Dewey Commission
Encyclopedia
The Dewey Commission was initiated in March 1937 by the "American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky
." It was named after its Chairman, John Dewey
. Its other members were Carleton Beals
, Otto Ruehle, Benjamin Stolberg, and Secretary Suzanne La Follette
, Alfred Rosmer
, Wendelin Thomas, Edward A. Ross
, John Chamberlain
, Carlo Tresca
, and Francisco Zamora.
Following months of investigation, the Dewey Commission made its findings public in New York on September 21, 1937.
's home in Coyoacan, Mexico, D.F., from April 10 to April 17, 1937.
Trotsky was defended by the lawyer Albert Goldman
. John Finerty acted as the commission’s legal counsel.
The commission cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials
and, moreover, exposed the scale of the alleged frame-up of all other defendants during these trials.
Among its conclusions, it stated: "That the conduct of the Moscow trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no effort was made to ascertain the truth.
in 1936. It comprised Franz Boas
, John Chamberlain
, John Dos Passos
, Louis Hacker, Sidney Hook
, Suzanne La Follette
, Reinhold Niebuhr
, George Novack
, Norman Thomas
and Edmund Wilson
. Dewey, then seventy-eight years old, agreed to head its Commission of Inquiry.
Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true.
For example, Georgy Pyatakov
testified that he had flown to Oslo
in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov
, confessed to taking part in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year.
The Dewey Commission published its findings in the form of a 422-page book titled Not Guilty. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary the commission wrote: "Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds:
The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."
"Your sub-commission reports with regret the resignation, before the hearings were concluded, of one of its members, Mr. Carleton Beals. Toward the close of the hearing on the afternoon of April 16, Mr. Beals put to Mr. Trotsky a provocative question based on alleged information which the sub-commission could not check and place on the record. After the hearing our counsel, Mr. John Finerty, advised the sub-commission that questions based on private information were highly improper, would be sufficient cause for mistrial in any ordinary court, and that he could not continue as counsel if they were to be permitted in future. Mr. Beals then angrily declared that either he or Mr. Finerty must leave the sub-commission. Still, he promised to attend a conference that evening to discuss the matter. But although we waited for him until midnight he did not come. The next morning, before the opening of the session, Mrs. Beals brought us his resignation, in which he charged that the Commission was not conducting a serious inquiry."
Beals subsequently wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled "The Fewer Outsiders the Better" criticizing the Commission as biased and in the hands of a "purely pro-Trotsky clique."
and signed by Arthur Koestler
, C. E. M. Joad
, Frank Horrabin, George Padmore
, Julian Symons
, H. G. Wells
, F. A. Ridley
, C. A. Smith
and John Baird, among others, it was suggested that the Nuremberg Trials
then underway were an invaluable opportunity for establishing "historical truth and bearing upon the political integrity" of figures of international standing. Specifically they called for Rudolf Hess
to be interrogated about his alleged meeting with Trotsky and that the Gestapo records then in the hands of Allied experts be examined for any proof of any "liaison between the Nazi Party or State and Trotsky or the other old Bolshevik leaders indicted at the Moscow trials...".
American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky
The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky was a pseudo-judicial process set up by American Marxists following the first of the Moscow Trials. It had no powers of subpeona, nor official imprimatur from any government...
." It was named after its Chairman, John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
. Its other members were Carleton Beals
Carleton Beals
Carleton Beals was a radical American journalist, author, historian, and a crusader with special interests in Latin America.-Early years:...
, Otto Ruehle, Benjamin Stolberg, and Secretary Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne Clara La Follette was an American journalist and author who advocated for libertarian feminism in the first half of the 20th century. As an editor she helped found several magazines. She was an early and ardent feminist and a vocal anti communist.-Family:She was born in Washington state...
, Alfred Rosmer
Alfred Rosmer
Alfred Rosmer was a syndicalist leader before World War I and one of the few leaders of that movement to oppose the war from a revolutionary internationalist position....
, Wendelin Thomas, Edward A. Ross
Edward A. Ross
Edward Alsworth Ross was a progressive American sociologist, eugenicist, and major figure of early criminology.-Biography:...
, John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...
, Carlo Tresca
Carlo Tresca
Carlo Tresca was an Italian-born American newspaper editor, orator, and labor organizer who was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World during the decade of the 1910s. Tresca is remembered as a leading public opponent of fascism, stalinism, and Mafia infiltration of the trade union movement...
, and Francisco Zamora.
Following months of investigation, the Dewey Commission made its findings public in New York on September 21, 1937.
Sub-commission
A sub-commission, comprising the first five commission members above, conducted thirteen hearings at Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's home in Coyoacan, Mexico, D.F., from April 10 to April 17, 1937.
Trotsky was defended by the lawyer Albert Goldman
Albert Goldman (politician)
Albert Goldman was an American Trotskyist and lawyer to the labor movement.Born Albert Verblen in Chicago, he studied at Medhill High School and then the University of Cincinnati. He also studied to be a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College...
. John Finerty acted as the commission’s legal counsel.
The commission cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
and, moreover, exposed the scale of the alleged frame-up of all other defendants during these trials.
Among its conclusions, it stated: "That the conduct of the Moscow trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no effort was made to ascertain the truth.
Background
The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky had been set up following the first of the Moscow "Show Trials"Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
in 1936. It comprised Franz Boas
Franz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
, John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, Louis Hacker, Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne Clara La Follette was an American journalist and author who advocated for libertarian feminism in the first half of the 20th century. As an editor she helped found several magazines. She was an early and ardent feminist and a vocal anti communist.-Family:She was born in Washington state...
, Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
, George Novack
George Novack
George Novack was an American Communist politician and Marxist theoretician....
, Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
and Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
. Dewey, then seventy-eight years old, agreed to head its Commission of Inquiry.
Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true.
For example, Georgy Pyatakov
Georgy Pyatakov
Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader during the Russian Revolution, and member of the Left Opposition.Pyatakov was born August 6, 1890 in the settlement of the Mariinsky sugar factory which was owned by his father, an ethnic Russian, Leonid Timofeyevich Pyatakov.He...
testified that he had flown to Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov
Ivan Smirnov
Ivan Smirnov may refer to:* Ivan Nikitich Smirnov , Russian revolutionary* Ivan Nikolayevich Smirnov , Russian guitarist* Ivan Vasilyevich Smirnov , Russian pilot...
, confessed to taking part in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year.
The Dewey Commission published its findings in the form of a 422-page book titled Not Guilty. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary the commission wrote: "Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds:
- That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no attempt was made to ascertain the truth.
- That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them.
- That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR."
The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."
Trotsky's response
Resignation of Beals
Following the resignation of Beals, Dewey added the following text to the report:"Your sub-commission reports with regret the resignation, before the hearings were concluded, of one of its members, Mr. Carleton Beals. Toward the close of the hearing on the afternoon of April 16, Mr. Beals put to Mr. Trotsky a provocative question based on alleged information which the sub-commission could not check and place on the record. After the hearing our counsel, Mr. John Finerty, advised the sub-commission that questions based on private information were highly improper, would be sufficient cause for mistrial in any ordinary court, and that he could not continue as counsel if they were to be permitted in future. Mr. Beals then angrily declared that either he or Mr. Finerty must leave the sub-commission. Still, he promised to attend a conference that evening to discuss the matter. But although we waited for him until midnight he did not come. The next morning, before the opening of the session, Mrs. Beals brought us his resignation, in which he charged that the Commission was not conducting a serious inquiry."
Beals subsequently wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled "The Fewer Outsiders the Better" criticizing the Commission as biased and in the hands of a "purely pro-Trotsky clique."
Nuremberg Trials
Some ten years later, the Dewey Commission was cited in great detail, when in an open letter to the British press dated 25 February 1946, written by George OrwellGeorge Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
and signed by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, C. E. M. Joad
C. E. M. Joad
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher and broadcasting personality. He is most famous for his appearance on The Brains Trust, an extremely popular BBC Radio wartime discussion programme...
, Frank Horrabin, George Padmore
George Padmore
George Padmore , born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a Trinidadian communist who became a leading Pan-Africanist in his later years.-Early years:...
, Julian Symons
Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, F. A. Ridley
F. A. Ridley
Francis Ambrose Ridley, usually known as Frank Ridley was a marxist and secularist of the United Kingdom.- Life :...
, C. A. Smith
C. A. Smith
Charles A. Smith , known as C. A. Smith, was a British politician who held prominent positions in several minor parties.Born in Bishop Auckland, Smith studied at the University of Durham and the University of London, then trained as a school teacher, and later worked as a tutor for the Workers'...
and John Baird, among others, it was suggested that the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
then underway were an invaluable opportunity for establishing "historical truth and bearing upon the political integrity" of figures of international standing. Specifically they called for Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
to be interrogated about his alleged meeting with Trotsky and that the Gestapo records then in the hands of Allied experts be examined for any proof of any "liaison between the Nazi Party or State and Trotsky or the other old Bolshevik leaders indicted at the Moscow trials...".