of the Comintern Executive" which appeared the same day. "If the Nazis (not the Trotskyists) had wanted to show the world the rottenness of the whole Stalin regime they could not have improved on the two great Moscow Trials." This writer cautiously predicted a move by Stalin in a German direction, the very crime of which Trotsky and his associates had been accused. Communist polemics against Trotskyism accelerate from 1936. [49] Trotskyism , a pamphlet by many hands appeared in 1937, as did a pamphlet by Marjorie Pollitt entitled Defeat of Trotskyism . The Daily Worker and Labour Monthly were busy. To counter this the Trotskyists had only their own papers, cruelly dubbed "miserable little rags" by Orwell. Yet in the labour movement there was a debate about the trials. Advance in 1937, Controversy (until the communists withdrew from it), Forward , The New Leader and The Plebs all gave space for the expression of different points of view, sometimes by Trotskyists. This did not sustain Trotskyism, but it certainly contributed to the eventual disenchantment of liberals and non-aligned socialists with the Soviets. [50] The second trial was simultaneous with critical events in Britain. The Unity Campaign was launched in January 1937, and a chain of events begun which would lead to the voluntary dissolution of the Socialist League in May. Hopes were high, but the communists had extracted as a price for cooperation, that criticism of the Soviets be suspended. Cripps, in the eye of the storm, rebuffed an