Khristian Rakovsky – Trotsky’s Japanese Spy

Description

Khristian Rakovsky was a lifelong supporter and collaborator of Leon Trotsky’s. In the 1920s Rakovsky occupied important posts in the Soviet government and joined the Trotskyite opposition. He was exiled to a series of provincial cities for his opposition activity. In 1934 Rakovsky wrote statements in which he claimed to have abandoned Trotskyism. He did so again in 1936 and 1937.

Having been named by defendants in the 1937 Second “Trotskyite” Moscow Trial, Rakovsky was arrested and imprisoned. He confessed and named co-conspirators in 1937 and repeated those confessions at the Third Moscow Trial of March 1938. At that trial, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison. In prison, he repeated his anti-Soviet views for which he was sentenced to death in September 1941 as the Nazi army approached. Rakovsky was “rehabilitated” by the Gorbachev Soviet government in 1988.

The present book examines Rakovsky’s last years, his claims that he retracted his anti-Soviet views, his accusations against his fellow conspirators, his arrest, further confessions, trial, sentence, and the circumstances of his execution.

This study concludes that, on the evidence, there can be no doubt of Rakovsky’s guilt in serving as Trotsky’s agent in Japan and in espionage for Japan against the Soviet Union, and no doubt of Trotsky’s guilt as well. It also examines statements by Trotsky that he could only have made if he knew about Rakovsky’s recruitment by Japanese leaders as a Trotskyite spy.

Grover Furr is the author and co-author of seventeen books on Soviet history of the Stalin period. He is a professor of Medieval English Literature at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, USA.