There were presented:
The AG - Angel-Guardian, the AD - Angel-Destroyer
Witnesses:
Leon Feuchtwanger, Pyatakov. Radek, K. Norkin Cherankov, George Zhukov, Buharin, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, Konev. V. Molotov. A Hamer.
* * *
'Businesslike and frank confession, with which these people directly in front of their almost certain death talked about their actions and provide explanations to their crimes seemed to be unbelievable and terrible.
It is a pity that in the Soviet Union is forbidden to make photographing in courtroom and recording on gramophone records.
If the world public opinion were to be represented not only what was said by the defendants, but how they say it, their tone, their faces, then I think there would be much fewer unbelievers' (Leon Feuchtwanger).
'They confessed everything but each did it in his own way:
one with a cynical tone, another with swagger like a soldier, the third with inward resisting, resorting to subterfuges, the fourth as the repentant disciple, the fifth did it by teaching others.
But tone, facial expression, gestures of all those people were true'.
About Pyatakov:
'Calmly and carefully he narrated how he damaged in industry entrusted to him.
He explained, pointing with his outstretched finger, resembling a high school teacher or a historian who delivered a report on lives and deeds of long-dead man by the name of Piatakov and sought to clarify all the circumstances to the smallest details.
He only wanted his listeners and students to learn everything right'.
About Radek:
"... he was very cool, often deliberately ironic... When nhe entered, he put his hand on shoulders of one or another of the defendants with a light and sweet gesture�
when he spoke, he posed a little, smiling slightly at the other accused, showing its superiority of an actor who was arrogant, skeptical, clever, literarily educated.
Suddenly pushing Pyatakov from the microphone, he stood himself to his place.
He struck a newspaper on the barrier or took a cup of tea, throwing a piece of lemon into it, stirring it with a spoon, and telling about his horrific affairs, drank tea in small sips.
However, without showing off he delivered his final speech in which he explained why he confessed.
This statement, despite its ease and perfectly trimmed wording sounded pathetic like a revelation of a man suffering a great disaster.
The most terrible and difficult to explain was his gesture with which Radek after the end of the last meeting left the courtroom.
Soldiers came; they first approached the four people who were not sentenced to death.
One of the soldiers put his hand on Radek's shoulder, apparently suggesting him to follow him.
And Radek went.
He turned, raised his hand in greeting, almost imperceptibly shrugged and nodded to the rest of his friends who were sentence of death and smiled.
Yes, he smiled ...'
'It is also difficult to forget a painful detailed story of the engineer Stroilov about how he was to a Trotskists organization.
How he struggled, trying to escape from it, and how the Trotskists, taking advantage of his fault in the past kept him firmly, not letting him go from their networks until the end'.
'The engineer Norkin impressed on everyone by cursing Trotsky in his last word and shouting to him 'his boiling contempt and hatred'
However, during all the criminal trial it was the first and only one occasion when someone shouted; and everybody, the judge, the prosecutor and the accused, spoke, calmly, without passion and without raising their voices all the time'.
'Doubters base their unwillingness to believe in authenticity of charges, in addition to the above objections, on the fact that the conduct of the accused before the court was psychologically inexplicable.
Why did the defendants, these skeptics, ask instead of denying and try to outdo each other in their confessions?
And what confessions they were!
They draw themselves as dirty and vile criminals.
Why don't they protect themselves, as all defendants it usually do?
Why don't they, even being unmasked, try to bring mitigating circumstances in their own defense but on the contrary make their positions worse and worse?
Why don't those revolutionaries and ideologues, once they believe in Trotsky's theories, speak openly on the side of their leader and his theories?
Why don't they now praise their deeds, which in fact they should consider as commendable ones, speaking before masses for the last time?
Finally, one can imagine that two or four of these seventeen people resign themselves.
But it is unlikely that all of them could do so'.
'Soviet citizens would argue: the fact that the defendants confess their crimes is explained very simply.
During the preliminary investigation they were so unmasked by testimonies and documents that their denial would be pointless for them.
The fact that they confess all their crimes is explained by the fact that not all the Trotskists implicated in the conspiracy were judged but only those who have been unmasked'.
'I must confess that, although the criminal trial has convinced me of the guilt of the accused, yet despite the arguments of Soviet citizens, the conduct of the accused before the court remains not quite clear for me. Immediately after the criminal trial I have briefly outlined my impressions in Soviet press:
'The main reasons of crimes the accused committed and the main motives for their behavior before the court are not still quite clear to western people.
Though most of them deserved death penalty for their actions but it is impossible to explain the psychology of these people by their swear words and gusts of indignation, no matter how they may be understood,.
Only a great Soviet writer can disclose their guilt and redemption to a western man until the end'.
However, my words should in no way mean that I wish to discredit the conduct of the trial or its results.
If you ask me, what the essence of my opinion is, I could, like the wise publicist Ernst Bloch, answer by the words of Socrates, who said about some uncertainties of Heraclitus:
'What I have understood is perfectly.
From this I conclude that the rest of what I do not understand is fine too'.
'Soviet people cannot imagine this misunderstanding. After the end of the criminal trial at a meeting in Moscow one writer spoke passionately about my short commentary in the press. He said:
"Feuchtwanger does not understand what motives made the accused confess. A quarter of a million workers who are demonstrating on Red Square now can understood it'.
Given the fact that a Soviet writer who could illuminate motives of their confessions has not appeared yet, I want to try to tell by myself how I imagine the genesis of confessions.
The court before which the criminal trial works certainly can be considered as a kind of a party court.
Defendants have belonged to the party from their early years; some of them were considered as its leaders.
It would be a mistake to think that people were brought to a party court would behave in the same way as people do before an ordinary court in the West.
Even a seemingly simple slip of Radek's tongue who applied to the judge as 'comrade judge' and was corrected by the chairman who told him to say 'citizen judge' had its inner meaning.
The accused still feels his connection with the party and it is not a random that from the beginning the criminal trial has had a line of discussions that was strange to foreigners.
Judges, prosecutors, the defendants (it did not only seem so) were linked by ties of common purpose.
They were like engineers, testing a completely new complex machine.
Some of them have damaged something in that car; they did it not with malice but simply because they willfully chose to use their own theories to improve this car.
Their methods turned out to be wrong, but this machine is close to their hearts no less than others; so they discuss frankly their mistakes together with others.
They all share an interest in the car, love it.
This feeling encourages judges and the accused to amicably cooperate with each other.
This feeling akin to the one which binds the government in England with the opposition so strongly that the leader of the opposition receives two thousand pounds salary from the state' (Leon Feuchtwanger).
* * *
'What do you think about it, Positive? the AD asked suddenly.'
"Probably the same as you son of darkness ..."
It was a voluntary collective confession of party sinners to the revolutionary priest.
Shepherd-Emperor Joseph arranged the demonstrative Judgment Day in a single Antivampiria.
Over the 'enemies of people' who betrayed the cause with a capital letter. It is known to be sacred, and only repentance and the blood can redeem their guilt.
It was a mystical sacrifice for the salvation of the Cause. Where blood of the innocent, (of course there were such people) and sinners who repented before their death served as a salvation."
"What about 'Thou shalt not kill"?
"And I say so: at the highest Court the executed may be justified because they already suffered punishment on earth.
But for an executioner�
An executioner looked into the endless dance of former colleagues, trying to discern the 'spot', about which evil spirit from the Pages of History blabbed.
He has a black mark inside his soul i.e. a seal of the Prince of Darkness...
'The gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars.
Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are'.
And after a little more than half a century:
'An unprecedented sorrow has happened'.
The Homeland, our country, a grand state given to us for care by history, nature and glorious ancestors dies, breaks down, sinks into darkness and oblivion.
And this destruction is going on under our silence, acquiescence and consent.
Has our hearts and souls hardened, and is there no soul, might, courage, love for the Fatherland in no one of us?
What's happened to us, brothers?
Why have evil and grandiloquent rulers, clever and cunning rebels, greedy and rich accumulators, mocking us and our beliefs, and using our naivety, seized power?
They pilfer riches, rob houses, factories and land from people, cut the country into parts, cause us to fight against each other and try to fool us, separate us from our past and deprive us of our future, doom us to miserable wretched existence in slavery and subjection to the all-powerful neighbors.
Brothers, we wake up late, noticed trouble too late when our house was already burning from its four corners, when it could not be extinguished with water but with our tears and blood.
Joseph memorized this 'Word to People' form the Pages of History, which was copied by evil spirit.
He knew it would certainly happen but didn't know when.
The clock will midnight, the carriage will turn back to be a hearse, the horses will turn into rats, the coachman will turn into a gravedigger, the ball costume into a shroud.
Claws animal, hair and teeth will start to sprout at important guests of the ball.
* * *
'The hero of the Civil War Schmidt was called to the Commissariat and sent to a command post in the province. He called his former comrades from all over USSR to go with him. A real train gathered. With hilarious drunken singing the train moved from the Kazan railway station. At the first station the carriage was uncoupled from the engine and men in the form of the NKVD came in it (the witness K. Churankov).
* * *
"If, for example, Gamarnik who committed suicide was a consistent counter-revolutionary, I, if I had been him, would have asked for meeting with Stalin, then I would have killed hem and them myself. (J. Stalin).
* * *
George Zhukov. The testimony of pre-war times:
"It is distinguished by a unique kind of lift of enthusiasm, optimism, a spirituality and at the same time, efficiency, modesty and simplicity in communicating of people.
We began to live well, very well.
And what an economist, a philosopher or writer will be able to reliably describe how our country would prosper today, how far we would come forward, if the war wouldn't interrupt a broad, peaceful and powerful course of those years'.
* * *
The country rises with glory
Towards the day!
And the joy is singing without falling silent
And the song goes to meet,
And people laugh, meeting it,
And the sun rises towards them.
* * *
Bukharin. From his overheard conversation with Kamenev and Sokolnikov:
'Our potential strengths are enormous.
Rykov, Tomsky, Uglanov are our full supporters.
I tried to tear Stalin's away from other Politburo members, but so far it turns out bad.
Ordzhonikidze is not a knight. He visited me and scolded Stalin but he betrayed in the decisive moment.
Voroshilov, Kalinin also betrayed us in the last moment. I think that Stalin keeps them by some special chains.
The Orgbureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) is ours.
The leaders of the OGPU, Yagoda and Trilisser, too; Andreev also supports us'.
* * *
And you will smile at friends
With whom m you have labor and work
Our meetings and lives are common.
With such a splendid speech
State about your truth
We meet our life,
And go to toward labor and love.
* * *
'Annihilated commanders:
Tukhachevsky, Egorov, Yakir, Kork, Uborevich, Blucher, Dybenko...
Only Tukhachevsky and Uborevych can be considered as modern warlords.
Most of them were a match for Voroshilov and Budyonny. These heroes of the Civil War, horsemen-soldiers live by the past.
Blucher failed the military operation at the lake of Khasan, Voroshilov failed Finnish war.
If they all headed the army, the war would have been different' (Marshal Konev).
V. Molotov in his conversation in the F. Chuev:
"I think Tukhachevsky to be a very dangerous military conspirator who was caught at the last moment. If he were not caught, it would be very dangerous. He is the most authoritative.
Did each of the accused and the executed participate in the conspiracy, which was prepared by Tukhachevsky?
I have no doubt that some of them participated; some could get there by mistake.
But as far as Tukhachevsky and his holdings of a group of militaries connected with Trotskyites, right-wingers who were preparing the conspiracy by author, there is no doubt of it'.
"The time will come and will be cleared up. Among leaders of the party there were their own Solzhenitsyns. Both then and now they had to be tolerated.
By 1937 they lost the platform and support of people. They voted for Stalin but they were double-dealers.
At the criminal trial it was shown how Kuibyshev and Gorky were poisoned on orders of right-wingers.
The former head of the OGPU Yagoda participated in organization of poisoning of his head in the OGPU Menzhinsky.
* * *
Encyclopedia Britannica:
"During the 10th anniversary the Soviet Union was really transformed from one of the most backward states into a great industrial power; it was one of the factors which provided the Soviet victory in World War II'.
* * *
A. Hammer:
'In 1930 my business contacts with Russia actually stopped.
In your country state economy actively developed. It was believed that the state no longer needed help of private enterprise.
I must admit that though a very hard period for the people followed, you achieved your purposes his own and built a powerful state'.
* * *
'In 1935in the face of growing prosperity of the Soviet Union the defendants had to admit bankruptcy of Trotskyism.
According to Radek, they lost their faith in Trotsky's concept.
Under these circumstances, by the very nature of things, the confessions of the accused sounded like a forced to the regime of Stalin.
Defendants likened to a pagan prophet of the Bible who acted with intent to curse but against his will began to bless' (Feuchtwanger)