Orjonikidze had confided thoughts of suicide to Kaganovich and Mikoyan.61 In published photographs taken near the body, Kaganovich was seen expressing visibly strong emotions: grief, anger. He had lost his soul mate, and he knew Stalin had been sadistically pressuring the infirm Orjonikidze. Kaganovich—tough as nails, explosive—was spiritually broken. Stalin went on to break Mikoyan, summoning him in 1937 to discuss the arrest of his subordinate in the food industry commissariat, Mark Belenky, then, after Mikoyan supposedly protested and Stalin called him blind in matters of personnel, summoning him again to show him protocols of Belenky’s “confession.” “Have a look: he confessed to wrecking,” Stalin said. “You vouched for him. Go and read it!” Mikoyan called it “a blow against me.”62 Members of the inner circle were no longer comrades of the ruler. Stalin was no longer first among peers, but a despot.63
EXTIRPATION
Molotov opened the delayed Central Committee plenum on February 23 in the Sverdlov rotunda of Catherine the Great’s Imperial Senate, and in the shadow of Orjonikidze’s death. The sessions would last an unusual eleven days, longer than any other plenum.64 NKVD officials from all around the country, most of them not members of the Central Committee, were conspicuous. Stalin set a tone of menace in his opening remarks, calling top officials who had been arrested “empty chatterboxes, lacking technical training,” whose only claim to fame was “possession of a party card.” He added that “current wreckers have no technical advantages over our people. On the contrary, in technical terms our people are better prepared.” Sounding a cherished theme, he boasted that “we have tens of thousands of capable people, talented people. We need only to know them and promote them, so that they do not get stuck in the old place and begin to rot.”65
The first order of business at the choreographed gathering, though, was Bukharin and Rykov. On the opening evening, Yezhov reported on the accusations of treason. Mikoyan reliably reinforced his points. Bukharin had written a long rebuttal of the press slander against him to the politburo and announced a hunger strike. Now, in a debilitated state, unshaven, wearing a rumpled suit, he was given the floor. He denied the charges but was mercilessly heckled. “Trotsky and his disciples Zinoviev and Kamenev once worked with Lenin, and now these people have reached an agreement with Hitler,” Stalin interrupted. “After all that has happened with these men, these former comrades who have reached an agreement with Hitler in order to sell out the USSR, there are no more surprises in human life. You must prove everything. . . .”66 Three days before the plenum, Bukharin had again abased himself in a letter to Stalin. “I really love you now dearly and with belated love,” he wrote, praising Stalin’s mistrust as a sign of “wisdom.” Bukharin predicted that a still greater age would dawn, with Stalin as the very “world spirit” Hegel had imagined.67
Turar Ryskulov, an ethnic Kazakh candidate member of the Central Committee and the long-standing deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars for the Russian republic, quietly tried to persuade some plenum attendees to come to the defense of Rykov and Bukharin, but he could not manage to do so.68
At the plenum (February 24), Rykov denied the scurrilous accusations and called the mockery of him “a savage thing,” given that he was already effectively condemned to death (he pointed out that others had confessed and been shot anyway). During Rykov’s and Bukharin’s speeches, nearly 1,000 interruptions were recorded. Not one was supportive. Stalin made the greatest number (100), followed by Molotov (82) and Postyshev (88).69 More than half of those present never interjected, but for two more days (February 25–26), speakers took the dais to rip into the rightists. “Bukharin writes in his statement to the Central Committee that Ilich [Lenin] died in his arms,” Yezhov shouted. “Rubbish! You’re lying! Utterly false!” Bukharin responded that “those present when Ilich died were Maria Ilinichna [Ulyanova], Nadezhda Konstantinovna [Krupskaya], and myself”—and turned toward them for confirmation. Neither Lenin’s wife nor his sister said anything. Bukharin continued: “Did I take Ilich’s dead body in my arms, and kiss his feet?” Both women stayed silent.