The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Also among the 1,111 was Ivar Smilga’s wife, Nadezhda Smilga-Poluian, and her closest friend, Nina Delibash, who had lived with the Smilgas in the House of Government. Delibash was shot one day earlier than Poloz; Smilga-Poluian, one day later.50

  ■ ■ ■

  Ivar Smilga and most other arrested leaseholders from the House of Government were shot in or around Moscow, after a formal sentencing by Vasily Ulrikh’s Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. One such trial was described by the former overseer of “the Soviet and foreign intelligentsia” and editor of Izvestia and Novyi mir, Ivan Gronsky:

  There are three men sitting behind a desk. You are brought in.

  “Last name, first name, patronymic? You have received the indictment. There is a letter in the file? Okay, the court will consider it.”

  They take you out. Three or five minutes later, they bring you back in. They read out the sentence. That’s it!

  At my trial, they let me talk (most unusual). I spoke for one hour and twenty minutes. I ridiculed the testimony used against me, made fun of the investigation, argued that I was completely innocent before my country and my Party. Nobody mentioned any accusations against me. The judges were silent throughout. Only once one of the judges said:

  “Didn’t you print Bukharin’s ‘Notes by an Economist’”?

  But the presiding judge, Ulrikh, interrupted him:

  “Not only did he not print them, he criticized them in print the very next day.”

  When I finished, I was escorted out. “Now,” I thought, “the whole thing will collapse, and I will be set free. After all, no one accused me of anything, and the presiding judge even supported me.”

  I was brought before the judges again. The same Ulrikh read out the sentence: fifteen years in a camp and five years deprivation of rights.

  Although I was very weak then, I flew into a rage:

  “Please tell me where I am! What is this, a court or a comedy theater?”

  At that moment the soldiers put my arms behind my back and took me down the stairs to the ground floor.

  “Death sentence?” somebody asked.

  “No, fifteen years.”

  “To the left.”51

  Most House of Government leaseholders were taken to the right. Most of the approximately twenty-nine thousand people sentenced to death in Moscow in 1937–38 were executed at one of two wooded “special sites” disguised as military shooting ranges: Butovo, used by the Moscow Region NKVD Directory (presided over by Stanislav Redens, who headed the sentencing troika and signed off on all the execution orders), and Kommunarka (Yagoda’s former dacha), used by the NKVD’s central organs to execute top state and Party officials sentenced by the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium. In the case of Butovo, the procedure has been reconstructed on the basis of archival documents and interviews with retired executioners, and described by the historian Lydia Golovkova:52

  The people sentenced to death were taken to Butovo without being told where they were going or why….

  Trucks with twenty to thirty, and sometimes up to fifty people inside approached the area from the direction of the forest at around 1 or 2 a.m. Today’s wooden fence did not exist then. The zone was surrounded by barbed wire. The trucks pulled up to an improvised observation tower, in a tree. Nearby were two buildings: a small stone house and a very long barrack, about eighty meters long. The people were taken inside the barrack, supposedly for “sanitary treatment.” Immediately before the execution the decision was announced and personal data verified. This was done very thoroughly. Along with reports on executions, archival documents contain letters requesting confirmation of the place of birth, and often the name and patronymic of one of the condemned.…

  In Butovo, the executions were carried out by one of several so-called execution crews, which, according to a former acting commandant, usually included three or four men. On days with large numbers of executions the crews might be bigger. According to one local resident who worked in the NKVD garage …, the entire “special unit” consisted of twelve men, who worked in both Butovo and Kommunarka, as well as in Moscow, in Varsonofiev Alley and Lefortovo Prison.

  At first the condemned were buried in small single graves. They were scattered throughout the grounds. But starting in August 1937, executions in Butovo reached such a volume that the “procedure” had to be modified. A bulldozer-excavator dug out several large pits, about 500 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 3 meters deep….

  The roll-call, ID verification, and the filtering out of those whose files raised questions appears to have continued until dawn. According to the former acting commandant, the executioners had nothing to do with the verification process and waited, in isolation, in the nearby stone building….

  The condemned were led out of the barrack one at a time. At this point, the executioners would appear. The condemned would be handed over to them and they would lead them, each his own victim, to the back of the grounds, toward the pit. The condemned were shot at the edge of the pit, in the back of the head, at point-blank range. The bodies were thrown to the bottom of the pit, until they covered it more or less evenly. Nights with fewer than 100 executions were rare. There were cases of 300, 400, or even over 500 executions in one night. On February 28, 1937, 562 individuals were executed. According to the acting commandant, the executioners used their own Civil War weapons, usually Nagan revolvers, which they considered accurate, convenient, and reliable. Executions were supposed to be witnessed by a doctor and a public prosecutor, but that was not always the case. There was plenty of vodka, however, which was brought to Butovo especially for the executioners. After the shootings forms were filled out and signed, and the executioners, usually completely drunk, were taken to Moscow. In the evening, a local resident whose house stood on the grounds until the 1950s showed up, turned on the bulldozer, and covered the bodies with a thin layer of earth.53

  It is not known whether the House of Government neighbors executed on the same nights—Kraval, Mikhailov, and Khalatov on September 26, 1937, Gaister and Demchenko on October 30, 1937, Muklevich, Kaminsky, and Serebrovsky, on February 10, 1938, Piatnitsky and Shumiatsky on July 29, 1938, or the accused at the Bukharin trial, who had their sentences publicly announced to them—had a chance or the wish to talk to each other before being shot. As the Cossack corps commander Filipp Mironov had written after his own conviction by Smilga and Poluian, “in battle, death is not frightening: one moment and it’s over. What is terrible for the human soul is the awareness of an imminent, inescapable death, when there is no hope for another chance and when you know that nothing in the world can stop the approaching end, when there is less and less time before the terrible moment, and when finally they tell you: ‘your grave is ready.’” For most condemned residents of the House of Government, the time of full awareness varied from a few minutes to at least two nights and a day in the case of Bukharin and his codefendants.54

  ■ ■ ■

  Witch hunts begin abruptly, as violent reactions to particular events, and die down gradually, for no apparent reason. Participants have difficulty remembering and explaining what has happened and try to avoid talking or thinking about it.

  In the second half of November 1938, without a formal announcement or explanation, the mass operations were discontinued, the troikas disbanded, and Ezhov fired. Arrests and killings became sporadic and more carefully targeted. The shootings of some of those arrested earlier, including Postyshev, Eikhe, and Bogachev, can mostly be attributed to the force of inertia. Radek and Sokolnikov, who had been spared after the trial of the “Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center,” were murdered in prison on Stalin’s orders, as part of a mopping-up operation. The first assassin planted in Radek’s cell in the Verkhneuralsk political isolator provoked a fight but failed to kill Radek. The second one was more successful. According to the report issued by the prison administration on May 19, 1939, “The examination of the body of inmate K. B. Radek revealed bruises around the neck and bleeding from one ear
and the throat, which resulted from the forceful impact of the head against the floor. Death resulted from the beatings and strangling inflicted by inmate Varezhnikov, a Trotskyite.” The killer’s real name was I. I. Stepanov; he was the former commandant (officer in charge of executions) of the Checheno-Ingush NKVD office, who had been arrested three months earlier for official misconduct. Six months later, he was released for performing “a special assignment of particular importance to the state.”55

  The last act of the mass operations was the liquidation of their organizers. Having woken up after the orgy, Stalin and the surviving members of the inner circle needed to get rid of those who had administered it.

  The head of the NKVD’s First Special (Bookkeeping) Section, Isaak Shapiro, from Apt. 453, who signed the “lists of individuals to be tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court” before they were sent up to the Politburo, was arrested on November 13, 1938. The former head of the Moscow Province NKVD Directorate and the undisputed champion among regional exterminators of the enemies of the people, Stanislav Redens, from Apt. 200, was arrested on November 21, 1938 (one day after being urgently summoned to Moscow from Kazakhstan, where he had been serving as the people’s commissar of internal affairs since late January). The former head of the Gulag and, most recently, people’s commissar of communications, Matvei Berman, from Apt. 141, was arrested on December 24, 1938 (ten days after his upstairs neighbor from Apt. 143, Mikhail Koltsov, and three months after his brother, Boris Berman, who had been Radek’s and Bukharin’s interrogator and later head of Belorussian NKVD). The two men who had directed the conduct of the operations were among the last ones to be arrested: Frinovsky, on April 6, 1939, and Ezhov, on April 10. At his trial before Vasily Ulrikh’s Collegium, Ezhov said: “During the preliminary investigation, I said that I was not a spy and not a terrorist, but they did not believe me and subjected me to the most violent beatings. During my twenty-five years of Party work I honestly fought and exterminated our enemies. I have committed crimes for which I may deserve to be executed, and I will talk about them shortly, but I have not committed the crimes listed in my indictment and am not guilty of them.”

  Bukharin had claimed that he was innocent of the crimes listed in his indictment, but guilty of endowing them with moral and intellectual legitimacy. Ezhov argued that he was innocent of the crimes listed in his indictment but guilty of not neutralizing their perpetrators:

  I purged 14,000 Chekists. But my true guilt consists of the fact that I did not purge enough of them. My practice was as follows: directing this or that department head to interrogate an arrested person, I would think to myself: “Today you are doing the interrogating, and tomorrow I’ll have you arrested.” I was surrounded by enemies of the people, my enemies. I purged Chekists everywhere. It was only in Moscow, Leningrad, and the North Caucasus that I did not purge them. I thought they were honest, but it turned out that I had been harboring saboteurs, wreckers, spies, and enemies of the people of other stripes.

  Ezhov, like Bukharin, attempted to justify himself by appealing to Stalin. Bukharin, as the ideologue of what he called “the political idea of a general purge,” had hoped for an acknowledgment that he was not a monster in human form but a scapegoat randomly selected for redemptive sacrifice. Ezhov, as the purge’s executioner in chief, was hoping for an acknowledgment that the people who were about to execute him were the same enemies he should have had executed as part of the general purge. “I request that Stalin be informed that I have never in my life deceived the Party politically, a fact known to thousands of people who know my honesty and modesty. I request that Stalin be informed that I am a victim of circumstances and that it is possible that some enemies I have missed may have had something to do with this. Tell Stalin that I will die with his name on my lips.”56

  Sergei Mironov, who had spearheaded the implementation of mass operations and proposed the creation of the first “execution troika,” was happy in his new apartment and in his new job in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. According to Agnessa, “The arrests continued. We knew about them, of course. In our House of Government, not a night passed without someone being taken away. At night the ‘Black Ravens’ still prowled around. But the fear that had closed in on us in Novosibirsk seemed to recede and give us a little breathing room. Not that it disappeared completely—it just subsided, retreated.”

  For the first time in their life together, Mironov and Agnessa were living as a family surrounded by other families. As Agnessa put it, “We had landed on a safe, lucky island”:

  We were so happy! Mirosha loved his new job. He would sometimes even tell me funny stories about his work: about the “Japs,” “Chinks,” or others he happened to be dealing with. He was often in a good mood and spent a lot of time with the family. Our apartment was always full of children, and he would dream up all kinds of amusements for them, clowning around and joking, and spoiling them terribly.

  Once he announced:

  “Today is International Women’s Day. I am going to do everything myself so the women can relax.”

  And then he began to set the table, deliberately doing everything wrong. Little Agulia danced around him in delight, choking with laughter. “No, Daddy, not like that. Not like that, Daddy.”57

  Agnessa found a good dressmaker. At the first reception for foreign diplomats to which Mironov was invited, she wore “a strapless brocade evening gown with A-line skirt and train,” dress shoes with gold braid trimming, and her hair “piled high.” Everyone noticed them, according to Agnessa. “Later I heard that many people at the reception had asked, ‘What country are that new ambassador and his wife from?’”58

  After the transfers of Frinovsky (to the People’s Commissariat of the Navy) and Ezhov (to the People’s Commissariat of Water Transport) and the intensification of the purge of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the mood changed. Most of Mironov’s closest colleagues had been arrested. One night, he got out of bed, told Agnessa that he did not want to be taken by surprise, and barricaded the kitchen elevator door with a chest of drawers. “Suddenly he began to sob hysterically, and cried out in despair, ‘They’re arresting the wives, too. The wives!’” Agnessa gave him some valerian drops and kept talking to him until he went back to sleep. Before he did, they agreed that if he was arrested, he would try to send her a note. “I kiss you tenderly” would mean he was fine; “I kiss you” would mean “okay”; and “regards to everyone” would mean things were bad. Several days later, he was the only Commissariat of Foreign Affairs official besides Litvinov to be invited to the New Year’s Eve banquet in the Kremlin. Agnessa chose to wear a “severe dress suit” rather than the new black evening gown with the train and a rose at the waist that she had had sewn for another occasion. From their table, they could see Stalin and Molotov’s wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina. “After that New Year’s invitation, all our fears and worries evaporated, and we spent six calm, blissful days, completely reassured.”59

  January 6, 1939, was a day off. After the maid had straightened the room and made the bed, Agnessa took Mironov’s revolver, which he kept under his pillow, and hid it in her closet. Then they took the children to Gorky Park. “Mirosha horsed around with the children, as if he were a kid himself. To Agulia’s delight, he would stumble around on his skates and deliberately fall down (though he was a good skater), and slide downhill on a tiny sled and tumble over on his side.” Afterward, Mironov, Agnessa, and Agulia went over to the apartment of Mironov’s colleague from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, Anatoly Kolesnikov. The plan was for both families to take their children to the circus that evening:

  We were all having a good time. Suddenly the telephone rang. It was for Mirosha.

  He picked up the phone and listened. I could see the puzzled look on his face.

  “But everything has already been agreed upon,” he said.

  The person on the other end seemed to be insisting. Mirosha looked even more puzzled and said,

  “All
right, I’m on my way.”

  He slowly put down the receiver, but remained standing by the telephone, staring at it and thinking.

  I asked him, “Mirosha, who was that?”

  “They asked me to come down to the Commissariat right away—something to do with the fishing concessions with Japan. There’s some kind of problem…. I don’t understand, everything was already settled.”

  Then he whispered to me, “Maybe it’s an arrest?”

  I had been dealing with this paranoia of his for quite a while before New Year’s, and I was already used to it. So I brushed it aside cheerfully, and said:

  “Don’t be silly, Mirosha! Just come back quickly, we’ll be waiting for you. And try not to be late for the circus.”

  He put on his coat, still looking anxious. He asked Kolesnikov for the use of his car to take him there and then bring him back afterward. I accompanied him to the stairs.

  “Call me as soon as you get to the Commissariat, okay?”

  He promised.

  It was a very cold day, but Mirosha never wore a scarf, even when it was freezing. I had a nice wool scarf from abroad.

  “It’s so cold,” I said, “and you’ve been coughing. Take my scarf.”

  To my surprise, he agreed. Under normal circumstances he would never have agreed, but this time he took it right away. He gazed at the scarf, stroking it gently and tenderly, and then put it around his neck. Now, looking back, I understand: it was something of mine—perhaps the only thing he would have left of me.

  He was silent for a few seconds. Then he looked into my eyes, hugged me, kissed me very, very hard, gently pushed me away, and, quickly, without looking back, started running down the stairs. I stood watching as he appeared on one landing, then another, lower and lower. He never once looked back. The door to the outside slammed shut. Everything was still.60