The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

What was The Nation’s first reaction to the announcement of the initial “Trotskyist” trial? Not even decent astonishment. “It was to be expected that under the velvet glove of the New Soviet constitution,” it wrote, “there would still be the firm outlines of the iron hand. There can be no doubt the dictatorship in Russia is dying and that a new democracy is slowly being born.” The impending death of thousands of communists was thus another confirmation that the dictatorship is dying![ccliii] The gallant New Republic in its first reaction blandly assumed that the fantastic charges compounded by the G.P.U. were true. “Perhaps the deepest lesson to be learned from the Russian trial,” it declared, “is the profound, unchangeable stubbornness of human nature. From the standpoint of practical expediency, these men had little to gain and much to lose by their effort to bring down the Soviet state in ruins.”