The original source for the accusations against Stalin regarding Kirov seems to have been an anonymous ‘Letter of an Old Bolshevik’ published in 1937.[244] It transpired that the ‘Old Bolshevik’ was a Menshevik, Boris Nicolaevsky, who claimed that his information came from Bukharin when the latter was in Paris in 1936. In 1988 Bukharin’s widow published a book on her late husband, in which she denied that any such discussions had taken place between Bukharin and Nicolaevsky, and considered the ‘Letter’ to be a ‘spurious document’.[245]
In 1955 the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party commissioned P N Pospelov, the Secretary of the Central Committee, to investigate Stalinist repression. It had been the opinion of the party by this time that Stalin had been behind the murder of Kirov. Another commission of enquiry was undertaken in 1956. Neither found evidence that Stalin had a hand in the Kirov killing, but Khrushchev did not release the findings. Former foreign minister Molotov remarked of the 1956 enquiry: ‘The commission concluded that Stalin was not implicated in Kirov’s assassination. Khrushchev refused to have the findings published since they didn’t serve his purpose’.[246] As recently as 1989, the USSR was still making efforts to implicate Stalin, and a Politburo Commission headed by A Yakovlev was set up. The two year enquiry concluded that: ‘In this affair no materials objectively support Stalin’s participation or NKVD participation in the organisation and carrying out of Kirov’s murder’.[247] The findings of this enquiry were not released either.
Dr J Arch Getty writes of the circumstances of the Kirov murder that the OGPU and the NKVD had infiltrated opposition groups and there had been sufficient evidence obtained to consider that the so-called Zinovievites were engaged in dangerous underground activity. Stalin consequently regarded this group as being behind the assassin, Nikolayev. Although their former followers were being rounded up, Pravda announced on December 23, 1934 that there was ‘insufficient evidence to try Zinoviev and Kamenev for the crime’.[248] When the trial against this bloc did occur two years later, it was after many interrogations, and was therefore no hasty process. From the interrogations relative to the Kirov assassination, Stalin found out about the continued existence of the Opposition bloc that focused partly around Zinoviev. Vadim Rogovin, a Professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote that Kamenev and Zinoviev had rejoined Trotsky and formed ‘the anti-Stalinist bloc in June 1932’, although Trotsky had maintained to the Dewey Commission and subsequently, that no such alliance existed and that he had nothing but contempt for Zinoviev and Kamenev. Rogovin, a Trotskyite academic having researched the Russian archives, stated:
Only after a new wave of arrests following Kirov’s assassination, after interrogations and reinterrogations of dozens of Oppositionists, did Stalin receive information about the 1932 bloc, which served as one of the main reasons for organizing the Great Purge.[249]
Hence, the primary reason for the Moscow Trials and the purge of the Opposition was found by the most recent research of Dr Rogovin, a pro-Trotsky academic, to be valid.
In 1934 Yakov Agranov, temporary head of the NKVD in Leningrad, had found connections between the assassin Nikolayev and leaders of the Leningrad Komsomol at the time of Zinoviev’s authority over the city. The most prominent was I Kotolynov, whom Robert Conquest states ‘had, in fact, been a real oppositionist’.[250] Kotolynov, a ‘Zinovievite’, was among those of the so-called ‘Leningrad terrorist centre’ found guilty in 1934 of the death of Kirov. The investigation had been of long duration and the influence of Zinoviev’s followers had been established. However, there was considered to be insufficient evidence to charge Zinoviev and Kamenev.[251]
In 1935 other evidence came to light showing that Zinoviev and Kamenev were aware of the ‘terrorist sentiments’ in Leningrad, which they had ‘inflamed’.[252] While several trials associated with the Kirov killing took place in 1935, in 1936 sufficient evidence had accrued to begin the first of the so-called Moscow Trials of the ‘Trotsky-Zinoviev Terrorist Centre’, including Trotsky and his son Sedov, who were tried in absentia. The defendant Sergei Mrachovsky testified that at the end of 1932 a terrorist bloc was formed between the Trotskyites and the Zinovievites, stating:
That in the second half of 1932 the question was raised of the necessity of uniting the Trotskyite terrorist group with the Zinovievites. The question of this unification was raised by I N Smirnov… In the autumn of 1932 a letter was received from Trotsky in which he approved the decision to unite with the Zinovievites… Union must take place on the basis of terrorism, and Trotsky once again emphasised the necessity of killing Stalin, Voroshiloy and Kirov… The terrorist bloc of the Trotskyites and the Zinovievites was formed at the end of 1932.[253]
Despite the condemnation that such testimony has received from academia and media, this accords with the relatively recent findings of the Trotskyite academic Professor Rogovin, and the letter from Trotsky sent to Radek et al, in 1932, referred to by J Arch Getty. The Kirov investigations, which were a prelude to the Moscow Trials, were carefully undertaken. When there was still insufficient evidence against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev et al, this was conceded by the party press. When testimony was obtained implicating the leaders of an Opposition bloc, this testimony has transpired to have conformed to what has come to light quite recently in both the Kremlin archives and the Trotsky papers at Harvard.
The reality of the Opposition bloc in relation to the Moscow Trials was the theme of a lecture by Professor Rogovin at Melbourne University in 1996. The motive of Rogovin was to present Trotskyism as having been an effective opposition within Stalinist Russia, and therefore he departs from the usual Trotskyite attitude of denial, stating:
…This myth says that virtually the entire population of the Soviet Union was reduced to a stunned silence by the terror, and either said nothing about the repression, or blindly believed in and supported the terror. This myth also claims that the victims of the repression were completely innocent of any crimes, including opposition to Stalin. They were, instead, victims of Stalin’s excessive paranoia. Since there was no serious opposition to the regime of Stalin, according to this myth, the victims were not guilty of such opposition.[254]
Rogovin alludes to anti-Stalinist leaflets that were being widely distributed in the USSR as late as 1938, calling for a ‘struggle against Stalin and his clique’. Rogovin also states that there was much more to the Opposition than isolated incidents of leaflet distribution:
Of course these are isolated incidents, but prior to the unleashing of the Great Terror there was a much more widespread, more serious, and well-organised opposition to Stalinism as a regime which had veered ever more widely away from the ideals of socialism.
245
Anna Larina Bukharina, Nezabyvaemoe (Moscow, 1989); This I Cannot Forget (London, 1993), 276.
247
A Yakovlev, ‘O dekabr’skoi tragedii 1934’, Pravda, 28th January, 1991, 3, ‘The Politics of Repression Revisited’, in J Arch Getty and Roberta T Manning (editors), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (New York, 1993), 46.
248
J Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered: 1933-1938 (Cambridge; 1985), 48.
253
Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre (Moscow, 1936), 41-42.
254
Vadim Rogovin, ‘Stalin’s Great Terror: Origins and Consequences’, lecture, University of Melbourne, May 28, 1996. World Socialist Website: http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/1937/lecture1.htm