The Kravchenko Case: One Man's War on Stalin by Gary Kern

Author:Gary Kern [Kern, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Biography & Autobiography, Political
ISBN: 9781936274888
Google: _VlEAQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Enigma Books
Published: 2007-10-01T23:21:36.482953+00:00

8. Kravchenko Takes Them to Court

The first reaction of the French Communists to Kravchenko’s suit was an equal degree of shock, since they clearly believed at least part of their slander against him. Such a miserable worm, wretch and scoundrel as this traitor and puppet could never have the temerity to lash back at Les Lettres Françaises, a great cultural institution backed by the working class, even if his book had sold more than 250,000 copies in France. But when he did, the paper’s directors could not defend the article they had printed on their own, since they had not generated it themselves and did not possess any OSS notebook or any correspondent who had actually interviewed an OSS man. At best they had someone who handed them an exposé and told them his source was trustworthy. And so they had to turn to that source—to Moscow, which had spirited the article and its fictitious personages into existence.

At the first pre-trial hearing on March 16, 1948, the paper’s chief lawyer, Joë Nordmann, produced the remarkable witness list. It included Kravchenko’s “three wives” in Russia [sic], his colleagues at the Purchasing Commission “in New York” [sic] and his fellow directors at Soviet factories where he had allegedly committed misdeeds. Again, the errors, as in the Sim Thomas article, or, for that matter, the Life magazine special issue of 1943, indicate a problem with handling Russian materials. But even without errors, the list clearly revealed the Kremlin’s hand, for Soviet citizens and officials were not accustomed to take the stand in a democratic court of law, since they had no right to leave the country.726

The list also included foreign engineers who had worked in the Soviet Union, plus two American authors, Albert E. Kahn and Michael Sayers, who had written a couple of books together on the Nazi Fifth Column in America. These two presumably would testify on the legal matter in dispute, namely, whether Kravchenko or a ghost in American intelligence had written I Chose Freedom. The other witnesses obviously would be called to defame his person, to deny the horrible picture of the Soviet Union depicted in his book and to tell the world that everything was wonderful behind the Iron Curtain. Thus, by the witness list alone, it was evident that larger political issues would be debated in the case. What the Defense did not realize was that by calling such witnesses to discredit Kravchenko, it unwittingly allowed him to put the Soviet Union on trial.

At the March hearing Nordmann insisted that Kravchenko himself be present for the trial. Izard assured him that he would. This detail reveals that Nordmann and his clients truly believed that Kravchenko was incompetent and could be humiliated in cross examination. According to the newspaper’s account, Nordmann then requested an early date for the trial, but Izard sought and obtained a postponement until the end of June. The paper suspected that the case would be delayed still further, until the end of the summer vacation, and then perhaps beyond, as indeed happened.

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