The Great Terror полностью

Life, which had cast the Bukharin reactionaries aside, was represented mainly by the heroes of the Soviet Arctic expedition who had been landed at the pole some months earlier and were now in the news. There was celebration first of their rescue from the ice floe and then, on 16 March, of their arrival back in Leningrad on the icebreakers Yermak and Murmanets. Papanin and his gallant comrades were, as before, given the full treatment day after day, with receptions, decorations, public meetings, and a vast press spread.

A further sign of the rejection by the forward-looking Soviet people of all the dark forces of the past was shown in the elections to Union Republic Supreme Soviets. As Stalin was to remark so tellingly in his Report to the XVIIIth Congress in 1939,²³⁰ the executions of Tukhachevsky and Yakir were followed by the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, giving the Soviet power 98.6 percent of all taking part in the voting. At the beginning of 1938, “Rosengolts, Rykov, Bukharin and others” had been sentenced, and after this, elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics gave the Soviet power 99.4 percent of all taking part in the voting.

As for the effects of the trial, once again neither the ineptitudes of the plot nor the partial denials of the accused made any difference. The extravagances included those long since established. Once more, a vast network of assassins was discovered. At least eight groups were working on the destruction of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Yezhov. And, this time, they were shown not simply to be under the protection of high officials in the Party and the Army, but actually to have been nourished and sponsored by the NKVD itself. Seldom can terrorists have had such advantages as those supposedly enjoyed by the plotters. Apart from half a dozen members of the Government, including the Head of the Secret Police itself, they actually had on their side the NKVD officers Pauker and Volovich, responsible for guarding their prospective victims. But the results had been negligible. Assassinations had indeed been carried out, but only by doctors. By adding these in, the total successes of all the groups of assassins exposed at the three trials consisted of Kirov killed; Molotov perhaps slightly shaken in a car accident; Kuibyshev, Gorky, and Menzhinsky “poisoned” by their doctors; and Gorky’s son given a chill and then doctored to death. It is an unimpressive result, and the conclusion—that the best way to assassinate anyone was to wait until he got ill—was not very encouraging to anyone desiring speedy action. A minor curiosity, again unnoticed by enthusiasts, is that the indictment cites against the accused diversionary acts in the Far Eastern Territory, and in particular certain specified train wrecks, on the instructions of Japanese intelligence, and the verdict finds them guilty of this, but no attempt at all is made to prove it in the evidence! The reason for this anomaly is not clear, though it might conceivably be that the relevant witness balked at the last moment.

Another oddity of the trial was again the implication of a whole series of important figures who were, however, not produced. As Grinko had remarked, the “bloc” included “a number of other people who are not now in the dock.”²³¹ Major roles in the conspiracy, as important as those played by any of those appearing in court, were alleged to have been played by Yenukidze, Rudzutak,²³² and Antipov,²³³ while A. P. Smirnov, Karakhan, Uglanov, V. Shmidt, and Yakovlev²³⁴ had roles notably more important than the second level of those appearing in the dock.fn6 Yenukidze and Karakhan had indeed been shot without public trial. But why? And as to the others, why did they not appear? Such questions were scarcely asked.

On an even more essential point, Bukharin’s calculation that his tactics would adequately expose the falsity of the charges against him seems to have been too subtle. It was, of course, plain that he denied all overt acts of terrorism and espionage. But who was affected by this? Serious independent observers in any case did not credit the charges, and would not have done so even if he had confessed to all of them—any more than they did in the case of Zinoviev. But to the greater political audience for whom the trials were enacted, the impression received was simply that “Bukharin had confessed.” For those who even noted that the confession had only been partial, the fact that he had admitted to organizing a terrorist conspiracy outweighed his rejection of actual terrorist acts. Indeed, this last even gave a certain color to Vyshinsky’s thesis that Bukharin, though driven to admit the essentials, was trying to wriggle out of particular crimes.