格雷弗弗（Grover Furr）：從蘇聯(lián)解密檔案和托洛茨基檔案所見的蘇聯(lián)歷史

"The Soviet Union's History Seen from the Trotsky Archives and Russian Declassified Documents after the Cold War."
講演人：格雷弗弗（Grover Furr）教授

2014年5月20日北京清華大學(xué)

本稿為格雷弗·弗（Grover Furr）教授為北京之行準(zhǔn)備的“蘇聯(lián)斯大林時(shí)代的繼續(xù)革命”之系列講演的第二部分。

A. 導(dǎo)言

自俄國十月革命以來，蘇聯(lián)歷史便一直遭到篡改。首先撒謊的就是那些試圖傾覆革命的勢(shì)力。

因被擊敗而流亡的孟什維克們出版了許多書籍和報(bào)刊，直至上個(gè)世紀(jì)六十年代末。也正是他們奠定了美國和或許其他地方的俄羅斯研究的基礎(chǔ)。

“白軍”（The “Whites”），或曰專制?；蕜?shì)力，以野蠻的行徑攻擊布爾什維克。他們終被挫敗之后走向流亡，主要是在西歐。他們也發(fā)行了不少書籍和報(bào)刊，并且在上個(gè)世紀(jì)二三十年代贊助了恐怖分子和間諜組織在蘇聯(lián)的活動(dòng)。

“白軍”是反動(dòng)的民族主義集團(tuán)，它和包括白俄羅斯和烏克蘭部分在內(nèi)的其他民族主義者，在1919-1920年間支持企圖顛覆革命的協(xié)約國武裝干涉。而到了上世紀(jì)二三十年代，白俄羅斯和烏克蘭的民族主義者急劇右傾，甚至滑向了希特勒的納粹陣營。

二戰(zhàn)爆發(fā)后，他們和其他所謂的“民族主義者”與納粹聯(lián)手對(duì)抗蘇聯(lián)紅軍，殺害了成百上千萬的蘇聯(lián)戰(zhàn)俘以及西遷的百姓。在西方他們獲得了美國中央情報(bào)局的支持。烏克蘭民族主義者進(jìn)入學(xué)術(shù)界尤多，開始在學(xué)術(shù)的掩蓋下制造反共宣傳。

1991年蘇聯(lián)解體后，烏克蘭民族主義者離開加拿大、美國和西歐回到烏克蘭。他們于是開始主導(dǎo)學(xué)校和大學(xué)的歷史研究以及大眾媒體上的歷史討論。2000-2009年間，他們成為一股獨(dú)占鰲頭的勢(shì)力，推動(dòng)烏克蘭政府進(jìn)行反共的歷史歪曲。他們?cè)跒蹩颂m現(xiàn)政府中很有權(quán)勢(shì)。

除了這些公開的反共勢(shì)力之外，布爾什維克黨內(nèi)也存在一些反共力量。1929年，列夫·托洛茨基（Leon Trotsky）被逐出蘇聯(lián)。之后他組織并領(lǐng)導(dǎo)了一場(chǎng)無所不用其極地攻擊布爾什維克黨領(lǐng)袖的運(yùn)動(dòng)。

托洛茨基于1940年8月被斯大林下令暗殺。在赫魯曉夫（Khrushchev）于一九五六年蘇共二十大上發(fā)表秘密報(bào)告之前，托洛茨基少有影響，而赫魯曉夫的報(bào)告簡直讓托洛茨基看上去像一個(gè)先知、一個(gè)天才。這使得托派的活動(dòng)死灰復(fù)燃，如今也是許多國家重要的反共力量。

B. 赫魯曉夫說謊

就其實(shí)際上對(duì)世界歷史的沖擊而言，赫魯曉夫的“秘密報(bào)告”可以說是二十世紀(jì)甚或迄今為止最具影響力的演講了。他在其中把斯大林描畫成實(shí)行恐怖統(tǒng)治長達(dá)二十多年的嗜血暴君。這次報(bào)告直接導(dǎo)致非共產(chǎn)主義陣營國家里約一半的共產(chǎn)黨員在兩年之內(nèi)紛紛退黨。

1961年蘇共二十二大上，赫魯曉夫及其追隨者對(duì)斯大林進(jìn)行了更為惡毒的攻擊。此后大批蘇聯(lián)歷史學(xué)家為赫魯曉夫的謊言添磚加瓦。這些假話為冷戰(zhàn)時(shí)期如羅伯特·康奎斯特（Robert Conquest）之類的反共者所沿用。它們也進(jìn)入了左翼話語，不僅經(jīng)由托派和無政府主義者的著作，而且還經(jīng)由那些“親莫斯科”（pro-Moscow）的、當(dāng)然不得不接受赫魯曉夫那個(gè)故事版本的共產(chǎn)主義者。

在戈?duì)柊蛦谭颍∕ikhail Gorbachev）和葉利欽（Boris Eltsin）時(shí)代，先是蘇聯(lián)的職業(yè)歷史學(xué)家，隨后是俄羅斯的職業(yè)歷史學(xué)家，把赫魯曉夫的謊言進(jìn)一步放大。戈?duì)柊蛦谭蚓幵炝藢映霾桓F的反共謊言，為蘇聯(lián)回歸剝削制度和最終放棄社會(huì)主義改革、重返資本主義掠奪制造了意識(shí)形態(tài)煙幕。

2005-2006年期間，我研究并寫下了《赫魯曉夫說謊》一書。其長副標(biāo)題如下：“在1956年2月25日蘇共二十大上，赫魯曉夫臭名昭著的秘密報(bào)告所揭露的斯大林［和貝利亞（Beria）］的每一條罪行都被證明是完全錯(cuò)誤的。”

在我的書里，我理出了61條赫魯曉夫針對(duì)斯大林的指控或某些情況下針對(duì)貝利亞的指控。接著，我根據(jù)前蘇聯(lián)檔案曝光的證據(jù)研究了其中的每一條指控。令人驚訝的是，61條中有60條都能被證明是明顯的錯(cuò)誤。

赫魯曉夫竟能偽造一切并與之撇清干系長達(dá)50年之久這個(gè)事實(shí)，表明我們?nèi)孕柚匦聦徱暺渌^的斯大林及他領(lǐng)導(dǎo)下的蘇聯(lián)的“罪行”。

我的書已被翻譯成六國語言，由中國社科院馬維先教授翻譯的中文版（《反斯大林的卑劣行徑》，社會(huì)科學(xué)文獻(xiàn)出版社）也將在近幾個(gè)月內(nèi)面世。

1）赫魯曉夫黨羽和西方反共者

赫魯曉夫贊助許多蘇聯(lián)歷史學(xué)家在成千上萬的書籍和文章中潤色他的謊言。著名的例子包括羅伊·麥德維杰夫（Roy Medvedev）1的《讓歷史來審判：斯大林主義的起源及其后果》和亞歷山大·勒科瑞奇（Aleksandr Nekrich）的《1941年6月》。

赫魯曉夫黨羽的謊言被西方反共作者利用并在蘇聯(lián)外反復(fù)散布。重要的例子是羅伯特·康奎斯特所寫的《大恐怖：斯大林三十年代的清洗》和其他很多書籍?？悼固氐乃兄鰢?yán)重依賴赫魯曉夫時(shí)代的資料，盡管他同時(shí)還不加辨別地援引了各種反共的書籍和文章，譬如亞歷山大·奧爾洛夫（Alexander Orlov）2的《斯大林肅反秘史》。

另一本嚴(yán)重依賴赫魯曉夫時(shí)代說法的重要著作，是史蒂芬·F·科恩（Steven. F. Cohen）的《布哈林（Bukharin）和布爾什維克革命》，出版于1973年以后已多次重印。我和我的莫斯科同事弗拉基米爾·L·波布羅夫（Vladimir L. Bobrov）已經(jīng)發(fā)表了對(duì)上書第十章的詳細(xì)研究?？贫髟谒臅凶匪萘瞬脊謴?930年到他于1938年3月受審、被處死的生平，可我們的研究展示了兩件事。首先，科恩幾乎僅僅是依賴赫魯曉夫時(shí)代的說法。

其次，我們展示出，事實(shí)上科恩從赫魯曉夫時(shí)代援引而來的每條陳述都是錯(cuò)誤的。通過仔細(xì)研究蘇聯(lián)解體后公布的前蘇聯(lián)的檔案，我們能夠證明這一點(diǎn)。就跟我對(duì)待赫魯曉夫的秘密報(bào)告一樣，我們用這個(gè)檔案的證據(jù)來表明，科恩取自赫魯曉夫時(shí)代的陳述和事實(shí)論斷是錯(cuò)誤的。

2）戈?duì)柊蛦谭蚣捌浜?br />
米哈伊爾·戈?duì)柊蛦谭蜃?985年擔(dān)任蘇共中央總書記，并于1990年3月15日當(dāng)選為蘇聯(lián)總統(tǒng)。他在1987年發(fā)動(dòng)了一場(chǎng)甚至比赫魯曉夫在1961年11月蘇共二十二大后所發(fā)動(dòng)的都更激烈的運(yùn)動(dòng)。在他首肯之下，據(jù)說數(shù)以百計(jì)的書籍和數(shù)以千計(jì)的文章不只將斯大林，還將所有前蘇聯(lián)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人涂抹成惡魔。西方反共學(xué)者在蘇聯(lián)出版的第一部著作就是科恩關(guān)于布哈林的書，該書也受到戈?duì)柊蛦谭虮救说馁潛P(yáng)和資助。

戈?duì)柊蛦谭蚝椭蟮娜~利欽都承諾，伴隨著沿資本主義路線的經(jīng)濟(jì)“改革”（perestroika，即“重建”），他們還會(huì)力求蘇聯(lián)歷史的“公開性”（glasnost，即“開放”）。許多前蘇聯(lián)的檔案因此短時(shí)間地部分向研究人員開放，盡管幾乎僅僅是向反共的研究人員開放。但在1995年，很多或者說大部分的檔案又被重新“分類”，重新保密，不再對(duì)學(xué)者開放。當(dāng)局沒有給出任何理由，不過我們都能猜到這是由于文件無法支撐當(dāng)前官方授定的反共版本的蘇聯(lián)歷史。

如今檔案匯編又不斷地出版著。它們都非常重要！但這個(gè)過程被反共學(xué)者們嚴(yán)密地監(jiān)控著，還經(jīng)常與一個(gè)打著“人權(quán)”旗號(hào)而受索羅斯基金會(huì)（Soros Foundation）等西方集團(tuán)資助的極端反共組織“紀(jì)念協(xié)會(huì)”（MEMORIAL Society）相關(guān)。大多數(shù)關(guān)于莫斯科審判、軍隊(duì)肅反、“葉若夫時(shí)期”（Ezhovshchina）或“大恐怖”（Great Terror）以及1930年代高層政治的其他重大事件的調(diào)研證據(jù)都被設(shè)為機(jī)密，學(xué)者無從參閱?，F(xiàn)狀仍然如此，盡管照俄羅斯法律，75年之后的文檔應(yīng)當(dāng)解禁，以供學(xué)術(shù)之用。但這沒有兌現(xiàn)。

然而，也有很多重要的檔案已經(jīng)印發(fā)，有時(shí)來源模糊。但通過仔細(xì)地辨認(rèn)、收集、研究，我們現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)可能發(fā)現(xiàn)許多或大部分斯大林時(shí)期重大事件的真相。這也是我今年在北京，在這所大學(xué)和贊助我北京之行的中國社科院演講的主題。

C. 謝爾蓋·基洛夫謀殺案

1934年12月1日大約下午4:30，列昂尼德·瓦西里耶維奇·尼古拉耶夫（Leonid Vasil'evich Nikolaev），一位失業(yè)的黨員，開槍射中了列寧格勒布爾什維克黨第一書記謝爾蓋·基洛夫的后顱。尼古拉耶夫繼而試圖爆頭自殺，但未擊中而暈倒。

起初，他似已聲稱，是他自己要?dú)⒒宸颉Ｒ粋€(gè)星期不到，他就供認(rèn)他不過是黨內(nèi)秘密組織策動(dòng)的陰謀的一個(gè)環(huán)節(jié)，而這秘密組織正是由反斯大林、支持基洛夫之前一任列寧格勒第一書記格里高利·季諾維也夫（Grigory Zinoviev）的黨員構(gòu)成。

對(duì)尼古拉耶夫所指認(rèn)的圖謀者及這些圖謀者所指認(rèn)的牽連者的審訊帶來了許多比較局部的招供和一些比較全面的招供。謀殺發(fā)生后的三個(gè)星期以內(nèi)，就有14人因參與陰謀而被指控。他們受審于12月28-29日，被宣告有罪并被迅速處決。

基洛夫謀殺案更大的意義在之后的三年逐漸浮出水面。這股將謀殺案頭目引向季諾維也夫和加米涅夫（Kamenev）的線索導(dǎo)致了1936、1937和1938年三次莫斯科“擺樣子公審”（show trial），還有1937年被熟知為“圖哈切夫斯基事件”（Tukhachevsky Affair）的對(duì)軍事領(lǐng)袖的審判。

赫魯曉夫在他的“秘密報(bào)告”之中對(duì)基洛夫遇刺的官方版本提出質(zhì)疑。他的黨羽想盡一切招數(shù)要把謀殺的主使推到斯大林。找不到相應(yīng)的證據(jù)，他們就最終虛構(gòu)了一個(gè)尼古拉耶夫因?yàn)樽陨碓蜾b而走險(xiǎn)的詳盡故事。然而，斯大林謀害基洛夫的版本仍在坊間流傳，廣為蘇聯(lián)內(nèi)外的人所認(rèn)同。

1990年以來，尼古拉耶夫獨(dú)立行動(dòng)的觀點(diǎn)已被官方接受。而斯大林被認(rèn)為是要借此謀殺案來陷害先前的或假定的敵人，迫使他們坦白從未犯下的罪行，處決他們，最終懲處成千上萬的人。

我的目標(biāo)是要解決基洛夫謀殺案。我盡可能客觀地審查所有的證據(jù)，加以適當(dāng)?shù)膽岩?，不攜帶任何先入為主的結(jié)論。我研究得出的主要結(jié)論是，尼古拉耶夫絕非“孤膽槍手”。蘇聯(lián)的調(diào)查人員和起訴早在1934年12月就得出了正解。一個(gè)藏在背后的季諾維也夫分子陰謀組織，尼古拉耶夫作為其中的一員，殺害了基洛夫。

D. 托洛茨基在20世紀(jì)30年代 1）右派和托派集團(tuán)

哈佛霍頓圖書館的托洛茨基檔案在1980年1月開放之后不久，托派史學(xué)家皮埃爾·勃魯埃（Pierre Broué）發(fā)現(xiàn)了列夫·謝多夫（Leon Sedov）和他父親托洛茨基的通信。這些通信足以證明蘇聯(lián)內(nèi)部托派和其他反對(duì)派之間的集團(tuán)的存在。1932年中某時(shí)，謝多夫告知父親如下：

集團(tuán)已經(jīng)建成。季諾維也夫分子、斯登-羅明納茲（Sten-Lominadze）集團(tuán)和托派（原“投降派”）成員紛紛加入。

薩法爾（Safar，按指Safarnov）和塔克漢（Tarkhkan，按指Tarkhanov）集團(tuán)尚未正式加入——他們的立場(chǎng)過于極端；但他們很快就會(huì)進(jìn)入集團(tuán)。正是在季［諾維也夫］和加［米涅夫］被流放之前，季［諾維也夫］和加［米涅夫］正在為著集團(tuán)的事宜而與我們的人談判，此時(shí)，季［諾維也夫］和加［米涅夫］作出了關(guān)于他們?cè)?927年的重大失誤的聲明。

幾乎同時(shí)，美國歷史學(xué)家阿奇巴爾德·蓋提（Arch Getty）發(fā)現(xiàn)托洛茨基至少曾秘密致函拉狄克（Radek）、索科利尼科夫（Sokol'nikov）、普列奧布拉任斯基（Preobrazhenskii）、科倫泰（Kollontai）和李維諾夫（Litvinov）。前三者在公開改變觀點(diǎn)以前屬于托派。蓋提并未找到那些信件——發(fā)現(xiàn)的只是些掛號(hào)信收據(jù)。蓋提據(jù)此領(lǐng)會(huì)到這意味著托洛茨基檔案也已被“清洗”過。信件已被移除。其他材料也免不了被清洗。

“清洗”這類檔案唯一的緣由，無非是為了去除那些可能證明托洛茨基有罪的、對(duì)其聲譽(yù)有惡劣影響的材料。信件遭到移除的事實(shí)，正如對(duì)致函拉狄克的問題的一個(gè)調(diào)查所顯露的，無論如何都能說明托洛茨基在1930年代曾經(jīng)說謊。他自食其言地聲稱他從未與蘇聯(lián)內(nèi)的反對(duì)派保持聯(lián)絡(luò)；并且自相矛盾地說，他絕不會(huì)接受一個(gè)在他的支持者和其他反對(duì)派團(tuán)體之間的秘密集團(tuán)。

很明顯，勃魯埃覺得這個(gè)事實(shí)的意味令人不安。他絕口不提蓋提對(duì)托洛茨基與蘇聯(lián)內(nèi)部支持者和其他人物通信或者托洛茨基檔案曾遭清洗的發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管勃魯埃非?？隙ǖ匾昧松w提的出版物（一篇文章和一本書）。

可見在上世紀(jì)80年代中期以前學(xué)者們就已證明，托洛茨基-季諾維也夫集團(tuán)在事實(shí)上存在，其成型于1932年，而且季諾維也夫和加米涅夫也親身參與。謝多夫還前瞻到薩法爾諾夫的加入，后者無論如何也還有一個(gè)自己的小集團(tuán)。

1937年1月下半月，正值第二次莫斯科審判之時(shí)，謝多夫在與荷蘭語的社會(huì)民主主義報(bào)紙《人民》（Het Volk）的訪談中說漏嘴，曝出托派曾與1936年8月第一次莫斯科審判的被告有所聯(lián)絡(luò)。謝多夫特別點(diǎn)到了季諾維也夫、加米涅夫和斯米爾諾夫（Smirnov）。說到拉狄克和皮亞塔科夫（Piatakov），謝多夫補(bǔ)充道：“托派與他們的聯(lián)絡(luò)少過其他人。更準(zhǔn)確的說：根本沒有聯(lián)絡(luò)。”這不過是謝多夫企圖收回關(guān)于拉狄克和皮亞塔科夫的失言。

但謝多夫甚至都沒有試圖收回這前面的信息：托派確然與“其他人”有所聯(lián)絡(luò)：斯米爾諾夫、季諾維也夫和加米涅夫。這場(chǎng)訪談，包括說漏嘴的部分在內(nèi)，發(fā)表在1937年 1月28日地方版的《人民》。說漏嘴一事這也被共產(chǎn)黨的報(bào)刊所留意。（見Arbeideren, Oslo, February 5, 1937; Abejderbladet, Copenhagen, February 12, 1937.）幸好有了蓋提，現(xiàn)在我們知道黨報(bào)是對(duì)的。謝多夫的談?wù)撨€真是說漏嘴了。我們知道謝多夫是在撒謊，因?yàn)樯w提已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了托洛茨基給拉狄克寫信的證據(jù)。托洛茨基確確實(shí)實(shí)在與拉狄克接觸。謝多夫評(píng)論的第一條，說接觸比之其他人更少，倒是確切的。

這樣一來，在托洛茨基檔案的確認(rèn)下，我們就有了充分的、非蘇聯(lián)方的證據(jù)來佐證如下事實(shí)：

* 一個(gè)季諾維也夫派、托派和其他反對(duì)派組成的“集團(tuán)”的確在1932年形成，其中至少囊括了斯登-羅明納茲集團(tuán)、或許包括薩法爾諾夫-塔克漢諾夫集團(tuán)（無論如何都與之有所接觸），以及季諾維也夫和加米涅夫本人。

*托洛茨基確實(shí)一直在與季諾維也夫和加米涅夫以及其他人聯(lián)絡(luò)，也許是經(jīng)由他的兒子兼首席代表謝多夫。

*托洛茨基確實(shí)至少與拉狄克和皮亞塔科夫接觸過。

*正如拉狄克在1937年莫斯科審判時(shí)證實(shí)的那樣，托洛茨基確曾在1932年的春天寄了一封信給當(dāng)時(shí)正在日內(nèi)瓦的拉狄克。

*我們沒有什么理由接受托派史學(xué)家皮埃爾·勃魯埃的結(jié)論：說這個(gè)集團(tuán)是短命的、朝生暮死的。勃魯埃沒有證據(jù)支持他的結(jié)論，我們卻了解到了托洛茨基檔案曾在某個(gè)時(shí)候被清洗過。

2）20世紀(jì)30年代的托洛茨基

遠(yuǎn)在赫魯曉夫之前，托洛茨基就把斯大林描畫成了搞大屠殺的嗜血屠夫，把1930年代的莫斯科審判描畫成捏造構(gòu)陷。20世紀(jì)50年代以前少有人相信他。然后兩件事發(fā)生了。一是赫魯曉夫的秘密報(bào)告。二是伊薩克·多伊徹（Isaac Deutscher）的三卷本傳記，尤其是最后一卷，《流亡的先知》。

1980年1月2日，哈佛托洛茨基檔案公諸眾人。20世紀(jì)80年代和90年代的美國史學(xué)家蓋提和世界首屈一指的托派研究者勃魯埃，發(fā)現(xiàn)了托洛茨基故意掩蓋其與蘇聯(lián)反對(duì)派聯(lián)絡(luò)的謊言。但是勃魯埃沒有探究其發(fā)現(xiàn)的深意。

我卻一直在研究這些。如果了解到不是斯大林，而是托洛茨基在他1934年之后的著述中肆意歪曲幾乎任何關(guān)乎蘇聯(lián)和斯大林的事，那么這會(huì)震驚，甚至攪擾許多人。是托洛茨基在30年代發(fā)明了關(guān)于莫斯科審判的虛假故事。

托洛茨基的所有傳記作者，無論是同情的還是敵對(duì)的，都輕易忽視了這一點(diǎn)。作為一種癥候，這昭示了當(dāng)代左翼置身的死胡同：托派無視大白于眾人20年以上的真相：托洛茨基在30年代對(duì)斯大林和蘇聯(lián)的書寫充斥著故意的謊言。

我正在寫作一本關(guān)于30年代的托洛茨基的書。這本書將會(huì)在2015年出版。

E. 莫斯科審判

新近的證據(jù)確證了下述結(jié)論：

*1936年8月、1937年1月和1938年3月莫斯科審判中的被告是有罪的，至少犯有他們供認(rèn)的那些罪行。“右派和托派分子集團(tuán)”確實(shí)存在。該集團(tuán)策劃發(fā)動(dòng)政變——即他們所謂的“宮廷政變”（dvortsovyi perevorot）——暗殺斯大林、卡岡諾維奇（Kaganovich）、莫洛托夫（Molotov）等人，即他們所謂的“宮廷政變”。該集團(tuán)的確刺殺了基洛夫。

*右派分子和托派分子均與德國和日本密謀策劃，還有軍隊(duì)同謀者參與。如果“宮廷政變”失敗，他們希望通過在入侵事件中向德國或日本效忠來執(zhí)政。

*托洛茨基本人以及他的一些支持者直接與德國和日本合謀。

*尼古拉·葉若夫（Nikolai Ezhov），作為1936年到1938年底內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部（NKVD）的頭號(hào)人物，同樣參與了同德國人的密謀。

所有反共學(xué)者皆認(rèn)為三場(chǎng)莫斯科審判中的證詞是內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部以某種方式捏造的。但他們沒有提供任何證據(jù)給予證明，也沒有做任何論證來替這些非?？捎^的疏漏辯護(hù)。實(shí)際上馬修·E·利昂（Matthew E. Lenoe）之類的反共學(xué)者只是選擇忽視這一點(diǎn)及大量其他證據(jù)。

現(xiàn)實(shí)中，從來沒有人成功證明莫斯科審判中的任何一點(diǎn)是偽造的。然而，在高度政治化和一邊倒的蘇聯(lián)歷史領(lǐng)域，莫斯科審判變成了無中生有，所有被告都是被“陷害”的。這樣的立場(chǎng)不僅居于“主流”位置，而且是唯一得到容許的觀點(diǎn)。無論誰說莫斯科審判可能不是胡亂構(gòu)陷的都將面臨嘲笑甚至更糟的事情。因此，有很大的職業(yè)壓力讓人們把審判視為羅織罪名，卻沒有動(dòng)力叫人對(duì)此做任何認(rèn)真的研究。

任何客觀的調(diào)查都必須正視必需的核實(shí)。因此，本節(jié)我們將討論兩個(gè)問題。一，基洛夫在第一場(chǎng)莫斯科審判中的證詞是什么？二，我們能在多大程度上證實(shí)或證偽這次審判的證詞？

1936年8月19日至24日第一場(chǎng)公開的莫斯科審判是有大量的調(diào)查做鋪墊的。這些調(diào)查生成的檔案，如口供、陳述記錄以及一些實(shí)體證物，僅有一小部分被公開，絕大部分到現(xiàn)在仍然是絕密。沒有研究者能夠接觸到檔案的全部內(nèi)容，我們當(dāng)然也不能。

像任何其他研究者或調(diào)查員一樣，我們面臨著以客觀的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來評(píng)估所有證據(jù)的任務(wù)。反共的研究者僅僅假設(shè)審判對(duì)被告者的指控乏善可陳，斯大林是要借此摧毀“前”反對(duì)派。事實(shí)上，沒有證據(jù)表明斯大林以摧毀前反對(duì)派為目標(biāo)：從來沒有過這樣的證據(jù)。相反的是，有充分的證據(jù)表明基洛夫謀殺案之前斯大林試圖安撫前反對(duì)派，或者說那些他認(rèn)為是前反對(duì)派的人。斯大林相信，他們的反對(duì)立場(chǎng)已經(jīng)是往事了，因?yàn)樗麄兙褪沁@樣保證的。

1）方法論問題

如何評(píng)定材料的真實(shí)性？我們實(shí)際上能合理地期待從這些材料中認(rèn)識(shí)到什么？這個(gè)問題也是反共學(xué)者所面臨的，雖然他們不直接這么說。他們有審訊稿、審判筆錄和調(diào)查材料。他們選擇性地向我們披露其中的一部分，此外，我們還擁有他們無論出于何種原因而遺漏了的證據(jù)。

對(duì)莫斯科審判做全面的審查超出了本文的范圍。但我想強(qiáng)調(diào)一點(diǎn)：沒有證據(jù)表明在這些審判中的任何一名被告是被誣陷、被誤判或是無辜的。沒有一絲一毫證據(jù)表明被告沒有犯下他們被指控的罪行，而他們也認(rèn)罪了。也沒有人拿出證據(jù)證明被告是被迫以某種方式按照檢方或內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部的口授作證的。赫魯曉夫時(shí)代，尤其是戈?duì)柊蛦谭驎r(shí)代被解禁的檔案和報(bào)告中，并未包含可以認(rèn)定被告無罪的證據(jù)。所有解禁報(bào)告的所有結(jié)論都只是（確證被告有罪的）斷言。

充分的證據(jù)表明，部分被告至少?zèng)]有把真相全盤托出，雅戈達(dá)（Iagoda）和其他被告，包括葉若夫，在審判中歪曲和隱瞞了一些事情。但這種欺騙并不能開脫任何被告的罪狀，這只會(huì)在我們既已掌握的他們罪行與陰謀的畫卷上又添一重。據(jù)我們所知，被告的證詞反映了他們想說的話。

評(píng)價(jià)莫斯科審判證詞的關(guān)鍵問題，在于通過不可能被檢方安排、植入或以其他方式制造的證據(jù)來考察審判中各陳述的獨(dú)立確證性。當(dāng)然，僅僅是缺乏獨(dú)立性并不意味著證詞或口供是檢方偽造的。巧妙的陰謀設(shè)計(jì)中可能根本沒有獨(dú)立的證據(jù)。這只不過意味著我們無法將證詞和獨(dú)立的證據(jù)進(jìn)行比較。不過即使我們不能證實(shí)證詞間的獨(dú)立性，我們還是可以評(píng)估不同被告、不同時(shí)間所做的各個(gè)陳述間內(nèi)在的一致性。

幸運(yùn)的是，莫斯科審判之外甚至是蘇聯(lián)之外的一些證據(jù)確實(shí)存在，所有這些外部證據(jù)均傾向于證實(shí)被告的供述。

2）審訊的證詞是偽造的嗎？

所有反共學(xué)者都“回避這個(gè)問題”。他們先入為主地認(rèn)為，審判證詞是以他們并未確指的某種方式偽造的。做此預(yù)設(shè)無異于效尤受縛于意識(shí)形態(tài)的反共研究者。在研究蘇聯(lián)歷史的史學(xué)家中，很容易就能找到作出這種預(yù)設(shè)的人，卻找不到誰證明了這一預(yù)設(shè)，或拿得出任何相關(guān)證據(jù)。從未有過任何證據(jù)證明莫斯科審判中的證詞是偽造的，或被告被迫說出由他人編派或口授的供詞。

不過，雖然沒有證據(jù)表明這次審判的證詞是偽造的，卻有很多相反的證據(jù)：證詞是真實(shí)的。下面是1937年1月的證詞和其他公認(rèn)的事實(shí)之間相互佐證的幾個(gè)例子：

*拉狄克等人作證說他們反對(duì)對(duì)個(gè)人的暗殺（1937 Trial 71;101-2）。這與雅戈達(dá)獨(dú)立做的證詞一致，這一點(diǎn)我有專章講述。

*拉狄克聲稱，他在1932年春收到了來自托洛茨基的信，這可由蓋提在哈佛托洛茨基檔案中找到的掛號(hào)信收據(jù)證實(shí)。（92）

*拉狄克作證說，布哈林曾告訴他，他（布哈林）已經(jīng)“走上了恐怖主義的道路”。（99）從1971年儒勒·恩貝爾-德厚（Jules Humbert-Droz）在瑞士出版的回憶錄我們可以知道，在此之前很久布哈林就已經(jīng)決定暗殺斯大林。

*索科利尼科夫作證說，“早在1932年秋”，季諾維也夫分子和托洛茨基分子的“聯(lián)合總部”就已決定策劃對(duì)斯大林和基洛夫的恐怖主義行動(dòng)。（147）這與瓦連京·阿斯特洛夫（Valentin Astrov）的供詞一致，他是布哈林的追隨者之一，其供詞一種已公開發(fā)表。阿斯特洛夫本來有機(jī)會(huì)在蘇聯(lián)垮臺(tái)后矢口否認(rèn)這一說法，但他明確拒絕這樣做。阿斯特洛夫還堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為，蘇聯(lián)內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部調(diào)查人員對(duì)他很尊重，并沒有對(duì)他做出逼迫行為。

*穆拉洛夫（Muralov）說，伊萬·斯米爾諾夫曾告訴過他自己出國會(huì)見謝多夫的事。（217）在他的《關(guān)于莫斯科審判的紅皮書》（Livre rouge）中，謝多夫承認(rèn)自己曾與斯米爾諾夫會(huì)面，雖然他聲稱這次會(huì)面是完全清白的。

*穆拉洛夫表示，舍斯托夫（Shestov）在1932年給他帶來了謝多夫的一封信，內(nèi)容是用隱形墨水寫的秘密消息。（218）我們知道謝多夫會(huì)使用安替比林寫秘密信息，因?yàn)橹辽僖环膺@樣的信保存在了哈佛托洛茨基檔案里。他在信中建議他的父親托洛茨基也用隱形墨水回信。

*拉狄克說，正是他自己向托洛茨基建議，讓忠于托洛茨基的軍事指揮官維托夫特·普特納（Vitovt Putna）代表托洛茨基與德國和日本進(jìn)行談判。與此對(duì)應(yīng)的是布瓊尼元帥（Marshal Budienniy）所記錄的普特納后來的供述。

此類的大部分證據(jù)可能會(huì)被解釋為偽造的——假如有任何證據(jù)證明口供以及所謂的陰謀，已由內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部寫好腳本的話。但沒有證據(jù)顯示在審判中造假的任何有關(guān)陰謀，而我們也有證據(jù)表明，審判并非提前設(shè)計(jì)的。

這些事實(shí)不允許任何稱職且客觀的研究者未經(jīng)思考就簡單地摒棄審判記錄中非常重要的證據(jù)。

F. “葉若夫時(shí)期”，或稱“大恐怖”

2004至2005年間我分兩部分寫了名為《斯大林與民主改革的抗?fàn)帯返奈恼?。自那時(shí)以來，大量新的證據(jù)被公布出來，涉及反對(duì)派，1936年、1937年和1938年的莫斯科審判，軍隊(duì)肅反（或“圖哈切夫斯基事件”），以及隨后的“葉若夫時(shí)期”，羅伯特·康奎斯特1968年首次出版了一本極不誠實(shí)的書后，人們通常以這本書的書名稱“葉若夫時(shí)期”為“大恐怖”。

新近的證據(jù)證實(shí)了下述結(jié)論：

*1936年8月、1937年1月和1938年3月莫斯科審判中的被告是有罪的，至少犯有他們供認(rèn)的那些罪行。“右派和托派分子集團(tuán)”確實(shí)存在。該集團(tuán)策劃發(fā)動(dòng)政變——即他們所謂的“宮廷政變”——暗殺斯大林、卡岡諾維奇（Kaganovich）、莫洛托夫（Molotov）等人，即他們所謂的“宮廷政變”。該集團(tuán)的確刺殺了基洛夫。

*右派分子和托派分子均與德國和日本密謀策劃，還有軍隊(duì)同謀者參與。如果“宮廷政變”失敗，他們希望通過在入侵事件中向德國或日本效忠來執(zhí)政。

*托洛茨基本人以及他的一些支持者直接與德國和日本合謀。

*尼古拉·葉若夫，作為1936年到1938年底內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部的頭號(hào)人物，同樣參與了同德國人的密謀。

1）葉若夫

與2005年相比，現(xiàn)在我們關(guān)于尼古拉·葉若夫的角色的相關(guān)資料豐富了很多。葉若夫作為內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人，有個(gè)人的陰謀反對(duì)蘇維埃政府和政黨。同時(shí)，他也曾受雇于德國的情報(bào)機(jī)構(gòu)。

與右派和托派一樣，葉若夫和他的內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部心腹寄希望于德國、日本，或者是其他的資本主義國家發(fā)起入侵。他們使無數(shù)無辜的人屈打成招，最后承認(rèn)自己有死罪，以致最后被迫害致死。甚至更多的人被他們錯(cuò)誤地，或是根本沒有任何原因地處決。

葉若夫希望通過對(duì)無辜者的大規(guī)模屠殺促使蘇聯(lián)的多數(shù)人反對(duì)當(dāng)局，從而為德國或日本入侵發(fā)起內(nèi)部叛亂奠定基礎(chǔ)。

關(guān)于這些事情，葉若夫欺騙了斯大林、黨［聯(lián)共（布）］和政府（蘇聯(lián)人民委員會(huì)）。1937至1938年間那場(chǎng)非常恐怖的涉及約六十八萬兩千人的大規(guī)模處決，很大程度上是葉若夫及其心腹對(duì)無辜者無端發(fā)動(dòng)的，以喚起蘇聯(lián)人民對(duì)當(dāng)局的不滿。

雖然葉若夫處決了大量無辜的人，但從現(xiàn)在的證據(jù)可以看出，被處決的人中確有與陰謀相關(guān)。俄羅斯政府繼續(xù)保存著相關(guān)調(diào)查的大量絕密文件，而缺少這些證據(jù)，我們還無法得知陰謀的確切量級(jí)。因此，我們不知道這682,000人有多少是真的有罪，多少是無辜的受害者。

正如我在2005年寫道，斯大林和黨的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)層早在1937年10月就開始懷疑一些處決事件的合法性。從在1938年初開始，隨著帕維爾·波斯蒂舍夫（Pavel Postyshev）受到嚴(yán)厲批判，被開除出中央委員會(huì)，繼而被開除出黨，最終以不正當(dāng)?shù)拇笠?guī)模鎮(zhèn)壓為名被審判和處決，對(duì)葉若夫的懷疑逐漸增長。

當(dāng)拉夫連季·貝利亞（Lavrentii Beria）被任命為葉若夫的副手時(shí)，葉若夫和他的部下明白，斯大林和蘇共領(lǐng)導(dǎo)已經(jīng)不再信任他們。他們孤注一擲密謀在1938年11月7日，也就是十月革命21周年慶典之日刺殺斯大林，但事先敗露，葉若夫的手下被捕。

葉若夫從而被迫辭職。隨即展開了緊密的調(diào)查，內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部的大量權(quán)力濫用事件得以浮現(xiàn)。很多葉若夫時(shí)期的判決被重審，超過十萬人被從監(jiān)獄和集中營種釋放。委員部的許多成員被捕，承認(rèn)了他們?cè)?jīng)折磨、審判和處決無辜的人的事實(shí)。很多成員被免職或者被判刑。

與葉若夫的1937-1938年相比，貝利亞上臺(tái)后的1930-1940年間，案件數(shù)量驟降至不足前者的1%，并且其中許多是處理內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部的遺留問題，包括葉若夫本人，被認(rèn)定犯有大規(guī)模非法鎮(zhèn)壓以及殘害無辜者之罪。

2005年公開以來，最具沖擊力的證據(jù)之一是葉若夫和他的副手米哈伊爾·弗里諾夫斯基（Mikhail Frinovsky）的供詞。我已經(jīng)把其中的一部分內(nèi)容的俄語原文和英譯放在了網(wǎng)絡(luò)上。我們還有其他許多葉若夫的供述和審訊，絕大多數(shù)材料不完整，在其中他承認(rèn)了更多的事實(shí)。這些材料由阿列克謝·帕夫柳科夫（Aleksei Pavliukov）在2007年通過半官方的途徑公開。

2）反共學(xué)者隱藏了真相

所有的“主流”——也就是反共產(chǎn)主義的——和托洛茨基主義的研究者錯(cuò)誤地聲稱，受到處決的人中沒有陰謀。按照他們的說法，所有莫斯科審判的被告、所有軍人被告、以及所有那些因間諜活動(dòng)、陰謀、破壞和其他罪行而受審并判決的人，都是無辜的受害者。有人聲稱，斯大林曾計(jì)劃殺死所有的這些人，因?yàn)橐坏┨K聯(lián)遭到襲擊，他們可能構(gòu)成一個(gè)“第五縱隊(duì)”（Fifth Column）。其他反共者偏向于相信斯大林只是想恐嚇人民使其順服的這一解釋。

這只是一種意識(shí)形態(tài)性的反共立場(chǎng)，卻被偽裝成了一個(gè)歷史定論。它并非基于歷史證據(jù)，并且與證據(jù)相左。反共史學(xué)家忽略了可用的一手證據(jù)來源，甚至無視在他們自己的作品中引過的檔案集的證據(jù)。

為什么無論俄羅斯還是西方的反共“學(xué)者”都忽略所有這些證據(jù)？為什么他們繼續(xù)推行這種錯(cuò)誤的觀念，否認(rèn)陰謀存在，認(rèn)為是斯大林，而不是葉若夫，下令處決了數(shù)以萬計(jì)的無辜的人？唯一可能的解釋是他們是出于意識(shí)形態(tài)的考慮。通過研究一手資料得出的本真面目，對(duì)大多數(shù)來說，意味著把斯大林和布爾什維克“變成好人”。

3）布哈林，而非斯大林，當(dāng)因大規(guī)模鎮(zhèn)壓受到譴責(zé)

有意思的一件事是，右派代表和領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人布哈林，聽聞當(dāng)時(shí)正在進(jìn)行的“大清洗”運(yùn)動(dòng)后，在監(jiān)獄中給斯大林寫信對(duì)其贊揚(yáng)有加。

這還沒完。布哈林肯定心知葉若夫跟他自己一樣是右派陰謀的一員。正因如此，他才歡迎葉若夫的當(dāng)選內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員一職——他的這一態(tài)度被記錄在了他的遺孀的回憶錄里。

在他的第一次供詞中，在今天著名的那封他在1937年12月10日寫給斯大林的信里，在1938年3月對(duì)他的審判上，布哈林都聲稱自己已經(jīng)徹底“繳械”，并且已經(jīng)交代了自己知道的一切。但是現(xiàn)在我們可以證明這是一個(gè)謊言。其實(shí)布哈林知道葉若夫是右派陰謀的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)成員——但他當(dāng)時(shí)并沒有供出來。據(jù)葉若夫的左膀右臂米哈伊爾·弗里諾夫斯基的供詞，葉若夫很可能答應(yīng)過布哈林，如果布哈林不提及葉若夫本人的參與，就可以免于處決。（參見1939年4月11日的弗里諾夫斯基的供詞）。

如果布哈林當(dāng)時(shí)說了實(shí)話——如果他這么做了，也就是供出了葉若夫的話——葉若夫的大屠殺完全可能被當(dāng)即叫停 ，那么成千上萬無辜者的生命就能被挽救。

但布哈林對(duì)他的同伙保持了忠誠。他沒有透露葉若夫的參與陰謀，依然受到了處決——一種他誓言比他應(yīng)得的“輕了十倍以上”的處決。

這一點(diǎn)怎么被強(qiáng)調(diào)都不為過：布哈林的手上，同樣沾有葉若夫和他的黨羽在1937至1938年間屠殺的無數(shù)無辜者的血。

4)客觀性與證據(jù)

我同意歷史學(xué)家杰弗里·羅伯茨（Geoffrey Roberts）的一個(gè)說法：

在過去的15年左右里大量關(guān)于斯大林……的新史料從開放的俄羅斯檔案中涌現(xiàn)出來。我得明確說，作為一個(gè)歷史學(xué)家，我有強(qiáng)烈的還原過去之真相的傾向，不論那種結(jié)論可能多么地不中聽……我不認(rèn)為這有什么兩難的：你就說出你說看到的真實(shí)罷了。

（"Stalin's Wars" 斯大林的戰(zhàn)爭, Frontpagemag.com February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35305.html）

我所得到的有關(guān)“大清洗”的結(jié)論，對(duì)那些從意識(shí)形態(tài)出發(fā)的人定會(huì)是不可接受的。我并非出于為斯大林政策和蘇聯(lián)政府“辯護(hù)”的欲望才做出這些結(jié)論。我相信這些是根據(jù)可用的證據(jù)所能得到的唯一可能的客觀結(jié)論。

我可不是說蘇聯(lián)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)層不犯錯(cuò)誤。斯大林對(duì)從社會(huì)主義過渡到共產(chǎn)主義的愿景明顯有很多毛病，因?yàn)樗勾罅炙O(shè)想的愿景并未實(shí)現(xiàn)。斯大林統(tǒng)治時(shí)期，和列寧占據(jù)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)位置的短暫時(shí)期一樣，蘇聯(lián)犯下了許多錯(cuò)誤。犯錯(cuò)，當(dāng)然，在整個(gè)人類活動(dòng)中都不可避免。我們要理解布爾什維克黨人作為首次奪取并執(zhí)掌政權(quán)的共產(chǎn)主義者，完全是在未知的水域探索。因此，錯(cuò)誤對(duì)他們來說是不可豁免的——他們也著實(shí)犯了。

然而，基于證據(jù)和歷史記錄的客觀研究將會(huì)指出，蘇聯(lián)走向強(qiáng)制集體化和工業(yè)化是別無選擇的——要不然就等著被資本主義的聯(lián)合勢(shì)力吞沒。同樣，右派、托派和軍方陰謀確實(shí)存在并被蘇聯(lián)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)層——他們也設(shè)法用計(jì)挫敗了葉若夫的陰謀——扼殺的事實(shí)再一次證明了是蘇聯(lián)，或“斯大林”，把歐洲從納粹主義中拯救出來，也把所有的同盟國從軸心國制造的難以計(jì)數(shù)的突變和災(zāi)難中解救出來。

G. 結(jié)語

在這次講演中我只涉及了二十世紀(jì)三十年代蘇聯(lián)歷史上的一些重大事件。這一周接下來的幾天里，我還會(huì)在北京大學(xué)以及中國社會(huì)科學(xué)院進(jìn)行幾次講演并將討論其他的部分。

在結(jié)語里，我想談?wù)効陀^性以及我為了探求真知而進(jìn)行的嘗試。

現(xiàn)而今，幾乎所有已經(jīng)出版的關(guān)于斯大林統(tǒng)治時(shí)期的蘇聯(lián)歷史的書籍和文章都被某種我稱之為“反斯大林的范式”所扭曲，進(jìn)而被控制。在西方的學(xué)術(shù)討論中，研究者被強(qiáng)制性地——必須——得出結(jié)論，帶著反共產(chǎn)主義的色彩，將斯大林描繪為一個(gè)邪惡的劊子手和獨(dú)裁者，而蘇聯(lián)則是一個(gè)屠殺之地和殘暴之所。如果你不愿將你的研究置于這個(gè)被偏見左右的框架中，你的學(xué)術(shù)生涯便毫無出路。

兩位優(yōu)秀的蘇聯(lián)史研究者——他們不是左派，但力求保持客觀——曾經(jīng)告訴我說，那些對(duì)斯大林沒有仇視的書籍根本不會(huì)被任何學(xué)術(shù)出版機(jī)構(gòu)出版。在西方確實(shí)如此，而且我相信在俄羅斯也是這樣。

換一種方式說，如果你的研究領(lǐng)域是蘇聯(lián)史——如果你想在西方的任何大學(xué)里的歷史系教授蘇聯(lián)史——我想在中國情況可能有所不同——你根本無法做我正在做的研究。如果你像我這樣在做蘇聯(lián)史研究，你的成果也無法在正規(guī)期刊上發(fā)表，或者被主流學(xué)術(shù)機(jī)構(gòu)出版，很快你就無法繼續(xù)蘇聯(lián)史的研究了，因?yàn)槟氵B工作也不會(huì)有了！

這就是我的位置特殊之所在。我在英文系教書。我的學(xué)術(shù)生計(jì)絲毫不依賴于我在蘇聯(lián)歷史相關(guān)領(lǐng)域進(jìn)行的研究。

這就是我不得不做的。世界上很多人認(rèn)為這很重要。不只是左派。反共產(chǎn)主義者也覺得這項(xiàng)研究很重要。即便他們不喜歡。

很多右派并不希望斯大林統(tǒng)治時(shí)期的蘇聯(lián)共產(chǎn)主義運(yùn)動(dòng)史的真相被公諸于眾。他們想要繼續(xù)妖魔化它，繼續(xù)將其與希特勒和法西斯相類比，繼續(xù)撒謊。這就是他們的行徑——不僅“被動(dòng)地”，借由他們的“觀點(diǎn)”，或者說偏見，而且主動(dòng)地，有意地對(duì)相關(guān)證據(jù)，資料和歷史進(jìn)行篡改。

馬克思和恩格斯寫道，“無產(chǎn)階級(jí)除了鎖鏈便再也沒有什么可失去了。”我認(rèn)為他們這么說的意思是我們無產(chǎn)階級(jí)沒有奶牛作為神圣的犧牲和獻(xiàn)祭（沒有什么神圣不可侵犯的東西），也沒有理由拒絕服從于批判性的審思。我們想要拋卻所有的幻象和謬誤。只有“真相能讓我們得到自由”，既然“我們”都反對(duì)人對(duì)人的一切剝削，既然“我們”是國際工人階級(jí)。

馬克思最喜歡的一句話是“懷疑一切”（De omnibus dubitandum），并懷疑你對(duì)其他事物的先入之見以及偏狹。如果你想要探知真相，這便是你必須要做的。

另外，這也是每個(gè)偵探小說里每一個(gè)資產(chǎn)階級(jí)偵探所熟知的。正如夏洛特·福爾摩斯過去曾說的：不要倉促就定下結(jié)論。在提出假設(shè)之前要先找事實(shí)依據(jù)。隨時(shí)準(zhǔn)備好舍棄那些與事實(shí)依據(jù)相悖的假設(shè)。

如果你不這樣做——如果你不去追本溯源探求真相——那么你就沒有可能偶然回首，得見燈火闌珊。你所找到的也不會(huì)是真相。

這就是我一直在努力做的。那些對(duì)斯大林和蘇聯(lián)進(jìn)行妖魔化的共產(chǎn)主義運(yùn)動(dòng)史“專家們”帶著反共產(chǎn)主義的偏見，他們之中沒有人試圖保持客觀。他們不去探求真相，因?yàn)樗麄儾幌脒@樣做。他們只是想要寫出“帶著腳注的宣傳品”。這就是他們研究工作的實(shí)質(zhì)。

我在美國做講演時(shí)，曾提到了一名喜歡諷刺挖苦的流行歌手，叫做“怪咖揚(yáng)科維奇” （Weird Al Yankovich）。他有一首歌題目叫做“你所知道的一切都是謬誤”。而這就是蘇聯(lián)史研究的現(xiàn)狀。關(guān)于斯大林時(shí)代的蘇聯(lián)史，我們所耳濡目染的一切，至少從赫魯曉夫時(shí)期開始——就是錯(cuò)的，這種謬誤建立在反共產(chǎn)主義的謊言之上（同樣，在中國情況可能不太一樣。）

而現(xiàn)在我們有了充分的證據(jù)，主要來自前蘇聯(lián)檔案以及哈佛大學(xué)托洛茨基檔案館，這些證據(jù)表明，我們不可避免地——在每一種情況下都總是這樣——發(fā)現(xiàn)這些反共產(chǎn)主義者，從列夫·托洛茨基到赫魯曉夫，再到戈?duì)柊蛦谭?，以及如今所有的反共產(chǎn)主義“學(xué)者們”——都是錯(cuò)的，大多數(shù)情況下他們都在有意撒謊。

我這里想要舉個(gè)例子，關(guān)于我最近一本書的主題：

提摩西·斯奈德（Timothy Snyder）：《血地：希特勒與斯大林夾持下的歐洲》（Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. N.Y: Basic Books, 2010）

斯奈德，耶魯大學(xué)東歐歷史領(lǐng)域的全職教授，撰寫了數(shù)十篇文章發(fā)表在主要的學(xué)術(shù)期刊上，如紐約書評(píng)。2010年，他出版了《血地》。這本書是迄今為止最成功的企圖把斯大林與希特勒，蘇聯(lián)與納粹德國等同起來的努力。它獲得了不計(jì)其數(shù)的報(bào)紙和期刊上的如潮好評(píng)；獲得史學(xué)方面的獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)；并被翻譯成超過20種語言。

斯奈德對(duì)納粹評(píng)論的很少，它主要的靶心是斯大林和蘇聯(lián)政策，總的來說是共產(chǎn)主義。他的更廣泛的說法是，蘇聯(lián)殺死了六到九百萬無辜平民，而納粹殺害了約一千四百萬。斯奈德認(rèn)為蘇聯(lián)和納粹罪行之間到處都有相似點(diǎn)。

我花了整整一年時(shí)間有條不紊地檢查每一個(gè)注腳、每一條參考，去審視那些被視作由斯大林、蘇聯(lián)，或親蘇聯(lián)共產(chǎn)黨人犯下的罪行。斯奈德的資料主要源于波蘭和烏克蘭，源于一些很難找到的書籍和文章。

我發(fā)現(xiàn)，斯奈德所稱的每一個(gè)“罪行”都是假的，捏造的。斯奈德經(jīng)常故意曲解他的參考文獻(xiàn)。更多的時(shí)候，他引用了反共的波蘭和烏克蘭的二手資料來替他說謊。同樣，沒有一條控訴成立。

這一大規(guī)模的胡編亂造意義顯著。其一，斯奈德的書現(xiàn)在是被廣泛引述的權(quán)威。斯奈德曾在《血地》中“說”了什么，人們就認(rèn)為事實(shí)就是什么。

不過更廣泛的意義還在于此：斯奈德背后有一整隊(duì)非常反共的波蘭、烏克蘭的民族主義研究者群在幫著他。而他，大體上正是把該團(tuán)隊(duì)的研究成果“零售”給英文世界的讀者。斯奈德自己倒也花了多年時(shí)間研究兩次世界大戰(zhàn)之間的東歐歷史。

然而斯奈德找不到一條由蘇聯(lián)、斯大林，甚至親共產(chǎn)主義團(tuán)體犯下的真正“罪行”！理所當(dāng)然的是，這個(gè)專心致志的反共團(tuán)隊(duì)，在他們的后蘇聯(lián)國家的扶持下查閱檔案、從所有的東歐語言里吸取養(yǎng)料，本是沒有道理發(fā)現(xiàn)不了斯大林或蘇聯(lián)“真正”的罪行的——只要它們存在過。這就是“罪行”子虛烏有的最好證明。

我這本關(guān)于斯奈德的《血地》（Bloodlands）的書，姑且叫做《血色謊言》（Blood Lies），會(huì)在這個(gè)月出版。

我的下一本書，計(jì)劃于明年，也就是2015年出版，是關(guān)于列夫·托洛茨基在20世紀(jì)30年代，特別是從1934年12月至他1940年去世期間的著作。與前蘇聯(lián)檔案的證據(jù)放在一起，而今托洛茨基自己的檔案更讓我們看到，在此期間，托洛茨基如何有意涂改了蘇聯(lián)和斯大林，基洛夫謀殺和莫斯科審判。他這樣做是為了保全自己的陰謀。做一個(gè)陰謀家自然而然就要說謊。但一開始是他自己的追隨者相信了托洛茨基的謊言，接著，赫魯曉夫的秘密講話之后，許許多多的人也相信了。所以，我認(rèn)為這項(xiàng)研究至關(guān)緊要。

一個(gè)人問的問題不可避免地反映和暴露出他的政治意圖，我也不例外。我相信在斯大林時(shí)代的布爾什維克黨的歷史能給后人很多教益，雖然這段歷史被反共人士扭曲、模糊，有待重寫。那些想從過去尋求指引的政治活動(dòng)家，那些堅(jiān)信能通過吸取從前的斗爭經(jīng)驗(yàn)來為創(chuàng)造更好的世界做出巨大貢獻(xiàn)的、有政治覺悟的學(xué)者們，勢(shì)必能從蘇聯(lián)留下的遺產(chǎn)中學(xué)到很多東西。

就像迷失于更多憑想象繪制的地圖的中世紀(jì)水手，我們被主流的、主要是虛假的蘇聯(lián)歷史給誤導(dǎo)了。探索世界上第一個(gè)社會(huì)主義實(shí)驗(yàn)的歷史真相的進(jìn)程還幾乎尚未開始。我相信這對(duì)我們的未來意義深遠(yuǎn)。我希望你們能在這個(gè)問題上同意我的看法。

感謝大家的傾聽。下面我會(huì)盡我所能地答問，并虛心聽取你們的批評(píng)。

（清華大學(xué)學(xué)生求是學(xué)會(huì)等集體翻譯） 格雷弗·弗教授簡介

格雷弗·弗（Grover Furr），國際知名俄蘇問題專家、歷史學(xué)家。1979年普林斯頓大學(xué)比較文學(xué)博士，現(xiàn)任美國新澤西蒙特克萊爾州立大學(xué)（Montclair State University）英語系教授。主要研究領(lǐng)域包括中世紀(jì)文學(xué)、蘇聯(lián)史、國際共產(chǎn)主義運(yùn)動(dòng)等。格雷弗·弗教授曾與俄羅斯學(xué)者合著《被誹謗的斯大林》（Yuri Mukhin, Grover Furr & Aleksei Golenkov. Slandered Stalin. Moscow: Algorithm / Penguin Books. 2010）、《1937年，斯大林依法審判，無可上訴!》（Grover Furr & Vladimir L. Bobrov. 1937. Justice Stalin. Not Appealable! . Moscow: Penguin Books. 2010）等書。2007年出版《反斯大林的卑劣行徑》（Grover Furr. Anti-Stalinist Meanness. Moscow: Algorithm. 2007，2010年重版），成為俄羅斯暢銷書，短期內(nèi)銷售了近兩萬冊(cè)?！斗此勾罅值谋傲有袕健窂氐最嵏擦宋鞣侥承v史學(xué)家和報(bào)刊對(duì)赫魯曉夫“秘密報(bào)告”的高度評(píng)價(jià)，不僅推翻了他們關(guān)于“秘密報(bào)告”是“二十世紀(jì)最有影響的演講”之類的溢美之詞，還得出了完全相反的結(jié)論：赫魯曉夫整個(gè)“秘密報(bào)告”“全部由謊言拼湊而成”，而赫魯曉夫用于直接“揭露”斯大林或貝利亞的論據(jù)，沒有一件與事實(shí)相符。2012年格雷弗·弗出版《斯大林與民主，托洛茨基與納粹》（Grover Furr. Stalin and Democracy - Trotsky and the Nazis. Istanbul: Software Update, 2012.），2013年出版《謀殺基洛夫：歷史、學(xué)術(shù)與反斯大林的范式》（Grover Furr. The Murder of Sergei Kirov: History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm. Kettering, OH: Erythros Press & Media. 2013），2014年出版《血腥的謊言》，主要揭露耶魯大學(xué)教授Timothy Snyder的Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (N.Y: Basic Books, 2010)一書的 欺騙性，Snyder書的主要目的，是要證明斯大林等于希特勒。2015年格雷弗·弗教授將出版一本專論，揭露1930年代托洛茨基言 論中的謊言。由于格雷弗·弗多年來致力于回?fù)魢H資產(chǎn)階級(jí)對(duì)斯大林和蘇聯(lián)革命的抹黑和誹謗，美國右翼保守主義名人、作家David Horowitz將其列為“美國101個(gè)最危險(xiǎn)的學(xué)者之一”（David Horowitz. The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America）。格雷弗·弗教授的《反斯大林的卑劣行徑》一書不日將刊行中文版。格雷弗·弗的網(wǎng)頁是http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/。

1 羅伊·A·麥德維杰夫（Roy A. Medvedev，1925—）：1925年生于格魯吉亞加盟共和國首府第比利斯。屬于蘇聯(lián)少數(shù)民族。他曾在列寧格勒大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)哲學(xué)和教育學(xué)，并在該大學(xué)獲得職業(yè)教育方面科學(xué)學(xué)位候選人提名。他對(duì)蘇聯(lián)歷史和政治哲學(xué)的興趣顯然是被赫魯曉夫1956年在蘇共第20次代表大會(huì)上的報(bào)告中所揭露出來的所謂“內(nèi)幕”激發(fā)起來的。麥德維杰夫1959年完成其博士學(xué)位論文，不久就出版了兩部教育學(xué)方面的論著。1962年他開始寫作《讓歷史來審判》。本書對(duì)所謂“斯大林主義”進(jìn)行了嚴(yán)厲抨擊，認(rèn)為它是歷史上的一種變態(tài)。麥德維杰夫在1969年被開除出共產(chǎn)黨。兩年以后，就在出版《讓歷史來審判》以及《關(guān)于瘋狂的問題》〔和他的同胞兄弟——現(xiàn)住倫敦的生物學(xué)家曹瑞斯（Zhores）合著〕前夕，他辭去了在教育科學(xué)研究院職業(yè)教育研究所的工作。從那以后，集中精力從事持不同政見者的活動(dòng)。他的著作和文章經(jīng)常在西方發(fā)表。在《讓歷史來審判》 于1973年出版。他的第二部主要著作《論社會(huì)主義民主》1975年出版。1979年之后，麥德維杰夫的作品被大量翻譯成中文出版。

2 亞歷山大猠哈伊洛維奇攠爾洛夫（Александр Михайлович Орлов；1895年－1973年），原名列夫費(fèi)爾德賓（Лев Фельдбин），是一位蘇聯(lián)秘密警察，軍銜為少將。曾獲得列寧勛章，大清洗時(shí)流亡美國，后成為反共產(chǎn)主義作家。奧爾洛夫出生在白俄羅斯博布魯伊斯克的一個(gè)東正教猶太人家庭，曾在莫斯科大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)，后來加入沙俄軍隊(duì)。俄國內(nèi)戰(zhàn)爆發(fā)之后奧爾洛夫加入蘇聯(lián)紅軍，成為陸軍總參謀部情報(bào)局（GRU）的軍官，活躍于烏克蘭的基輔。后來前往阿爾漢格爾斯克，進(jìn)入內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員會(huì)附屬國家政治局中工作。1924年5月，成為秘密警察中的一員。作為內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部的間諜，他曾先后前往巴黎、柏林、美國、奧地利、英國等地活動(dòng)。后來西班牙內(nèi)戰(zhàn)爆發(fā)，內(nèi)務(wù)人民委員部派遣奧爾洛夫前去協(xié)助西班牙第二共和國，并在內(nèi)戰(zhàn)中扮演重要角色。20世紀(jì)三十年代，奧爾洛夫的上司阿布拉姆斯盧茨基聲稱得到消息，說德軍計(jì)劃刺殺奧爾洛夫，準(zhǔn)備為奧爾洛夫裝備一個(gè)衛(wèi)隊(duì)；但奧爾洛夫認(rèn)為其目的是為了監(jiān)視自己，因此婉拒了這個(gè)建議。1938年，葉若夫向奧爾洛夫發(fā)出電報(bào)，要求他前往比利時(shí)安特衛(wèi)普的一艘船上與蘇聯(lián)特工接頭。奧爾洛夫認(rèn)為自己將會(huì)被逮捕回國，而回國后可能遭到逮捕處決，因此拒絕回國并且攜妻女流亡美國。在美國，他過起了隱居生活，用俄語寫下《斯大林肅反秘史》（The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes）一書。此后又將其翻譯成英語，于1953年在美國出版。該書的出版轟動(dòng)了整個(gè)西方世界，他本人則成為美國中情局的被保護(hù)人。1963年，赫魯曉夫政權(quán)不再將奧爾洛夫列為叛國者。

[ 此帖被ziliao在2014-05-27 16:06重新編輯 ]

頂端Posted: 2014-05-26 23:36 | [樓 主]

 ziliao

級(jí)別: 精靈王

  
精華: 0 
發(fā)帖: 1529
威望: 1539 點(diǎn)
紅花: 15290 朵
貢獻(xiàn)值: 0 點(diǎn)
在線時(shí)間:895(小時(shí))
注冊(cè)時(shí)間:2011-09-30
最后登錄:2015-01-11

小 中 大引用 推薦 編輯 只看 復(fù)制

GF, The Continuing Revolution in Stalin-Era Soviet History Pt 2 – Tsinghua ver 03 05.09.14.docx

Professor Grover Furr

Part Two: "The Soviet Union's History Seen from the Trotsky Archives and Russian Declassified Documents after the Cold War." 

Tsinghua University, May 20, 2014, 18:30 - 21:00.

7428 words = 47 ninutes reading in English

A. Introduction

Soviet history has been falsified since the Russian Revolution of November 7, 1917. The first to lie about it were the forces who tried to overthrow the Revolution. 

The Mensheviks, defeated and in exile, published many books and newspapers until the late 1960s. The Mensheviks formed the foundation for Russian studies in the United States and probably elsewhere too. 

The “Whites”, or monarchist forces, fought the Bolsheviks with great savagery. Ultimately defeated, they went into exile, mainly in Western Europe. They also published books and newspapers. The Whites sponsored terrorist and espionage groups inside the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s.

The “Whites” were a kind of reactionary nationalist group. Other nationalists included Belorussian and Ukrainian nationalists. They had sided with the Allied intervention in 1919-1920 that tried to overthrow the Revolution. During the 1920s and 1930s the Belorussian and Ukrainian Nationalists moved even more sharply to the right, joining up with Hitler’s Nazis. 

After World War 2 these and other so-called “nationalists” that had collaborated with the Nazis in fighting the Red Army and in murdering millions of Soviet Prisoners of War and civilians moved to the West. There they were supported by the American Central Intelligence Agency. The Ukrainian Nationalists especially entered academia, where they began to produce anticommunist propaganda in academic disguise. 

After the end of the USSR in 1991 the Ukrainian Nationalists left Canada, the USA, and Western Europe and returned to Ukraine. There they came to dominate the study of history in schools and universities and historical discussion in the mass media. During the period 2000-2009 they became the single most influential force over the Ukrainian government’s anticommunist falsification of history. They are very powerful in the current Ukrainian government.

In addition to these openly anticommunist forces there are some anticommunist forces from within the Bolshevik Party. Leon Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in 1929. After that he organized a movement under his leadership that attacked the Bolshevik leadership of the USSR in every possible way

Trotsky was assassinated at Stalin’s order in August 1940. He had little influence until Khrushchev’s Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress of 1956. Khrushchev’s Speech made Trotsky seem like a prophet and a genius. It revived the almost-dead Trotskyist smovement, which is now an important anticommunist force in many countries.

B. Khrushchev Lied

In terms of its practical impact on world history Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” is the most influential speech of the 20th century and possibly of all time. In it Khrushchev painted Stalin as a bloodthirsty tyrant guilty of a reign of terror lasting more than two decades. As a direct result of this speech about one-half of all members of communist parties in the non-communist bloc quit their parties within two years. 

After the 22nd Party Congress of 1961, where Khrushchev and his men attacked Stalin with even more venom, many Soviet historians elaborated Khrushchev’s lies. These falsehoods were repeated by Cold War anticommunists like Robert Conquest. They also entered “left” discourse not only through the works of Trotskyists and anarchists, but through those of “pro-Moscow” communists who of course had to accept Khrushchev’s version.

Khrushchev’s lies were amplified during Mikhail Gorbachev’s and Boris Eltsin’s time by professional Soviet, then Russian, historians. Gorbachev orchestrated an avalanche of anticommunist falsehoods that provided the ideological smokescreen for the return to exploitative practices within the USSR and ultimately for the abandonment of socialist reforms and a return to predatory capitalism. 

During 2005-2006 I researched and wrote the book Khrushchev Lied. Its long subtitle reads: “The Evidence That Every ‘Revelation’ of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) “Crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous ‘Secret Speech’ to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False.”

In my book I identify 61 accusations that Khrushchev made against either Stalin or, in a few cases, Beria. I then studied each one of them in the light of evidence available from former Soviet archives. To my own surprise I found that 60 of the 61 accusations are provably, demonstrably false.

The fact that Khrushchev could falsify everything and get away with it for over 50 years suggests that we should look carefully at other supposed “crimes” of Stalin and of the USSR during his time. 

My book has been translated into six languages. A Chinese translation, by Professor Ma Weisian of CASS, is scheduled to appear within the next few months.

Khrushchevites and Western Anticommunists

Khrushchev sponsored many Soviet historians who elaborated his falsehoods in thousands of books and articles. Well-known examples include Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism and Aleksandr Nekrich, June 1941. 

The lies of the Khrushchevites were picked up and repeated by Western anticommunist writers who spread them outside the USSR Important examples are Robert Conquest, who wrote The Great Terror. Stalin’s Purge of the ‘30s and many other books. All Conqeust’s books rely heavily on Khrushchev-era sources, though Conquest also cites any and all anticommunist books and articles, regardless of their credibility, such as Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes. 

Another important book that relies heavily on Khrushchev-era sources is Steven F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, published in 1973 and reprinted many times since.. My Moscow colleague Vladimir L. Bobrov and I have published a detailed study of the 10th chapter of Cohen’s book, in which Cohen traces Bukharin’s life from 1930 until his trial and execution in March 1938. In that article we show two things. First, that Cohen relies almost exclusively on Khrushchev-era sources. 

Second, we show that virtually every single statement Cohen draws from the Khrushchev-era sources is false. We were able to prove this by carefully studying the documents from former Soviet archives that have been published since the end of the USSR. Just as I did with Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, we use this archival evidence to prove that Cohen’s statements and fact-claims, taken from Khrusuchev –era sources, are false. 

Gorbachev and afterwards

Mikhail Gorbachev, after 1985 the final First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (and after March 15, 1990 President of the Soviet Union) began in 1987 an anti-Stalin campaign that was even more fierce than that which Khrushchev had unleashed after the 22nd Party Congress of November 1961. Under Gorbachev hundreds of books and thousands of articles were written supposedly to prove how evil not only Stalin, but all Soviet leaders had been. The first work of Western anticommunist scholarship ever published in the Soviet Union was Cohen’s book on Bukharin, which Gorbachev personally praised and sponsored. 

Gorbachev, and after him Boris Eltsin, promised that along with “perestroika”, or “restructuring” of the economy along capitalist lines, they would sponsor “glasnost’”, or “openness” about Soviet history. For a short time many former Soviet archives were partly open to researchers, though almost exclusively to anticommunist researchers. But in 1995 many or most documents were “reclassified”, made secret again, unavailable to scholars.  No reason was given, though we can guess that this was because the documents do not support the anticommunist version of Soviet history that is now official in Russia today.

Today document collections are being published. These are very important! But this process is closely overseen by anticommunist scholars, often associated with the “Memorial Society”, a viciously anticommunist organization that claims to be a “human rights” group and that gets funding from Western sources such as the Soros Foundation. Most of the investigative  evidence related to the Moscow Trials, the Military Purges, the “Ezhovshchina” or “Great Terror”, and other important events of high politics of the 1930s, are classified, unavailable to researchers today. This remains true even though by Russian law documents are supposed to be declassified and made available to researchers after 75 years. But this is not done.

Nevertheless, a great many important documents have been published, sometimes in obscure sources, By carefully identifying them, collectiving them, and studying them, it is now possible to discover the truth about many or most of the important events of the Stalin period. This is the subject of my talks in Beijing this year, both at this university and at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who has sponsored my trip to Beijing and my presentations.

C. The Murder of Sergei Kirov

At about 4:30 p.m. on December 1, 1934 Leonid Vasil’evich Nikolaev, an unemployed Party member, shot Sergei Mironovich Kirov First Secretary of the Bolshevik Party in Leningrad in the back of the skull. Nikolaev then tried to shoot himself in the head but missed and fainted.

At first he seems to have claimed that he had killed Kirov on his own. Before a week was out Nikolaev had admitted that he was part of a conspiracy by a clandestine group of Party members opposed to Joseph Stalin and favoring Grigorii Zinoviev, Leningrad First Secretary before Kirov.

Interrogations of those whom Nikolaev had named, and then of the persons named by those men, led to a number of partial and a few fuller confessions. Three weeks after the murder fourteen men were indicted for conspiracy to kill Kirov. They were tried on December 28-29, convicted, and executed immediately. 

The larger significance of the Kirov murder unfolded gradually during the next three years. The threads that bound the Kirov conspirators to Zinoviev and Kamenev led to the three Moscow “Show Trials” of 1936, 1937 and 1938, and to the trial of the military commanders known as the “Tukhachevsky Affair” of 1937. 

In his “Secret Speech” Khrushchev cast doubt on the official version of the Kirov assassination. Khrushchev’s men tried hard to find any evidence they could to prove that Stalin had been behind Kirov’s murder. Unable to do so, they settled at length for a story that Nikolaev had acted on his own. However, the version that Stalin had caused Kirov to be killed continued to circulate, becoming widely believed both inside and outside the Soviet Union. 

Since 1990 the view officially accepted in Russia has been that Nikolaev acted alone, and that Stalin “used” Kirov’s murder to frame former or putative rivals, forcing them to admit to crimes they had never committed, and executing them and, ultimately, many thousands more. 

My goal has been to solve the Kirov murder case. I review all the evidence as objectively as possible, with appropriate skepticism, and without any preconceived conclusion in mind. The main conclusion of my study is that Nikolaev was not a “lone gunman” at all. The Soviet investigators and prosecution got it right in December 1934. A clandestine Zinovievite conspiratorial organization, of which Nikolaev was a member, killed Kirov. 

D. Trotsky in the 1930s

The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites

Shortly after the Leon Trotsky Archive at Harvard’s Houghton Library was opened in January 1980 Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué discovered letters between Leon Sedov and his father Trotsky that proved the existence of a bloc between Trotskyists and other opposition groups within the USSR. Sometime in the middle of 1932 Sedov informed his father as follows:

[The bloc] is organized. In it have entered the Zinovievites, the Sten-Lominadze group and the Trotskyists (former “[capitulators]”)

. The group of Safar. Tarkhkan. has not formally entered yet – they stand on too extreme a position; they will enter in a very short time. – The declaration of Z. and K. concerning their enormous mistake in ’27 was made during negotiations with our people concerning the bloc, immediately  before the exile of Z and K. – 

About the same time American historian Arch Getty was discovering that Trotsky had secretly sent letters to at least Radek, Sokol’nikov, Preobrazhenskii, Kollontai, and Litvinov. The first three had been Trotskyists before publicly recanting their views. Getty did not find the letters – only the certified mail receipts for them. Getty realized this meant that the Trotsky Archive had been “purged”. These letters had been removed. Other materials had undoubtedly been purged as well. 

The only reason to “purge” the archives would have been to remove materials that would have seemed incriminating – that would have negatively impacted Trotsky’s reputation. As an examination of the question of the letter to Radek shows, the letters that we know were removed proved, at the very least, that Trotsky lied during the 1930s by claiming he never maintained contact with oppositionists inside the USSR when, in reality, he was doing so, and by claiming that he would never agree to a secret bloc between his supporters and other opposi-tionist groups when in fact he had done precisely that. 

Evidently Broué found the implications of this fact very disturbing. He never mentioned Getty’s discoveries of Trotsky’s letters to his supporters and others inside the USSR or the purging of the Trotsky archive, even though Broué cites the same Getty publications (an article and a book) in a very positive manner. 

Therefore it had been well established by scholars by the mid-1980s that a Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc did in fact exist and that it was formed in 1932 and that Zinoviev and Kamenev were personally involved. Sedov also foresaw the entry into the group of Safarov, who in any case had a group of his own. 

In an interview with the Dutch social-democratic newspaper Het Volk (= “The People”) during the second half of January 1937, at the time of the Second Mos-cow Trial, Sedov stated, in a slip of the tongue, that “the Trotskyists” had been in contact with the defendants at the First Moscow Trial of August 1936.  Sedov specifically named Zinoviev, Kamenev and Smirnov. Concerning Radek and Piatakov Sedov went on to say that “[t]he Trotskyists have had much less contact with them than with the others. To be more exact: no contact at all.” That is, Sedov tried to withdraw his “slip” about Radek and Piatakov. 

But Sedov did not even try to retract the information that preceded it: that “the Trotskyists” had indeed been in contact with “the others”: Smirnov, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. This interview, “slip of the tongue” included, was published in a provincial edition of Het Volk on January 28, 1937. It was noticed by the Communist press, which called attention to Sedov’s “slip of the tongue.” (Arbeideren, Oslo, February 5, 1937; Abejderbladet, Copenhagen, February 12, 1937.) Thanks to Getty we now know that the Communist press was correct. Sedov’s remark really was a “slip of the tongue.” We know that Sedov was lying because Getty had found evidence of Trotsky’s letter to Radek. Trotsky had indeed been in touch with Radek. Sedov’s first remark, about “much less contact”, was accurate. 

Therefore we have good, non-Soviet evidence, confirmed by the Trot-sky Archive, of the following:

* A “bloc” of Zinovievites, Trotskyites, and others including at least the Sten-Lominadze and, perhaps, the Safarov-Tarkhanov group (with whom they were in any case in touch) and involving Zinoviev and Kamenev themselves, was indeed formed in 1932.

* Trotsky had indeed been in touch with Zinoviev and Kamenev, as well as others, probably through his son and chief representative Sedov. 

* Trotsky was indeed in touch with at least Radek and Piatakov. 

* Trotsky really did send a letter to Radek, who was in Geneva at the time, in the Spring of 1932, just as Radek testified in the Janu-ary 1937 Moscow Trial.

* There is no reason to accept Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué’s conclusion that this bloc was “ephemeral” and died out shortly after it was formed, because we know the Trotsky Archive was purged at some time, while Broué had no evidence to support his statement.

Trotsky in the 1930s

Long before Khrushchev Leon Trotsky was portraying Stalin as a bloodthirsty mass killer and the Moscow Trials of the 1930s fabrications. Few people believed him until the 1950s. Then two things happened. One was Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. The second was Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume biography, especially the last volume, The Prophet Outcast. 

On January 2, 1980 the Trotsky Archives at Harvard were opened. During the 1980s and ‘90s American historian Arch Getty and Pierre Broué, the foremost Trotskyist researcher in the world, discovered evidence that Trotsky had deliberately lied about his contacts with the Soviet Oppositionists. But Broué never explored the implications of what he discovered. 

I have been studying all this. It will startle, even disturb, many to learn that it was not Stalin, but Trotsky who lied in his post-1934 writings about pretty much everything having to do with the Soviet Union and Stalin. It was Trotsky who invented false stories about the Moscow Trials during the 1930s. 

All Trotsky biographers, both the sympathetic and the hostile, simply ignore all this. It is symptomatic of the impasse in which much of the Left finds itself today that Trotskyists have ignored the evidence, available for over 20 years now, that Trotsky’s writings about Stalin and the USSR during the 1930s are deliberate falsehoods. 

I’m currently writing a book on Trotsky during the 1930s. It should be published in 2015.

E. The Moscow Trials

The newly-available evidence confirms the following conclusions:

* The defendants at the Moscow Trials of August 1936, January 1937, and March 1938, were guilty of at least those crimes to which they confessed. A “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” did indeed exist. It planned to assassinate Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and others in a coup d’état , what they called a “palace coup.”. The bloc did assassinate Kirov. 

* Both Rights and Trotskyites were conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were the Military conspirators. If the “palace coup” did not work they hoped to come to power by showing loyalty to Germany or Japan in the event of an invasion.

* Trotsky too was directly conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were a number of his supporters. 

* Nikolai Ezhov, head of the NKVD from 1936 to late 1938, was also conspiring with the Germans.

All anticommunist scholars takes the position that the testimony in the three Moscow Trials was fabricated by the NKVD in some way. But they fail to give any evidence that this is so, nor do they make any kind of argument to justify these very considerable omissions. In effect LENOE simply chose to ignore this and a great deal of other evidence. 

In reality, no one has ever come close to proving that any of the Moscow Trials were faked. However, in the highly politicized and biased field of Soviet history the position that the Moscow Trials were all fabrications and all the defendants “framed” is not merely the “mainstream” position – it is the only position that is tolerated. Anyone who suggests that the Moscow Trials may not have been fabrications faces ridicule or worse. So there is a great deal of professional pressure to regard the trials as fabrications and little incentive to do any serious research on them. 

Any objective investigation must always confront the question of verification. Therefore in this chapter we will discuss two questions. First: What is the Kirov testimony in the first Moscow Trial? Second: To what extent can we confirm or disconfirm the testimony in the first Moscow Trial?

The first public Moscow Trial of August 19-24, 1936 was preceded by a great deal of investigation. Only a very small amount of the documentation this investigation produced – confessions, statements, and some physical evidence as well – has ever been made public. Most of it by far is still top-secret in Russia today. No researcher has access to anything like the full extent of it. Nor, of course, do we.

Like any researcher or investigator, we are faced with the task of evaluating all this evidence according to objective criteria. Anticommunist researchers  simply assume that there was no merit to the charges and that Stalin was out to destroy the “former” oppositionists. In reality there is no evidence whatsoever that Stalin had a “goal” of “crushing” or “destroying” former oppositionists. There never has been any such evidence. On the contrary: there is good evidence that prior to the Kirov murder Stalin was trying to conciliate former oppositionists – or people whom he believed were former oppositionists, whose opposition he believed was in the past, as they promised it was. 

Questions of Methodology

How can these materials be assessed as to their truthfulness? What, in fact, can we reasonably expect to learn from them? This problem confronts all anticommunist scholars too, though they do not directly address it. They have some interrogations, trial transcripts, and investigative materials, so we too have whatever of these materials they have chosen to disclose to us. In addition, we have all the evidence that, for whatever reasons, they omit. 

A full examination of the Moscow Trials is beyond the scope of this presentation. But I do wish to emphasize the following point: There is no evidence that any of the defendants in these trials was framed, falsely convicted, innocent. Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced that the defendants in the three Moscow Trials were anything but guilty of those charges to which they confessed. No one has ever produced any evidence that the defendants were forced to testify in some manner dictated by the prosecution or NKVD. None of the “rehabilitation” documents and reports produced during Khrushchev’s and especially during Gorbachev’s era contains any evidence that the defendants were innocent. All the conclusions of all these rehabilitation reports are assertions only. 

There is good evidence that some of the defendants at least did not tell “the whole truth” and that both Iagoda and other defendants, as well as Ezhov, distorted and concealed some matters at the trials. But none of this deception tends to exculpate any of the trial defendants either. It simply adds another dimension to their guilt, and to the picture of the conspiracies that we already have. From what we know, the defendants’ testimony reflects what they wanted to say.

A central problem in evaluating the Moscow Trials testimony is the question of independent corroboration of statements made at the trial through evidence that could not have been arranged, planted, or other-wise created by the prosecution. Of course the lack of independent corroboration would not mean that the trial testimony and confessions were faked by the prosecution. In the case of a skillful conspiracy there might be no independent evidence at all. It would just mean that we would have no way of comparing this testimony with independent evidence. Even if we had no independent corroboration, we could evaluate the internal consistency of the statements made by different defendants at different times. 

Fortunately some evidence external to the Moscow Trials and even to the USSR itself does exist. All of this external evidence tends to corroborate the confessions of the accused.

Was the Trial Testimony Falsified?

All anticommunist scholars “beg the question.” They assume that the trial testimony was falsified in some way they do not specify. In this he follows the example of ideologically anticommunist researchers. It is easy to find historians of Soviet history who make this assumption. But it is impossible to find one who proves it, or indeed has any evidence for it at all. There has never been any evidence that the testimony at the Moscow Trials was falsified, the defendants forced to mouth confessions composed or dictated by others.

But though there is no evidence that the testimony in this trial was falsified, there is a lot of evidence of the contrary: that it was genuine. Here are a few examples of corroboration between testimony at the January 1937 trial and other established facts:

* Radek and others testify that they disagreed with the assassination of individuals (1937 Trial 71; 101-2). This corresponds to what Iagoda testified independently, as we will see in the chapter devoted to him.

* Radek’s claim that he had received a letter from Trotsky in the spring of 1932 is confirmed by a certified mail receipt found by Getty in the Harvard Trotsky archive. (92)

* Radek testified that Bukharin had told him he (Bukharin) had “taken the path of terrorism.” (99) We know from the memoirs of Jules Humbert-Droz, published in Switzerland in 1971, that Bukharin had decided to assassinate Stalin long before this. 

* Sokol’nikov testified that the “united centre” of Zinovievites and Trotskyites had decided on planning terrorist acts against Stalin and Kirov “as early as the autumn of 1932.” (147) This corresponds with the testimony of Valentin Astrov, one of Bukharin’s followers, one of whose confessions has been published. Astrov had the chance to recant this after the fall of the USSR but explicitly refused to do so. Astrov also insisted that the NKVD investigators had treated him with respect and used no compulsion against him.

* Muralov stated that Ivan Smirnov had told him about his meeting abroad with Sedov. (217) In his Livre rouge Sedov admitted that he had met with Smirnov, though he claimed the meeting was entirely innocent. 

* Muralov stated that Shestov had brought a letter from Sedov in 1932 with a secret message written with invisible ink. (218) We know that Sedov used antipirin to write secret messages since at least one such letter of Sedov’s survives in the Harvard Trotsky archive. In it he recommends that his father Trotsky write him back with invisible ink as well.

* Radek stated that it was he who had recommended to Trotsky that Vitovt Putna, a military commander loyal to Trotsky, be the person to negotiate with the Germans and Japanese on Trotsky’s behalf. This corresponds with Putna’s later confessions as recorded by Marshal Budienniy. 

Most of this evidence might be explained as faked – if there were any evidence that the confessions, and the alleged plots, had been scripted by the NKVD. But there is no evidence of any such conspiracy to fabricate the trials, while we do have evidence that they were not scripted. 

In light of these facts it is impermissible for any competent and objective researcher to simply dismiss without any consideration the very significant evidence given in the trial transcript. 

F. The “Ezhovshchina”, or “Great Terror”

Since my two-part essay "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform" was written in 2004-5, a great deal more evidence has been published concerning the Opposition, the Moscow Trials of 1936, 1937, and 1938, the Military Purges or "Tukhachevsky Affair", and the subsequent "Ezhovshchina", often called "the Great Terror" after the title of the extremely dishonest book by Robert Conquest first published in 1968.

The newly-available evidence confirms the following conclusions:

* The defendants at the Moscow Trials of August 1936, January 1937, and March 1938, were guilty of at least those crimes to which they confessed. A "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" did indeed exist. It planned to assassinate Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and others in a coup d’état , what they called a "palace coup" (dvortsovyi perevorot). The bloc did assassinate Kirov.

* Both Rights and Trotskyites were conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were the Military conspirators. If the "palace coup" did not work they hoped to come to power by showing loyalty to Germany or Japan in the event of an invasion.

* Trotsky too was directly conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were a number of his supporters.

* Nikolai Ezhov, head of the NKVD from 1936 to late 1938, was also conspiring with the Germans.

Ezhov

We now have much more evidence about the role of NKVD chief Nikolai Ezhov than we had in 2005. Ezhov, head of the NKVD (People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs), had his own conspiracy against the Soviet government and Party leadership. Ezhov had also been recruited by German intelligence.

Like the Rights and Trotskyites, Ezhov and his top NKVD men were counting on an invasion by Germany, Japan, or other major capitalist country. They tortured a great many innocent people into confessing to capital crimes so they would be shot. They executed a great many more on falsified grounds or no grounds at all.

Ezhov hoped that this mass murder of innocent people would turn large parts of the Soviet population against the government. That would create the basis for internal rebellions against the Soviet government when Germany or Japan attacked.

Ezhov lied to Stalin, the Party and government leaders about all this. The truly horrific mass executions of 1937-1938 of almost 682,000 people were in large part unjustifiable executions of innocent people carried out deliberately by Ezhov and his top men in order to sow discontent among the Soviet population.

Although Ezhov executed a very large number of innocent people, it is clear from the evidence now available that there were also real conspiracies. The Russian government continues to keep all but a tiny amount of the investigative materials top-secret. We can’t know for sure exactly the dimensions of the real conspiracies without that evidence. Therefore, we don’t know how many of these 682,000 people were actual conspirators and how many were innocent victims.

As I wrote in 2005, Stalin and the Party leadership began to suspect as early as October 1937 that some of the repression was done illegally. From early in 1938, when Pavel Postyshev was sharply criticized, then removed from the Central Committee, then expelled from the Party, tried and executed for mass unjustified repression, these suspicions grew.

When Lavrentii Beria was appointed as Ezhov’s second-in-command Ezhov and his men understood that Stalin and the Party leadership no longer trusted them. They made one last plot to assassinate Stalin at the November 7, 1938 celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But Ezhov’s men were arrested in time.

Ezhov was persuaded to resign. An intensive investigation was begun and a huge number of NKVD abuses were uncovered. A great many cases of those tried or punished under Ezhov were reviewed. Over 100,000 people were released from prison and camps. Many NKVD men were arrested, confessed to torturing innocent people, tried and executed. Many more NKVD men were sentenced to prison or dismissed.

Under Beria the number of executions in 1938 and 1940 dropped to less than 1% of the number under Ezhov in 1937 and 1938, and many of those executed were NKVD men, including Ezhov himself, who were found guilty of massive unjustified repression and executions of innocent people.

Some of the most dramatic evidence published since 2005 are confessions of Ezhov and Mikhail Frinovsky, Ezhov’s second-in-command. I have put some of these on the Internet in both the original Russian and in English translation. We also have a great many more confessions and interrogations, mostly partial, of Ezhov, in which he makes many more confessions. These were published in 2007 in a semi-official account by Aleksei Pavliukov.

Anticommunist Scholars Hide the Truth

All "mainstream" – that is, anticommunist – and Trotskyist researchers falsely claim that there were no conspiracies. According to them, all the Moscow Trial defendants, all the military defendants, and all those tried and sentenced for espionage, conspiracy, sabotage, and other crimes, were innocent victims. Some claim that Stalin had planned to kill all these people because they might constitute a "Fifth Column" if the USSR were attacked. Other anticommunists prefer the explanation that Stalin just tried to terrorize the population into obedience.

This is an ideological, anticommunist stance masquerading as an historical conclusion. It is not based upon the historical evidence and is inconsistent with that evidence. Anticommunist historians ignore the primary source evidence available. They even ignore evidence in collections of documents that they themselves cite in their own works.

Why do the anticommunist "scholars", both in Russia and the West, ignore all this evidence? Why do they continue to promote the false notions that no conspiracies existed and that Stalin, not Ezhov, decided to execute hundreds of thousands of innocent people? The only possible explanation is that they do this for ideological reasons alone. The truth, as established by an examination of the primary source evidence, would make Stalin and the Bolsheviks "look good" to most people.

Bukharin, Not Stalin, To Blame for the Massive Repressions

One interesting aspect of this is that Nikolai Bukharin, leading name among the Rightists and one of its leaders, knew about the "Ezhovshchina" as it was happening, and praised it in a letter to Stalin that he wrote from prison.

It gets even better. Bukharin knew that Ezhov was a member of the Rightist conspiracy, as he himself was. No doubt that is why he welcomed Ezhov's appointment as head of the NKVD -- a view recorded by his widow in her memoirs.

In his first confession, in his now-famous letter to Stalin of December 10, 1937, and at his trial in March 1938 Bukharin claimed he had completely "disarmed" and had told everything he knew. But now we can prove that this was a lie. Bukharin knew that Ezhov was a leading member of the Rightist conspiracy -- but did not inform on him. According to Mikhail Frinovsky, Ezhov's right-hand man, Ezhov probably promised to see that he would not be executed if he did not mention his own, Ezhov's, participation (see Frinovsky's confession of April 11, 1939).

If Bukharin had told the truth -- if he had, in fact, informed on Ezhov -- Ezhov's mass murders could have been stopped in their tracks. The lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people could have been saved.

But Bukharin remained true to his fellow conspirators. He went to execution -- an execution he swore he deserved "ten times over" -- without revealing Ezhov's participation in the conspiracy.

This point cannot be stressed too much: the blood of the hundreds of thousands of innocent persons slaughtered by Ezhov and his men during 1937-1938, are on Bukharin's hands.

Objectivity and Evidence

I agree with historian Geoffrey Roberts when he says:

In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it.

("Stalin’s Wars", Frontpagemag.com February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35305.html  )

The conclusions I have reached about the "Ezhovshchina" will be unacceptable to ideologically-motivated people. I have not reached these conclusions out of any desire to "apologize" for the policies of Stalin or the Soviet government. I believe these to be the only objective conclusions possible based on the available evidence.

I make no claim that the Soviet leadership was free from error. Stalin’s vision of a socialism leading to communism was obviously faulty in that it did not come to pass. During Stalin’s time, as during the short period of Lenin’s leadership, the Soviets made a great many errors. Error is, of course, inevitable in all human endeavor. And since the Bolsheviks were the first communists to conquer and hold state power, they were in unknown waters. It was inevitable, therefore, that they would make a great many mistakes – and they did.

However, any objective study of the evidence and the historical record shows that there was simply no alternative to forced collectivization and industrialization – except defeat at the hands of some combination of capitalist powers. Likewise, the fact that the Right, Trotskyite, and Military conspiracies really did exist but were snuffed out by the Soviet leadership, which managed to out-maneuver Ezhov and foil his conspiracy as well, proves that once again the USSR – "Stalin" – saved Europe from Naziism and all the Allies from an immense number of additional casualties at the hands of the Axis powers.

G. Conclusion

In this talk I have only touched on a few of the important events of Soviet history of the 1930s. I will discuss others in my talks at Beijing University in a few days and at CASS during this week.

In conclusion I would like to say something about objectivity and the attempt to discover the truth.

Almost all books and articles published today about Soviet history of the Stalin period are framed, and therefore controlled, by what I call the “anti-Stalin paradigm.” In Western academic discussion it is obligatory – required – that a researcher come to conclusions that confirm the anticommunist portrayal of Stalin as a vicious, evil killer and dictator, and the Soviet Union as a site of mass murder and cruelty. If you are unwilling to put your research within this biased framework you simply cannot have an academic career at all.

I have been told by two fine researchers in Soviet history – researchers who are not leftists but who strive to be objective – that no book that is not hostile to Stalin can be published by an academic publisher. That certainly is true in the West, and I believe it to be true in Russia as well.

Let me put this another way: If you were in the field of Soviet history – if you taught Soviet history in a history department anywhere in the West – I assume the situation is different here in China  – you could not do the research I do. If you did, you could not be published in the standard journals, or by mainstream academic publishers, and you would soon not be in the field of Soviet history anymore, because you wouldn’t have a job!

That is why my position is unusual. I teach in an English Department. My academic livelihood does not depend in any way on my research into Soviet history.  

This is what I have to offer.  And a lot of people around the world think it is important. Not just people on the Left, such as you are. The anticommunists also think it’s important. And they don’t like it.

A lot of people on the Right do not want the truth about the history of the communist movement in the USSR, during the Stalin years, to come to light. They want to continue to demonize it, to compare it to Hitler and fascism, and to lie about it. And that’s what they do – not only “passively”, through their “point of view”, or bias, but actively, by deliberately falsifying the evidence, sources, and history.

Marx and Engels wrote that “the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains.” By that I assume they meant that we have no sacred cows, nothing we refuse to subject to critical scrutiny. We want to cast aside all illusions and falsehoods. Only “the truth shall make us free”, if “we” are against all exploitation of man by man; if “we” are the international working class. 

Marx’s favorite slogan was “De omnibus dubitandum” – Question Everything, and your preconceived ideas and biases above all others. If you want to learn the truth, that’s what you must do.

Moreover, it is what every bourgeois detective in every detective story knows. As Sherlock Holmes used to say: Keep your mind free of precipitate conclusions. Get the facts before you form your hypotheses. Be ready to abandon an hypothesis that does not explain the established facts.

If you don’t do this – if you don’t try to discover the truth from the outset – then you are not going to stumble upon it by accident along the way. And what you will find will not be the truth. 

This is what I try hard to do. None of the demonizers of Stalin and the Soviet Union, the anticommunist “experts” on the history of the communist movement, make any attempt to be objective. They do not discover the truth, then, because they don’t want to do so. They want to write “propaganda with footnotes.” And that’s what their works are.

In my presentations in the United States I quote a line from a popular and satirical singer named “Weird Al Yankovich.” He has a song titled “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” And that is the situation with Soviet history today. Everything we have been taught, at least since Khrushchev’s day about Soviet history of the Stalin period – is wrong, based on anticommunist lies (Again, things may well be different here in China).

But where we now have evidence, chiefly from former Soviet archives though also from the Trotsky Archive at Harvard University, we inevitably – always, in every single specific instance – find that the anticommunist from Leon Trotsky to Khrushchev to Gorbachev, and all the anticommunist “scholars” to the present day – are wrong, and in most cases they are deliberately lying. 

I would like to cite an example, the subject of my latest book:

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin ((N.Y: Basic Books, 2010)

Snyder, a full professor of Eastern European history at Yale, has written dozens of articles for leading intellectual journals such as the NY Review of Books. In 2010 he published Bloodlands. This book is by far the most successful attempt to date to equate Stalin with Hitler, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. It has garnered rave reviews in literally dozens of newspapers and journals; received prizes for historiography; and has been translated into more than 20 languages. 

Snyder has little to say about the Nazis. His main target is Stalin, Soviet policy, and communists generally. His broader claim is that the Soviets killed 6 to 9 million innocent civilians while the Nazis were killing about 14 million. Snyder finds parallels between Soviet and Nazi crimes at every turn.

I spent a whole year methodically checking every single footnote, every reference to anything that could be construed as a crime by Stalin, the USSR, or pro-Soviet communists. Snyder’s main sources are in Polish and Ukrainian, in hard-to-find books and articles. 

I found that every single “crime” Snyder alleges is false – a fabrication. Snyder very often deliberately lies about what his sources say. More often he cites anticommunist Polish and Ukrainian secondary sources that do the lying for him. Once again, not a single accusation holds up. 

The significance of this wholesale falsification is important. For one thing, Snyder’s book is now widely quoted as an authority. Snyder “said” it in Bloodlands, so it is established as a fact. 

But the broader significance of Snyder’s wholesale lying and falsifying is as follows. Snyder had a team of very anticommunist Polish and Ukrainian nationalist researchers to help him. It is their work which he is, basically, “retailing” to an English-speaking audience. Snyder himself has spent many years researching Eastern Europe between the world wars.

And yet Snyder cannot find a single genuine “crime” by the USSR, Stalin, or even by pro-communist groups! Surely this team of dedicated anticommunists, armed with the support of their post-Soviet states, access to archives, and knowledge of all the Eastern European languages, would have discovered real crimes of Stalin or of the USSR – if any existed. This constitutes the best evidence we are ever likely to have that there are no such “crimes”.

My book on Snyder’s Bloodlands, tentatively titled Blood Lies, will be published this month.

My next book, planned for publication next year, in 2015, will be on Leon Trotsky’s writings in the 1930s, especially from December 1934 until his death in 1940. Evidence from Trotsky’s own archives, when put together with evidence from former Soviet archives, now permits us to see that Trotsky deliberately lied about the Soviet Union and Stalin, about the Kirov murder, and the Moscow Trials, throughout this period. He did this to preserve his own conspiracy. Naturally, one must lie if one is to be a conspirator. But Trotsky’s lies have been believed first by his own followers and then, after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, by a great many persons. So I think this study will be of broad interest.

The questions one asks inevitably reflect and expose one's own political concerns, and mine are no exception. I believe that the history of the Bolshevik Party during Stalin's years -- a history obfuscated by anti-communist lies and as yet to be written -- has a lot to teach future generations. Political activists who look to the past for guidance, and politically-conscious scholars who believe their greatest contributions towards a better world can be made through study of such struggles in the past, have a great deal to learn from the legacy of the Soviet Union.

Like medieval mariners whose maps were more imagination than fact, we have been misled by canonical histories of the USSR that are mainly false. The process of discovering the real history of the world's first socialist experiment has scarcely begun. I believe this is of immense importance for our future. I hope you agree with me in this.

Thank you for listening to me. I am ready to answer your questions as best I can, and to receive your criticisms with humility.

——中國文革研究網(wǎng)

微信掃一掃，進(jìn)入讀者交流群

獻(xiàn)一朵花： 鮮花數(shù)量：