Leon
Trotsky: Supplementary Deposition on the July 2 Hearing
July
3, 1940
[Writings
of Leon Trotsky, Vol 12, 1939-1940, New York ²1973, p. 303 f.]
I
feel it necessary to make the following supplementary statements to
attorney Pavon Flores's questions.
Around
the beginning of the investigation, when I could only deal with
questions of hypothesis, I expressed suspicions about one of Mr.
Flores's political friends, who had arisen as one of my severe
accusers. In the same hearing, however, it seemed possible to him to
express the suspicion that I had been warned of the crime beforehand
by one of the supposed participants, specifically by Robert S. Harte,
and that I hid this during the investigation. In other words, Mr.
Flores brands me publicly with suspicion of a very grave crime, and
does this, not at the start of the investigation, not in response to
the police's questions, but at a time when the general nature of the
crime has been completely clarified, and after which I, in the
presence of Mr. Flores, have supplied detailed explanations of the
particulars in question. It must also be borne in mind that Mr.
Flores acted in his capacity as the attorney of one of those accused
of a grave crime, while I acted from the vantage point of the victim
of that crime.
But
if Mr. Flores doesn't have, and cannot have, even a shred of proof,
one would have to suppose that his monstrous charge contains at least
logically or psychologically convincing arguments. Unfortunately,
even from this point of view his charge is completely ridiculous.
Mr.
Flores's question about whether my house has "habitable"
cellars led one to suppose that I generally spent my nights in the
cellar. From what followed, however, it became clear that Mr.
Flores's idea was totally different: having been forewarned by Robert
Harte, according to him, I spent only a small part of the night of
May 23-24 in the cellar. But for this it wouldn't be in any way
necessary to have a habitable cellar: to avoid death it would even be
possible to spend half an hour in the hen house or the firewood box.
The
internal inconsistency in Mr. Flores's schema would not even,
nevertheless, lie solely in this. Following the reasoning of the
attorney, the only use I made of this warning about the impending
attack consisted in my taking refuge in a "habitable"
cellar (wouldn't it, nevertheless, have been a little less stupid to
hide in an uninhabitable
and therefore probably less accessible cellar?). That is to say, I
abandoned all the inhabitants of the house to their own fate,
including my grandson, whom the assailants intended to kill. Is there
a shred of common sense in any of this? Isn't it obvious that if I
really had been warned by my close collaborator, I would naturally
have adopted totally different measures? I would have immediately
informed General Nunez, mobilized my friends, and with the help of
the police prepared a closed trap for the GPU's gangsters. In that
case my poor friend Robert Harte would have been able to save his
life. Naturally this is the way any reasonable person who had been
warned would act. However, Mr. Flores prefers to attribute not only
criminal, but also irrational behavior to me; dangerous to me and my
friends, but favorable or at least less unfavorable for the GPU. In
all truth it would be unjust not to recognize that the condition of
this theory is reality pitiful.