Trotsky, Not Guilty, New York, 1938, original printed wrappers, inscribed by Trotsky

[TROTSKY, LEON]

Not guilty: report of the Commission of Inquiry into the charges made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow trials. John Dewey, Chairman. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938

8vo (214 x 140mm.), half-title, original red printed wrappers, in a modern drop-back box with a facsimile of the upper cover, light browning, joints strengthened, spine slightly chipped

INSCRIBED ON THE HALF-TITLE BY TROTSKY TO THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO, Lázaro Cárdenas, dated Coyoacán, 16 August 1938. Trotsky was exiled from Russia in 1929 and eventually settled in Mexico in January 1937, at the house of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Asylum was granted by Cárdenas in 1936.

The Dewey Commission was established in order to analyse the charges made against Trotsky and his son (Leon Sedov) in Moscow, which were accompanied by show trials. The proceedings of the Commission took place in Coyoacán in April 1937 and, unsurprisingly, found that the Moscow trials had not been fairly conducted; "On the basis of all the evidence herein examined and all the conclusions stated, we find that the trials of August, 1936 and January, 1937, were frame-ups" (p.394). Trotsky's son had also written a book on this subject, Le livre rouge sure les proces de Moscou (1937), though he died in Paris shortly before the publication of the Dewey Commission's findings.