Books·
THE MOSCOW TRIALS, 1942 VERSION
LIKE
LADY
MACBETH's BLOODSTAINS,
the Moscow Trials are an inex·
pugnable moral stain which no amount of washing seems to affect. To
judge by the repeated efforts that have been made to alter the widely
unfavorable public opinion on the Trials and their attendant massacres,
one might think that the perpetrators-and their acolytes-had uneasy
consciences. However, it's really not at all a matter of bad conscience,
but simply of political calculation.
The terrible reality of the world war apparently is not enough for
these students of history. They also feel they must rake up the Moscow
Trials again, as though some new data had appeared on which to base a
revision of previous opinion on these pseudo-judicial monstrosities. The
pretext is the Nazi-Soviet war and the hasty and superficial deductions
drawn from the fact that the U.S.S.R., with a population more than
double that of Germany and an army in proportion, was not conquered
by Hitler as easily as Denmark, Greece or France.
A myth is being created and popularized, skillfully nurtured by
the
Stalinists and their veteran fellow-travellers, that the relative fighting
power of the Red Army is due to the previous extermination of all poten·
tial opponents of Stalin, conveniently amalgamated under the generic
term, "Fifth Columnists."*
The note was first struck by the Hon. Joseph E. Davies, former Ameri–
can ambassador to the Soviet Union. Speaking in Chicago last June, three
days after Hitler's invasion of Russia had begun, Mr. Davies declared:
"There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941- they had shot them.
The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason." This is to be
found, with other observations on the same level, in the anthology entitled
Mission to Moscow.*
This work is a mixed salad composed of official dispatches selected
by the author and often edited by him, mingled with extracts from his
private journal also chosen and edited by him, and seasoned with topical
comments on the intellectual level of an election speech. It goes without
saying that we have no guarantee even of the authenticity of the fragments
reprinted: a diplomatic publication is always carefully edited for reasons
of state, and furthermore in this case the job has been done not by per-
*Every age has its catchwords which relieve us of the painful duty of thinking,
and one cannot help wondering how we got along, for so many centuries, without this
invaluable term, "Fifth Columnist." But, as Goethe's Mephisto observes, "Where
id eas are lacking, words come to the rescue."
*Mission to Moscow.
By Joseph E. Davies. Simon
&
Schuster. $3.00.
160
