Desperate, and conscious that he was the victim of a deadly plot, Bukharin then wrote to Stalin on 15 December 1936. Using his Georgian nickname, as in the good old days, Bukharin addressed him as ‘Dear Koba’. He said that he had just read an article in Pravda against the ‘Right’ (i.e. against him) which ‘knocked me off my feet’. The letter ended: ‘I’m perishing because of scoundrels, human scum, loathsome villains. Yours, Bukharin.’
Supposedly directed against anonymous scoundrels, this curse-like tirade fitted Stalin perfectly. It is unlikely that Bukharin, however distressed, did not know who was pulling the strings. Stalin certainly understood that the expression ‘loathsome villain’ was directed at him personally. His vengeful response to Bukharin’s appeals for help and indirect accusations came during a carefully planned ‘spectacle’ – the Central Committee meetings of February—March 1937. The way Stalin conducted these puts one in mind of a half-crazed actor, bent on driving a sane audience (the Central Committee members) into a state of collective insanity and forcing them to share his own fantasies. What he had to say was incoherent. But the aim of the meeting was not only to destroy ‘his’ enemy. In addition, it had a hidden agenda: to test Central Committee members through a barely concealed stratagem. Three versions of the resolution on Bukharin’s ‘guilt’ were to be put to the vote. The first – ‘arrest and consignment of the matter to the NKVD’ – was clearly Stalin’s preference (it betokened a death sentence, possibly preceded by torture); the second involved not proceeding to an arrest, but requiring the NKVD to pursue its investigation; while the third envisaged releasing Bukharin. This was a trap for Central Committee members, as most of them probably appreciated. No one dared declare for the third option, although several did choose the second – and paid with their lives for it.
This is just one small illustration of the incredible nightmare of the purges in 1937–8. ‘Human scum’ is the appropriate term to describe those responsible for this orgy of arrests, show trials, and sentencing without trial, conducted on an unprecedented scale. And there are good grounds for thinking that the events of these atrocious years had been being carefully prepared for a long time, possibly since 1933. As Khlevniuk has indicated,[2] the supposed ‘re-examination of reality’ on the agenda of the Central Committee in February-March 1937 is strongly reminiscent of a point addressed during the Central Committee session in January 1933. Then numerous speakers had said things they virtually repeated in 1937, in the hope of proving their lucidity and vigilance. It seems likely that Stalin was ready in 1933 to declare war on society and, one might add, the party, with the support of his acolytes and repressive apparatuses. But there were probably reasons preventing him (we have suggested some); and he opted for the ‘interlude’ despite his resentment at the ‘termite-like’ methods of his enemies – especially the ‘respectable cereal-growers’ of whom he had spoken to Sholokhov.
PREPARING THE VALIANT CHEKISTS
When it came to preparing the launch of the terror, certain measures were required apart from administrative spring-cleaning like checking the rolls of party members and validating membership cards. Above all, it was necessary to prepare the secret police, its leadership and personnel, for the gruesome task ahead. Ideological and moral inducements were applied along with material incentives. While propaganda extolled their valour, the new Interior Minister Yezhov increased the wages of NKVD functionaries at every level. An NKVD head at republican level received 1,200 roubles a month (as did other higher ranks), while an average worker’s wage was 250 roubles. But the NKVD’s top brass now received up to 3,500 roubles a month. Having previously had access to collective dachas and sanatoria, where they mixed with other party activists, they were now accorded individual dachas and significant bonuses.[3]
The infamous NKVD order no. 00447 of July 1937, approved by the Politburo on 31 July, contained the order to act and an action plan. It singled out two categories of victims and prescribed the punishment to be meted out to them: 75,000 people were to be shot and 225,000 sent to camps. There are different drafts of this order and the figures vary somewhat. But the documents in our possession demonstrate that in the event the ‘norms’ were fulfilled at least twice over. A budget of 85 million roubles was allocated for the operation. The pampering of the NKVD reached an even higher pitch when, in a speech, Stalin bestowed upon his security apparatus the lofty status of ‘armed detachment of our party’.[4] ‘The cult of the NKVD,’ writes Khlevniuk, ‘the special extralegal status of the secret police, attained its apogee.’ Stalin used the heads of the NKVD and rewarded them for their services, while controlling them with an iron hand. He distributed material rewards and severe punishments with equal arbitrariness. Several authors have seen an analogy here with the way that Ivan the Terrible used the oprichnina (his militia) in his struggle against the boyars.
This dual attitude is Stalin all over. Chekists – the historical term of honour that is still used today – were now separated from other party members, including socially, since they had their own dachas, clubs and other leisure facilities. In December 1937, huge ceremonies were held throughout the country to celebrate the glorious tradition of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD. The Kremlin called on regional party committees to organize public trials of ‘enemies of the people’ in agriculture and the NKVD was instructed to ‘unmask’ – in fact, supply – them. Likewise, on the third anniversary of Kirov’s assassination (29 November 1937), Stalin telegraphed local party authorities and ordered them to ‘mobilize party members mercilessly to eradicate Trotskyite–Bukharinite agents’. Khlevniuk concludes that the whole apparatus, as well as the wider society, was in the grip of a truly psychotic hunt for enemies, punctuated by the descent of the secret police, usually in the early hours, to knock at the door, seize their victims, and transport them in sinister black vans to meet their fate.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE NKVD (1935–50)
As we have already indicated, the NKVD’s symbolic incorporation into the party – in other words, its attachment to Stalin personally – elevated it above all other institutions. The party now possessed its own iron guard, its crusaders, on whom Stalin lavished favours and honours. The Stalinist party – especially its own apparatus – itself became a police agency, with the qualification that the secret police deferred exclusively to Stalin and no one else in the party. It was therefore above the party and a powerful weapon with which to bludgeon it. Here an impertinent question is in order: if the chekists were a valiant detachment in the service of morality and ideology, why were its leaders paid ten times more than a worker? The real chekists of the Civil War, who risked their lives, were poorly paid. Was it really necessary to pay those charged with representing the country’s ideological vanguard in cash, material goods and privileges? Lenin would have turned in his grave – had his embalming not prevented him…