1. To Give Representation to Natalia Trotsky 2. To Produce Evidence of Moscow Trials¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents a document published by Socialist Appeal in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, addressed to the Nuremberg War Crimes Commission. Its core argument is that the Moscow Trials of 1936-37, in which Leon Trotsky and other old Bolsheviks were convicted of conspiring with Nazi Germany, can now be definitively exposed as frame-ups. The authors argue that the unique historical opportunity presented by the Allied capture of the entire Gestapo archive and the imprisonment of Rudolf Hess—the only Nazi official named in the Moscow indictments—makes it possible to settle the question once and for all. The chapter thus functions as a formal petition, demanding that Hess be publicly interrogated about his alleged meeting with Trotsky, that Trotsky’s widow Natalia Sedova be permitted to send a representative with cross-examination rights, and that Allied experts be instructed to search the Gestapo records for any evidence of a Nazi-Trotsky liaison.
The chapter reproduces the specific language of the January 1937 indictment, which claimed Trotsky had negotiated territorial concessions, economic collaboration, and diversionist activities in wartime with a Nazi leader, and that the agreement was finalised with Hess. Against this, the chapter marshals the findings of the Dewey Commission of 1937, an independent international body chaired by the liberal philosopher John Dewey. The Commission, whose members were not political adherents of Trotsky, concluded unanimously that the charge of conspiracy with foreign powers was “not only not proved but preposterous.” The chapter quotes the Commission’s verdict that Trotsky had always uncompromisingly advocated the defence of the USSR and opposed fascism, and that the trials were frame-ups.
The historical context is crucial: the trials took place during the Stalinist purges, when the Soviet prosecution relied on forced confessions. The chapter’s polemical target is twofold. First, it implicitly challenges the Stalinist narrative that Trotsky was a Nazi agent, a slander that had been used to justify his murder in 1940 and to discredit the international Trotskyist movement. Second, it confronts the Western Allies and the British Labour and Communist parties, who are named as recipients of the petition, with a demand for historical justice. By invoking the authority of the Dewey Commission and the new availability of Nazi records, the chapter insists that the truth can no longer be evaded. The signatories—including H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and several Labour MPs—lend the petition a broad, non-sectarian political weight, positioning the demand not as a sectarian cause but as a matter of elementary historical and legal integrity.