The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  KOSIOR. Yes, for many years.60

  The next morning, Osinsky was the first to take the floor. He had turned fifty the previous day.

  OSINSKY. Comrades, I was not going to speak on this question for the following two reasons … (Voices from the floor: You’re speaking now. We’ll see why soon enough.) that I would like to elaborate on at the outset. (Voices from the floor: Interesting.) In general, I tend to speak on questions that, as it were, inspire and captivate me (Voice from the floor: And the struggle against the Rightists does not captivate you? Laughter, noise) and to which I can add something that has not been said before, something that is new to the listeners and contains something that may be significant and useful, at least from my perspective, for the Central Committee (noise, laughter). My dear comrades, surely you do not consider me a Rightist? Why do you start interrupting me right away? (Shkiriatov: Can’t we simply ask you some things? Kosior: We don’t hear from you very often.) And if you don’t hear from me very often, then allow me to add that the third reason I was not going to speak is that, at the previous plenum, I was the thirteenth person to sign up to speak on the agricultural question, which interests me, but my turn never came, even though thirty people spoke. (Voices from the floor: He feels hurt, mistreated. Noise, laughter.)

  Anyway, this particular question not only does not inspire or captivate me, it provokes in me a feeling of utter revulsion. (Voice from the floor: Toward whom?) The case that is being considered is, to put it mildly, extremely unappetizing and, therefore, difficult and unpleasant to talk about, so that I have very few subjective incentives to speak on this question…. But since I was, so to speak, called up to the podium on the initiative of Comrades Beria, Postyshev, and others, and since I am flattered by such attention from the Central Committee, I have decided to speak. Perhaps it will be of some use.61

  Valerian Osinsky (Courtesy of Elena Simakova)

  Osinsky was called up to the podium because he and Bukharin had once opposed Lenin as leaders of Left Communism. He had apologized for opposing Lenin many times before. Now he needed to apologize for doing so jointly with Bukharin:

  Bukharin and I ended up as leaders of Left Communism because we had been great friends since before the Revolution. We started our Party work at the same time, did a lot together within the Party (Voice from the floor: Was that the only reason?), spent time in prison together, and, by the way, were very close in our political views, because, before the Revolution, I was, to use the term that has recently come into use, a Leftist, and so was Bukharin. Then, when the Revolution happened, and after a fairly long break in our relationship (Bukharin had been living in emigration, and I had been wandering around Russian provinces, in various exiles), we met again, and our friendship was renewed. Indeed, at first I had great hopes for it. It interested me and I thought that something good might come of it. But what did come of it, during the first year and a half, was our common participation in Left Communism: nothing good, in other words, as I can state now quite clearly and very sincerely (laughter). It was, as Lenin charitably put it in those days, “a childhood disease within Communism.” For me, it was Childhood Disease No. 1, because my Childhood Disease No. 2 was Democratic Centralism.

  It was a very charitable definition because there is no doubt that those “infantile disorders” of ours caused considerable damage to the working class. Our “childhood diseases” had incurred some very serious costs. In addition, they gave support to such people as Trotsky and reinforced and promoted petit bourgeois elements within the working class. (Vareikis: Lenin called you a petit bourgeois gone mad.) That is true, but didn’t he call you the same thing, Comrade Vareikis? (laughter). (Vareikis: I was not one of them at that time. In any case, everyone knows that I was for the Brest Treaty, the whole of Ukraine knows that.) Okay, then you went mad a little later, during Democratic Centralism (laughter).62

  Everyone had suffered from one or more childhood diseases, and each disease had caused considerable damage to the working class. Everyone was objectively responsible for criminal terrorist activity against the Party. Who still belonged in the Party (and why)? Osinsky had held various administrative posts in his career as a Bolshevik, but his heart “lay then, and lies now, in scholarly pursuits, and not in such work (laughter).” Accordingly, his defense at the plenum focused on his disagreements with Bukharin on theological matters. Once, around 1931–32, or perhaps 1933, he was walking in the Kremlin and ran into Bukharin, who asked him what he had been up to lately. When he responded that he had been studying philosophy, Bukharin told him that he had been studying philosophy, too, and that he was having difficulty understanding the concepts “objective contradiction” and “quantity becoming quality.” Osinsky found Bukharin’s difficulty to be “bourgeois-positivist” in nature and, when he got home that night, wrote an essay on the subject. He was going to send it to Bukharin, but then he changed his mind. “I thought to myself: ‘Should I really send it if the man has such a profound and persistent misunderstanding of the most basic things about the dialectical method? After all, our views on the subject have nothing in common, so there is no point in talking, especially since we don’t have anything in common in political matters, either. And someone might even think: they started by talking about theoretical matters and then moved on to joint political activities.’”63

  The speech ended with the words: “All logical and legal prerequisites for bringing Bukharin and Rykov to trial have been met.” The implication seemed to be that what had started out as a misunderstanding of Marxist dialectics had inevitably led to terrorism. Did this mean that Marxist dialectic was more important than Left Communism, so that Osinsky’s and Bukharin’s childhood diseases were trivial cases of measles compared to Bukharin’s bourgeois-positivist cancer? Or did this mean that one did not have to be an open oppositionist to cause significant damage to the Party, so that everyone who had ever had difficulty with Marxist dialectics, which is to say, everyone with the exception of Comrade Stalin, could be brought to trial? The plenum did not rule on the matter.

  On February 26, during the morning session, Bukharin and Rykov were allowed to respond. Both argued that they were human beings, as well as former oppositionists, and that there was, in fact, a wall separating the subjective from the objective:

  RYKOV. I don’t know—of course it’s okay to mock me. I’m finished, no doubt about it, but why mock me for no good reason? (Postyshev. We are not mocking you, but we do need to establish the facts.) It’s terrible. (Postyshev. There’s no need to mock you. You have yourself to blame.) I am about to finish, and I fully understand that this is my last speech at a Central Committee plenum and possibly in my whole life. But I will say once more that to confess to something I did not do or represent myself as the kind of scoundrel people here say I am, for my own or someone else’s benefit, this I will never do.

  STALIN. Who’s asking you to?

  RYKOV. But for God’s sake, that is surely what follows? I have never been a member of any bloc, never belonged to any Rightist Center, and never engaged in any wrecking, espionage, sabotage, terror, or any other filth. And I will keep saying this for as long as I live.64

  The mockery was not gratuitous. The point of the ritual was to prepare the victims for sacrifice. Laughter was the most effective way of making sure that the former oppositionist was no longer a human being:

  BUKHARIN. My sins before the Party are very grave. My sins were particularly grave during socialism’s decisive offensive, when our group became a de facto brake and caused a great deal of damage. I confessed those sins: I confessed that between 1930 and 1932 I still had some unresolved issues that I have since recognized. But with the same force with which I admit my real guilt I deny the guilt that is being imposed on me. I will always deny it—not only because it is important to me personally, but also because I believe that one should never take on extra responsibilities, especially if neither the Party, nor the country, nor I personally need it (noise in the room, laughter).…


  The tragedy of my situation is that Piatakov and the rest have poisoned the atmosphere to such an extent that no one believes human emotions any more: feelings, passions, tears (laughter). Human behaviors that used to serve as proof, and there was nothing shameful about it, have lost their power. (Kaganovich: There’s been too much hypocrisy!)65

  Human emotions had always been at the heart of Bolshevism. For Sverdlov, the real day arrived when he kissed Kira Egon-Besser; for Mayakovsky, the world ended when his Gioconda was stolen; and for Postyshev and Voronsky (as well as for Sverdlov and Mayakovsky), the key to “the gates of a new kingdom” was the sheer power of hatred. For Osinsky, Hamsun’s Victoria brought together his luminous faith, his love for Anna Shaternikova, and his friendship with Nikolai Bukharin. For Bukharin, it stood for his sacrifice for the Revolution, his love for Anna Larina, and his friendship with Aleksei Rykov. For Rykov, the “dignity” with which he conducted himself at the Sixteenth Party Congress (where the Rightists were being pilloried while Bukharin was in Crimea with Anna) had something to do with the fact that he loved Bukharin “the way even a woman who was passionately in love with [him] never could.” The telephone call on December 1, 1934, changed everything. No one believed human emotions any more. Words were as powerless at expressing feelings as they were at making legal arguments.

  At home in the House of Government, Rykov stopped talking almost completely. His wife had a stroke the day she heard about the death of Ordzhonikidze (whom she considered their protector) and lay in bed motionless, unable to speak. Natalia was fired from her job at the Border Guard Academy in early January and rarely left the apartment. According to her memoirs,

  During the last days of the plenum, my father would come home and walk straight into my mother’s room because she was sick in bed. I remember him once saying (I remember it well—he was taking off his shoes, his face turned up, tense, the skin bluish and hanging in folds, his hands untying and loosening the shoelaces: “They want to lock me up.” And then, on another occasion, “They’re going to lock me up. They’re going to lock me up.” But this was not addressed to those present (my mother and me), the way people usually speak, but into space, without looking at us directly. In those days, he did not seem to live on Earth, among other human beings, but in some world of his own, from which a few words and thoughts would occasionally reach us.66

  He had stopped seeing his two closest associates, Tomsky and Bukharin, after the fall of the Right Opposition. In his speech at the plenum, he said that he now believed in Tomsky’s guilt. He had asked his other friend, Boris Iofan (who had recently renovated his dacha for him), not to call or come by anymore. Another friend, Yagoda, had stopped coming himself.67 On his last day at the plenum, Rykov came home while it was still light outside:

  This time he walked straight to his room without answering any of my questions. I remember asking if the session was over or if he had left early, but he did not answer. At a loss and realizing that he was not quite himself and therefore capable of doing the wrong thing, I called Poskrebyshev, told him that my father had come home, and asked if he was needed and if I should send him back. Poskrebyshev told me not for now, but, if necessary, he’d call. At dusk he called and said: “Go ahead and send him over now.” I helped my father dress and walked him to his car, although I did not think then that he would never return. He did not go in to see my mother and did not utter a single sound the whole time. He got dressed and walked mechanically.

  We spent several hours anxiously awaiting his return. At eleven the doorbell rang, and I opened the door, but it was not my father, but instead, about ten NKVD men, who spread out through the apartment and began their search. We realized that my father had been arrested. It was February 27, 1937.68

  Bukharin, Anna, their nine-month-old son Yuri, and Bukharin’s father and first wife were waiting in their Kremlin apartment. In the evening, Stalin’s secretary, Poskrebyshev, called and told Bukharin that he must report to the plenum.

  We said our farewells.

  It is difficult to describe Ivan Gavrilovich’s state. Exhausted with worry for his son, the old man had mostly kept to his bed. When the time came to say goodbye, he started having convulsions: his legs kept flying up uncontrollably and then falling back on the bed, his hands shook, and his face turned blue. He seemed on the verge of death. But then the attack passed, and he asked his son in a weak voice:

  “What’s happening, Nikolai? What’s happening? Please explain to me!”

  Before N.I. had a chance to answer, the phone rang again.

  “You are delaying the plenum,” said Poskrebyshev, at his Master’s bidding. “Everyone is waiting for you.”

  I cannot say that N.I. was in a particular hurry. He said goodbye to Nadezhda Mikhailovna. Then my turn came.

  It is impossible to describe the tragic moment of that terrible farewell or the pain that still lives on in my soul. N.I. fell on his knees before me and, with tears in his eyes, asked me to forgive him for ruining my life, to raise our son a Bolshevik (“definitely a Bolshevik!”), to fight for his exoneration, not to forget a single line of his letter, and to hand the text to the Central Committee when the situation improves. “Because it will definitely improve,” he said. “You are young and will live to see that day. Swear to me that you will do it!” And I swore.

  He rose from his knees, hugged and kissed me, and said, with great emotion:

  “Whatever, you do, don’t hold a grudge, Anna dear. History has occasional misprints, but truth will prevail!”

  I started shaking with emotion, and I could feel my lips trembling. We knew that we were parting forever.

  N.I. put on his leather jacket and his fur hat with the ear flaps, and headed for the door.

  “Make sure you don’t tell any lies about yourself, Nikolai!” was all I could say in farewell.

  No sooner had I seen him off to purgatory and lain down for a bit than they came to search the apartment. There was no longer any doubt: N.I. had been arrested.69

  The group of about a dozen NKVD men was led by Boris Berman, who, according to Larina, “came dressed as if to a banquet, wearing an expensive black suit and white shirt with a ring and a long nail on his little finger.” The procedure, including body searches, lasted a long time. “Closer to midnight, I heard some noise coming from the kitchen and went to see what was going on. The picture I witnessed startled me. The agents had gotten hungry and were having a feast. There was not enough room around the kitchen table, so they were sitting on the floor. On the newspaper that was serving as a tablecloth, I saw a huge piece of ham and some sausage. Eggs were frying on the stove. I could hear their merry laughter.”70

  ■ ■ ■

  Two months later, Anna, Yuri, Ivan Gavrilovich, Nadezhda Mikhailovna, and their maid Pasha (Praskovia Ivanovna Ivanova) moved to the House of Government. They did not have to pay rent, and Pasha worked for free. Ivan Gavrilovich, who had taught math at a women’s gymnasium before the Revolution, spent his days “filling sheet after sheet with algebraic formulas.”71

  Natalia Rykova, her mother, Nina Semenovna Marshak, and Glikeria Flegontovna (Lusha) Rodiukova stayed on in their large apartment (Apt. 18) on the tenth floor of Entryway 1. Since their move from the Kremlin in late fall, they had not had a chance to hang up curtains or unpack most of their books. After Rykov’s arrest, Nina Semenovna regained her ability to speak and asked Natalia to read The Brothers Karamazov to her. Soon afterward, she went back to work in the People’s Commissariat of Health (the people’s commissar, Grigory Kaminsky, from Apt. 225, had been one of Rykov’s accusers at the February–March Plenum). In July, two NKVD agents came with a warrant for Nina Semenovna’s arrest. Natalia took out the little suitcase she used for carrying her skates and wool socks to the Gorky Park skating rink and packed her mother’s nightshirt, a toothbrush, some soap, an extra summer dress (“white, with black dots”), and probably a change of underwear (she was not sure many years later). Before leaving, Nina Semenovna stopp
ed at the door “and told me, really firmly: ‘Go on living …’ She probably wanted to say ‘honestly,’ that’s what seemed to be coming, but stopped short and said ‘the best you can.’ We said goodbye and kissed. And then she left. Not a tear was shed, of course…. It was just the two of us, Lusha and I, left. We talked a little. I said: ‘What are we going to do, Glikeria Flegontovna?’ And she said: ‘What are the two of us going to do here?’”72

  They asked for permission to move and were given a room in an apartment above the Shock Worker movie theater, at the opposite end of the building. The former renter had been arrested, but his wife and two small children were still living there. Natalia and Lusha brought with them some sheets and pillowcases, a few dishes, and a small cupboard. Before leaving their old apartment, Natalia broke a plaster bust of her father and smashed it into little pieces, so strangers would not desecrate it. The carpet with her father’s portrait (a present from some textile workers) was too large and heavy, so she left it behind.73

  The Rykovs’ old apartment on the tenth floor was then occupied by the Osinskys. In June 1937, Osinsky had been removed from the Central Committee and asked to move from the Kremlin to the House of Government. Following the arrests of a group of top Red Army commanders in April and May, many apartments had become vacant. The Osinskys first moved into the apartment of the commander and commissar of the Military Academy, August Kork, and then, after Natalia’s and Lusha’s departure, into the much bigger Rykov (formerly Radek, formerly Gronsky) apartment. When they arrived, they found Rykov’s study still sealed with brown sealing wax. On the kitchen table stood a teapot with the inscription: “To Dear Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov from the Workers of Lysva.”74

  Unlike Rykov, Osinsky had all his books unpacked, sorted, and shelved. Since there was not enough space for them all, he had additional bookcases built in the middle of the room, perpendicular to one of the walls. His wife, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Smirnova, moved into a small walk-through room. The children’s former nanny, Anna Petrovna, got a room of her own. Another bedroom was given over to the children—Svetlana, who was twelve, and Valia and Rem, who were fourteen. Svetlana slept on Kork’s mahogany bed, which they had brought from their previous apartment. The maid, Nastia, slept in the children’s room. (Rem’s father and Ekaterina’s brother, the former “Democratic Centralist” Vladimir Smirnov, had been brought back from exile after Kirov’s murder, sentenced to three years in prison, retried on May 26, 1937, and executed later that day, about the same time the Osinskys moved into the House of Government.) The sixth and final room—counting Rykov’s sealed study—belonged to the Osinskys’ eldest son, Vadim (“Dima”), and his pregnant wife, Dina. Dima was a military engineer. “He loved my mother and was very close to her,” wrote Svetlana, who was thirteen years younger. “As for me, I remember very little about him, except how he would half-jokingly, half-seriously call me a little bourgeois girl, rock me on his knee, where I would get a delicious whiff of his military boot, and scare me by talking about how much I loved going to the Bolshoi and how the Bolshoi chandelier had once fallen straight into the audience and probably would again.75