A MEETING WITH TROTSKY'S SON
By PRICHARDS
PREFATORY NOTE
At the moment when, on the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Leon Trotsky, the Soviet authorities, using the Czechoslovak authorities as intermediaries, have given the murderer a passport, with a view to hindering any later researches (see on page 52 the declaration of the International Secretaria! of the Fourth International this subject), it is useful to recall that the blow struck directly at Trotsky came after a series of actions striking at Trotsky and his companion Natalia Sedov in the persons of those near to them—first of all, their children. in his fight against the Bolsheviks who resisted bureaucratie degeneration, at the height of his terror proceeded to engage in a repression striking at the families of all the Bolsheviks whom he arrested.
One particularly cruel case was that of the younger son
In February 1937 I was transferred back from the hospital to a cell in the Butyri prison for prisoners in process of indictment. From there I was transported — very late in the evening, as was the usual practice — to the Lubianka in a sealed cellular police van. to leave the thus transported prisoners for a long time, usually several hours, in small cages called sobatchniks, until - often in hours of the night — their turn came for examination. As a very disorderly activity was the rule in these places, various people were shut up together in these cells, without regard to the possibility — which should have been since their cases were still under investigation -that prisoners involved in the same cases might in this way get together. Hence interesting encounters occurred here.
At one of these night hearings — it was on February 21st or one of the following days — just after I had been installed in a cell, its door reopened to admit a thick-set, blond, blue-eyed prisoner in a flannel jacket and trousers (which was the usual clothing of camp prisoners). door was relocked, and we were left together.
The conversation began — as is usual when two total strangers find themselves in such a situation — by the general prisoners' questions: From where? It appeared that the neweomer had, like me, been brought back from an ITL (labor camp), except that this had been my case several months before, whereas he had come directly from a camp beyond the Arctic circle, Vorkuta. I was immediately interested to learn whether he had not met some of my acquaintances of the 1935-6 period (I had of Trotsky and Natalia, Sergei Lvovitch Sedov; he had never engaged in the slightest political activity, had very soon led a life independent of his parents, and was a valuable technician employed in Soviet industry.
Sergei had disappeared, among many others, Stalinist terror. And when finally the camps were emptied, a very small number of Old Bolsheviks emerged therefrom after a long martyrdom, and the memory those who had been swallowed up in them lives once more.
Our friend P Richards - who spent more than twenty years in that other world — had brought back for us the of a passing encounter with Sergei, the chance result of an investigation and transfers among prisons and camps. He has sent us this moving account for the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Leon Trotsky. been at that time in Siberia, at the moment when, from prisons all over the country, those sentenced for "Trotskyist or Zinovievist activity" had been brought together at Kolyma or Vorkuta). It turned out that the newcomer knew the names of a few people with whom I had been together.
Through this we got to talking about the latest events in Vorkuta at the end of 1936 and beginning of 1937, and the prisoner with whom I was talking introduced himself as Sergei Lvovitch Sedov, sentenced in 1936 to five years of hard labor, and now brought back from the camp to the centre to have his case reexamined. We remained together for several hours; during this time Sedov related to me various episodes from his life, especially about the last years before his arrest and the months that had passed since then.
He had — according to what he said — voluntarily declined to accompany his parents and his brother when they were exiled in 1929. Indeed, he had always been completely apolitical, and in his childhood had been more interested in the circus profession and later in his studies. He had in fact at the beginning of the '30s obtained his diploma as civil engineer, and had been assigned to a big plant in Krasnoyarsk. In the years following the exile of his parents, he had regular epistolary correspondence with them without anyone's molesting him on that account. It was only at the beginning of 1936 that he had been given to understand by the N K V D that — until further notice — he should break off the correspondence; then it was suggested to him that he should publiely, i e, by a letter to the newspapers, denounce his father's
26 activities, and to declare that he desolidarized himself from his parents.
Sergei Lvovitch declared that he had declined to take either action, on the grounds that he had never been politically active or even interested, and that his correspondence had always been of a purely family and personal nature. Thereupon persons, such as colleagues in his work, who had hitherto backed him up, underwent certain reprisals (warnings, discharges from work, arrests). Next, Sergei Lvovitch was himself transferred to another place, and then (at the heginning of 1936, it seems) arrested. As welt as I recall from the description that Sergei Lvovitch gave of the charges that were brought against him, it was a matter of an alleged action prepared against the state, which was said to have been confirmed by depositions about conversations between him and his acquaintances. He stressed the fact that his correspondence with his parents was not brought up as a charge - probably because it had been carried on with the knowledge of the proper authorities. The investigation had been carried out rapidly and without resort to any violence against him. Sergei Lvovitch declared that he had not admitted guilt in any way. He was nevertheless condemned by the "Osoboye Sowjeschtschanye" and soon after transferred to Vorkuta.
He lived there under very hard conditions, fell ill, and finally — when the concentration of the "Trotskyists" began in the second half of 1936 -he was shut up with them. Sergei Lvovitch had never had, he said, i any previous connections with Trotskyists, and had never known any of them. He now spoke of them — after having been together with them for several months - in words of the highest esteem and most deeply felt thanks, in which he emphasized that his good opinion did not extend to their political conceptions and actions, but that he was speaking from a purely human standpoint. He said that he maintained this particularly about the so-called "orthodox" ones (i e, the few participants in the 1925-7 campaign of the Left Opposition who had never "capitulated," in spite of all persecutions — most of them had been for years in jails or camps, or transported — but had held fast to their programme), and who, in spite of their own desperate situation, had shown themsel. ves to be extraordinarily sympathetic and ready to aid.
Sergei Lvovitch then explained that, involuntarily, he soon found himself at the centre of this group just at the moment when it got into a very sharp conflict with the camp authorities. As a whole series of their elementary demands
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL had not been satisfied (it was above all a question of separation from the common criminal prisoners, of suppression of various illegal vexations, of obtention of rights to some limited correspondence, etc), they began a mass hungerstrike of long duration, in which Sergei Lvovitch participated right from the beginning. He said that he could neither esteem nor approve the political grounds and background of this measure, but that — in view of their attitude toward himself and their human worth as prisoners who defended these elementary demands — he could not stand aside.
Sergei Lvovitch described the various phases of the hunger-strike that went on week after week (I do not remember the exact number of days that it lasted, but it was more than three months). The strikers were isolated, and after some time forcibly fed, despite which, according to Sergei Lvovitch, there were some cases of death, especially among the women. Sergei Lvovitch held out to the end, and, in his own words, came pretty close to death himself. The main demands of the strikers were satisfied by a special commission sent from the centre, and, according to the words of Sergei Lvovitch, after the end of the hunger-strike the whole regime was rendered more bearable.
(A remark in passing: some months after this mass hunger-strike. described by Sergei Lvovitch, i e, toward the end of 1937, participation in it was taken as a pretext for a whole series of reprisals. A disciplinary commission also sent from the centre organized the annihilation of all persons who had taken part in the hunger-strike, as well as all those who had, really or allegedly, sympathized with it.)
A short time after these events the administration of the camp where Sergei Lvovitch was confined received the order to transport him urgently to the centre for a continuation of the investigation. As normal communications were not yet open, Sergei Lvovitch and his staff of guards traveled for weeks from village to village through the icy wastes. Sergei Lvovitch humorously described how, after the recent events, this otherwise not at all pleasant journey was it relief. He rested up from the camp regime and was very well fed. He related that during this trip he had not only made up for the losses of the hunger-strike, but had got quite fat and felt as well as in the best years of his youth.
(There followed here quite detailed reminiscences about his twenties: indications about controversies with his parents, romantic incidents, and so on. Sergei Lvovitch showed, during this talk, that he was a man of many-sided formation
and had a very cultivated taste in matters of art he especially regretted that nobody would ever
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and the theatre.)
Among many persons whom he named in connection with his experience of prison-camp life at Vorkuta and the hunger-strike, Sergei Lvo. vitch mentioned in particular two persons who opinion outstanding role, Yenukidze and J Kossior. In addition he recalled with praise a group of youngsters from the Caucasus — mostly Armenians and Georgians -whom he had left behind there.
The conversation came around to what Sergei Lvovitch thought about the reopening of the investigation of his case, as well as his transfer to the Lubianka. He declared that he had no illusions about the possibility of a reconsideration of his case, or even a confirmation of his previous sentence to a camp. He spoke in detail about the methods used in investigations and opined that a well-read man must be a match for everything that was used with prisoners during interrogations. After a century things were little changed, for about a hundred years ago Balzac (Sergei Lvovitch mentioned specifically the novel Splendeur et misère des courtisanes) had described in their essentials all the ruses and tricks of the examining magistrate just as they still exist. Since, in his estimation, the political situation of the regime served by the investigating authorities seemed to be growing lastingly hardened, Sergei Lvovitch considered that the had little chance of drawing a new prison sentence — even a lengthened one — for he scarcely believed that he could escape the mass executions which had been prepared well beforehand and were now announced as im. mediate. Sergei Lvovitch declared he looked upon future events with complete calm, and that no circumstances was he ready, even in transporting him to the centre was because they vanted to force him to make statements agains arious people whom ther wanted to compromise through their acquaintance with him.)
From this Sergei Lvovitch went on to say that
27 be in a position (because he assumed that not one of the people he had met or would meet in the next few weeks of prison would ever again see the light of the outside world) to tell his relatives (he spoke especially of his mother) about the changes in attitude which he had undergone.
He enquired further whether to my knowledge there would be, in these investigation cells, enough good reading matter, for the possibility that he had had, during the period of his earlier interrogations, to read books had been able to compensate for many of the painful things that he had to undergo.
In the midst of this conversation, Sergei Lvovitch was summoned from the cell: a brief good-bye; I never saw him again.
At the beginning of 1938 A Eichenwald - a philosopher, close friend and collaborator of Bukharin, imprisoned since 1933, who at the end of 1937 was sentenced to 15 years of prison - related the following, in a cell of the special prison of Solovki:
In a conversation with my investigating magistrate, Kogan — who was, among other things, conducting the investigation against the former members of the Central
Committee - I asked for the grounds for severe reprisals, which were unknown in earlier practice, against the relatives of persons who were considered to be political enemies. Kogan opined that this was not only useful but inevitable. The conversation came to Sergei Lvovitch Sedor, who was, nevertheless, "apolitical." Kogan was just the person entrusted with the investiga-
— was as good as closed. Then he added:
"If his « batjka » will give us a carload of gold, we'll turn him loose; if not,