Sabotage, on a large scale, had been designed to cause discontent as well as disruption. He, too, had spread disease among animals:
I must also say that in 1932 we took measures to spread plague among pigs, which resulted in a high pig mortality; this was done by inoculating pigs against plague in a wrecking fashion.58
… Further, as regards rural economy, I should like to say something about our diversionist activities in horse-breeding. In 1936 we caused a wide outbreak of anaemia in Byelorussia. This was done intentionally, because in Byelorussia horses are extremely important for defence purposes. We endeavoured to undermine this powerful base in case it should be needed in connection with war….
As far as I can now recall, about 30,000 horses perished owing to this measure.59
More essentially, he took the blame for the early excesses of collectivization. These had been put through for anti-Party reasons:
At that period there were still about 100,000 individual peasants in Byelorussia. We gave it out that an individual peasant who failed to join the collective farm was an enemy of the Soviet power. This was done for provocative purposes; in accordance with our provocative stand, we applied to the individual peasants who resisted collectivization such taxation measures which caused discontent and an insurrectionary spirit among the individual peasants.60
But fortunately Moscow had known better:
… Later the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. took measures to correct what we had done, and the situation changed. The spirit among the individual peasants, among those whom we had provoked, took a distinct turn for the better.
This interpretation of the events of 1929 and 1930 is a striking one, and shows a continual preoccupation with the peasantry on Stalin’s part.
In industry, too, the “national fascists” had operated on a large scale:
As to power development, here attention was mainly concentrated on the Byelorussian Regional Power Station, which feeds the industries of Vitebsk, Orsha and Moghilev. Fuel was supplied irregularly. Construction work was interfered with. Specifically, I can mention the Krichevsk Cement Works, the Orsha Flax Mills, the Moghilev Pipe Foundry….61
ASIAN NATIONALISTS
The Uzbek leader Khodzhayev followed Sharangovich. It will be convenient to take his case together with that of his colleague Ikramov, though the latter gave evidence the following day.
Hitherto “bourgeois nationalism” had been represented by Sharangovich and, to a lesser extent, Grinko. In the persons of the two Uzbeks, it was put forward in a more forthright form. They were not mobile
They represented, as others represented in their different spheres, a much larger set of Party and State officials—implicating the First Secretary and Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in neighboring Tadzhikistan, for example, as well as their own Republic’s deviationists.
Khodzhayev seems to have really resented in some degree the centralizing and denationalizing tendencies of Stalinism, but Ikramov had not. In fact, they had led two opposed factions in the Uzbek Party, and they now attributed their alleged unity in struggling against the regime to pressure from the Rightist central group. Ikramov testified, “Under the pressure of Bukharin and the direct guidance of Antipov, the two nationalist organizations co-ordinated their work.”62
Khodzhayev was by far the most prominent and effective Uzbek to have taken the Communist side right from the time of the Revolution, in the struggle against the old Emir of Bokhara. He had been a member of the Uzbek Central Committee Bureau since the first Congress of the Uzbek Party in 1925, and had long served as Chairman of the local Council of People’s Commissars.
But he had not even been elected a delegate to the VIIth Congress of the Uzbek Communist Party, ending on 17 June 1937. On 27 June, his removal from the Chairmanship of the Uzbek Council of People’s Commissars and expulsion from the Uzbek Central Executive Committee were announced, together with an attack on his counter-revolutionary nationalist positions.63 He was clearly under arrest by this time. His brother, also prominent in the local Party, committed suicide.64
