by Will Podmore
The Soviet government knew that Nazi Germany and Japan were preparing to attack the Soviet Union, that they had allies inside the Soviet Union and that exposing and defeating these agents would weaken the Axis drive to war. Many modern historians agreed that, as Hoffmann judged, “What historians term ‘the Great Terror’ was in fact a number of related yet discrete operations instigated by Stalin and his fellow leaders to strike down potential political opponents and fifth columnists in anticipation of the coming war.”3 Oleg Khlevnyuk agreed, “This operation was conceived as a means of eliminating a potential ‘fifth column’ in a period when the threat of war was increasing …”4 Acton agreed too, “A proposition currently finding renewed favour among historians is that the overarching motive behind them was preparation for war and an all-encompassing pre-emptive strike against any potential source of internal opposition liable to take advantage of military crisis.”5
Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and others had “engaged in opposition, had had contacts with Trotsky and leaked secret documents to the West, and had wanted to remove Stalin, all of which they had lied about, while proclaiming their complete loyalty.”6 Bukharin’s friend Jules Humbert-Droz wrote in his memoirs, “Before leaving I went to see Bukharin for one last time not knowing whether I would see him again upon my return. We had a long and frank conversation. He brought me up to date with the contacts made by his group with the Zinoviev-Kamenev fraction in order to coordinate the struggle against the power of Stalin.” And, “Bukharin also told me that they had decided to utilise individual terror in order to rid themselves of Stalin.”7
Oppositionist Karl Radek testified that Bukharin had said that he had ‘taken the path of terrorism’. Oppositionist Grigori Sokolnikov testified that the ‘united centre’ of Zinovievites and Trotskyists had agreed to plan terrorist attacks on Stalin and Politburo member Sergei Kirov ‘as early as the autumn of 1932’.8 Trotsky’s son Sergei Sedov informed Trotsky in mid-1932 that the bloc “is organized. In it have entered the Zinovievites, the Sten-Lominadze group and the Trotskyists …”9
In December 1934, Kirov was murdered. The assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, was arrested at once. As Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov noted, “Nikolaev began talking freely from the start. He admitted to having planned the killing for some time because he blamed Kirov for persecution of the Zinoviev group and his resulting unemployment. He said that he had initially planned the killing alone but had then talked to [Ivan] Kotolynov [a ‘former Zinoviev supporter’] and others, who at first tried to dissuade him. According to Nikolaev, they wanted to kill someone higher up, like Stalin, but they later approved his plan.”10
Interrogations of Nikolaev’s opposition contacts followed. Getty and Naumov observed, “In some cases, the accused refused to confess to belonging to any conspiracy and maintained his or her innocence … Others admitted to belonging to a ‘counterrevolutionary organization’ but not to knowing of Nikolaev’s plans. … Another group admitted to the full accusation: belonging to a criminal conspiracy that organized the assassination.”11 Nikolaev was the gunman for this opposition conspiracy.12 Kamenev and Zinoviev admitted that they had planned the assassination: Kamenev said, “we, that is the Zinovievist center of the counterrevolutionary organization, the membership of which I have named above, and the Trotskyist counterrevolutionary organization in the persons of Smirnov, Mrachkovskii and Ter-Vaganian, agreed in 1932 about the union of both, i.e. the Zinovievist and Trotskyist counterrevolutionary organization for cooperative organization of terrorist acts against the leaders of the CC and first of all against Stalin and Kirov.”13
On 2 June 1937, Bukharin admitted, straight after his arrest, with no protest, that he had been “a participant in the organization of the Rights up to the present, that he was a member of the center of the organization together with Rykov and Tomsky, that this organization had set as its goal the forcible overthrow of Soviet power (uprising, coup d’état, terror), that it had entered into a bloc with the Trotskyite-Zinovievite organization.” He confirmed these statements at the close of the investigation and then again at his 1938 trial.14 Every country’s legal system treated as valid admissions made by a suspect during investigation and repeated at trial. At his trial, Bukharin admitted, “If my programme conception were to be formulated practically, it would be in the economic sphere, state capitalism, the prosperous muzhik individual, the curtailment of the collective farms, foreign concessions, surrender of the monopoly of foreign trade, and, as a result - the restoration of capitalism in the country.”15
The 1961 Commission that investigated Bukharin’s case found no evidence that he was coerced. Only a small part of the investigative material for the three Moscow trials has been released. If any of the material had undermined the verdicts, it would surely have been released. As Sarah Davies and James Harris recently concluded, “It would appear that Stalin believed, and had good reason to believe, the essence of the prosecution case as it was presented at the Moscow trials.”16
There were other opposition conspiracies, one involving Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the Red Army’s commander in chief. French journalist Genevieve Tabouis related that on 29 January 1936, “Tukhachevsky … had just returned from a trip to Germany, and was heaping glowing praise upon the Nazis. Seated at my right, he said over and over again, as he discussed an air pact between the great powers and Hitler’s country: ‘They are already invincible, Madame Tabouis!’”17 Should the Soviet Union have allowed a known defeatist to stay in post?
Later in 1936, Tukhachevsky held secret talks with Czechoslovakia’s President Eduard Benes and its Commander-in-Chief General Jan Sirovy. There were no secretaries at these talks and no minutes were kept. Tukhachevsky then left Prague for talks in Berlin. Later, the Czech secret service told Benes that the Nazis knew all the details of the Prague meeting. Benes had to conclude that only Tukhachevsky could have given the Nazis these details.
As Churchill affirmed, “communications were passing through the Soviet Embassy in Prague between important personages in Russia and the German Government. This was a part of the so-called military and old-guard Communist conspiracy to overthrow Stalin and introduce a new régime based on a pro-German policy. President Benes lost no time in communicating all he could find out to Stalin. Thereafter there followed the merciless, but perhaps not needless, military and political purge in Soviet Russia, and the series of trials in January 1937, in which Vyshinsky, the Public Prosecutor, played so masterful a part.”18 In 1991, Colonel Viktor Alksnis read the transcript of the trial of Tukhachevsky and the seven other generals. Before Alksnis read the transcript, he believed that the generals had been framed. After reading it, he concluded that they were indeed guilty.19 Since then, the Russian state has not allowed anyone to read the transcript.
Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, wrote in May 1943, “The Führer recalled the case of Tukhachevskii and expressed the opinion that we were entirely wrong then in believing that Stalin would ruin the Red Army by the way he handled it. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of all opposition in the Red Army and thereby brought an end to defeatism.”20 The French government let its defeatist generals stay in command - its army’s resistance lasted just 40 days.
In 1937, Trotsky increased his efforts to overthrow the Soviet government, urging in November, “It is high time to launch a world offensive against Stalinism.”21 He wrote, “Since the principal condition for the Trotskyites coming into power, if they fail to achieve this by means of terrorism, would be the defeat of the USSR, it is necessary, as much as possible, to hasten the clash between the USSR and Germany.”22 Radek stated that he had recommended to Trotsky that Vitovt Putna, a military commander loyal to Trotsky, negotiated with the Germans and Japanese on Trotsky’s behalf.23 Trotsky called on the Soviet people to overthrow the Soviet government when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.24 He called for a ‘revolutionary uprising’, an ‘insurrection’, writing, “It would be childish t
o think that the Stalin bureaucracy can be removed by means of a Party or Soviet Congress. Normal, constitutional means are no longer available for the removal of the ruling clique. ... They can be compelled to hand over power to the Proletarian vanguard only by FORCE.”25 And, “Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist.”26
Trotsky forecast, “If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic and military sense, imperialism is incomparably more strong. If it is not paralysed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the present regime.”27 Trotsky tried to organise anti-Soviet groups in every country and received support from powerful figures. For example, the American press tycoon and fascist Randolph Hearst published Trotsky’s books, which were sold openly in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Under Nikolai Yezhov, the NKVD became the seat of another conspiracy, carried out by “enemies of the people and spies for foreign intelligence, who made their way into the organs of the NKVD at the centre and in the localities, and who continued to carry out their subversive work, striving by all means to muddle up the investigative and information-collecting work, consciously perverting Soviet laws, carrying out mass and unfounded arrests.” Yezhov used impermissible methods, imposing quotas in every part of the Soviet Union for mass arrests, which led to huge numbers of illegal arrests and punishments of innocent people. For far too long, the NKVD was out of party and government control, largely because Nikita Khrushchev protected Yezhov and adopted his methods. When Khrushchev was First Secretary in Moscow, and then in the Ukraine, he had more people executed than in any other parts of the Soviet Union, far more than the government had authorised.28 The Soviet government eventually exposed Yezhov and regained control of the NKVD. A resolution of 17 November 1938, On the new processes for arrests, procurator control, and investigation, forbade ‘any sort of mass operations relating to arrests and exiles’ by the NKVD and the procuracy.29 More than 100,000 persons wrongly arrested were released from camps and prisons.
In 1990, Lazar Kaganovich, a Politburo member from 1930 to 1957, said, “Look, if you investigate everything in detail, and look at every single case, then of course it is possible to find flaws and mistakes, no doubt about it. But if we approach the issue historically, then it was necessary to cleanse the country. This is shown by the current situation. Are there no people today who are open enemies of socialism and of the October revolution? There are lots of them! Therefore, those who want to defend the October revolution have to beat the enemies of this revolution, beat the enemies of Soviet power and of the Soviet state. The present situation demonstrates that we were right.”30 Schuman commented later, “had it not smashed ruthlessly the conspiracies of the 1930’s, the Soviet Union and all the United Nations would have suffered irreparable defeat in World War II at the hands of insanely savage foes …”31
World war
By 1938, a second world war had begun across the world from Gibraltar to Shanghai, involving at least 500 million people. Japanese forces had invaded China and were launching border attacks on the Soviet Union, which Soviet forces repelled. After the 1938 Japanese-Soviet battle at Changkufeng, the US military attaché in Moscow judged, “any adverse effects on Red Army efficiency which may have been occasioned by the purges have now been overcome. … The recent events around Lake Hassan have shown that the personnel of the Red Army is not only dependable, but that it can be called upon for extraordinary exploits of valor, that the material with which the Red Army is equipped is adequate and serviceable, if, indeed, it is not entitled to higher rating.” The US military attaché in China, Colonel (later General) Joseph Stilwell, agreed, “the Russian troops appeared to advantage, and those who believe the Red Army is rotten would do well to reconsider their views.”32 In August 1939, the Red Army defeated Japanese forces at the battle of Khalkhin-Gol in Mongolia, a victory which saved the Soviet Union from facing a two-front war.
In the late 1930s, Hitler encouraged a Sudeten German fifth column in Czechoslovakia to secede. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whom the French neatly called Monsieur J’aime Berlin, assisted Hitler’s scheme. In October 1938, Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, which gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The Trotskyist ILP MP John McGovern praised Chamberlain for this, saying, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”33 Anna Louise Strong pointed out at the time, “British diplomacy granted to Hitler Germany everything that it had refused for more than a decade to the German republic: the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Nazi-terrorized plebiscite in the Saar, German rearmament and naval expansion … British finance, which had strangled the struggling German democracy with demands for impossible war reparations, supported Hitler’s regime with heavy investments and loans. It was no secret to any intelligent world citizen that the British Tories made these concessions to Hitler because they saw in him their ‘strong-arm gangster’ who would eventually fight the Soviets, which important sections of British finance capital have always seen as their greatest foe.”34
Many modern historians accepted that the Chamberlain government schemed for Hitler to attack the Soviet Union. As Louise Shaw explained, Chamberlain “was so consumed by his suspicion of the Soviet leadership and his hatred of communism. His repeated attacks upon the Soviet leadership in the letters to his sisters during this period are unparalleled in any other collection of private papers.”35 Paul Hehn noted the “upper class hatred of the Soviet Union on the part of Chamberlain and his friends. This same hatred led them to place class survival over the interests of the country which in the end led to the debacle of World War II. Chamberlain and his friends in the government desired to give Hitler at Munich a ‘free hand in the east’ – and probably before Munich – well into the opening months of 1939 and beyond, even after it became apparent that Hitler’s aggressive policy and ambitions placed Great Britain and France in mortal danger.”36 Their policies ‘could be explained by the unspoken hope and expectation that he would ultimately turn east and attack the Soviet Union and destroy Communism’.37 Warren Kimball agreed, writing of Munich’s ‘implied invitation to Hitler to move eastward’.38 Andrew Alexander agreed too: “British and French policy seemed so ready to solve the problem of Hitler by turning him eastwards.”39
Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel summed up, “those in the [British] ruling group before May 10, 1940 were bloody-minded protectors of privilege whose fixation with destroying communists and communism led them to make common cause with fascists. They were not honest, idiotic patriots; they were liars and traitors who would sacrifice human lives in their defense of property and privilege … Blame for the tragedy of World War II, including the Holocaust, must rest partly with Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and their close associates, who, far from being naïve appeasers anxious to avoid wars in Europe, were visceral anti-communists who single-mindedly pursued an alliance with Hitler.”40
After the Munich Agreement, Chamberlain schemed with the Nazi and French governments to use Ukraine to destroy the Soviet Union, just as they had used the Sudetenland to destroy Czechoslovakia. In talks with the French government, on 24 November 1938, Chamberlain said, “there might be in the minds of the German Government an idea that they could begin the disruption of Russia by the encouragement of agitation for an independent Ukraine.”41 He asked Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, “what the position would be if Russia were to ask France for assistance on the grounds that a separatist movement in the Ukraine was provoked by Germany. M. Bonnet explained that French obligations towards Russia only came into force if there were a direct attack by Germany on Russian territory. Mr. Chamberlain said that he considered M. Bonnet’s reply entirely satisfactory.”42 So aggression by Hitler, on the Sudeten pattern, would leave the Soviet Union isolated.
Hitler called for a Ukraine separate
from the Soviet Union.43 The British and French governments secretly backed Ukrainians based in Germany who wanted to break Ukraine away from the Soviet Union.44 And in April, May and July 1939, Trotsky too called for an independent Ukraine.45
On 17 April 1939, the Soviet government proposed a mutual assistance treaty with Britain and France. As Churchill commented, “The alliance of Britain, France and Russia would have struck deep alarm into the heart of Germany in 1939 and no one can prove that war might not even then have been averted.” On 8 May, Chamberlain rejected the Soviet proposal, making war inevitable. (As Schuman commented later, “The verdict of the record is unmistakable and obvious: responsibility for the breakdown of collective security rests on the Western democracies, not on the Soviet Union.”46) The British and French governments knew that Germany would invade Poland, but refused to join the alliance with the Soviet Union that alone could have saved Poland. The British and French governments, not the Soviet Union, betrayed and sacrificed Poland.
On 22 May, Hitler signed the Pact of Steel with Mussolini. The next day, he decided to attack Poland on 1 September. This was three months before he signed the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
The non-aggression pact was a consequence, not a cause, of the breakdown of the Anglo-Soviet-French alliance negotiations. The pact laid down a line within Poland beyond which German forces could not pass, so that the Polish army and the Polish government could retreat behind this line. The Soviet Union would have a buffer state, still armed and hostile to Germany, between the Reich and the Soviet frontier. The pact foiled Chamberlain’s scheme to set Hitler on the Soviet Union and gave the Soviet Union two more years to prepare itself against attack.
