The events that followed showed that the agreement was simply a Chekist trick. Agranov immediately received Commissar Dzerzhinsky’s approval to finish the Tagantsev case.87 After Tagantsev’s following two-day interrogation, additional mass arrests began in Petrograd on July 31.
The Russian Physical Chemistry Society tried to save the arrested chemists Mikhail Tikhvinsky, Aleksandr Gorbov, and Boris Byzov. In a letter to Lenin, the society characterized the arrested chemists as “outstanding specialists in the most important branches of chemistry and chemical technology.”88 They asked for “an urgent interrogation and the release of the arrested.” Only Byzov was helped by the letter. He escaped death but was condemned to two years’ forced labor. Lenin was extremely irritated by the letter. On September 3, 1921 (i.e., after Tikhvinsky had already been shot), he wrote a note on the letter: “To Comrade Gorbunov [Lenin’s secretary and later permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences]: Send an inquiry to the VCheKa. Tikhvinsky was not arrested ‘accidentally’: Chemistry and the counterrevolution do not exclude each other.”89 After the personal intercession of Maxim Gorky, Gorbov was also released. As a result of an appeal by the geologist and paleontologist Nikolai Yakovlev to Lenin, the three geologists V. Yavorsky, N. Pogrebov, and P. Butov were released.90
All the others were shot between August 24 and 29 near Ivanovskaya Station, not far from Petrograd. The description of the execution given in an official publication in 1922 reminds one of the work of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen:
The arrested were brought during the night before daybreak. They were forced to dig a pit. When the pit was half-done, [the Chekists] ordered the arrested to take off their clothes. The arrested started to scream for help. A group of the doomed was pushed into the pit and [the Chekists] began shooting. The rest of the arrested were forced to step down on the top of corpses and were killed the same way. After this the pit, in which still living wounded victims groaned, was covered with earth.91
The VCheKa’s action was undertaken to terrify the Russian population, especially the intelligentsia. But the result was the opposite. According to Academician Vernadsky, the published list of names of the victims “had a shocking effect and produced not a feeling of fear, but of hatred and contempt” against the Bolshevik regime.92 Academy president Aleksandr Karpinsky, who had a reputation for loyalty to the Bolsheviks, sent Lenin a bitter letter in which he openly protested against the regime. He never again confronted the authorities so strongly as in the letter dated November 21, 1921:
Dear Vladimir Il’ich:
…I… can see how these events [arrests and executions] provoked a deep moral indignation because of their unjustified cruelty which was so poorly motivated and is harmful to our country and real international interests. The execution of scientists, …for instance, Prof. Lazarevsky or Prof. Tikhvinsky, who, according to the opinion of his colleagues, was not involved in any political activity, caused an irretrievable blow not only to his relatives, but to his numerous former and current pupils. Therefore, it creates inevitably hatred to the current regime, under which a group of persons not controlled by the highest state authorities can decide the fate of many citizens, extremely important for the state, without any elementary guarantees of justice. The majority of people understand that the only goal of the events was to terrify [citizens]. But you, with your life experience, know that such kind of a terror does not lead to this goal. On the contrary, giving a [human] life no value, it [the terror] can result in such events which will shake our already wretched, suffering country again and again.
The whole world sees you as the Head of the modern Russian State, and you know better than I which measures should be taken to protect your name and the state from new threatening troubles.
Lenin did not answer the letter. The original has Lenin’s note: “To Comrade Gorbunov: Put this into the archive.”94 The terror continued. More people were arrested, mainly accused of being connected with the British and French secret services.95 In autumn 1921, twenty-five more people were shot as members of the PBO “plot.”96 On December 21, 1921, the Sovnarkom issued a special Resolution on Political Control in which the GPU was put in charge of secretly registering all former noblemen, industrialists, merchants, priests, and potentially anti-Soviet representatives of the intelligentsia.97
After the Tagantsev case, at the beginning of 1922, Lenin concluded that it was necessary to send to exile “the writers and professors who are helping the counterrevolution.”98 The deportation was under the control of the Special Bureau in Charge of Administrative Exile of Anti-Soviet Elements and Intelligentsia. Created in November 1922 within the Secret Operational Directorate of the GPU, it existed for approximately four months99 and was headed by the specialist on intelligentsia, Yakov Agranov. Georgii Prokofiev, whose name we will encounter again in the Vavilov case (Chapter 4), was appointed deputy chairman of this bureau. A special Commission of the Politburo, headed by Dzerzhinsky’s deputy Iosif Unshlikht, approved lists of names created by the VCheKa.
In July–August 1922, the GPU prepared the first list of names for the Politburo meetings. At first the lists of names were scrutinized by the special Commission of the Bolshevik (Communist) Party Central Committee.100 On August 18, 1922, Unshlikht reported personally to Lenin:
According to your order, I’m sending you the lists of names of the intelligentsia in Moscow, Peter [i.e., Petrograd], and the Ukraine, approved by the Politburo. The operation was conducted in Moscow and Peter from the 16th to 17th, and in the Ukraine, from the 17th to 18th, respectively. Today the Moscow public was informed about the deportation abroad and they were notified in advance that the unauthorized return to the RSFSR [Russian Federation] would be punished by being shot to death… I’ll send you the information about the deportation daily. (Bold in original)101
On August 31, 1922, the lists were published in Pravda under the title “The First Notification in Advance.”102 The short article pronounced: “On the decision of the State Political Directorate (GPU), the most active counterrevolutionary elements among professors, doctors, agronomists, and writers were sent to exile to the northern regions. A part of them have been deported abroad.” In November 1922, the deportation of more than 300 scientists, philosophers, and writers from Russia started. Among them there were historian Sergei Melgunov, condemned at the Tactical Center trial, and the famous philosopher Semyon Frank, an uncle of the biophysicist Gleb Frank, whom we will meet in the following chapters. Many of those expelled were sent abroad against their will.103
CLASS SELECTION
After Tagantsev’s case, the academy was left to rest in peace for a while. The new regime was more concerned with the situation at the universities. The political activity of students had been a constant problem of the tsarist regime. Now the Bolsheviks were facing the same problem. They needed professors loyal to the regime in order to create a new type of intelligentsia through the education of students from the worker and peasant classes only.