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PARTISAN REVIEW
Committee for the Defense of Trotsky very actively issued bulletins,
press releases, and announcements on his behalf. It contacted labor
unions, sent out publicity materials, and disseminated the details of
Trotsky's defense, which soon turned into a wholesale attack upon
Stalin as a revolutionary-turned-fascist dictator. All of the defendants in
the earlier Moscow trials had made "confessions." Trotsky was more
unreconstructed . Never before had a prominent member of the Revolu–
tion condemned so fully, in reports so widely distributed, the failure of
the Revolution .
The Kremlin mounted a virulent campaign of abuse against the hear–
ings. Communist papers, such as
The Daily Work er
in America, and
many leftist journals made a violent attack upon the hearings and its
chair. For instance, in
The New Masses,
Marion Hammett and William
Smith mocked "the so-called impartial inquiry" : "The hearings merely
presented a rosy picture of Trotsky while blackening the Moscow defen–
dants who implicated him. The commissioners heard only Trotsky's ver–
sion. Suzanne La Follette's questions were so biased that even Mr.
Dewey had to object." Dewey was attacked as a deluded old man who
had once been a friend of the Revolution but now was merely duped by
the enemies of socialism. In the USSR, Dewey was charged with being
"an enemy of peace and progress."
In the midst of the hearings, a dramatic event occurred. Carleton
Beals resigned in protest. It was evident to all that this was a party strat–
egy to shift attention away from Stalin's charges and Trotsky's defense,
and to make the Commission itself the subject of controversy. Naturally,
as expected, Beals's resignation itself took over the headlines. His criti–
cism of the committee, rather than the substance of the hearings,
became the focus of the news . He was ready with a series of announce–
ments. "Thus far," he told the reporters in an evident attempt to dis–
credit Trotsky'S damning testimony against Stalin, "no investigation has
been conducted, but merely a pink tea party-with everyone but myself
uttering sweet platitudes . Trotsky had wings spouting from his shoul–
ders." Beals had the party line down pat, with all the available cliches.
"By its Czarist methods," he told the press, "the Commission prevented
me from clarifying matters." He himself, he suggested, could question
Trotsky effectively, and reveal his counterrevolutionary acts, but only if
the Commission were disbanded . But, "until Trotsky is willing to dis–
avow the stupidities of the Commission, he can twiddle his thumbs so
far as I am concerned," Beals concluded.
Back in Washington, D.C. , Soviet Ambassador Troyanovsky was try–
ing to persuade newsmen that the commission was a "flop"-his
