Levine, Trotsky & Stalin
Sirs:
What in the world possessed you to describe me in your issue of Feb. 1 as "an avowed, outspoken partisan of Trotsky?" Did the Moscow trial upset you so much? Your account shows that you handled the Moscow end of it much more authoritatively than the Manhattan end.
My article in the New York American, on the basis of which you characterized me as a violent Trotskyite, said:
"The frame-up system has been the cornerstone of Soviet 'justice' since the middle of 1918. Trotsky and Radek, Zinoviev and Bukharin helped build it."
My Stalin published in 1931 and republished in a new edition in England in 1936, says:
"The Bolshevist guillotine was built by Lenin. Trotsky as well as Stalin, Kamenev as well as Zinoviev, helped in its erection."
Does that sound like the statement of a Trotskyite?
Since you coupled me with Eugene Lyons, whom you characterize as "a thoroughly professional journalist," as against my being an unprofessional partisan, the following correction is in order:
... I never belonged to any political party or clique. For more than 20 years I have consistently and deliberately pursued the course of an independent journalist and author. In fact, there is nothing in my record which does not entitle me to be called "a thoroughly professional journalist." (See story by George Seldes in current Esquire.)
And now for the last correction. "The first quoting interview ever given by J. Stalin to a foreign journalist was obtained by Eugene Lyons," you pontifically announce. Wrong once more!
The first personal quoting interview ever given by J. Stalin was granted to Mr. Hearst's New York American. The interviewer was none other than the eminent Jerome Davis, lately of Yale. It was published in all the Hearst papers on Oct. 3, 1926. The then shy Stalin presented to the Hearst readers his first autographed picture ever given for publication.
But that is not all. Actually the first quoting interview with Stalin was obtained by yours truly in 1924 for the New York American. It was in the form of a series of questions submitted in writing and answered in writing by the mysterious Georgian in the Kremlin. I had the honor of seeing it published in full in the Soviet press simultaneously with its publication in America. . . .
ISAAC DON LEVINE
New York City