None of the explanations and detailed refutations given by the two men was of any use – and sometimes they almost lost their way in the jungle of details about meetings, chance encounters, visits to dachas, newspaper offices, conferences, etc. And, indeed, refutation, argument or proofs were not the point. What mattered here was the ritual of exclusion and surrender. Yezhov’s reply, which once again summed up the theory of conspiracy and coup d’état, was followed by a mounting chorus of catcalls and heckling. Mikoian attacked Bukharin’s despair as a ‘tactic of tears’ and the hunger strike as a ‘tactic of threats’. Writing a 100-page screed to the plenum was an intolerable imposition, entirely in Trotsky’s style. In the same way, writing letters to the Central Committee was simply a declaration of war on the Party. Mikoian alternated between the polite and familiar form of address. Bukharin, he said, was trying to exploit the sympathies of Central Committee members. Bukharin’s reply was drowned out by a torrent of words. He asked not to be interrupted and defended his hunger strike as his only recourse in his despair. Bukharin asked why the audience kept bursting into laughter when the situation was in fact very serious. If he refuted points of detail, this was interpreted as ‘legalistic quibbling’. But how else should he defend himself? Stalin interjected that nobody could force him to utter untruths about himself – and to do so would be a crime. When Rykov spoke of suicide, this too was rejected as an attempt at emotional blackmail. The entire audience burst out laughing and mocked him. Nor were they placated when Rykov admitted that he had been insufficiently vigilant. On the contrary, he was accused of pretending to be naïve when in fact he had been engaged in planning acts of terror. If Bukharin met Radek in the offices of Izvestiia, that was referred to as a ‘conspiracy’; if he missed important decisions because he was on vacation in the Pamir Mountains, that was described as an absence with the intention of distracting attention from his conspiracy and providing himself with an alibi. If Bukharin said, ‘I cannot endure this atmosphere’, it was interpreted as blackmailing the Party. And even his hunger strike was mocked: he was said not to be capable of carrying it through and only pretending not to eat. Bukharin was like a ‘squashed, squeaking mouse’.12 He really should stop lecturing the Party and acting the Christ child (‘khristosik’). He was a ‘mediocre actor’, his hunger strike just a theatrical trick. When something went wrong in the People’s Commissariat for Transport, 70 to 80 million people were affected – the plenum believed this was sufficient proof of superbly organized wrecking activities. The plenum rejected as ‘blackmail’ Bukharin’s demand to see evidence of his collaboration with Hitler or that hard and fast data about his conspiratorial activities should be provided, including times and places. Bukharin, driven into a corner, himself resorted to heckling the speaker who accused him of preparing an assassination attempt against Stalin. Everyone waited with baited breath to hear what Valerian Osinskii would say when it was his turn to speak. Osinskii defended his early friendship with Bukharin and confessed his admiration for him as a theoretician at that stage. But he also spoke of his intellectual disagreements with Bukharin. His audience laughed and urged him to get to the point, since he surely did not just have philosophical discussions with Bukharin about the transformation of quantity into quality. Osinskii soon found himself in the firing line and subjected to ridicule. Bukharin was repeatedly driven into a corner, but kept going on the counter-attack – against Semen Budennyi, a political illiterate and an old trooper from the Civil War, against Kliment Voroshilov, the uneducated People’s Commissar for Defence, against people like Emelian Iaroslavskii and Iosif Vareikis, who had plenty of ‘petty bourgeois skeletons in the cupboard’. Bukharin made fun of Budyonny, who understood nothing of the Jesuitical casuistry of which he had accused Bukharin. He stuck to his guns: he had made mistakes, but wrecking activities, rebellion, terrorism, treason – all that was lies and slander. But his audience just burst out laughing. ‘That’s enough of all that. It’s time you went to gaol.’ Rykov rejected the accusation that he had formed a ‘centre party’ as an invention, a myth, a fiction; he had never belonged to any ‘bloc’.
It was Yezhov who had the final word on this item of the agenda. All this simply confirmed his view that the accused were being wilfully obtuse; they were double-dealers who refused to face up to the facts. It was typical of such double-dealers that they should demand ‘proofs’, since of necessity there were no records or programmes and hence proofs. The existence of the centre was demonstrated precisely by its being a perfect conspiracy – i.e. the absence of proofs. The notion that Bukharin was the author of the anti-Stalinist ‘Riutin platform’ was said to be evident from the textual similarities between Bukharin’s writings and the platform. While everyone present was allowed to attack Bukharin verbally, his own protest was rejected.
At the end, a commission was appointed to prepare a resolution that would be presented to the plenum for a vote a few days later. The original votes and the final text have come down to us, and, taken together, they give us a picture of how it was intended to deal with ‘deviationists’ at the inner core of power. There was no dissent in the commission about the wisdom of expelling the two men from the Central Committee and the Party. There were discussions about whether or not they should be handed over to a military tribunal. The breakdown of the votes was as follows:
1 One section of the commission’s members was in favour of shooting them immediately.
2 Others spoke up in favour of sentencing them to ten years’ imprisonment.
3 A third group wanted them handed over to the courts without stipulating a sentence in advance.
4 A fourth group wanted them handed over not to the courts but to the NKVD.
At its evening session on 27 February, the plenum accepted Stalin’s proposal – with Bukharin and Rykov abstaining – to expel Bukharin and Rykov from the Party and to hand them over to the NKVD for further investigation.13 Following the vote, Bukharin and Rykov were arrested and sent to the Lubianka.
These four days were not conceived as a debate about personnel tacked onto the end of the plenum. That debate was the point of the exercise. It was the continuation of the witch hunt that had begun at the December plenum. Members of the plenum had time and opportunity to articulate their thoughts; the actors in the debate had the opportunity to sound out the mood and the balance of forces and to test their own activity. Cohesion was established; the plenum would assemble around its hard core. Everyone had come together in a judicial process that would be reenacted publicly one year later at a further show trial. An example had been made to show how to deal with plenum members who were not yet ready to cast aside all their scruples. This was a good start for the next stage of the plenum, which could now turn its attention to even greater challenges. But the vital step had been taken: a member of their own group had been consigned to the embrace of the executioner.
The shock: ‘universal, free, secret elections’
Zhdanov subsequently informed the plenum that in the coming autumn or winter there would be elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and to Soviets of other levels, in conformity with the new constitution, the ‘Stalin Constitution’, that had been passed in December 1936. The terms of this new constitution were significant. In future elections were to be ‘universal, equal and secret’. This meant, first, the removal of limitations placed on ‘servants of religion’, ‘former White Guards’, the so-called former people, and ‘people who did not earn their living from universally useful labour’. Now all these were to be admitted to the ballot. The so-called lishentsy [disenfranchised], a separate category of persons excluded from the franchise, now ceased to exist under the new constitution. Second, elections were to be equal. The previous electoral imbalance between town and country, between workers and peasants, was eliminated. A peasant’s vote was to have the same weight as a worker’s. This spelled the abolition of the predominance of the towns and the workers. Third, the suffrage was direct. That is to say, votes were cast directly for
candidates to the Supreme Soviet, and not, as previously, indirectly via a four-stage system. Fourth, elections were to be held in secret, whereas previously they were open and involved voting for a list. Henceforth, it would be possible to vote for the different candidates in secret. In addition, referendums would be introduced. That at least was the formal side of the constitution.14
The Party had to adjust to what was for it an entirely new situation. Andrei Zhdanov, member of the Organization Office of the Central Committee, tried to explain to the plenum that it was facing a significant and far-reaching decision, something that, to judge from their reactions, was not evident to many of the members. One discussant – Anna Kalygina – reminded the plenum of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1917, an event whose purely organizational preparations lasted from May to December of that year.15 Mikhail Kalinin, the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, drew their attention to the enormous labour involved in setting up constituencies in such a vast country with its plurality of constitutions.16 And, in fact, the delegates were unprepared to discuss the subject of elections. They had to be expressly invited to speak – they were evidently lost for words. Most of them did not know what elections were. Zhdanov admitted as much, observing that ‘we have no experience of how to conduct universal, secret ballots’.17 They had never even taken part in such elections, let alone organized them – except perhaps internal Party elections, which had increasingly fallen by the wayside in recent years. Many appeared to have been taken by surprise at the suggestion that elections were imminent. It was evident that the delegates were unclear about the extent of the changes in the constitution and now found themselves confronted by its implications. They panicked at the thought that power might slip from their hands in a situation of open competition and free choice. They now began to see non-Party, anti-Party forces and movements springing into life everywhere. While the Party was still dreaming, the enemy had already leapt into action in pursuit of electoral success. The accounts of the Party’s powerlessness and lack of influence in the country are frightening. ‘Keep it in mind that there are 2 million communists in our country, but rather more non-party people’, Zhdanov reminded the delegates.18 Their gaze was fixed on the potential challengers, the potential centres of political influence that might emerge from the undergrowth in the course of the electoral campaign. From the vantage point of the Communist Party, these potential threats were above all the believers and their representatives, the clergy, the deported peasants – the kulaks – who were preparing to return home after serving their sentences and to reclaim their former positions. Further possible opponents came from the ranks of former Party members who had been expelled in recent years, and who in many places were numerically stronger than those who had remained in the Party, and, lastly, the representatives of the former ruling classes and pre-revolutionary parties, who were stirring once again after decades of defeat, repression and passivity. Thus what members of the Central Committee had to say during the plenum – often referring to the results of the census of January 1937 – reveals some of the truth about the actual majorities in the country. They addressed the obvious fact that closing down the churches or mosques by no means implied that the communist anti-God movement had been victorious. On the contrary, that movement had always been the creed of a minority. Church people were active everywhere. Clergy initiated reading groups and organized football matches, while mullahs carried out circumcisions on Young Pioneers.19 Many believers and clergy were enthusiastic about the new constitution and sent congratulatory telegrams to Stalin.20 Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Moscow Party organization, noted a revival of ‘hostile forces’ in Moscow and its environs – in factories, collective farms, institutions and the groupings of former Socialist Revolutionaries, who began to prepare for the elections on the basis of the new constitution. Levon Mirzoian, the Kazakhstan Party secretary, reported that mosques were becoming the centres of religious activity, and that the spiritual authorities had begun to praise the temporal power – once again appealing to the tenor of the new constitution. Iakov Popok, the first secretary of Turkmenistan, pointed to the kulaks returning to their homes after having been through Solovki and other labour and educational camps. Emerging now as ‘honest workers’, they called for rehabilitation and admission to the collective farms. Ivan Kabakov, of the Sverdlovsk Party committee, pointed to the problematic increase of ‘alien elements’ in his region. Aleksei Stetskii of the theoretical journal Bolshevik – and, like him, Stalin – thought there was a real risk that, in an election, the village Soviets might fall into the hands of elements hostile to the Party. In many districts former Party members had seized the initiative and called for people to take part in the elections.21
Faced by the prospect of imminent elections, plenum participants appeared to have grasped the basic weaknesses in Party organization for the first time. In many places the number of people expelled from the Party exceeded the number of members. The cadres of the Godless movement had been disbanded, it was reported, and it had therefore ceased to exist as an organization.22 If anywhere, the Party enjoyed a relatively secure position only in the big factories, but beyond them – 50 to 60 per cent of the population worked in smaller businesses and cottage industries – and among housewives and white-collar workers, it was said that no Party work was being done at all. Nor was any Party work being done among the technical intelligentsia, according to Robert Eikhe of the West Siberian Party organization and Stanislav Kosior, first secretary of the Ukraine Party organization.23 Agitation and propaganda were dull and useless. Mendel' Khataevich, the boss of the Party organization in Dnepropetrovsk, demanded that the Communist Party should once again be turned into a party of combat. Zhdanov even reminded his listeners of the time when the Party had to struggle to survive as an illegal organization! Stalin referred to collective farms where a Party representative would put in an appearance once a year, but said there were also kolkhozes where no communist had ever been seen.24 In short, the delegates began slowly to realize that, if there really were to be ‘universal, free, secret elections’, their own power might well be questioned or even completely wiped out. The idea that the elections were imminent, and that the Party was utterly unprepared for them, filled them with dread.
Audit report: ungovernability and fear of chaos
The picture the plenum sought to project was enhanced by the reports under the agenda item on ‘Lessons from the wrecking activities, sabotage and spying on the part of Japanese, German and Trotskyist agents in the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry and Transport’. Replacing the late Ordzhonikidze, Molotov gave the keynote address. It was an uncompromising summary of the trial against Piatakov and others that had just come to an end. The lesson of the trial could only be the need for increased vigilance, for stressing the importance of the distinction between laxity and irresponsibility on the one hand and wrecking activities and outright sabotage on the other, and for improvements in Party work to further these goals. Lazar' Kaganovich gave a detailed account of conditions in the transport industry. He argued that not every shipwreck, disruption or case of damage could be laid at the door of the Trotskyists. To some extent, inefficiency, casualness, stupidity, poor training, confusion and the constant ebb and flow of the workforce all played their part. The picture was similar in other branches of industry. Sarkis Sarkisov from Donetsk described the situation in the Donbass, Avrami Saveniagin the situation in the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, and Robert Eikhe that in the Kuzbass. Mir Bagirov reported on the oil industry, while Nikolai Antipov gave an overview of the service industry. There were further reports on forestry and wood-processing, the water industry, the state farms, the fishing fleet, the food and canning industry (Anastas Mikoian), the defence sector (Kliment Voroshilov) and internal affairs (Nikolai Yezhov). In this way, every branch of the economy was analysed and illustrated with the aid of everyday but strikingly dramatic descriptions. There were reports of botched sewage trea
tment plants that not only infuriated the population but also triggered epidemics;25 over-reactions, in which factory directors wrongly accused of wrecking activities were saved only at the last moment from being shot;26 self-criticisms that in reality were just so much hot air; and tirades that simply served to drown out true self-criticism and the uncovering of genuine faults. There were reports of confusion and anarchy in planning and execution, of design faults in blast furnaces. As in the case of the earlier show trial, an entire catalogue of wrecking activities was unveiled. In the transport sector there was the ‘lowering of norms for the load capacity of trucks and locomotives’, the ‘intentional reduction of speed limits’, an ‘increasing number of locomotives sent off for service and maintenance’, the ‘overcrowding at rail junctions’, and the ‘failure to make full use of capacity’.27 Furthermore, obstacles were placed in the way of Stakhanovite workers, who were making valiant efforts to raise production rates universally.28 Transport timetables were so poorly coordinated that traffic jams and accidents were inevitable; oil exploration methods were so ineptly implemented that oil production had to be reduced;29 valuable, freshly felled timber was ruined by poor storage methods in the open air or inappropriate transport;30 boats were damaged by being used too early in the season; food chemists produced wrong analyses, leading to food poisoning in the Red Army. The final resolution on this item of the agenda encompassed the entire range of wrecking activities, which in reality were no more than a matter of poor organization. We can easily recognize the typology of ‘crimes’ already familiar from the trials: delaying work, reducing productive capacity, squandering financial resources, unbalanced planning, failure to maintain safety standards and purloining socialist property. The causes too were reviewed once more: rushed execution, short-sightedness, the absence of Bolshevik vigilance, naïvety, excessive red tape in management and an over-lenient attitude towards work discipline.31 The inferences drawn looked above all at ‘raising political standards’, starting with the leadership of the People’s Commissariat and going right down to basic economic units, including monitoring the key workers, who came to be seen as the key factor, as well as fostering young, energetic, technically qualified workers.32
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