Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy – The Case of Osip Pyatnitsky

Description

On December 1, 1934, Leningrad Party leader Sergei M. Kirov was shot to death in the Party HQ. His murderer, Leonid Vasil’evich Nikolaev, was arrested on the spot. After first claiming he had acted alone, Nikolaev began to identify the other persons in his underground conspiratorial group. These men were arrested; some gave additional names, and the list of conspirators grew.

In this way, an extensive group of conspiracies was eventually identified including Zinovievites, or followers of Grigori Zinoviev, Trotskyites (followers of Leon Trotsky), Rightists, and military conspirators. In the present book, we examine the conspiracy within the Comintern by studying the investigation file of Osip Aronovich Pyatnitsky, head (secretary) of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) from 1923 to 1935.

All of these conspiracies were connected to Leon Trotsky, exiled from the USSR in 1929. All were aware that Trotsky was collaborating with Nazi Germany and militarist Japan for espionage and sabotage against the USSR.

Pyatnitsky’s investigative file contains a great deal of evidence, allowing us to see for the first time the vast extent of this combination of interconnected conspiracies.

Included is a transcript, translated into English, of Pyatnitsky’s confessions and of Pyatnitsky’s indictment, trial, and sentence.

Vladimir L. Bobrov is a historian and translator based in Moscow, Russia.

Grover Furr is a historian of the Stalin era. He is a professor of English at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ, USA.