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The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective. by Jay Lovestone

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The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective. by Jay Lovestone Lovestone: The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective [Feb. 1937] 1 The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective. by Jay Lovestone First published in Workers Age, v. 6, no. 6 (Feb. 6, 1937), pg. 3 and v. 6, no. 7 (Feb. 13, 1937), pg. 3. The merest glance at the official proceedings of further, from reaching the point where it might en- the Moscow trial† is enough to convince any candid danger “social order and property”; they therefore be- person that some, at least, of the charges and allega- came the natural point of concentration for all con- tions therein contained, even though “confirmed” by servative and even reactionary elements, especially the confessions of the defendants, cannot hold water among the upper middle classes. In direct contradic- for a moment since they are full of gross contradic- tion, the Jacobins stood for thoroughgoing democracy, tions, material and psychological. This much seems to for ruthless terror against “aristocrats” and “suspects” me hardly open to question. But, having said this, ex- and for certain social and economic measures in the actly what have we said? What are the political impli- interest of the petty bourgeois masses upon whom they cations of this conclusion? depended for support. Between the two, no compro- I think that we can approach this difficult ques- mise was possible; there simply was not room enough tion with better perspective if we examine the prob- in France politically for them to coexist. lem as it has appeared in the past, in the great French It did not take long before the Girondin depu- Revolution, for example, which we can now study with ties were expelled from the Convention and, together a measure of dispassionate objectivity still impossible with a number of other Girondin leaders, arrested and in the case of the Soviet Union. Any conclusions we placed on trial for their lives. The affair was obviously may draw from such an examination will surely be of a thoroughly political one, yet significantly enough the service in arriving at an understanding of the political trial was prepared largely as a criminal case. Only to a significance of the Moscow trial. minor degree did the fundamental political issues ap- pear either in the indictment or in the proceedings: In the summer of 1793, following the great in- charges were chiefly criminal in character, sometimes surrection of May 30, the party of the Mountain, irrelevant, often clearly without basis in fact. Eugene headed by Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, came to Newton Curtis, in his recent biography of Saint-Just, power, elevated and supported by the awakened might which in its general tone is exceedingly friendly to the of the plebian masses of Paris and other big cities. The Robespierrists, makes the point quite plain: group whom the Jacobins‡ thus displaced as ruling “Saint-Just’s speeches, particularly his denuncia- party, the Girondins, had been outstanding revolution- tions, rarely follow a logical outline. In this case, he ists in their day, eager champions of the republic, im- launched forth at once with the monstrous and unprov- placable enemies of despotism in France and in Eu- able charge that the Girondins had a scheme, orga- rope. But now they had developed into a conservative nized by General Dillon, to restore the dauphin, a ca- force, convinced that the revolution had gone “far lamity from which the country had been saved only enough” and determined to prevent it from going any by their arrest.”§ †- This article was written before the second series of trials (Radek-Piatakov). ‡- It is customary, but inaccurate, to identify the Jacobins with the party of the Mountain. Many of the Girondins were members of the Jacobin Club. The Mountain was really the left wing of the Jacobins. §- Here and in other quotations the emphasis is my own. 1 2 Lovestone: The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective [Feb. 1937] “It seems difficult to deny that the attack (of plan was to cause a food shortage and use it to arouse Saint-Just) shrivels into insignificance when confronted the people against the government.... He then de- by the defense (of the Girondins). Brissot, in particu- scribed the famine plot in more detail. Here foodstuffs lar, has proved his case, even though in a few instances were buried, there arrivals of grain intercepted, else- he went too far. The truth is that the Girondins were where the citizens embittered by seditious speeches. not monarchist in 1793 and the charge was thoroughly The prime author of the scheme was the English gov- disingenuous. It was easily demolished by bringing out ernment. At this point, he opens the second and long- discrepancies in fact and date, as Brissot did. Probably est part of his oration, a definite attack on the Extrem- it was because he realized the weakness of his argu- ists. His term for them is le parti de l’etranger (the party ment from a legal standpoint that Saint-Just envel- of the foreigner)”... oped it in purposed obscurity. The vague, inconsis- “From the critical standpoint, the unfairness of tent statements, the innuendo, were all intended to the accusation is note the less apparent. The Hebertists throw dust in his opponents’ eyes. It is significant that were not traitors, though they were unwise and ex- most of his denunciations are in just this vein. The travagant, less balanced and able than the fact is that the real case against the Girondins, as at a Robespierrists.... The impossibility of any foreign later date the real case against Danton, was purely po- government’s buying out two whole political factions litical. These men must go, not because they were trai- is matched by the absurdity that their leaders, who tors or guilty of conspiracy. They had to go, partly had so deeply damned themselves in royalist eyes by because these latter conscientiously believed that the regicide and terrorism, should wish or dare to restore safety of the state required it.... The legal justification the Bourbon throne.” for their action was largely eyewash and they knew it, no In his work on the French Revolution, Kropot- doubt, as well as anyone... The report is weak in fact but kin presents us with another feature of the trial of the it was strong in effect, because the logic of events was on Hebertists, of particular significance in the present con- its side.” nection: The Girondins were convicted, of course; some “The Hebertists were sent before the Revolution- were executed and others imprisoned. But within the ary Tribunal and the Committees had the baseness to party of the Mountain itself, new enemies arose. At make up what was known then as an “amalgam.” In the left were the Extremists, led by Hebert and the same batch were included bankers and German Chaumette, who championed an “extravagant” pro- agents, together with Momoro, who since 1790 had gram of economic, social, and political reforms, corre- become known for his communist ideas and who had sponding to the obscure, inarticulate but intense aspi- given absolutely everything he possessed to the revo- rations of the lowest sections of the city plebs, includ- lution; with Leclerc, the friend of Chalier, and ing the embryo proletariat. During the early winter of Anacharsis Cloots, ‘the orator of mankind.’...” 1793-1794, the Extremists — or “Ultras,” as they were And so, on March 24, 1794, after a trial of a called — had their way, more or less, because Robes- character that may be imagined, the Hebertists were pierre needed their support in order to consolidate the executed! Jacobin dictatorship against the threat from the right. Now Robespierre turned against the right. For But towards the beginning of March, the break came. around Danton and his friends had gathered a new Again the issue was entirely political but again the conservative concentration composed of elements agi- Robespierrists disguised it as a wretched criminal plot, tating for peace (the “Pacifists”), demanding the ces- as a vicious conspiracy, fomented by the foreign en- sation or relaxation of the Terror (the “Indulgents”), emy, to undermine the foundations of the republic. and protesting against the radical economic and social “Beginning with an exposition of the familiar measures of the Mountain (the “Friends of Order and foreign plot theory,” Curtis narrates, “he (Saint-Just) Property”). Against this “Citra” faction, Robespierre developed the idea that the foreigner, alarmed at the loosed all his thunder and, in doing so, was forced to decree depriving the revolution’s enemies of their prop- adopt a good deal of the program of the Hebertists erty, felt the need of moving more rapidly. The new whom he had only recently dispatched to the guillo- Lovestone: The Moscow Trial in Historical Perspective [Feb. 1937] 3 tine. Again the revolutionary trials, again the fantastic rid of a dangerous foe.” accusations of monarchism and plotting with the for- The “batch” for the guillotine was made up in eign enemy, again the “amalgams,” again the convic- the usual way: tions: “The Committees again made an ‘amalgam,’” “Phlegmatic, in sententious tones,” writes Curtis, Kropotkin tells us, “in order to bewilder public opin- “Saint-Just recited (against the Dantonists) the most ion and sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal singular and monstrous indictment ever dreamed of... Danton, together with Desmoulins†; Basire; Fabre, The real issue was political, not juridical, as in all the accused of forgery; Lacrouix, accused of robbery; great processes of the Revolution.... The charges of con- Chabot, who acknowledged that he had received (with- spiracy and black-hearted crime were made in every one out having spent) a hundred thousand francs from the of these cases with monotonous regularity and with as royalists for some unknown affair; the forger, Delaunay; little foundation in one as in another.
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