JAY MARTIN
525
And so the hearings were begun. All of the thirteen sessions that fol–
lowed unfolded in pretty much the same way. The commissioners raised
various questions concerning the charges against Trotsky. He answered
vigorously, evincing a remarkable command of detail and a penetrating
capacity for analysis . Despite his heavy accent, Trotsky spoke with
exceptional clarity, sometimes even with wit and beauty, and always
with impeccable logic, in his own defense. Dewey showed a particular
interest in Trotsky'S activities with Lenin during the early stages of the
Revolution. The investigation into Trotsky'S activities since the acces–
sion of Stalin was minute.
Lorine Pruette, a journalist who reported the trial, gave a vivid
description of the setting:
As they sit at the green baize table at the head of the long room in
the house of Diego Rivera, the order is always the same: Otto
Ruehle, former Reichstag Deputy; Carleton Beals, authority on
Latin America, who translates the official pronouncements for the
impassive Mexican worker delegates sitting at the back of the
small, hand-picked audience; Mr. Dewey in the center; Miss
Suzanne La Follette, black-haired, white-faced, intense; Benjamin
Stolberg, labor journalist. Dewey is quiet, slow-spoken, and quick–
witted in Yankee shrewdness. In the audience, crowded with repre–
sentatives of the press, one person stands out, Frida Kahlo, stately
in native costume, with jade beads at her throat, her black hair
coiled in loops.
To Miss Pruette, the scene
might almost be a Ph.D. examination-except for the armed
guards at the door and the cordon of police flung around the blue–
walled villa; except for the careful checking of guns, even of the
commissioners, at their own insistence; except for the windows of
what was Trotsky'S study, which are not only boarded up but bar–
ricaded with heavy adobe brick.
A war of words went on inside the hearing room, as well as outside
and around Casa Azul. This hearing was rapidly becoming a catalyst for
the conflict between the unbending supporters of the Revolution and
those who were skeptical of it. The move that Stalin and Vyshinsky had
made
to
accuse Trotsky of treason so as
to
render him impotent as a dis–
senter, since he was beyond their reach, was in danger of backfiring.
Trotsky'S defense was getting unexpected publicity. The American
