Secondly, I instructed Ginsburg and Boyarshinov, Chief of the Bacteriological Department, to artificially infect pigs with erysipelas in the Leningrad Region and with plague in the Voronezh Region and the Azov-Black Sea Territory….
It is difficult to estimate the results, but at any rate it may be taken for granted that several tens of thousands of pigs perished owing to this diversive act.
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And a variety of other agricultural sabotage schemes, such as wrong types of crop rotation, the provision of bad seed, and so on, contributed to “lowering the harvest yield.”
In Chernov’s Ukrainian period, he had also undertaken to incense the middle peasants and Ukrainian national feeling generally by attributing the policies he had pursued to orders from Moscow. He had contacted Mensheviks abroad, and become a German spy. Rykov was his main connection in the Rightist center. Recalled, the ex-Premier again admitted the plot, but denied approving the actions. “All that he says is essentially and fundamentally true, but as to the part in which he said that I was in favour of distortions [of the agricultural policy], it seems to me he is wrong.”36 On the overthrow of the Soviet power, Rykov added, “I do not remember having such a conversation with Chernov, but of course the possibility of such a conversation is not precluded.”37 Finally, he denied various meetings with Chernov for wrecking purposes, and when Chernov said that to have neglected to give such instructions would have marked him as a very poor Rightist leader, he answered sardonically, “Perhaps I should have done as he says. It was a mistake on my part.”38 At which Ulrikh abruptly closed the day’s session.
The next day, 3 March, started with the ex-medical student Ivanov, former People’s Commissar for the Timber Industry. He had, of course, sabotaged that industry, on instructions from Rosengolts. Referring to the timber dumping which was a notorious aspect of Soviet trade policy in the early 1930s, he said:
The most valuable timber was sold at reduced prices. This involved a loss to the Soviet State of several million roubles in foreign currency. Bukharin explained this measure as being an advance to the British bourgeoisie in return for the support it had promised. Otherwise, he said, we would not be taken seriously, and we would forfeit confidence.39
In the internal administration of lumbering, his main aim, curiously enough, had been the disruption of culture:
Attention was chiefly devoted to hindering the technical re-equipment of lumbering, preventing the fulfillment of the plans of capital construction, especially in the cellulose and paper industry, in this way placing the country on a short paper ration and aiming a blow at the cultural revolution, interrupting the supply of exercise books and thus rousing discontent among the masses.40
He confessed also to having been involved in the “Left Communist” movement against Lenin, and to various attempts to organize insurrectionary bands (partly on British orders) and terrorist groups. In this connection, Bukharin was now questioned. He said he had ordered the formation of illegal organizations, but not insurrectionary bands. He had (though at a later date than that given by Ivanov) propounded an “insurrectionary orientation”—the Ryutin Platform. He had given no actual instructions for insurrectionary preparations, but he accepted the responsibility, in that a “practical worker” like Ivanov would doubtless go on to action on such a basis.41
When Vyshinsky said to him, “Hence, Ivanov’s statements about connections with the British Intelligence Service … ,” he interrupted, “I was totally uninformed about the Intelligence Service.”42
The next questioning should, according to schedule, have been that of Krestinsky. But instead, a minor agricultural specialist from Chernov’s Commissariat, Zubarev, appeared. He gave a good deal of evidence about disrupting the food supply.
Tell us the nature of your wrecking activities.
… Causing confusion in seed cultivation, lowering the quality of the seeds, employing bad quality materials, bad sifting, careless storing, and the result of all this was not only a reduction in yield, but also a hostile mood of the peasantry, dissatisfaction with these so-called selected seeds…. My criminal activities consisted first of all in wrongly planning the sowing of vegetables…. Exactly the same kind of work was carried on in respect to retarding the development of fruit-tree nurseries.
In respect to State farms, the main wrecking activities were that up to the last moment no proper rotation of crops was established, and in a number of State farms there was no rotation of crops at all. All this naturally reduced the yields. A large number of State farms which possessed large herds of cattle were left without fodder owing to the wrong crop rotation, and as a result we had the dying-off of cattle and slow development of the livestock farming….
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