As one of the leaders of the Right part of this bloc, I took part in the organization of a number of terrorist groups and in preparations for terrorist acts. As I have said in my testimony, I do not know of a single decision of the Right centre, through which I was related with the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’, about the actual commission of assassinations….
About the actual commission. So. Do you know that one of the aims of the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’ was to organize and commit terrorist acts against leaders of the Party and Government?
I said more than that, I said that I personally organized terrorist groups. But you are asking me whether I knew of such aims through some third person.
I am asking whether the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’ had any relation to the assassination of Comrade Kirov.
I have no information regarding the relation of the Rights or the Right part of the bloc to this assassination, and therefore I am convinced to this day that the assassination of Kirov was carried out by the Trotskyites without the knowledge of the Rights. Of course, I might not have known about it.
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Vyshinsky, baffled, then called on Yagoda, who said that both Rykov and Bukharin were lying: Rykov had been present, with Yenukidze, at the meeting which had discussed the question. However, Yagoda now started to drop peculiar hints on his own:
After this, did you personally take any measures to effect the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov?
I personally?
Yes, as a member of the bloc.
I gave instructions….
To whom?
To Zaporozhets in Leningrad. That is not quite how it was….
And then you gave instructions not to place obstacles in the way of the murder of Sergei Mironovich Kirov?
Yes, I did…. It was not like that.
In a somewhat different form?
It was not like that, but it is not important.
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Vyshinsky hastily dropped the matter and started to question Bukharin about the allegation that he had intended to kill Lenin. Bukharin admitted that there had been a plan in 1918 to arrest Lenin, but when Vyshinsky asserted that this must mean to kill him, he pointed out that Dzerzhinsky had actually been arrested by Socialist Revolutionaries at the time, and not killed. Conceding that Stalin and Sverdlov, too, were to have been arrested, he added that “under no circumstances” were the three to have been killed. Vyshinsky postponed the question until witnesses were called.
Bukharin was then allowed to start to speak at length. Ulrikh told him to stick to his “criminal anti-Soviet activities,” but after ten or fifteen minutes he was still expounding a theory of the way Rightism inevitably led to the restoration of capitalism. Ulrikh interrupted to say he must not make his defense plea now.
Bukharin countered: “This is not my defense, it is my self-accusation. I have not said a single word in my defense…”110 Nor, strictly speaking, had he. And he now went on to admit that his program would have meant “a lapse into bourgeois-democratic freedom,” which (Vyshinsky pointed out, and he accepted) meant in effect “outright rabid fascism”!
Vyshinsky turned to espionage:
Then why was it so easy for you to join a bloc which was engaged in espionage work?
Concerning espionage work I know absolutely nothing.
What do you mean, you don’t know?
Just that.
And what was the bloc engaged in?
Two people testified here about espionage, Sharangovich and Ivanov, that is to say two
Here Bukharin was cleverly turning the trial’s tactics against its originators. Ivanov had, on his own evidence, been a Tsarist agent provocateur in the revolutionary movement—for a Bolshevik audience, no lower form of life, no more untrustworthy character, could exist. His evidence was automatically worthless. But at the same time, Bukharin was surely suggesting that he was still following the same trade, under different orders.
Vyshinsky now scored a point by turning to Rykov, who again admitted knowing that espionage was being conducted by the Byelorussian “national fascists,” and that “in my opinion, Bukharin also knew.” Bukharin simply retorted that he had not known. His connections with the Austrian police, which Vyshinsky raised, “consisted of my imprisonment in an Austrian fortress.”
Accused Sharangovich, you were a Polish spy, although you have been in prison?
Yes, although I have been in prison.
I have been in a Swedish prison, twice in a Russian prison, and in a German prison.
112
