The Kirov and Kremlin Affair investigations were now running in parallel. In Leningrad on March 10, Draule was tried and executed, along with her sister and brother-in-law; there was no public announcement.264 The next day, a secret NKVD circular observed that enemies had been smashed mercilessly but as a result had “gone deep underground,” so operatives had to dig deeper to find them.265 In Moscow, in further testimony (March 11), Nina Rozenfeld was said to have attributed Nadya Alliluyeva’s death to differences over party policy, while complaining about the removal of Zinoviev and Kamenev and a lack of democracy. Rozenfeld happened to be the former wife of Lev Kamenev’s brother Nikolai, and their son, Boris N. Rozenfeld, was labeled a Trotskyite.266 Nikolai Kamenev had been arrested, and found to have painted watercolors of Stalin. Finally, Lev Kamenev was interrogated (March 21) and asked about his brother, who Lev was told had confessed to planning to kill Stalin. Lev Kamenev said that after the arrests of the Zinoviev followers Ivan Bakayev and Grigory Yevdokimov in the wake of the Kirov murder, an agitated Zinoviev had come to him expressing fears of an action like Germany’s Night of the Long Knives against him and others. Stalin circulated the document to Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Yezhov, writing, “Idiotic interrogation of Kamenev.”267
Stalin had the politburo approve by telephone poll a secret party circular absolving Yenukidze of knowing of plans to assassinate the dictator, but deeming him to have been used by the class enemy. His demotion to the South Caucasus was judged too light a punishment.268 Gorky was following press accounts of the Kremlin Affair. “What is striking is not so much the behavior of Yenukidze, but the shameful indifference to this behavior of the party-ites,” he wrote ingratiatingly to Stalin (March 23, 1935). “Even the non-party people long ago knew and spoke about how the old man was surrounded by nobles, Mensheviks, and, in general, shitty flies.” Gorky asserted that the strangely well-informed émigré Socialist Herald got its inside information from Yenukidze’s staff. “The closer we get to war, the stronger will be the efforts of these jokers of all suits to try to assassinate you, in order to decapitate the Union,” Gorky stated in his letter, which Stalin circulated to the politburo. “This is natural, for the enemies see welclass="underline" there is no one who could take your place. With your colossal and wise work, you have inculcated in millions of people trust and love to you—that’s a fact. . . . Take care of yourself.”269
Also on March 23, after protracted negotiations, the Soviets sold the Chinese Eastern Railway to Manchukuo for the convertible currency equivalent of 140 million yen, a fraction of its market (let alone strategic) value.270 (Stalin’s regime left behind a network of undercover agents.) On the same day, the politburo decreed that the payment would be used for more equipment purchases in the United States, Britain, and Germany for Moscow’s ZIS Factory, which manufactured heavy trucks and, soon, luxury sedans.271 Chinese patriots said the railroad was not the Soviets’ to sell, and the Nationalist government in Nanking lodged an official protest. Chiang Kai-shek had opened semiofficial negotiations for a friendship treaty with Japan’s representative, who proposed a Sino-Japanese alliance. As a dedicated anti-Communist, Chiang would have been a natural ally of Japan (as well as Germany) against the Soviet Union.272 But “Chiang Kai-shek did not go for this,” the Soviet chargé d’affaires in China had reported of the alliance proposal. Chiang did raise the Japanese legation to the status of an embassy, and the two countries announced an exchange of ambassadors. This provoked anti-Japanese protests in Tientsin and Peking. Japan, leaping on the “insult” of the protests, had its garrison in Tientsin expel the Chinese Nationalist authorities and soldiers from Hebei province, and then from the Chahar province of Inner Mongolia, as it spread its control over northern China. Japan would also ramp up pressure on the Soviet satellite Outer Mongolia.273 The Soviet chargé d’affaires, in the same report about Chiang, warned that another faction in the Nanking government “favors an alliance” with Japan.274
JOYRIDE
On April 22, 1935, after concluding meetings in the Little Corner at 7:00 p.m., Stalin went downstairs to his apartment for supper. It was the birthday of Svetlana’s governess, and the relatives had come by. Stalin was said to be in a good mood. During the toasts, Svetlana said she wanted to ride on the new Moscow metro. Her governess, Maria Svanidze, and others were to accompany her and Vasily; Kaganovich sent the party with his deputy. Suddenly Stalin said he wanted to go, too. Molotov was phoned to join. “Everybody was terribly concerned,” Svanidze wrote in her diary. “There was a lot of whispering about the danger of such an outing without proper preparation.”
A now pale Kaganovich suggested that they wait until midnight, when the metro shut down. Stalin insisted they go immediately. They drove in three cars to Moscow’s Crimea Square and descended into the station, waiting for what turned out to be twenty minutes; a train arrived already packed. Workers decoupled the car with the motor and Stalin’s group was off, to Hunters’ Row, the station closest to the Kremlin, where he inspected the station and the escalator; onlookers erupted. Stalin ended up surrounded by well-wishers. Bodyguards and police had arrived and tried to bring order. The crowd smashed an enormous metal lamp. Svanidze was nearly smothered against a column. Vasily was scared for his life. Svetlana was so frightened, she stayed in the train car. We “were intimidated by the uninhibited ecstasy of the crowd,” Svanidze wrote. “Iosif was merry.”
This was an unstaged moment catalyzed by his daughter. Stalin reboarded, traveling to the end of the line, Sokolniki, where he was supposed to get into a waiting automobile, but he decided to stay on board and return to Smolensk Square, where no vehicles were waiting (the train beat them). He and his entourage went on foot toward the Arbat as rain descended and puddles formed. A car finally arrived. Svetlana and Vasily were taken to the Kremlin apartment, where Vasily “threw himself on the bed and cried hysterically.” Stalin headed to the Near Dacha. Evidently, his obsession with possible assassination was in abeyance that evening: regular passengers had been allowed to ride in the train carriage with him from Hunters’ Row.275 “Iosif smiled affectionately the whole time,” Svanidze wrote in her diary. “I think that, despite all his sobriety, he was touched by the people’s love and attention to their Supreme Leader. . . . He once said about the ovations offered to him that people need a tsar, that is, someone to revere and in whose name to live and labor.”276
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COULD STALIN HAVE MURDERED HIS CLOSEST FRIEND? He was capable of anything.277 But who, precisely, would have carried out that mission for him? Medved, who was incompetent, and would himself go to his grave suspecting that Yagoda had organized the murder on Stalin’s behalf?278 Zaporozhets, who broke his leg, took no part in any operational matters after September 1934, and had left town on an extended holiday in the weeks leading up to the critical deed? Borisov, a near invalid who had gotten his bodyguard job only because he was of working-class origin and, for a time, had been a night watchman and was a faithful dog to Kirov? A mystery second gunman in the corridor, who eluded every single witness, as well as the lockdown imposed after the shots were heard? There is no evidence whatsoever that Stalin killed Kirov (despite the work of several commissions under Khrushchev aimed at discrediting the dictator). And there is copious evidence, recorded right before and after the assassination, that Nikolayev did it, and managed to pull it off because of his determination and shoddy NKVD security practices that were, ultimately, traceable to Kirov himself.279 Nikolayev had motive, and opportunity.280 He roiled with grievance and summoned resolve from revolutionary terrorist history and Soviet ideals of a workers’ state and social justice. He plotted out numerous attempts, all of which failed, until finally a combination of planning and luck gave him the chance to fulfill a wish to exact revenge and make history.