Litvinov
Moscow, K-1, Ulitsa Aleksei
Tolstoy 8,
Flat 78.
SUPPORT THE APPEAL OF PAVEL LITVINOV AND LARISA DANIEL!
[The following statement was issued by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.]
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The United Secretariat of the Fourth International hails the appeal to world public opinion issued by Pavel Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz-Daniel in connection with the Ginzburg trial in Moscow and asks revolutionary socialists and communists throughout the world to respond to the request in the appeal; namely, to reproduce it as widely as possible in order to help the Soviet Union to definitively rid itself of the Stalinist crew.
The Ginzburg trial, following on the trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky, has shown that if there is no longer such terror as raged in the thirties and forties, bureaucratic despotism has never been done away with and Soviet democracy still does not exist, despite a certain number of measures of mere liberalization.
But the appeal of Pavel Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz—Daniel shows that the resistance to the despotism is growing. The defendants no longer "confess," witnesses resist judges of the Vishinsky stripe, most intellectuals are asking the Soviet authorities to stop persisting in scandalous practices, a minority has finally issued an appeal without fearing to place at stake the freedom of the signers.
Soviet society must be helped in
getting rid of a bureaucratic power,
which from the time of Stalin to his suc-
cessors of today has defiled the cause of
socialism. From their cowardice in defend-
ing Vietnam against U.S. imperialism to
their virulent attitude toward nonconform-
ist young intellectuals, runs a common
thread -- the effort to maintain the
status quo. This holds on the interna-
tional scale with the United States and
on a domestic scale in the Soviet Union;
they seek to maintain the status quo in
favor of bureaucratic privileges against
the interests of the masses both in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world.
Soviet society today is no longer
threatened by the danger of a capitalist
restoration. The actual threat is the one
to the progress of socialism represented
by the leadership of the Soviet Union.
All those who aspire to achieve a
democratic socialist society, all the
workers, all the peoples whose economic
status is of a colonial type, all the in-
tellectuals worthy of the name, will re-
spond to the appeal of Pavel Litvinov. and
Larisa Bogoraz—-Daniel.
Down with "Moscow trials" -- those
of today as well as those of the thirties!
Long live Soviet democracy, the
best means of reinforcing the conquests
of October and of assuring the progress
of the USSR toward socialism in intimate
association with the world socialist rev-
olution.