The Young Pioneer in fact needed only to switch on the radio any day of the week to hear the frenzied indignation of the mob. An additional threat was brought to bear: “If you refuse to plead guilty in court a substitute will be found—your son. We have evidence that he monitored the movements of Voroshilov’s and Stalin’s cars on the highway.” When he heard that Zinoviev had agreed to make any statement required of him, Kamenev knew that he was doomed, and agreed to play the same role.
The principal actors were now ready to take the stage. A number of other prominent Party members were put on trial with them. Among them were Ivan Smirnov, member of the Party since 1905, who had taken part in the defeat of Kolchak, and the former People’s Commissar for Communications, Sergei Mrachkovsky, a worker by origin, an old Bolshevik, and also a hero of the war with Kolchak. They were prepared for trial in the same way, enjoined to confess in the sacred name of the Party. In 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw, A. Safonova, I. Smirnov’s divorced wife, testified that when she was asked to slander her former husband she was told that “it’s necessary for the Party’s sake.”
END OF THE OLD BEAR
In the hot summer days of 1936 something also had to be done about Gorky. “The old bear with a ring in his nose,” Romain Rolland had sadly called him. But the bear had plainly ceased to be tame. He sought forgiveness for his old friend Kamenev. At the Academia publishing house over which Gorky had presided, Kamenev had been his deputy. The publishing house was, of course, savagely attacked. Gorky again expressed his indignation, and announced his decision to go back to Sorrento for his health. The Boss gave orders that he should not be allowed to leave. Just a little tug on the ring. From then on Gorky’s secretary, N. Kryuchkov, became in effect his jailer, openly taking note of all visitors to the house. At the same time Yagoda began an insultingly public affair with Gorky’s son’s wife. As a prelude to the coming catastrophe the Maxim Gorky, the world’s largest airplane, built to advertise the country’s industrial progress, had ignominiously crashed.
Yagoda delivered to the Boss a letter from Gorky to Louis Aragon in France, in which Gorky begged the famous poet to come and see him immediately. With the scale of the impending trials in mind Stalin was bound to realize how dangerous a rebellious Gorky would be. Gorky repeatedly urged Aragon to visit him. “Gorky had been urging us to go there for the past two months … and every summons was more pressing than the last,” Aragon wrote later. This must have been when the Boss instructed Yagoda to take good care of Gorky, to do everything possible to prevent enemies from using the writer. Yagoda, of course, did just that … by helping him to die.
Yagoda first dealt skillfully with the Communist Aragon and his Russian-born wife, the writer Elsa Triolet. When they arrived to see Gorky they were apparently advised not to be in any hurry to go to him but to stay with Elsa’s relatives in Leningrad for a while. Aragon wrote later that they should have hurried on to Moscow. He was right. But they didn’t. When they finally arrived in Moscow on June 15, Gorky already lay dying. He died on June 18. The easily persuaded poet had no opportunity to talk to him.
Another visitor turned up at that time—the French writer André Gide, a friend of the USSR. He had been invited to extol the land of the Soviets, but first he intended to visit Gorky. When he arrived in Moscow on June 18 his first question was about Gorky’s health. But Gorky had died that very day.
Gorky was given a magnificent funeral. Molotov delivered an address at the memorial service. Gide also spoke: “To this day and in all countries of the world the great writer has almost always been a rebel and a mutineer.… In the Soviet Union, for the first time … the writer, though a revolutionary, is no longer an oppositionist. On the contrary … the Soviet Union has lit new stars in a new heaven.” Gide remained in the USSR for a few months, and became the only European radical to write the truth about the terrible land of the “new heaven.”
Another incorrigible grumbler died in 1936, the former Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin, a very prominent member of the Party in his day. While so many old Bolsheviks were being shot in the years of terror, others died peaceful but convenient deaths. There existed in the NKVD a splendid toxicological laboratory—the creation of the pharmacist manqué Yagoda.
THE THRILLER STAGED: FIRST TRIAL OF LENIN’S ASSOCIATES
For the trial of Kirov’s “murderers” Stalin chose the House of Unions, where not so long ago Kirov had lain in state. Another of history’s ironies: the leaders of the land of October were tried in a small hall called the October Room. And, amusingly enough, the premiere of his spectacle on August 19 coincided with the opening of the Moscow theater season.
The stage designers had turned the October Room into a revolutionary court, decorated in different shades of red. The judge’s desk was covered with bright red cloth. There were monumental chairs embossed with the arms of the Soviet Union. The defendants were near the right-hand wall, behind a wooden barrier. In back of them stood Red army soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets. Also behind the defendants was a door, beyond which was, shall we say, the “Wings of His Theater,” with a buffet, restrooms for the defendants, and an area for Yagoda and the prosecutor, Vyshinsky, to hold friendly discussions with the accused in the course of the trial, to criticize their performances and give them instructions. There were additional actors in the body of the hall, NKVD agents in mufti acting the part of “the people.” If the accused departed from the script as rehearsed, “the people’s” job was to drown their voices with cries of indignation.
The charge against the defendants was that acting on Trotsky’s instructions they had organized a “center” for the purpose of assassinating the leaders of the Party and the state. They had succeeded in murdering Kirov and created a number of terrorist groups to kill Stalin and his loyal comrades-in-arms.
The state prosecutor, A. Vyshinsky, demanded that these “mad dogs” (the sixteen accused) be executed by shooting. After that the accused, all famous Bolsheviks, eagerly confessed their guilt and declared themselves repentant.
Zinoviev: “My perverted Bolshevism became anti-Bolshevism, and by way of Trotskyism I arrived at fascism. Trotskyism is a variant of fascism.” Kamenev: “I stand before a proletarian court for the third time. My life has been spared twice, but there is a limit to the magnanimity of the proletariat.” The accused unanimously asked to be shot. Once again, the trial could not have been running more smoothly.
Kamenev: “I should like to say a few words to my children. I have two children, one is an army pilot, the other a Young Pioneer. Whatever my sentence may be, I consider it just. Do not keep looking back, keep going forward. Together with the people, follow where Stalin leads.” It was because he knew Koba that Kamenev made this attempt to save his children. It would fail. Koba’s plans were much too far-reaching.
Kamenev’s son’s wife still has the official document which reached her from the NKVD in answer to her inquiry.
Kamenev, Lev Borisovitch, died 25.8.36, aged 53. Cause of death [deleted].
Place of death—Moscow.
Kamenev, Olga Davidovna, died 11.9.41, aged 58. Cause of death [deleted].
Place of death [deleted].
Kamenev, Alexander Lvovich, died 15.07.39, aged 33. Cause of death [deleted].
Place of death [deleted].
Kamenev’s younger son, the “Young Pioneer,” would also be shot, at the age of seventeen.
The newspapers were full of deafening curses. But Stalin’s main concern was that famous old Bolsheviks still temporarily free should cast stones at their former comrades. The legendary Antonov-Ovseenko (who on the day of the October rising had declared the Provisional Government overthrown) in an Izvestia article with the eloquent title “Finish Them Off’ spoke of “a special force of fascist saboteurs”: the “only way to talk to them,” he said, was to shoot them. Inevitably, he went on to praise Comrade Stalin, who with his “eagle eye” saw the prospect ahead, who ensured unity, who had turned the USSR into a “mighty
granite cliff.”
Antonov-Ovseenko’s turn would soon come. Till then, let him make himself useful!
The ex-leaders were sentenced to death by shooting. Their last written words survive in secret files held by the former State Archive of the October Revolution. These are petitions from Zinoviev, Kamenev, I. Smirnov, and other defendants in the case of the united Trotskyist-Zinovievite center. Kamenev wrote the necessary few lines calmly, in a steady hand. But Zinoviev! Zinoviev wrote in the illegible, childish scrawl of someone crazed by fear.
On the night of August 24–25 visitors entered their cells. Among those in attendance at the execution of the old Leninist leaders were the NKVD chiefs Yagoda and Yezhov, and also the commander of Stalin’s personal bodyguard, Pauker. Pauker, once employed as a hairdresser at the Budapest Operetta Theater, had been taken prisoner by the Russians in the First World War. Then came the Revolution and a brilliant career with the GPU. Pauker was still a theater lover, and himself an inimitable clown. Orlov described Pauker’s performance of the Boss’s favorite turn—an impression of Zinoviev on his way to execution: Pauker’s Zinoviev clings helplessly to the GPU men’s shoulders, drags his feet, whimpers pitifully, then falls on his knees and howls: “Please, comrade, please, for God’s sake call Joseph Vissarionovich.” Stalin “laughed uncontrollably.”
He laughed all the louder because he knew how the daring raconteur himself would end. Pauker too belonged to the old guard. A similarly comic role awaited the merry fellow in the Boss’s thriller. He would be shot, just like Zinoviev, and just like Zinoviev he would beg his murderers for mercy.
Yagoda, who prized historical souvenirs, collected the bullets with which famous revolutionaries had been shot. When Yagoda was shot, his executioner, Yezhov, appropriated the historic bullets. When Yezhov himself was shot later, the bullets were preserved in his case record. The inventory attached to his file lists “revolver bullets, blunted, wrapped in paper, inscribed Zinoviev, Kamenev.…”
The bullets were a sort of symbol, a baton zealously passed from one runner to another in a relay race with death at the winning post, while the Boss looked on and laughed.
THE ONE AND ONLY RYUTIN
While he was destroying the leftists, Stalin was already getting ready to settle accounts with the rightists, planning a new production with a new cast. On the interrogating officer’s insistence Kamenev had testified that Bukharin was also involved in their terrorist plot, but the evidence against him was for future reference, to be used in Act Two of the thriller. Nor, of course, had the Boss forgotten Ryutin. He was brought to Moscow, to the terrible “inner prison” of the NKVD. The only man who really had been brave enough to rebel, Ryutin would play an invaluable part in the coming production—the trial of the rightists.
But here again Ryutin proved unique: he alone refused to play his part, and although—as he himself put it—he was “treated like an animal,” he stood his ground. Out of the whole cohort of Party notables one and only one preserved his honor—modest Ryutin. His file contains his last letter, written on November 1, 1936, and made public half a century later, to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee: “I am not afraid of death, if that is what the investigative apparatus of the NKVD, in glaring contravention of the law, has in mind for me. I declare in advance that I will not plead for a pardon since I cannot confess to things which I have not done, things of which I am completely innocent. But I cannot endure the illegal treatment inflicted on me, and I request protection from it. If I am not so protected I must try again to protect myself by the only means left in such circumstances to a defenseless and innocently persecuted prisoner deprived of all rights, bound hand and foot, cooped up and completely cut off from the outside world.” Yezhov passed the letter to Stalin, after which Ryutin was tortured, to no effect, for a further two months. They got nothing out of him. He was shot on January 13, 1937.
YAGODA’S TURN
The Boss realized, not for the first time, that Yagoda was not up to the job. He was still “nannying” Party men, just as he always had. Once Stalin had decided to finish with Yagoda he, as was his habit, showered favors on the doomed man. Yagoda was given accommodation in the Kremlin, and told that he “had earned a place in the Politburo.” Much would be written later about the Boss’s sadism, as seen in the invariable promotion of a victim before liquidation. In fact, he simply wanted his prey to work harder, and to be unaware that the end was near. Above all, he promoted them at the last minute so that people could see how much he loved them, and how they had betrayed his trust.
Happiness made the wily Yagoda stupid. Anticipating further reward, he took steps to speed up construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal. Starving and overworked prisoners died by the thousands. Yagoda hoped that the canal would bear his name. The Boss liked all things “imperial,” so Yagoda, eager to please, introduced a splendid dress uniform for the higher ranks of the NKVD: a white tunic with gold facings, pale blue breeches, and a gilded dagger, as worn by officers of the tsar’s navy. There was a public changing of the guard outside the NKVD building—like the old ceremony at the tsar’s palaces. The luxurious premises of the NKVD club became a replica of the officers’ club in one of the tsar’s guards regiments. Heads of NKVD departments gave balls. Soviet ladies, the wives of this new aristocracy, flocked to their dressmakers. In September 1936 Slutsky, the head of the Overseas Administration, gave a fancy-dress party. A large, revolving crystal ball suspended from the ceiling created an illusion of falling snow in the darkened room. The men wore tuxedos or uniform; ladies were in long dresses. Masks and theatrical costumes had been borrowed from the Bolshoi for the use of the ladies. But this was a feast in time of plague. The executioners’ days were numbered. Their wives would not be wearing their new finery much longer. Slutsky would be poisoned, and nine out of ten dancing in that hall would be shot.
On September 25, 1936, the Boss and his new protégé Zhdanov sent a telegram from Sochi, where they were on vacation, to trusty Molotov and the Politburo: “We consider it essential and a matter of urgency to appoint Comrade Yezhov Commissar for Internal Affairs. Yagoda has shown that he is not up to his task of unmasking the Trotskyist-Zinovievite bloc. The GPU is four years behind in this.” Stalin made Yagoda People’s Commissar for Communications. But Yagoda knew the Boss and saw now where it would end. The torment of waiting for the denouement had begun.
A GREAT ARMY
Yezhov quadrupled NKVD salaries. They were now considerably higher than those in Party and government establishments. The NKVD were given the best apartments, rest homes, and hospitals. Yezhov’s people would enjoy these benefits for eighteen months. In 1937, preparing for the final destruction of Lenin’s old guard, Stalin converted the NKVD into an enormous army, organized in divisions and numbering hundreds of thousands. NKVD branches were all-powerful at the local level. NKVD “special departments” functioned in all large enterprises and in all educational establishments. A huge network of informers embraced the whole country. Ostensibly, they operated on a voluntary basis, but they received substantial rewards, in particular steady promotion in their professions. Best of all, they could exact a bloody reckoning from those whom they disliked. Their superiors at work trembled before them. At the height of the purges, informers enjoyed a measure of protection, though if their masters fell they might fall with them.
People fought for the right to inform.
Apart from the full-time informers, all citizens were obliged to join enthusiastically in the same activity. And even to inform on themselves. A Party member who learned that someone he knew had been arrested was obliged to report immediately on his relations with that person. Orlov cited an example: Kedrov, the investigator mentioned earlier, was the son of an old Bolshevik, a friend of Lenin. One day he buttonholed Orlov, to consult him on a “delicate matter.” It seemed that a certain Ilyin, now under arrest, had been a friend of Kedrov’s parents in exile. “What do you think—should my father write and tell the Central Committee that the
Ilyins used to drop in to drink tea occasionally?” Kedrov asked, in acute anxiety.
A special department of the NKVD now kept watch on all party bodies, up to and including the Central Committee. Appointments to Party posts were confirmed only with the approval of the NKVD. Within the NKVD, special secret sections were created to keep watch on NKVD personnel themselves. And there was a supersecret special section to keep an eye on the secret special sections. This section too kept files, innumerable dossiers.
When Yezhov was arrested they found in his safe a dossier on Stalin! It included the reminiscences of some Georgian (who had of course vanished in the camps) showing that Stalin had been a provocateur. (So Malenkov, one of Stalin’s closest collaborators, told his son.)
The year 1937 had arrived, and the reequipped NKVD under Yezhov set about the total destruction of the old Party. Another batch of Lenin’s comrades, identified for this purpose as the “Parallel Trotskyist Center,” were tried between January 23 and 30. Those involved included some of the most prominent Kremlin boyars, former supporters of Trotsky who had long ago deserted their idol. That did not help them. The star defendant was Yuri Pyatakov, a member of the Central Committee. Lenin had held him in high esteem, describing him in his Testament as “undoubtedly a person of outstanding strength of purpose and abilities.” He had been in the Party since 1905, taken part in the underground struggle, and commanded armies during the Civil War. He had joined opposition groups, had, needless to say, repented, and had been forgiven.
Ordzhonikidze, who was in charge of industry, had made him a vice-commissar, and Pyatakov had become one of the main implementers of the cruel first Five-Year Plan in 1929.
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