Stalin полностью

As each phase of the seemingly endless party cleanings had unfolded, the focus of attack had moved ever closer to the centers of power. Whereas the 1933–34 party purge (expulsions largely without arrest) had targeted the rank and file, and the 1935 verification and exchange of party cards had affected to a great degree lower-level apparatchiks sacrificed by their superiors, the 1936–38 terror, which involved arrest as well as expulsion, consumed the big fish, those who had earlier implemented the expulsions of others, and decimated the Stalinist Central Committee.⁵³ Central Committee membership had always been a mark of the highest prestige and privilege. True, its members had long ago ceased to demonstrate any capacity for, let alone inclination toward, collective action.⁵⁴ They met only when summoned, and even then were ultracareful to avoid the appearance of gathering in subgroups. After they received the June 1937 plenum materials in advance (as per normal procedure), which included interrogation protocols of already arrested high officials, Central Committee members wrote to Stalin swearing their fealty, even if their own names were not (yet) mentioned in “testimonies.” None wrote or spoke up to question the frame-ups.⁵⁵

Upon the opening of the June plenum, of the seventy-one members and sixty-eight candidates for membership formally elected to the Central Committee at the previous party congress (1934), thirteen had been arrested (including Pyatakov, Bukharin, and Rykov), three had committed suicide (Tomsky, Orjonikidze, and Gamarnik), four had died of natural causes (Mężyński, Kuibyshev, Tovstukha, and Alexander Steinhart), and one had been assassinated (Kirov). During the plenum, Stalin sanctioned the destruction of at least another thirty-one, so that more than fifty of the 139 did not take part in or finish the sessions; several more would be arrested right after.⁵⁶ Altogether, around 100 of the 139 Central Committee members would not survive to the next party congress. The vast majority of them had not been Stalin’s opponents in the oppositions of the 1920s. Nor had they run afoul of him subsequently. To be sure, a few, such as Sergei Syrtsov, party boss of Siberia during Stalin’s 1928 visit, had been expelled from the Central Committee in 1930 for private criticism of him.⁵⁷ But most of those arrested now were stalwarts who had been loyal right through the fire of dekulakization-collectivization and beyond.⁵⁸ Their subordinates and associates were also destroyed—followed, in many cases, by their replacements.

Most astonishingly, sitting provincial party bosses were forced to organize their own annihilation by summoning party meetings and encouraging denunciations.⁵⁹ When, predictably, they tried to protect themselves and their associates by sacrificing other, often rival, officials, Stalin accused them of suppressing criticism. He had sent a ciphered telegram around the Union expressly warning that “some party secretaries of provinces, apparently wishing to escape blame, very eagerly give authorization to the NKVD organs to arrest certain leaders, directors, technical directors, engineers and technicians, mid-managers of factories and transport, and other sectors. The Central Committee reminds you that neither secretaries of a province or territory, nor secretaries of national parties, nor party-soviet leaders in locales have the right to authorize such arrests.”⁶⁰ Such decisions were Stalin’s alone and, to ensure compliance, he dispatched “Central Committee” plenipotentiaries: Kaganovich to Chelyabinsk, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, and Ukraine; Zhdanov to Bashkiria, Tataria, and Orenburg; Malenkov to Belorussia, Armenia, Kazan, Tula, Omsk, and Tambov; Andreyev to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Saratov, and the North Caucasus; Shkiryatov to the Soviet Far East. In Kiev, chairing an assembly of the “party active,” Kaganovich began, “Well, come on up and report whatever anyone knows about enemies of the people.”⁶¹