Quotas could only be raised by permission from Ezhov. According to one campaign participant, they were “the subject of a kind of competition among many of the local NKVD commanders. The atmosphere in the commissariat was such that those regional commanders who had been able to quickly exhaust their quotas and receive new quotas from the people’s commissar were considered top performers.” Mironov seems to have performed well. By October 5, 1937, the West Siberian troika had sentenced 19,421 people, 13,216 of them to death. Another top performer, the head of the Moscow Province NKVD directorate (and Stalin’s brother-in-law), Stanislav Redens, reported to Ezhov in mid-August that the “extraction of kulak and criminal elements” had greatly improved labor discipline and productivity in rural districts.21
According to Order No. 00447, the operation’s purpose was “to destroy the whole gang of anti-Soviet elements in the most ruthless manner, defend the working people of the Soviet Union from their counterrevolutionary schemes, and put an end, once and for all, to their vile work of sabotage against the foundations of the Soviet state.” According to Frinovsky, who knew about the importance of referring to Don Quixote but had not had a chance to read it, “without such an operation, any talk about being able to prevail over this counterrevolutionary work would have been like tilting at watermills.”22
Kulaks, “old regime people,” and various former oppositionists were not the only potential saboteurs. Simultaneously with the “anti-kulak” campaign, the NKVD, following Stalin’s orders, conducted a series of “national operations” directed at individuals with links to hostile neighboring states. Most neighboring states were hostile: accordingly—and reflecting Stalin’s foreign policy preoccupations—the national operations began, on July 25, with the German operation; continued, on August 11, with the Polish one, and went on to include, over the course of 1937 and 1938, Romanian, Latvian, Greek, Estonian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Iranian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Afghan, and Chinese operations, as well as a related one against the employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway (“Harbiners”), who had returned to the Soviet Union after the railway’s sale to the Manchukuo government.
Candidates for arrest were selected on the basis of ethnic belonging (determined, in the absence of formal ascription, by a variety of means) or any other sign of susceptibility to enticements from abroad (fluency in the language, history of travel, correspondence with foreigners). There were no quotas, but the lists of Category 1 and 2 prisoners (known as “albums”) were subject to approval by Ezhov and Vyshinsky or their deputies. On March 21, 1938, Frinovsky complained to the head of the Sverdlovsk Provincial NKVD that, according to the albums received by Moscow, the 4,142 people arrested in Sverdlovsk as part of the German operation included only 390 Germans, and that the same was true of the other national operations: 390 Poles out of a total of 4,218 arrested Polish spies; 12 Latvians out of a total of 237 arrested Latvian spies; 42 Harbin returnees out of a total of 1,249 arrested “Harbiners”; 1 Romanian and 96 Russians as part of the Romanian operation; and, “with regard to the Finnish operation, not one single Finn, but five Russians, eight Jews, and two others.” The Polish operation was the largest (with 139,835 people sentenced, 111,091 executed); the Finnish, one of the most lethal (with an execution rate of more than 80 percent); and the Latvian, the most politically and operationally sensitive because of the large number of ethnic Latvians in the security apparatus. At the same time, all borderland populations considered unreliable were deported to the interior. The largest such operation involved the deportation of more than 170,000 Koreans from the Far East to Kazakhstan and central Asia in September and October 1937.23
Overall, according to the incomplete and continually revised statistics, between August 1937 and November 1938, when the mass operations were halted, the operation against kulaks and anti-Soviet elements resulted in 767,397 sentences, 386,798 of them under Category 1 (as compared to the original quotas of 268,950 and 75,950, respectively). The national operations resulted in 335,513 sentences, 247,157 of them under Category 1.24
The key to good work on the part of NKVD officials was “ruthlessness toward the enemy.” Mironov’s predecessor as head of the West Siberian NKVD, V. M. Kursky, declared that what a Chekist needed was “Bolshevik fury against the Zinovievite-Kamenevist scoundrels.” The head of Mironov’s Secret Political Department reported that every one of his employees was “imbued with fury and hatred for the counterrevolutionary Trotskyite-Zinovievite gang.” Mironov himself set the example by conducting interrogations, attending executions, arresting unreliable Chekists, and continuing to unmask enemies among high-ranking Party officials (including Eikhe’s second-in-command, V. P. Shubrikov, and the chairman of the West Siberian territorial Executive Committee, F. P. Griadinsky). When, on July 31, 1937, the deputy chairman of the Secret Political Department proved insufficiently imbued with fury and shot himself in his office, an emergency Party meeting approved Mironov’s report expressing “contempt for this treacherous and foul deed.” And when one of the interrogators proved unable to obtain the required number of confessions, Mironov said (at a special Party meeting): “Did Kuznetsov fight against the enemies of the people? Yes, he did, but in this struggle, his legs were shaky. When an enemy makes himself out to be an innocent lamb, Kuznetsov, who is unsteady on his feet, begins to vacillate.” Kuznetsov received a reprimand for “opportunist vacillation, which manifested itself in a relative lack of faith in the guilt of the enemies of the people,” and was asked to retire on account of ill health.25
Mironov’s fury was occasionally accompanied by another key Chekist trait: “Party sensitivity.” Kuznetsov’s mild punishment was the result of his past achievements and a sincere willingness to overcome his vacillations. And when another employee of the Secret Political Department, K. K. Pastanogov, was denounced by his colleagues for having refrained, back in 1930, from participating in the execution of his uncle, Mironov told the Party meeting: “Not every Chekist can carry out a death sentence—sometimes for health reasons, for example. Therefore, citing this episode as a reason for a direct political accusation is not quite correct, it seems to me, especially considering the fact that Pastanogov was not assigned to that firing squad. Comrade Pastanogov is the one who provided the first information about his uncle’s counterrevolutionary activity. And even if Pastanogov had stated that it would be awkward for him to execute his uncle, it would not have been a violation of Party ethics, it seems to me.” The Party meeting proclaimed Pastanogov “rehabilitated” and noted that, in this case, his comrades had lacked Party sensitivity.26
In Mironov’s own case, the only person in a position to show sensitivity was his wife, Agnessa:
He had a huge billiard room at work. Sometimes I would go to his office, and if he had a free hour, we would play a game or two. Once, we were playing, and it was his turn, but he suddenly froze with the cue in his hand and turned pale. I followed his gaze. Through the enormous window of the billiard room, I could see three soldiers in service caps with red bands.
“Mirosha,” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
And then I understood. “Mirosha, it’s only the changing of the guard.”
And, sure enough, the corporal of the guard had brought two soldiers to replace the ones in the sentry box. It was just that, for some reason, they had momentarily entered the courtyard.27
One of Mironov’s concerns was Eikhe. The conduct of the mass operations was their joint responsibility, but the Party and NKVD jurisdictions were not clearly differentiated, and the two men’s survival strategies did not always coincide. Mironov complained about Eikhe’s unauthorized arrest orders, while Eikhe lobbied in behalf of his close associates, whose arrests by Mironov seemed to expose his lack of vigilance. Mironov controlled the content of the confessions produced by his office (including a number of alleged assassination attempts against Eikhe), but Eikhe had the last word on all important decisions and a direct line to Stalin. Ezhov’s response when Mironov complained was that Eikhe kne
w what he was doing and that maintaining a good relationship with him was part of Mironov’s job. Eikhe seemed to agree. The two men regularly met outside of work, sometimes in the company of their wives.28 According to Agnessa, the Eikhes also had a smaller dacha, as “luxurious” as the palace they had first received them in, “but cozier and nicer”:
Once, Mirosha and I went there, just the two of us. Eikhe and his wife were alone at the dacha (not counting the servants). She had on bright pink lounging pajamas, very informal. (I also wore pajamas at home, only they were light blue.) We had a great time, the four of us. They were a close couple, and Mirosha and I were, too.
It was not at all like the first time—very simple, unpretentious—although Eikhe’s attitude toward me hadn’t changed. He was probably saying to himself, “All she cares about are her outfits, unlike my wife, who has two degrees and does important Party work.” He was very proud of her….
They gave us a luxurious room on the second floor. True, it was a bit cold, but there were some bearskins, and we piled them on top of the covers and could have slept beautifully—it’s so nice to sleep in a cold room under warm covers … But I woke at dawn sensing that Mirosha was awake. I was right. It was very quiet, but I listened to his breathing, and sure enough, he was awake.
“What’s the matter?”
He whispered: “You know, I think my secretary is spying on me.”
“Osipov? What nonsense!”
“He must have been assigned to spy on me …”
“Oh, Mirosha, there you go again, just like that time with the guard commander!”
I tried to cheer him up and distract him with caresses.29
He continued to do his job well. By August 9, he and Eikhe, assisted by the prosecutor Barkov, had sentenced 1,487 people, 1,254 of them to death. By mid-August—within three weeks of the beginning of the operation—Mironov’s directorate had arrested 13,650 people. Ezhov praised West Siberia for being second in the countrywide race for the speediest destruction of the enemy underground. (The first was probably Redens’s Moscow Province.) On August 15, Mironov was appointed Soviet ambassador to Mongolia.30
Eikhe was impossible to recognize. This was not the same man who had received us with such pomp and circumstance in his country palace or so informally, with such affectionate condescension, in the intimate atmosphere of his forest retreat. I saw an obsequious, ingratiating man stripped of all his pride. He became extremely attentive and courteous to me. He sat beside me at the table and started talking to me about politics, China, and Chiang Kai-shek. When I confessed to him that all those Chinese-Japanese names sounded the same to me (thereby admitting my total ignorance), there was no hint of contempt or condescension in his face. He immediately changed the subject and began asking my opinion of a film he knew I’d seen. He was desperate to find some point of contact or common ground with me and, hoping I would tell Mirosha, kept repeating how sorry he was to see us go, how we had become such dear friends, how he and Mirosha had worked so well together.31
■ ■ ■
Three days after hearing of the new appointment, the Mironovs joined Frinovsky on a special train bound for Ulan Ude. (The rest of the journey to Ulaanbaatar had to be made by car.) The Eikhes came to the railway station to say goodbye, but Mironov, according to Agnessa, was busy talking to Frinovsky and did not even bother to respond:
Mirosha had cheered up visibly as soon as he got wind of his coming promotion. Now all his old ambition, self-confidence, proud bearing, and reckless decisiveness were back. His eyes seemed different: they sparkled with the light of success, as if he were back in the days of his youth doing “real work” in the struggle against counterrevolutionaries in Rostov.
All the way to Mongolia, Mirosha and Frinovsky, both former border guards, spent hours poring over maps, thinking and planning. Here’s Outer Mongolia, there’s Inner Mongolia, and over there is Manchuria, now occupied by the Japanese, whose goal is to pounce on Lake Baikal and separate the Far East from the rest of the Soviet Union. The Japanese had already shown their true colors: after the execution of Tukhachevsky and other high-ranking officers, they had provoked a skirmish on the Amur and occupied the Bolshoi Island.
Meanwhile, I had completely forgotten all my fears and begun to breathe more easily and to have fun again. I eagerly studied the Rules of Behavior for Soviet Plenipotentiaries Abroad, about how to dress for receptions: tuxedos, shirt fronts, cuff links made of mother-of-pearl as opposed to imitation pearl. The foreign diplomats wore diamonds; we couldn’t, of course—they were too expensive—but fake pearls were tasteless and vulgar, and bound to provoke ridicule. Mother-of-pearl, now that is elegant and modest.32
During a stop in Irkutsk, Mironov and Frinovsky visited the local NKVD office. According to Agnessa, Mironov came back very upset. She asked him what happened:
So he told me. He and Frinovsky walked into the office of the local NKVD boss and saw a man being interrogated. He didn’t say who. They were interrogating him, but he wouldn’t confess. Suddenly Frinovsky punched him hard in the ear! And then started beating him! He knocked him to the floor and kicked him over and over again. Mirosha couldn’t believe his eyes. As they were leaving, Frinovsky was red in the face and breathing heavily, and could barely pull himself together. Seeing Mirosha’s amazement, he grinned:
“What, you don’t know yet? There’s been a secret order from Comrade Stalin—if the bastard doesn’t confess, beat him till he does.”
Remember I told you once that I sometimes ask myself: was Mirosha really an executioner? Of course, I want to believe that he was not. The incident I’ve just described—the impression that brutal beating made on him—that speaks in his favor, doesn’t it? That must mean that up to that point, he had not used torture himself, right?33
It is possible that Mironov did not participate in the beatings of prisoners—or had not, up to that point. The fact of the beating in Irkutsk is confirmed by the local interrogator, I. F. Kotin, who described the scene a year and a half later: “In Irkutsk, Frinovsky listened to the reports of the department heads about the cases under investigation—and then offered to interrogate the prisoner Korshunov. In my presence and in the presence of S. N. Mironov, he began to reinterrogate him about his testimony concerning Zirnis and the other NKVD officials. Korshunov confirmed it, but then began wavering. Frinovsky started beating him—and Korshunov stated that he had falsely accused Zirnis and the other officials.” Yan (Jānis) Zirnis had been the head of the East Siberian NKVD and a close colleague of Mironov’s. The news of his fate may have contributed to Mironov’s distress.34
The same fate (at about the same time) had befallen Mironov’s predecessor as Soviet ambassador to Mongolia, Vladimir Tairov (Vagarshak Ter-Grigorian). Agnessa knew that Mironov owed his promotion to Tairov’s arrest:
Once, when the train stopped, Agulia and I went for a walk along the platform. We were both wearing our blue fox stoles, and I had on a wonderful little hat. It was completely empty with no one around, just one little building off to the side. Suddenly we heard a bloodcurdling shriek, a terrifying, almost inhuman howl of anguish and despair. And then, utter silence.
“Agulia, did you hear that? Where did it come from?”
Agulia started fantasizing about how an airplane had just flown by and how the howl must have come from there.
In the train I asked Mirosha about it.
“It must have been Tairov,” he said, stone-faced.35
On August 24, 1937, Mironov and Frinovsky arrived in Ulaanbaatar. Their mission was to secure an official invitation for the Soviet Army (which had already entered the country) and to supervise the extermination of the enemies of the Mongolian people. The invitation was issued the following day. The extermination campaign began on September 10 with the arrest of sixty-five top state, Party, and military officials. On October 2, Frinovsky formed a troika chaired by Mongolian Minister of Internal Affairs Khorloogiin Choibalsan. On October 18–20, a show trial of fourteen top officials
was held in Ulaanbaatar’s Central Theater. Thirteen of them were sentenced to death. According to the historian Baabar, “before the sentences were pronounced, the accused were bathed and fed.” Over the course of the campaign, thirty-six of the fifty-one Central Committee members elected at the most recent Party Congress were executed. Choibalsan was the only member of the Central Committee Presidium to survive Mironov’s scrutiny.36
In accordance with the Soviet model, the purge of top officials was followed by two mass operations: the national one, directed at the Buriats, Barga Mongols, Kazakhs, and Chinese, and the social one, directed at the “feudals” and, above all, “counterrevolutionary Buddhist lamas.” In 1932, Fedor Fedotov, Lyova Fedotov’s father, had written a book for children about Mongolia:
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