The Lacuna

None today, only testimony. Cross-examination begins tomorrow.

12 April

One question in Spanish today, from Sr. Pontón of the Sociedad de Naciones, translated as follows: “Sir, for our Mexican correspondents I beg you the trouble of answering: your persistent charge against Stalin is a lack of democracy. Is that correct?”

Lev answered: “Correct. A rank of party workers has been created who enter the government and renounce their own opinions. Or at least any open expression of them. Every page on their desks comes from above. They behave as if the hierarchy had already created all party opinion and decisions. From this hierarchy, every decision affecting the country stands in the form of a command.”

When Lev isn’t speaking he puts his feet on the table and leans back in his chair. Today he reached such an extreme backward angle, it seemed the GPU might not be needed to crack the man’s head. But he was still listening. He looks down his Russian nose and his whole lower face crumples into his collar when he concentrates. He has no consciousness of how he must look to others, only aiming his mind with such a ferocious focus that it could set all those bureaucrats’ papers to flames. This must be the countenance of a revolutionary.

This daily record complete and submitted: 4/12/37.

13 April

Sr. Pontón’s question and Lev’s answer have gone on the front page of today’s Washington Post! Exactly as translated by HS, and quoted again on the editor’s page, in a discussion of the Moscow Trials and the commission. The article even used the description of Mr. Trotsky leaning in his chair, and the headline in very bold letters was: THE COUNTENANCE OF A REVOLUTIONARY.

These were only some notes and doodles submitted with the translation transcript, Sra. Frida. This is a shock, and a terror. The very first try at translation, and some notes jotted on a whim, now on display for the world to read? It was hard to think about breakfast this morning. Perpetua said, “Sit down and stop shaking, mi’ijo. It’s a bad start to the week for a man who’s hanged on Monday.”

Hanging is what it feels like! A twenty-year-old galopino who knows nothing about politics could have mistaken yes for no, a renunciar for a renacer, and then what? History could hang on it. Lives could be lost, for the sake of a wrong word. No wonder writers are pessimistic. Better to be a cook, where a mistake will only send someone away hungry, or at worst, to the WC.

But Van complimented the translation. He read the article to Lev and Natalya at breakfast, translating it back to Russian as he went. They listened to the words of a cook, while eating toasted bread for which the same nervous cook had already burned his knuckles.

14 April

After the day’s hearings closed today, Lev went to the front door to see the huge crowd gathered there. Not only newsmen but workers of all sorts, even laundrywomen. No barefoot soldiers want to kill him anymore, after hearing his fiery defense of the worker and peasant reported in the news. Now he’s afraid they’ll want to knock Jesus off the pallets of the Holy Week processions this week and put Trotsky up there instead. A group from the miners’ syndicate walked here all the way from Michoacán.

He spoke to the crowd in Spanish, slowly but well. “I am here because your country believes with me in democratic government and the worker-control of industry. Our efforts cannot succeed in an empty space.” (Probably he meant “a vacuum.”) “True change will come from an international organization of workers for world revolution.” The crowd has been quiet all day, but at those words they roared.

Nearly every day he takes small pauses from his writing to practice Spanish with the native typist. Van doesn’t like the distraction, pointing out that translators are always at the ready. And Lev says, “Trust an old revolutionary to trust no one completely.” He was teasing, it seemed. But today as he spoke directly to the crowd, his purpose was clear.

15 April

A long day of hearings. Mr. Dewey says it’s nearly concluded, but the crowd still grows, both the number of foreigners inside and the Mexicans outside. Lev has such a passion for this hearing, he wouldn’t mind if it went on until the sun burned cold. Van seems content beside his chief, undaunted by the army of observers: Mexican and foreign reporters in fedoras and rolled-up shirtsleeves, magazine writers, even some novelists, watching Van’s every move as he fishes into the paper caverns of the files with his long fingers, retrieving whatever obscure page Lev might need, indicated only by a word, a date, or a person’s name. They are like father and son. Lev and Van.

Very few questions in Spanish today. Sr. Pontón of the Sociedad de Naciones has the most. Today he had two. The first: “Sir, is it your position that a worker’s state could genuinely honor suffrage and all democratic rights, as in a social democracy?”

Lev’s reply: “Why should it not be so? Even now, in all the capitalist countries, Communists take part in the parliamentary struggle. When we achieve a worker’s state, there is no difference in principle in the way we will use suffrage, freedom of the press, assembly, and so forth.”

Second question: “Sir, you say the Soviet Union under Stalin is a degenerated workers’ state, controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy. You predict this corruption will be overthrown by a political revolution, establishing a democracy of the working class. Or that it will continue to degenerate under world pressure into a purely capitalist state. In either case, can you rationalize the costs to society?”

Lev answered: “Young man, you make a point. Humanity has never succeeded in rationalizing its history. Much harm comes from leaders who insist that for every advance, someone else must slide backward. The dictatorship of the Soviet Secretariat came about because of the backwardness and isolation of the country, for so long imposed on us by the tsar. We were accustomed to the rationalizing of a despot. People accept what they have already known. When mankind is exhausted, he creates new enemies, new religions. Our best task is to move forward without seeking to do so.”

April 17

The commission has ended its work after thirteen sessions. If it went another day, the dining room of this house would crack like an egg. Lev closed with his usual vigor: “The experience of my life has not destroyed my faith in the clear, bright future of mankind. At age eighteen I entered the workers’ quarters of Nikolayev with nothing but a boy’s belief in reason, truth, and human solidarity. My faith since then has become more mature, but no less ardent.”