Table Of ContentParty Opposition to Stalin (1930-1932) and the First
Moscow Trial
Pierre Broué
From Sochi, on 25 September 1936, J. V. Stalin and A. A. Zhdanov
addressed a telegram to the other members of the Politburo stating:
Yagoda has definitely proved himself to be incapable of
unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. e OGPU is
four years behind in this matter.1
e same charge was formulated in the resolution approved by the
February-March session of the Central Committee of the All-Union
Communist Party (Bolsheviks):
e People's Commissariat of Internal affairs has fallen
behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these
most inexorable enemies of the people.2
Everybody is aware today that there was not, in the thirties, a "terrorist
bloc" of "harmful activity, diversion and espionage of the Japanese-
German-Trotskyite agents" carried out by the Old Bolsheviks and
defendants of the Moscow Trials. But recent discoveries, first in the Trotskii
Papers (former "closed part") in the Houghton Library, then in the
Nicolaevsky Collection in the archives of the Hoover Institution at
Stanford, have taught us that in 1932, that is to say four years before the
trials, a "bloc of the oppositions" was organized, which was initially a
"Trotskiite-Zinov'evite bloc" and that it was destroyed, without its presence
being realized by the routine repression of its members. is evidence
1
suggests that the existence of such a bloc was discovered only during the
investigations in preparation for the First Moscow Trial. e charges
against the so-called "terrorists" in the First Moscow Trial were really
charges against the members of this "political bloc," depicted as a "terrorist
bloc" by the procurator and the defendants themselves.3
e first document found in Trotskii's archives is an undated Fall
1932) report by Trotskii's son, Lev Sedov, written in chemical ink,
informing Trotskii of the constitution of a bloc composed of Trotskiists,
Zinov'evists, former Trotskiites called "capitulators" around I. N. Smirnov,
and the Lominadze-Sten group, and that negotiations were in progress, not
only with a Zinov'evist dissident group headed by Safarov and Tarkhanov,
but also with the so-called "Riutin group." We also learn through Trotskii's
answer to his son of a subsequent discussion between father and son about
the question of the validity of the slogan "Down with Stalin!" and the
relation to be developed with the "liberals" (Smirnov group) and the
"rightists" (Riutin or rather the Riutin-Slepkov group). e messenger sent
by I. N. Smirnov to L. L. Sedov in Berlin in 1932 was was E. S. Holzman,
who was to be one of the defendants during the First Moscow Trial. He
was to confess later that he had met Trotskii and Sedov in Copenhagen,
where Sedov had never been.
Some documents found in Sedov's Papers in Hoover cast useful
supplementary light on the case. For the first time, we learn something
about the man who was depicted by procurator Vyshinskii and some of the
defendants as the one who brought the terrorist directives from Trotskii to
the USSR, that is Iuri Petrovich Gavenis (sometimes Gaven), an Old
Bolshevik working in Gosplan. Gavenis never appeared on the bench of
defendants but was later shot, according to Roy Medvedev, carried out on a
stretcher, after having been savagely tortured, and having refused to make a
"confession." In 1936 Trotskii and Sedov denied having had any contact
with him. In fact, they had. Allowed to go to Germany in order to received
2
medical care, Gavenis wrote to Trotskii and got an interview with Lev
Sedov who wrote an account of it. Gavenis gave information about the
bloc, supplementing Holzman's. He also gave information about his own
"O"-group (probably Osinskii) and seems to have agreed to bring back to
the Soviet Union a message to the Trotskiite group itself—in spite of his
worry about the latter having been infiltrated by OGPU. e
correspondence between Trotskii and Sedov demonstrates that father and
son were astounded at the beginning of the trial when they saw that
Smirnov and Holzman, already guilty in Stalin's eyes, did not content
themselves with confessing the truth but accused themselves of fantastic
crimes.4 Sedov at first wondered whether he should tell the truth, publicly,
but finally decided to deny everything, except proven contacts, which
seemed to him the only way of hindering the annihilation of the
defendants. All these persons can be traced in the Trotskii-Sedov
correspondence under the following pseudonyms: "Ko," "Kolokoltsev" or
"Kolokolnikov" for I. N. Smirnov, "Orlov" for E. S. Holzman, "Sorokin"
for Gavenis. Lev Sedov was the first to understand that Gavenis had
refused to confess, which explained his absence among the defendants in
front of the court.
ere is today a trend which appears in the Western historiography of
the thirties and is best expressed by the works of J. Arch Getty. From an
excellent consideration of sources, criticism of the testimonies, establishes
of the lack of first-hand accounts for the "political" version of the emigres
(and especially of the Menshevik historian B. I. Nicolaevsky), Professor
Getty and other distinguished authors seriously question the validity of
several interpretations of the internal party opposition, beginning with the
Riutin affair. Before criticizing what he wrote, I must acknowledge the
merit of Professor Getty who is the first and, as far as I know, the only one
to have mentioned, in his own work, an article of mine which contradicts
some of his views.
3
Here are the three texts found by the Leon Trotskii Institute team in
1980 during our investigation of the Trotskii Papers in the Houghton
Library. e first is Sedov's letter written in chemical ink, date unknown,
probably the end of September 1932:
e (...) has been organized. It includes the
Zinovievites, the Sten-Lominadze group and the
Trotskyites (former "c............."). e Safar.-Tarkhan. group
have not formally joined yet—their position is too
extreme; they will join very soon. Z and K's declaration
about the very serious mistake they made in '27 was made
during negotiations with us about the bloc, just before Z
and K's deportation.
e collapse of I. N. (.........), Preobrazh. and Uf. group
(the three of them belonged to the center) was caused by a
sick, half-distracted man. He had been arrested by accident
and started talk. No document could be found at I. N.'s of
the others what could be "Trotskyite literature." A few days
before he was arrested, I. N. said to our informer: "X has
betrayed. I am expecting to be arrested any day." anks to
the presence of his Markovkin who had thoroughly
informed him, he was ready. Unfortunately, I. N. did not
have time to convey the information."
e informer asserts there had been no mistake from
abroad, or links with abroad.
If there are any important points at issue, I will wire
before ursday (according to instructions).
e collapse of the "Old People" is a bad blow but the
links with the workers have been preserved.5
4
Of course, the words deleted are "bloc," "capitulators," "Smirnov."
"Safar." means Safarov, "Tarkhan." Tarkhanov, "Z" Zinov'ev, "K"
Kamenev, "Preobrazh." Preobrazhenskii, "Uf." N. I. Ufimtsev. "His
Markovkin" seems to be an OGPU man connected with Smirnov and "the
informer" is obviously E. S. Holzman. "Old People" means Grunstein,
who had capitulated recently.
Trotskii answered in the middle of October:
1) My letter home had already been written before I
got yours referring to Kol. e letter was obviously for the
Left Opposition, in the true meaning of the word. But you
may show it to the Informer in order to give him an idea of
my point of view.
2) e proposal of a bloc seems to me altogether
reasonable. I insist on the fact that it is a bloc and not a
unification.
3) My proposal of a declaration is obviously for our
fraction of the Left Opposition, in the strict meaning of
the term (and not for our own allies). I don't agree with
the allies' opinion according to which we should wait for
the rightists to go further, as regards our fraction. Against
repression, one fights by anonymity and conspiracy, not
silence. A waste of time is unthinkable: from a political
point of view, it would mean leaving the ground to the
Rightists.
4) How is the bloc going to express itself? For the time
being, mainly by mutual information. e allies inform us
about the Soviet Union in the same way as we do for them
about the Communist International. We must come to an
agreement about a very accurate way of correspondence.
5
e allies must send us papers for the Biulleten. e
staff of the Biulleten will commit themselves to publish the
allies' documents, but reserve the right to comment on
them freely.
5) e bloc does not prevent mutual criticism. We will
fight unrelentingly and ruthlessly against any propaganda
from the allies in favor of the capitulators (Grunstein, etc.).
6) e question of an economic program has been
sketched in the last issue of the Biulleten and [will be]
developed in the following issues.
A few questions:
1) What does the Declaration of the 18 mean (Sots-
Vestnik)?
2) What about the Decist, Workers Opposition and
other Ultra-Left groups?
3) What does the ally think of the draft of platform
published in the last issue of the Biulleten?
4) What does he think about the problem of the
Communist International (we attack the same importance
to this problem as to those of the USSR)?
As to the general situation of the country, the
information we get does not differ much from the image I
could get through a careful reading of Russian newspapers.
e conditions of secrecy maintained in Trotskii's entourage as well as
his own unwillingness years later to admit the existence of the bloc are
better expressed in a letter written by his secretary, Jean van Heijennoort,
from Mexico to Lev Sedov in Paris on 3 July 1937, which enclosed a copy
of Trotskii's letter quoted above:
Dear Friend,
6
Here is a copy of a letter found in the archives. It was
in a "confidential" file with other odd things. ere is
neither a date nor an other piece of information and this is
an exact copy. e original is badly-type-written, it seems
to be a copy of a hand-written letter. Here are a few clues
given to me by my uncle.
1) e letter must have been written by me and sent to
L. S. in Berlin..
2) Kol., as mentioned in it, must be Kolokolnikov, the
nickname given to Smirnov by L. S.
3) e question of the bloc was considered in the letter,
as some of the capitulators were becoming dissatisfied
again with the official policy, without unifying the Left
Opposition, and far from it.. e content of the "bloc" is
strictly defined in the letter, and basically comes to mutual
information.
4) e letter can be dated after the date of the meeting
with H-n and that of the publishing in Sots. V. of the
declaration of the 18.
Would it be possible to find the original? Of course, we
will not make use of this page with N. Y. before receiving
further information from you.7
Of course, "H-n" is Holzman, the "declaration of the 18" the Riutin
platform, "Sots. V." is Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik, "N. Y." the Dewey
Commission.
At the time, when we discovered the three documents referred to
above, we had only a vague idea concerning the links between the exiles
and the Soviet Union. Sedov's Papers at Hoover helped us to fill the gaps in
our knowledge. Trotskii's son had succeeded in organizing in the Soviet
Union, as well as in several diplomatic missions abroad, a network of
7
informants that gave him useful and serious information. is is how—
years before Nicolaevsky, the Letter of an Old Bolshevik, and Ciliga's and
Victor Serge's books—he was in possession of information concerning the
activity and the content of the "Platform" of the so-called Riutin group.
During the same period, he was able to explain in his own correspondence
that the Riutin group was the work of rightists leaders, the "lieutenants"
immediately below the "chiefs" Bukharin, Rykov and Tomskii, angry to
have been "betrayed" by them. He was also informed that the inspirers of
the group and the writers of the Platform were very critical of their own
past attitude towards Trotskii and the Trotskiites and that they were trying
to propose a combination of the two platforms: the economic program of
the neo-NEP borrowed from the Right program, and the restoration of
party democracy borrowed from the Left program. e Sedov Papers
finally inform us that the "Rightists" were engaged in negotiations with a
spokesman of the bloc, i.e., with I. N. Smirnov, and that the Smirnov
group was inclined to postpone any political initiative until an agreement
was reached with the "Rightists."
Who were the members of the "Bloc" as it was announced to Trotskii
by L. L. Sedov? Let us begin with the so-called "Trotskiites" themselves
who survived, not as a true organization, but as a network of
correspondents and contacts in several major towns, places of deportation
and isolation. In 1932 Lev Sedov kept in touch regulardly and, apparently,
safely with several people in the Soviet Union. One of them has not been
as yet identified: he appears in the archives under the name "Ten—sov"
(beginning and end of his real last name), and the initials M. M. and T. T.,
as well as the pen-name "Svoj." We only know that he was an Old
Bolshevik, personally well acquainted with Kote Tsintadze and V. S.
Kasparova, and a former member of the Trade Mission in London in 1930.
Another correspondent, publicly known as "Piotr" after the publication by
Pravda in January 1928 of a letter to him from Trotskii, was N. N.
8
Pereverzev, a former official of an international railway organization in
Switzerland according to Ruth Fischer. A third, probably the most
important, who was able to correspond with Sedov and send him secret
party circulars, as well as to inform him about public events, was
Kocherets, known in the Opposition as Vet., Vetter and "the Frenchman,"
but publicly known under the pen-name of J. Renaud, translator of the
works of the French novelist and poet Louis Aragon. Among the other
people involved in the underground activity of the Left Opposition were
two persons from Moscow: the Old Bolshevik Andrei Konstantinov
("Kostia") and a History Professor, A. M. Shabion, who was later suspected
of being manipulated by the OGPU. Many other people were active at the
time, among them the former Chekist Nadezhda Ostrovskaia, and the
former leader of Workers Opposition Rafail. But the first three were the
people who informed Sedov and wrote to him about the declaration of
Zinov'ev leaving for exile, according to which he thought that their most
serious political mistake had been to break with Trotskii in 1927.
In 1931 and 1932, all information gathered from the Soviet Union
indicated the "oppositionist" mood of Zinov'ev, Kamenev and their close
friends, who seem to have been especially worried about Stalin's
catastrophic policy in Germany, which opened the door and paved the way
for Hitler and his gang. G. L. Shklovskii, who was the contact between
Zinov'ev and his friends abroad, especially Ruth Fischer and Maslow,
regulardly brought information showing the state of mind of the former
capitulators who were beginning to regret their capitulation. e Soviet
Minister in Prague, Arosov, seems to have been playing a similar role.
Lev Sedov called the Smirnov group either the "former capitulators" or
the "Trotskiite capitulators." Everybody had known, from 1929 on, that
people in the Smirnov group had not really capitulated but were trying to
fool the apparatus, and were capable of organizing themselves as an
Opposition within the party: the fact was so universally known that Andrés
9
Nin, the Spaniard deported from the Soviet Union in August 1930,
explained it openly to his German comrades of Die permanente
Revolution who printed his declaration without apparent problem.
Jan Ernestovich Sten, a Lett, and Vasso Vissarionovich Lominadze, a
Georgian, had once been good Stalinist henchmen. "Young Turks," "Left
Stalinists," they had already begun to organize and act as an opposition in
1929, had been unmasked in 1930 and were continuing their oppositionist
activities despite public confession of mistakes and self-criticism, which
induced the apparatus to call them "double-dealers." In 1931, Sedov's
correspondents wrote to him that Lominadze's people were very busy, not
only in the Caucasus party apparatus, but also in the ranks and cadres of
youth groups. Sten as well as Lominadze, Shatzkin, Chaplin and many
others, had been among the leaders of the first Komsomol generation who
were to be shot "en masse" during the Ezhovshchina.
Safarov—an Old Bolshevik from Leningrad and ex-French exile, then a
specialist on the Eastern people—and Tarkhanov—a Komsomol leader and
Soviet political adviser in China—were former Zinov'evists having broken
with Zinov'ev after his capitulation. ey had been the first group to
elaborate, in 1928, a theory about the necessity of a "double face" for
oppositionists as a cover for political opposition action.
We, of course, know everything necessary about the group of
Leningrad "Zinov'evists," the bulk of the party before the revolution, the
core of the apparatus from 1917 to 1926 in the former tsarist capital.
What about the genesis of the Bloc? All the elements in Sedov's
correspondence seem to indicate that the initiative for the regrouping
belonged to Ivan Nikitich Smirnov and his group of former "capitulators."
If we decide to treat the official minutes of the first Moscow Trial as a
palimpsest, suppressing from them all mention of terrorism, we find the
story of a political evolution of political people in a changing but dramatic
situation. Kamenev said that Safarov was one of the first, probably at the
10
