… I had instructions, and I pursued the aim of contaminating the apparatus with alien, hostile, anti-Soviet and insurrectionary elements. How contaminated the apparatus of the Centrosoyuz was may be judged from the fact that when I was in charge of it about 15 percent of the staff of the Centrosoyuz consisted of former Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists, Trotskyites, etc. In certain regions the number of alien elements, former members of other parties, Kolchak officers, and so on, as, for example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Irkutsk and West Siberia, was considerably higher.
96
He then got into a curious altercation with Vyshinsky:
… But how did matters stand with butter?
We don’t sell butter in the rural districts.
I am not asking you what you sell. You were above all selling the main thing—your country. I am speaking about what measures were taken by your organization to disrupt trade and deprive the population of prime necessities. Apart from sugar and salt, do you know anything concerning butter?
I told you that the co-operatives do not sell butter in the rural districts….
I am asking you: have you any knowledge of criminal operations with regard to supplying the population with butter, particularly cheap grades of butter, or not? Operations which were effected on the orders of your ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’; are they known to you or not?
Yes, they are.
In what did they consist?
They consisted in the following: in making butter, all the produce purchasing organizations used the international standards fixing quality of butter.
That is not the point.
That is the point.
No.
What do you mean? This was done….
Accused Zelensky, no cross-talk, and keep to the point….
And was the butter which was issued for sale always of good quality, or did you try to spoil its quality too?
Yes.
Were there cases when members of your organization connected with the butter business threw glass into the butter?
There were cases when glass was thrown into the butter.
Were there cases when your accomplices, fellow participants in the criminal plot against the Soviet power and the Soviet people, threw nails into the butter?
There were.
For what purpose? to make it ‘tastier’?
That is clear.
Well, that is organized wrecking and diversive activities. Do you admit that you are guilty of this?
I do….
In addition to his vaguely unsatisfactory and undignified style of reply, Zelensky balked at a major question:
Did you take part in the wrecking, diversive, terrorist and espionage work of this bloc?
I did take part in wrecking and diversive work.
About espionage work you so far say nothing?
(No reply.)
Do you answer for all the criminal activities of the bloc?
I do.
—this last a weak ploy by Vyshinsky.
Zelensky did, however, admit contact with A. V. Alexander, the British Labour and Cooperative leader, with whom he had discussed the possibilities of a Rightist Government in Russia.
Ikramov’s examination, which we have already covered, came next. When he had finished, first Bessonov was again questioned. He gave evidence of connections with Socialist Revolutionary émigrés, with Trotsky, and with the Nazis.
BUKHARIN IN DOCK
And now, at last, the main subject of the trial was brought to questioning. Vyshinsky started his duel with Bukharin.
