Eastern Approaches

by Fitzroy MacLean

  The sixty-eighth and ninety-first psalms. Odd words to hear in that place and at that time. And yet, perhaps, not so inappropriate.

  But Vyshinski was gleefully pursuing his point. ‘And how,’ he asked, ‘did that come to be in your pocket?’

  ‘My wife put it there,’ Rosengolts replied sheepishly. ‘She said it was a kind of talisman to bring me luck.’

  This was what Vyshinski had been working round to. ‘To bring you luck!’ he said, and he winked knowingly at the crowd. They took their cue. There was a roar of laughter, and the court broke up in an atmosphere of general hilarity.

  Next day the Soviet official Rest Day, taking the place of Sunday, came round again and the court did not sit, but in the papers there was a brief communiqué announcing that on the previous evening the court had heard in camera statements from the accused regarding their dealings with the official representatives of certain foreign states. Rosengolts, I remembered, had lunched at the Embassy once or twice when he was Commissar for Foreign Trade, bringing his little dark Jewish wife with him. Now, I supposed, their innocent conversation with the Ambassador and Ambassadress about their children, and the Opera and the weather, had, with the help of one or other of the Embassy footmen who possessed a smattering of English, been converted into a sinister plot to murder Stalin or dynamite the Kremlin.

  The Court had also heard, it seemed, a statement from Yagoda, who had admitted that he was guilty of the murder of Max Peshkov and had let it be known that he had committed this crime to some extent from personal motives. Once again the shadow of the beautiful Nadyezhda Peshkova fell across the scene.

  When, on March 11th, we assembled again, it was to hear Vyshinski make his final speech for the prosecution.

  He began with a text. A year ago Comrade Stalin had said: ‘Whether these people call themselves Trotskists or Bukharinists, they have long since ceased to be a political movement and have become an unprincipled band of wreckers, spies and assassins, devoid of ideology. They must be mercilessly rooted out.’ Therein lay the historical significance of the present trial. It had shown that Comrade Stalin was right. Bukharin and his friends were nothing but common criminals. They were also the agents of foreign countries: Great Britain, Poland, Germany and Japan. More clearly than ever before this trial had shown that the Socialist World and the Capitalist World were deadly enemies, irreconcilably opposed to each other. How right, once again, Comrade Stalin, the Great Master, had been to draw attention to the menace of capitalist encirclement. And so on, for five and a half hours, of which no less than two were devoted to the all-important task of finally and conclusively blackening Bukharin.

  What Vyshinski lacked in eloquence, he made up for by the violence of his metaphors, the extravagance of his comparisons. He likened Bukharin to Judas Iscariot and Al Capone; he described him as a ‘cross between a fox and a pig’. He had, he said, been the instigating force behind all the crimes of the ‘bloc’, behind practically all the crimes that had been committed, or planned, in the Soviet Union since the Revolution. At great length he recalled them all, from the attempted murder of Lenin in 1918 to the attempted murder of Yezhov in 1936; launched into a pseudo-scientific disquisition on poisoning and poisoners with references to Pope Clement VI and Philip II of Spain; recalled the espionage, the sabotage; dwelt once again, for the benefit of the audience, on the crimes of Zelenski. ‘Powdered glass and nails in the butter!’ he exclaimed, ‘a monstrous act, in comparison with which all other such crimes fade into insignificance … Fifty truckloads of eggs deliberately destroyed. It is clear now why there is famine in the midst of plenty.’ And the object of these fell deeds: to strangle the Socialist Revolution with the bony hand of hunger. Such had been from the outset the purpose of Bukharin and his associates.

  Gradually he worked himself up. ‘Our country,’ he declaimed, in a shrill crescendo, foaming slightly at the mouth, ‘only asks one thing: that these filthy dogs, these accursed reptiles, be wiped out.’ Then, having reached his climax, he ended on a calmer note, his voice oozing adulation. ‘The weed and the thistle,’ he concluded, ‘will grow on the graves of these execrable traitors. But, on us and our happy country, our Glorious Sun will continue to shed His serene light. Guided by our beloved Leader and Master, Great Stalin, we will go forward to Communism along a path that has been cleansed of the sordid remnants of the past.’

  The trial was almost at an end. After Vyshinski came the lawyers for the defence, but they spoke only on behalf of the three doctors, the other accused having waived the right to be defended or defend themselves. It now only remained for the accused to make their last statements. These final speeches occupied what was left of that day and all the following day, adding, for the most part, little or nothing to what had gone before. One after the other the accused once more confessed their crimes, declared their repentance and begged for mercy, dwelling, in the most abject terms, on their ingratitude and treachery and on the glories of the Soviet Fatherland which they, miserable wretches, had betrayed. Even Yagoda mumbled with frozen lips a request to be allowed to live and to be sent to the Arctic to work on the White Sea Canal, his own masterpiece, where so many thousands of his victims had met their death toiling amid frost and snow under the most terrible conditions.

  But one speech, by its eloquence and dignity, stood out far above the rest. On the evening of March 12th Bukharin rose to speak for the last time. Once more, by sheer force of personality and intellect, he compelled attention. Staring up at him, row upon row, smug, self-satisfied and hostile, sat the new generation of Communists, revolutionaries no longer in the old sense, but worshippers of the established order, deeply suspicious of dangerous thoughts. Watching him standing there, frail and defiant, one had the feeling that here, facing destruction, was the last survivor of a vanished race, of the men who had made the Revolution, who had fought and toiled all their lives for an ideal, and who now, rather than betray it, were letting themselves be crushed by their own creation.

  He began by making a formal confession of guilt. He accepted, he said, once more, full ‘political and juridical responsibility’ for all the crimes which had been committed by the ‘bloc’. These crimes, high treason and incitement to revolt amongst them, rendered him liable to the death penalty. There again he was in complete agreement with the Public Prosecutor, who had asked for a death sentence. But, having said this, there were one or two charges which he would like to examine in rather greater detail.

  And then, having, in principle, admitted the justice of the case which had been made out against him, he proceeded, uninterrupted this time, to tear it to bits, while Vyshinski, powerless to intervene, sat uneasily in his place, looking embarrassed and yawning ostentatiously.

  In the first place, said Bukharin, there was supposed to have been a ‘bloc’. It might therefore be assumed that the members of such a ‘bloc’ would at least have known each other. But, before he came into court, he had never seen or even heard of Charangovich, or Maximov, had never in his life spoken to Pletnev, Kasakov or Bulanov; had never had any counter-revolutionary talk with Rosengolts or Rakovski. In fact, it was impossible legally to maintain that the accused constituted a Rightist-Trotskist ‘Bloc’. ‘I deny,’ said Bukharin, ‘belonging to any Rightist-Trotskist “Bloc”; there was no such group.’

  Besides there was an obvious lack of connection between the crimes with which the members of the alleged ‘bloc’ were charged. For example, Yagoda was now known to have murdered Max Peshkov for personal reasons. That had nothing to do with any ‘bloc’. Menzhinski was known to have been dying. What could be the object of murdering him? The weakness of the prosecution’s arguments was painfully apparent. From the mere fact that he, Bukharin, happened to have been acquainted with Yenukidze, now conveniently out of the way, the story of an elaborate conspiracy had been built up. Because Tomski, also now dead, had once said to him in the course of conversation that the Trotskists were opposed to Maxim Gorki, he, Bukharin, was now accused of having given o
rders for Gorki to be murdered. In fact what Vyshinski was doing was assuming what he was trying to prove. He would give a concrete example to illustrate his methods of cross-examination.

  VYSHINSKI Did you see Khojayev in Tashkent?

  BUKHARIN Yes.

  VYSHINSKI Did you talk politics?

  BUKHARIN Yes.

  VYSHINSKI Then I can assume that you instructed him to get into touch with British agents in Tajikstan.

  But in fact he had done nothing of the kind. He, for his part, categorically denied having had any connection with any foreign espionage organization. Nor had he ever advocated opening the front to the enemy in case of war, or given instructions for sabotage, which he regarded as useless. As proof of these charges the prosecution produced the testimony of Charangovich, of whose very existence he had been unaware and who now tried to make out that he had been the author of a plan for widespread sabotage.

  At this Charangovich, with a fine show of indignation, got up and shook his fist at Bukharin, shouting ‘Liar’. But, with vindictive pertinacity, Bukharin continued to pick holes in the case that had been made out against him. He denied, he said, having had anything to do with the murders of Kirov, Menzhinski, Kuibyshev, Gorki and Peshkov. Finally, he denied having ever contemplated the assassination of Lenin. Vyshinski had not been speaking the truth when he said that he had had no answer to the testimonies of the five witnesses who had been called by the prosecution in support of this charge. He had had any number of answers. And he proceeded to recapitulate them at length.

  But, said Bukharin, all this did not mean that he was not guilty. The crimes for which he had accepted political and juridical responsibility were sufficient to justify his being shot ten times over. And so, before finishing, he would like to give some account of the political and mental process which had brought him to where he now was.

  To some extent his own evolution and that of his friends had been the logical consequence of their opposition to the regime. Having once abandoned Bolshevism, they were inevitably, irresistibly forced into the position of counter-revolutionary bandits. But, despite their disloyalty to their Fatherland, they lacked faith in their own counter-revolutionary cause. Their conscience was uneasy. They had, as it were, a split personality. The compelling spell of Socialist construction was hard to resist. Therein lay the strength of the Soviet State: it had power to sap the will of its adversaries. Ultimately even they were bound to repent and confess.

  Western intellectuals who were puzzled by what happened at the Soviet State Trials could not understand this. They did not realize the fascination which the proletarian State exercised even over those who sought to betray it. Such things could not happen in capitalist countries. Only in the Soviet Union.

  People had attributed the confessions of the accused to oriental drugs, or hypnotism, or the workings of the Slav soul. But that was all nonsense. Anyone could see, if only by the way he himself argued with the Public Prosecutor, that his mind was perfectly clear, that he was neither drugged nor hypnotized.

  Perhaps, he continued, he might dwell on his own case for a few moments more. He would not keep them much longer. He was speaking, probably, for the last time in his life.

  Why had he admitted his guilt? In prison he had had time to look back over his past, and he had asked himself this question: If I die, what shall I be dying for? It was then that he had found himself looking into a black abyss, and had realized that, if he died unrepentant, there would be no cause left to him to die for. If, on the other hand, he were by some extraordinary chance to be spared, there would, without repentance, be nothing left for him to live for. He would be an enemy of the people, an outcast, cut off from humanity. It was then that all the positive qualities of the Soviet Fatherland came back to him more forcibly than ever, and it had been this that in the end disarmed him completely and caused him to bow the knee before the Party and the Country. Personal considerations had long since ceased to weigh with him. His repentance and confession represented the moral triumph of the Soviet Union over yet another of its opponents. Left-wing circles abroad would probably seek to defend him. He did not want their defence. They would do better to profit by his example. ‘My own fate,’ he concluded, ‘is of no importance. All that matters is the Soviet Union.’

  When all the prisoners had had their say, the court adjourned to consider their verdict. It was half-past nine at night. Sentence would not be pronounced for several hours. Chip Bohlen and I walked through the icy streets to his flat in the American Embassy to get something to eat. We could not take our minds off what we had seen and heard. For ten days we had spent eight or nine hours a day at the trial. We had thought and talked of little else. It had come to be part of our lives. Now, over dinner, in a normal atmosphere once more, we tried to find a theory which would fit the facts as we knew them.

  It was not easy.

  If what we had heard in court was the literal truth, if, ever since the Revolution, the highest offices of State had been held by a band of traitors, spies, murderers and wreckers, whose sole aim had been to overthrow the Soviet regime, if the whole regime had from the start been riddled with treachery and corruption, how was it that such a galaxy of talent, with such opportunities, had obtained so small a measure of success, how was it that their most important achievements had been to spoil a relatively small quantity of eggs and butter and to hasten the demise of an elderly littérateur, who for forty years had been suffering from an incurable disease? For five years Yagoda, a notoriously ruthless man, had controlled the all-powerful N.K.V.D., had had under his command the Kremlin guards; had had in his power the doctors who attended Stalin and the other leaders of the Party and Government; had had his private laboratory for the preparation of special poisons. Why had he not used these opportunities to eliminate all those who stood in his way?

  If, on the other hand, the men now standing their trial had in fact been loyal servants of the regime and the charges brought against them nothing but a tissue of lies, then an answer was no easier to find. What possible purpose could it serve to invent such fairy-tales; to murder, on purely imaginary charges, a large number of key men, and, in the process, to proclaim gratuitously to an already sceptical and hostile world that for years past the Soviet Union had been ruled by a gang of ruffians?

  And the accused themselves? If they were innocent, why did they confess? It was hard to believe that torture or drugs alone could produce such ready admissions, such closely reasoned statements, such eloquent speeches. If, on the other hand, they were guilty, if there had really been a large-scale conspiracy against the regime, why did they not seek to justify themselves, why was it that none of their speeches contained a word of criticism of a system of which they had been such bitter opponents?

  The answer to some of these questions must lie, it seemed, in Bukharin’s last speech. It was, in the first place, a matter of ideological, of psychological atmosphere. Such things, he had said, could only happen in the Soviet Union.

  One knew what he meant.

  For twenty years past, everyone in court, prisoners, judges, prosecutor, guards and spectators, had lived in the tense atmosphere of unreality, tension, oppression and suspicion which we had come to know so well. Before that, the older ones amongst them had lived in the tense conspiratorial atmosphere of revolutionary circles in Tsarist Russia. On top of this, the accused had endured additional strains and stresses. For years they had known the fear of impending liquidation. Then had come the final shock of arrest, the long-awaited knock on the door at midnight; then the long months of prison, the unceasing interrogations.

  All, judges and accused alike, had, for the greater part of their lives, been subjected to propaganda, so constant, so intensive, so insidious, as to leave its mark on the strongest intellect. All had been cut off, as only Soviet citizens are cut off, from any contact with the outside world, from all normal intellectual and political influences, from all valid standards of comparison. In a sense, all their minds must work along th
e same lines, along different lines, that is, from the Western mind.

  Was it altogether surprising that, with this mental background, they should at times have difficulty in distinguishing between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the hypothetical, that their faculties should become blurred, that they should lose their objectivity?

  Besides, all were Party Members, deeply impregnated with Communist dogma, their conduct ruled by a Party Line. For them any deviation, however slight, was a crime. To disagree, even mentally, with the leaders of the Party on some minor point of doctrine was as unforgivable as to commit a seemingly much graver crime, as to plan their physical destruction, for instance. ‘Having once deviated from Bolshevism,’ Bukharin had said, ‘we were inevitably, irresistibly forced into the position of counter-revolutionary bandits.’ If they had deviated, the rest followed.

  Already, the whole problem of guilt and innocence was reduced to a simpler form. In the past, when political discussion had still been admissible, Bukharin and Rykov, Krestinski and Rakovski had all differed openly from Stalin. On the face of it, despite subsequent disavowals, it was improbable that they had since become convinced of his infallibility or that they could be reconciled to the grim new form which the Soviet regime had assumed under his sway. There was much about it that must shock them, much of which, when they remembered the structure that they themselves had planned to build, they must disapprove.

  Disapprove. There, already, was something to go on. Enough for Stalin, at any rate. The former seminarist had learnt at an early age the power for evil of ‘dangerous thoughts’. The old revolutionary knew from his own experience that, in Russia, every difference of opinion carries in it the germ of a conspiracy. The tribesman, the guerrilla, knew the importance in irregular warfare of thinking quicker than your opponent, of getting your blow in first, before his intentions have had time to take shape.