The first order of business at the choreographed gathering, though, was Bukharin and Rykov. On the opening evening, Yezhov reported on the accusations of treason. Mikoyan reliably reinforced his points. Bukharin had written a long rebuttal of the press slander against him to the politburo and announced a hunger strike. Now, in a debilitated state, unshaven, wearing a rumpled suit, he was given the floor. He denied the charges but was mercilessly heckled. “Trotsky and his disciples Zinoviev and Kamenev once worked with Lenin, and now these people have reached an agreement with Hitler,” Stalin interrupted. “After all that has happened with these men, these former comrades who have reached an agreement with Hitler in order to sell out the USSR, there are no more surprises in human life. You must prove everything. . . .”66 Three days before the plenum, Bukharin had again abased himself in a letter to Stalin. “I really love you now dearly and with belated love,” he wrote, praising Stalin’s mistrust as a sign of “wisdom.” Bukharin predicted that a still greater age would dawn, with Stalin as the very “world spirit” Hegel had imagined.67
Turar Ryskulov, an ethnic Kazakh candidate member of the Central Committee and the long-standing deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars for the Russian republic, quietly tried to persuade some plenum attendees to come to the defense of Rykov and Bukharin, but he could not manage to do so.68
At the plenum (February 24), Rykov denied the scurrilous accusations and called the mockery of him “a savage thing,” given that he was already effectively condemned to death (he pointed out that others had confessed and been shot anyway). During Rykov’s and Bukharin’s speeches, nearly 1,000 interruptions were recorded. Not one was supportive. Stalin made the greatest number (100), followed by Molotov (82) and Postyshev (88).69 More than half of those present never interjected, but for two more days (February 25–26), speakers took the dais to rip into the rightists. “Bukharin writes in his statement to the Central Committee that Ilich [Lenin] died in his arms,” Yezhov shouted. “Rubbish! You’re lying! Utterly false!” Bukharin responded that “those present when Ilich died were Maria Ilinichna [Ulyanova], Nadezhda Konstantinovna [Krupskaya], and myself”—and turned toward them for confirmation. Neither Lenin’s wife nor his sister said anything. Bukharin continued: “Did I take Ilich’s dead body in my arms, and kiss his feet?” Both women stayed silent.
Stalin intervened at the plenum (February 27) to recommend a seeming middle ground whereby Bukharin and Rykov would not be immediately put on trial, but turned over to the NKVD for further “investigation.” Secret police operatives took Bukharin and Rykov away, the first time anyone had been arrested at a party plenum.70 The pair spent the remainder of the proceedings at the Lubyanka inner prison while Stalin formed a special commission of the plenum to adjudicate their fate.71 Bukharin’s expulsion from the Central Committee and his disposition to the NKVD were duly upheld by the commission, whose members included Mikoyan (chairman), Maria Ulyanova, and Krupskaya.72
Perhaps Stalin might now be satiated? “It must be hoped,” the Stalinist propagandist Yaroslavsky told the plenum, “that we are discussing in the Central Committee of our party the question of betrayal by members and candidate members of the Central Committee for the last time.”73 Such was the naïveté.
With Stalin’s primary aim accomplished, the plenum switched gears. Zhdanov had reported (February 26) on the upcoming elections by secret ballot to party posts (for May), a way to mobilize pressure from below against sitting officials, as well as elections to soviets. “We lack the habits of direct elections and secret ballots,” he admitted. One plenum attendee, trying to convey the immensity of the organizational undertaking, reminded the plenum of the 1917 vote for the Constituent Assembly. Stalin pointed out that the class enemy could be elected, especially given that some collective farms had no Communist party members. “Keep in mind that our country has two million Communists and a ‘bit more’ non-party people,” Zhdanov noted of the scores of millions of non-party adults.74 He even alluded to the days when Bolshevism had had to survive in the underground.75 It was a surreal discussion: no one was forcing the monopoly regime to stage competitive elections by secret ballot.
On the morning of February 28, Molotov, in place of Orjonikidze, delivered the report on sabotage in industry, and ridiculed Orjonikidze’s counterinvestigations that minimized wrecking. Kaganovich, falling in line, presented similar tales of sabotage, though he continued to try to push back ever so gently. “As you can see,” he summarized, “we have had a rather serious cleansing of the ranks of politically dangerous people.”76
February 28 also happened to be Svetlana Stalin’s eleventh birthday. The relatives gathered in the Kremlin apartment without the despot. In her diary, Maria Svanidze, the sister-in-law of Stalin’s first wife, Kato, bad-mouthed the “half-wit” and “idiot” relatives of Stalin’s second wife, Nadya, and the couple’s “lazy” son Vasily, concluding that “the only normal people present” were her, her husband (Alyosha Svanidze), Nadya’s sister-in-law Zhenya, and “Little Svetlana, who makes up for all the rest.” Maria also recorded that Stalin’s elder son, Yakov, from his marriage to Kato, had arrived with his new wife, Judith “Yulia” Meltzer (b. 1911). “She is pretty, older than Yasha—he’s her fifth husband, not counting other relationships—none too bright, little cultured. She trapped him, of course. . . . Too bad for I[osif].”77 (In fact, Stalin’s elder son was her third husband.78) Yakov was now studying at Moscow’s Artillery Academy, but he could never manage to please his father. Be that as it may, two sons whom Stalin deemed disappointing and two dead wives were not the main factors keeping him away from the family scene, despite his fondness for Svetlana. His dislike for busybodies like Svanidze had grown. In any case, he was busy, forcing extirpation of “enemies and spies who had a party card in their pocket.”79
“TRULY A HISTORIC PLENUM!”
Back at the interminable plenum, after a further flogging of industrial wrecking, Yezhov was at the dais again (March 2). He would speak a total of five times. (Molotov spoke thrice.) Now, Yezhov suddenly laced into Yagoda for sheltering spies and traitors at the NKVD, prompting Yagoda to shout denials (“Not true!”). But in the discussion that day and the next, numerous NKVD officials rose to condemn Yagoda, including his old nemesis Yevdokimov. The latter had three turns at the rostrum, and helpfully linked Yagoda to the rightists Bukharin and Rykov. That was precisely the testimony being beaten out of Georgy Molchanov, who until recently had headed the NKVD’s secret-political department and who had been arrested in Minsk (following a demotion to the Belorussian NKVD). “I think,” Yevdokimov thundered, “that matters are not limited to Molchanov alone.” Yagoda: “What, have you gone out of your mind?” Yevdokimov: “We must put Yagoda on trial.”80 One participant asked why Yagoda had not already been arrested. “(Noise in the hall.)”81 This is what a slaughterhouse would sound like if the pigs, cows, and sheep could talk.