Dewey Commission

In March 1937, in collaboration with similar European committees, the American Committee in Defense of Trotsky (ACDLT) formed the Commission to Investigate the Allegations of Lev Trotsky during the Moscow Proceedings the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials ). The American philosopher and educator John Dewey, who visited the Soviet Union in 1928, became chairman of the Commission ^[1] .

The main commission included: journalist and activist , journalist and critic , sociologist , sociology professor , literary critic , former member of the Executive Committee Comintern Alfred Rosmer , Italian editor and trade union leader anarchist , former Reichstag deputy , left-wing communist Otto Ryule , and Mexican journalist Francisco Zamora ^[2] . Other commissioners include the anthropologist Franz Boas , the writer John Dos Passos , the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr , the Marxist theorist , the leader of the Socialist Party Norman Thomas , the literary critic Edmund Wilson , the philosopher Sidney Hook ^[3] .

A number of public figures refused to enter the Commission. American historian Charles Austin Bird refused because of the obviousness of fictitious accusations for him. The writer Bernard Shaw , refusing, hinted that Trotsky had better live and write in Mexico, and not in the Stalinist Soviet Union, where his only listeners and readers could be Soviet investigators and prosecutors ^[4] .

The Commission’s meetings were held from April 10 to April 17, 1937 in the Blue House of the Trotsky-Sedov family in Coyoacan. Not all the members of the commission arrived there, but the five men, led by John Dewey himself. Lawyer John Finerty ( eng. John F. Finerty ) acted as a legal advisor to the commission. Chicago lawyer was a lawyer for Trotsky. The only witness, besides Lev Davidovich himself, was his secretary, Jan Frenkel. was considered the “judicial reporter”.

Commission composition

According to the authors of the four-volume biography of Trotsky, Yuri Felshtinsky and George Chernyavsky , “the overwhelming majority of the members of the Commission were liberals. There were no Trotskyists in the Commission ” ^[5] . The Swedish researcher Sven-Eric Holmstrom ( Swede. Sven-Eric Holmström ) adhered to a different opinion: he noted the participation of many members of the commission in the ACDLT, as well as their past connections with Trotskyism ^[6] .

The Bristol Question

An important common place for both the Moscow process and the Dewey Commission meetings was the testimony of Holtzman about a meeting with Trotsky and his son, Lev Sedym, in the lobby of the Bristol Hotel in Copenhagen. Lev Davidovich even devoted a separate article in the journal “Opposition Bulletin” to this particular accusation, which he categorically denied.

Books

• Felshtinsky Y. , Chernyavsky G. “The Case of Leon Trotsky” // Lev Trotsky. Book 4. Enemy number 1. 1929-1940 - M .: Tsentrpoligraf , 2013. - 544 p. - 2500 copies - ISBN 978-5-227-04154-8 .
• Volkogonov D. A. Trotsky. Political portrait . - M .: AST , 1998. - T. 2. - 416 p. - (World history in faces). - ISBN 5-237-00974-3 .
• Knei-Paz B. The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky. - 1st. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. - 652 p. - ISBN 9780198272335 .

Articles

• Holmström S.-E. New Years' Hotel Bristol "Question of the First Moscow Trial of 1936 // Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of the Marxist Theory and Practice. - 2008. - P. 1–63 . - ISSN 1097-3087 . Archived September 1, 2017.
• Trotsky L. Hotel Bristol // Opposition Bulletin (Bolshevik-Leninists) . - 1937. - July ( No. 56–57 ).