Yagoda went on to admit to killing Menzhinsky and to reluctantly becoming involved in the murder of Gorky, at Yenukidze’s insistence. When Vyshinsky went through his crimes at the end of the day, asking in turn whether Yagoda was guilty in the cases of Kirov, Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky, and Gorky, he did not refer to Peshkov—a minor victory for the accused.
Levin’s defense counsel, Braude, then cross-examined:
Allow me to ask you, what methods did you employ to secure Levin’s consent to commit these terrorist acts?
In any case not such as he described here.
You yourself went into detail about this at the preliminary investigation. Do you confirm this part of your testimony?
It is exaggerated, but that doesn’t matter.
165
Vyshinsky now attempted to involve Bukharin in the Gorky murder. Bukharin defended himself effectively. The “evidence,” even at its face value, was simply that Tomsky had once said to him in conversation that the Trotskyites were opposed to Gorky and had some idea of a “hostile act” against him. A hostile act could be anything from a newspaper article up, and in any case such a conversation, as he pointed out, could not possibly prove that he, Bukharin, had murdered the writer.
Kryuchkov, Gorky’s secretary, followed. He had left Peshkov lying in the snow in March or April, without result, and finally managed to leave him out to catch a chill in May; Levin and A. I. Vinogradov had managed to persuade other doctors and nurses to give the patient a fatal dose of laxative. When Gorky, in turn, had been given a cold, Pletnev and Levin had insisted on overdoses of digitalis.
The most tragic of all the figures in the great trials was examined on the morning of 9 March. Professor Dmitry Pletnev, a sixty-six-year-old heart specialist, had long enjoyed a reputation as Russia’s leading doctor, the pride of the profession. Now, for the first time (if we except the petty crook Arnold) a figure from outside the whole machinery of state, the whole political controversy, stood for trial—and confessed. He, above all, represented the silent non-Party masses whose sufferings in the Purge were otherwise hidden from sight.
When Yezhov had decided that a confession from Levin alone would clearly not be impressive enough, he had turned his attention to Gorky’s other main physician. But Pletnev had been before the Revolution a member of the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party. There was no question of appealing to him on the basis of Communist morality. But equally, he had avoided politics since the Revolution, and no political blackmail against him was possible.
Yezhov’s solution was nasty even by Yezhov standards. A preliminary decision on the story of medical murders must have been taken soon after he succeeded to Yagoda’s post. An NKVD provocateur, a young woman usually employed to compromise foreigners, was sent as a patient to Pletnev. After a couple of consultations, she accused him of having assaulted her two years previously.166 By December 1936, she was coming to his house, annoying his daughter and housekeeper, and he complained to the police.167
They affected to take up his complaint, but instead went into hers, and claimed to believe it. Pletnev appealed to his medical and personal connections to help him. (He was treating Ordzhonikidze and others.)168 As late as 5 March, the official account tells us, he was still expecting that such help would be forthcoming.169
But the contrary was true. On 8 June,
Be accursed, criminal violator of my body! Be accursed, sadist, practicing your foul perversions on my body! Let shame and disgrace fall on you, let terror and sorrow, weeping and anguish be yours as they have been mine, ever since, criminal professor, you made me the victim of your sexual corruption and criminal perversions. I curse you.
“B”
A short statement was added, signed by Vyshinsky, to the effect that the Section for Investigating Specially Important Cases had the matter in hand—that is, I. I. Shapiro, who was in fact to be Pletnev’s interrogator throughout.170
