Stalin

by Ian Grey

  The terror broke upon the nation in August 1936 with the sensational Trial of the Sixteen. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and fourteen other old Bolsheviks were charged with setting up a secret terrorist center under the direction of Trotsky in exile. The center, it was alleged, had planned the assassination of Kirov and was plotting attempts on the lives of Stalin and those close to him. Stalin had anticipated the incredulity evoked by such charges against old revolutionaries and had ordered careful preparations. His purpose was not only to disburden himself of the old Bolsheviks but also to revise the revolutionary tradition so that the new generation of leaders would be equipped in education and outlook to advance Soviet Russia.

  Revolutionary assassins of the past had been glorified as heroes. The murderers of Alexander II and of numerous tsarist officials and even those who had failed in their assassination attempts, like Lenin’s brother, were members of the revolutionary pantheon. Every young Russian knew their stories and how they had hurled defiance at the courts during their trials, going to their deaths as martyrs.

  This tradition was no longer relevant. It might even become dangerous. Stalin considered it essential to re-educate the coming generation, giving them positive heroes in place of the destructive terrorists, who belonged to a different age. While schools instilled in young people the duties of discipline and respect for authority, the state set about creating new heroes, who would inspire them in building a new Russia. Already the press and radio were extolling Alexey Stakhanov, the coal miner who raised his productivity to unprecedented levels, and the airmen and Arctic explorers, who were pressing forward to new frontiers. The ideals to be inculcated were service and high endeavor.

  The Trial of the Sixteen was conducted in a blaze of publicity. It demonstrated that dangerous traitors were everywhere, even among the old Bolsheviks and that they were not heroes but enemies seeking to destroy the new Russia. The trial was effective in serving these ends. It had seemed impossible that Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin’s old comrades, who had held high office, could be sinister enemies of the new Russia. But in court, each of the sixteen accused pleaded guilty to the fantastic charges laid against them. They confessed their guilt abjectly and convincingly. All were sentenced to death and shot.

  In the course of the trial, the accused had implicated others. The chief prosecutor, Vyshinsky, made it known that he had ordered the investigation of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. A few days later, Tomsky, the old Bolshevik and trade-unionist, committed suicide.

  The terror seemed to falter. Tomsky’s suicide and an undercurrent of opposition among older party members may have daunted Yagoda and others in charge of the investigations. Stalin was away at this time with Zhdanov at the holiday resort of Sochi on the shore of the Black Sea. He was evidently surprised by an announcement made in Moscow on September 10, 1936, that the investigation of Bukharin and Rykov had been closed, as no evidence had been found against them. On September 25, 1936, he and Zhdanov signed a telegram to Kaganovich, Molotov, and other members of the Politburo, which read: “We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent to appoint Comrade Ezhov kommissar for Internal Affairs [NKVD]. Yagoda has obviously proved unequal to the task of exposing the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. The OGPU was four years late in this matter.”

  Ezhov’s appointment on the following day as head of the NKVD began a more savage phase in the terror, the Ezhovshchina, which lasted until 1938. The older officers of the security service, some of whom had served in the Cheka under Dzerzhinsky, were replaced. A purge hysteria seized the nation. The belief that spies and traitors were active everywhere spread insidiously. Unbalanced by the relentless propaganda and by exhortations to show vigilance and fearing for their own safety, people denounced neighbors, colleagues, even members of their own families. Lines formed outside NKVD offices, as people waited patiently to file their denunciations. Terror degraded the whole nation.

  The second great show trial opened in Moscow on January 23, 1937. The seventeen accused were said to be the leaders of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center. They had conspired with the German and Japanese governments to overthrow the Soviet regime. Their main weapon was sabotage of the economy. Again, showing Stalin’s obsessive hatred, Trotsky was condemned as the evil mind behind the conspiracy.

  Vyshinsky, who as prosecutor dominated the trial, appeared calm and moderate in his conduct of the case, which had been fabricated in impressive detail. The behavior of the accused eased his task. An eyewitness at the trial wrote: “All defendants seemed eager to heap accusation upon accusation upon themselves - mea culpa maxima. They required little cross examination by the prosecutor.” All were found guilty. Thirteen were shot, and four were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.

  The death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze soon after this trial revealed even more starkly Stalin’s ruthlessness and inhumanity. Sergo Ordzhonikidze was one of his oldest colleagues and friends. In 1912, he had spoken to Lenin about Stalin and had been instrumental in arranging his first election to the Central Committee. They had worked together to resolve the Georgian problem. Ordzhonikidze had shown himself on this and other occasions capable of brutal action. Sometimes, however, he could be a warm and humane companion. He accepted Stalin’s leadership, but as an old comrade and also as a member of the Politburo and kommissar for Heavy Industry, he did not hesitate to speak his mind. He was said to be the only one who protested to Stalin about the NKVD’s activities and who interceded on behalf of some of those arrested. His influence had declined, however, while that of his rival and enemy, Lavrenty Beria, was mounting.

  Nearly all who knew Beria detested and feared him. Ordzhonikidze considered him an unprincipled blackguard, and he told Stalin so bluntly. He opposed Beria’s plans whenever possible. But Beria was able in some sinister way to plant seeds of doubt and to foster suspicions in Stalin’s mind. He was a master intriguer, more cunning than the blustery Sergo. It would seem, however, that independently of Beria’s influence, Stalin had decided to dispense with him.

  Pressure on Ordzhonikidze had been growing. Charges of “wrecking” and sabotage in industry had been a major theme of the show trials, and the incessant demand in the press and radio for vigilance against wreckers directly involved him. His deputy, Pyatakov, had been found guilty of conspiracy and sabotage and was shot. Many of the senior officials in his kommissariat had been arrested. He himself was now required to make a report on industrial sabotage and to recommend fresh action to be taken against spies and wreckers to the Central Committee, convened to meet on February 19, 1937, to consider the lessons to be learned from the Trial of the Seventeen.

  Ordzhonikidze was in poor health. He had high blood pressure and heart trouble, but he refused to rest or to take a vacation. The terror had penetrated into his personal life. He was anxious about his elder brother, Papulia, who had been arrested by the NKVD and was being interrogated under torture. His statements were falsified, and Stalin was said to have sent him extracts with the comment: “Comrade Sergo, look what they’re writing about you!”

  On the morning of February 17, 1937, according to Medvedev, Ordzhonikidze had a stormy meeting with Stalin. He protested angrily that the NKVD had searched his Kremlin apartment on Ezhov’s orders. Stalin answered calmly that “the NKVD can even search my apartment. There is nothing strange about that.” Ordzhonikidze no doubt complained about the terror and the arrest of his friends and officials in his kommissariat. Both men apparently lost their tempers, and the bonds of long friendship were forgotten.

  Ordzhonikidze returned to his office and worked there until 2:00 a.m. the next morning when he returned to his apartment. According to the testimony of his wife, Zinaida Gavrilovna, he later refused to get out of bed. He declined to see friends who called and would not eat but spent the day writing. About 5:30 p.m., she heard a shot, and running into his room, she found him lying dead, the bedclothes stained with blood. She immediately phoned Stalin, but although his apartment was nearby, he only came later and then accompanied by other m
embers of the Politburo and by Ezhov.

  On February 18, 1937, the newspapers carried the report of Ordzhonikidze’s death from a sudden heart attack. The official certificate was signed by four prominent doctors, three of whom were soon afterward arrested and liquidated. With thoroughness, the NKVD arrested members of his family, except his wife, and all who had worked with him, including even the watchman at his dacha. Although rumors circulated, the report that he had died of a heart attack was generally accepted until 1956, when Khrushchev declared that it was suicide.

  Suicide troubled Stalin. It was a form of betrayal. His wife had betrayed him in this way. Now Sergo Ordzhonikidze had shot himself. His protests against the arrest of Pyatakov and others had shown that he was not able to detect oppositionists and traitors close to him, but perhaps he was protesting not only from a softhearted and trusting nature but because he, too, supported these traitors and would have become an active enemy. Interpreting people and events in these perverse terms, Stalin felt that he had been betrayed. Once aroused, such suspicions obsessed him, poisoning his mind against his old colleague and all associated with him. It was in understanding how suspicions made Stalin cut people from his thoughts, treating them and all close to them as though they were already dead, that Beria was able to wield such a profound and evil influence over him.

  The meeting of the Central Committee, postponed after the death of Ordzhonikidze, opened on February 23, 1937. It was an ominous meeting. Stalin spoke at length about the wrecking and spying activities of foreign agents and Trotskyites, which undermined nearly all party and governmental institutions and damaged industry. They had infiltrated not only the lower ranks but also the most senior offices. He then castigated those present and by implication all members for their “carelessness, indifference, and naïveté,” leading to their failure to unmask the “wreckers, spies, and murderers.”

  Carried away by the party’s dramatic achievements since the Revolution, they forgot that, so long as there were capitalist states, there would be saboteurs, and further that the greater the success of the Soviet Union, the greater would be the efforts of capitalist class enemies to destroy it. Constant vigilance was needed to eradicate such people “under whatever flag, whether that of Trotsky or that of Bukharin.” On this basis, no one, not even the most dedicated worker, was beyond suspicion of wrecking. He was injecting suspicion, like a virus, into the bloodstream of the nation.

  The fact that he coupled Bukharin’s name with that of Trotsky indicated Bukharin was doomed. Indeed, when Bukharin and Rykov tried to defend themselves, the meeting shouted them down. Like a wolf pack, the delegates were now demanding to “arrest, try, and shoot” these old members. But Stalin gave his own ruling: “Let the NKVD handle the case.”

  The practical action, which Stalin ordered, was the immediate appointment of two assistants to every party official from the lowest up to Union Republic level. The Central Committee itself was directed to arrange courses to train regional party workers in “problems of internal and foreign policy.” Students should be enrolled for these courses in sufficient numbers to provide “not for one but for several teams capable of replacing the leaders of the Central Committee of our party.” He could scarcely have warned the committee members more bluntly that he was going to dispose of them, appointing new, more trustworthy men in their places. To a man, they applauded his prescience. The Central Committee had the power under the party statutes to dismiss him and other members of the Politburo. But his authority over them was extraordinary. He was the embodiment of the party, that mystic union which they served, and his word was law even when it warned of their own destruction.

  For the first time, the party felt the full impact of terror. Of the 1,966 delegates who attended the Congress of Victors in 1934, 1,108 were arrested and did not survive, while of the 139 members elected to the Central Committee, ninety-eight were shot.

  Stalin was, however, looking beyond the eradication of latent opposition within the party and the government. Constantly in the forefront of his mind was the threat of war. It was a real and imminent threat. In the past, Russia had been attacked when it was weak; now it was not only weak but also had embarked on the road to socialism, which gave the capitalist powers a further reason to seek to destroy it. Soviet Russia was in the vanguard of socialism and would be the first to be attacked.

  Germany posed the immediate danger. From the time of the Baltic Knights up to World War I, Germany had been a dreaded enemy. German military strength in World War I had made a lasting impression on Russians of Stalin’s generation. Now Germany was rearming. Since the birth of the Third Reich in 1933, expenditure on armaments had mounted from 2,000 million to 16,000 million marks five years later. Adolf Hitler made no secret of his determination to establish a German hegemony over Europe. His anti-Comintern Pact with Japan in 1936, joined a few months later by Italy, was directed at Soviet Russia.

  Since 1926 when he had established his control over the armed forces, Stalin had worked to expand and modernize them. He was no longer so concerned about the role of the Army and security forces in supporting the party. The overriding priority was to prepare against attack by Germany and other powers. He was urgently building up Russia’s heavy industry and military might to this end. Under the Second Five-year Plan, the defense industries developed some two and a half times as fast as the rest of industry. Budget allocations for the Army and Navy rose from 1,430 million rubles in 1933 to 23,200 million rubles in 1938, and in 1940, the figure was 56,800 million rubles. Equipment was modernized and special attention given to tanks, artillery, and aircraft. In 1934, Red Army strength was increased from 562,000 to 940,000 and in the following year to 1.3 million. Three years later, the Soviet armed forces had a strength of more than 4.2 million men.

  By the mid-1930s, the Red Army had become a more efficient and better-disciplined force than at any time in the past. Tukhachevsky, with his outstanding abilities for organization and his creative approach, made a major contribution. General Georgy Zhukov in his Memoirs paid tribute to his professionalism, his understanding of both tactical and strategic problems, and to his recognition of the importance of scientific and technical developments. Tukhachevsky was supported by a number of men of similar ability. Under their leadership, Soviet military thinking was being transformed.

  Two committees responsible for defense were headed by Molotov and Voroshilov. Stalin was simply a member of each committee, but it was he who directed this massive buildup of the defense industries and the armed forces. Molotov and Voroshilov referred everything to him. Nikolai Kuznetsov, on his appointment as kommissar for the Navy, wrote that at first “in his ignorance,” he took important naval matters to Molotov, as chairman of the Council of People’s Kommissars and of the Committee of Defense. Molotov simply referred him to Stalin. He learned, too, that Stalin took a close interest in naval matters and that his approval was needed in everything of importance.

  Zhukov and others have stated that no pattern of armament could be adopted or discarded without Stalin’s authority. This “certainly cramped the initiative of the Kommissar for Defense,” as Zhukov remarked, but he and others were impressed by Stalin’s wide technical knowledge. The kommissar for Armament, Boris Vannikov, related that early in 1941, Stalin favored the 107-mm gun as the main armament for tanks, and he surprised Vannikov when he added that it was a good weapon, “for he knew it from the Civil War.” Vannikov had advocated the 85-mm antiaircraft gun for the purpose, but Stalin’s preference for the 107-mm proved justified: With some modification, it was found to be excellent as an antitank weapon and remained in service. Harry Hopkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal representative, wrote of a meeting in which Stalin asked for a million or more American rifles, adding that he did not need the ammunition since “if the calibre was the same as that used by the Red Army, he had plenty.”

  G. Hilger, a member of the German Embassy, who observed Stalin and others at several meetings, wrote that Molotov followed S
talin’s instructions closely and yielded to him in everything. Stalin himself was simple and unpretentious in manner when dealing with the German representatives, but curt and icy in rapping out instructions to the People’s Kommissars. Hilger was impressed by the extent of the authority Stalin wielded. Nothing could be decided without his express approval. He was struck also by Stalin’s technical knowledge even when discussing such a matter as the ordnance specification of the turrets for a cruiser which Germany was building for the Red Navy. Yakovlev, the Soviet aircraft designer, wrote of Stalin’s direct interest in aircraft development and, indeed, in this as in other fields, Stalin made the final decisions. When in 1940 Yakovlev went to Germany to purchase military aircraft, he had to send his recommendations directly to Stalin.

  At the same time, Stalin awed and terrified many of the most senior officers and officials who had to answer to him. Hilger noted the submissive attitude of Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff, when speaking to him. Hopkins, too, observed the fear with which subordinates regarded their leader.

  Stalin demanded precise replies to his questions and was quick to show displeasure with vague and inadequate information. Vasily Emilyanov, a metallurgist, was present at a meeting to discuss the advantages of cast over pressed and welded turrets for the T-34 tank. Stalin asked for further information. Emilyanov asked permission to speak. Stalin turned to him and snapped, “What are you, a military man?” Emilyanov summoned up his courage and gave the answer. Stalin asked, “How would the center of gravity be changed by the new turret?” and “What was the difference in load on the front axle?” The reply that it would be “slight” angered him; “slight” was not, he said, an engineering term. Emilyanov knew the precise answer, but his attempt to speak was ignored. Stalin rejected the proposal because it was inadequately prepared, but he ordered a commission to examine it. He appointed Yakov Fedorenko, the tank general, and pointed to two other people present, including Emilyanov. He respected the true expert.