The following is the text of the appeal to rehabilitate the victims of the Moscow trials. It has been signed by many people, including trade unionists, academics and politicians. The campaign is appealing for further signatures from individuals and organisations and for financial donations.
'IT IS NOW over fifty years since the infamous Moscow show trials. It is astounding that at a time when the Soviet government is at pains to emphasise its concern with "human rights" and proclaims the need for glasnost (openness), the accused in these trials, with a tew exceptions, are still considered guilty of being paid agents of Nazism and other crimes. 'Among these men were numbered several who played outstanding roles in the Russian revolution of 1917. The reputations of founders of the Soviet state like, Zinoviev, Radek, Trotsky and Bukharin were besmirched or expunged from the history books. Today, no one doubts that the "confessions" at the trials - the sole basis for the prosecution - were utterly false. Seven defendants in the third trial, Krestinsky and others, have been both judicially rehabilitated and politically exonerated. So have the military leaders, Tuchachevsky and others, whose military trial in 1937 was held in secret. But the admittedly false evidence against these men was inseparable from the charges against all the other accused. 'None of the accused, of course, is still alive today. Many were executed immediately after their trials. Others died in prison or camps. Leon Trotsky, the chief accused in all three of the trials, was murdered in exile in 1940. However, families of some of the defendants are still living in the Soviet Union. Some have also suffered imprisonment and exile. It is worth recalling that a review of all these cases was promised by Krushchev, but this promise was broken.
'We therefore call on the Soviet government to re-examine the cases against all these victims of the perversion of Soviet justice, as took place with Krestinsky. We are confident that all those accused in the trials of 1936-1938 will be shown to have been innocent. They should immediately be rehabilitated, their honour restored, their families compensated and their graves marked.'
1 November 1987 You can contact the Moscow Trials Campaign care of Michel Lowy, 34 rue des Lyonnais, 75005 Paris, France.