Trotsky's Speech about the Moscow Trials (full)

"Stalin's trial against me is built upon false confessions, extorted by modern Inquisitorial methods, in the interests of the ruling clique. There are no crimes in history more terrible in intention or execution than the Moscow trials of Zinoviev-Kamenev and of Radek-Piatakov. These trials develop not from communism, not from socialism, but from Stalinism, that is, from the irresponsible despotism of the bureaucracy over the people! "What is now my principal task? To reveal the truth. To show and to demonstrate that the true criminals hide under the cloak of the accusers. What will be the next step in this direction? The creation of an American, a European and subsequently, an international commission of inquiry, composed of people who incontestably enjoy authority and public confidence. I will undertake to present to such a commission all my files, thousands of personal and open letters in which the development of my thought and my action is reflected day by day, without any gaps. I have nothing to hide! Dozens of witnesses who are abroad possess invaluable facts and documents which will shed light on the Moscow frame-ups. The work of the commission of inquiry must terminate in a great countertrial. A countertrial is necessary to cleanse the atmosphere of the germs of deceit, slander, falsification and frame-ups, whose source is Stalin's police, the GPU, which has fallen to the level of the Nazi Gestapo."