Leon Trotsky: Pavon Flores, the GPU's Attorney

July 3, 1940

[Writings of Leon Trotsky, Vol 12, 1939-1940, New York ²1973, p. 301 f.]

Both at the time of my testimony before the court, on July 2, and at the judicial inspection in my house, on the 19th of last month, the defense attorneys of David Serrano, Mateo Martinez, and others tried to suggest that my archives were not found in the room where the bombs were thrown, nor anywhere else in the house.

Mr. Pavon Flores and his colleague are defending individuals who claim that they had no part in the attack. From this vantage point, the question of the archives would seem irrelevant. Nonetheless, Mr. Pavon Flores and his colleague make repeated attempts to show that there was no interest in destroying the archives on anyone's part

Why do the defense attorneys attribute such decisive importance to this question? The assailants murdered Robert Harte, intended to kill me, my wife, my grandson, tied up the police, etc.; these crimes are infinitely more important than the intent to destroy a particular collection of documents. Why then this particular interest in a secondary question? Mr. Pavon Flores's interest in my archives is explained simply by the fact that the attempt to burn them represents a very important, though not the only, proof against Stalin. No organization in the world can have a greater interest in destroying my archives than the GPU. The GPU revealed its interest in them when it overcame great technical difficulties to rob eighty-five kilograms of my archives in Paris on November 7, 1936. My archives enabled the International Commission presided over by Dr. John Dewey to uncover the judicial frauds of the Moscow trials, and continue serving as a means of uncovering Stalin's crimes.

If Mr. Flores had acknowledged the evidence that the attack was organized by the GPU, it would lessen the case against those he defends, since the potent arm of the Soviet state has unlimited resources available to break the will of the (temporary) members of the Comintern and subjugate them totally to its criminal ends. On the contrary, Mr. Pavon Flores is interested not in the fate of those he is defending, but rather in an undertaking of the GPU and in Stalin's reputation. Denying the obvious directing role of the GPU in the May 24 attack, Mr. Flores is actually endangering those accused. Serving and defending Stalin, Mr. Flores feels himself obliged to slander Stalin's adversaries. Only his moral and political dependence on the GPU explains his role in the proceedings, his disgraceful accusations, and his gross attacks on me.

In my testimony of the 17th, I indicated that it is not by chance that Mr. Flores is part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, elected to that body two months before the attack, for the purpose of intensifying the struggle against Trotsky and Trotskyism. During the course of the inquiry, he corrected me, saying that he had first been elected a member of the Central Committee, not at the last congress last March, but a year before. The correction does not fundamentally change my conclusions; rather it strengthens them. During 1939, Mr. Flores worked quietly and docilely under the direction of Laborde, on whom he heaped praise. When the GPU, with its sights fixed on the planned attack, felt it essential to revise the composition of the Central Committee, Mr. Flores, who suddenly discovered a "traitor" and an "enemy of the people" in his boss of yesterday, was approved by the GPU and, as a result, was included in the new Central Committee. Mr. Flores interprets loyalty to the "master" — meaning to the GPU — as revolutionary "loyalty." Mr. Flores interprets "treason" as disobedience to the GPU, and as struggle against its crimes. It isn't surprising that he calls me a "traitor" in my own house.

In his celebrated Testament, Lenin cited two essential aspects of Stalin's personality: rudeness and disloyalty. These are now the traits of an entire school. The rudeness was transformed to insolence, the disloyalty to treachery. In his capacity as a disciple of this school, Mr. Flores represents a type completely opposite from that of a revolutionary.

I realize perfectly well that the tribunal cannot use judicial means to stop the torrent of scandalous insinuations stemming from Mr. Flores, who uses his position as defense attorney to cover his servitude to the GPU. Therefore, I maintain the right to publish all my statements relating to Mr. Flores's disgraceful activities.