Khrushchev was more of a “Trotskyite” than myriad officials who were destroyed for it. If Stalin had suddenly changed his mind, nothing Khrushchev did, or did not do, could have saved his life. Of the thirty-eight highest officials in the Moscow provincial party organization, three survived, two of whom were Kaganovich and Khrushchev. As party boss of Moscow, Khrushchev had to “authorize” arrests, and, in connection with the onset of “mass operations,” he’d had to submit a list of “criminal and kulak elements,” which in his case carried an expansive 41,305 names; he marked 8,500 of them “first category” (execution).124
Stalin entrusted his star pupil with a big new assignment. In late January 1938, the Ukraine-born ethnic Russian Khrushchev replaced the ethnic Pole Stanisław Kosior as party boss of Ukraine.125 He arrived in Kiev atop a mountain of corpses and took part in new arrest waves. By this time, the Communist party in Ukraine had been reduced by half, to 284,152 members (just 1 percent of the population), and the Ukrainian politburo and Central Committee had essentially ceased to function. Many provinces in Ukraine had no first or second secretaries, and none had a third secretary (with a single exception). Newspapers lacked editors. All eleven Ukrainian politburo members would perish without a trace. No one from the Ukrainian orgburo or the Ukrainian party Control Commission would survive, either. Just two of the sixty-two members and forty candidate members of the Ukrainian Central Committee would manage to escape execution or incarceration.126 This state of affairs was not unique to Ukraine, but this was a strategic and industrial region roughly equal in size to France.
At least 160,000 victims, in Moscow and Ukraine, would be arrested under Khrushchev during the terror. Such rough figures should put to rest the notion that Beria was a singular monster, instead of an exceedingly ambitious figure, like Khrushchev, who developed ways to thrive in a monstrous system. It bears further remarking that Khrushchev, while working in Moscow, got along well with the party boss of the Caucasus. “I met Beria, it seems, in 1932,” Khrushchev would recall. “We met to discuss personnel issues. . . . He came with Bagirov” (whom Khrushchev already knew). They talked about an Armenian (Ruben Mkrtichyan, known as Rubenov) who was party boss of a Moscow ward but being recommended for a higher position. “After the first encounter with Beria, I got closer to him,” Khrushchev continued. “I liked Beria—a simple and sharp-witted person. Therefore, at Central Committee plenums, we often sat next to each other, exchanging opinions, scoffing at the orators. I liked Beria so much that in 1934, when I was on holiday in Sochi for the first time, I went to see him in Tiflis.”127
Khrushchev, no less than Beria, albeit with a sunnier and more idealistic disposition, earnestly took to the role of pupil under the great teacher. Another Khrushchev subordinate, P. V. Lukashov, was arrested in Ukraine only a few weeks after Khrushchev had received Stalin’s approval to promote him. “For me it was a moral blow,” he recalled. “How could this be? I had seen this man, trusted him, respected him. But what could I do?” Lukashov, miraculously, was released, after which he described for Khrushchev the ways he had been tortured—to testify against Khrushchev. When Khrushchev mentioned Lukashov’s arrest to Stalin, the latter said, “Yes, there are perversions. On me, as well, they’re collecting material.”128
During the terror of 1937–38, Khrushchev would turn out to be one of only two people promoted to candidate membership in the politburo, the other being Yezhov. And Khrushchev became the first person elevated to the politburo without prerevolutionary membership in the party.129
NKVD DEGRADATION