Mr. Dennett. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Velde. I think you will find, Mr. Dennett, that you will have a lot more friends now after you get through testifying in this area than you had when you relied on the fifth amendment and refused to answer questions at a previous hearing.
Mr. Dennett. Without trying to prolong this, I would just say that I feel a keen obligation to one group of people, and that is the fellows that I work with on the job. The fellows that I have worked closest with have always had confidence in my integrity, and even when I have been under the sharpest attacks they have remained confident that my integrity would stand up.
Mr. Moulder. You should have more of them now.
Mr. Dennett. To them I feel the greatest obligation. And it is mainly for them that I am testifying here today, and I hope that it will be of satisfactory use to you.
Mr. Tavenner, for your benefit, during the recess I found something which I did not know that I could find, on this question of Mr. Stalin’s insistence upon iron discipline, and I found it in a little pamphlet: The Soviets and the Individual. I do not recall the year in which this was published. I will see if I can find a date on it. Well, this is an address that he delivered to the Red Army Academy, in the Kremlin, on May 4, 1935, and in the course of it he makes a remark like this:
Of course, it never even occurred to us to leave the Leninist road. More, having established ourselves on this road, we pushed forward still more vigorously brushing every obstacle from our path. It is true that in our course we were obliged to handle some of these comrades roughly. But you cannot help that. I must confess that I, too, took a hand in this business.
Mr. Tavenner. I believe that was after the first set of purges but before the second.
Mr. Dennett. I read that to corroborate the oral information which was passed on to me from Alex Noral.
(The witness confers with his counsel.)