Stalin полностью

Yagoda had written to Stalin recommending that the multitude of “Trotskyites” in custody be executed, in accordance with the Kirov assassination anti-terror law.³³⁹ Some were said to have “ties” to the Gestapo. He reported that two arrested Trotskyites had been found to have thirteen issues of the Bulletin of the Opposition in a suitcase hidden in the wall—Stalin kept his in a cupboard—as well as a copy of the defector Grigory Besedovsky’s book On the Road to Thermidor. The NKVD had also found an address book—more “Trotskyites” to arrest.³⁴⁰ On May 20, 1936, pointing to “the unceasing counterrevolutionary activity of Trotskyites in internal exile, and of those expelled from the party,” the politburo stipulated that more than 600 “Trotskyites” should be sent to remote concentration camps, while those found to have engaged in terrorism were to be executed.³⁴¹ Yagoda furnished Stalin with additional testimony about “Trotskyite-Zinovievite organizations” on June 1.³⁴²

From June 1 to 4, 1936, the Central Committee held its first plenum of the year. It was devoted to agriculture, the pending adoption of a new constitution, and the appeals/reinstatement process for party members expelled during the recent verification campaign (more than 200,000 total). With the regime under severe financial pressure, Stalin had reduced the interest paid on government bonds subscribed to by ordinary people from 8–10 percent to 4 percent, with maturity extended from 10 to 20 years, which he now felt compelled to mention. Some 50 million Soviet inhabitants were affected, most of whom had “subscribed” only under severe pressure from trade unions and party organizers. “As you are well aware, we spend an alarming amount of money on things that cannot be postponed,” he told the plenum attendees (June 3), who would have to face the people’s resentment back in their locales. “Much money has been spent, and is being spent, on such matters as building schools, teachers’ pay, urban improvement, irrigation, afforestation of a number of parts of the country, . . . and constructing canals. Money is being spent on defense and even more will be spent in the future. . . . We do not yet have a navy, and a new one must be established. . . . This is the situation, comrades.”³⁴³

These remarks were not reported in the press. Pravda, however, did castigate provincial-level party bosses for “mistakes” made in party expulsions.³⁴⁴ Yezhov in his report had admitted that far from everyone expelled was an enemy, but he ominously stated that “we ought not to think that the enemy, who yesterday was still in the party, will rest content with being expelled from the party and quietly wait for ‘better times.’” Stalin made some rambling interjections about clearer procedures for appeals, and allowed Yenukidze to be reinstated in the party. Several matters were not recorded even in the rough draft materials of the plenum, including an exchange between Yagoda and Stalin on the “Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc.”³⁴⁵

Gorky had taken gravely ill during the plenum, four days after visiting his son Maxim’s grave in Novodevichy Cemetery. “We came to see you at 2:00 a.m.,” Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov wrote in a short note (June 10). “They said your pulse was excellent (82, more or less). The doctors forbade us from seeing you. We had to comply. Greetings from all of us, a big greeting.”³⁴⁶ On the morning of June 18, he died at his dacha. Levitan, on Soviet radio, called him “a great Russian writer, brilliant artist of the word, friend of workers, and fighter for the victory of Communism.” Gorky’s brain was removed and taken in a bucket, by his secretary, to Moscow’s Brain Research Institute, which housed the brains of Lenin and Mayakovsky. That day and the next, the brainless body lay in state as half a million people paid their respects. (When Stalin entered for the solemn farewell, applause broke out, which was shown on newsreels.)³⁴⁷ On June 20, at the state funeral, Gide, on the Mausoleum, delivered one of the eulogies, along with Aleksei Tolstoy and Molotov. Rolland sent a letter from Switzerland, published in Pravda (June 20): “I recall his youthful ardor, his sparkling enthusiasm when he spoke of the new world in whose building he took part. I recall his goodness and the sorrow hidden in its depth.”