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How Trotsky Murdered Maxim Gorky and Many Others

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How Trotsky Murdered Maxim Gorky and Many Others 1 How Trotsky Murdered Maxim Gorky and Many Others The investigation following the murder Maxim Gorky, the uncovered a sinister plot that linked most celebrated of all Leon Trotsky to German, Polish and proletarian writers; Japanese fascists, and to the British loved by Lenin and secret service through the American Stalin and endeared to Trotskyite Max Eastman. the world proletariat, was murdered June Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin 18, 1936. organized the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites3 not only to murder Maxim The circumstances of Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov but the crime were so to murder a number of other people as shocking and bizarre that none but well including Mironovich Kirov and Socrates himself, a witness to the wicked Mezhinsky. The trial of the Bloc of demagoguery of the 5th century B.C., Rights and Trotskyites before the could have envisioned such a dastardly Military Collegium of the Supreme deed.1 Upon learning of the crime the Court of the USSR, in Moscow, March proletariat of the entire world loosed a 2–13, 1938 exposed the entire shriek of horror and the Soviet people treasonous affair and Trotsky’s direct echoed Gorky’s words: “If the enemy links to fascism along with it. does not surrender, he must be destroyed.”2 The plot to murder Gorky unfolded as follows. Trotsky met Bessonov in Paris in 1934 who told him that Gorky must 1 In Plato’s Republic, the interlocutor Simonides be destroyed at all costs for his held that justice is giving to each person his due adherence to Stalin, the general line of which, according to him, is good to one’s friends the party, and his vocal opposition to the and harm to one’s enemies. Socrates gave this terrorist activities of the Kulaks, which proposition his characteristic ironic twist: had mobilized the Soviet masses against Socrates: “Who then is most able when they are them. Thereupon Trotsky helped ill to benefit friends and harm enemies in respect Bessonov enter the USSR telling him to to disease and heath?” covey this message to Gorky’s physician Pyatakov who transmitted it to the Bloc Simonides: “The physician.” (Republic, 332:e) as was testified to by the conspirator 2 Maxim Gorky, If the Enemy does not Yagoda. The terrorist Rykov, an Surrender, Nov. 15, 1930. “Inside the country, cunning enemies organize a shortage of food. enemy does not surrender, he must be The kulaks terrorize the collective farm peasants destroyed.” by murder, by arson, by all sorts of villainies; everything that has outlived the term set by 3 The Bloc was a terrorist conspiracy of Rights, history is against us, and this gives us the right to Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Socialist- consider ourselves still in a state of civil war. Revolutionaries, bourgeois nationalists and The natural conclusion which follows is: if the Social-Democrats (fascists). 2 accomplice of Bukharin, testified that causes and that their murders, their the Bloc “insisted on putting an end to physicians, had done all in their power to Gorky’s political activity,” just as they save the victims lives. had done to Sergei Mironovich Kirov. Yagoda conceived of the plan and Levin Bukharin said at the trial that Tomsky became the main organizer of the had told him that Trotsky was preparing terrorist cell group and suborned both a hostile act against Gorky. Tomsky Kazakov and Pletnev. Maxim Gorky heard it from Bessonov who had brought perished in the hands of Levin, a Doctor these instructions from abroad. What of Medical Sciences, a man who would instructions? To destroy Gorky. From go on to write Gorky’s obituary in an whom? Trotsky. What effort to conceal his was the hostile act Bukharin said at the trial that crime, but in so supposed to be? Tomsky had told him that Trotsky doing, in fact, gave According to Bukharin was preparing a hostile act against away the secret of it was supposed to be: Gorky. Tomsky heard it from the murder. “An action against the Bessonov who had brought these ‘Stalinite Gorky,’ as a instructions from abroad. What Levin knew that defender of Socialist instructions? To destroy Gorky. Gorky had been construction in general, From whom? Trotsky. severely afflicted and of Stalin’s Party with tuberculosis policy in particular.” Bukharin said that since before the revolution and had been the hostile act against Gorky was to be Maxim Gorky’s personal physician for linked to the overthrow of the Soviet the preceding ten years and during that government and that when one speaks of time observed that Gorky suffered the a ‘hostile act’ it could mean anything, “grippe” (influenza) six times within that including a terrorist act. period and that complications of bronchitis and catarrhal invariably The terrorist acts which followed followed. In his obituary for Gorky, Trotsky’s contract on Gorky would Levin referred to Maxim’s lungs as the precipitate not one murder, but three: locus minors resistentiae. “Gorky was those of Mezhinsky, Gorky’s son Maxim one of those people who live to be a Peshkov Kuibyshev, and of Maxim hundred, and he would undoubtedly Gorky himself. The hideous method by have lived to be a hundred if not for the which these murders were committed vicious tuberculosis,” he said. The was called killing by degrees, as Yagoda murderer giving away the criminis put it “murder with a guarantee.” As odd secretum. as it may seem it was a murder method already well known to the ancients, as Levin was also physician to both Yagoda Plato so testifies. Trotsky knew of it, just and Mezhinsky’s and after 1928 they as all who have read Plato know of it. would meet with Gorky at his home in The three victims were murdered by Moscow during the summer. Yagoda their physicians: Levin, Kazakov and lavished Levin with flowers and fine Pletnev. It was called “murder with a French wine and eventually turned over guarantee” since it would be presumed to him a beautiful country home near that the victims had died of natural Moscow where he lived with his family 3 during the summer months for five or six entirely into his hands and proceeded to years. In addition to these flatteries, give him further instructions, the Yagoda arranged for Levin to pass instructions to commit even more through Soviet customs without crimes. “A change of government is inspection after his frequent trips abroad inevitable, predetermined and to visit Gorky recuperating in Italy unavoidable, the movement is headed by during the winter months. Rykov, Bukharin and Yenukidze. The sooner it takes place the better. In order In 1933 Yagoda suborned Levin in the to speed it up we have to remove certain plot against Gorky’s son Maxim members of the Political Bureau and Peshkov. “You see Max—that was the Alexei Maximovich Gorky,” Yagoda way he called him—is not told Levin. On “Gorky was one of those people only a good-for-nothing, account of the fact who live to be a hundred, and he but also exerts harmful that the murder of would undoubtedly have lived to be influence on his MaximGorky was a hundred if not for the vicious father…He must be a historical tuberculosis,” Levin said. removed. It is necessary necessity; Levin to do something that he should perish,” eagarly volunteered to carry out his Yagoda said. Yagoda was far from instructions. “You will reap the fruits of satisfied with this arrangement and went it when the new government comes to on to suborn Maxim’s secretary, power,” Yagoda told him. Kryuchkov into the plot. “It is not a question of Maxim Peshkov, but mainly Prosecutor: That means you organized of Gorky,” Kryuchkov said at the trial. the death of A. M. Gorky? Yagoda had convinced him that a counter-revolutionary coup was in the Levin: Yes. works and that a new government would soon be in power. Prosecutor: Upon whose orders did you act? Prosecutor: Whose? Levin: Yagoda’s. Kryuchkov: Mine. The President: Accused Levin, Yagoda convinced him that the death of continue. Maxim Peshkov would be a heavy blow to Gorky. “It would turn him into a Levin: “Not wishing to apply potent harmless old man,” Kryuchkov said. poisonous substances, we worked be Having thus concluded that Maxim means of wrong [medical] treatment.” Peshkov’s murder must be done and as a result of their professional wrecking With respect to the murder of Maxim activities of the medical kind, Peshkov, Levin and members of the Bloc Menzhinsky perished on May 10, 1934 first “worked on the weakening of the and Maxim Peshkov on the following organism” by the excessive use of day. After the funerals, Yagoda alcoholic beverages. After getting him summoned Levin and told him that on drunk and working him hard on a hot account of his crimes he was delivered spring day they arranged for him to pass- 4 out with out a shirt on causing him to complicated by croupous pneumonia catch a cold as the temperature which immediately took a dangerous plummeted in the late afternoon, in two turn. days croupous pneumonia set in. Medicines that would have been Instead of healing him, Levin, and beneficial to his heart were eliminated another conspirator named Professor while those detrimental were Pletnev, prescribed medicines normally systematically applied. On May 11 he used in such cases, but applied them in died. very large doses. “We did not administer any special medicines that would make Since Maxim people wonder why they were being Gorky’s heart and Grinko tried to applied,” Levin testified. Among such lungs were undermine the ruble.
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