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Mental Health Research Dissertation Grant to Enhance Workforce Diversity

Mark Chavez, Ph.D. Division of Translational Research Office of Research Training and Career Development

This concept would provide continued support for a long-standing and successful program for doctoral students in the dissertation stage of graduate school. The program aims to continue enhancing the diversity of the mental health research workforce by providing dissertation level research support to individuals who are underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences (as defined by NIH) who are proposing projects consistent with the NIMH’s mission and research priorities.

NIH and NIMH are committed to enhancing diversity in the NIH-funded biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences workforce (see NOT-OD-20-031  ). Research shows that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogeneous teams. Scientists and trainees from diverse backgrounds and life experiences bring different perspectives, creativity, and individual enterprise to address complex scientific problems. There are many benefits that flow from a diverse NIH/NIMH-supported scientific workforce, including fostering scientific innovation; enhancing global competitiveness; contributing to robust learning environments; advancing the likelihood that underserved or health disparity populations participate in and benefit from health research; enhancing public trust.

This initiative seeks to enhance the workforce diversity of graduate student researchers conducting NIMH-relevant research by supporting them to complete the dissertation stage of their research careers. The dissertation phase of graduate school falls at a particularly critical juncture in doctoral training and is a period during which institutional support may decline or terminate altogether. In addition, this initiative includes funds not readily or sufficiently available in other predoctoral awards, which limit support to stipends, tuition and fees, and institutional allowances.

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Predoctoral Training/Clinical Doctorate

Graduate students acquire the knowledge and independence that is required to earn the research doctorate degree. Clinical students acquire the knowledge to earn the clinical doctorate degree. Most importantly, students engage in highly structured research projects under the supervision of an experienced mentor.

NIH Programs for Graduate & Clinical Students

Become an appointee on institutional awards:.

International Research Training Grant

To support research training programs for U.S. and foreign professionals and students to strengthen global health research and international research collaboration.

Research Education Program

For support to develop and/or implement a program as it relates to a category in one or more of the areas of education, information, training, technical assistance, coordination, or evaluation.

Continuing Education Training Grants

To assist professional schools to establish, expand, or improve programs of continuing professional education, or refresher education dealing with new developments in the science of technology of the profession.

Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award

To enable institutions to recruit individuals selected by the program leadership for predoctoral and/or postdoctoral research training in specified scientific areas.

Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grant

To provide individuals with research training during off-quarters or summer periods to encourage research careers and/or research in areas of national need.

Ruth L. Kirschstein Interdisciplinary Research Training Award (T90) and combined Research Education Grant (R90)

To support comprehensive interdisciplinary research training programs at the undergraduate, predoctoral and/or postdoctoral levels, by capitalizing on the infrastructure of existing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research programs.

You apply for Individual Awards:

Early Independence Award

To support the independent research project of exceptionally creative scientists to bypass the typical Post-Doctoral research training period in order to move rapidly to research independence.

Ruth L. Kirschstein Individual Predoctoral NRSA for MD/​PhD and other Dual Degree Fellowships

Individual fellowships for predoctoral training which leads to the combined MD/PhD and other dual Clinical/Research degrees.

Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award

To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research doctoral degree (e.g., PhD).

Individual Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award

To support Pre- to Post-doctoral transition of highly motivated graduate students. The F99 activity code is intended to only be used in conjunction with a K00 Award.

Dissertation Award

To support dissertation research costs of students in research doctoral programs. Dissertation awards are not renewable.

Become an appointee on your Supervisor's grant:

Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research (Admin Supp)

Administrative supplements to currently active NIH research grants to enhance the diversity of the research workforce.

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• NOT-OD-24-129: Updates to NIH Institutional Training Grant Applications for Due Dates on or After January 25, 2025
• NOT-OD-24-116: Childcare Costs for Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Fellows and Institutional Research Training Awards
• NOT-OD-24-107: Implementation of Revisions to the NIH and AHRQ Fellowship Application and Review Process
• NOT-OD-24-084: Overview of Grant Application and Review Changes for Due Dates on or after January 25, 2025
• NOT-OD-23-111: Reminder – NIH Policies for NRSA Stipends, Compensation and Other Income
• NOT-OD-23-076: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Stipends, Tuition/Fees and Other Budgetary Levels Effective for Fiscal Year 2023

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Have You Heard About the NIH Dissertation Awards for Doctoral Students Studying Population Health?

If you have no idea what the NIH R36 grant mechanism is, don’t worry–you’re not alone. But if you’re in population health sciences and approaching the dissertation stage, or know someone who is, it’s worth getting to know more about this particular NIH grant.

The R36 program supports dissertation-related research costs of predoctoral students. There are currently four institutes/agencies that offer R36 grants: NIH, NIMH, NIDA, and AHRQ. Details on eligibility, application guidelines, and supported research topics for each institute/agency can be found at the links below:

• Aging Research Dissertation Awards to Increase Diversity (R36)
• Mental Health Research Dissertation Grant to Enhance Workforce Diversity (R36)
• Drug Abuse Dissertation Research (R36)
• AHRQ Grants for Health Services Research Dissertation Program (R36)

With the exception of AHRQ, the primary objective of the R36 program is to provide dissertation research awards to increase diversity of the pool of scientists available to support the scientific mission of the particular institute, particularly by including more underrepresented racial and ethnic scientists and individuals with disabilities.

Catherine had other great advice, including considering the importance of every part of the application in how reviewers will assess its merit. Organization is the key to not feeling  overwhelmed with the application, and Catherine suggests keeping a list of all the necessary documents for the application and planning due dates for when each part of the application will be completed.

This advice was echoed by another recent NIA R36 recipient, Harry Chatters Taylor , a doctoral candidate in social work at Washington University in St. Louis. He also suggested starting  your application as soon as possible in advance and being prepared to revise over many, many drafts. He further recommends having several people    provide constructive criticism and feedback on how to improve the ideas and writing in your application. Having the time and the feedback can be particularly useful for the R36 application because, as he points out, it can be difficult to distill the complexities of your entire dissertation idea into a six-page application.

I also asked for advice from someone who reviews R36 applications. I summarized the main points below:

• Follow the instructions!  Following the formatting instructions, for instance, makes it easier for reviewers to follow the application and write their review. And not following instructions could mean your application never makes it to review.
• Make sure you sponsor is really, really committed to you and your project. This should be demonstrated, for instance, in their narrative that should enthusiastically describe your research project and the resources they will provide for you over and above the fellowship award.
• Be as thorough as possible in your description of your dissertation study – within the page limits, of course.
• Try to frame your dissertation study in terms of your path to becoming a leader in the field. Provide context for your research, why it’s interesting to you, and where you might go with future research.
• Finish your application with enough time so that at least two people can carefully read it and note any errors, inconsistencies, and other mistakes.

So if you’re thinking about applying for an R36, what’s next? Mr. Chatters Taylor suggests your first step should be to tell your PhD advisor and get in touch with a program officer at the institute you are thinking of applying to. You may also want to ask someone who has received an R36 if you can read their application so you know what a successful application looks like. And of course, be sure to familiarize yourself with the application instructions!

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Environmental influences on child health outcomes (echo) program.

The Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program investigates how exposure to a range of environmental factors in early development influences the health of children and adolescents. This page provides information on all funded projects, active and archived funding opportunities, and background documents and notices related to these funding opportunities.

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Funding for Graduate Students

Funding at nsf.

From research experiences across the world to internships at its headquarters, the U.S. National Science Foundation offers graduate students and recent Ph.D.s paid opportunities to expand their skills and knowledge in science and engineering.

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Information for principal investigators

This page highlights opportunities that graduate students and recent Ph.D.s can directly apply to.

If you're interested in supporting graduate students with NSF funding, explore NSF's  Funding Search  page. Most of NSF's funding opportunities allow proposers to include graduate student researchers in their project budget.

Some NSF opportunities focus explicitly on supporting graduate student training through  internships  and other activities, like NSF's  Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) program.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

The prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program  supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's or doctoral degrees in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or in STEM education.

The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support that can be used at accredited U.S. institutions. This support includes an annual stipend and a cost-of-education allowance covering tuition and fees.

Eligibility

Applicants must be citizens, nationals or permanent residents of the United States. Applicants must be pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in STEM or in STEM education at accredited U.S. institutions.

How to apply

Applications are due in the fall of each year. Learn more about the program and how to apply at  nsfgrfp.org .

And read NSF 101 for some tips on how to apply .

International Research Experiences for Students (IRES)

NSF's IRES program offers international research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students.

Participants are mentored by researchers at a foreign lab, allowing them to build their professional network. IRES opportunities usually involve small groups of students who travel to a host institution for a summer-length research project.

Undergraduate or graduate students who are citizens, nationals or permanent residents of the United States are eligible to apply.

Students must contact researchers with IRES funding for information and application materials. Application materials for different IRES opportunities can vary: they may require a statement of purpose, transcripts, reference letters or additional materials.

To find active IRES projects, visit the  NSF IRES Project Search . Each project lists the name and contact information of the principal investigator, or lead, of that project.

You can also find many (but not all) IRES opportunities on the  NSF Education and Training Application  website, where you can prepare and submit applications for IRES and other NSF education and training opportunities.

Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US)

The CSGrad4US program helps bachelor's degree holders return to academia and pursue their research interests in computer and information science and engineering fields.

The three-year fellowship includes a stipend and cost-of-education allowance. 

Applicants must be citizens, nationals or permanent residents of the United States who are not currently enrolled in any degree-granting program and have never enrolled in a doctoral program. Applicants must intend to apply for full-time enrollment in a research-based doctoral degree program in a computer and information science and engineering field within two years.

Applications are typically due in the spring or early summer of each year. Learn more about the program and how to apply on the CISE Graduate Fellowships page.

Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG)

Some of NSF's programs offer grants to doctoral students, allowing them to undertake significant data-gathering projects and conduct field research in settings away from their campus.

The award amounts of these grants vary across programs but typically fall between $15,000 to $40,000 (excluding indirect costs).

Doctoral students enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education who are conducting scientific research are eligible to apply. Applicants do not need to be U.S. citizens.

These proposals are submitted to NSF through regular organizational channels by the doctoral student's dissertation advisor, with the student serving as the co-principal investigator on the proposal.

Visit NSF's  Funding Search  to see the list of programs that currently accept DDRIG proposals. Deadlines vary by program: some accept proposals at any time while others have annual or semi-annual deadlines.

Note: Information on the NSF-funded Law and Science Dissertation Grant (LSDG) can be found on the LSDG website .

NSF Research Traineeship Program (NRT)

The NSF Research Traineeship Program gives graduate students opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge needed to pursue a range of STEM careers.

Graduate students funded by the program receive, at minimum, 12-month-long stipends that support their participation in the program's training activities, which can include courses, workshops and research projects.

Graduate students who are citizens, nationals and permanent residents of the United States are eligible to participate as funded trainees in the NRT program. International students can participate as unfunded trainees. Participants must be enrolled in research-based master's or doctoral degree programs.

Students must contact researchers with NRT funding for information and application materials.

To find active NRT projects, visit the  NSF NRT Project Search . Each project lists the name and contact information of the Principal Investigator, or lead, of that project.

For more information about the NSF Research Traineeship Program, please contact  [email protected] .

Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship

NSF's Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship program supports summer research internships for doctoral students in the mathematical sciences. These internships are primarily at national laboratories and focus on introducing students to applications of mathematical or statistical theories outside of academia.

Current graduate students pursuing doctoral degrees in mathematics, statistics or applied mathematics are eligible to apply. Participants do not need to be U.S. citizens.

Applications are due in the fall or winter each year. Learn more about the program and how to apply on the internship website .

Presidential Management Fellowship Program

The Presidential Management Fellows Program is a two-year paid fellowship designed to prepare current or recent graduate students for a career in the analysis and management of public policies and programs. At NSF, fellows serve as program and management analysts and a variety of other positions requiring a scientific degree.

Current or recent graduate students are eligible to apply.

Applications are due in the fall of each year. Learn more about the program and how to apply at  pmf.gov .

Summer Scholars Internship Program

NSF's Summer Scholars Internship Program is a 10-week-long summer internship for undergraduate and graduate students. Students participating in the program work in NSF offices that align with their academic interests.

Through the program, interns learn about science administration and how federal policies affect the science and engineering community.

Graduate students and undergraduates who are citizens, nationals or permanent residents of the United States are eligible to apply.

Students interested in the NSF Summer Scholars Internship Program can apply through the following organizations:

• QEM Network
• Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities National Internship Program

For more information on the NSF Summer Scholars Internship Program, please contact  [email protected] .

Applying for a postdoc?

NSF's Postdoctoral Research Fellowships support independent postdoctoral research, allowing fellows to perform work that will broaden their perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions, and help establish them in leadership positions.

These two- or three-year fellowships provide a stipend and a research and training allowance.

Citizens, nationals and permanent residents of the United States who have recently earned a Ph.D. or will have earned their Ph.D. before beginning the fellowship are eligible to apply.

Current postdoctoral fellowship opportunities can be found on NSF's  Funding Search .

Deadlines vary by program: some accept proposals at any time while others have annual deadlines.

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Researcher Earns NIH Award To Study Rhythmic Abilities in Children

During her four years as a speech-language pathologist, Kate Kreidler MS’21 always felt drawn back to research and academia. With four years of her doctoral program now behind her, she has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to further her career ambitions.

Kreidler, a PhD candidate in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing at The University of Texas at Dallas, received a Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to continue her study of rhythmic deficits in children with developmental language disorder (DLD).

The award , known as an F31 grant, helps promising doctoral students become productive, independent research scientists by providing access to mentored research training during the student’s dissertation process.

“My long-term goal is to obtain a tenure-track position, and this grant provides wonderful exposure to the NIH’s inner workings — things a principal investigator has to learn,” she said. “There’s so much that I’ll be able to experience earlier thanks to this opportunity.”

When Kreidler first entered the State University of New York College at Geneseo in 2009, she said she gravitated to speech pathology because there was job security in the field.

“But during my second semester in the program, I learned more about becoming a scientist and studying language, which I have always loved,” she said.

In pursuit of a research career, Kreidler sought out undergraduate training opportunities, and that strong clinical background facilitated her acceptance into a master’s program at Purdue University, she said, where she studied how young children who stutter process words’ meanings.

“My long-term goal is to obtain a tenure-track position, and this grant provides wonderful exposure to the NIH’s inner workings — things a principal investigator has to learn. There’s so much that I’ll be able to experience earlier thanks to this opportunity.” Kate Kreidler MS’21

“There, I started taking classes with Dr. Lisa Goffman [professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at Purdue at the time] and became very interested in early child language development,” Kreidler said. “That guided my clinical choices.”

After completing her master’s degree in speech-language pathology, Kreidler entered the workforce in 2015 as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.

“I felt steadily pulled back to research — specifically, to Dr. Goffman’s studies at the intersection of linguistics, cognitive psychology and development,” she said, “As I worked with families with young children, I wondered, ‘How can we use children’s gesture development to predict later language development?’”

In 2019, Kreidler followed Goffman to UTD and began her PhD work in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), where Goffman was the Nelle C. Johnston Chair in Communication Disorders in Children. She has earned a second master’s degree along the way, but before her first year was over, Kreidler hit the same roadblock as many scientists worldwide.

“I had planned an experimental study about how toddlers learn to communicate through gestures,” she said. “When the COVID pandemic hit, I was unable to collect data on that. I had to find existing data from another project to analyze.”

Goffman had a longitudinal dataset comparing rhythmic production in children who have DLD with that of typically developing children. Kreidler’s analysis revealed that DLD is associated with a deficit in rhythmic grouping abilities when drumming a simple pattern.

“Through this project, Kate became captivated by how music and language rhythms develop in children with developmental language disorder,” said Goffman, who is now a senior scientist and endowed chair at the Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, and Learning at the Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska. “She, along with Dr. Janet Vuolo [at Ohio State University] and myself, published a research paper that served as the springboard for her dissertation research, which was selected for this fellowship.”

DLD affects about 7% of children. It is marked by a struggle with language, specifically grammar, but also shows co-occurring deficits in other areas, like music and prosody — the cadences and rhythms of speech.

“I hope to learn if slightly older children, 7- and 8-year-olds, have deficits around rhythmic organization with both music and speech,” said Kreidler, who is a Eugene McDermott Graduate Fellow . “In this work I will measure mouth and hand motion while children learn speech and music rhythms. Our long-term aim is to develop better diagnostic and intervention practices.”

Kreidler said she is happier as a researcher, driven by her love of science and its process.

“In a PhD program, the goal is to develop your own research program and your own questions,” she said. “That creativity — being able to work toward that as my career path — was probably the biggest motivation I had to return to school.”

Kreidler described the F31 grant-writing experience as a crucial part of her training and expressed gratitude for the support of Dr. Adrianna Shembel , her UTD mentor, along with the school’s leaders, including speech, language, and hearing department head Dr. Colleen Le Prell , who is the Emilie and Phil Schepps Distinguished Professor of Hearing Science, and Angela Shoup BS’89, MS’92, PhD’94 , the Ludwig A. Michael, MD Callier Center for Communication Disorders Executive Director.

“I have really appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of BBS, which provided a very strong background in neuroscience and psychology. I’ve developed as a student and researcher,” Kreidler said. “Having the Callier Center as a resource, a point of connection with clinicians and scientists, was a huge pull for me, and I’m grateful for all the ways they engage students.”

Media Contact: Stephen Fontenot, UT Dallas, 972-883-4405, [email protected] , or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected] .

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Your environment. your health., climate change and human health literature portal mortality related to air pollution with the moscow heat wave and wildfire of 2010, climate change and human health literature portal.

• Publisher http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/ede.0000000000000090

Background: Prolonged high temperatures and air pollution from wildfires often occur together, and the two may interact in their effects on mortality. However, there are few data on such possible interactions. Methods: We analyzed day-to-day variations in the number of deaths in Moscow, Russia, in relation to air pollution levels and temperature during the disastrous heat wave and wildfire of 2010. Corresponding data for the period 2006-2009 were used for comparison. Daily average levels of PM10 and ozone were obtained from several continuous measurement stations. The daily number of nonaccidental deaths from specific causes was extracted from official records. Analyses of interactions considered the main effect of temperature as well as the added effect of prolonged high temperatures and the interaction with PM10. Results: The major heat wave lasted for 44 days, with 24-hour average temperatures ranging from 24°C to 31°C and PM10 levels exceeding 300 μg/m on several days. There were close to 11,000 excess deaths from nonaccidental causes during this period, mainly among those older than 65 years. Increased risks also occurred in younger age groups. The most pronounced effects were for deaths from cardiovascular, respiratory, genitourinary, and nervous system diseases. Continuously increasing risks following prolonged high temperatures were apparent during the first 2 weeks of the heat wave. Interactions between high temperatures and air pollution from wildfires in excess of an additive effect contributed to more than 2000 deaths. ConclusionS: Interactions between high temperatures and wildfire air pollution should be considered in risk assessments regarding health consequences of climate change.

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Part 1. Overview Information

National Institute of Mental Health ( NIMH )

• July 14, 2021 - NNotice of Change to Expiration of PAR-18-894. See Notice NOT-MH-21-315 .
• April 2, 2021 - Notice of Extension to PAR-18-894. See Notice NOT-MH-21-250 .
• March 10, 2020 - Reminder: FORMS-F Grant Application Forms & Instructions Must be Used for Due Dates On or After May 25, 2020- New Grant Application Instructions Now Available. See Notice NOT-OD-20-077 .
• August 23, 2019 - Clarifying Competing Application Instructions and Notice of Publication of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research. See Notice NOT-OD-19-137 .
• July 26, 2019 - Changes to NIH Requirements Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research. See Notice NOT-OD-19-128 .
• November 26, 2018 - NIH & AHRQ Announce Upcoming Updates to Application Instructions and Review Criteria for Research Grant Applications. See Notice NOT-OD-18-228 .
• October 5, 2018 - Notice of Change in the Expiration Date for PAR-18-894. See Notice NOT-MH-18-059 .

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to enhance the diversity of the mental health research workforce by providing dissertation awards in all research areas within the strategic priorities of the NIMH to individuals from groups underrepresented in biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences research. This award supports the completion of the doctoral research project.

Applicants are encouraged to apply early to allow adequate time to make any corrections to errors found in the application during the submission process by the due date.

March 2019, July 2019, November 2019, March 2020, July 2020, November 2020, March 2021, July 2021, November 2021

May 2019, October 2019, January 2020, May 2020, October 2020, January 2021, May 2021, October 2021, January 2022

July 2019, December 2019, April 2020, July 2020, December 2020, April 2021, July 2021, December 2021, April 2022

New Date September 8, 2021 per issuance of NOT-MH-21-315 . (Original Expiration Date: September 8, 2022)

Conformance to all requirements (both in the Application Guide and the FOA) is required and strictly enforced. Applicants must read and follow all application instructions in the Application Guide as well as any program-specific instructions noted in Section IV . When the program-specific instructions deviate from those in the Application Guide, follow the program-specific instructions.

Part 2. Full Text of Announcement

Section i. funding opportunity description.

The NIH has an interest in diversity in the NIH-funded biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences workforce (see NOT-OD-18-129 ). Research shows that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogeneous teams. Scientists and trainees from diverse backgrounds and life experiences bring different perspectives, creativity, and individual enterprise to address complex scientific problems. There are many benefits that flow from a diverse NIH-supported scientific workforce, including: fostering scientific innovation, enhancing global competitiveness, contributing to robust learning environments, advancing the likelihood that underserved or health disparity populations participate in, and benefit from health research, and enhancing public trust.

Despite tremendous advancements in scientific research, information as well as educational and research opportunities are not equally available to all. NIH encourages institutions to diversify their student and faculty populations to enhance the participation of individuals from groups identified as underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral and social sciences.

NIMH is committed to recruiting and retaining in its research workforce talented individuals from the diverse fabric of U.S. society. In 2008, a workgroup of the National Advisory Mental Health Council issued a report ( http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/advisory-boards-and-groups/namhc/reports/investing-in-the-future_42525.pdf ) highlighting the need for enhancing the diversity of the mental health research workforce. Enhancing workforce diversity has meant creating opportunity, especially opportunity for people from underrepresented groups who bring different perspectives and who may solve problems in new ways. By promoting programs to enhance workforce diversity, the NIMH aims to enlist the full spectrum of perspectives and knowledge to accomplish the mission of the NIMH.

Although the NIH currently provides opportunities to develop research careers and improve participation of individuals from groups with low representation in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, reports from the National Science Foundation and others provide strong evidence that low representation remains a problem. The NIMH workforce is receiving doctoral degrees in neuroscience, genetics, clinical psychology, and other related fields, yet recent national data on U.S. citizen/permanent resident recipients of the doctorate demonstrate a continuing need to enhance diversity in those disciplines (Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities; http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/ ). For example, of those earning a neuroscience doctorate in 2016, <1% were Native American, 2% were Black/African American, and 7% were Hispanic/Latino. Of those earning a doctorate in genetics in 2016, <1% were Native American, 2% were Black/African American, and 5% were Hispanic/Latino. Similarly, among those earning a doctorate in clinical psychology in 2016, <1% were Native American, 5% were Black/African American and 9% were Hispanic/Latino.

To help address this need, this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) seeks to improve the research career preparedness of individuals from underrepresented groups by providing funding support to complete the dissertation, which falls at a particularly critical juncture in doctoral training, and a period during which institutional support may decline or terminate altogether. This FOA provides support to complete mental health-related dissertation research and includes funds not readily or sufficiently available in NRSA predoctoral (F31) awards, which limit support to stipends, tuition and fees, and institutional allowance.

This FOA meets a specific need by supporting dissertation stage research that utilizes state-of-the-art design, methods, and analytic techniques, and incorporates the highest level of scientific rigor and sound experimental practice (see http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/policies/enhancing-the-reliability-of-nimh-supported-research-through-rigorous-study-design-and-reporting.shtml). The NIMH encourages applications for dissertation research support across all research areas supported by NIMH. Applicants for this FOA are expected to propose a well-defined dissertation project that addresses research areas relevant to the NIMH mission and strategic research priorities ( https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/strategic-planning-reports/strategic-research-priorities/index.shtml ). For AIDS-related applications, the dissertation project should align with the research priorities of the most recent, annual Trans-NIH Plan for HIV-Related Research ( https://www.oar.nih.gov/strategic_plan/index.asp ) and the priorities of the NIMH Division of AIDS Research ( http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/organization/dar/index.shtml ).

Programmatic Evaluation

Within seven years of publication of this FOA, NIMH will assess the program’s overall outcomes and gauge its effectiveness in enhancing diversity of the mental health research workforce. The overall evaluation of the Mental Health Research Dissertation Grant to Enhance Workforce Diversity (R36) program will be based on core metrics that may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Number and percentage of program participants who complete graduate or professional doctoral degrees in mental health-related sciences
• Completion of graduate or professional doctoral degrees by gender, race/ethnicity, and disability
• Number and percentage of program participants who apply for postdoctoral training/research opportunities in mental health-related sciences
• Number and percentage of program participants who complete postdoctoral training/research opportunities by gender, race/ethnicity, and disability
• Publication of peer-reviewed research arising from the dissertation project and/or participant authorship of other scientific publications relevant to mental health
• Number and percentage of program participants who obtain independent faculty positions in mental health-related sciences

Upon the completion of this evaluation, the NIMH will determine whether to (a) continue the program as currently configured, (b) continue the program with modifications, or (c) discontinue the program.

Section II. Award Information

Grant: A support mechanism providing money, property, or both to an eligible entity to carry out an approved project or activity.

The OER Glossary and the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide provide details on these application types.

Need help determining whether you are doing a clinical trial?

The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

This FOA allows for budget requests to cover, per year, a salary consistent with the current fiscal year National Research Service Award (NRSA) predoctoral stipend level ( https://grants.nih.gov/training/nrsa.htm#policy ) and up to $15,000 for additional expenses such as fringe benefits (including health insurance for self and family members), travel to scientific meetings, and dissertation research costs in accordance with institutional policies.

With the exception of costs associated with the dissertation (i.e., dissertation credits), no funds may be used to pay tuition or fees. Other specific costs not allowed on dissertation research grants are equipment, alterations/renovations, space rental, contracting or consortium costs, dissertation defense or deposit fees, membership fees, and faculty or consultant effort. This listing is not exhaustive, and the applicant institution should contact NIMH staff regarding any other cost item being considered. For more information on allowable and unallowable costs, see https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/policy.htm ?.

Section III. Eligibility Information

1. eligible applicants.

Higher Education Institutions

• Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
• Private Institutions of Higher Education

The following types of Higher Education Institutions are always encouraged to apply for NIH support as Public or Private Institutions of Higher Education:

• Hispanic-serving Institutions
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
• Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs)
• Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
• Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)

Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education

• Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
• Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)

For-Profit Organizations

• Small Businesses
• For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)

Governments

• State Governments
• County Governments
• City or Township Governments
• Special District Governments
• Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
• Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized)
• Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
• U.S. Territory or Possession
• Independent School Districts
• Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
• Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
• Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
• Regional Organizations

In addition, eligible institutions must have a doctoral degree-granting program in the candidate's area of study. The applicant institution must be the institution at which the PD/PI is pursuing doctoral studies. The research training should occur in a strong research environment that has appropriate human and technical resources for the proposed research and is demonstrably committed to high-quality research training in the research area proposed by the PD/PI.

Applicant organizations

Applicant organizations must complete and maintain the following registrations as described in the SF 424 (R&R) Application Guide to be eligible to apply for or receive an award. All registrations must be completed prior to the application being submitted. Registration can take 6 weeks or more, so applicants should begin the registration process as soon as possible. The NIH Policy on Late Submission of Grant Applications states that failure to complete registrations in advance of a due date is not a valid reason for a late submission.

• Dun and Bradstreet Universal Numbering System (DUNS) - All registrations require that applicants be issued a DUNS number. After obtaining a DUNS number, applicants can begin both SAM and eRA Commons registrations. The same DUNS number must be used for all registrations, as well as on the grant application.
• NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) Code Foreign organizations must obtain an NCAGE code (in lieu of a CAGE code) in order to register in SAM.
• eRA Commons - Applicants must have an active DUNS number and SAM registration in order to complete the eRA Commons registration. Organizations can register with the eRA Commons as they are working through their SAM or Grants.gov registration. eRA Commons requires organizations to identify at least one Signing Official (SO) and at least one Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) account in order to submit an application.
• Grants.gov Applicants must have an active DUNS number and SAM registration in order to complete the Grants.gov registration.

Program Directors/Principal Investigators (PD(s)/PI(s))

All PD(s)/PI(s) must have an eRA Commons account. PD(s)/PI(s) should work with their organizational officials to either create a new account or to affiliate their existing account with the applicant organization in eRA Commons. If the PD/PI is also the organizational Signing Official, they must have two distinct eRA Commons accounts, one for each role. Obtaining an eRA Commons account can take up to 2 weeks.

Eligible PDs/PIs include predoctoral students at the dissertation stage of training with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research. The applicant must have an approved dissertation proposal (at the time of award), show evidence of high academic performance in the field of study and a commitment to a career as an independent research scientist, an independent physician-scientist or other clinician-scientist (dual-degree training)

This FOA is available to predoctoral students from groups underrepresented in biomedical research who are in good standing in accredited research doctoral programs in the United States (including Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories or possessions; see Section III for additional information regarding eligibility for this program). The PD/PI must have a baccalaureate degree and be currently enrolled in a PhD or equivalent research degree program (e.g., EngD, DNSc, DrPH, DSW, PharmD, PsyD, ScD), a formally combined MD/PhD program, or other combined professional/clinical and research doctoral (e.g., DDS/PhD) in the biomedical, behavioral, or clinical sciences.

The NIH is particularly interested in encouraging the recruitment and retention of the following groups of individuals:

A. Individuals from racial and ethnic groups that have been shown by the National Science Foundation to be underrepresented in health-related sciences on a national basis (see data at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/showpub.cfm?TopID=2&SubID=27 ), and the report Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering ). The following racial and ethnic groups have been shown to be underrepresented in biomedical research: Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. In addition, it is recognized that underrepresentation can vary from setting to setting; individuals from racial or ethnic groups that can be demonstrated convincingly to be underrepresented by the grantee institution should be encouraged to participate in this program. For more information on racial and ethnic categories and definitions, see NOT-OD-15-089 .

B. Individuals with disabilities, who are defined as those with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, as described in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as amended . See NSF data at, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab7-5_updated_2014_10.pdf .

Multiple PD/PIs are not allowed.

By the time of the award, the individual must be a citizen or a non-citizen national of the United States or have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence (i.e., possess a valid Permanent Resident Card USCIS Form I-551 or other legal verification of such status).

2. Cost Sharing

3. additional information on eligibility.

Number of Applications

The NIH will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time. This means that the NIH will not accept:

• A new (A0) application that is submitted before issuance of the summary statement from the review of an overlapping new (A0) or resubmission (A1) application.
• A resubmission (A1) application that is submitted before issuance of the summary statement from the review of the previous new (A0) application.
• An application that has substantial overlap with another application pending appeal of initial peer review (see NOT-OD-11-101 )

Section IV. Application and Submission Information

1. requesting an application package.

Buttons to access the online ASSIST system or to download application forms are available in Part 1 of this FOA. See your administrative office for instructions if you plan to use an institutional system-to-system solution.

2. Content and Form of Application Submission

For information on Application Submission and Receipt, visit Frequently Asked Questions Application Guide, Electronic Submission of Grant Applications .

Biographical Sketches: Biographical Sketches must be provided for the PD/PI and the dissertation project advisor. Follow the recommended format of the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide at https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/424/index.htm . The PD/PI's Biographical Sketch must include information on Scholastic Performance as described in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide for predoctoral applicants/candidates.

The advisor's Biographical Sketch should document the experience, resources, and time available to supervise and mentor the PD/PI so that he/she will complete the dissertation in a timely manner.

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed.

Letters of Support:

All letters must be combined into a single pdf file.

Letter of Certification: The faculty advisor, dissertation committee chair, or university official directly responsible for supervising the dissertation research must submit a signed letter on institutional letterhead certifying that the PD/PI meets the eligibility criteria for the award.

Advisor and Reference Letters:

The faculty advisor and at least one other member of the dissertation committee must submit letters, each no longer than 2 pages, that assess (a) the doctoral candidate’s progress to date; and (b) the candidate’s commitment to mental health-related research and her/his prospect of becoming an independent investigator in this area.

The following modifications also apply:

If you answered Yes to the question Are Human Subjects Involved? on the R&R Other Project Information form, you must include at least one human subjects study record using the Study Record: PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form or Delayed Onset Study record.

Study Record: PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information

3. Unique Entity Identifier and System for Award Management (SAM)

See Part 1. Section III.1 for information regarding the requirement for obtaining a unique entity identifier and for completing and maintaining active registrations in System for Award Management (SAM), NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) Code (if applicable), eRA Commons, and Grants.gov

4. Submission Dates and Times

Part I. Overview Information contains information about Key Dates and times. Applicants are encouraged to submit applications before the due date to ensure they have time to make any application corrections that might be necessary for successful submission. When a submission date falls on a weekend or Federal holiday , the application deadline is automatically extended to the next business day.

Organizations must submit applications to Grants.gov (the online portal to find and apply for grants across all Federal agencies). Applicants must then complete the submission process by tracking the status of the application in the eRA Commons , NIH’s electronic system for grants administration. NIH and Grants.gov systems check the application against many of the application instructions upon submission. Errors must be corrected and a changed/corrected application must be submitted to Grants.gov on or before the application due date and time. If a Changed/Corrected application is submitted after the deadline, the application will be considered late. Applications that miss the due date and time are subjected to the NIH Policy on Late Application Submission.

Applicants are responsible for viewing their application before the due date in the eRA Commons to ensure accurate and successful submission.

Information on the submission process and a definition of on-time submission are provided in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

5. Intergovernmental Review (E.O. 12372)

This initiative is not subject to intergovernmental review.

6. Funding Restrictions

All NIH awards are subject to the terms and conditions, cost principles, and other considerations described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Pre-award costs are allowable only as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

7. Other Submission Requirements and Information

Applications must be submitted electronically following the instructions described in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide. Paper applications will not be accepted.

Applicants must complete all required registrations before the application due date. Section III. Eligibility Information contains information about registration.

For assistance with your electronic application or for more information on the electronic submission process, visit Applying Electronically . If you encounter a system issue beyond your control that threatens your ability to complete the submission process on-time, you must follow the Guidelines for Applicants Experiencing System Issues . For assistance with application submission, contact the Application Submission Contacts in Section VII .

Important reminders:

All PD(s)/PI(s) must include their eRA Commons ID in the Credential field of the Senior/Key Person Profile Component of the SF424(R&R) Application Package. Failure to register in the Commons and to include a valid PD/PI Commons ID in the credential field will prevent the successful submission of an electronic application to NIH. See Section III of this FOA for information on registration requirements.

The applicant organization must ensure that the DUNS number it provides on the application is the same number used in the organization’s profile in the eRA Commons and for the System for Award Management. Additional information may be found in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

See more tips for avoiding common errors.

Section V. Application Review Information

1. criteria.

Only the review criteria described below will be considered in the review process. As part of the NIH mission , all applications submitted to the NIH in support of biomedical and behavioral research are evaluated for scientific and technical merit through the NIH peer review system.

Significance

Does the project address an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field? Is there a strong scientific premise for the project? If the aims of the project are achieved, how will scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice be improved? How will successful completion of the aims change the concepts, methods, technologies, treatments, services, or preventative interventions that drive this field?

Investigator(s)

Are the PD(s)/PI(s), collaborators, and other researchers well suited to the project? If Early Stage Investigators or those in the early stages of independent careers, do they have appropriate experience and training? If established, have they demonstrated an ongoing record of accomplishments that have advanced their field(s)? If the project is collaborative or multi-PD/PI, do the investigators have complementary and integrated expertise; are their leadership approach, governance and organizational structure appropriate for the project?

Does the application challenge and seek to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions? Are the concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions novel to one field of research or novel in a broad sense? Is a refinement, improvement, or new application of theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions proposed?

Are the overall strategy, methodology, and analyses well-reasoned and appropriate to accomplish the specific aims of the project? Have the investigators presented strategies to ensure a robust and unbiased approach, as appropriate for the work proposed? Are potential problems, alternative strategies, and benchmarks for success presented? If the project is in the early stages of development, will the strategy establish feasibility and will particularly risky aspects be managed? Have the investigators presented adequate plans to address relevant biological variables, such as sex, for studies in vertebrate animals or human subjects?

If the project involves human subjects and/or NIH-defined clinical research, are the plans to address 1) the protection of human subjects from research risks, and 2) inclusion (or exclusion) of individuals on the basis of sex/gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as the inclusion or exclusion of children, justified in terms of the scientific goals and research strategy proposed?

Environment

Will the scientific environment in which the work will be done contribute to the probability of success? Are the institutional support, equipment and other physical resources available to the investigators adequate for the project proposed? Will the project benefit from unique features of the scientific environment, subject populations, or collaborative arrangements?

Protections for Human Subjects

For research that involves human subjects but does not involve one of the six categories of research that are exempt under 45 CFR Part 46, the committee will evaluate the justification for involvement of human subjects and the proposed protections from research risk relating to their participation according to the following five review criteria: 1) risk to subjects, 2) adequacy of protection against risks, 3) potential benefits to the subjects and others, 4) importance of the knowledge to be gained, and 5) data and safety monitoring for clinical trials.

For research that involves human subjects and meets the criteria for one or more of the six categories of research that are exempt under 45 CFR Part 46, the committee will evaluate: 1) the justification for the exemption, 2) human subjects involvement and characteristics, and 3) sources of materials. For additional information on review of the Human Subjects section, please refer to the Guidelines for the Review of Human Subjects .

Inclusion of Women, Minorities, and Children

When the proposed project involves human subjects and/or NIH-defined clinical research, the committee will evaluate the proposed plans for the inclusion (or exclusion) of individuals on the basis of sex/gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as the inclusion (or exclusion) of children to determine if it is justified in terms of the scientific goals and research strategy proposed. For additional information on review of the Inclusion section, please refer to the Guidelines for the Review of Inclusion in Clinical Research .

Vertebrate Animals

The committee will evaluate the involvement of live vertebrate animals as part of the scientific assessment according to the following criteria: (1) description of proposed procedures involving animals, including species, strains, ages, sex, and total number to be used; (2) justifications for the use of animals versus alternative models and for the appropriateness of the species proposed; (3) interventions to minimize discomfort, distress, pain and injury; and (4) justification for euthanasia method if NOT consistent with the AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals. Reviewers will assess the use of chimpanzees as they would any other application proposing the use of vertebrate animals. For additional information on review of the Vertebrate Animals section, please refer to the Worksheet for Review of the Vertebrate Animal Section .

Reviewers will assess whether materials or procedures proposed are potentially hazardous to research personnel and/or the environment, and if needed, determine whether adequate protection is proposed.

Resubmissions

For Resubmissions, the committee will evaluate the application as now presented, taking into consideration the responses to comments from the previous scientific review group and changes made to the project.

Not Applicable

Applications from Foreign Organizations

Select Agent Research

Reviewers will assess the information provided in this section of the application, including 1) the Select Agent(s) to be used in the proposed research, 2) the registration status of all entities where Select Agent(s) will be used, 3) the procedures that will be used to monitor possession use and transfer of Select Agent(s), and 4) plans for appropriate biosafety, biocontainment, and security of the Select Agent(s).

Resource Sharing Plans

Reviewers will comment on whether the following Resource Sharing Plans, or the rationale for not sharing the following types of resources, are reasonable: (1) Data Sharing Plan ; (2) Sharing Model Organisms ; and (3) Genomic Data Sharing Plan (GDS) .

Authentication of Key Biological and/or Chemical Resources:

For projects involving key biological and/or chemical resources, reviewers will comment on the brief plans proposed for identifying and ensuring the validity of those resources.

Budget and Period of Support

Reviewers will consider whether the budget and the requested period of support are fully justified and reasonable in relation to the proposed research.

2. Review and Selection Process

• May undergo a selection process in which only those applications deemed to have the highest scientific and technical merit (generally the top half of applications under review) will be discussed and assigned an overall impact score.
• Will receive a written critique.

Applications will be assigned to the appropriate NIH Institute or Center. Applications will compete for available funds with all other recommended applications. Following initial peer review, recommended applications will receive a second level of review by the National Advisory Mental Health Council. The following will be considered in making funding decisions:

• Scientific and technical merit of the proposed project as determined by scientific peer review.
• Availability of funds.
• Relevance of the proposed project to program priorities.

3. Anticipated Announcement and Award Dates

Information regarding the disposition of applications is available in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Section VI. Award Administration Information

1. award notices.

A formal notification in the form of a Notice of Award (NoA) will be provided to the applicant organization for successful applications. The NoA signed by the grants management officer is the authorizing document and will be sent via email to the grantee’s business official.

Awardees must comply with any funding restrictions described in Section IV.5. Funding Restrictions . Selection of an application for award is not an authorization to begin performance. Any costs incurred before receipt of the NoA are at the recipient's risk. These costs may be reimbursed only to the extent considered allowable pre-award costs.

Any application awarded in response to this FOA will be subject to terms and conditions found on the Award Conditions and Information for NIH Grants website. This includes any recent legislation and policy applicable to awards that is highlighted on this website.

2. Administrative and National Policy Requirements

Recipients of federal financial assistance (FFA) from HHS must administer their programs in compliance with federal civil rights law. This means that recipients of HHS funds must ensure equal access to their programs without regard to a person’s race, color, national origin, disability, age and, in some circumstances, sex and religion. This includes ensuring your programs are accessible to persons with limited English proficiency. HHS recognizes that research projects are often limited in scope for many reasons that are nondiscriminatory, such as the principal investigator’s scientific interest, funding limitations, recruitment requirements, and other considerations. Thus, criteria in research protocols that target or exclude certain populations are warranted where nondiscriminatory justifications establish that such criteria are appropriate with respect to the health or safety of the subjects, the scientific study design, or the purpose of the research.

In accordance with the statutory provisions contained in Section 872 of the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2009 (Public Law 110-417), NIH awards will be subject to the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) requirements. FAPIIS requires Federal award making officials to review and consider information about an applicant in the designated integrity and performance system (currently FAPIIS) prior to making an award. An applicant, at its option, may review information in the designated integrity and performance systems accessible through FAPIIS and comment on any information about itself that a Federal agency previously entered and is currently in FAPIIS. The Federal awarding agency will consider any comments by the applicant, in addition to other information in FAPIIS, in making a judgement about the applicant’s integrity, business ethics, and record of performance under Federal awards when completing the review of risk posed by applicants as described in 45 CFR Part 75.205 Federal awarding agency review of risk posed by applicants. This provision will apply to all NIH grants and cooperative agreements except fellowships.

For additional guidance regarding how the provisions apply to NIH grant programs, please contact the Scientific/Research Contact that is identified in Section VII under Agency Contacts of this FOA. HHS provides general guidance to recipients of FFA on meeting their legal obligation to take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to their programs by persons with limited English proficiency. Please see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/resources/laws/revisedlep.html. The HHS Office for Civil Rights also provides guidance on complying with civil rights laws enforced by HHS. Please see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/understanding/section1557/index.html ; and http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/understanding/index.html . Recipients of FFA also have specific legal obligations for serving qualified individuals with disabilities. Please see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/understanding/disability/index.html . Please contact the HHS Office for Civil Rights for more information about obligations and prohibitions under federal civil rights laws at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/office/about/rgn-hqaddresses.html or call 1-800-368-1019 or TDD 1-800-537-7697. Also note it is an HHS Departmental goal to ensure access to quality, culturally competent care, including long-term services and supports, for vulnerable populations. For further guidance on providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services, recipients should review the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care at http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlid=53 .

3. Reporting

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act), includes a requirement for awardees of Federal grants to report information about first-tier subawards and executive compensation under Federal assistance awards issued in FY2011 or later. All awardees of applicable NIH grants and cooperative agreements are required to report to the Federal Subaward Reporting System (FSRS) available at www.fsrs.gov on all subawards over $25,000. See the NIH Grants Policy Statement for additional information on this reporting requirement.

Section VII. Agency Contacts

Finding Help Online: http://grants.nih.gov/support/ (preferred method of contact)

Telephone: 301-402-7469 or 866-504-9552 (Toll Free)

Grants.gov Customer Support (Questions regarding Grants.gov registration and submission, downloading forms and application packages)

Contact Center Telephone: 800-518-4726

Email: [email protected]

GrantsInfo (Questions regarding application instructions and process, finding NIH grant resources)

Email: [email protected] (preferred method of contact)

Telephone: 301-710-0267

Christopher Sarampote, Ph.D. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Telephone: 301-443-1959 Email: [email protected]

Also, please see: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/funding/training/contacts-for-research-training-and-career-development-programs.shtml

Section VIII. Other Information

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UM SONHS Ph.D. Student Jazmin Ramirez Awarded Prestigious NIH Award

By SONHSNews 07-02-2024

The University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) is proud to announce that Jazmin Ramirez, B.S.N., R.N., has been awarded a 2.5-year grant by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) to support her study, "Effects of Heat Exposure on Maternal and Pregnancy Health: Understanding the Role of Social Determinants and Adaptive Behaviors.” The prestigious F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (NRSA) supports mentored research training opportunities for promising predoctoral students conducting dissertation research who demonstrate potential to develop into productive, independent research scientists.

A second-year student in the SONHS’ Ph.D. in Nursing Science program , Ramirez will examine the complex interactions between hyperlocal heat exposure, social determinants of health, and adaptive behaviors among pregnant women. The study will look at micro-environments within ten diverse Miami-Dade County neighborhoods—from Homestead to Hialeah—gathering hyperlocal temperature and humidity data from iButton sensors affixed to structures in local parks, as well as from Elitech sensors placed inside the homes of the 100 pregnant women who will participate in the study.

Ramirez, who worked as a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse for five years prior to starting the Ph.D. program, brings a solid foundation in maternal and child health to the new study. “My experience as a NICU nurse made me aware of the environmental and social issues that can affect pregnancies,” she said. “The F31 award provides me with the opportunity to learn more about how exposure to high levels of heat can impact pregnancy outcomes in our South Florida communities.” 

Ramirez’s mentor, SONHS Dean and Professor Hudson Santos, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.B.M.R., F.A.A.N., will serve as the grant’s sponsor and help her develop specialized and advanced research skills. An internationally-renowned expert in maternal and child health, Santos will link the new study to his NIH-funded “ Miami-ECHO: A Diverse Cohort of Mothers, Children and Fathers in Miami-Dade County” to provide Ramirez with access to research participants, study data and resources.

“Ms. Ramirez is an exceptional scholar who will be conducting urgently-needed research at the intersection of nursing and environmental sciences,” said Santos. “As higher levels of intense heat and humidity increasingly affect South Florida and the world, her work has the potential to make significant contributions that will help address climate-related health impacts on vulnerable populations.”

To consolidate the study’s interdisciplinary approach, Ramirez will be mentored by Katharine Mach, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. Two faculty members from the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine also will serve as mentors—JoNell Efantis Potter, Ph.D., A.P.R.N., F.A.A.N., professor of Clinical Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and Raymond Balise, Ph.D., associate professor of biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences—providing expertise on maternal health and biostatistics, respectively.

The study responds to one of the NINR’s research priorities: to understand how climate impacts health, especially in populations and communities that may be more vulnerable to experiencing severe health consequences related to extreme climatic conditions.

“Heat affects everyone, but it can be very physiologically taxing for pregnant women, especially when they have underlying health conditions,” said Ramirez. “This study will help us learn more about how social and environmental factors interact with high levels of heat to exacerbate its impact on pregnancy outcomes such as the mother’s health and well-being, stress, gestational weight, and preterm birth—all of which can affect the baby’s overall health as well.” 

The F31 award will help Ramirez launch her career as a nurse researcher and expert in climate and environmental health, with a focus on how they impact maternal and child health and vulnerable populations such as older adults and people with certain health conditions.

“This is an emerging research area within nursing science and there is an urgent need for more nurse researchers who are environmental health experts,” said Ramirez. “As we gain more understanding about how climate and social factors interact to affect pregnancy outcomes, we can develop interventions to help pregnant women adopt more protective heat-adaptive behaviors, and guide communities in implementing changes—such as increasing the amount of tree cover in neighborhoods – that can help mitigate the growing impact of extreme heat.”

About the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies:  The University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) transforms lives and health care through education, research, innovation, and service across the hemisphere. Established in 1948 as South Florida’s first collegiate nursing program, SONHS is a world-class, prestigiously accredited, research-driven school conferring undergraduate and advanced nursing degrees, and undergraduate public health and health science degrees. SONHS values its diverse faculty, students, and 250+ clinical and community health partners. Its research core includes the Biobehavioral Research Laboratory, PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre, Center for Latino Health Research Opportunities, Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training Program, and 41,000-square-foot Simulation Hospital Advancing Research and Education (S.H.A.R.E. ® ). For more information, visit  sonhs.miami.edu .

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COSAM News Articles 2024 06 Two Auburn biologists organize sessions at The Allied Genetics Conference in DC

Two Auburn biologists organize sessions at The Allied Genetics Conference in DC

Published: 07/02/2024

By: Maria Gebhardt

Rita Graze and Laurie Stevison organized major sessions at the The Allied Genetics Conference 2024 (TAGC2024) hosted by the Genetics Society of America that was held in Washington D.C. during Spring Break in March 2024.

Graze, an associate professor, and Stevison, an associate professor and Coordinator for Graduate Certificate in Computational Biology, are both from the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn University.

In total, there were five members from the two lab groups representing Auburn at the conference. From the Stevison Lab, there were three in attendance – Stevison, a postdoc from her lab, Spencer Koury, and an undergraduate attending her first scientific conference, Amelia May. Stevison and Koury co-chaired a session on Chromosome Dynamics where Stevison gave a talk on the NIH funded work in her lab.

From the Graze Lab, there were two in attendance. Graze organized two major sessions. One session was titled “Sex Differences in Biology and Disease” and her recently graduated PhD student Mursalin Khan spoke during this session on his dissertation work in her lab. Additionally, Graze organized a second session in the same area focused on Genomes and Genomics.

Koury also presented a poster on his work prior to starting in the Stevison Lab. Additionally, Amelia presented research from her work as a student researcher in the Stevison Lab that she has done in collaboration with PhD student Natalia Rivera-Rincon.

“The conference is only held every four years, so we were excited to be able to help facilitate sessions for the 2,884 attendees,” said Stevison.

Latest Headlines

• Summer Bridge Program celebrates 21 incoming Auburn students as they prepare for future STEM careers 07/02/2024
• Two Auburn biologists organize sessions at The Allied Genetics Conference in DC 07/02/2024
• Dr. Junshan Lin receives a new NSF grant 06/17/2024
• Call for Distinguished Alumni Award (DAA) and Young Alumni Achievement Award (YAAA) Nominations 06/07/2024
• Timothy L. Hawthorne joins COSAM as new chair of the Department of Geosciences 05/31/2024

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Joseph Redman

The british stalinists and the moscow trials, (march 1958).

From Labour Review , Vol. 3 No. 2 , March–April 1958, pp. 44–53. Joseph Redman was a pseudonym of Brian Pearce. Transcribed by Ted Crawford. Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) .

‘Foreigners little realize how vital it was for Stalin in 1936, 1937 and 1938 to be able to declare that the British, American, French, German, Polish, Bulgarian and Chinese communists unanimously supported the liquidation of the “Trotskyite, fascist mad dogs and wreckers” ...’ – W.G. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent (1939), p. 79.

‘These apologists for Stalin will one day regret their hasty zeal, for truth, breaking a path through every obstacle, will carry away many reputations.’ – L.D. Trotsky, Les Crimes de Staline (1937), p. 62.

TWENTY years ago there took place the trial of Bukharin and twenty others, the third and largest of a series of three historic State trials in the Soviet Union. Like the fraction of the iceberg that shows above the water’s surface, these trials were the publicly-paraded fraction of a vast mass of repressions carried out in 1936-38 by Yagoda and Yezhov under the supreme direction of Stalin. It is not the purpose of this article to examine the trials themselves or to discuss their causes and consequences for the Soviet Union and the international working-class movement. Its purpose is merely to recall how the leaders and spokesmen of the Stalinist organization in Britain reacted to the trials and what some of the effects of their reaction were in the British working-class movement, so that lessons may be learned regarding the political character of the organization and the individuals concerned.  

The First Trial

The first of the three great ‘public’ trials took place in August 1936. Immediately upon the publication of the indictment, the DW came out with an editorial (August 17) accepting the guilt of the accused men: ‘The revelations ... will fill all decent citizens with loathing and hatred ... Crowning infamy of all is the evidence showing how they were linked up with the Nazi Secret Police .. .’ This instantaneous and whole-hearted endorsement of whatever Stalin’s policemen chose to allege at any given moment was to prove characteristic of the British Stalinist reaction to each of the successive trials.

The prototype of another statement which was in re-appear regularly throughout this period figured in the DW ’s editorial of August 22: ‘The extent and organization of the plot, with its cold-blooded killings of the leaders of the international working class, has shocked the Labour and socialist movement of the world.’ In reality, of course, the effect of trial was to compromise the Soviet Union in the eyes of many workers and to play into the hands of the most Right-wing sections. Accordingly, a third ‘keynote’ had to be sounded right from the beginning, with the headline in the DW of August 24 to the report that the International Federation of Trade Unions had asked the Soviet authorities to allow a foreign lawyer to defend the accused: Citrine Sides with Traitors . On the other hand, any expression of approval for the trial by a bourgeois newspaper or other ‘source’ was to be eagerly seized upon and publicized during these years, and already in this issue we find The Observer quoted, in a special ‘box’, as saying: ‘It is futile to think the trial was staged and the charges trumped up.’ [1]

With the minimum of delay the implications of the trials for current politics began to be drawn, especially with regard to Spain. The DW leader of August 25 affirmed that ‘Trotsky ... whose agents are trying to betray the Spanish Republic by advancing provocative “Left” slogans ... is the very spearpoint of counter-revolution’, and next day J.R. Campbell had an article comparing Zinoviev to Franco. At the same time, a programme of rewriting of the history of the Bolshevik Party and the October Revolution was launched with an article by Ralph Fox in the DW of August 28, entitled Trotsky Was No Great General , followed by another on September 1: He Was Always a Base Double-Crosser . [2] A Communist Party pamphlet The Moscow Trial , by W.G. Shepherd, carried the retrospective smear campaign further, telling readers that in October 1917 ‘the organization leadership was not, as is sometimes supposed, in [Trotsky’s] hands ... He was a bad organizer.’ The main point of this pamphlet, however, was squarely to identify ‘Trotskyists’ with police agents.

Shepherd based himself in his defence of the trial upon the declarations of D.N. Pritt, KC, (‘None can challenge either Mr Pritt’s integrity or his competence to understand the significance of court procedure and the value of evidence’), and indeed the importance of these cannot be exaggerated in assessing how this trial and its successors were ‘sold’ to the Left in Britain.

Mr Pritt made two principal contributions to the propaganda for the August 1936 trial. He wrote the preface to the pamphlet The Moscow Trial, 1936 , a report of the proceedings published by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee (secretary, W.P. Coates). This report omitted from the testimony of Holtzman, one of the accused, his reference to a meeting in a non-existent ‘Hotel Bristol’ in Copenhagen, a slip in the ‘libretto’ which had been widely remarked upon. (Compare p. 49 of this pamphlet with p. 100 of the English version of the Report of Court Proceedings. Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre , published in Moscow, 1936.) ‘Once again’, wrote Pritt, ‘the more faint-hearted socialists are beset with doubt and anxieties’, but ‘once again we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct, and the prosecution fairly conducted ... But in order that public opinion shall reach this verdict ... it must be properly informed of the facts; and it is here that this little book will be of such value.’ Pritt also wrote a pamphlet of his own, The Zinoviev Trial , in which he dealt with the suspicion some sceptics had expressed that the confessions might not be entirely spontaneous – might, indeed, be influenced by torture or intimidation of some sort. The abjectness of the confessions was ‘sufficiently explained when one bears in mind the very great differences in form and style that naturally exist between one race and another ... In conversations I have held in Soviet prisons with accused persons awaiting trial on substantial charges, I have not infrequently been struck by the readiness with which they have stated to me in the presence of warders that they are guilty and cannot complain if they are punished.’ And anyway, after all, accused persons often plead guilty when they see ‘the evidence against them is overwhelming’. True, no evidence was actually produced at the trial other than the confessions of the accused; but ‘it is no part of the duty of the judicial authorities to publish reports showing exactly how they have conducted preliminary investigations of which the persons who are at once most interested and best informed, viz., the accused, make no complaint.’ Actually, ‘one can well imagine that the Soviet Government, so far as concerns the point of view of properly informing foreign criticism, would much have preferred that all or most of the accused should have pleaded Not Guilty and contested the case. The full strength of the case would then have been seen and appraised ...’

What strikes one most forcibly in re-reading today the literature of the first trial is the complete silence of the British Stalinists about some of the most contradictory and question-begging of its features. Not only the famous Hotel Bristol – the even more famous Café Bristol was not ‘discovered’ until February 1937 – but many other, less ‘technical’, points were passed over. Molotov was conspicuously missing from the list of the ‘leaders of party and State’ whom Zinoviev and Co. were accused of plotting to murder – and from the ceremonial list of these leaders included by Vyshinsky in his closing speech – though he was the nominal head of the Soviet Government at the time. (Alexander Orlov, a former NKVD officer, tells us in his book The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes (1954), p. 81, that the dictator, who wished to frighten Molotov a little, personally struck out his name from the list of ‘intended victims of the conspiracy’!) [3] Nor did they refer back later on, when Kossior and Postyshev were put away as ‘Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalists’, to their presence among the leaders whose deaths had allegedly been demanded by Rudolf Hess, through Trotsky. Nobody questioned the consistency of accusing Trotsky of being a fascist while stating (Smirnov’s last plea, Report of Court Proceedings , pp. 171–2) that he regarded the Soviet Union as ‘a fascist State’. Nobody suggested that it was somewhat premature of N. Lurye to get himself sent into Russia by the Gestapo in April 1932 ( ibid. , pp. 102–3); or that Trotsky had shown curious tactlessness in choosing five Jews – Olberg, Berman-Yurin, David and the two Luryes [4] – to collaborate with the Gestapo. That Holtzman testified to meeting Trotsky’s son Sedov in Copenhagen whereas Olberg said Sedov had not managed to get there ( ibid. pp.87, 100) excited no surprise. Above all, the complete unconcern of the Prosecutor about these and other contradictions and oddities in the confessions, which he made no attempt to sort out, was matched by a corresponding unconcern among the British Stalinists. [5] Like Vyshinsky, too, they gave no sign of finding it suspicious that the treasonable intrigues of these Trotskyites’, dating from 1931, had been carried on exclusively with Germany, no role having been played, apparently, by Britain, France, Poland or Italy. (As Trotsky observed, there ‘terrorists’ might make an attempt on Stalin’s life, but never on Litvinov’s diplomacy.)

Jack Cohen, in those days responsible for the political education of communist students, contributed to the party monthly Discussion for September 1936 a piece on Heroes of Fascism and Counter-Revolution in which he asserted that in 1933 Trotsky had issued a call for ‘terroristic acts to “remove” the party leaders’, in an article in the Weltbühne which actually speaks not of terrorism but of a workers’ revolution against the bureaucracy. (Neither Cohen nor any of the other Stalinists ever quoted, of course, from Trotsky’s numerous writings condemning terrorism as useless and harmful, as ‘bureaucratism turned inside-out’, such as The Kirov Assassination [1935].) Pat Sloan, of the Friends of the Soviet Union (now British-Soviet Friendship Society), wrote in the New Statesman of September 5: ‘I do not see what was unconvincing in the Moscow trial.’ [6] Walter Holmes, in his Worker’s Notebook in the DW of September 4, told of a conversation with ‘members of the Labour Party’ who reassured him: ‘What are you worrying about? ... Everybody in our party has got enough sense to know they ought to be shot.’ Reg Bishop, however, admitted in Inprecorr of September 5 that Labour was not quite so solidly convinced on this point: ‘The Labour Daily Herald vies in venom and spite with the Daily Mail ... It is pathetic to see men like Brailsford and Tom Johnston failing to see through the tricks prepared for them by Trotsky to cover up his tracks.’ Douglas Garman, in the New Statesman of September 12, demanded: ‘If ... they were innocent, why should they have confessed at all?’ (The editor replied: ‘We say that confessions without independent corroborative evidence are not convincing.’) [7] Ivor Montagu, in Left Book News for October, pooh-poohed suggestions that torture, whether physical or moral, or promises of pardon in return for perjury, could have anything to do with the confessions, and gave some historical background in which he quoted Lenin’s criticisms of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, while saying nothing of his criticisms of Stalin. R. Page Arnot, in the Labour Monthly for October, wrote: ‘Trotskyism is now revealed as an ancillary of fascism ... The ILP is in great danger of falling into the hands of Trotskyists and becoming a wing of fascism. Let the members of the ILP look to it.’ Pat Sloan, again, in the October number of Russia Today specially devoted to the trial, had a new explanation for the confessions: ‘These were men who, in their desire for publicity, had never refused an opportunity to speak to a large audience.’ From the same inspired pen came an argument, in Controversy of December, worthy of the confidence men of South Sea Bubble days: ‘The Soviet Government does not intend to broadcast to the whole world all the evidence of activities of Hitler’s agents it could broadcast.’ (Though well-informed about the secret archives of the Soviet intelligence service, Sloan was, at this stage, a bit shaky on the topography of Denmark’s capital: ‘Anyway, are we sure there’s no Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen? The denial, I believe, comes only from Norway.’)

Towards the end of 1936 and beginning of 1937 there were two trials in Germany of real Trotskyites for real subversive activity. In Danzig, Jakubowski and nine others were given severe hard-labour sentences for issuing leaflets declaring that ‘the defence of the Soviet Union remains an unconditional duty for the proletariat’, and in Hamburg a group of fifteen, which included a Vienna Schutzbund member and a worker who had fought in the 1923 uprising, suffered similarly for similar activity. There were no confessions and there was plenty of material evidence. No report of these cases appeared in the DW or other Stalinist publications. It is curious that Nazi propaganda in this period alleged that in spite of appearances the Fourth International was a secret agency of the Third, operating on the basis of a division of labour. Accounts of a conference (at Breda) between representatives of the two Internationals were spread by Goebbels, just as Stalin told the world of Trotsky’s talks with Hess. [8]  

The Second Trial

Already during the period of the first trial, as we have seen, King Street’s concern for ‘working-class unity’ was subordinated to the paramount need to attack anybody and everybody in the Labour movement who expressed doubt regarding the justice of the verdict. This became still clearer when the second trial was launched, in January 1937. The DW of January 25 carried the headline: The Herald Defends Spies and Assassins , and a leader Enemies of the Working Class , which declared: ‘It is for the working class of Britain to deal with those who in this country constitute themselves the defenders of the Trotskyites and thereby assist fascism and strike a blow at socialism all over the world.’ On January 29 the paper attacked the New Leader for ‘playing into the hands of the enemy’ because it had called for an independent inquiry into the trial such as Pritt and others had organized in connexion with the Reichstag Fire trial in 1933. Arnot was the DW ’s reporter at the second trial: he assured readers that the only pressure which had been brought to bear on the prisoners was ‘the pressure of facts’ (January 27).

The campaign to justify Stalin’s purges and to make the utmost political capital out of them was raised to a higher level and put on a more organized basis than hitherto by John Gollan, in his address to the enlarged meeting of the national council of the Young Communist League held on January 30–31. The historical ‘rewrite’ adumbrated by Ralph Fox was undertaken more thoroughly and at some length by Gollan. The address was published as a. duplicated document under the title The Development of Trotskyism from Menshevism to Alliance with Fascism and Counter-Revolution . Gollan showed how Lenin’s chief assistant in building the Red Army was not Trotsky but Stalin, how Trotsky had advocated that industrialization be carried out ‘at the expense of the peasant masses’ (saved by Stalin) etc. etc. This remarkable assemblage of half-truths and untruths concluded with a list of ‘the real Bolshevik Old Guard’, in which figure the names Rudzutak, Bubnov, Chubar, Kossior and Postyshev, all shot or imprisoned by Stalin shortly afterwards. Harry Pollitt went one better than this in his list of ‘the real Old Guard’ who ‘are still at their posts’, by including the name of ... Yezhov, whom hardly anybody – probably not Pollitt himself – had even heard of until his sudden elevation in September 1936 to be head of the NKVD following Yagoda’s fall! This exploit occurred in a pamphlet called The Truth About Trotskyism , published at the end of January. Another gem from the same source is Pollitt’s comment on the confessions of the accused: ‘The evidence produced in the Moscow trial is not confessions in the ordinary sense but statements signed in the way depositions are signed in any British court ...’ [9] The main point of the pamphlet, made in a contribution by R.P. Dutt, was to show that it was ‘essential to ... destroy the Trotskyist propaganda and influence which is seeking to win a foothold within the Labour movement, since these attempts represent in fact the channel of fascist penetration into the Labour movement’. In addition to the Gollan address and the Pollitt-Dutt pamphlet the DW brought out a special supplement on the trial in its issue of February 1 (‘Keep It Always’), in which, after the ritual statement ‘everywhere in the British Labour movement the scrupulous fairness of the trial, the overwhelming guilt of the accused, and the justness of the sentences is recognized’, readers were urged to send protests to the Daily Herald regarding its sceptical attitude thereto. A statement by the central committee of the Communist Party published in this issue emphasized that ‘the lead given by the Soviet Union ... requires to be energetically followed up throughout the whole Labour movement, and above all in Great Britain ...’

From this time onward one can say without exaggeration that the fight against ‘Trotskyism’ became one of the main preoccupations of the Communist Party, diverting the energies and confusing the minds of its members and disrupting the working-class movement more and more. [10] R.F. Andrews (Andrew Rothstein) now came well to the fore, as might be expected, with a series of articles in the DW . ‘The criminals have received their well-merited sentences ... Millions of people have had their eyes opened to the inner essence of Trotskyism’ (February 5); ‘Trotsky ... a malignant, avowed and still dangerous criminal’ (February 9); ‘ Herald – Shameful Blot on Labour’, i.e., for doubting the justice of the verdict (February 15). [11] A mere pamphlet such as Pritt had devoted to the Zinoviev trial was now realized to be inadequate and a whole book, Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek (1937), was published, the work of a fresh legal talent, Dudley Collard, though not without an introduction by Pritt (‘The impression gained from Mr Collard’s description will, I think, enable many who were puzzled by the first trial not merely to convince themselves on the genuineness of the second, but also to derive from that a conviction of the genuineness of the first’). This pathetic effort contains such propositions as (p.52): ‘I have read some statement to the effect that no aeroplanes flew from Germany to Norway in December 1935. It seems hard to believe that this is so ...’ Here the reference is to the statement issued by the Oslo airport authorities that no foreign aeroplanes landed there in December 1935, contrary to Pyatakov’s confession that he had landed there on his way to visit Trotsky. (Attempts were later made to explain that perhaps Pyatakov’s memory was at fault and his aeroplane had actually landed on a frozen fiord; but, alas, this version was incompatible with the accused man’s account of his journey by car from the aeroplane to Trotsky’s dwelling.) After a display of quite extraordinary gullibility, Collard came to the conclusion (p. 79) that ‘the court was more merciful than I would have been!’ That was sufficient to ensure his book the maximum boost treatment throughout the Stalinist movement. William Gallacher, reviewing Collard in the DW of March 19, wrote: ‘Here one sees the Soviet legal system as it really is, the most advanced, the most humane in the world ... It is a book which once read must make any normal human being resolve that never again under any circumstances will he have truck with Trotsky, his followers or any of his works.’ Harking back to one of the mysteries of the first trial, the DW gave a sizable bit of its valuable space in the issue of February 26 to a plan of the Grand Hotel, Copenhagen, allegedly showing that one could enter a café said to be called the Café Bristol through this hotel – though how Holtzman could have proposed to ‘put up’ at this café still remained unexplained! [12] The egregious Arnot, in an article on The Trotskyist Trial in the Labour Monthly for March, quoted Lenin on MacDonald to show how workers’ leaders can degenerate (but did not quote Lenin on Stalin!), took a swipe at Emrys Hughes (‘a middle-class Philistine’) for an article in Forward critical of the trials, and opened up with all guns against the Manchester Guardian . Principled political criticism of the Liberals was ‘out’ in this epoch of Popular-Frontery, but here was something more important. The Guardian had stated that, in the course of the waves of repression sweeping over the Soviet Union in the wake of the second trial, ‘the Polish communists ... have suffered heavy casualties under the Stalinist persecution’. As is now admitted, almost the entire leadership of the Polish Communist Party was in fact liquidated by the NKVD in this period, and the party itself dissolved. This was the buffoonery that Arnot wrote at the time: ‘They have not “suffered heavy casualities”; there is no “Stalinist persecution” ... At one time the Trotskyists complained that the condemnation of their errors was a sign of anti-Semitism. Now, apparently, the condemnation of their crimes is to be presented as “the assault on the Polish Virgin” ...’

At this time the Stalinists were putting forth determined efforts to capture the Labour League of Youth, for which they published a paper called Advance . The March issue of this journal carried an article, We Have Our Wreckers, Too! by Ted Willis, later to win fame as author of The Blue Lamp , but then the leading Stalinist youth-worker. ‘The recent trial and sentences on the Terrorists in Moscow were of particular interest to the members of the League of Youth for an obvious reason. That being the fact that, for the last year we have been blessed (is that the right word?) with a tiny group of people in the League who style themselves Trotskyists ... Turn them lock, stock and barrel out of the Labour movement!’ Fittingly, at the same time as Ted Willis was making his debut in this field, John Strachey, then the top Stalinist publicist in this country, was telling readers of Left News that he believed that

The psychological student of the future will look back on the long-drawn-out incredulity of British public opinion over the Moscow trials of 1936 and 1937 as one of the strangest and most interesting psychological phenomena of the present time. For it will be clear to such a student that there were no rational grounds for disbelief. The fact is that there is no answer to the simple question: ‘If these men were innocent, why did they confess?’ ... Before the inexorable, extremely prolonged, though gentle, cross-examination of the Soviet investigators, their last convictions broke down.

Major contributions to the fight against Trotskyism now came thick and fast. Stalin’s speech at the February-March plenum of the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party, setting out his thesis that the further the Soviet Union progressed the more intense became the class struggle and the greater was the need for security work, was published in full in the DW (‘Especially in Britain do we require to pay heed to his words regarding the danger of the rotten theory that because the Trotskyists are few we can afford to pay little attention to them ... This is a report to be carefully read and studied, not once but many times’ – March 31). At the second National Congress for Peace and Friendship with the USSR, Pritt soothed the anxieties of those who had doubts about the course of justice under Stalin. ‘I do happen to know that, when you are arrested in the USSR ... there are very elaborate rules of criminal procedure to see that your case will be proceeded with promptly and to ensure that there shall be no delay in having it put forward’ (Congress Report, p. 51). In Left News for April, Ivor Montagu reviewed, under the heading The Guilty the official report of the second trial, together with Collard’s book. A feature of this article was its misquotation from The Revolution Betrayed , designed to show that Trotsky prophesied the defeat of the Soviet Union in war with Nazi Germany. (Montagu gives: ‘Defeat will be fatal to the leading circles of the USSR and to the social bases of the country.’ Trotsky actually wrote ‘would’, not ‘will’, and made plain in the following paragraph that he considered the defeat of Germany more probable:

Notwithstanding all its contradictions, the Soviet regime in the matter of stability still has immense advantages over the regimes of its probable enemies. The very possibility of a rule by the Nazis over the German people was created by the unbearable tenseness of social antagonisms in Germany. These antagonisms have not been removed and not even weakened, but only suppressed by the lid of fascism. A war will bring them to the surface. Hitler has far less chances than had Wilhelm II of carrying a war to victory. Only a timely revolution, by saving Germany from war, could save her from a new defeat. ( The Revolution Betrayed , chapter viii , section 5)

Montagu also referred to Trotsky as ‘perhaps the star contributor to the Hearst Press on Soviet affairs’. In fact, Trotsky always refused even to receive a representative of the Hearst Press, and anything they published over his name was lifted’, often with distortions, from other papers. (Lenin had had occasion in July 1917 to remark regarding a similar slander by the Menshevik Montagus of those days: ‘They have stooped to such a ridiculous thing as blaming the Pravda for the fact that its dispatches to the socialist papers of Sweden and other countries ... have been reprinted by the German papers, often garbled! ... As if the reprinting or the vicious distortions can be blamed on the authors!’)

In Challenge of May 27 Gollan asserted ‘the absolute necessity ... of once and for all ridding the youth movement of all Trotskyist elements as a pre-condition for unity’, thus subordinating the urgent need for workers’ unity to the requirements of the NKVD.  

Between the Second and Third Trials

The case of the Generals – a sort of intermezzo between the second and third trials – gave the British Stalinists fresh occasion to display their ‘loyalty’ and quarrel with other sections of the working-class movement on its account. This was a secret trial, without confessions, but no matter: the first announcement of the case was greeted by the DW with a leader stating that ‘thanks to the unrelaxing vigilance of the Soviet intelligence service, a further shattering blow has been given to the criminal war-making elements who seek to undermine and destroy the Socialist Fatherland of the international working class’ (June 12). On June 14 the paper announced: Red Army Traitors Executed . The leading article affirmed, as usual, that ‘the workers of Britain will rejoice’, but nevertheless Pollitt, in a special statement published in the same issue, had to rebuke the Herald for getting ‘so hot and bothered’ about this trial. In a statement congratulating the Soviet Government on the executions, published in the DW of June 16, the central committee welcomed, on behalf of the British workers, ‘the wiping out of the bureaucratic degenerates associated with fascism ...’ Arnot proclaimed ( DW , June 18) his conviction of the reliability of the official account of the crimes of Tukhachevsky, Gamarnik, Eidemann and the others: ‘That it is a true story no reasonable man can doubt.’ Montagu added his stone next day ( A Blow at Fascism ) and called for heightened vigilance against ‘such agents in the working class movement elsewhere and working to the same end’. Pat Sloan’s Russia Today (July) hastened to identify itself with the executioners: ‘No true friend of the Soviet Union ... can feel other than a sense of satisfaction that the activities of spies, diversionists and wreckers in the Soviet Army have been given an abrupt quietus ... All talk about the personal struggle of the “dictator” Stalin is rubbish.’ Dutt pitched into Brailsford for his doubts ( On Which Side? , DW , June 21) [13] and Jack Gaster denounced the ‘slanders’ of the Herald at a Hyde Park meeting ( DW , June 22).

About the middle of 1937 it began to be known in the West that a truly gigantic, unprecedentedly sweeping wave of arrests was engulfing many who hitherto had been regarded as secure and loyal pillars of the Stalin regime. This put the British Stalinists in a quandary. When Mezhlauk, for instance, was appointed to succeed Ordzhonikidze as Commissar for Heavy Industry, he was headlined in the DW of February 27 as an Old Soldier of the Revolution . When he was arrested a few months later they could thus hardly dispose of him in the traditional way as ‘never an Old Bolshevik’. So they ignored the arrest, and dealt similarly with the many similar cases that now poured out of the tape-machines. A photograph of Marshal Yegorov appeared in the DW of July 14; when he was arrested shortly afterwards, nothing was said. A photograph of Marshal Bluecher was published in the issue of February 25, actually after his arrest! (At the same time, the wretched Daily Herald came in for another pasting in the DW of October 8 for having published a report of the murder by NKVD agents in Switzerland of Ignace Reiss, an NKVD man who had tried to break with Stalin.)

Perhaps the most revealing instance of the methods of the British Stalinists in dealing with the arrests which they knew about but dared not admit to their dupes is provided by the case of the Lost Editor. When the Soviet official History of the Civil War , Vol.I, was first announced as a forthcoming publication, in the DW of March 11, the list of editors, headed by Stalin and Gorky, included the names of Gamarnik and Bubnov. General Gamarnik having allegedly committed suicide as an exposed accomplice of Tukhachevsky ( Entangled with Enemies of USSR, Took Own Life – DW , June 2), his name had of course disappeared from the advertisement of the book published in Russia Today of November 1937. But though Bubnov had been arrested as an enemy of the people in time for his name to be removed from the title-page of the book before it reached the shops, it was still to be seen on the fly-leaf! When Rothstein reviewed this work in Russia Today of February 1938 he cannily listed the editors as ‘Joseph Stalin, Maxim Gorky and others’. The arrest of Bubnov was a particularly hard blow for the British Stalinists, since they had made special use of his name as that of an Old Bolshevik still in favour. Perhaps resentment at his inconsiderateness in getting arrested was the reason why the DW did not report his return to Moscow in 1956, as an old, broken man, after nearly twenty years in prison. [14]

Particularly worthy of being rescued from oblivion, among the achievements of ‘working-class journalism’ in this period, is an article in the DW of August 20 by Ben Francis, the paper’s Moscow correspondent, in praise of the wonderful work being done by Zakovsky, in charge of security in Leningrad. Around this time, as Khrushchev described in his famous ‘secret speech’ ( Manchester Guardian pamphlet version, The Dethronement of Stalin [1956], p. 15), Zakovsky was having prisoners brought before him after torture in order to offer them their lives in return for their agreement to make a false confession (‘You, yourself’, said Zakovsky, ‘will not need to invent anything. The NKVD will prepare for you a ready outline ... You will have to study it carefully and remember well all questions and answers which the court might ask’).

An example of the contempt into which the trials were bringing both the Soviet authorities and the British Stalinists is provided by the article by ‘Y.Y.’ (Robert Lynd) in the New Statesman of June 26. On the ascription of all shortcoming in Soviet industry to Soviet sabotage, he wrote that, apparently, ‘wherever there is a screw loose in Russia it was Trotsky who loosened it’, and he summed up the King Street theory of the trials thus: ‘Stalin can do no wrong. He will give these men a fair trial, but, as a matter of fact, they would not be put on their trial at all unless it were certain that they were guilty. Therefore, even without knowing the evidence, we know that they are guilty.’ [15] Desperate in their concern to keep the other point of view from their dupes, the Stalinist editors of Left Review refused to publish an advertisement of The Case of Leon Trotsky , being the report of the examination of Trotsky, regarding the statements affecting him made in the trials, carried out by the Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey. This was revealed in a letter in the New Statesman of November 6 from the publisher, Mr Frederick Warburg. Replying for Left Review in the next issue of the New Statesman , Randall Swingler explained that ‘there is a line at which criticism ends and destructive attacks begin, and we regret that this line separates us both from Dr Goebbels and from Leon Trotsky’. [16] This spot of publicity compelled the publication of a review of the book in the DW of November 17, in which J.R. Campbell claimed that it gave ‘added confirmation to the Moscow trials, which showed Trotsky as a political degenerate, an ally of fascism, a vile maniacal enemy of socialism and peace’. A letter from Charles van Gelderen pointing out some glaring inaccuracies in Campbell’s article was refused publication in the DW ; it appeared, however, in the (London) Militant for December.

The political consequences of all this pernicious nonsense were well summed up in an article by H.J. Laski in the New York Nation for November 20:

There is no doubt but the mass executions in the Soviet Union in the last two years have greatly injured the prestige of Russia with the rank and file of the Labour Party. They do not understand them, and they feel that those who accept them without discussion are not satisfactory allies. I do not comment on this view; I merely record it. In my judgment. the executions undoubtedly cost the supporters of the United Front something like half a million votes in the Bournemouth Conference.

The year 1938, which opened with the final disappearance of the slogan: ‘Workers of all lands, unite!’ from the masthead of the DW , was to see even further feats of genuine sabotage of workers’ unity by the Stalinists under the banner of anti-Trotskyism. Communist speakers refused to appear on the same platform with ILP speakers at ‘Aid Spain’ meetings. All remnants of shame and caution were cast aside in this truly maniacal campaign. Thus, in Discussion of January, Pat Sloan wrote: ‘Masses and leaders are united; the people adore “our Stalin”. Stalin respects the masses as no other political leader of today respects the masses ...’ In Controversy of the same month the same propagandist declared himself unfamiliar with and unready to accept as genuine Stalin’s statement of November 6, 1918, on Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution (Stalin, The October Revolution , published in the Marxist-Leninist Library by Lawrence and Wishart in 1936, p.30), which had been mentioned by a contributor, and proceeded to withdraw from the battle on the grounds that ‘it is impossible to continue a controversy with someone as unscrupulous ... Trotskyism ... is incompatible with historical truth’. [17] Dutt, in the DW of January 21, quoted some remarks of Lenin’s about Bukharin (also, incidentally, Dzerzhinsky and other ‘Left Communists’ who died in the odour of Stalinist sanctity) as though they referred to Trotsky. R. Osborn (Reuben Osbert, the psychiatrist) brought out a book, The Psychology of Reaction (1938), in which he tried to identify fascism and ‘Trotskyism’ psychologically (‘A knowledge of the psychology of fascist leaders is at the same time a knowledge of the psychology of the Trotskyists’) and this was reviewed enthusiastically by John Strachey in Left News for February. (Strachey offered as his own view that ‘Trotskyists’ were recruited mainly from ‘insufficiently sensitive’, ‘inhuman’ types).  

The Third Trial

Now came the third and last of the great ‘public’ trials – the Trial of the Twenty-One, bigger and more fantastic than any of the foregoing, with Bukharin, Rykov, Rakovsky and Krestinsky in the leading roles. The British Stalinists (who had made extensive use of the writings of Bukharin and Rykov in the anti-Trotskyist campaign of 1925-28, presenting them as great Marxist thinkers and statesmen) did not flinch. [18] The DW leader of March 2 declared: ‘Soviet justice will prove itself once again as the unsleeping sword on behalf of the working class and the peoples of the world against their enemies.’ Eden having been replaced by Halifax, British agents now found their place in the legend alongside the German ones, and R. Page Arnot, in his dispatches from the Moscow court-room, solemnly explained how Rakovsky had been in British pay since 1924 and Trotsky since 1926. As before – Stalin still retaining confidence in the Franco-Soviet Pact – it appeared that none of the accused had had any contact with France, even in the years when French imperialism was heading the anti-Soviet forces in the world. Even so far back, it seemed, the cunning ‘Trotskyists’ had foreseen what the pattern of diplomacy would be at the time of their trial.

Furthermore, Trotsky had been a German spy since 1921; though why he should wish to link up with an impoverished and defeated State such as Germany was then, or why, indeed, being at the height of his authority in Russia at that time, he should have troubled to make such connexions at all, was never explained. The British Stalinists knew their place better than even as much as to comment on these oddities. (Arnot confined his observations to such safe remarks as: ‘Vyshinsky ... is always a credit to his calling’) [19] As before, however, certain ill-conditioned elements in the Labour movement gave trouble. The DW had to devote a leading article on March 7 to – Brailsford Again . (‘They did not confess of their own accord. They held out to the last until they realized the Soviet authorities had complete proof of all their crimes, and then admitted only what could not be denied.’) The central committee of the party published in the DW of March 8 its routine, required declaration kicking the accused (‘Every weak, corrupt or ambitious traitor to Socialism’), denouncing ‘the fascist agent Trotsky’ and expressing ‘full confidence’ in Yezhov, ‘our Bolshevik comrade’. William Wainwright, in Challenge of March 10, really went to town on the trial: ‘This is more than a trial. It is a fight between the forces of war and the forces of peace.’ After the ritual bit of historical untruth (Trotsky ‘was not one of the leaders of the rising. Stalin was’), Wainwright went on to allege that the accused wanted to let the fascists into Russia. ‘Just as Franco did in Spain ... Let us be glad that this trial has taken place, that these men will be sentenced ... Let us in our youth organizations clean out those ... who support those whose crime is against the people.’

The DW leader of March 11, dealing with the ILP’s appeal to Moscow not to execute the convicted men, was entitled: ‘Degenerates Appeal for Degenerates’. In Inprecorr of March 12, Reg Bishop welcomed the publication in certain bourgeois papers of articles accepting the genuineness of the tria1 [20] , while at the same time deploring that at the most recent meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party a resolution had been moved condemning it. The resolution was defeated, true; ‘but it is a deplorable thing that it should even have been mooted in a responsible Labour gathering’. The New Statesman ’s attitude had been unsatisfactory, too; but then, that was ‘mainly read by intellectuals’. Albert Inkpin, secretary of the World Committee of Friends of the Soviet Union, had a letter in the March 12 issue of the offending weekly, telling the editor that ‘all fascists and reactionaries’ would applaud his doubts about the trial. (Replying, the editor declared that it was rather the picture of nearly all the founders of the Soviet State being spies and wreckers that was likely to give pleasure to the enemies of the USSR. Besides, if the New Statesman had ventured to suggest such a thing, not so very long before, the FSU would certainly have jumped on them. ‘What Soviet hero dare we praise today? Who is tomorrow’s carrion?’)

Harry Pollitt himself, in the DW of March 12, told the world that ‘the trials in Moscow represent a new triumph in the history of progress’, the article being illustrated by a photograph of Stalin with Yezhov, that Old Bolshevik shortly to be dismissed and die in obscurity. Forces from the cultural field also joined in the battle on this occasion. Jack Lindsay put a letter into Tribune of March 18 affirming that ‘surely the strangest thing about the Moscow trials is the way that critics find them “psychologically” puzzling ... That is the one thing they are not ... The cleavage between the men who trusted the powers of the masses, and the men who trusted only their own “cleverness” had to come. And naturally persons with “individualistic” minds can’t understand! Naturally they get scared and see themselves in the dock.’ So there! Sean O’Casey contributed a lamentable article in the DW of March 25 ( The Sword of the Soviet ) containing such statements as: ‘The opposition to and envy of Lenin and Stalin by Trotsky was evident before even the Revolution of 1917 began.’ (O’Casey cannot but have known how little cause Trotsky had to ‘envy’ Stalin before 1917 and would have been hard put to it to show how such envy made itself ‘evident’!).

Rather unkindly, in view of the efforts of Messrs Lindsay and O’Casey, Russia Today for April dismissed the victims as ‘almost all middle-class intellectuals’. The same issue carried an article by Kath Taylor describing the anger of Russian workers at the revelations of sabotage made in the ‘Bukharin’ trial. Now they realized, she wrote, why ‘they waited hours long in the food queues only to find the food almost unfit to eat when they got it home ... Now we knew why our wages had been held up, and the reasons for many other things that had made life so hard at the most difficult moments.’ [21]

Let us conclude our quotations with one from John Strachey, who wrote in the DW , appropriately enough on April 1, that ‘no one who really reads the evidence, either of the former trials or of this one, can doubt that these things happened’, and assessed the conviction of the wretched victims as ‘the greatest anti-fascist victory which we have yet recorded.’

1. This was the issue with the editorial headed: Shoot the Reptiles! Commenting on it, the New Statesman of August 29 remarked prophetically: ‘Those who shoot them today may be themselves shot as reptiles at the next turn of the wheel.’ (This was to be the fate of Yagoda, head of the NKVD at the time of the first trial, shot in 1938.) It was presumably by an oversight that the DW never quoted the verses which graced the August 29 issue of the Paris White Guard paper Vozrozhdenye following the announcement of the executions after the first trial.

2. Fox did not live – he was killed in Spain a few months later – to reflect on the fate of two of the persons whom he named in this article as examples of how there were still plenty of Old Bolsheviks around and loyal to Stalin: ‘Bubnov, Stasova and Krestinsky continue to hold important and honourable places in the leadership of the Soviet State.’

3. As soon as Molotov had made up his quarrel with Stalin, defendants began confessing to plots against him so far back as 1934 (Muralov, Shestov, Arnold, in the trial of January 1937) of which nothing had been said in the confessions of August 1936. Trotsky commented: ‘The conclusions are absolutely clear: the defendants had as little freedom in their choice of “victims” as in all other respects.’

4. It was Moisei Lurye, incidentally, writing under the pseudonym ‘Alexander Emel’, who wrote in Inprecorr (German edition), November 15, 1932, that ‘in Pilsudski’s Poland Trotsky enjoys the particular sympathy of the political police’. Cf. J. Klugmann: ‘The secret police of the Polish dictatorship were specially educated in Trotskyism ... ( From Trotsky to Tito [1951], p. 82)

5. Contrast the earnest efforts of Christian apologists to reconcile the contradictions and differences between the various Gospels. Anyone approaching the study of the August 1936 trial for the first time is recommended to notice the following points. Ter-Vaganian stated that the terrorist group was formed in autumn 1931 and Zinoviev that it began in summer 1932, while Mrachkovsky made it date from the end of 1932. In November 1932 Kamenev and Zinoviev had been banished to the East and were not allowed back until the middle of 1933. Smirnov was in prison from the beginning of 1933 onwards, so could hardly have participated effectively in the plot to kill Kirov (December 1934). Berman-Yurin dated the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in September 1934 (it took place in July–August 1935), and explained that a plot to kill Stalin at a Comintern executive meeting failed because David, the assassin-designate, was unable to get a pass to enter the hall, whereas David said the plot failed because Stalin did not attend the meeting. A number of persons whose alleged testimony was quoted in the indictment or in court (Radin, Schmidt, Karev, Matorin etc.) were never produced either as witnesses or as accused at this or any later trial. Trotsky’s appeal (to the central executive committee!) in his Open Letter of March 1932 to ‘put Stalin out of the way’ ( Report of Court Proceedings , p. 127) was actually an appeal to them to ‘at last put into effect the final urgent advice by Lenin, to “remove Stalin”,’ i.e., a reference to the document known as Lenin’s Testament , as may be seen from the Bulletin of the Opposition in which this Open Letter quite openly appeared.

6. Contrast the sceptical mood of many Soviet citizens reflected in the story which was current in Moscow during the trial: Alexei Tolstoy, upon being arrested and examined, had confessed that he was the author of Hamlet ...

7. The example of Galileo, who ‘confessed’ and repudiated his own discoveries under the mere threat of torture, seems never to have been discussed in Stalinist writing on the trials; nor that of the numerous ‘witches’ who, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, went to their deaths confessing to having had communication with the Devil; nor even that of the Duke of Northumberland who in 1553 confessed to Catholicism even on the very scaffold, in the delusive hope of a pardon from Queen Mary. Krivitsky ( op. cit. p. 212) remarks that ‘the real wonder is that, despite their broken condition and the monstrous forms of pressure exerted by the Ogpu on Stalin’s political opponents, so few did confess. For every one of the 54 prisoners who figured in the three “treason trials”, at least 100 were shot without being broken down.’

8. At the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal the Soviet representatives conspicuously refrained from asking Hess about his alleged anti-Soviet negotiations with Trotsky. In March 1946 a number of prominent British people, including H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Julian Symons and Frank Horrabin, signed an appeal to the Tribunal asking that Trotsky’s widow be allowed to interrogate Hess in order to clear her husband’s name, or that at least the Allied experts examining Gestapo records make a statement showing to what extent they had found confirmation of the story told in the Moscow trials. No action was taken on these requests, and to this day no evidence of Nazi-Trotskyite’ negotiations has been published.

9. Pollitt also wrote in this pamphlet: ‘The bold Trotsky, eh? Wants an international court of inquiry. His tools are left to face it out. Why doesn’t he face it with them? Why doesn’t he go to Moscow?’ Neither here nor anywhere else in Stalinist publications was it ever revealed that Trotsky repeatedly demanded that the Soviet Government bring extradition proceedings against him – which would have necessitated their making a case in a Norwegian or Mexican court.

10 . Anti-Trotskyism eventually became for a time the chief activity of J.R. Campbell, as is reflected in Phil Bolsover’s article, in the DW of April 2, 1938, The Man behind the Answers , describing Campbell at work preparing his Answers to Questions feature: ‘And if you see sometimes a grim, but not unhappy, gleam behind those horn-rimmed spectacles that are lifted occasionally to survey the busy room, you’ll know it’s ten to one that Johnnie Campbell is dealing with some Trotskyist or other. One of his sharper joys is to take an artistic delight in dissecting the sophistries, the half-truths, the complete falsehoods of the breed; laying bare the poverty of their creed for all to see. “Give him a Trotskyist and he’ll be happy for hours”, someone once said.’

11. Around this time died Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Commissar for Heavy Industry. Under the headline Stalin bears Coffin of “Bolshevism’s Fiery Knight” , the DW of February 22 reported the funeral: ‘As Stalin stood with his hands sorrowfully crossed, a wave of the people’s love and loyalty swept towards him. Beside him stood Zinaida Ordzhonikidze, Sergo’s wife ...’ An article about the dead man which appeared next day was headed: Health Shattered by Trotskyist Wrecking . On August 12 a leader headed Foul Lies denounced the Herald for carrying a story that Ordzhonikidze had killed himself and that his brothers has been arrested. (‘All Labour men and women [should now]> protest .against the anti-Soviet line of this most scurrilous rag in the newspaper world.’) Russia Today for September, under the heading Another Daily Herald Slander , declared that ‘we are able to state definitely there is not a word of truth in this assertion’. In his secret speech of February 25, 1956 ( The Dethronement of Stalin [1956], p. 27) Khrushchev said: ‘Stalin allowed the liquidation of Ordzhonikidze’s brother and brought Ordzhonikidze himself to such a state that he was forced to shoot himself.’ When Khrushchev and Bulganin came to Britain in the warship Ordzhonikidze , Walter Holmes published in his Worker’s Notebook ( DW , April 16, 1956) a note on the man after whom the ship was named: ‘Ordzhonikidze died in 1937, when many of his assistants were being arrested on charges of spying, sabotage etc. There were rumours that he had been driven to suicide ... It has now been established that Sergo Ordzhonikidze was suspicious of Beria’s political position. After the death of Ordzhonikidze, Beria and his fellow-conspirators continued cruelly to revenge themselves on his family ...’

12 . The extreme concern shown to shore up Holtzman’s evidence is explained by two facts – his was the only statement giving anything like precise details of time and place, and it furnished the basis for all the rest of the story. Concentration on the place where Holtzman allegedly went also served to divert attention from the fact that the person – Sedov – whom he had allegedly met there had been able to prove conclusively, by means of his student’s attendance card and other documents, that he was taking an examination in another city at the time!

13. Returning to the attack on June 8, Dutt wrote with characteristic scorn of ‘liberal intellectual waverers who are incapable of facing the hard realities of the fight against fascism’.

14. Even nearer the bone than the Bubnov case was that of Rose Cohen, a British Communist Party member since 1921, one-time office-manager of the Labour Research Department and member of the Party’s colonial bureau, wife of Petrovsky-Bennett, the Comintern’s nuncio in Britain. While working in Moscow on the staff of Moscow Daily News she was arrested as a spy and never heard of again. An earlier (and unluckier) Edith Bone, her case was never mentioned in the Stalinist press. For details, see Fight and Militant (London) of June 1938 and subsequently.

15. William Rust was perhaps the most honest of the British Stalinists in the matter of admitting that there was nothing whatever to go on beyond the confessions. In his review, in the DW of March 1, 1937, of the verbatim report of the second trial, he wrote: ‘Of the treason and the actual negotiations with the fascist governments there is, of course, no documentary proof ...’ Desperate for ‘documentary proof’ of some sort, the DW of November 10 published a block showing. side by side, the symbol used by a ‘Trotskyist’ publishing firm in Antwerp – a lightning-flash across a globe – and the Mosleyite ‘flash-in-the-pan’. The caption supplied read: ‘Similarity with a significance.’ (During the second world war the five-pointed star was used as an emblem in various ways by the Soviet, American, Indian and Japanese armies).

16. J.R. Campbell defended in the DW of April 11, 1938, that paper’s refusal of advertisements for ‘Trotskyite’ publications: ‘It would be senseless for the Daily Worker to give a free advertisement to opposition political tendencies.’ With this may be compared Walter Holmes’s Worker’s Notebook of November 27, 1936, in which he reproduced a letter from Mr Warburg telling how the Observer had refused an advertisement for John Langdon-Davies’s book Behind the Spanish Barricades , and commented: ‘We agree with Messrs. Secker and Warburg about the grave character of this censorship of advertisements.’

17. Sloan came back to the pages of Controversy in the March issue to denounce Stalin’s words as ‘an unscrupulous misquotation by Trotsky’, to defend the Communist Party’s refusal to allow republication of John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World (‘It is a little naïve. I think, to ask communists to popularize an inaccurate account of the internal affairs in Bolshevik leadership in 1917’). and to declare regarding the victims of the trials: ‘It is a good thing they have been shot. Further, if there were more of them, then more of them should have been shot.’

18. J.R. Campbell, closely associated in his time with the Bukharin-Rykov trend, wrote firmly in the DW of March 17, after the executions: ‘It is enemies of socialism and peace who have perished. We should not mourn.’ Lawrence and Wishart brought out a book about the trial – The Plot Against the Soviet Union and World Peace – by B.N. Ponomarev, in which this Soviet authority made it plain that one of the chief criteria for people’s political reliability was ‘their attitude towards ... the struggle against Trotskyism’ (p. 186). (Ponomarev is a member of the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party, working with Suslov in the department concerned with relations with other Communist Parties, and in this capacity recently received. e.g., a delegation from the Australian Communist Party, according to Pravda of January 5, 1958.)

19. One really might have expected some comment on the statement made through Rakovsky that Trotsky had put the British imperialists up to the Arcos raid in 1927, arranging through ‘a certain Meller or Mueller ... the discovery of specially fabricated provocative documents’ ( DW , March 7). After all, the line of the Communist Party had always been that the Arcos raid had produced nothing to justify the charges made against the Soviet agencies in this country. No mention of Rakovsky’s statement at his trial is made in the detailed account of the Arcos Raid in the History of Anglo-Soviet Relations by W.P. and Zelda Coates published by Lawrence and Wishart in 1944. Yet in their book From Tsardom to the Stalin Constitution (1938) Mr and Mrs Coates had declared their belief in the genuineness of the confessions ... In his dispatch printed in the DW of March 9, Arnot quoted without comment an alleged statement by Trotsky in 1918: ‘Stalin – Lenin’s closest assistant – must be destroyed’. It would indeed have been hard for Arnot to comment acceptably, for in 1923 he had written for the Labour Research Department a short history of The Russian Revolution , in which he showed how far Stalin was from being ‘Lenin’s closest assistant’ in 1918, and who in fact occupied that position! Much was made, by Arnot and others, in connexion with all three trials, of the alleged fact that some of the accused had at one time or another been Mensheviks, but no mention appeared of Vyshinsky’s having been a Menshevik down to 1920.

20. All through the period 1936–38 Walter Holmes had kept up a running fire in his Worker’s Notebook in the DW of quotations from bourgeois papers directed against the ‘Trotskyists’. Perhaps his best bag was one from the Times of Malaya which he published on August 7, 1937, reporting the formation of a bloc between Monarchists and Trotskyists’.

21. Compare eyewitness Fitzroy Maclean’s account of the trial in his Eastern Approaches (1949). Zelensky, former chairman of Gosplan, “confessed’ to having put powdered glass and nails into the butter and to having destroyed truckloads of eggs. ‘At this startling revelation a grunt of rage and horror rose from the audience. Now they knew what was the matter with the butter, and why there were never any eggs. Deliberate sabotage was somehow a much more satisfactory solution than carelessness or inefficiency. Besides. Zelensky had admitted that he had been in contact with a sinister foreigner, a politician, a member of the British Labour Party, a certain Mr A.V. Alexander, who had encouraged him in his fell designs. No wonder that he had put ground glass in the butter. And nails! What a warning, too, to have nothing to do with foreigners, even though they masqueraded as socialists.’ Doubtless taking his cue from the inclusion of A.V. Alexander in the dramatis personae of the ‘Bukharin’ trial. Arnot went even further in attacking fellow-socialists in his Labour Monthly article of May 1938 than he had ventured to do previously: he now wrote of ‘H.N. Brailsford and ILP leaders, whose position as dupes of Trotsky or agents of Trotsky is still to be examined.’

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Last updated: 24 February 2020