Orjonikidze worked long hours under phenomenal strain, which strained his weak heart. (One time when he suffered from heart palpitations he lost consciousness in his office, inducing his assistants to summon a doctor from the Kremlin hospital.) He also had just one kidney. Gossips said his wife, Zinaida, had a difficult personality, compounding his problems.64 On June 29, the culmination of the heavy industry gathering, the commissar’s poor health had become visible for all to see. A foreign doctor was brought in to examine him.65 Be that as it may, the key factor in exacerbating his health was his old friend and fellow Georgian, who was mercilessly, relentlessly driving the “saboteur” line. Kaganovich also did not see why manifestly loyal people needed to be arrested and executed. He had been defending top Ukrainian officials from Stalin’s wrath since famine days. But he knew Stalin all too well. In early July 1936, the dictator had sent Kaganovich—then vacationing in Kislovodsk—protocols of the Dreitser and Pikel “interrogations”; he took the unsubtle hint. “Although this was clear even earlier, they have now revealed the true bandit face of those murderers and provocateurs Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev,” he had responded to Stalin on July 6. “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. Regards as ever, Yours, L. Kaganovich.”66
Stalin pressed for wider arrests, using the unique instruments only he commanded: he dispatched a secret circular (July 29, 1936)—drafted by Yezhov and edited by the dictator—to party organizations, which was to be read aloud to all party members and which quoted the “testimony” of the various accused “Trotskyites.” “Confronted with the completely irrefutable successes of socialist construction, they initially hoped our party could not cope with the difficulties,” the circular stated. “But seeing that the party was successfully overcoming difficulties, they wagered on the defeat of Soviet power in a forthcoming war, as a result of which they dreamed of seizing power.” Then, “not seeing any prospects, in despair, they resorted to the last means of struggle—terror.” The circular explained that the “Trotskyites” had colluded in terror with Zinoviev and Kamenev and that, after the imprisonment of the latter, “Trotsky had taken upon himself all direction of terrorist activity in the USSR.” The document exhorted that “the essential mark of every Bolshevik in the current situation should be the ability to recognize and identify enemies of the party no matter how well they are able to disguise themselves.” But who were these
NKVD operatives would “unmask” enemies to win raises, medals, and promotions; informants, queried about a “Trotskyite” underground, would become eager to please. Regional party officials, in order to protect themselves and their closest people, targeted as “Trotskyites” lower-level types as well as economic managers—precisely the people Orjonikidze sought to protect.68 But Kaganovich, responsible for rail transport—which had been suffering an inordinate number of accidents, driven by underinvestment and overexploitation—expressly rejected assertions of Trotskyites in his bailiwick. On July 30, 1936, the day after the secret party circular on hidden enemies, he presided over the country’s inaugural all-Union Day of Transport, where, before 25,000 railway employees assembled at the outdoor Green Theater, in Gorky Park, as well as a Union-wide audience listening on radio, he delivered a two-hour oration on the daily loading of 81,214 freight cars, exceeding Stalin’s directive to reach 80,000. “Here the way is not purging and repression,” Kaganovich stated, noting the multitudes of railway workers who had received state awards. “No, for 99 percent of railway employees are honest people, who are committed to their work, who love their motherland.”69 Soviet newspapers prominently published photographs of Kaganovich and Orjonikidze together that summer of 1936.70