Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  (a) To die would be a thousand times easier for me than to go through the coming trial: I simply do not know how I shall manage to control myself.… If I could, I would beg you on bended knees, abandoning all shame and pride, not to let it happen, but that is probably now impossible … so I should like to ask you to make it possible for me to die before the trial, although I know what a strict view you take on such matters.

  (b) If [some words deleted] you have already decided on the death sentence, let me ask you in advance, let me urge you by all that is dear to you to let me, instead of being shot, take poison in my cell (give me morphine so that I can go to sleep and never wake up again). Take pity on me, let me spend my last minutes in my own way. You know me well enough to understand: I sometimes look death in the face with clear eyes.… I am capable of brave actions, yet sometimes the same me is so panic-stricken that there is nothing left of me.… So if I am condemned to death I ask you to let me have the poisoned cup (like Socrates).

  (c) Let me say goodbye to my wife and son before the trial. My reason for this is that if my family see the things I have confessed to, the shock might drive them to suicide. I must somehow prepare them. This would, I think, be a help to the case and its official interpretation.

  If my life is to be spared my request is—either send me to America for x years. Arguments in favor: I could mount a publicity campaign about the trials, wage war to the death on Trotsky, win over large sections of the vacillating intelligentsia. I would be in effect an anti-Trotsky, and I would do all this with great energy and enthusiasm. You could send a trained Chekist with me, and as an additional guarantee I would leave my wife here for six months while I show how good I am at bashing Trotsky. Or if there is the slightest doubt about this, banish me, for 25 years if you like, to Pechora or Kolyma, to a camp, where I could start a university, learned institutes, a picture gallery, zoological and photographic museums. Though to tell the truth I have little hope of that.

  Joseph Vissarionovich! You have lost in me one of your ablest generals, and one of those really devoted to you. But I am preparing myself spiritually to depart from this vale of tears, and I feel, toward you, toward the Party, toward the cause as a whole nothing but great and boundless love. I embrace you in my thoughts, farewell forever, and think well of your unhappy N. Bukharin.

  This letter gives us the final key to the trials. It tells us everything. No, Stalin had not promised to pardon him. Bukharin went on hoping, but the Boss was silent. Bukharin had consented to everything, endlessly professed his love for his torturer, and the Boss had remained silent.

  So we see Bukharin, the Party’s greatest theoretician, voluntarily inventing a rationale for the trials on Stalin’s behalf—“the great and bold” political idea behind a general purge—although he did not know whether there really was such a thing. To have acted simply out of fright would have been too disgraceful. And so he cooperated to the full with his interrogator, although the God Stalin promised nothing. We must try to understand the mentality of this Russian intellectual: the upright liar, the helpless strongman, the noble scoundrel, the bold coward—and at the same time immensely talented even in his humiliation. Incapable of saying, “I simply dread the wrath of these hideously cruel people,” he has to invent a “great idea” to justify his behavior. How well I understand and—yes—love him. For I too am a child of fear. My whole conscious life has been lived in that land of fear. Have pity on me. “You, who know me so well, will understand.”

  Yes, Stalin knew them all so well. Which was why he had devised the trials.

  “THE FORTUNES OF INDIVIDUALS ARE TRANSIENT AND TRIVIAL”

  The Boss granted none of his prostrate enemy’s requests. He allowed Bukharin only to write to his wife immediately before the trial.

  My dear, my precious Annushka, my darling. I am writing to you on the eve of the trial, and I write for a particular purpose, which I underline three times: whatever you read, whatever you hear, however horrible the implications, whatever they say about me, and whatever I say, take it all bravely and calmly. Prepare the family for it, help them, I’m afraid for you and for the others, but above all for you. You must not in any event become embittered, remember always that the great cause of the USSR lives on, that is the main thing, the fortunes of individuals are transient and trivial in comparison with that. A great ordeal awaits you, I beg you, my own, do everything you can, tighten the strings of your soul, but do not let them snap. Don’t talk to anyone unnecessarily about anything. You are nearer and dearer to me than anyone. I implore you by all that was good in our life together to brace yourself by a supreme effort so that you can help yourself and the family to live through this terrible phase. I don’t think my father and Nadya ought to read the newspapers for those few days: let them pretend to be asleep for a while.… If I ask you this believe me that I have arrived at my present state of mind, and this request, through suffering, and that it will all be as great and supreme interests demand that it should be. I am tremendously anxious for you, and if you were allowed to write and give me a few reassuring words on what I have just said some of the weight at least would be lifted from my mind. Please try, my dearest. This is no place to carry on about my feelings, but you know, and will read between the lines, how immense, how profound my love for you is.

  No one was prepared to pass this letter to his wife. Bukharin’s infinitely dear Annushka was already under arrest. Not until she was an old woman, fifty years later, would she be given the letter which her husband had once written to the young and beautiful Anna Larina. For almost half a century her husband’s name was an obscene word in the country which he had helped to found. “Great and supreme interests” demanded that it should be.

  Then came the trial—in March 1938—the last in the series of trials of famous Bolshevik leaders. The work of exterminating Ilyich’s comrades-in-arms was nearing completion. This trial was the climax of the Boss’s thriller. As all storytellers should, he drew all the story lines together and left nothing unexplained. It now emerged that Bukharin and Rykov had collaborated simultaneously with the Trotskyist-Zinovievites, with Tukhachevsky and the other German spies in the high command, with the nationalist underground, and with wreckers in the NKVD represented by Yagoda and his associates. The main organizer of the previous trials, Yagoda, thus became one of the stars of the Bukharin trial. “Murdering doctors” who had allegedly helped him to carry out his “perfidious schemes” were tried with him. These were eminent physicians unfortunate enough to have treated Kremlin leaders—Pletnev, Levin, and Kazakov, among others. The Boss exerted himself to answer all the people’s questions. One of the accused, for instance, was the former People’s Commissar for Agriculture, Chernov, famous for his reign of terror in the countryside during collectivization; the ironical author now invited this enemy of Bukharin’s ideas to take part in the trial—side by side with Bukharin. What accounted for the horrors of collectivization? Chernov was contrite and told the court how he had deliberately misinterpreted the correct policy of collectivization on instructions from Bukharin and Rykov! What could account for the unavailability of butter and the continual interruptions in the supply of bread in a country of victorious socialism? This was the cue for Zelensky, head of the Central Council of Cooperatives, to confess: it was all caused by acts of sabotage which he had carried out on the instructions of the rightists.

  There is a widely reported story that the Boss watched the trials—that behind one of the heavily curtained windows overlooking the platform in the hall, one could occasionally see puffs of smoke from his pipe rising behind the cloth. It was of course quite possible. The chief producer ought to see how the show is going. One weakness of previous spectaculars had been the suspicious readiness of the accused to agree with every charge against them, and it was evidently in recognition of this that a few “surprises” were introduced into the Bukharin trial. N. Krestinsky, a member of the Central Committee in Lenin’s time, suddenly declared, “I do not plead guilty.…
I did not commit a single one of the crimes of which I am accused.” The audience was stunned. But the author saw to it that the sensation was short-lived. On the very next day Krestinsky said, “I ask the court to record my statement that I acknowledge myself to be completely and utterly guilty.… Yesterday, in a moment of false shame caused by finding myself in the dock, I was incapable of telling the truth.”

  Bukharin also exerted himself at the trial and thoroughly revised a chapter of history. Lenin’s favorite told the court how in order to obstruct the Brest treaty, he had been ready to cooperate with the Left SRs in arresting his beloved Lenin. Bukharin not only called himself a despicable fascist but carried out the promise in his letter and stoutly defended the authenticity of the trials against Western critics. But he could not sustain his role. As the trial went on the Boss saw more and more clearly that Bukharin was playing a double game. Admitting everything was his way of admitting nothing in particular. Stalin also appreciated another crafty move of his “most talented general.” Bukharin suddenly mentioned that he had an understanding with Nikolaevsky, who had undertaken to organize a public protest if there should be a trial. This was the cunning Bukharin’s way of reminding European socialists that he had once organized a campaign in defense of the Left SRs and asking them to repay their debt by organizing a campaign in his defense. The Boss realized yet again that some people never learn. Only the grave would teach them.

  A campaign in defense of Bukharin was, of course, organized, but times had changed. Some people were suborned by the NKVD, while others believed that Stalin was the last bulwark against Hitler and were afraid of “playing into the hands of the fascists.” As Nikolaevsky wrote, “a number of very influential organs of the Western press suddenly became apologists for Stalin’s terrorist policies.” Romain Rolland, however, did send Stalin a message: “An intellect of the Bukharin type is a treasure for his country. We are all to blame for the death of the chemist of genius Lavoisier, we, the bravest of revolutionaries, who cherish the memory of Robespierre—nonetheless profoundly regret and grieve. I beg you to show clemency.” Stalin did not deign to reply.

  After sentence of death had been passed, the defendants appealed for a pardon. Rykov confined himself to a few formal lines. Bukharin, of course, went into much greater detail, but ended with the words “On bended knee before my Motherland, my Party, my people and its government, I plead for forgiveness.” The interrogators evidently told them that petitions were not enough. They had to work a bit harder. So the next day, March 14 Bukharin wrote another, very long petition: “I have mentally disarmed and have rearmed myself in the new, socialist style.… Give this new, this second Bukharin a chance to grow—we’ll call him Petrov if you like. This new man will be the complete opposite of the one who has died. He has been born already, give him the chance to do some sort, any sort, of work.” He had reverted to his favorite romantic notion. Shoot Bukharin, he must be shot in the name of Great Interests—but let me go on living under the name of Petrov.

  Yagoda also submitted a petition: “Before the whole people and the Party on bended knees I beg you to forgive me and spare my life.” The interesting thing is that the policeman Yagoda and the aesthete Bukharin both use the words “on bended knees.” This prayerbook language gives the editor of petitions away.

  They came for him. Only then did Bukharin realize that the business of the petitions was merely the final torture—torture by hope. All were executed as sentenced. Friend Koba had not granted Bukharin’s request for the poisoned cup. Instead of dying like Socrates, Bukharin died at the hands of “our people.” They shot him last. Stalin had not forgiven him for his behavior at the trial. And abroad. Nor for his wife. He let him experience the full torment of waiting for death.

  There is an extraordinary feat of proofreading in the President’s Archive: Stalin personally prepared the stenographic record of the trial for publication and edited the speeches, deleting words used by the deceased and writing in others. The fastidious author worked away at his thriller to the very end.

  FREE OF THE PAST

  He had been writing to his mother all this time: “I’m told you are well and in good spirits. Is it true? We are obviously a hardy breed. Keep well, and live for many years, Mama dear.” He knew that it was not true. His mother was sick. Tiflis was a small city, and she had heard about Ordzhonikidze and his brothers. There were arrests every night. Old nationalists as well as the old Bolsheviks who had fought them were doomed to die. Horror gripped the city.

  In that terrible year his mother fell mortally sick. “Greetings, Mama dear. I’m sending you a shawl and some medicines. Show the medicines to the doctor before you take them. It’s for him to decide on the dosage.” In the middle of the red hot summer of 1937 he was informed that “on June 4 at 23:05 after a long and grave illness Ekaterina Georgievna Dzhugashvili died at home in her apartment.”

  This was at the height of the repressions. He knew that Caucasians were skilled in vengeance, and he did not dare go to Georgia for her funeral. This was something else he would never forget: that his enemies had prevented him from saying farewell to his mother.

  Stubborn Keke had departed this life without ever forgiving him for her dear Soso, murdered by the revolutionary Koba. I found among his papers a pathetic list of the things left by the mother of the man who ruled half the world. She had lived the life of a solitary pauper. And died poor, and alone. After her death his letters, which she had carefully preserved, were returned to him.

  Now he was completely free of the past.

  18

  CREATION OF A NEW COUNTRY

  Reading this tedious catalog of never-ending arrests and trials, we are bound to imagine that the country’s state of mind in that terrible year 1937 was one of deep depression. Not a bit of it! The great majority of the population woke up happily to the relentless blare of loudspeakers, sped eagerly to work, participated enthusiastically in the daily public meetings at which their enemies were anathematized, and read skimpy newspaper reports of the trials which showed how very reliable the secret police were. They knew how hard the lot of workers was in the West. They felt pity for persecuted blacks in the United States and for all whose lot it was not to live in the USSR. Our nearest neighbor, in our communal apartment, was a young professor of biology at Moscow University, sharing a single room with his wife, mother, and daughter. He always hummed happily as he stood perusing the newspaper in the queue for the communal lavatory. During the October Revolution holiday the whole family took part in a “demonstration”: they went to Red Square and later told the professor’s paralyzed mother how they had seen Stalin. The old lady was deaf, and they shouted so loud that the whole apartment heard them. Were they afraid of the NKVD? The question would have aroused their indignation. They knew that only enemies feared the NKVD. Did they know about the arrests? Of course they did. Many people they knew had been arrested. But they had subsequently turned out to be enemies. Anyway, arrests took place after midnight. Moscow’s peculiar night life was not something they knew about. It didn’t concern them. At night they slept the sleep of the just. To wake up happily again in the morning, and sing as they stood in line for the lavatory.

  The public trials, with their magnificent ritual of retribution, were one of the distractions from everyday life. As a true Caesar should, Stalin arranged many such diversions for his fortunate fellow citizens. Ruby-red stars, for instance, appeared over the Kremlin, and the country exulted—whole families trooped to Red Square to watch them light up at night. Everyday life resounded with the thunder of marching music, for this was the land of victors. Monarchists, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, Kadets, the White Guard—all beaten by them in the Civil War. And now they were winning peacetime victories. In the space of two or three Five-Year Plans they had caught up with the rest of the world and would soon leave it behind. Every day the papers reported the victory of some champion worker and the country rejoiced. They had vanquished religion. Nothing was left of Ho
ly Russia except its decapitated churches. And at every political trial the Boss’s Chekists were defeating enemies and spies. They had conquered death itself: Ilyich lay incorruptible in his Mausoleum, waiting to receive his fellow citizens. Every day Stalin presented the inhabitants of the world’s first socialist state with some new victory. The aviator Chkalov and his crew were driven round the city in open cars; they had been the first in the world to fly nonstop from Moscow to the United States. Then there were the annual military and gymnastic parades on Red Square. And finally the ceremonies in honor of the greatest victors of all—the heroes of labor.

  In 1935 when Stalin was launching the “wrecker” trials, he had arranged for the “discovery” of a miner able to produce an enormous quantity of coal; the miner would, moreover, have to dig at a mine where intellectuals engaged in sabotage would inevitably obstruct his heroic labor. This was the Master’s script, and it was quickly put into production. The miner was a nice-looking country boy called Stakhanov. A record-breaking shift was organized, and the Stakhanovite movement spread all over the country. Very high output rates were obtained with unmodified equipment. Industrial accidents were put down to wreckers, who had been found at the mine. The records set by Stakhanovites were supposed to spur on others. From time to time, the Boss organized festive congresses of Stakhanovites. The masses, the collective, were everywhere in evidence. He had created a country of collectives. Everything was collective. You worked collectively, lived collectively in a communal apartment, enjoyed your leisure collectively, perhaps on a collective excursion into the countryside. Holidays were collective—Miners’ Day, Construction Workers’ Day, Metalworkers’ Day. Every profession had its own holiday, so that on that one day its collectives could drink and frolic to their hearts’ content, and—most important—all together.