And yet what they said, the actual contents of their statements, seemed to bear no relation to reality. The fabric that was being built up was fantastic beyond belief. The history of the ‘bloc’, as a ‘bloc’, did not, it appeared, go back much beyond 1932 or 1933, when the Right-wing Diversionists under Bukharin and Rykov had joined forces with the Trotskists, with Yagoda, and with the dissident elements in the Red Army, under Marshal Tukachevski, in a kind of counter-revolutionary coalition for the purpose of overthrowing the Soviet regime by force. But the personal history of every one of the accused was taken back to his early youth in an attempt to show that not one of them had been anything but a traitor from the start. Faisullah Khojayev, who was famous for his part in the Soviet Revolution in Central Asia, and who, while still in his twenties, had been President, first of the People’s Republic of Bokhara and then, since its formation in 1925, of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, announced that he had in fact been a clandestine ‘bourgeois nationalist’ ever since 1918; that his aim throughout had been to overthrow the local Soviet regime and set up an independent Central Asian State under British influence; that, with this object in view, he had deliberately sabotaged agriculture in order to cause discontent amongst the native population; and that for twenty years his apparent loyalty to Moscow had been no more than a blind. When in 1933 and again in 1936 Bukharin had visited Central Asia and got into touch with him, the Rightists had found a ready recruit.
The counter-revolutionary activities of some of the prisoners were traced back to before the Revolution. With the greatest readiness, they admitted that they had been Tsarist police spies and agents provocateurs, masquerading as revolutionaries. One such case afforded an opportunity for a dramatic interlude, which, though in itself unimportant, afforded an interesting illustration of Vyshinski’s technique as a stage manager.
In the course of his interrogation Zubarev, a relatively unimportant prisoner, against whom the main charge preferred was one of recent agricultural wrecking in the Urals, admitted incidentally that he had in 1908 been enrolled as a police spy by the Chief of Police of the little town of Kotelnich, a certain Vassiliev. In return for betraying his fellow revolutionaries to the Imperial Police, he had, he said, on two occasions received from Vassiliev payments of thirty silver roubles. (‘Twice as much as Judas,’ commented Vyshinski in a loud aside, which was greeted with sniggers by the crowd.)
Zubarev’s admission gave Vyshinski his cue. He turned to Ulrich. ‘Perhaps,’ he said casually, ‘you will allow me to call Vassiliev as a witness for purposes of verification.’
At once there was a buzz of surprise and excitement in the court. How could Vyshinski call as a witness a man who had been a police officer under the Tsar thirty years ago? Surely he could not still be alive? And even if by a miracle he had survived the Revolution, and the Civil War, and the Famine and the Purge, how had it been possible to find him? It was like bringing back a ghost. It was as though he had offered to produce in court Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible.
But Ulrich had given his consent and an usher had been dispatched to fetch the witness. Heads turned and necks craned; all eyes were fixed on the entrance.
The doors opened and up the middle of the room tottered step by step a frail little old man, his skin so shrivelled and yellow as to resemble parchment, his sunken features dominated by an enormous pair of moustaches carefully waxed to a point and sticking out on either side. If the powers that be had wanted to symbolize a grotesque and long-dead past, they could have chosen no better means than this faded military ghost. Shakily, he made his way up the whole length of the court-room, between the serried rows of benches; made his way unaccompanied, for this was no prisoner to be guarded, but a free man, enjoying the liberty accorded him by a merciful, forgiving Government.
As he went, the audience followed him with puzzled eyes. How were they to react? Should they register disgust at the sight of this vile old man, this survival from a hated past? Or delight at the victory which the regime had won over such vermin? Or admiration at the ingenuity displayed in producing him? This was something outside their experience.
Anxiously they looked at Ulrich and Vyshinski to see how they were taking it. Both were discreetly grinning. At once all doubts vanished. They might have known. This was a comedy turn. Soon the court-room was echoing with obedient laughter.
Amid guffaws the old man reached the witness box. Silence fell on the crowd. What was coming next? Ulrich asked him his name. In a high, piping squeak he answered: Vassiliev, Dmitri Nikolaievich. The creature could speak. It was too good to be true. The guffaws burst out afresh. Ulrich was at his most genial. His fat frame shaking with half-suppressed mirth, he signalled to the crowd to be quiet and let him get on with his cross-questioning. ‘Just leave it to me, boys,’ his gestures seemed to say, ‘there’s plenty more fun to come.’
The old man, his tired, cracked voice barely audible, had launched into an account of how in 1908 (or was it 1909?) he had been Chief of Police at Kotelnich and had paid the prisoner thirty silver roubles to betray his comrades. Sometimes he seemed to lose track of what he was saying and Ulrich, like a showman cracking his whip, had to bring him back to the point. To the accompaniment of delighted titters from the crowd, he completed his statement. Then it was Vyshinski’s turn. ‘Do you really remember the prisoner after all these years?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ piped the old man, ‘I remember him, but he was younger then.’ ‘And so were you, I suppose?’ said Vyshinski. This sally was altogether too much for the crowd. They roared and bellowed and stamped on the floor, until even the old man woke from his torpor and looked about him in dazed surprise.
And now, having played his part, he was on his way back down the room. The door opened and he shuffled out, back to whatever limbo he had come from.
He had been a success. There was no doubt about it. True, his evidence had added nothing to what the prisoner had already confessed; indeed, it was altogether superfluous. But that only made it the more valuable. If the prosecution could produce a witness to prove in such a spectacular manner something that had happened thirty years ago and that in any case didn’t really need proving, then clearly it followed that they must be able to prove with equal ease all the more recent crimes with which the accused were charged. At this thought, a ripple of satisfaction ran through the audience. The nasty taste which the Krestinski episode had left in their mouths had been taken away. Vyshinski preened himself. It had been a master-stroke.
Gradually the trial moved towards its climax. Bit by bit the web was woven more closely round the accused. Sitting there day after day, listening to statement after statement, cross-examination after cross-examination, from early morning until late at night, in the dingy winter daylight and under the stale glare of the electric lamps, in that strange, tense atmosphere, one found oneself unconsciously yielding to the power of suggestion beginning to take what was said at its face value, seeking to follow prosecutor and prisoners step by step through the intricate labyrinths of the structure that they were building up, beginning to assume, as they assumed, that it really existed. Gradually, one came to grasp their mental processes, to understand what was going on in their minds, to see how in time the same ideas and doubts and half-memories might take root in anyone’s mind, one’s own, for example.
Then, not a minute too soon, the court would adjourn, Ulrich would waddle out to his dinner, the prisoners, dim ghosts, would fade through their little door, and one would emerge, as from an unpleasant dream, to find oneself outside in the fresh air listening to the reassuring chatter of the newspapermen, to the old Moscow hands recalling what had really happened in 1929 or 1932, and how Trotski, or someone else, could not possibly have been where he was said to be.
But the real struggle was still to come. As the trial progressed, it became ever clearer that the underlying purpose of every testimony was to blacken the leaders of the ‘bloc’, to represent them, not as political offenders, but as common criminals, murderers, po
isoners and spies. Again and again came the revelation, following on a long catalogue of improbable misdeeds, that the instigator of this murder, of that piece of sabotage, of those treasonable conversations with the agents of a foreign power, had been Rykov, or Yagoda, or Bukharin.
Particularly Bukharin. To him, it seemed, belonged the role of arch-fiend in this grim pantomime. He had been behind every villainy, had had a hand in every plot. It was he who had planned to murder Lenin in 1918; who had decided on the dismemberment of the Soviet Union; who had plotted with Tukachevski to open the front to the Germans in the event of war and with Yagoda to murder Kirov and Maxim Gorki, Menzhinski and Kuibyshev; who had instructed his myrmidons to establish contact with the agents of Britain, Japan, Poland and Germany, with the White Russians, with Trotski, with the Second International; who had organized agricultural and industrial sabotage in the Ukraine, in Siberia, in the Caucasus, in Central Asia; who had planned, first, a peasant rising and civil war, then a palace revolution and coup d’état. Each prisoner, as he blackened himself, was careful at the same time to blacken Bukharin. Methodically, the old picture of the revolutionary fighter, the Marxist theoretician, the friend of Lenin, the member of the Politbureau, the President of the Communist International, was demolished, and a new portrait substituted for it: a demon, complete with horns, hooves and tail, a traitor, a spy and a capitalist mercenary, a sinister figure, skulking in the shadows, poisoning Soviet hogs, slaughtering Soviet stallions, slipping powdered glass into the workers’ butter. Lurking memories of a glorious past were obliterated. No one could have any sympathy with such a miserable wretch. Each fresh revelation was greeted by the crowd with murmurs of rage, horror and disgust. Clearly the method chosen was having the desired effect, was working satisfactorily.
Working satisfactorily, that is, so long as Bukharin himself took no part in the proceedings. But, when, as sometimes happened, Vyshinski, leaving the prisoner under examination, turned to Bukharin for confirmation, things did not go so smoothly. Even when he admitted the crimes with which he was charged, he had an awkward way of qualifying his admissions, of qualifying them in such a way as largely to invalidate them, of slipping in little asides which made complete nonsense of them. Besides, he did not answer the Public Prosecutor with at all the same deference as did the other prisoners. He seemed to treat him as an equal, even as an inferior. At times he actually seemed to be making fun of him, and even the good Party men in the audience caught themselves laughing at his sallies.
And his cross-examination was yet to come.
At last, on the evening of March 5th, Ulrich announced that it was Bukharin’s turn to be cross-examined. The morning had been devoted to the interrogation of Akmal Ikramov, until a few months before Secretary-General of the Uzbek Communist Party. Prompted by Vyshinski, he had readily revealed that, under personal instructions from Bukharin, he had, with Faisullah Khojayev, for years past, sought to wreck the industry and agriculture of Uzbekistan, with the ultimate object of converting it into a British colony. Bukharin, he said, had visited him more than once at Tashkent and reproached him with not doing enough damage. A suitable frame of mind having thus been induced in the audience, the stage was now set for the appearance of the villain in person.
As Bukharin rose to his feet, there was a stir of interest in the crowd. This was the big moment; this was what they had been waiting for. A stir of anxiety too; for might not the old fox have some trick in store?
But they were soon reassured. Immediately the accused made a full confession of his guilt. Almost too full, for, having declared himself one of the leaders of the Rightest-Trotskist ‘bloc’, he forthwith announced that he accepted entire responsibility for any and every misdeed which might have been committed by the ‘bloc’, whether he had had any knowledge of it or not.
This, of course, was satisfactory, but not, it seemed, exactly what was wanted. Vyshinski started in to elicit some more details. But it was not easy to pin down the prisoner to concrete facts. Soon he was launched on an account of the ‘bloc’s’ economic programme. Their first divergence, it appeared, had been on the subject of industrialization. They had considered that it was being carried too far too quickly; that it was putting too great a strain on the budget; that it was defeating its own object and having a harmful effect on production. They had also had doubts about the collectivization of agriculture, had disapproved of the way in which the Government had treated the richer and medium peasants, the kulaks, of their mass liquidation, in fact. Gradually, they had moved towards the idea of a system of State capitalism, with smaller collective farms, prosperous individual peasants, foreign concessions and no State monopoly of foreign trade. On the political side, they had evolved in the direction of bourgeois democratic liberty, with more than one party. It was this oppositional tendency, carried to its logical conclusion, that had led them to consider overthrowing the regime by force and to their various other sins of thought and deed, to the project, finally, of a coup d’état against the present rulers of the Soviet Union. …
Ulrich and Vyshinski began to look annoyed. This was not at all the kind of thing that was wanted. It was essential that Bukharin should appear, not as a theoretician, but as a common criminal, and here he was, quite his old self, evolving a reasoned political and economic theory, and, what was worse, one that for some people might not be without attractions. It was unheard of that a prisoner at a State trial should declare that he had opposed Stalin’s policy because he had come to the conclusion that it was wrong, and yet this in effect was what Bukharin was doing.
Hastily Vyshinski raised the question of espionage. Bukharin had been in Austria before the Revolution in 1912 and 1913. Had he not had some contact with the Austrian police? Had they not recruited him as a spy? The answer came back like a flash: ‘My only contact with the Austrian police was when they imprisoned me in a fortress as a revolutionary.’ And almost immediately he was back in the realm of political theory. When the court adjourned later that night, Vyshinski had made little progress in the desired direction.
Next day, March 6th, was a Rest Day — twenty-four hours in which to prepare Bukharin for the next phase of his cross-examination, and induce in him a more amenable frame of mind. But when, on the seventh, the court reassembled, though showing signs of strain, he was as resilient as ever. His tactics varied. To some charges he replied blandly that he personally had no knowledge of the events referred to, but that he was nevertheless prepared to accept responsibility for them on behalf of the ‘bloc’. To others his answer was that he didn’t happen to have committed the crimes with which he was charged, but that it would have been a logical consequence of his conduct had he done so and that he was therefore quite ready to admit his guilt, if it would give any pleasure to the Public Prosecutor. Sometimes, displaying all his old dialectical skill, he amused himself by picking holes in the arguments advanced by the prosecution, making free use of such terms as ‘nonsense’ and ‘absurd’. On several points he remained absolutely firm. He refused to admit that he had ever contemplated murdering Lenin; or that he had ever been the agent of a foreign power; or that he had ever agreed to dismember the Soviet Union or to open the front to the Germans in time of war. Nor did he once consent to play the prosecution’s game by incriminating his fellow prisoners.
Vyshinski tried arguing; he tried blustering; he used every quibble of a second-rate pettifogging lawyer. Still Bukharin stood firm. Vyshinski re-interrogated several of the other prisoners, eliciting from them the most damning statements. Bukharin flatly contradicted some and dismissed the others as agents provocateurs, while others he cross-examined himself, quickly disposing of their allegations.
Then Vyshinski called Rykov, Bucharin’s close friend and associate and, allegedly, co-leader of the ‘bloc’. ‘You will surely not suggest that your good friend Rykov is an agent provocateur,’ he said triumphantly.
Former President of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars, Lenin’s successor, Molotov’s predecessor, Ry
kov, as he rose to his feet, was a pathetic figure, tall, with hunched shoulders, swaying slightly, red-nosed and bleary-eyed, his straggling beard wagging unsteadily as he looked round him. Always known for his addiction to strong liquor, he now seemed to have gone to pieces completely. Already, under cross-examination, he had admitted everything that had been required of him, his incoherent utterances punctuated by inane giggles. But still Bukharin held out, and even the poor creature Rykov seemed somehow to rally at his example, refusing after all to betray his friend.
Again and again, on different pretexts, Vyshinski raised the issue of espionage. At all costs the prisoner must be shown to be a criminal, and a criminal hired by the enemies of his country. But Bukharin, unshaken, continued to expound the ideology underlying his alleged conduct and calmly to deny the specific charges brought against him. ‘And so you consider yourself an ideologist?’ said Vyshinski. ‘Yes,’ replied Bukharin, quietly. ‘You, I suppose, would rather I said I was a spy, but I don’t happen to have been one.’
For Vyshinski the most important task of all was to show that Bukharin had planned to murder Lenin in 1918. If he could do that, nothing else would matter. The accused would be finally and irretrievably blackened. The legend of his friendship with the Great Master would be finally disposed of; turned against him, in fact, so that he appeared as an arch-traitor, a Judas. But already the cross-examination had lasted for many hours and still Bukharin showed no signs of weakening.
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