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Trotsky and his troop, of whom the 21 are only samples, originally began their machinations against Lenin and are implicated in the infliction of a bullet wound upon the founder of the Soviet Union in 1919 which contributed to his death in 1924. Trotsky was a spy in the pay of Germany from 1921 on, notwithstanding that he had just won the civil war for the Reds and continued until 1925 as Commissar of the Red Army, which he created. In more recent times Yagoda, acting under orders from Trotsky, caused three of Russia's most eminent physicians and scientists to murder outright or hasten the deaths of 1) famed Writer Maxim Gorky; 2) Yagoda's predecessor as secret police chief, Menzhinsky, and 3) Kuibishev, who was chief of the First Five-Year Plan.
Trotsky was also able to have acts of terrorism and wrecking performed in all parts of the Soviet Union, and the general picture presented by the State's indictment is that the friends of Trotsky occupied until a few months ago towering positions from which they could and did cause most of any unfortunate conditions which may exist now in the Soviet Union. Among innumerable specific disasters charged up to Trotsky & Co. is the wreck at Volochaevsk of a military freight train.
Guilty? Judicial Field Marshal Vasily Ulrich, famed "Shooting Judge" of Moscow trials, appeared on the bench last week wearing for the first time the Order of Lenin, "Highest Soviet Decoration," which he received after the last trial. With a bored air he superintended the routine by which prisoner after prisoner, as his name is called, pops up from the prisoner's box, pleads guilty to his section of the indictment (which he has already signed before entering the courtroom), pops down.
After ten of the 21 had thus popped on schedule, Prisoner Krestinsky created last week's first big sensation by making a play, not to the gallery,* but to "The Box."
The Box is located above and behind the judges' bench at Moscow trials in semidarkness. Now & then last week a cigaret could be seen glowing in The Box. It is believed to be at the disposal of the Dictator, but if he comes to watch proceedings darkness hides him.
Krestinsky, speaking and gesturing as though he were appealing to an invisible Stalin behind the glowing cigaret, declared: "I am not guilty. I have been a member of the Bolshevik Party from 1903 until my arrest, and I believe that I am, still a Bolshevik. I did not speak the truth before my examiners.† I lied, of my own free will. I will tell the truth now so that it will reach the ears of the Soviet Government heads. I am not a Trotskyist."
When, after this, the Dictator did not come forward and intervene from The Box, none doubted that overnight the Secret Political Police would get Krestinsky in a frame of mind to confess to everything on the morrow and he did, visibly a broken man. Meanwhile, all the rest of the prisoners popped up & down with their confessions.
Signals. As at the previous Moscow trials, the prisoners, drawn out into elaborations of their confessions by Public Prosecutor Andrei Vishinsky last week, gave the now familiar signals that everyone in court was repeating a rehearsed drama.