[London, 1951], pp. 22–23). However, in a speech in 1948, he admitted and criticized “the desperate actions of the leaders of the Party’s military organization culminating in the attempt at Sofia Cathedral” (p. 203).
5 The Problem of Confession
fn1
We should note, incidentally, that some of the earlier crop of capitulations by “Trotskyites” had been much less abject than those of Zinoviev. Muralov had never made any declaration against the opposition. Ivan Stnirnov’s “capitulation” had been in rather noncommittal terms, and when he met Sedov in Berlin, they had been friendly. Trotsky recognized that Serebryakov’s capitulation, too, was “more dignified than some.”
fn2
The factual side of the confessions, as so often, contained impossibilities—as when the Head of the Congregationalist Church mentioned meetings with a British Vice Consul over a long period when the man concerned had not been in the country.
6 Last Stand
fn1
Kossior, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Chubar, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Andreyev, and Postyshev (Pravda, 28 August 1936).
fn2
In the January 1937 Trial itself, there was to be a curious reflection of this attitude: an engineer formerly sentenced in connection with the Shakhty Trial, Boyarshchinov, was referred to as having become an honest Soviet engineer, killed by the conspirators because he was exposing their wrongful methods of work.
fn3
For example, in
Pravda
of 6 January 1937, a Ukrainian public report is made to all four bodies: to the Central Committee in Moscow, it simply goes to Stalin; to the Central Committee in Kiev, to both Kossior and Postyshev. All this was later to be censured as a personality cult, reflecting years of complacency on the part of Postyshev and his entourage, who as a result had “let in enemies” (
Pravda
, 29 May 1937).
fn4
An early adumbration of the line to be used in the Korean War in the 1950s.
fn5
One difference between Byng’s situation and that of the Soviet industrialists 200 years later is that on his tomb in Southill, Bedfordshire, it was possible at once for his family to erect a monument, with the famous inscription beginning “To the Perpetual Disgrace of Public Justice …”
fn6
Which was by no means a foregone conclusion. Yezhov had given Ulrikh instructions on the sentencing on 28 January: all the accused were to be shot. Stalin must have changed his mind (as he had about the names for trial—Livshits and Turok being added at the last moment) (
lzvestiya TsK KPSS
, no. 9 [1989]).
fn7
Although we may note that the Secretary of the Azov-Black Sea Committee, Malinov, and the head of his Party Organs Department were to be denounced as Trotskyite conspirators (
Pravda
, 5 June 1937).
7 Assault on the Army
fn1
The other “military” full members were Voroshilov and Gamamik.
fn2
Blyukher, Budenny, Tukhachevsky, and Yegorov.
fn3
Stalin also put some of the blame for the Polish debacle on Smilga (John Erickson, The Soviet High Command [London, 1962], p. 99).
fn4
The same is true of vague reports that the idea of a coup occurred to some officers, in particular Feldman, but that none of the senior generals were involved. The other “military conspiracy” mentioned at the Bukharin Trial—that of Peterson, Commander of the Kremlin Guard, who intended a palace coup—is only perfunctorily linked with Tulchachevsky (
Bukharin Trial
, pp. 570, 177); but again, though not implausible, there is no evidence for it.
fn5
Shmidt was being interrogated “nine months before” the June Trial with a view to incriminating Yakir (I. V. Dubinskiy,
Naperekor vetram
[Moscow, 1964], pp. 243ff).
fn6
Who himself remarked that he could always turn a Communist into a Nazi, but could not do the same with a Social Democrat (Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks [New York, 1940], p.
fn7
Indeed, in the occupied countries during the war, too, the Gestapo was in contact with the local Communist Parties, at least in the period before the German—Soviet war. In France, negotiations with the French Communist Party had reached the stage of discussing permission to let
L’Humanite
appear. In occupied Norway, Communist periodicals were briefly allowed. The position was similar in Belgium.
fn8
A minor point is that of the military men, they implicated Tulchachevsky only, and that they are said to have included Stalin’s Ambassador first in Berlin and then in Paris, Surits, who was (by a curious quirk) one of the very few Ambassadors to survive the Purge.
fn9
Shot on 14 June 1938 (
Sovetskaya istoricheskaya entsyklopediya)
.
fn10
“At least,” because that is not to allow for replacements who must have come in: the proportion who had gone through military political schools, compared with that in 1934, had gone down by half. So of the 10,500, the assumption is that some 5,000 were fresh and raw.
8 The Party Crushed
fn1
We are told by a Soviet historian that 90 percent of the members of Provincial and City Committees and Republican Central Committees were liquidated in 1937 and 1938 (Roy Medvedev,
Faut-il rehabiliter Staline?
[Paris, 19691,
P.
42).
fn2
Also a member of the Provincial Committee and Secretary of the Leningrad Trade Unions.
fn3
The vote had been Menshevik, 640,000; Bolshevik, 24,000. The latter had won no seats at all.
fn4
“List 4” executions included the wives of Kossior, Eikhe, Chubar, and Dybenko (
Pravda
, 3 April 1964).
fn5
Petrovsky and Eilche, though not Postyshev, were included in one list (
Pravda
, 2 November 1937).
9 Nations in Torment
fn1
The alphabet is arranged, in imagination, in a square of horizontal and vertical lines. To show a letter, you tap its coordinates in the horizontal and then the vertical.
10 On the Cultural Front
fn1
Landau, long one of Russia’s foremost scientists, has described how he nearly died in prison as a “German spy.” His colleague Peter Kapitsa, with extraordinary bravery, finally persuaded Stalin of his value (
Komsomolskaya pravda
, 8 July 1965).
11 In the Labor Camps
fn1
23 April 1949. This was at a later time, but the conditions described are exactly parallel.
12 The Great Trial
fn1
The Senior Veterinary Surgeon of the Moscow Military District is reported in the Butyrka about this time. He was charged with destroying 25,000 horses of the cavalry reserve by issuing poisoned vaccine and was sentenced to death (R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik,
Memoirs
[London, 1965], p. 310).
fn2
Apart from the other two doctors actually on trial, it may be noted that two more were implicated: Dr. A. I. Vinogradov, of the medical service of the OGPU (
Bukharin Trial
, p. 518), proceedings against whom had been “terminated owing to his death” (ibid., p. 35); and the political Khodorovsky, Head of the Kremlin Medical Administration until 1938, who had presumably not yet ripened (and whose death date was later given as 1940) (
XI s“ezd RKP(b) mart—aprel’ 1922 g. Stenograficheskiy otchet
[Moscow, 1961]).