Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  17

  “CLEANSING” THE SOVIET ELITE

  Lenin began the tradition of purging the Party of those who disagreed with him. In 1919, 10 to 15 percent of Party members were expelled, though some who showed self-criticism were allowed to rejoin. On September 20, 1921, Lenin purged what he called the “rascals, bureaucrats, corrupt or fickle Communists, and Mensheviks who put a new coat of paint on their ‘facade’ but are still Mensheviks at heart.”1This purge, the greatest of all (in percentage terms), led to the loss of 25 percent of the members. It was followed by five others in the 1920s, which expelled between 3 and 13 percent in either a “verification” process (proverka) or “cleansing” (chistka).

  Grounds for being ejected varied, but high on the list was hiding one’s social origins. Corruption was considered a major offense, as was violating Party discipline, but even “passivity” was frowned upon. The tradition of purging various “elements” continued into the 1930s, when its political significance grew because Party members by then occupied leading positions in society.

  PARTY PURGES UNDER STALIN

  The Party itself became massive, and in 1929, the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan, membership reached 1 million, not counting candidate members, usually representing between one-third and two-thirds of the regular membership. By 1933, there were 2, 203,951 members and 1,351,387 candidate members. The Party was underrepresented in the countryside, reflecting the generally negative attitude of peasants to Communism. Women were also underrepresented, likely a result of persistent social attitudes that resisted putting them on an equal footing with men. Still, by 1932, there were nearly half a million female members, or 15.9 percent of the total.2

  Purges were generally conducted within and by the Party itself, with directives issued from Moscow. Some local leaders wanted to avoid overheating the atmosphere, however, as is shown in a letter of the Smolensk City Party Committee, which said in the midst of the 1935 events that it did not want the Party to “transform the work of verifying party documents into a campaign of unmasking.” The aim should be to raise “party awareness” and foster “integrity” in the ranks by “sweeping them of all alien and corrupt elements.” Such a process was in practice difficult to control.3

  The secret police was more involved in the 1935 purge, with its boss, Yezhov, in charge of the “verification of party documents.” He reported in December that 177,000 members (just under 10 percent of the total) had been expelled. Some 15,218 were arrested.4 Stalin said Yezhov might have gone too far, but in fact he wanted deeper cuts.

  Stalin was informed in early 1936 that Trotsky, living in exile since 1929, working through sympathizers, was still trying to influence events in the Soviet Union. Several top leaders were arrested for being part of this “conspiracy,” which allegedly included the already incarcerated Kamenev and Zinoviev. On July 29, 1936, the Central Committee informed local and regional committees that a “Trotskyist-Zinovievist” plot had been uncovered, the aim of which was to assassinate eight national leaders, including Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Kaganovich. The Party was called upon to exercise “proper Bolshevik vigilance” and stop those who operated “under cover of their Communist rank.”5

  Letters of denunciation flowed in from the regions as they discussed this Central Committee note. Moscow’s response was to “focus the attention of all members of the Party on the struggle against the last vestiges of the villainous enemies of our Party and of the working class, to focus their attention on raising Bolshevik revolutionary vigilance with every means possible.”6

  SHOW TRIALS

  That note set the stage for the first major show trial in Moscow on August 19–24, 1936. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and fourteen other major Party leaders were charged with organizing a “terrorist” center on Trotsky’s instructions. Behind the scenes, Stalin worked out the details of what was to happen. He had plenty of willing accomplices. Kaganovich, on vacation as the trial approached, wrote to Stalin on July 6 that, having read the interrogations, he was sure that the “main instigator of this gang is that venal scum Trotsky. It is time to declare him an outlaw, and to execute the rest of the lowlifes we have in jail.”7

  One feature of the trial was that all the accused openly confessed to crimes most observers regarded as preposterous. They also implicated others, such as Bukharin, Aleksei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky (that is, leading rightists), as well as Karl Radek (a well-known leftist) and several generals. All were not tried at once. Tomsky committed suicide the day after his name was mentioned by Procurator-General Vyshinsky.8

  Suicide became one way to cope with accusations, but at the Central Committee meetings in December 1936 Stalin said that those who chose that option were admitting their guilt. They were trying to “cover their tracks,” to “distract the Party, undermine its vigilance, and deceive it one last time before they died.” Far from being victims, Stalin told the committee, they took their lives out of fear “that everything would be discovered.” He said suicide was a simple method to “spit on the Party for the last time, and deceive the Party.”9

  Many rank-and-file members adopted this coldhearted interpretation. A director of a machine-building factory in the Urals, for example, said of the death of a local official in early 1937: “These days we cannot believe suicide notes—even these may well turn out to be false. In committing suicide an individual is trying to threaten the Party, to tell it that by mistreating those who commit political crimes, the Party cripples people and forces them to put revolvers to their own heads.” He concluded that in this case as well “a suicide has to be regarded as an antiParty gesture.”10

  Stalin’s correspondence with Kaganovich reveals his part in the show trials. He helped phrase the charges, decided on the slate of defendants, crafted the evidence, and prescribed the sentences. He even dictated Vyshinsky’s emotional speech as the grand finale of the trial and polished its style.11

  Stalin wanted a public trial to convince the world and Soviet citizens that these former “oppositionists” aimed at counterrevolution and acted as the agents of foreign governments. The press frenzy reached its climax on the last day of the trial with the headline “Crush the Loathsome Creatures! The Mad Dogs Must Be Shot!” Each of the unfortunates made his plea for mercy. Kamenev went so far as to say, “No matter what my sentence will be, I in advance consider it just.” He told his sons not to look back, but to “go forward…. Follow Stalin.”12

  Lev Kopelev, later a dissident, was credulous. He stopped talking to people he knew were innocent when their exclusion “had been decided by a higher necessity.” Despite second thoughts “the rule remained: unswerving loyalty to the idol,” namely to Stalin and Communism, “the graven image” he had helped to create.13 What was called “Bolshevik party-mindedness”—a mystical concept—meant repression of doubts, “iron discipline and faithful observance” of the Party’s dictates and rituals.14

  Even as this first major show trial was proceeding, Stalin and his henchmen were preparing the next. Georgy Pyatakov, deputy commissar of heavy industry, was arrested on September 12. Stalin’s longtime ally and fellow Georgian Sergo Ordzhonikidze, commissar of heavy industry, vainly tried to slow down the repression, but Pyatakov, once a supporter of Trotsky, soon “confessed” his role in the conspiracy supposedly being hatched against Stalin.

  Yezhov revealed the “facts” at the December meeting of the Central Committee, and key leaders such as Pyatakov, Radek, Grigory Sokolnikov, and Leonid Serebriakov were arrested. They were allegedly a “backup” to take over once the main conspirators were caught. Yezhov said there were ties between this group and hundreds of Party leaders. Pyatakov was called a “vicious fascist” and a “degenerate Communist.” Yezhov insisted “these swine must be strangled.”

  There was a commotion at the meeting when someone asked about the popular Bukharin. Stalin said Bukharin aimed to restore capitalism, bring back private enterprise in agriculture, and worse. Although Bukharin and other accused on the Central Co
mmittee were allowed to respond, they were not convincing, partly because they were in fact critical of Stalin. At the very least they thought the Soviet Union under his aegis was socializing faster than was sustainable. Stalin’s concluding speech was calm and cool but left little doubt that he believed Bukharin and his allies to be as guilty as Yezhov had intimated.15

  What was at the heart of the matter? Stalin wanted a radical transformation of society. He was opposed by Bukharin and “the right” who believed he was going too far and by those on what Stalinists called “the left” (onetime sympathizers with Trotsky) who felt Stalin was not going far enough and had made too many concessions to “capitalism.” The debate would start up anew whenever any policies seemed not to be working. The “left” or the “right” opposition picked away at Stalin, and with the purges he struck back.

  At the end of 1936 and into the next year many began to feel some kind of national calamity was at hand, be that war or famine or both, their worries fueled by a failed harvest in 1936. That led to breadlines and anxieties verging on panic.16

  The NKVD intercepted letters, from which they extracted strident views of the situation. These included:

  “I wish that a war would start. I would be the first to go against the Soviet government.”

  “Tsar Nicholas was stupid, but bread was cheap and white, and you didn’t have to stand in line for it. You could have as much as you wanted.”

  “The Soviet government and Stalin act like we are serfs. Just like before, when the peasants worked for landlords, now the kolkhoznik [worker on a collective farm] works until he drops—nobody knows for whom, but he does not get bread.”

  “What a life! If Trotsky were the leader, he would rule better than Stalin.”

  “Hitler will not only take the Soviet Union, but the whole world will be under his power—then we will begin to live. But now only the leaders have a life.”17

  These disorganized voices of discontent hinted at support for Stalin’s enemies, so eliminating potential leaders was one way to solidify his dictatorship beyond all possible threats.

  “ACCOMPLICES” OF FASCISM?

  The second great show trial was conducted in Moscow between January 23 and 30, 1937. In the dock this time, besides Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, and Serebriakov, were more than a dozen others. The prosecutor Vyshinsky met with Stalin to work out how to proceed, even jotting down how to mimic Stalin’s tone. Vyshinsky was told not to let the accused “babble,” but to “shut them up.”

  The defendants again confessed their guilt and did not even ask for mercy. One said: “I do not need leniency. The proletarian court should not and cannot spare my life…. I want one thing: to calmly mount the execution block and wash away the stain of a traitor of the Motherland with my blood.”18

  To give the show trial another prop, defense counsel was added. One plea is worth noting as an illustration of what a show trial was about. Ilya Braude’s remarks went as follows:

  Comrade Judges, I am not going to conceal from you the exceptionally difficult and immeasurably hard position a counsel for the defense finds himself in this case. After all, a counsel for the defense, Comrade Judges, is first and foremost a son of his Motherland, he is also a citizen of the great Soviet Union, and the feelings of great indignation, wrath, horror which all our country, both young and old, are now seized with, these feelings are inevitably shared by the counsels for the defense as well….

  I am defending I. A. Knyazev, the head of the railway, who in order to please the Japanese Intelligence Service derailed trains carrying workers and Red Army men. I shall not conceal that as I was reading over the materials of the case, as I was leafing through the documents, as I was listening to Knyazev’s testimony, I imagined the crash of the carriages as they were being derailed and the groans of the dying and injured Red Army men…. Driven into a corner, Knyazev agreed to join the counter-revolutionary Trotskyite organization. Thus began the first page of Knyazev’s despicable actions which had been dictated to him by the Trotskyite terrorist organization.19

  The outcome was a foregone conclusion. A crowd of 200,000 demonstrated their bloodlust in Red Square on January 29, despite the-27°C temperatures. They carried banners reading: “The Court’s Verdict Is the People’s Verdict.”

  Nikita Khrushchev, one of Stalin’s most vicious enforcers, addressed the crowds and passionately denounced the “Judas-Trotsky.” The guilty “raised their hand against all the best that humanity has, because Stalin is hope…. Stalin is our banner. Stalin is our will, Stalin is our victory.”20

  Sergo Ordzhonikidze, a longtime Stalin friend, became entangled himself. He opted for suicide on January 31, an ominous sign of worse to come for others.

  Bukharin’s fate was discussed in his presence at the Central Committee plenum beginning on February 23. The shadow cast over the meeting was the suicide of Ordzhonikidze and the execution of Pyatakov. Molotov demanded Bukharin confess. If he would not, his refusal would be taken as “proof” he was a “fascist hireling.”21 Voroshilov called his ex-friend a “scoundrel.” Stalin told Bukharin to “ask the Central Committee for its forgiveness.”22 A commission struck to investigate Bukharin’s case and that of Rykov came back on February 27 with the conclusion to “arrest, try, shoot” both.23 However, the ever-calculating Stalin suggested that instead their cases be turned over to a special commission of thirty-six worthies for investigation.

  The third major show trial—usually called the trial of twenty-one—included Bukharin and other important leaders, like Yagoda, of the so-called “right-Trotskyist bloc.” It began on March 2, 1938, with Vyshinsky descending to new levels to besmirch the accused. Some of the Soviet Union’s great writers and publicists chimed in as well. A Moscow writer’s open letter stated bluntly: “We demand the spies’ execution! We shall not allow the enemies of the Soviet Union to live!” It was signed by writers as illustrious as Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Alexei Tolstoy. Vasily Grossman, who had been saved by Bukharin’s direct intervention earlier, now shouted: “No mercy to the Trotskyite degenerates, the murderous accomplices of fascism!”24 Vyshinsky’s summation against Bukharin was that he was a “damnable cross of a fox and a swine.”25

  Bukharin’s professions of innocence were useless. Sentence was passed on March 13, and two days later he, Rykov, and seventeen others, including the former NKVD chief Yagoda, were executed. This was the last of the great show trials, but the terror was operating at other levels as well.

  Lev Kopelev admitted in his autobiography he did not really think

  Bukharin and Trotsky were Gestapo agents or that they had wanted to kill Lenin, and I was sure that Stalin never believed it either. But I regarded the purge trials of 1937 and 1938 as an expression of some farsighted policy; I believed that, on balance, Stalin was right in deciding on these terrible measures in order to discredit all forms of political opposition, once and for all. We were a besieged fortress; we had to be united, knowing neither vacillation nor doubt. But to most people—the “broad masses”—the theoretical differences between left and right within the Party were difficult to understand: both sides quoted Lenin and swore loyalty to the October Revolution. Therefore, the opposition leaders had to be depicted as deviationists and villains, so that the people would come to hate them.26

  Victor Kravchenko, who was more skeptical than Kopelev, agreed in substance about Bukharin. In his autobiography he recalled that no one he met in Moscow

  attached the slightest value to their confessions. These men had consented to serve as puppets in a political morality play not in the least related to truth. Stalin was destroying his personal opponents and had succeeded in forcing them to participate in their own humiliation and extinction. We wondered about the techniques he had used. But even Party people were not expected to believe the trial testimony literally. To do so would have been tantamount, among Communists, to an admission of congenital idiocy. At most we accepted the fantasies in a symbolic, allegorical sense.27

>   Given the atmosphere in which conspiracies by foreign powers were being discovered with such regularity, it was “logical” that foreign spies would have to be found inside the armed forces. From the latter part of 1936 the NKVD gathered evidence against some of the most senior officers. Using torture, they gained confessions that implicated (among many others) Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, hero of the civil war and deputy commissar of defense. On May 22, 1937, he was arrested and, with Stalin’s express permission, tortured brutally. Stalin’s instruction was to find out what the marshal knew: “It is impossible that he acted on his own.”

  The extorted testimonies were duly presented to Stalin in order to confirm suspicions. He then circulated his opinion to the Politburo for what was by then merely a pro forma “vote” to remove Tukhachevsky and others from the Communist Party. The damning accusation was that he was part of a “Trotskyite-Right [sic]” conspiracy on behalf of Hitler’s Germany. On June 11, the one-day military tribunal met and, in keeping with Stalin’s instructions, sentenced Tukhachevsky and seven army generals to death. The sentence was carried out early the following morning. Stalin attended to all the details, even seeking to orchestrate popular responses. He sent telegrams to Communist Party officials across the USSR telling them to organize meetings and pass resolutions “about the need to apply the supreme measure of punishment”—which is to say, to call for the execution of the traitors.28

  In the next nine days 980 senior officers and political commissars were arrested in connection with this “military conspiracy.” The wave of repression then struck down an even longer list of officers. A former Soviet general noted how “they were the flower of the officer corps, with civil war experience, and most of them were relatively young. The blow to the Soviet armed forces was immense.”29