Those comrades who have been following the discussion in the columns of Tribune arising out of Palme Dutt's reply to a review of Ten Days that Shook the World will be intorested in the following contribution which has been sent in but not published so fare
"Jack Cohen is a difficult chap to argue with, since he reasons much in the manner of the Red Queen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass." One reme— mbers, in particular, her retort to Alice'b complaint that she has been talking nonsenses
"You may call it nonsonse if you like, but I've seen nonsense
compared with which that would be a sensible as a dictionary!"
"The trouble is that in Jack Cohen's case, one feels he isn't fibbing: perhaps he has access to a larger nonsense than that known to all the rest of us. But in some of the remarks he makes in his letter on the Dutt case he shows that he would half like tho argument to proceed according to the rules prevailing on this side of the looking glass. Perhaps I could be allowed to discuss those bits of his argument, which do involve reference to the world outside his rather bizarre imagination,
" ,eceeee'li tho lioscow Trials had been framoups, this would have been established and announced long ago' he tells us. Well, now this has been pretty well established for many socialists for quite a long time. But leaving aside the report of the Dewey Commission of 1937, which analysed and refuted the grisly charges as and when they were made, there is quite a lot of recent evidence which ought to be drawn to Jack Cohen's attention. In 1956, for instance, the Polish newspaper, Trssbuna Luda, reported on February 19th:
W .'In 1938 the iixecutive Committee of the Communist International
decided to dissolve the Commnist Party of Poland, following m
accusation that enemy agents had penetrated its leadership. It has
now been found out that this accusation was based on evidence fabric-
ated by provocateurs who have since been unmasked,!
"But reference to the Report of the Bukharin-Rykov Trial of 1938 will show that not the loast of the treasonable acts of the Rightists was their conspiracy with the Polish General Staff to permeate the Polish Communist Party with spies and saboteurs, Jiither Trybuna Luda was mistaken, or the same psople who fabricated this evidence about the Poles also put it into the mouths of Bukharin and Rykov during their trial. Yet this is only a beginning, If Jack Cohen will turn to Mr, Khrushchov's secret speech and compare it with his 'Reply to Discus= sion! in the 22nd C.P.S.U. Congress debate on the party programme, ho will see that the scarcely veiled hint of 1956 becomes in 1961 an open allegation that:
",.'Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uberovitch, Kork, Yegorov, ideman and others! were ‘amon, st tie victims of reprisals.' These reprisals not only cost the Red Army its most gifted leaders before the invasion of Hitler's troops : they also cost Jack Cohen the last claim to the support of the evidence of the Trials, For it was precisely with these soldiers that Bukharin 'confessed' to having planned a 'palace coup.! ‘iven this isn't all. On pages 111-112 of Krushchov's 1961 Report and Roply, it is suggested that the mrder of Kirov took place with the connivance of the security organs in the most fishy possible manner. Undoubtably Khrushchov is preparing the ground for the announcement that Stalin hed Kirov killed. But even if he never manages to come quite so clean as this, chrushchov has already said enough to make it plain that not only the Bukharin- Rykov, but also the Zinoviev-Kamoenev and Piatakov—Radek Trials were precisely the butcher's holidays that the Dewey Commission said they were all those years ago. If Jack Cohen (or Dutt) doubts this, then they can scarcely have any reason for not supporting the appeal of Trotsky's widow, Natalia Sedova, just before she died, that the Soviet Government initiate an enquiry into the whole matter. I , will gladly forward their names to Mr, Khrushchov for this purpose if they feel that their cause might be advanced by it. ; Why, indeed, since the innocence of the accused is so clearly established, has it not been announced? Porh®).s Jack Cohen can dig up the Red Queen's answer for us. liine, more prosaically advanced on the basis of marxist sociology, would suggest that if the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U, is afraid of ghosts, . there is likely in this case, as in all others, to be a materialist explanation for so strange an hallucination,"