Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Joliot-Curie, who, during his testimony, proceeded to defend the Moscow show trials of the 1930s. The one witness the defence never produced was ‘Sim Thomas’, thealleged American author of the original article. He did not exist. The author had in fact been André Ulmann, editor of the Soviet-backed
Tribune des nations
.
    On 7 February, Kravchenko’s former wife, Zinaïda Gorlova, made her appearance for the defence. The courtroom became tense with anticipation. ‘She’s a prepossessing blonde,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘thirtysix years old, with what used to be called “advantages” which are tightly restrained in a corset. She wears a black dress. Her face is pale, with a closed expression.’ Gorlova had been flown into Paris with a woman guard, presumably from the NKVD, who escorted her everywhere from an apartment rented by the Soviet Embassy in the Boulevard Suchet. In a voice which sounded monotonous from over-rehearsal, she recounted that Kravchenko had beaten her, broken china and forced her to have an abortion. He was a liar, a womanizer and a drunkard.
    Kravchenko’s lawyer, Maître Georges Izard, had little difficulty in making the poor woman squirm. She refused to admit that her father was either a former White Guard or in a prison camp. She claimed that he was dead. She had never seen the scenes of famine in the Ukraine which Kravchenko had claimed to witness with her. The effort was so great for her that she had to ask for a chair so that she could sit down. Nordmann, for the defence, tried to stop Kravchenko speaking to his former wife. The president of the court told him to be quiet. A furious row broke out between them, and in the uproar Gorlova continued to repeat mechanically the insults against her former husband. ‘Always the same recording!’ Kravchenko yelled, as the president of the court brought the session to a hurried close.
    The proceedings were often chaotic. One exchange led to Kravchenko throwing himself at Wurmser, before being dragged back by a gendarme. Many of his remarks were not only clever and funny; they cut to the bone, to the delight of his supporters on the public benches. Claude Morgan, on another occasion, burst out: ‘They’re not the public, they’re
cagoulards
!’ André Wurmser, too, could not contain his unfeigned outrage that a man he considered a traitor should be allowed a public hearing.
    Over the next few days, Gorlova’s appearance changed. She had become listless, her face looked yellow, her hair was unkempt, she had lost weight. Kravchenko felt sorry for her, knowing that her failure tomake an impression boded ill for her and her family. ‘She did not come to France voluntarily,’ he cried to the court. He promised to look after her in the West for the rest of her life. ‘But she must say why she came here!’ The courtroom was electrified. Gorlova collapsed, vainly searching for a handkerchief in her handbag. Her female guard sat frozen beside her. Before the court reassembled, Gorlova was taken to Orly, where a Soviet military aircraft was waiting to fly her back to the Soviet Union.
    It was then Kravchenko’s turn to call his witnesses. Almost all came from camps for displaced persons in Germany, but his most effective witness had arrived from Stockholm. This was Margarete Buber-Neumann, the widow of a pre-war leader of the German Communist Party, Heinz Neumann. On Hitler’s rise to power the couple had sought refuge in Russia, but were sent to Soviet labour camps, accused of political deviationism.
    In 1940, after the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, the Soviet Union handed them and some German Jews over to the Nazis. Margarete Buber-Neumann survived five years in Ravensbrück and managed to escape just before the Red Army arrived. According to Galtier-Boissière, who was watching closely, Claude Morgan and André Wurmser looked down at the ground during her description of the Soviet labour camps. Her account was clear and unflinching in every detail, and revealed an astonishing courage and stamina. Only the most fanatical Stalinist could have disbelieved her. That other Communist renegade, Arthur Koestler, exulted at the effect of her contribution. Buber-Neumann went to stay with him and Mamaine Paget for a couple of days.
    The verdict in Kravchenko’s favour was announced on 4 April, the same day as the signature of the North Atlantic Alliance. Almost as if to prove his point, the press in Russia claimed the opposite: that Kravchenko’s