Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  The accused had indicated that, while they were under arrest, they had undergone a process of clarification, a reassessment of their values, indeed a total transformation. All of them had had a cathartic experience. Together with Bukharin, Christian Rakovskii gave it the clearest expression:

  No one will deny that arrest and isolation cause people to change their values … And so I stood before myself as my own examining magistrate; I sat in judgement on myself. That is a court whom no one can accuse of prejudice. From my early youth I belonged to the workers’ movement, and where have I ended up? I have ended up by making the most repugnant actions possible through my own actions. I made it easier for the fascist aggressors to prepare for the destruction of culture, of civilization, of all the achievements of democracy, all the achievements of the working class.

  That induced me to give up my obstinacy, my false sense of shame that sprang from amour propre, my fears for my own fate, feelings that are a disgrace for anyone who has ever taken part in the revolutionary movement. I arrived at the conviction that it is now my duty to join the battle against the aggressors, that I should now proceed to unmask myself utterly, and so I declared to the examining magistrate that I would begin to make full and exhaustive statements the very next day. I must declare that the statements I have now made are absolutely complete, honest and exhaustive.25

  The Lubianka: prison as a production site

  Bukharin had re-emerged from obscurity on 2 March 1938 for the first time after almost exactly a year – the trial had even been filmed, but, apart from a brief sequence that was presented in Moscow theatres in a film documentary in 1948, the film has never been shown. He had been taken to the innermost cells of the Lubianka directly from the meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee on 27 February 1937. His archives and library were confiscated during the search of his house and vanished for decades, and perhaps for ever.26 We can only surmise how Nikolai Bukharin spent this year, hovering between life and death – in isolation, ignorant of what happening to his family, separated from his books, sitting in a poorly lighted cell that had almost deprived him of his eyesight, and visited by hallucinations. There were repeated confrontations and interrogations, albeit supposedly not accompanied by physical torture.27 There he was looked after by Lazar' Kogan, an experienced Chekist, originally an anarchist, who had been in charge of the construction works at the White Sea Canal before he became Bukharin’s ‘personal carer’28 in the Lubianka. From his cell Bukharin carried on his struggle for his honour and his life, as well as his family’s. Initially, he categorically refused to respond to the fantastic accusations. On 1 June his resistance was broken – he had evidently been incriminated by the evidence produced in connection with the exposure of the ‘military conspiracy’ – and from then on he strove to ‘negotiate’ with Stalin about the role he was intended to play in the forthcoming trial. This process is reflected in part in the letters he wrote to Stalin from prison on 15 April, 29 September, 14 November and 10 December 1937.29

  But what is truly incredible is what Bukharin accomplished in this year in which he was suspended between life and death. When he was taken to his execution, he left behind in his cell a voluminous body of writing. He possessed the discipline, energy and mental concentration to write four books, manuscripts amounting to some 1,400 typewritten pages. Four books in a single year, all written by a man overshadowed by the prospect of death! That is more than could reasonably have been expected even of such a professional writer and experienced scholar as Bukharin. Prison emerges as a place for reflection under extreme conditions. He had been torn away from life and forcibly silenced. The idea of a stay in prison as a welcome pause, a time for theoretical reflection, for gathering one’s strength – such a thing was not uncommon in the history of Bolshevism. But this prisoner was the prisoner of his own party and doomed to die, without any prospect of being allowed to make ‘a revolutionary’s speech before the court’, without defence counsel and without the presence of the press which had once upon a time served as a powerful sounding-board for the voice of the persecuted. As we can see from his prison writings, Bukharin was able to obtain reading matter, books from the prison library – Lion Feuchtwanger’s book on Moscow, for example, or Sergei Witte’s Memoirs – or else he may have obtained them from Lazar' Kogan personally, the ‘intellectual Chekist’, but broadly speaking he must have succeeded in doing his writing without any scholarly apparatus at his disposal.30

  This may have given him a greater independence and a freedom of thought he had not possessed in his earlier writings, in which he had always tried to impress the world of scholarship with the weight of his learning. The fear of death may not have had a merely paralysing effect; it may also have had a disciplining function. It is even possible that the focal point of violence, a cell in the innermost core of the labyrinth of terror, may have enabled the man imprisoned there to become the most spiritually free and independent man in the whole of Moscow. Bukharin had been plunged from his Kremlin apartment at the centre of power into the depths of impotence and abandonment. In exchange he had been granted the opportunity to see something that can be perceived only by a man who finds himself in the eye of the hurricane. From that vantage point – ‘de profundis’ – Moscow could be surveyed more clearly than from any other.

  He wrote the first piece between March and April 1937. This was Socialism and its Culture, and was essentially the second part of a study he had completed at the time of his arrest, but which had been confiscated, with the title of the Decline of Culture and Fascism.31 In this book Bukharin gives a systematic account of something that had preoccupied him throughout his life: the development of culture in a society free from class antagonisms.32

  In September 1937, seven months after his arrest, Bukharin finished a second manuscript, a cycle of 200 poems with the title Reshaping the World. Almost every day, perhaps at the end of an interrogation, Bukharin wrote down a poem – such as ‘Amor Dei intellectualis’ (Baruch Spinoza) on 13 August 1937, ‘Berlin Barracks’, ‘The Dance of the Women Parachutists’ on 1 July 1937, ‘New York’s Skyscrapers’ on 5 August 1937, ‘The Ironic Lyre’ (after Heinrich Heine) on 14 July 1937, and ‘Sabotage’ on 16 September 1937.33 Only the publication of these poems, which had been written in quick succession, might give us some indication of the importance of this genre for the imprisoned Bukharin. Was it the creation of his own free poetic cosmos under prison conditions? Was it Bukharin’s way of digesting the meagre scraps of news penetrating to his cell from the outside world? Was it a kind of intellectual and aesthetic training programme for survival? At all events, his poetic efforts, like his drawings and caricatures, were the expression of an exceptionally talented, versatile and even artistic nature whose vigour was unimpaired even in gaol.34

  Bukharin’s third manuscript, Philosophical Arabesques, had been started in April and completed on ‘7/8 November 1937, on the days commemorating the twentieth anniversary of a great victory’. He described it as ‘mature’ and thought of it as his most ambitious piece of writing.35 Even the external form must impress, as people who hold the manuscript in their hands must be able to testify.

  The manuscript reveals a firm hand. Not a tremor is to be seen in a single word, a single line. There are hardly any corrections or illegible words, though there are interpolations in the shape of entire chapters that were added at the end of the first version. The 310 pages of the manuscript (divided into 40 chapters) were written by hand with a primitive fountain pen, in small, extremely neat handwriting. They can be read as easily as the printed pages of a book and for this reason can be used as the basis for translation without the usual difficulties of ‘deciphering’.36

  Bukharin was familiar with the subject. He had already ventured onto this terrain in the early 1920s, when philosophical differences of opinion already had political, not to say dissident, implications but did not yet represent a mortal danger. As the underlying motive for the book, Bukharin refers to the need to orientate
oneself at a time of secular crisis.

  Our age is the age of the great crisis of world history. The battle of social forces has reached its climax. It is an apocalyptic age for old women of both sexes. It is the birth of a new world for mankind, an age of great heroism on the part of the class that is bringing change, and a twilight of the gods for the departing, dying order of things. All older values are crumbling and are collapsing. There is a general transformation of habits, norms, ideas, ideologies, and a differentiation and polarization of all material and spiritual powers. Can we be surprised to find philosophy included in this cycle, in this titanic struggle?37

  In form and structure, the manuscript resembles a textbook and provides a curious analogue to Stalin’s Short Course, which was to appear in millions of copies in 1938 and serve henceforth as a catechism of communist doctrines. With his Philosophical Arabesques, Bukharin probably wanted to correct weaknesses in his earlier philosophical writings and pay homage to Lenin, who had always criticized Bukharin as an undialectical thinker. Most importantly of all, however, the Philosophical Arabesques were designed as a preparation for what was about to befall him: they represented an attempt to discover a theoretical explanation for that ‘reconciliation with the process of history’, which had caused him to incur guilt, if not subjectively, then at least ‘objectively’. However, just as there is a language that differs from the language of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit while coexisting with it, so too there is a Bukharin that differs from the Bukharin who appears on the stage of the show trial and coexists with him.38

  Letter to Koba

  Together with a note headed ‘I request that no one else should read this without the permission of J. V. Stalin’, Nikolai Bukharin wrote this letter to Stalin on 10 December 1937, no more than a few weeks before the opening of the third Moscow show trial.

  Joseph Vissarionovich

  This is perhaps the last letter I shall write to you before my death. That’s why, though I am a prisoner, I ask you to permit me to write this letter without resorting to officialese, all the more as I am writing this letter to you alone: the very fact of its existence or non-existence will remain entirely in your hands.

  I’ve come to the last page of my drama and perhaps of my life. I have agonized over whether I should pick up pen and paper – as I write this, I am trembling all over from a thousand emotions stirring within me, and I can hardly control myself. I want to take my leave of you in advance, before it’s too late, while my hand can still write, while my eyes can still see, while my brain somehow still functions.

  In order to avoid any misunderstandings, I will say to you from the outset that, as far as the world at large is concerned: a) I have no intention of recanting anything I’ve confessed; b) I have no desire to make any request of you, nor have I any intention of pleading with you to change matters or divert them from their present course. But I am writing for your personal information. I cannot leave this life without writing to you these last lines because I am in the grip of torments which you should know about.

  Standing on the edge of a precipice, from which there is no return, I tell you on my word of honour that I am innocent of those crimes to which I confessed during the investigation.39

  Having referred to a number of minor errors and misdemeanours, Bukharin went on to speak of what seemed to matter most to him on the eve of his death:

  Permit me, finally, to move on to my last, minor, requests:

  a) It would be a thousand times easier for me to die than to go through the coming trial; I simply don’t know how I’ll be able to control myself. You know my nature. I am no enemy of the Party of the USSR, and I shall do everything in my power, but in this situation my strength is minimal and I am experiencing feelings of agony. I’d get on my knees, forgetting shame and pride, and plead with you not to make me go through with the trial. But this is probably already impossible. I’d ask you, if it were possible, to let me die before the trial. Of course, I know how harshly you look upon such matters.

  b) If I’m to receive the death sentence, then I implore you beforehand, I entreat you, by all that you hold dear, not to have me shot. Let me drink poison in my cell instead. For me, this point is extremely important. I don’t know what words I should summon up in order to entreat you to grant me this as an act of charity. Politically, it won’t really matter, and, besides, no one will know a thing about it. Have pity on me! Surely you’ll understand, knowing me as well as you do. Sometimes I look death openly in the face, just as I know very well that I am capable of brave deeds. At other times, I find myself in such disarray that I am drained of all strength. So if the verdict is death, let me have a cup of morphine. I implore you …

  c) I ask you to allow me to bid farewell to my wife and son. No need for me to say goodbye to my daughter. It will be far too painful for her. It will also be too painful to Nadia [his first wife] and my father. Aniuta [his second wife], on the other hand, is young. She will survive, and I would like to be able to say farewell to her in person. I would like permission to meet her before the trial. If my family sees what I confessed to, they might commit suicide because they won’t have expected anything of the sort. I must somehow prepare them for it. It seems to me that this would be in the interest of the cause and its official interpretation.

  d) If, against all expectations, my life is to be spared, I would like to request (though I would first have to discuss it with my wife) the following: that I be exiled to America for an unspecified number of years. The arguments in favour of this are: I would wage a campaign on behalf of the trials and a mortal war against Trotsky; I would win over large segments of the wavering intelligentsia. I would tactically play the anti-Trotsky and would carry out this programme with great energy and enthusiasm. You could send an expert Chekist with me and, as added insurance, you could detain my wife here for six months until I have proven that I am really punching Trotsky and company on the nose. But if there is the slightest doubt in your mind, then exile me to a camp in Pechora or Kolyma, for 25 years at least. I would organize a university, a provincial museum, technical research stations, etc., institutes, a picture gallery, an ethnographic museum, a museum for animal and plant research, a camp magazine and a newspaper. Settling there with my family to the end of my days, I would carry out pioneering, enterprising, cultural work.

  In short, I would work like a dynamo wherever I am sent. However, to tell the truth, I do not place much hope in this, for the fact that the directives of the February plenum have been changed speaks for itself (and I can see that everything is leading up to the fact that the trial will take place very soon). And so these, it seems, are my last requests. (One final one: my philosophical studies that I still have with me here – I have done a good deal of useful work.)

  Joseph Vissarionovich! In me you have lost one of your most capable generals, one who is genuinely devoted to you. But that is all past. I recall what Marx wrote about Barclay de Tolly, who had been accused of treason: he said it was not necessary for Alexander I to have lost such a faithful servant. It is bitter to reflect on all this. But I am preparing myself mentally to depart from this vale of tears, and there is nothing in me towards all of you, towards the Party and the cause, but a great and boundless love. I am doing everything that is humanly possible. I have written to you about everything.

  I have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s. I have done it all in good time since I do not know how I shall feel tomorrow and the day after. Perhaps, like a neurotic, I shall lapse into such a state of apathy that I shall be unable even to lift a finger.

  But I continue to write, in spite of a headache and with tears in my eyes. My conscience with regard to you, Koba, is clear. I ask you one final time for your forgiveness (only in your heart, not otherwise). For that reason I embrace you in my mind.

  Farewell forever and remember kindly your wretched Nikolai Bukharin.

  10 December 1937

  Enc. Attachment of 7 pages40

  A Moscow child
hood in 1900

  Bukharin sent off this letter to Stalin while writing down his fourth manuscript, which he had begun on 12 November 1937, a few days after the celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution. This was his last text before the trial and hence his final statement, written for himself and preserved for posterity. It is the equivalent of 350 printed pages in length. The first seven chapters were written by mid-January 1938, by which time the show trial was originally supposed to have begun. Its postponement until the beginning of March enabled Bukharin to produce another fifteen chapters. Bukharin called How it All Began (Vremena) a novel, but it is in fact a self-portrait. The conditions under which this lengthy, densely written and attractive text was produced can be inferred from Bukharin’s letter to Stalin of 10 December 1937. A man in a state of mortal anxiety, nearly stupefied by hallucinations and dreams, almost blinded by the relentless glare of the light in his cell, desperate and terrified about the fate of his loved ones, a man who would rather die than be put on show before a court and who, even at the very moment when he was certain that he was doomed, still took refuge in the hope that he might be sent to America in order to demonstrate his anti-Trotsky credentials, or, as an alternative, could beg to be banished to Kolyma, where he would make himself useful building a university, libraries or laboratories, and who therefore beseeched Stalin not to have him shot but instead poisoned, and implored his executioner friend at least to rescue his writings – this man is no more himself or in possession of his wits than in his novel How it All Began.