Stalin himself specialized in reassuring his victims and then arresting them. Early in the year, the wife of one of Ordzhonikidze’s deputies at Heavy Industry was called by Stalin himself: “I hear you’re going about on foot. That’s no good… I’ll send you a car.” Next morning, the limousine was there. Two days later, her husband was arrested.
The generals, diplomats, spies and writers, who had served in the Spanish War, sunk in a quagmire of betrayals, assassinations, defeats, Trotskyite intrigues and denunciations, were decimated even when they had apparently done little wrong. Stalin’s Ambassador to Madrid, Antonov-Ovseenko, an ex-Trotskyite, entangled himself by trying to prove his loyalty; he was recalled, affably promoted by Stalin, and arrested the next day. When Stalin received the journalist Mikhail Koltsov, he teased him about his adventures in the Spanish Civil War, calling him “Don Miguel,” but then asked: “You don’t intend to shoot yourself? So long, Don Miguel.” But Koltsov had played a deadly game in Spain, denouncing others to Stalin and Voroshilov. The “Don” was arrested.15
Stalin’s office was bombarded with notes of execution from the regions: a typical one on 21 October 1937, listed eleven shot in Saratov, eight in Leningrad then another twelve, then six in Minsk then another five… a total of 82. There are hundreds of such lists, addressed to Stalin and Molotov.16
On the other hand, Stalin received a stream of miserable cries for help. Bonch-Bruevich whose daughter was married into Yagoda’s circle, insisted: “Believe me, dear Joseph Vissarionovich, I’d bring a son or daughter to the NKVD myself if they were against the Party…”17 Stalin’s own secretary from the twenties, Kanner, who had been in charge of his dirty tricks against Trotsky and others, was arrested. “Kanner cannot be a villain,” wrote a certain Makarova, perhaps his wife. “He was friends with Yagoda but who could think the Narkom of Security could be such scum? Believe, Comrade Stalin, that Kanner deserved your trust!” Kanner was shot.
Often the appeals were from Old Bolsheviks who had been close friends, such as Viano Djaparidze whose tragic letter read: “My daughter’s been arrested. I cannot imagine what she could have done. I ask you dear Joseph Vissarionovich to ease the terrible fate of my daughter…”18
Then he received letters from doomed leaders desperate to save themselves: “I am unable to work, it’s not a question of Party-mindedness, but it’s impossible for me not to react to the situation around me and to clear the air and understand the reason for it… Please give me a moment of your time to receive me…” wrote Nikolai Krylenko, the People’s Commissar of Justice no less and signer of many a death sentence. He too was shot.19
Yezhov was the chief organizer of the Terror, with Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov as enthusiastic accomplices. But all the magnates had the power over life and death: years later Khrushchev remembered his power over a junior agronomist who crossed him: “Well of course I could have done anything I wanted with him, I could have destroyed him, I could have arranged it so that, you know, he would disappear from the face of the earth.” 20
21. THE BLACKBERRY AT WORK AND PLAY
Stalin received Yezhov 1,100 times during the Terror, second only to Molotov in frequency—and this only counted formal appointments in the Little Corner. There must have been many meetings at the dacha. The archives show how Stalin noted down those to be arrested in little lists to discuss with the Blackberry: on 2 April 1937, for example, he writes in his blue and red pencils to Yezhov a list of six points, many ominous, such as “Purge State Bank.”[115] Sometimes Stalin gave him a lift home to his dacha.1
Yezhov followed a punishing schedule of work, intensified by the terrible deeds he supervised and the pressure, from both above and below, to arrest and kill more: he lived the Stalinist nocturnal existence and was constantly exhausted, becoming paler and nervier. We now know how he worked: he tended to sleep in the morning, dine at home with his wife, meet his deputy Frinovsky for a drink at their dachas—and then drive to Butyrki or Lubianka to supervise the interrogations and tortures.2 Since Yezhov had been in the top echelons of the Party for about seven years, he often knew his victims personally. In June 1937, he signed off on the arrest of his “godfather” Moskvin and his wife, whose house he had often visited. Both were shot. He could be brutal. When Bulatov, who had run a CC Department alongside Yezhov and had visited his home, was being interrogated for the fifth time, the Commissar-General appeared through a door in the walclass="underline" “Well, is Bulatov testifying?”
“Not at all, Comrade Commissar-General!” replied the interrogator.
“Then lay it on him good!” he snapped and departed. But sometimes he clearly found his job difficult: when he had to witness the execution of a friend, he looked distressed. “I see in your eyes that you feel sorry for me!” said the friend. Yezhov was flustered but ordered the executioners to fire. When another old buddy was arrested, Yezhov seemed moved but drunkenly ordered his men “to cut off his ears and nose, put out his eyes, cut him to pieces,” yet this was for show: he then chatted to his friend late into the night but he too was shot. The Politburo greatly admired Yezhov who, thought Molotov, “wasn’t spotless but he was a good Party worker.”3
Sometimes, amid all the murder and thuggery, Yezhov showed his old side. When he received Stalin’s doctor, Vinogradov, who had to testify in the upcoming Bukharin trial against his own teacher, Yezhov tipsily advised him: “You’re a good person but you talk too much. Bear in mind that every third person is my person and informs me of everything. I recommend you talk less.”4
The Commissar-General was at his peak. On holidays, Yezhov was filmed strolling through the Kremlin, laughing with Stalin while absurdly smoking what appears to be a very big cigarette. During the long November 6th speeches at the Bolshoi Theatre, US Ambassador Davies watched “Stalin, Voroshilov and Yezhov obviously whispering and joking among themselves.” Pravda hailed him as “an unyielding Bolshevik who without getting up from his desk, night and day, is unravelling and cutting the threads of the Fascist conspiracy.” Towns and stadiums were named after him.[116] For the Kazakh “bard” Dzhambul Dzhabaev, he was “a flame, burning the serpents’ nests.”5
He and Yevgenia now lived luxuriously in a dacha, with the usual cinema, tennis court and staff, at Meshcherino near Leninsky Gorky where many leaders had their homes. They had adopted a daughter, Natasha, an orphan from a children’s home. Yezhov was tender, teaching her to play tennis, skate and bicycle. In the photographs, he stands next to his friends, hugging Natasha like any other father. He spoiled her with presents and played with her on his return from work.
When Yezhov began to feed foreign Communists and returned émigrés into the meat grinder, he received an appeal from an anxious, pretty and very pregnant Russian émigré named Vera Trail, who was the daughter of Alexander Guchkov, the pre-revolutionary moderate conservative. She received a call after midnight.
“Kremlin speaking. The Comrade Commissar will see you now.” A limousine took her into the Kremlin where she was led into his long, dimly lit study with a green lampshade. The aphrodisiac of power working its wonders, she immediately admired his “finely chiselled face,” his “brown wavy hair and blue eyes—the deepest blue I’d ever seen” and his “small graceful slender hands.” She mentioned a list of friends, mainly writers, who had been arrested. He was acutely perceptive, “a marvellous listener.” Blackberry dismissed his guards to receive her: “I certainly don’t make the habit of receiving total strangers unprotected.”
115
Yezhov replied in black: “In addition to the copy of Uzakovsky’s report sent to you, I sent another one of the 7th Division of GUGB [State Security] about the activities of Chinese-Trotskyites. Yezhov.”
116
His huge portraits were borne past the Mausoleum on all the State holidays. The pun on the resemblance of his name to the “steel gauntlet” had now spawned vast posters showing his iron grip “strangling the snakes” with the heads of Trotsky, Rykov and Bukharin. The other Yezhovite slogan read: “