Khlevniuk also surmises that the retreat from mass terror resulted from Stalin’s sense that he had attained his prosaic objective: rejuvenating the party’s cadres. (We might note that the pedagogy employed to bring on young talent was rather unusual.) At the Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, Stalin announced that between April 1934 and March 1939 more than 500,000 cadres had been recruited to breathe new energy into state and party administration, particularly at the top levels. At the beginning of 1939, of the 32,899 post-holders forming part of the nomenklatura administered by the Central Committee (from People’s Commissar to party official assigned to important duties by the Central Committee), 15,485 had been appointed in 1937–8. This figure is interesting, for it involves the post-purge cohort: the so-called ‘Stalin promotion’. The rapidity of their advancement was phenomenal, given that they had often not finished their studies. Among them were those who would lead the USSR after Stalin’s death.
After the loss of human life, the heaviest losses were suffered by the economy. Appointed immediately after the terror, new cadres found nothing but empty desks and chairs in their offices: obviously, their predecessors were not present to introduce them to their jobs. Inexperienced, many of the new arrivals were afraid to take the slightest initiative. The purges had destroyed discipline and undermined productivity (even if many in Russia insisted on asserting the opposite). Government agencies were now full of all sorts of morally dubious types. To remedy this situation, some ‘honest specialists’ were rehabilitated (assuming they were still alive) and released from the camps. Among them were military figures – future generals and marshals, scholars, strategy experts, engineers – like Rokossovsky, Meretskov, Gorbatov, Tiulenev, Bogdanov, Kholostiakov, Tupolev, Landau, Miasishchev, and so on. The outstanding ballistic-rockets expert Korolev had to wait until 1944, and many others remained in detention until 1956. But those who regained their freedom in 1939 represented quite a contingent. Some of them were not in a fit condition immediately after their release to resume work and thus could not help repair the damage inflicted on the army by the destruction of the high command and many of the lower ranks. In the summer of 1941, 75 per cent of field officers and 70 per cent of political commissars had been in post for less than a year, so that the core of the army lacked the requisite experience in commanding larger units. That the Red Army was scarcely battle-ready was amply demonstrated by the disastrous war with Finland in 1940. The highly accurate analysis of this ‘victorious defeat’ conducted by military and political leaders laid bare lamentable shortcomings in leadership, training, the officer corps, and coordination between different army corps. Yet the main culprit – Stalin – was never mentioned.
The dementia of 1937–8 would never be repeated on the same scale, even if it continued at a more modest level. In 1939, the party recruited a million new members and everything seemingly returned to ‘normal’.
This abrupt retreat from mass terror – signalled, as we have said, by the elimination of Yezhov, who took the blame – was never acknowledged as such. Thereafter, a whole series of manoeuvres sought to camouflage it. It was claimed that the bulk of saboteurs had been eliminated, as had those who were guilty of excesses in combating them. Even so, the propaganda against ‘enemies of the people’ persisted, clamorous and insidious by turns, for the regime did not want it to be thought that enemies had altogether evaporated. The state’s terrorist machinery and activity remained veiled in secrecy, even from otherwise well-informed top officials. The Politburo was imposing a ‘rectification’, but in a manner that bordered on the absurd, since it did it clandestinely, while denying that it was doing so.
Some now declassified documents from the presidential archive lift a small corner of the veil.[5] In the minutes of its 9 January 1938 session, the Politburo instructed Vyshinsky to inform the Prosecutor General that it was no longer acceptable to dismiss someone from a job just because a relative had been arrested for counter-revolutionary crimes. This was a move in a ‘liberal’ direction, putting an end to the unspeakable suffering endured by many. But even if the relative in question was ‘rehabilitated’ – in other words, even if the state admitted its error – no one was to know of the regime’s admission. An example: on 3 December 1939, the Supreme Court suggested to Stalin and Molotov that the revision of sentences for counter-revolutionary crimes should be carried out via a legal procedure – a welcome change! – but dealt with by a tribunal sitting in some simplified format. In other words, even if the tribunals acknowledged that errors had been made, everything was to be done to ensure that public attention was not drawn to such cases. In a similar vein, on 13 December 1939 Pankratov, USSR Prosecutor General, suggested to Stalin and Molotov that relatives should not be informed of the revision of sentences in cases where the victims had already been executed.
The government was likewise fearful that the methods used during interrogation would become public. To avoid this, Beria wrote to Stalin and Molotov on 7 December 1939 to say that defence lawyers and witnesses should not be admitted during ‘preliminary investigations’ (instigated to review illegal proceedings), ‘in order to prevent disclosure of the way in which these investigations are conducted’. Even in this top-secret document, however, Beria was resorting to a ruse. What he actually meant was this: in order to prevent disclosure of what the current investigations revealed about the earlier ones. The very fact that they had involved torturing people (as ordered by Stalin personally), and forcing them to sign ‘confessions’, was never mentioned even in the most confidential exchanges. To put that on paper was to run the risk of some official coming across it and blurting it out. In other words: do not tell anyone that the enemies and saboteurs, above all those who were executed, were innocent; do not disclose how their confessions were extracted; or the fact that someone just rehabilitated has already been shot.
Two further Politburo decisions point up the limits of the ‘retreat’.[6] On 10 July 1939 it instructed those in charge of NKVD camps to abolish the reductions in sentence that common-law criminals, and some political prisoners, could receive for good conduct. Sentences were henceforth to be served in full. Similarly, when it came to political charges, there was no question of abandoning a hard line. The infamous Chairman of the Supreme Military Tribunal, Ulrikh, proposed to Stalin and Molotov that in cases involving ‘right-wing Trotskyists, bourgeois nationalists and espionage’, defence lawyers should not be allowed to see the files or appear in court. Those who had been selected for such categorization continued to be targeted and suffered the same treatment at the hands of investigators as before. Without such methods, how could a ‘right-wing Trotskyist’ be flushed out?
So the veil of secrecy was to remain tightly drawn. Lawyers were excluded from tribunals, even if the law required their presence. Nothing was to transpire concerning the regime’s errors, methods, or targets – even if they were actually in the process of being reviewed.
5
TsKhSD, f. 89 (various minutes and other texts from this file have already been published).