Leon
Trotsky: Letter to El Nacional
June
6, 1940
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 862]
Editor,
El
National
Mexico
City
Dear
Sir:
Carefully
following the May 24 attack’s reverberations in the capitalist
press, I found in your worthy newspaper, in the issue dated May 27, a
note under the heading “Trotsky Contradicts Himself.” The note
attributes to me differing versions concerning how I was saved from
the gunfire and concerning the room in which I spent the night. This
dispatch represents a poor fabrication from beginning to end. In my
statements there was not, and there could not have been, the shadow
of a contradiction. Your editorial staff was simply the victim of
tendentious, not to say criminal, reporting, whose source should be
sought very close to the source of the attack.
The
note begins with the words, “The observers make various comments on
the statements made by the former Soviet war commissar” (El
National,
May 27, section 2, page 2). You could undoubtedly have done a very
large service for the investigation and for public opinion by more
accurately indicating who these “observers” are that gave you
false information. These observers cannot be members of my household,
nor can they be the investigators, nor can they be distant observers.
Isn’t this just some journalist who observed nothing, but rather
carried out an order from the GPU? The ill-intentioned character of
the information is dictated by two objectives: to mislead the
investigation and to prepare the groundwork for the hypothesis of a
self-assault
No
doubt you will understand the importance of these circumstances and
will hasten to make the necessary clarification.
Very
sincerely,
Leon
Trotsky
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