But the Marshal himself went by train. He was not yet, however, under arrest. At the end of August, he made a report to the Military Soviet of the People’s Commissariat of Defense. “Criticism was sharp and one-sided.” Voroshilov attacked him, while Stalin, who had always defended him previously, remained silent. Later Voroshilov told him that he was not to return to the Far East, but to remain at the disposal of the Military Revolutionary Soviet “until a post suitable for a Marshal” could be found. Meanwhile, he should go on leave to Sochi, the resort in the Caucasus.69
Blyukher telegraphed his wife to return, adding that his health was poor. He put some money aside for her, in case he was arrested. For the chances of this now seemed high. She and the family joined him soon afterwards, together with his brother, Pavel, commander of an Air Force unit in the Far East. By this time, he had learned of the arrest of Army Commander Fedko, Assistant Commissar of Defense, which seems in some way to have been associated with his own. Fedko put up armed resistance and ordered his guard to hold the NKVD men at gunpoint while he telephoned Voroshilov, who told him to yield “temporarily.”70
On 22 October, on Stalin’s personal orders,71 four men in black civilian suits entered Blyukher’s place and arrested all the family. Blyukher and his wife were taken to the Lefortovo, where Beria personally conducted the first examinations. He was then continuously interrogated by other NKVD officers working in shifts. The charge was of having been a Japanese spy since 1921, and of having planned to escape to Japan with the help of his Air Force brother, Pavel (this second charge at least was not totally implausible; after all, Lyushkov had just done precisely that). The Marshal was now told that in addition to the rest of the family, his first wife, Galina, had been arrested in Leningrad. (He had taken the pseudonym Galen from her name.)72 Apart from using all these hostages, the NKVD also offered him an inducement: if he confessed, he would get off with a ten-year sentence. However, he refused to sign the protoco1.73
On 28 October 1938, medals were awarded to the heroes of the recent fighting in the Far East, including Shtern. The true victor was now undergoing severe torture by his NKVD interrogators.
There is no evident reason for the NKVD to have practiced or feigned on this occasion the haste with which the May—June 1937 purge of the Tukhachevsky group had been carried out. And unlike the procedure not only in that case, but even in the July 1938 military executions, we learn from a Soviet publication of the Khrushchev period that Blyukher was killed “without court or sentence.”74 It was also stated that “uninterrupted interrogation broke down the health of this virile man.”75 And we are now told that by 6 November, he had been beaten until “unrecognizable” and died as the result of “inhuman beatings” though without signing any confession.76 (Fedko and Khakanian, his presumed associates, were not to be executed until the following February.)
His wife, Glafira, spent seven months in solitary confinement in the Lubyanka,77 then eight years in camps, but survived. Their five-year-old daughter was sent to an NKVD orphanage in Kemerovo, where her mother eventually found her, being the first mother ever to appear there.78
There have always been rumors that Blyukher, or some of the officers round him, had seriously entertained the idea of a revolt. There is no reliable evidence of this, though Lyushkov gave information to the Japanese about “opposition groupings” in Siberia. Much of this was seen, and transmitted back to Moscow, by the Soviet spy Richard Sorge. And whether it was factual or speculative, it seems from the timing that it may have been used against Blyukher.79
The true reasons for proceeding against the Marshal seems to have been that he was a comparatively independent-minded soldier, and (as a candidate member of the Central Committee) a politician, in a position of power and influence. His fall and death mark the end of the last tenuous hope of action against Stalin. By the beginning of November, official listings of the military leadership ran Voroshilov, Mekhlis, Shchadenko, Shaposhnikov, Budenny, Kulik, Timoshenko.80 For the first time, the Purge operatives ranked before the surviving soldiery. A few days later, the same order of listing contained an even more insulting and symptomatic insertion: Frinovsky, briefly become People’s Commissar for the Navy, immediately after Voroshilov.81
THE FALL OF YEZHOV
