opinion, and although we know that in some European legislation the confession of guilt by the defendants is considered authoritative enough to no longer doubt their guilt, and the court considers itself entitled to exempt itself from verification of these testimony, nevertheless, in order to maintain absolute objectivity, even in the presence of our own testimonies of the criminals, we checked them from the technical side and received a categorical answer about the explosion on November 11, and about the mountain fires at the Prokopevsky mine, and about the fires and explosions at the Kemerovo plant found that there could be no doubt that there was malice.

Thus, we have a whole system of widely ramified wrecking and sabotage measures, which covered those branches of our industry that are most important from the point of view of all-Union interests and from the point of view of the interests of defense and the defense capability of our state.

The Trotskyist Center organized fairly extensive wrecking and sabotage activities in railway transport as well. We have already established that Livshits, Turk, Knyazev and Boguslavsky played an active role in this nightmarish crime, or rather in this sum of nightmarish crimes. But even here I cannot fail to single out Livshits, for this is already the limit, as we had in the case of Pyatakov, of any conceivable crime. In fact, Livshits was not just a railway worker, not just one of the senior officials of the People's Commissariat of Railways. Livshits was Deputy People's Commissar of Railways. In this respect, he is no different from Pyatakov, despite the fact that his role compared to Pyatakov was secondary. When our industry and railway transport, under the brilliant leadership of Comrades Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich, overcoming all sorts of difficulties, day after day, month after month, year after year, rose uphill, at that very time those who were called to help them, brazenly and treacherously deceived them, deceived us all, our party, our people.

That is why I believe that in relation to Pyatakov, the former Deputy People's Commissar of Heavy Industry of the USSR, in relation to Livshits, the former Deputy People's Commissar of Railways, and in relation to Sokolnikov, the former Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in relation to these three persons, as persons vested with special trust, special state responsibility to our country - the question of criminal responsibility should be raised especially, even if there were no other monstrous crimes behind their shoulders.

The defendant Knyazev, on the direct instructions of the "parallel" Trotskyist center, organized and carried out a number of train wrecks, mostly military, accompanied by a significant number of human casualties. There was a crash at St. The hype, where 29 Red Army soldiers died and 29 Red Army soldiers were injured, the crash on the Yakhino-Ust-Katav stretch, the crash of military trains, the crash of freight trains. Knyazev organized them, as it turned out, not only on behalf and instructions of the "parallel" Trotskyist center and, in particular, Livshits, but also on the direct orders of an agent of one of the foreign powers, an agent of Japanese intelligence, Mr. X., who really was one of driving springs of criminal activity of Knyazev and Turok.

Knyazev showed that the organization of the wrecks of military trains was part of the range of measures planned for a strike against our Red Army, and it cannot be denied that these criminal measures really could have dealt us a painful blow.

Thus intertwined the interests of the Trotskyist organization with the interests of foreign intelligence services. They could not help but intertwine, because they had a common political task, common methods work and organizational connection, which, in essence, erased any distinction between the Trotskyist organization and the organization of Japanese or German intelligence.

We checked the connections of Knyazev and Turok, the connections of a spy sabotage nature, at a closed meeting, where the identity of this Mr. X. was absolutely established, and all the circumstances about which the defendants testified in court.

Here I will have to recall the two letters in the case, which expose Knyazev's connections with this Mr. X. These letters only once again and quite objectively confirm Knyazev's testimony.

Knyazev testified that, by agreement with this same Mr. X., he gave and carried out tasks in case of war to organize arson of military depots, food points, and sanitation points for troops. Knyazev confirmed that Japanese intelligence particularly sharply raised the issue of organizing acts of sabotage by using bacteriological agents at the time of the war in order to infect trains under military echelons with acutely infectious bacteria, as well as food and sanitation stations for troops.

Here are the two most characteristic facts, which in themselves speak of a truly boundless fall, of a truly moral corruption to which both the small and the big figures of this anti-Soviet Trotskyist center turned out to be subject. The episode with the Kemerovo plant and the task that Knyazev received from X. in case of war - infecting Red Army soldiers with highly contagious bacteria - two facts that are quite sufficient to consider the charge of treason presented here fully established.

The criminals acted with arrogance and cynicism. They were somewhat influenced by their position, which allowed them to think that they were so tightly hidden and disguised that they would not be completely exposed. Indeed, how could they commit these crimes for a relatively long time without being punished? This is, of course, a legitimate question. But what if the very consuls who have the duty to see to it that the state does not suffer any damage (the old formula that says that consuls are obliged not to allow any damage to the state), these same consuls turned out to be the main wreckers, the main organizers of these crimes! Here, of course, you can harm a month, you can harm a year, two, five years, maybe even a whole ten years, if you play this vile double game, if you live that double life that the defendants lived in this case. Yes, these crimes were possible because they were committed under the guise of those who should have been the first to raise the alarm, give the signal and throw themselves into a life-and-death struggle against such crimes. This explains everything.

But here I will pose another question: despite the fact that spies and spies like Rataichak, such traitors and traitors as Livshits or Pyatakov, have attached themselves to the leadership, how did it happen that, despite all these efforts of theirs to undermine the power of industry, to weaken the strength of the defense industry, to shake the defense capability of our country turned out to be futile? This is the most important question, and it must be given an accurate and exhaustive answer.

Yes, at a certain period, at a certain moment, in certain areas, we had a hard time. But, despite the sabotage and sabotage strikes, our industry and our railway transport are constantly going uphill, rising more and more. I will cite a few references from several branches of industry that were the scene of the criminal activities of the Trotskyist conspirators.

In the coal industry, we have an increase in coal production:

in Donbass - from 25,288 thousand tons in 1913 to 75,202 thousand tons in 1936,

in Kuzbass - from 799 thousand tons in 1913 to 17,259 thousand tons in 1936,

in the Moscow Basin - from 300 thousand tons to 7201 thousand tons in 1936. Huge growth!

For 19 years, our country has created a powerful chemistry and took third or even second place in the world in certain industries.

By the beginning of the first five-year plan, our country was enriched by the creation of a number of new industries of national economic importance, such as the aniline-dye industry, the coke-benzene industry, the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, etc. The first and second five-year plans of Soviet chemistry were the most striking stages in the development of chemical industry. It must be borne in mind that the history of world chemistry generally begins at the end of the 18th century. Consequently, the modern world chemical industry has about 150 years of development, while our Soviet chemical industry has no more than 10 years of development. And during these 10 years it has gone the way of 150 years of the world capitalist economy. We have successes, thanks to which we are third in sulfuric acid and soda, second only to Germany and the United States, in superphosphate we are first after the United States, in nitrogen fertilizers our country is moving into fourth place in the world. These are significant facts, especially in the light of the nightmarish crimes that we have heard about here and which have caused general indignation in our country. This shows that this is precisely how our people, our socialist industry, respond to the subversive work of traitors and agents of fascist intelligence. Despite the sabotage, despite the sabotage, hundreds of the best Stakhanovites who died at the hands of scouts and saboteurs, despite the systematic and systematic measures taken to consciously disrupt the Stakhanov movement, our industry is growing rapidly and exceeding its production plans!

The same is true for rail transport. Here, too, we have a heroic upswing in the railroad economy, as evidenced by the average daily loading figures especially eloquently. This loading in 1934 was expressed in 55,417 wagons, in 1935 - in 68,098 wagons, in 1936 - in 86,160 wagons! Annual transportation of goods in billions of ton-kilometers for the same years: 205, 258, 323! Railway transport heroically overcame past difficulties...

How to explain this miracle, how to explain this phenomenon? There are no miracles in the world. Why do we have such a brilliant growth, such a flourishing of our industry and railway transport? Because there are only a few on the side of the pests. The harm caused by these units is quickly eliminated by the millions. Because millions are on the side of the Soviet government and the building of socialism!

ESPIONAGE AND TERROR

The materials of the preliminary and judicial investigation and the own confessions of the accused Rataichak, Knyazev, Putin, Turok, Grashe, Shestov, Stroilov established that, along with sabotage and sabotage activities, the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center was widely and systematically engaged in espionage in favor of foreign intelligence services.

I will not dwell on this issue in detail, I will only say the main thing.

Establishing links with Japanese and German intelligence services was not carried out on the basis of the personal initiative of some Turk or Shestov. This connection was carried out in order to fulfill Trotsky's directive. People who contacted foreign, German and Japanese, intelligence services under the leadership of Trotsky and Pyatakov, with their espionage work, prepared results that should have the most grave impact on the interests of the CR only of our state, but also on the interests of a number of states that together with us want peace. fighting with us for peace.

Comrade Stalin, in his telegram addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain, addressed to Comrade Jose Diaz, said that “the working people of the Soviet Union are only doing their duty, rendering all possible assistance to the revolutionary masses of Spain. They,” said Comrade Stalin, “are aware that the liberation of Spain from the oppression of the fascist reactionaries is not a private affair of the Spaniards, but a common affair of all advanced and progressive mankind.”

And I want to ask you, comrade judges, that you, weighing all the circumstances of this case and evaluating the significance of the crimes committed by the defendants, also approach this case from the point of view of protecting the interests of our state, from the point of view of protecting the interests of all advanced and progressive mankind .

We are highly interested in the fact that in every country that desires peace and fights for peace, by the most resolute measures of their governments, all attempts at criminal espionage, sabotage, and terrorist activities, which are organized by the enemies of peace, the enemies of democracy, the dark fascist forces preparing war, intending to blow up the cause of peace and, consequently, the cause of all advanced, all progressive mankind. It has been quite fully established what exactly in this area the little spies sitting here in the dock, like Grasha, Ratajczak, and the big spies who head this dock, were doing. Knyazev and Livshits, Rataychak, Shestov, Stroilov, Pushin, Grashe are the direct agents of German and Japanese intelligence. Agents, of course, not only do not exclude, but, on the contrary, assume responsibility on an equal footing for the leaders of this center, who organized the agents and put them into action.

The indictment accuses members of the Trotskyist center and their accomplices of organizing terrorist acts.

Here, first of all, we must dwell on the main and general question - it has been proved that terror was included in the program of the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center, that this terror was carried out in practice.

We have documents in our hands that testify that Trotsky twice, at least, and, moreover, in a fairly frank, unveiled form, gave instructions for terror - documents that were announced by their author urbi et orbi (to the whole world). I mean, firstly, that letter of 1932, in which Trotsky threw out his treacherous, shameful cry - "remove Stalin", and, secondly, I have in mind a document that already belongs to a later time - Trotskyist "Bulletin of the Opposition" No. 36-37, October 1933, where we find a number of direct indications of terror as a method of combating the Soviet regime.

Indeed, here, in an article that has a programmatic character, in an article that, under its official name contains another subtitle - "Problems of the Fourth International" - Trotsky speaks quite frankly about terror as a method that already in those years was put on the order of the day for the practical activities of the Trotskyists. They, to our great grief, managed to carry out this terror in 1934, by killing Sergei Mironovich Kirov.

In this very article, which has a programmatic character, there is a chapter that says: “Is it possible to peacefully remove the bureaucracy?” Trotsky and the Trotskyists consider our Soviet apparatus to be a bureaucratic apparatus.

It says here:

"Take the important question of how to approach the reorganization of the Soviet state."

Trotsky, you see, is preoccupied with the reorganization of the Soviet state, which, as we saw in this process, is also preoccupied by his closest assistants - Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Radek, Serebryakov and others.

How to approach the reorganization of the Soviet state, and is it possible to solve this problem in a peaceful way? Absolutely clear setting. An opponent of terror and violence should have said: yes, perhaps in a peaceful way, say, on the basis of the constitution.

And what do Trotsky and the Trotskyists say?

They say this:

“It would be childish to think that the Stalinist bureaucracy can be removed with the help of a party or Soviet congress. There are no normal constitutional ways left to eliminate the ruling clique (as they slanderously call our government. - A.V.).

“Forcing them to transfer power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard (they talk about themselves as the vanguard, they obviously have in mind a “vanguard” like these gentlemen, who was engaged in murders and sabotage, and espionage) can only be done by force.”

Moreover, the word "force", as you can see, is typed in black. Clear question! Peaceful means? Peaceful means are powerless. The only remedy is force, force and eliminate. But we know how they are eliminated by force, especially when it comes to leaving this force in the hands of such a “vanguard” as these gentlemen are. (Laughter.)

What I have quoted, and which, out of a sense of mere political disgust, I am unable to quote further, speaks quite distinctly of how the Trotskyists in their journals pose the question of methods of struggle, what are Trotsky’s attitudes towards this so-called “reorganization” of the Soviet state. Incidentally, Pyatakov told us about this very Bulletin of the Trotskyite Opposition that Trotsky told him: “Pay no attention entirely to what will be written in the Bulletin. Keep in mind that in the Bulletin we cannot say frankly everything we say and demand from you. Know that in the Bulletin we will even speak sometimes, perhaps directly the opposite what we require of you." And if, under these conditions, what I have just quoted is said - how can it be called, if not a direct call for violent actions against our state, against our leaders? How to call it, if not a direct call to terror? I can't give it another name.

And this is the most objective proof that when some - Pyatakov, Radek and others - members of this criminal gang said that they had organized terrorist acts on the direct instructions of Trotsky, they were forced to say what really happened, and no chatter, no slander, no insinuation and Trotskyist nonsense cannot gloss over this fact! We have documents in our hands that objectively say that terror is on the order of the day for the Trotskyite organization, that terror was proposed by Trotsky, that it was accepted by Pyatakov.

We are confronted by terrorists who organized the attacks not only themselves, but by agreement with the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc, with which they had some competition. Look: the published minutes of the court sessions of the united Zinoviev-Trotskyite Center show that the Zinovievites were spurred on by the fear that the Trotskyists might "outrun" them in their criminal activities. Didn't we hear about the same thing at this trial? Didn't the Trotskyites from the "parallel" center consider it their task, as Radek admitted here, to keep the Zinovievists in hand, not to allow the Zinovievists to push them out of power at the moment when they were distributing portfolios? This "avant-garde" was sleeping and dreaming of briefcases. Radek - the portfolio of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ratajczak - probably the Minister of Religious Confessions (laughter in the hall), because he showed that he still feels bound by the oath that he gave to someone somewhere. And Pyatakov was destined (we know this) for the post of minister of war and, in general, commander-in-chief of all armed land forces (they did not have naval forces) and-I mean the “old pilot” Ratajczak - flying forces.

The center organized a network of terrorist groups. Pyatakov has Loginov, Golubenko and others; Radek has Prigogine and others; at Sokolnikov - Zaks-Gladnev, Tivel and others; Serebryakov - he has his own group - Mdivani; Drobnis has some kind of Podolskaya, who also prepared a terrorist act. Drobnis has his own group. Muralov has nothing to say about this. He is a former commander, how can he be without an army? If it was impossible to command the Soviet forces, is it impossible to command the anti-Soviet ones. He is a "soldier" - whatever and how they are ordered, so and so he will command. Even Shestov had his own group - Arnold and Co. - and the group was not bad from the point of view of its tasks. True, it doesn’t hurt that she is presentable in appearance, but she practically knew how to act.

Pyatakov is preparing a terrorist act in 1935 against Comrade Stalin. We asked Pyatakov about this, we called Loginov for an interrogation of witnesses, and he confirmed this. Radek trains terrorist cadres in Leningrad; Zaks-Gladnev and others are preparing, under the direction of Sokolnikov, a terrorist act against Comrade Stalin; Mdivani, under the leadership of Serebryakov, is gathering terrorists who could be rounded up in Moscow in order to ensure the most successful implementation of the so-called group terrorist acts.

Prepare, including Drobnis, other terrorist acts. Muralov, for example, is preparing an act against those who will come to him in Siberia. This is the directive: to take into account, use the trips of the leaders of the party and government to the periphery and organize their murder. And here is Muralov, who in no way wants to agree that the preparation of the assassination against comrade is attributed to him. Ordzhonikidze, this same Muralov firmly and frankly (I cannot say "honestly", because this word does not fit such cases) admits that he really organized a terrorist act against Comrade V. M. Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of our Union. Muralov not only organized the terrorist act, but also tried to carry it out through Shestov and Arnold.

Of course, the following question can also be posed: there are many groups, but somehow there is no “deed” to be seen. But this is your happiness. After all, these same gentlemen did not personally take upon themselves the commission of terrorist acts, this is our happiness. We met quite closely with Radek, Pyatakov, and Sokolnikov, discussing various questions together, believing that comrades were sitting nearby. But it turned out that our killers were sitting nearby! If they could openly act on terror, the situation would, of course, be more complicated. But their tactics were different: not to reveal that the Trotskyists were plotting murders. Their tactic was to make it possible to blame the commission of terrorist attacks on others - say, on the White Guards (this is how the question was posed). Under these conditions, of course, it was not easy for them to find people who, like such enlightened navigators as Arnold, would agree to take on such terrible crimes. Arnold, Shestov, Muralov, the West Siberian center, the Trotskyist center as a whole are, of course, responsible for the preparation of these acts, because this was done according to a general directive, "concretely translated," as Pyatakov put it, "from the language of algebra into the language of arithmetic." But they forgot that there is another language - the language of the Criminal Code, which knows the crimes, knows the people who committed them, and knows the responsibility provided for by law for these crimes. They choose Arnold as a very suitable person for this kind of crime. Well, what does it mean for Arnold to take upon himself the commission of one or a dozen terrorist acts? You've already seen this Arnold. Arnold has only one quality that these Trotskyist conspirators did not take into account - cowardice ... So he organized an assassination attempt against Comrade Ordzhonikidze and, to our greatest happiness, blew it at the last minute - it did not succeed. He organizes an attempt on the life of Comrade Molotov, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, but, to our happiness, to our greatest happiness, he again blew it - the attempt failed.

But the fact remains. The assassination attempt on Comrade Molotov happened. This accident on the crest of a 15-meter groove, as Muralov modestly said here, is a fact.

Take the murder of engineer Boyarshinov. Who is Boyarshinov? This was a man who had once been convicted of sabotage. But then it passed. Boyarshinov turned out to be an honest man. He refused to build a mine according to wrecking plans and more than once spoke out against the backlog of work and the criminal activities of Stroilov. He exposes Stroilov.

This honest work of Boyarshinov embittered the nest of saboteurs. They orchestrate the assassination. April 15, 1934 engineer Boyarshinov rides a horse from the station. A truck overtakes him and crushes him to death. Again, the same method used by the Shestov-Cherepukhin gang, which had in its ranks Arnold and some other persons who were opened, tried and convicted. For example, Kazantsev, who participated in this story.

This is a fact, this is not self-incrimination, this is a fact: Boyarshinov was killed. They attempted to kill the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Comrade V. M. Molotov, in a similar way.

That is why this center is fully and completely responsible for terrorist activity, for the preparation of terrorist crimes - from Arnold to Pyatakov, and from Pyatakov to Arnold. Responsibility is the same and joint and several.

The crimes listed by us in the indictment, I consider fully proven, the criminals are also fully exposed.

PROCEDURAL ISSUES

Our law requires an assessment of the evidence available in the case on the internal conviction of the court, on the basis of consideration of all the circumstances of the case in their entirety.

Article 320 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR speaks of the need to put a number of questions before the court when sentencing. Of these, I consider the first two questions to be the most significant and most important: the question of whether the act attributed to the defendants took place, and, secondly, whether this act contains the elements of a criminal offense. Both of these questions are answered in the affirmative. Yes, the crimes attributed to the defendants took place. The acts attributed to the accused were committed by them, and these acts contain full squad criminal offense. There can be no doubt about these two questions.

But what evidence do we have in our arsenal in terms of legal claims?

It must be said that the nature of the present case is such that it is precisely this nature that predetermines the originality of the possible evidence in the case. We have a conspiracy, we have before us a group of people who were going to carry out a coup d'état, who organized and conducted for a number of years or carried out activities aimed at ensuring the success of this conspiracy, a conspiracy, quite ramified, a conspiracy that connected the conspirators with foreign fascist forces. How can one raise the question of evidence under these conditions? You can put the question this way: a conspiracy, you say, but where do you have documents? You say a program, but where do you have a program? Do these people have a written program somewhere? They only talk about it.

You say that this is an organization, that this is some kind of gang (and they call themselves a party), but where do they have decisions, where do they have material traces of their conspiratorial activity - charter, protocols, seals, etc., etc. . P.?

I take the liberty of asserting, in accordance with the basic requirements of the science of criminal procedure, that such requirements cannot be made in conspiracy cases. We cannot demand that we approach cases of a conspiracy, a coup d'état with the demand - give us protocols, resolutions, give us membership books, give us the numbers of your membership cards; conspirators cannot be required to conspire to have their criminal activities certified by a notary public. No sane person can raise the question in such a way in cases of state conspiracy. Yes, we have a number of documents in this regard. But even if they did not exist, we would still consider ourselves entitled to bring charges on the basis of the testimony and explanations of the accused and witnesses and, if you like, circumstantial evidence. In this case, I must refer at least to such a brilliant proceduralist as the famous old English lawyer William Wiles, who in his book An Essay on the Theory of Circumstantial Evidence says how strong circumstantial evidence can be and how circumstantial evidence often possesses much more persuasiveness than direct evidence.

I think that my esteemed opponents will also agree with me in terms of the positions they, as defenders, take on this issue. But we also have objective evidence. I spoke about the program, and I brought to your attention, Comrade Judges, Trotsky's Bulletin, in which this same program is printed. But identification here will be much easier than what you have done, establishing the identity of certain persons from German intelligence from photographs.

We rely on a number of proofs that can serve in our hands as a verification of accusatory assertions, accusatory theses. First, a historical connection that confirms the accusatory theses on the basis of the past activities of the Trotskyists. We have in mind, further, the testimonies of the accused, which in themselves are of the greatest evidentiary value. In the process, when one of the evidence was the testimony of the accused themselves, we did not limit ourselves to the fact that the court listened only to the explanations of the accused: we checked these explanations with all possible and available means. I must say that we did this here with all objective conscientiousness and with all possible care.

In order to distinguish the truth from lies in court, of course, judicial experience is enough, and every judge, every prosecutor and defense attorney who has conducted more than a dozen trials know when the accused is telling the truth and when he evades this truth in some way. nor was the purpose. But let us assume that the testimonies of the accused cannot serve as conclusive evidence. Then it is necessary to answer several questions, as the science of the criminal process requires from us. If these explanations do not correspond to reality, then this is what is called in science a slander. And if this is a slander, then it is necessary to explain the reasons for this slander. These reasons may vary. We must show whether these causes are present. It can be personal gain, personal calculation, this desire to take revenge on someone, etc. Now, if you approach the case that is resolved here from this point of view, then you will also have to analyze these testimonies in your deliberation room, give yourself an account in how convincing the personal confessions of the accused are, you will be obliged to raise the question of the motives of certain testimonies of the defendants or witnesses. The circumstances of the present case, examined here with all possible care, convincingly confirm what the defendants have said here. There are no grounds to assume that Pyatakov is not a member of the center, that Radek was not at diplomatic receptions and did not speak with Mr. K. or with Mr. X., or with some other gentleman - whatever his name is - that he is with Bukharin did not feed "fried eggs and sausage" to some persons who came unofficially to him, that Sokolnikov did not talk to some representative, "endorsing the mandate to Trotsky." Everything that they said about their activities has been verified by expert examination, preliminary interrogation, confessions and testimonies, and all this cannot be subject to any doubt whatsoever.

I believe that all these circumstances allow us to assert that in our present trial, if there is a defect, it is not that the defendants said everything they did here, but that the defendants still did not fully tell all that what they did, what they did against the Soviet state.

But, Comrade Judges, we have such an example in past trials, and I ask you to bear this in mind also in your final assessment of the subsequent words that will pass before you in a few hours. Let me remind you how, say, in the case of the united Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center, some defendants swore right here, on these same benches, in their last words - some asking, others not asking for mercy - that they were telling the whole truth, that they said everything that they had nothing left in their souls against the working class, against our people, against our country. And then, when they began to unravel further and further these disgusting tangles of monstrous,

Judicial Speeches, ed. 4 crimes committed by them, at every step we discovered the lies and deceit of these people, who already had one foot in the grave.

If it is possible to say about the shortcomings of this process, then I see this shortcoming only in one thing: I am convinced that the accused did not tell even half of the whole truth, which is a nightmare story of their terrible atrocities against our country, against our great homeland!

I accuse the people sitting here before us of the fact that in 1933, on the instructions of Trotsky, a “parallel” center was organized under the name of a “parallel” center, consisting of the defendants in the present case, Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov, which in reality was an active active Trotskyist center, that this on behalf of Trotsky, through the accused Sokolnikov and Radek, the center entered into relations with representatives of some foreign states in order to organize a joint struggle against the Soviet Union, and the center undertook, if it came to power, to provide these states with a number of political and economic benefits and territorial concessions ; that this center, through its members and other members of the criminal Trotskyist organization, was engaged in espionage in favor of these states, supplying foreign intelligence services with the most important, top-secret materials of great national importance, that in order to undermine the economic power and defense capability of our country, this center and its accomplices organized and carried out a number of acts of sabotage and sabotage that resulted in human sacrifices that caused significant damage to our Soviet state.

In this I accuse the members of the "parallel" anti-Soviet Trotskyist center - Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov - that is, of the crimes provided for by the articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: 581a - treason, 586 - espionage, 588 - terror, 589 - sabotage, 5811 - formation of secret criminal organizations. I accuse all the other defendants: Livshits, N. Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Knyazev, Rataychak, Norkin, Shestov, Stroilov, Turok, Grasha, Pushin and Arnold, of being guilty of the same crimes as members of this organization, bearing full and joint responsibility for these crimes, regardless of the individual difference in their criminal activity, which characterizes the crimes of each of them, i.e. in the crimes provided for by the same articles of the Criminal Code.

The main accusation, comrade judges, which is presented in this trial is treason. Treason to the motherland is punishable by article 581a of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. She speaks of treason as actions that are committed to the detriment of the military power of the Union, its state independence, its territorial integrity, as espionage, the issuance of military and state secrets, and going over to the side of the enemy. All these elements, except for the last one - flight abroad - we have here. The law imposes on those who have committed this grave state crime, which our great Stalinist Constitution rightly calls the gravest atrocity, the gravest punishment. The law requires, if the guilt of criminals is proved, that they be sentenced to death, allowing the mitigation of this punishment only under extenuating circumstances.

You will have to, comrade judges, answer the question in the deliberation room, do these accused and each of them individually have individual and specific circumstances that would allow you to mitigate the punishment that threatens them under the law? I believe that there are no such extenuating circumstances. I accuse those put on trial under the articles of the Criminal Code indicated in the indictment in full.

I blame not one! Next to me, comrade judges, I feel as if the victims of these crimes and these criminals are standing here - on crutches, crippled, half-dead, and perhaps without legs at all, like that switchman of Art. Chusovskaya comrade Nagovitsyna, who today addressed me through Pravda and who at the age of 20 lost both legs, preventing a crash organized by these people! I'm not alone. I feel that dead and maimed victims of terrible crimes are standing next to me here, demanding that I, as a public prosecutor, bring charges in full.

I'm not alone! Let the victims be buried, but they are standing here next to me, pointing to this dock, to you, the defendants, with their terrible hands, decayed in the graves where you sent them! ..

I blame not one! I accuse, together with all our people, I accuse the gravest criminals, worthy of only one measure of punishment - execution, death! (Long unceasing applause from the whole hall.)

The military board has sentenced: Pyatakova Yu. L., Serebryakova L. P., Muralova N. I., Drobnisa Ya. N., Livshits Ya. A., Boguslavsky M. S., Knyazev I. A., Rataychak S. A., Norkina B. O., Shestova A. A., Turoka I. D., Pushina G. E. and Grashe I. I. to the highest measure of criminal punishment - execution.

Sokolnikov G. I. and Radek K. B. as members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center, responsible for its criminal activities, but not directly involved in organizing and carrying out acts of sabotage, sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities - to imprisonment for a term of 10 years each.

Arnold VV - to imprisonment for 10 years.

Stroilova MS - to imprisonment for 8 years.

Convicted to prison Sokolnikov, Radek, Arnold and Stroilov, the Military Collegium decided to deprive them of their political rights for a period of five years each.

The property of all convicts, personally belonging to them, was decided by the Military Collegium to be confiscated.

The sentence against those sentenced to death, in view of the rejection by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of their applications for pardon, was carried out on January 30, 1937.

1 I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 13, p. 98.

2 I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 350

3 V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 18, p. 8

4 V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 20, pp. 321-322.

5 Ibid., p. 322.

6 I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 9, p. 134.

7 Ibid., p. 135.

8 Ibid., p. 136.

9 V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 23, p. 17.

10 V. and Lenin, Op. t 27, p. 260.

11 I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 8, p. 279.

12 I. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11th, 1953, pp. 549-550.

13 I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 39.

14 I. V. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 260 - 261.

15 V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 21, p. 85.

Andrei Vyshinsky's speech on the case of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center

Comrade judges, members of the Supreme Court of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! As I enter upon my last duty in the present case, I cannot fail to dwell on some of the highly important features of the present trial.

These features, in my opinion, primarily consist in the fact that this trial in a certain sense sums up the criminal activities of the Trotskyist conspirators who fought for many years, systematically and with the help of the most disgusting, most vile means of fighting against the Soviet system, the Soviet state , against the Soviet government and our party. This process sums up the struggle against the Soviet state and the party of these people, who began the struggle long before our time, even during the lifetime of our great teacher and organizer of the Soviet state, Lenin; people who fought under Lenin against Lenin, after Lenin - against his brilliant student, the faithful guardian of Lenin's precepts and continuer of his cause - Stalin.

The peculiarities of the present trial lie also in the fact that it was precisely this trial that, like the beams of a searchlight, illuminated the most hidden corners, secret nooks and crannies, disgusting corners of the Trotskyist underground.

This process showed and proved with what stupid tenacity, with what serpentine composure, with what prudence of professional criminals, the Trotskyist bandits waged and are waging their struggle against the USSR, not retreating to anything - not to wrecking, not to sabotage, not to espionage, not before terror, nor before treason.

When a few months ago in this very hall, on these very docks, members of the so-called united Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist center were sitting, when the Supreme Court represented by the Military Collegium tried those criminals, each of us, at the sight of the crimes that took place in a nightmare picture before our eyes, could not help but recoil with horror and disgust.

Every honest person in our country, every honest person in any country in the world could not help but say:

Here is the abyss of falling!

Here is the limit, the last line of moral and political decay!

Here is the diabolical immensity of crimes!

Every honest son of our country thought: such heinous crimes cannot be repeated.

There are no more people in our country who have fallen so low, such vilely betrayed us.

And now again we are seized by the feeling we recently experienced! Once again, terrible pictures of monstrous crimes, monstrous betrayals, monstrous betrayals pass before our alarmed and indignant consciousness.

This trial, where the defendants themselves confessed to their guilt; this trial, where next to the leaders of the so-called parallel Trotskyist center - the accused Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Radek, Serebryakov - are sitting on the same dock such prominent Trotskyists as Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Livshits; where simply spies and spies are sitting next to these Trotskyists - Rataichak, Shestov, Stroilov, Grashe - this trial showed what these gentlemen have sunk to, into what a whirlpool finally and irrevocably sunk counter-revolutionary Trotskyism, which has long since become the foremost and worst detachment of international fascism .

This process revealed all the secret springs of the underground criminal activity of Trotskyism, the whole mechanism of their bloody, their treacherous tactics. Once again he showed the face of real, genuine Trotskyism—that age-old enemy of the workers and peasants, age-old enemy of socialism, faithful servant of capitalism.

This process showed once again who Trotsky and his henchmen serve, what Trotskyism is in reality, in practice.

Here, in this hall, before the court, before the whole country, before the whole world, a string of crimes committed by these people passed.

Who benefits from their crime? In the name of what goal, in the name of what ideas, in the name of what political platform or program did these people act? In the name of what? And, finally, why did they become traitors to their homeland—traitors to the cause of socialism and the international proletariat?

The present process answered, in my opinion, with exhaustive completeness to all these questions, answered clearly and precisely why and how they came to such a life.

Like a cinematographic tape launched in reverse, this process reminded us and showed us all the main stages of the historical path of the Trotskyists and Trotskyism, which spent more than 30 years of its existence in order to finally prepare its final transformation into an assault detachment of fascism, one of the branches of the fascist police.

The defendants themselves spoke about whom they served. But their own deeds, their dirty, bloody, criminal deeds speak of this even more eloquently.

Many years ago our party, the working class, our entire people rejected the Trotskyist-Zinovievist platform as an anti-Soviet, anti-socialist platform. Trotsky was thrown out of the country by our people, his accomplices were thrown out of the ranks of the party, as having betrayed the cause of the working class and socialism. Trotsky and Zinoviev were defeated, but they did not calm down, they did not lay down their weapons.

The Trotskyists went underground, putting on the masks of repentant and supposedly disarmed people. Following the instructions of Trotsky, Pyatakov and other leaders of this gang of criminals, pursuing a double-dealing policy, disguising themselves, they again penetrated into the party, again penetrated into Soviet work, some even crept into responsible government posts, hiding for the time being, as it is now clearly established, their old Trotskyist anti-Soviet cargo in their safe houses, along with weapons, ciphers, passwords, connections and their own personnel.

Starting with the formation of an anti-Party faction, moving more and more to sharpened methods of struggle against the Party, becoming, especially after being expelled from the Party, the main mouthpiece of all anti-Soviet groups and trends, they turned into an advanced detachment of fascists, acting on the direct instructions of foreign intelligence services.

The trial of the united Trotskyist-Zinoviev center has already exposed the connections of the Trotskyists with the Gestapo and the Nazis. The present process has gone further in this respect. He provided material of exceptional probative force, once again confirming and clarifying these connections, fully confirming and clarifying in a procedural and evidentiary sense and in full the treacherous role of Trotskyism, which completely and unconditionally went over to the camp of enemies, turned into one of the branches of the "SS" and the Gestapo .

The path of the Trotskyists, the path of Trotskyism is completed. Throughout their disgraceful and sad history, the Trotskyists tried and hit the most sensitive and dangerous places of the proletarian revolution and Soviet socialist construction.

The directive that Pyatakov spoke of here, which he received from Trotsky - "to hit the most sensitive places with the most sensitive methods" - this directive represents the old Trotskyist attitude towards Soviet power, towards socialist construction in our country.

The period that coincided with the final victory of socialism in the USSR is distinguished by special activity, special determination, stubbornness, and perseverance of the Trotskyists in the struggle against the Soviet regime. And this is quite natural. This victory was given to us not without overcoming enormous difficulties. Difficulties and, in particular, those that we met on our way in the period 1929-1931, especially in the countryside, these difficulties inspired the Trotskyist-Zinoviev underground, which began to stir, set its tentacles in motion, trying, at the direction of Trotsky, to strike at the very sensitive place.

Sensing their imminent death, the remnants of the exploiting classes destroyed by the proletarian dictatorship and their agents switched to new tactics, to new forms, to a new course of struggle against the Soviet regime, which the defendants set out here in sufficient detail and spoke to the court.

The growth of resistance of classes hostile to the proletarian dictatorship inspired the Trotskyist-Zinoviev gang, which, moreover, was inspired and incited to commit crimes against the USSR by the capitalist encirclement of the USSR that still exists.

Counting on the weakening of the Soviet rear, the international counter-revolution hastened the preparations for intervention. It is known, after all, that the interventionists are preparing a strike against the Soviet Union every year. The fragments of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-Zinoviev group knew that other defenders of the restoration of capitalism, other detachments of capitalist agents in our country, were operating alongside them. The Industrial Party, Kondratiev’s Trudovaya Peasants’ Party—a kulak party, the Allied Bureau of the Mensheviks, whose activities were examined at one time in court hearings of the Supreme Court—all these organizations were exposed as organizations of wreckers and groups of saboteurs who welcomed Trotsky’s struggle with our party, with the Soviet government, knowing that in the person of the Trotskyists they really have people like them, but more cynical, more brazen defenders of the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

What is the restoration of capitalism in our country? In 1932, the Trotskyists intensified their consolidation with the counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet groups, they established ties with the right-wing opposition in order to jointly fight against the party, against the Soviet regime. Comrade Stalin exposed the real content of this connection at the 16th and 17th Party Congresses, showing that the counter-revolutionary Trotskyists and Zinovievites, as he put it, are united by the desire to restore capitalism in the USSR. Comrade Stalin then called this program a program of contemptible cowards and capitulators, a counter-revolutionary program for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

In the light of today, it is especially clear what an enormous historical deed Comrade Stalin did when in 1931 he showed the true essence of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist counter-revolutionary organization in its "new" quality. Comrade Stalin wrote in a letter to the editors of the journal Proletarian Revolution: “In fact, Trotskyism is the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, which is waging a struggle against communism, against Soviet power, against the building of socialism in the USSR.”48 Comrade Stalin branded Trotskyism as the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie which received from the hands of the Trotskyists spiritual, tactical and organizational weapons for its struggle against Bolshevism, with the construction of socialism.

In the light of the current process, it is especially clear what exceptional historical significance this indication has. In the light of the present process, the role of the underground anti-Soviet Trotskyist groups appears especially vividly - this is the main channel of all anti-Soviet sentiments, hopes and aspirations, the main lever, the battering ram, with which the enemies of the Soviets are trying to make a breach in the walls of our state, to crush the fortress of socialism we have erected.

This role of the vanguard of the anti-Soviet fascist forces was by no means accidental. The departure of Trotskyism into the anti-Soviet underground, its transformation into a fascist agent, is only the completion of its historical development.

The transformation of the Trotskyist groups into groups of saboteurs and assassins, acting on instructions from foreign intelligence services and the general staffs of the aggressors, only completed the struggle of Trotskyism against the working class and the party, the struggle against Lenin and Leninism, which lasted for decades. Trotskyism began its path with a repulsive struggle, and Trotskyism is on this path even now, along this path it goes further and further, knowing no limits of hatred and malice in the struggle. The entire history of the political activity of the Trotskyists is a continuous chain of betrayals to the cause of the working class, to the cause of socialism.

In 1904, Trotsky, as you know, came out with a vile pamphlet entitled Our Political Tasks. This pamphlet was filled with filthy insinuations about our great teacher, the leader of the international proletariat, Lenin, Lenin's great teaching about the ways of the Bolshevik victory, the victory of the working people, the victory of socialism. In this pamphlet, Trotsky spatters with poisonous saliva, spitting on the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism. He tries to poison the proletariat with this poison, he tries to turn the proletariat off the path of irreconcilable class struggle, he slanders the proletariat, slanders the proletarian revolution, slanders Bolshevism, Lenin, calling Lenin "Maximillian" - the name of Robespierre - the hero of the bourgeois French revolution, wanting to humiliate great leader of the international proletariat.

This gentleman allowed himself to call Lenin the leader of the reactionary wing of the working-class movement, knowing no limits in his impudence and political shamelessness. While Lenin and Stalin selected the best people, educating them in political battles with the autocracy, tsarism, and the bourgeoisie, knocking together the core of the Bolshevik party from them, Judas-Trotsky rallied a united front of lackeys of capitalism to fight against the cause of the proletariat. In 1911-1912, Trotsky also organized a bloc, just as he later organized the Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc, organized the so-called "August bloc" from the servants of capital, from the Mensheviks, from those thrown out of the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, from the demagnetized intellectuals and the dregs of the labor movement. Of this bloc, Stalin wrote: “It is known that this patchwork “party” pursued the goal of destroying the Bolshevik Party.”49

Lenin wrote that this bloc was “built on unscrupulousness, hypocrisy and empty phrases.”50 Trotsky and his henchmen responded with a stream of dirty slander, vilifying Lenin and the Bolsheviks, calling them “barbaric”, “sectarian-violent” Asians. Of Trotsky, Lenin wrote: "Such types are characteristic, like fragments of yesterday's historical formations and formations, when the mass working-class movement in Russia was still sleeping..."51. Against such a "type," as Lenin called Trotsky at that time, he warned the party and the working class 20 years ago. In the article "On the Violation of Unity Covered by Cries of Unity," Lenin wrote: "It is necessary that the young working generation should know well with whom it is dealing...".

Our process is helping millions and millions of young workers and peasants, the working people of all countries, to imagine clearly and distinctly who we are really dealing with. Of course, the despicable Trotskyist bloc failed to destroy the Bolshevik Party, but the Trotskyists did not stop attacking the Bolshevik Party as best they could after the failure of the bloc. The entire period from 1903 to the very eve of the revolution in the history of our working-class movement is filled with the struggle of Trotsky and the Trotskyists against the revolutionary mood of the masses that is growing stronger and growing in Russia, the struggle against Lenin and against his party.

In 1915, Trotsky spoke out against Lenin's teaching on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, having already capitulated more than 20 years ago, thus completely capitulating to capitalism.

Trotsky alternately serves Economism, Menshevism, Liquidationism, Kautskyism, Social Democracy and National Chauvinism in the struggle against Lenin, just as he now serves imperialism and fascism in the struggle against the USSR.

Is it a coincidence that the Trotskyists eventually turned into a nest and hotbed of degeneration and Thermidorism, as Comrade Stalin used to say about this in his time? Is it accidental that Trotsky, finding himself in the ranks of our party after the revolution, again broke loose, slipped into counter-revolutionary positions, found himself thrown out of our state, out of the Soviet Union? Was Trotskyism accidentally turned into an assault detachment of capitalist restoration?

It is no coincidence, because this has been going on since the very birth of Trotskyism. It is no accident, because even before the October Revolution Trotsky and his friends fought against Lenin and the Leninist party in the same way that they are now fighting against Stalin and the party of Lenin-Stalin.

Comrade Stalin's predictions have completely come true. Trotskyism has really turned into the central rallying point for all forces hostile to socialism, into a detachment of simple bandits, spies and murderers who have placed themselves entirely at the disposal of foreign intelligence services, have definitively and irrevocably turned into lackeys of capitalism, into restorers of capitalism in our country.

And here, at the trial, precisely this vile essence of Trotskyism was revealed with exceptional fullness and clarity. They came to their shameful end because for decades they followed this path, glorifying capitalism, not believing in the successes of socialist construction, in the victory of socialism. That is why they finally came up with a comprehensive program of capitalist restoration, that is why they went to the point of betraying and selling our homeland.

Things were already moving towards this when, as was the case in 1922, Trotsky proposed allowing our industrial enterprises and trusts to mortgage our property, including fixed capital, to private capitalists in order to obtain loans that the Soviet state really needed at that time.

This proposal of Trotsky was even then a stepping stone towards the return to the power of the capitalists, towards making the capitalists, financiers, factory owners again the owners of our factories and plants and depriving our workers of the rights they had won under Soviet power. These gentlemen asserted that the Soviet economy was "more and more merged with the capitalist economy", that is, it was turning into an appendage of world capitalism. They assured that "we will always be under the control of the world economy", that is, they asserted what the capitalist sharks dreamed of.

Comrade Stalin then exposed this wrecking position of Trotskyism, saying: “Capitalist control means, first of all, financial control ... Financial control means planting branches of large capitalist banks in our country, this means the formation of so-called “subsidiary” banks. But do we have, - said Comrade Stalin, - such banks? Of course not! And not only not, but never will be, as long as Soviet power is alive.

Capitalist control, which was then talked about, dreamed of and demanded by the Trotskyists, and these leaders of the Trotskyist bloc sitting here on the dock, is the right of the capitalists to dispose of our homeland, our markets. “Capitalist control means, finally,” said Comrade Stalin, “political control, the destruction of the political independence of our country, the adaptation of the laws of the country to the interests and tastes of the international capitalist economy.”

This is what this so-called capitalist control meant, which Trotsky and some part, the head of the so-called anti-Soviet Trotskyist center sitting here on the dock, yearned for.

Comrade Stalin, exposing the anti-Soviet essence of such proposals, said: “If we are talking about such real capitalist control ... then I must declare that we do not have such control and will never have it, as long as our proletariat lives and as long as we have Soviet power” . That is why it is not accidental, why these two tasks are so organically linked—the preparation of capitalist restoration with the struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is it a coincidence that, starting with capitalist control, these people descended to an open platform of capitalist restoration, to an open struggle, in the name of realizing this platform, in alliance with the capitalists against the dictatorship of the proletariat!

It is well known that at the turning points of our struggle, at the steep upswings of our proletarian revolution, the Trotskyist leaders always, as a rule, found themselves in the camp of our enemies, on the other side of the barricades.

The denial of the socialist character of our revolution, the denial of the possibility of building socialism in our country determined and predetermined the hostile position of the Trotskyists towards the cause of socialist construction in the USSR.

This, however, did not prevent the Trotskyists from hiding behind the name of socialism, just as it did not and does not prevent at present many enemies of socialism from hiding behind this name.

This has always happened in history. It is known that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, those worst enemies of socialism, always hid behind the name of socialism. But that didn't stop them from wallowing at the feet of the bourgeoisie, the landowners, the white generals.

We remember how the Mensheviks in the Petliura Rada called the troops of Wilhelm II to Ukraine, how they traded in the freedom and honor of the Ukrainian people;

how the interventionists operated in Arkhangelsk under the guise of Tchaikovsky's Socialist-Revolutionary government;

how the so-called "socialist" "government of the committee of the constituent assembly" brought Kolchak to power;

how the Menshevik government of Noah Zhordania faithfully served the foreign interventionists!

All these gentlemen called themselves socialists, they all hid behind the name of socialism, but everyone knows that there were and are no more consistent and more cruel, brutal enemies of socialism than the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Trotsky and the Trotskyists have long been capitalist agents in the labor movement.

They have now become a vanguard fascist detachment, an assault battalion of fascism.

In 1926-1927, they switched to the path of open anti-Soviet, already punishable crimes. They took to the streets - they tried at least to do this - their struggle against the leadership of our party, against the Soviet government. It was a difficult and difficult time in the life of the Soviet state. It was a time of transition from a period of restoration to a period of reorganization of our industry and agriculture on the basis of high technology. During this period, there could not have been a number of serious difficulties, reflecting the complexity of the struggle between the capitalist and socialist elements of our economy.

The "opposition bloc", the so-called "new opposition", headed by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, with the participation of almost all the defendants sitting here - the accused Pyatakov, Radek, Serebryakov, Sokolnikov, Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky - then tried to use these difficulties to to once again try to stab the Soviet state in the back, and, moreover, as hard as possible.

The Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc of 1926 was a bloc that turned the entire edge of its struggle against the cause of socialism in our country, for capitalism. Under the guise of false, sometimes outwardly “leftist” phrases about “super-industrialization”, etc., the Trotskyist-Zinoviev gang, from 1926-1927, put forward such proposals that undermined and frustrated the alliance of workers and peasants, undermined the foundation of the Soviet state. It put forward such demands as increased pressure on the peasantry, as "initial socialist accumulation" through the ruin and robbery of the peasantry, it put forward a number of demands that were supposed to lead to the disruption of the bond between town and country and thereby disrupt the possibility of real industrialization. These were, in essence, the same sabotage and wrecking measures. In essence, between the sabotage and sabotage measures of 1926-1927 and the present, the difference is only in form. And then the opposition bloc tried to break the link between the working class and the peasantry with their supposedly "left", but in fact counter-revolutionary proposals, in a form that corresponded to the conditions of the class struggle of that time. This was also a special form of sabotage, a form of subversive acts directed against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the cause of socialist construction. These proposals of the then opposition were only a special form of struggle against the Soviet state, corresponding to the then historical situation. Ten years have passed, and we see that they are embarking on the path of direct sabotage, the path of wrecking, the path of subversive work, but in much more acute forms, corresponding to the new conditions - the conditions of a fierce class struggle against the remnants of capitalist elements.

The “new opposition,” as this bloc was called, did not accidentally unite such a “super-industrializer” as Trotsky was with such an opponent of industrialization as Sokolnikov was 10 years ago and as he remains to this day. The “new opposition” essentially stood for a definite political and socio-economic program, which could not but lead, inevitably had to lead to the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in turn inevitably had to lead to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

Comrade Judges, when we now hear at trial in the testimony of the leaders of this gang, the leaders of the Trotskyist underground organization, confessions that they really received from Trotsky the instructions for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, accepted these instructions and, in the name of their implementation, carried out wrecking, sabotage, reconnaissance work, - the question may arise, which some people have: how can these people who fought for socialism for so many years, people who blasphemously called themselves Bolshevik-Leninists - how can they be accused of these monstrous crimes? Isn't this proof that the accusation was wrong, that these people are accused of what they cannot be accused of by the very essence of all their past socialist, revolutionary, Bolshevik activities?

I answer this question. The defendants in this trial have been charged with the fact that they really tried by all sorts of the most disgusting and dishonorable measures to return our country under the yoke of capitalism. This is the accusation of these gentlemen that they are traitors to socialism. We justify this accusation not only by what they have committed today—this is the subject of the accusation—but we say that the history of their downfall begins long before they organized the so-called “parallel” center, this outgrowth of the criminal Trotskyite-Zinovievist united bloc. There is an organic connection. The historical connection is obvious. And it would be enough to confine ourselves to what I said so that there would be no doubt that the main accusation brought by the state prosecutor's office to those sitting here in the dock of an attempt to restore in our country the capitalist system that was overthrown nineteen years ago is completely substantiated, documented, and by this accusation the criminals sitting here are nailed to eternal disgrace and eternal damnation on the part of all honest workers, honest people of our country and the whole world.

From the platform of 1926, from anti-Soviet street speeches, from illegal printing houses, from an alliance with the White Guard officers, which they also then went for, to sabotage, to espionage, to terror, to treason in 1932-1936 - one step. And they took this step!

We have already seen this in the example of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev united bloc, in the example of the political fate of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganyan and others, who shamefully ended their lives with the stigma of foreign intelligence hirelings.

We see the same thing now in the fate of the defendants in the present case, most of whom for many years, both before and after the October Revolution, fought against Lenin and Leninism, against the Lenin-Stalin party, against the building of socialism in our country.

Pyatakov, K. Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, Drobnis, Muralov, Livshits, Boguslavsky, Shestov—all of them fought for a number of years against the cause of socialism, against the cause of Lenin and Stalin.

These gentlemen already at that time were directing their forces to, as Comrade Stalin said, "breaking the back of the party" and at the same time breaking the back of the Soviet power, the death of which all the counter-revolutionary crows never tired of croaking.

In this struggle against Soviet power, these gentlemen fell as low as no one seems to have ever fallen before.

Lenin foresaw the inevitability of such a shameful end to which the accused came, to which everyone who takes the path they have taken must come. In the resolution of the Tenth Congress of our Party, then still called the Russian Communist Party, adopted at the suggestion of Lenin, there was a formidable warning that anyone who insists on his factionalism and his mistakes under the Soviet system must inevitably slide into the camp of the enemies of the working class, into the camp of whites and imperialists. These gentlemen proved with all their activity the entire validity of this historical prediction.

In 1933, on the direct instructions of L. Trotsky, who was exiled from the USSR in 1929, along with the existing so-called United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center consisting of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and others, an underground so-called parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center was created in Moscow, in which included Yu. L. Pyatakov, K. B. Radek, G. Ya. Sokolnikov and L. P. Serebryakov.

The anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization, which acted under the direct supervision of this "center", as it was established by the investigation, also included Livshits Ya.A., Muralov N.I., Drobnis Ya.N., Boguslavsky M.S. ., Knyazev I. A., Ratanchak S. A., Norkin B. O., Shestov A. A., Stroilov M. S., Turk I. D., Grashe I. I., Nushin E. E. and Arnold V.V.

The preliminary and judicial investigation established that, on the basis of the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center set itself the main task of overthrowing Soviet power in the USSR and restoring capitalism and the power of the bourgeoisie through sabotage, sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities aimed at undermining the economic and military the power of the Soviet Union, the acceleration of a military attack on the USSR, assistance to foreign aggressors and the defeat of the USSR.

In full accordance with this main task, the enemy of the people, L. Trotsky abroad, and the parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center in the person of Radek and Sokolnikov, in Moscow, entered into negotiations with individual representatives of Germany and Japan. The enemy of the people L. Trotsky, during negotiations with one of the leaders of the National Socialist Party of Germany, Rudolf Hess, promised, in the event that the Trotskyist government came to power as a result of the defeat of the Soviet Union, to make a number of political, economic and territorial concessions in favor of Germany and Japan at the expense of the USSR up to the cession of Ukraine-Germany, Primorye and Amur-Japan. At the same time, the enemy of the people L. Trotsky undertook, in the event of a seizure of power, to liquidate state farms, dissolve collective farms, abandon the country's industrialization policy and restore capitalist relations on the territory of the Soviet Union. In addition, the enemy of the people, L. Trotsky, pledged to provide all possible assistance to the aggressors by developing defeatist agitation, wrecking, sabotage and espionage activities both in peacetime and, in particular, during their military attack on the Soviet Union.

Members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov, in pursuance of the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, repeatedly received by Radek, and also personally received by Pyatakov during his meeting with the enemy of the people L. Trotsky in December 1935 near the city of Oslo, deployed a wrecking sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities.

For the direct management of anti-Soviet activities on the ground, local Trotskyist centers were created in some large cities of the Soviet Union. In particular, in Novosibirsk, on the direct instructions of Pyatakov, a West Siberian Trotskyist center was organized consisting of N. I. Muralov, M. S. Boguslavsky and Ya. N. Drobnis.

Sabotage and wrecking work in industry, mainly at enterprises of defense significance, as well as in railway transport, was carried out on the instructions of the enemy of the people Trotsky and on assignments and with the direct participation of German and Japanese intelligence agents and consisted in disrupting production plans, in deteriorating product quality, in organization of arsons and explosions of factories or individual workshops and mines, organization of train wrecks, damage to rolling stock and the railway track.

When organizing acts of sabotage, they proceeded from the instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky - “to deliver sensitive blows to the most sensitive places”, supplemented by the instructions of Pyatakov, Livshits and Drobnis - not to stop at human casualties, because “the more victims, the better, since this causes exasperation of the workers."

In the chemical industry, on the instructions of Pyatakov, the defendants Rataychak and Pushin carried out wrecking work aimed at disrupting the state production plan, delaying the construction of new factories and enterprises, and poor-quality construction of new enterprises.

In addition, in 1934-1935, Rataichak and Pushin organized three acts of sabotage at the Gorlovsky nitrogen-fertilizer plant, two of them with explosions, which led to the death of workers and caused great material losses.

At the suggestion of Ratajczak, acts of sabotage were also organized at the Resurrection Chemical Plant and the Nevsky Plant.

In the coal and chemical industry of the Kuznetsk basin, the accused Drobnis, Norkin, Shestov and Stroilov, on the instructions of Pyatakov and Muralov, carried out wrecking and sabotage work aimed at disrupting coal mining, delaying the construction and development of new mines and a chemical plant, and creating faces and mines by gassing , harmful and life-threatening working conditions, and on September 23, 1936, members of the local Trotskyist organization, on the instructions of Drobnis, organized an explosion at the Tsentralnaya mine of the Kemerovo mine, which resulted in the death of 10 workers and severe injuries of 14 workers.

In railway transport, the sabotage and sabotage activities of Serebryakov and members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization Boguslavsky, Livshits, Knyazev and Turks, in accordance with the guidelines of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center, were aimed at disrupting the state loading plan, especially for the most important cargoes (coal, ore, bread), damage to rolling stock (cars, steam locomotives), railway tracks and the organization of train wrecks, especially military ones.

Knyazev, on the instructions of Livshits and on the instructions of the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X., in 1935-1936 organized and committed a number of wrecks of freight, passenger and military trains with human casualties, and the collapse of a military echelon at the Shumikha station on October 27, 1935 resulted in the death of 29 Red Army soldiers and wounding 29 Red Army soldiers.

On the direct instructions of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov and Serebryakov, in the event of a military attack on the USSR, prepared a number of acts of sabotage in industry of defense importance, as well as on the most important railway lines.

Norkin, at the direction of Pyatakov, was preparing the arson of the Kemerovo chemical plant by the time the war began.

Knyazev, on behalf of Livshits, accepted for execution the task of the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X., during the war, to organize explosions of railway structures, arson of military depots and food points for troops, the collapse of military trains, and also to deliberately infect the echelons supplied under the troops with bacteria of acutely contagious diseases, and as well as food and sanitation units of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army.

Along with sabotage and sabotage activities, Livshits, Knyazev, Turks, Stroilov, Shestov, Rataychak, Pushin and Grashe, on behalf of the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center, were engaged in collecting and transferring secret information of great national importance to agents of German and Japanese intelligence.

Ratajczak, Pushin and Grasche were associated with German intelligence agents Meyerowitz and Lenz, who in 1935-1936 were given highly secret materials on the state and operation of chemical plants, and Pushin in 1935 gave German intelligence agent Lenz secret information about the production of products at all chemical plants. enterprises of the USSR for 1934, the program of work for all chemical enterprises for 1935 and the plan for the construction of nitrogen plants, and the defendant Ratajczak handed over to the same Lenz top secret materials on products for 1934 and the program of work for 1935 for military chemical plants.

Shestov and Stroilov were associated with agents of the German intelligence Shebesto. Fless, Floren, Sommeregger and others and gave them secret information on the coal and chemical industries of the Kuznetsk basin.

Livshits, Knyazev and Turok systematically handed over top secret information about the technical condition and mobilization readiness of the USSR railways, as well as military transportation, to the Japanese intelligence agent, Mr. X.

On the direct orders of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center created several terrorist groups in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Rostov, Novosibirsk, Sochi and other cities of the USSR, which were preparing terrorist acts against the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government - Stalin's comrades , Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Ordzhonikidze, Zhdanov, and some terrorist groups (in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ukraine, Transcaucasia) were directly led by members of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center Pyatakov and Serebryakov.

Organizing terrorist acts, the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center tried to use for this purpose the visits of the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government to the places.

So, in the fall of 1934, Shestov, at the direction of Muralov, tried to carry out a terrorist act against the chairman

Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Comrade V. M. Molotov during his stay in Kuzbass, for which a member of the local Trotskyist group Arnold tried to make a disaster with a car in which Comrade V. M. Molotov was driving.

In addition, at the instigation of Shestov, Arnold was preparing a terrorist act against comrade G. K. Ordzhonikidze.

The defendants were put on trial under Art. Art. 58.1a, 58.8, 58.9 and 58.4 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.

This case was heard in Moscow on January 23-30, 1937 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The defendants were defended by: Knyazeva, a member of the defense bar I.D. Braude, Pushchina, a member of the defense bar, N.V. Kommodov, and Arnold, a member of the defense bar, S.K. Kaznacheev. The rest of the defendants declined to defend themselves.