Editing Great Purge (section)

====Dewey Commission====
{{Main|Dewey Commission}}

In May 1937, the '''Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials''', commonly known as the Dewey Commission, was set up in the United States by supporters of Trotsky, to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator [[John Dewey]]. Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|ref=none|p=137}}

For example, [[Georgy Pyatakov]] testified that he had flown to [[Oslo]] in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place.<ref>{{cite book|title=Not guilty : report of the Commission of Inquiry Into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials|last=Dewey|first=John|publisher=Sam Sloan and Ishi Press International|others=1859–1952|year=2008|isbn=978-0923891312|location=New York|pages=154–155|oclc=843206645}}</ref> Another defendant, [[Ivan N. Smirnov|Ivan Smirnov]], confessed to taking part in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year.

The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled ''Not Guilty''. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary, the commission wrote:{{blockquote|Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds:
* That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no attempt was made to ascertain the truth.
* That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them.
* That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.}}

The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/index.htm|title=The Case of Leon Trotsky (Report of Dewey Commission – 1937)|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>