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Although Pritt was not a Communist party member, he was pro-Soviet. Was he, then, capable of forming an objective, professional opinion? Anecdotal evidence suggests he was. Jeremy Murray-Brown, biographer of the Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta, writing to the editor of Commentary in connection with the Moscow Trials, relates that he had had discussions with Pritt in 1970, in the course of which he asked Pritt about the trials:

His reply astonished me. ‘I thought they were all guilty’, he said, referring to Bukharin and his co-defendants. It was as simple as that; Pritt made no attempt at political justification, but reaffirmed what was for him a matter of clear professional judgment. …In terms of the Soviet Union’s own judicial system, Pritt said, he firmly believed the defendants in the Moscow trials were guilty as charged. It was an argument which came oddly from the man who defended Kenyatta.[180]

Kenyatta, accused of being leader of the terrorist Mau Mau, whom Pritt went to Kenya to defend before a British colonial court, had been ‘evasive’ under cross-examination, Pritt stated.[181] Pritt, despite his support for Kenyatta, was able to judge the veracity of proceedings regardless of political bias, and had maintained his view of the Moscow trials even in 1970, when it would have been opportune, even among Soviet sympathizers, to conform to the accepted view, including the declarations of Khrushchev. Indeed, Sidney Hook, long since having become a Cold Warrior in the service of the USA, retorted:

In reply to Jeremy Murray-Brown: the significance of D N Pritt’s infamous defense of the infamous Moscow frame-up trials must be appraised in the light of Khrushchev’s revelations of Stalin’s crimes available to the public (outside the Soviet Union) long before Pritt’s avowals to Mr Murray-Brown. Pritt cannot have been unaware of them.[182]

Of course Pritt was not unaware of Khrushchev’s so-called ‘revelations’. Unlike many former admirers of Stalin who found it opportune to change sides, he was simply not impressed by their veracity, and it must be assumed that his scepticism was based on both his eminent judicial experience and his first-hand observations. Certainly, Sidney Hook’s leading role in the formation of the Dewey Commission for the exoneration of Trotsky, was itself a cynical travesty, as will be considered below.

If there was a general consensus that the proceedings of the Moscow Trials were legitimate, and a quite sceptical attitude towards the findings of the Dewey Commission, what has since caused an almost universal reversal of opinion? It was a change of perception in regard to Stalin in the aftermath of World War II, and not due to any sudden revelations about the Moscow Trials or about Stalin’s tyranny. The wartime alliance, which, it was assumed, would endure during the post-war era, instead gave way to the Cold War.[183] Such was the hatred by the Trotskyites for the USSR that they were willing to enlist in the ranks of the anti-Soviet crusade even to the extent of working for the CIA[184], and supporting the US in Korea and Vietnam to counter Soviet influence.[185] Their services as experienced anti-Soviet propagandists were eagerly sought by the CIA. Hence the findings of the Dewey Commission, largely ignored in their own time, are now heralded as definitive. The nature of this Dewey Commission will now be considered.

‘Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials’

The so-called Dewey Commission, the full title of which was the ‘Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials’, having a legalistic and even official sound to it, was convened in March 1937 on the initiative of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky as a supposedly ‘impartial body’.[186] The purpose was, ‘to ascertain all the available facts about the Moscow Trial proceedings in which Trotsky and his son, Leon Sedov, were the principal accused and to render a judgment based upon those facts’.[187] However, the composition of the Commission indicates that it was set up as a counter-show trial with the preconceived intention of exonerating Trotsky, and was created at the instigation of Trotsky himself.

The stage was set with the founding of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky by Professor Sidney Hook, who persuaded his mentor, Professor John Dewey, to front for it. Just how ‘impartial’ the Dewey Commission was might be deduced not only from its having been initiated by those sympathetic towards Trotsky, but also by a comment in a Time report at the occasion of Trotsky’s deportation from Norway en route to Mexico: ‘The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky spat accusations at the Norwegian Government last week for its “indecent and filthy” behavior in placing the Great Exile & Mme Trotsky on the Norwegian tanker Ruth…’[188]

The mock ‘trial’ organised by the Dewey Commission was prompted by a ‘demand’ from Trotsky from his new abode in Mexico, who ‘publicly demanded the formation of an international commission of inquiry, since he had been deprived of any opportunity to reply to the accusations before a legally constituted court’.[189] A sub-commission was formed to travel to Mexico and to allow Trotsky to give testimony in his defence under what was supposed to include ‘cross-examination’. The sub-commission comprised:

John Dewey as chairman, described by Novack as America’s foremost liberal and philosopher;

Otto Ruehle, a German Marxist and former Reichstag Deputy;

Alfred Rosmer, former member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1920-21);

Wendelin Thomas, leader of the sailor’s revolt in Germany in 1918 and a former Communist Deputy in the Reichstag; and

Carlo Tresca, Italian-American anarchist.[190]

Other members, whose political orientations are not mentioned by Novack, were:

Benjamin Stolberg, American journalist;

Suzanne La Follette, American journalist;

Carleton Beals, authority on Latin-American affairs;

Edward A Ross, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin;

John Chamberlain, former literary critic of the New York Times; and

Francisco Zamora, Mexican journalist.

Of these, Stolberg was a supporter of the Socialist Party, described by fellow commissioner Carleton Beals as being, along with other commissioners, thoroughly under Trotsky’s spell.[191] Suzanne La Follette was described by Beals as having a ‘worshipful’ attitude towards Trotsky.[192] Edward A Ross, who had gone to Soviet Russia in 1917 had come back with a pro-Bolshevik sentiment, writing The Russian Bolshevik Revolution (1921) and The Russian Soviet Republic (1923). John Chamberlain, a Left-leaning liberal by his own description[193], was among those who became so obsessively anti-Soviet that they ended up as avid Cold Warriors in the US camp.[194] In 1946 Chamberlain and Suzanne La Follette, along with free market guru Henry Hazlitt, founded the libertarian journal The Freeman.[195] Both can therefore be regarded as among the many Trotsky-sympathizers who became apologists for American foreign policy,[196] and laid the foundation for the ‘neo-con’ movement. Chamberlain and La Follette continued to pursue a vigorous anti-Soviet line at the earliest stages of the Cold War.[197]