Moscow, 1937
Page 20
We are faced with a conspiracy; we have a group of people before us who intended to carry out a coup d’état, who were organized and who have pursued activities over a period of years that were designed to secure the success of this conspiracy, a fairly widespread conspiracy, one that brought the conspirators into contact with foreign fascist powers. In such circumstances, how can anyone raise the question of proof?
And Vyshinskii was not short of an answer:
I make so bold as to assert, in agreement with the fundamental requirements of the rule of law governing criminal trials, that in conspiracy trials such demands cannot be made. We cannot be expected to approach cases of conspiracy, of coups d’état, by saying, give us records, resolutions, give us membership cards and the numbers of your membership cards; we cannot be expected to believe that conspirators will carry out their conspiracy once a notary has provided written confirmation of their conspiratorial activities. No one with any common sense can make such demands in the case of a conspiracy to overthrow the state.
But Vyshinskii went even further when he declared that what enabled the court to arrive at a correct decision was ‘the objective situation’ and the mere confessions of the defendants:
We also have objective evidence … In the first place, there is a historical context that confirms the charges on the basis of Trotskyist activity in the past. Furthermore, we have the statements of the accused, which also have an immense importance for the prosecution’s case … In order to distinguish the truth from lies the experience of the judge is entirely sufficient, and every judge, every counsel for the prosecution and the defence who has taken part in over a dozen cases, knows when the defendant is telling the truth and when he departs from the truth for whatever reason.3
Everything unfolded in accordance with the investigations, interrogations, confrontations and stage directions of the weeks running up to the eve of the trial.4 The course of events in the October Chamber of the House of the Unions between 23 and 30 January before a selected audience had been previously negotiated, revised and refined in Stalin’s interrogation rooms, cells and offices. Everything had been ‘fixed’, everything was resolved upon. The remaining element of tension without which even an adequately rehearsed production does not go down well was the hope that one person or another might escape execution by firing squad. What fascinated the onlookers most was not so much this or that revelation, this or that detail, but the atmosphere, the naturalness of the exchanges between the accusers and the accused, the routine, the matter-of-fact way in which events unfolded.
‘The business-like atmosphere’
Those present in the October Hall of the House of the Unions included, in addition to the workers’ representatives, who had been given time off or ordered to attend, and Party and NKVD officials, numerous spectators who had been personally acquainted with the accused in former days – from negotiations, from diplomatic receptions or from the social life of the capital. They were conscious of witnessing an extraordinary event and followed the proceedings closely. One such observer was Lion Feuchtwanger, who – apart from his final judgement on events – wanted to know exactly what was going on. Another was the US ambassador, Joseph Davies, who needed to form a clear impression of events, if only for professional reasons. Both were familiar with normal court proceedings in states governed by the rule of law; both paid close attention to the proceedings; and both were subsequently criticized by contemporaries, especially historians, for their naïvety or for being actual apologists. In the account he wrote for Roosevelt, Davies praised the achievements of the Habeas Corpus Act; for Feuchtwanger, the trial of the Trotskyists was ‘the hardest test’. What did he actually see in the courtroom?
The room in which the trial took place is not large: it holds about 350 people. The judges, the public prosecutor, the accused, the counsel for the defence, and the experts sat on a low platform which had steps leading up to it, and there was no barrier between the court and the public. There was nothing in the nature of a prisoners’ dock; the barrier which divided the prisoners from the others reminded one rather of the support round a loge. The prisoners themselves were well-groomed, well-dressed men of a careless, natural bearing. They drank tea, had newspapers in their pockets, and often looked towards the public. The whole thing was less like a criminal trial than a debate carried on in a conversational tone by educated men who were trying to get at the truth and explain why what had happened had happened. Indeed, the impression one received was that the accused, prosecution, and judges had the same, I might almost say sporting, interest in arriving at a satisfactory explanation of what had happened, without omitting anything … They all confessed, but each in a different way; the first with a note of cynicism in his voice; the second with a soldier’s uprightness; the third conquering himself, not without an internal struggle; the fourth like a schoolboy who is sorry; the fifth lecturing. But everyone with the tone, the appearance and gestures of truth.
I shall never forget how this George Pyatakov stood in front of the microphone, a middle-aged man of average build, rather bald, with a reddish, old-fashioned, sparse, pointed beard, and how he lectured. Calmly, and at the same time sedulously, he explained how he had managed to sabotage the industries under him. He expounded, pointed his finger, gave the impression of a school teacher, a historian giving a lecture on the life and deeds of a man who had been dead for many years, named Pyatakov, anxious to make everything clear even to the smallest details so that his listeners and students should understand fully.
Nor shall I easily forget Karl Radek, the writer; how he sat there in his brown suit, his ugly fleshless face framed by a chestnut-coloured old-fashioned beard; how he looked over to the public, a great many of whom he knew, or at the other prisoners, often smiling, very composed, often studiedly ironical; how he laid his arm with a light and easy gesture round the shoulders of this or that prisoner as he came in; how, when he spoke, he would pose a little, laugh a little at the other prisoners, show his superiority; arrogant, sceptical, adroit, literary. Somewhat brusquely, he pushed Pyatakov away from the microphone and himself took up his position there; often he smote the barrier with his newspaper, or took up his glass of tea, threw a piece of lemon in, stirred it up, and, whilst he uttered the most atrocious things, drank it in little sips. Nevertheless, he was quite free from pose whilst he spoke his concluding words, in which he admitted why he had confessed, and, despite his apparent imperturbability and the finished perfection of his wording, this admission gave the impression of a man in great distress, and it was very affecting. But most startling of all, and difficult to explain, was the gesture with which Radek left the court after the conclusion of the proceedings. It was towards four o’clock in the morning, and everyone – judges, accused, and public – was exhausted. Of the seventeen prisoners, thirteen, amongst whom were friends of Radek, had been condemned to death, while he himself and three others had been sentenced only to imprisonment. The judge had read the verdict, and all of us had listened to it standing up – prisoners and public motionless, in deep silence. Immediately after the reading the judges retired and soldiers appeared, and first of all approached the four who had not been condemned to death. One of them laid his hand on Radek’s shoulder, evidently with an order to follow him. And Radek followed him. He turned round, raised a hand in greeting, shrugged his shoulders very slightly, nodded to the others, his friends who were condemned to death, and smiled. Yes, he smiled.5
This account is largely identical with that in Davies’s notes. The principal accused appeared to Davies to resemble a ‘college professor giving a lecture’.6 Feuchtwanger and Davies described the reactions of people who knew that everything had already been decided and that their actual appearance in court would not change anything. The defendants calmly described smuggled letters, preparations for acts of terror, meetings in cafés in Berlin and Paris, a flight by Piatakov from Berlin Tempelhof to Oslo, Trotsky’s meeting with Rudolf Hess. Everything unfolded in an authoritative
manner; it was all formal and even accommodating – everything had been well rehearsed and prepared in advance.
The language of expert witnesses
All the accused made comprehensive ‘confessions’ and gave detailed accounts of their alleged ‘wrecking activities’. Piatakov’s sabotage was supposed to have consisted in putting ‘the coking plant ovens into operation prematurely, as a result of which they were soon destroyed, and – the chief grievance – the chemical plant was delayed and almost not built at all so that the vast resources invested in the by-product coking industry were devalued by a half, if not two-thirds. The most valuable part of the coal, namely its chemical component, was not exploited and it simply vanished into thin air.’ The effect of this sabotage in the copper industry was ‘to reduce the efficiency of the copper smelters’,7 the ‘squandering of resources’, the ‘dragging out or failure to complete’ building works. Accommodation blocks were intentionally sited so close to the industrial plant that the workers’ health was affected. The project management and construction of buildings in the nitrogen industry was intentionally dragged out.8
Another of the accused, Serebriakov, a transport expert, was said also to have been involved in sabotage by paralysing the goods traffic. He was said to have reduced the volume of daily freight transports by extending the time the trains ran empty and retaining what had been seen to be excessively long turnaround times for both engines and wagons. His crime consisted, then, in a failure to make full use of the existing freight capacity.9 Lifshits, another transport expert, was said to have made preparations for disrupting the transport system in the event of war. He achieved this by causing traffic jams, holding trains back at junctions and so bringing the mobilization of the armed forces to a standstill. He was alleged to have taken the view that disruptions in transport were to be combined with industrial diversions. Wrecking activity consisted in the failure of coordination and poor planning – as could be seen, for example, from the fact that the chemical plant in Mariupol' was not started up until two years after the coking plant was put into operation or, in another case, the coking plant was set up even though no coal was being mined. The coke oven regenerators were said to have melted down because the temperature was driven up to over 1,400ºC. Elsewhere, the building of a coal-washing plant was delayed. Loginov, one of the defendants, admitted that the most important aspect of sabotage was ‘the use of delaying tactics to slow down and thwart the completion of these building projects’.10 The sabotage planned by another defendant, Drobnis, consisted allegedly in ‘squandering resources on measures of secondary importance’ so that construction work was delayed or brought to a standstill altogether. Many buildings in the chemical industry were intentionally left unfinished, ‘which had a highly deleterious effect on the operation of the works’, reduced product quality and led to the manufacture of coke with a very high moisture and ash content’.11 A similar accusation was levelled at Shestov, an experienced specialist, who presented his ‘plan of subversive activity’. The ‘building of new pits as well as the reconstruction of old ones’ was to be paralysed. His aim was ‘to introduce coal mining systems that would result in maximum losses and might cause subterranean fires’.12 A room and pillar system had been introduced into the Prokop'evsk mine, which led to the loss of 50 per cent of extracted coal, as compared to the usual 15 to 20 per cent. In another pit the failure to complete the planned repair programme led to transport blockages and even accidents. Another specialist – Kn'azev – was alleged to have sabotaged line maintenance and work in the marshalling yard. ‘This explains why they lacked the requisite efficiency and why the track continually deteriorated. The second form of subversive activity was the disruption of the locomotive repair shop, the deterioration in the servicing of the locomotives to the point where they were rendered useless.’13
The court did not remain satisfied with these ‘confessions’ and detailed narratives, but also engaged experts from the leading national institutes. Their assistance was enlisted to determine whether the acts in question were a matter of chance or intention, misfortune and accident, or sabotage and ‘wrecking’. ‘Could these fires have been prevented?’ was the question asked about the pit fires in Prokop'evsk. ‘Can this explosion be deemed to be a chance event or was it the product of malicious intent?’ – that was the question asked in connection with the explosion in the State Electricity Works in Kemerovo on 3 and 9 February 1936.14 In the case of the accidents in Azovstroi on 22 March and 5 April 1936, the court had to ascertain whether ‘these accidents should be treated as accidental or were the consequence of malicious intent’. In the cases of the explosion in Gorlovka on 11 November 1936, in the nitrogen fertilizer plant on 7 April 1934, and the broken gas main in the nitrogen fertilizer plant in Gorlovka on 14 November 1934, the experts were asked to ascertain whether ‘it might have been possible to prevent these explosions’, and whether ‘these explosions must be regarded as accidental or the products of malicious intent’.15
The experts produced the unambiguous answer required of them:
Without a doubt. Personnel had only to stick to the instructions that are obligatory for the task in question and which guarantee the normal, safe operation of these units … If the instructions that are obligatory for the work had been followed and the explosion had still taken place, it would have been possible to speak of an accident. In the case in point, instructions had been flagrantly ignored, thus creating all the circumstances needed to produce an explosion, and so there can be no question of an accident. The fact of malicious intent is indisputable…. The rupture of the gas main cannot be deemed accidental.
As to the pit fires in the Kuznetsk district, the experts determined that they could have been averted, ‘but that this possibility had intentionally been ignored.’ The experts thus ‘concluded that all the explosions in the power station had been the consequence of malicious intent.’16
The topography of the Five-Year Plan
For a few days the October Hall of the House of the Unions became the prism through which a dramatic landscape became visible: the Soviet Union of the first two Five-Year Plans, the battlefield of industrialization. Landscapes made of iron that had been shut down, neglected and left to decay during the Civil War and foreign intervention and had now been put back into operation. An entirely new region had come into view, beyond European Russia, which had experienced its first phase of industrialization during the nineteenth century. Steppes inhabited only by pastoral peoples now revealed unheard-of mineral resources that were ripe for exploitation. Thousands of kilometres from existing centres, they suddenly became accessible thanks to the arrival of roads and railways. Towns arose in the middle of the steppes. At first, they were no more than dugouts and tent cities, populated chiefly by young people from the southern centres, from towns, but chiefly from villages, but after them came factories, conveyor belts, mines, blast furnaces, shanty towns, growing up around mine shafts and opencast pits and inhabited by people who only a few weeks previously had been taken away from their villages in carts together with their families and tipped out into the steppes – kulaks, ‘former people’, prostitutes, ‘the human garbage of the exploiting classes’ who had no choice but to struggle for a bare existence: work, work and work until they dropped, that was the grim reality for hundreds of thousands. In places where hitherto there had been no quays or harbours, landing facilities now sprang up where ore, coal and above all timber could be loaded and transported. What used to be Russia was now the Soviet Union, region by region, square kilometre by square kilometre, a vast terrain that was now ready to be worked. New towns came into being, new means of transport, new river ports and canals, new overland connections, new plants and factories – all arriving faster in plans and on maps than in reality. A new map came into being, and every Soviet citizen – right down to the most distant corner of the vast country – had this map in his head.17 There we find new places and new names: DneproGES, at the time one of the largest hydroelectric power
stations in the world; Magnitogorsk, an ore-mining centre; Kuzbass – the coal and ore-mining centre in Western Siberia. Then there were the gigantic industrial plants: Uralmash in Sverdlovsk, the tractor plant in Cheliabinsk, Rosselmash, the plant building agricultural machinery, tractors and threshers in Rostov, the tractor factory in Stalingrad, the car factories in Gorky and Moscow, not to mention the canal-building operations that connected the White Sea with the Baltic and the Volga with the Moscow River.
The roaring and cracking sounds you hear when a whole world collapses, the grinding noises when an entire nation is shifted onto a new track, were all transposed onto the stage of the Moscow trials. There you heard the announcements of pit fires, explosions, collapsing factory buildings and bridges, broken pipelines, derailed trains, people falling under the wheels, people being crushed, shredded, mutilated and killed. A number of exemplary scenes were presented in Moscow theatres like films. There were three main settings that are fairly typical of the entire situation: first, the Kuzbass, the new industrial region in Western Siberia, with its centre in Kemerovo; then there was the nitrogen plant in Gorlovka in the Donbass, the Russian version of the Ruhr; and, lastly, there was the railway and transport system that formed the backbone of the entire economy.
All three centres of this whirlwind process of industrialization were afflicted by a string of accidents and breakdowns. In the Prokopievsk mine there were ten gas and coal-dust explosions between 1933 and October 1936, in which twenty-one men received severe burns, one died and coal production was reduced in consequence. In the regional power station in Kemerovo there were explosions between 3 and 9 February 1936. ‘A spark suffices to produce an explosion that may lead to the destruction of a boiler, the death of personnel and a lengthy disruption to the power supply.’18 On 22 March and 5 April 1936 an entire roof collapsed. Because of its high-grade coal and mineral deposits, the Kuznetsk region was one of the major industrialization centres, above all with its metalworks in Stalinsk. The population of the region had itself grown explosively: from 24,000 in 1913 to 128,000 in 1928 and 770,000 in 1936. In Stalinsk itself – formerly Kuznetsk – the population had leapt from 2,000 in 1920 to 220,000 in 1936.19