The class struggle during the thirties in the Soviet Union.
Mário
Sousa
2001
The purges
of, or expulsions from, the Soviet communist party and the political trials
in Moscow during the 1930-ies are two of the favourite issues for the
bourgeois propagandists. They are brought up time and time again in bourgeois
mass media giving the public a completely untruthful and false picture of the
purges, the political trials and the Soviet Union of the period.
Their purpose is to defame socialism and the Soviet Union to prevent
people of today from listening to the communists and make them accept
capitalism as something inevitable. For that reason it is important to clarify
this chapter of the history of the Soviet Union. This in order both to
fight the bourgeois lies and to understand the difficult which the Bolsheviks
met in the revolutionary transition. Recent historical research has been
carried out in this area, and that is one of the bases for the article. For the
rest, literature and documents from the 1930-ies and the 1940-ies are used,
which long ago have fallen into oblivion or totally unknown by most people.
Facts
about the 1930-ies.
But let us
begin by providing the reader a picture of the Soviet 1930-ies, as a matter of
fact a decisive decade in the history of the Soviet Union. Among other
things, it was during the 1930-ies that the first and second five-year plan
were realised and the collectivisation of the agriculture took place. The national
income, which was 29 million Roubles in 1929, grew to 105 millions 1938. An
increase by 360 per cent in ten years, a unique phenomenon in the history of
industrialisation! The number of workers and employees increased from 14,5
millions 1930 to 28 millions 1938. The average, annual salary of industrial
workers grew from 991 Roubles 1930 to 3,447 Roubles 1938. The grants for
cultural and social matters in the state budget increased from approx. 2
billion Roubles 1930 to 35 billions 1938. In the beginning of the
1930-ies the whole industrial sector was transverted to a maximum 7 hours
working day (less working hours for miners and other similar), a reform which
had to be abandoned towards the end of the 1930-ies for the preparations in the
face of the war threat from Nazi Germany.
During the
1930-ies production in the Soviet Union grew at a rate never before
seen in the history of mankind. In the beginning of 1930 the total value of the
industrial production was 21 million Roubles. Eight years later the value of
the industrial production was above 100 million Roubles. (Both figures counted
in the prices of 1926-27). The industrial production of the country had
multiplied almost five times in eight years! In the beginning of 1930 the area
sown with all kinds of crops was 118 million hectares. 1938 the area was 136.9
million hectares. Simultaneously, the country had carried through a total
collectivisation of the agriculture and passed through and solved gigantic
problems connected with the collectivisation and modernisation of the
agriculture. In the beginning of 1930 the number of tractors in the Soviet
Union was 34,900. In the year 1938 it was 483,500. The tractors
were multiplied almost fourteen times in eight years. During the same period
the combine-harvesters increased from 1,700 to 153,500 and the harvesters from
4,300 to 130,800.
During the
1930-ies the cultural development of the Soviet Union advanced in
leaps too. The number of students in all schools 1929 was approx. 14 millions.
In the year 1938 they had increased to approx. 34 millions, and at that time
students in all kinds of courses including part time, amounted to more than 47
millions. Almost a third of all citizens took part of the school system. In the
beginning of the 1930-ies 33 per cent were still illiterate in the Soviet
Union (67 per cent in 1913). 1938 illiteracy was totally eradicated since
several years back. During this period the students at higher forms of
education almost tripled from 207,000 to 601,000. The number of libraries
was 70,000 in the year 1938 compared with 40,000 in 1933.
The amount of books in the libraries 1938 reached the colossal figure of 126
millions to compare with 86 millions 1933. During the thirties another measure
was carried out, which demonstrates the ideological and material strength of
the Soviet Union and its wish to treat all citizens equally: the
general, compulsory elementary school education was implemented all over the
country in the languages of the different nationalities. This represented a
colossal cultural work with a great number of new books, text books and other
didactic materials in languages which had hardly even existed before in a
written form. For the first time literature in their own languages was
published for several nationalities. This is the back-ground against which
should be seen the class struggle in the Soviet Union during the
1930-ies. Keep that in mind when reading this article.[1]
The
development of the communist party.
During the
1930-ies millions of new members entered the CPSU(b) and took part in the
struggle for production and social development. This great influx of people and
the huge increase in production which took place were not only beneficial. The
party was obliged to evaluate the party- and social work of old and new members
and expel or purge those who did not attain a good enough level for communists.
This process did not have a given end. The struggle against bureaucracy,
corruption, opportunism and abuse of power within the party and state was
carried out in many different ways during the thirties, and it was not always
successful or devoid of errors. The socialist society presupposes discussion
and criticism to correct mistakes and find new ways. But the purges were
important for reasons of external policy too.
During the
1930-ies the external threat against the Soviet Union increased with
a new type of enemies. Beside the blockade, sabotages and the menace of
aggression from the capitalist countries, a new enemy emerged with the aim of
crushing the socialist Soviet Union and annihilating the Slavish
people. Nazism came to power in Germany in January 1933 having promised, among
other things, to crush Communism, get new colonies in the East and to use the
people there as slave labour in the German economy. Already in 1925 Hitler
wrote in his book Mein Kampf about these plans of conquest:
“Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line
of conduct followed by pre-War Germany in foreign policy. We put an
end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and
turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial
and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of
the future. But when we speak of new territory en Europe today we must
principally think of Russia and the border States subject
to her.”[2]
The rise of
the Soviet Union during the 1930-ies was vital. It was the very basis
for the victory of the Soviet Union over the Nazi Germany in World
War II. The struggle against the anomalies within the communist party and the
purges were conditions for the successes in the production and the safety of
the country. The bourgeois historian rarely mention this.
According
to the bourgeois myths the purges were a bloody persecution of those
criticising the regime, whereby a power hungry bureaucracy made use of an
extensive administrative and violent apparatus with the most cruel methods to
literally kill off a progressive opposition, yes even an opposition harbouring
–according to the same historians– the “genuine” socialists and communists.
Behind the persecutions there was of course Stalin with his alleged suspicions
and morbid behaviour. Stalin who, according to the bourgeoisie, had a long
ranging plan for killing all opponents and all old Bolsheviks in order to grip
the whole power himself. That is how the purges and political trials of the
thirties have been described during decades by bourgeois historians and
cultural personalities. But that mere fact, that the same bourgeoisie which in
their own countries register, persecute, imprison and execute communists,
accuse the socialist Soviet Union for persecuting the “real” communists, shows
that not is all as it appears to be. The bourgeois historians lie, and that is
what we shall prove. But it is in fact even worse. Since 1945 they have been in
possession of material proving that the conditions in the Soviet
Union were just the opposite to the myths they had been creating.
The Smolensk archives.
Facts about
the purges, the development of the production and the political trials are
elements in the history of the Soviet communist party, and like much else they
can be found in the archives of the party. Those archives have been closed to
foreign researchers up until 1989, when Gorbachov changed it. There is an
exception however. An extensive archive material reached the West and
the US in 1945 already. The history is simple but quite amazing. When
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II, they reached into
the country as far as the neighbourhood of Moscow and Leningrad.
Since 1941 the German troops had been occupying the Western oblast – the
Western region, which had as its centre the city of Smolensk. The Western
region was one of the administrative units of
the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. At
the time, the region had a population of approx. 6.5 million and a surface of
600 by 240 kilometres – 144,000 square kilometres, approximate a
third of Sweden’s surface (Sweden 450,000 square
kilometres, United Kingdom 243,500 square kilometres).
In Smolensk, the Germans found the archives of the Western region, which
for some reason had not been destroyed by the retreating Soviet troops.
Archives were forwarded to Germany 1941. At the end of the war 1945
the Smolensk archives came to land in the American occupation zone of
Germany. The Smolensk archives belonged to the US ally the
Soviet Union, but for the capitalist thinking of the American generals it was
natural to forward the archives on to the USA.
The Smolensk archives today are to be found in the United States
National Archives.
The Smolensk archives
are very large. With a few exceptions all the important doings of the communist
party of the Western region are collected there. From membership registers and
political directives at all levels to excerpts of discussions and debates at
meetings up to the leading institution of the area, the organisation bureau.
All aspects of political life can be found, from agricultural policies and
industrial strategies to the planning of the annual holidays of workers.
Documents about the party purges in the Western region are kept there.
The Smolensk archives should be a gold mine for all wishing to get an
insight in the functioning of the Soviet society. Especially those who are
opposed to the Soviet Union and socialism could find facts there to
prove their point. Yet, the Smolensk archives have been very little
used. The American historian Merle Fainsod was the first one to study the archives.
In 1958 he published a book on the subject, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, a
tendentious work with serious faults, almost entirely directed at giving a very
negative description of the soviet power apparatus. With few exceptions,
the Smolensk archives have remained practically untouched thereafter.
The archive
material never got a first page position in Western mass media. The reason is
that the political life in the Western region of Soviet Union as reported in
the Smolensk archives had nothing in common with the concoction of
monstrous lies and myths which were displayed (and still are) in mass media in
the West. The archive material, which is a collection of documents with
contributions from hundreds of thousands people with a wide range of opinions
about all aspects of life could not be used in the propaganda war against
the Soviet Union. Still, Merle Fainsod’s book Smolensk Under Soviet Rule
became part of the basis for the myths around the purges in the Soviet
communist party and the political trials during the 1930-ies, myths which
spread all over the Western world to universities and to mass media.
New
facts for own conclusions.
Not
until 1985 a book was published which was based on new investigations
of the Smolensk archives. The book bears the name Origins of
the Great Purges – The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933 – 1938 by
the American history professor J. Arch Getty. The book provides us with
statistics and other documents of great value for studying the history of
the Soviet Union. Getty is one of the principal figure behind the
publishing in the US in 1993 of the Russian research papers about the
Soviet treatment of offenders during Stalin (about which the present author
wrote Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union – From
Hitler to Hearst, from Conquest to Solzhenitsyn,1998). The Russian research
papers revealed the lies which had been spread in the capitalist mass media for
decades. The same author in 1999 (fifteen years later) published a new book
about the Soviet thirties with the title The Road to terror – Stalin
and the Self-Destruction of the Bocheviks. The book contains documents
from the earlier secret Soviet archives, for the first time made available to
the broad public. But it is like Getty writes, the documents have been selected
from a huge quantity, and it may be asked whether these were the most important
ones and whether they have been correctly interpreted – “Like all historical
documents they can be read in various ways”[3]. And
furthermore one may ask what is the meaning of the book when Getty writes, “our
study does not touch on all questions … we are unable to deal comprehensively
with foreign policy, agricultural or industrial affairs, or cultural matters”[4]. Was not the
politics in these questions that all struggle in the Bolshevik party was about?
The documents account for many internal discussions in the party but almost no
facts about the development of the Soviet Union during the 1930-ies.
This should be kept in mind.
The
research of Getty has destroyed some myths and lies about the Soviet
Union, but the most important is above all that it gives the individual a
possibility of judging for him/herself. And this, to draw one’s own conclusions
is in fact important. When it comes to the Soviet Union, there are no heavy
weighters in the West who can provide them and understand the whole. Getty
himself is a bourgeois author having limited possibilities to understand the
conditions of the class struggle the Soviet Union. In The Road to
Terror, which is supposed to show that the Bolsheviks exterminated
themselves during the 1930-ies in internal fights, there is for instance not a
word on the greatest social development by far in the history of mankind which
took place in the Soviet Union during the 1930-ies. Not a word about
that! With regard to the threaten from Nazi Germany, The Road to
Terror, a brick of 635 pages, mentions it with a line in a subordinate
clause, a total of six words, “the elite at the time obviously felt a
continuing crisis in the wake of collectivization and the rise of
German fascism”[5]. That is all!
Remember
then, that most of the thirties in the Soviet Union was characterised
of a struggle against time in the efforts to prepare the defences facing the
threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. If one does not accord due importance to
this fact, one will of course, inevitably draw wrong conclusions. If the
Bolsheviks had exterminated themselves instead of developing the country as
much as possible and building up its defence, the Nazis would have won the war
and eradicated the Soviet Union and the slavish people. That was not
what occurred, but the contrary. As everybody knows, the Soviet
Union won the war and eradicated Nazism. This said in order for the reader
to understand that academic research suffers from fundamental errors leaving
the realities of life outside, for intrigues and stupidities of all kinds
leading to conclusions on the level of the contents of a cheap detective story
in a book-stall. The specific aspect in Western research about the Soviet
Union is the colossal amount of lies and half truths which have been
flowing from the Western universities for the past fifty years.
“Origins
of the Great Purges”.
Both books
by Getty are among the literature forming the basis for this brochure. Origins
of the Great Purges is in contrast with the later The Road to
Terror a book replete with statistics and other things giving a true
picture of the society. Already the introduction makes you astonished. We are
not used to hearing professors talking frankly. In any case not Swedish
professors. Professor Arch Getty establishes in the introduction that research
on the Smolensk archives shows that most Western accounts for the
purges in the Soviet Union are based on “untenable assumptions”[6].
First, the
results of research show that the political events during the thirties were not
“a unified phenomenon (the Great Purges), which can be studied as a
process…planned, prepared, and carried out” by Stalin and his most intimate
men. Second, the research shows that the allegation that “the Old Bolsheviks of
Lenin’s (and Stalin’s) generation were the purges’ target”[7] has no
relationship with reality. Further, Getty confirms that it is time to review
what has been taught about the Soviet Union of the thirties.
This is
clear talk, which does not lend itself to writing by a researcher and professor
of history unless there is very strong evidence. Not least as this is in direct
contradiction with Fainsod’s book “Smolensk under Soviet Rule” from
1958. Fainsod wrote about the purges: “The assassination of Kirov in December
1934 touched off a new round of almost continuous purges which spread out in
ever-widening circles and rose to a smashing crescendo in the virtual
destruction of the oblast Party leadership in 1937[8]”.
It is not
just the case that the book by Getty removes the support from under all cheap
falsifiers of history. Getty calls in question Fainsod’s Smolensk itself,
which has for a long time been the basic “textbook” on the subject.
Meaning Smolensk Getty affirms that “The events of 1933-9 were
not all parts of the same planned crescendo of terror and did not constitute a
single phenomenon or process. The membership purges of 1933-6 were not simply
the predecessors of the police terror of 1937 and were related to it only
obliquely”[9].
We shall
present Arch Getty’s facts about the purges of the 1930-ies. Moreover, we shall
draw our own political conclusions from Getty’s statistics. Let us start by
giving the reader a short background about the situation in the Soviet
Communist party during the 1920-ies.
Briefly
about the history of the purges during the 1920-ies
After the
victory of the revolution, when the Communist party had become the ruling
party, the party leadership and Lenin had to acknowledge that some unwelcome
elements had penetrated into the party and state apparatus. They were people
who wanted to make a career via a membership in the party. At the eighth party
conference in December of 1919 Lenin brought this problem up. According to
Lenin it was “It is natural, on the one hand, that all the worst elements
should cling to the ruling party merely because it is the ruling party”[10]. For that
reason it was important to evaluate the contribution of the party members. On
the proposal of Lenin, the party carried out a re-registration of all party
members. Every member had to answer for his actions in front of the member
collective – those who were considered unreliable were excluded. That was the
first purification of the party apparatus. This method, to strengthen the party
by purging the opportunistic elements, was to characterise the Communist party
for many years to come.
The general
criteria for the purging of party members were corruption, passivity, breaches
of party discipline, alcoholism, criminality and anti-Semitism. For bourgeois
individuals and kulaks who hid their class origin expulsion was certain. (But
not for those who had been accepted into the party and who had admitted their
class background.) For the former tsarist officers who hid their past were also
inevitably expelled. All those who had been expelled could in their turn appeal
to the Central control commission, and then their cases were reviewed at a
higher level.
As we shall
se later, a relatively high number got their party membership back. The
decisions at the general meetings with hundreds of members were, as a rule,
more rigid than those at the party centre. The Central Committee of the party,
which had initiated the purges and decided their forms, tried first to make the
members at the base level to speak out and clamp down on corrupt functionaries
and their companions.
This turned
out to be a difficult work. Corrupt bureaucrats knew thousands of tricks to
escape criticism and tricky situations. Instead, the majority of those expelled
were base level members who often could not defend themselves against the
accusations by the party secretaries for passivity, political ignorance or bad
drinking habits.
The
purges during the 1920-ies.
After the
re-registration of 1919 Lenin and the party leadership found that there were
still considerable shortcomings in the party. The re-registration had not
achieved its aim. A great number of new members continued to be drawn into the
party without consideration to the directive of electing only workers and
reliable elements from other classes. New purges took place 1921, 1928 and
1929.
In the
table below we can see the proportion of members, in per cent, who were
expelled on these occasions. During the other years the expulsion of party
members could vary between three and five per cent.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Getty:
Origins of the Great Purges)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
per cent
expelled
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1919 re-registration 10-15
1921 purges 25
1928 revision
in 7
regions 13
1929 purges 11
In relation
to the purges of 1929, there is a detailed description of the causes. It does
in fact provide a good information and does away with at least
myth – that the purges would have been a way to get rid of opposing
elements within the party. In 1929, 1.53 million party members went through the
process of purges. Of these approx. 170,000 or 11 per cent were expelled. When
they appealed to the Central control commission 37,000 got their party
membership back (22 per cent of those expelled). In Smolensk, as many as
43 per cent of those expelled got their party membership back. When they are
further examined, it turns out that the great majority were base members from
the working class, who had been expelled by the local party functionaries for
passivity. No regard had been taken to the living conditions which made it more
difficult for these members to take part in the party activities.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Getty:
Origins of the Great Purges)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reasons for
expulsion per
cent
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Defects in
personal conduct 22
Alien
elements or connection
thereto 17
Passivity 17
Criminal
offences 12
Violations
of party
discipline 10
Other 22
According
to Getty, those expelled for political reasons – “fractional” or oppositional
activity – were among the ones expelled for “violation of party discipline”.
The former constitute 10 per cent of these 10 per cent. Thus, the expulsions
for political reasons were not more than one per cent of all expulsions which
took place in the purges of 1929[13]. Compare
this to the prevailing myth about the “Stalinists eliminating all those in
opposition”. Moreover, the bourgeoisie always alleges, that those expelled met
a certain death either in the work camps of the Gulag or just disappeared.
Reality is something else. Of those expelled, only those caught with criminal
acts – theft, embezzlement, blackmail, sabotage or similar – who were tried at
court. For the other expelled, life continued as usual, but now without the
obligations which accompanied a membership but also without the support which
membership did give.
The
purges in the CPSU(b) during the 1930-ies.
Let us now
pass to the Soviet Union of the 1930-ies. The purges during the
1930-ies are precisely that what is always brought forth by those who want to
defame socialism and reinforce the myth of the Soviet Union as an
oppressive state. Among the most famous falsifiers of history we find the former
police agent of the British secret service, Robert Conquest, the fascist
Alexander Solsjenitsyn and the Russian social democrat Roy Medvedev. Their
Swedish echoes are such as the failed poet Per Ahlmark, the simply failed
Staffan Skotte, the ‘historian’ and Trotskyite Peter England (recently elected
to be a member of the Royal Academy of Military Science /!/) plus
some other shady individuals (like Gerner, Salomon, Karlsson and others). But
the capitalists and the political police CIA and MI5 buy academicians in other
countries too, not only in the USA and Great Britain.
In Sweden too, there are traces leading from the capital and the
political police Säpo to university departments in for
example Stockholm, Uppsala and Lund.
It is
important to expose the falsifiers of history. They use people’s ignorance to
make those sympathising with socialism defensive and to make Communists
dissociate themselves from their history.
Robert
Conquest has had a central role in the defamation of socialism and
the Soviet Union during the whole post war period. Conquest is a
des-informer trained in one of the oldest and biggest secret services of the
world, the British[14]. Conquest
became their foremost agent specialised on des-information about
the Soviet Union. He is characterised by manipulating information and
changing black to white. Towards the end of the 50-ies Conquest suddenly quit
the British secret service. Next time we hear of him he is in the USA,
where the CIA is publishing his books and writings! It can be concluded, that
he gets a better pay by the CIA than by the British and for that reason he
moved to the USA. In addition, the CIA provided him with a decent
disguise, a research post at a university. Conquest’s stories have been
disseminated for decades by the CIA in capitalist mass media all over the
world, and unfortunately they have become truth for many people.
Conquest’s
best known work “The Great Terror – Stalin’s Purges of the Thirties” was
published in 1968 and has been one of the foremost weapons against socialism
used by the bourgeoisie. The book is partly based on material from Conquest’s
time with the British secret service. His sources originate among very
suspicious circles: Nazi collaborators, defectors and terrorists. Bourgeois
historians have elevated Conquest’s gross falsifications to historical facts
and willingly repeated his stories in periodicals and books. That is, for
example, what the senior lecturer Peter Englund has done in Moderna Tider in
February 1994, in a cavalcade of eight pages with lies and
falsifications about the year 1937 in the Soviet Union. The same
text reappears, with some changes, in Englund’s book “Letters from point zero”
(Brev från nollpunkten). According to Englund, Conquest’s The Great Terror is
“an indispensable work”[15]. Yet,
Conquest clearly states in the references of the book that “truth can thus only
percolate in the form of hearsay” and further, “On political matters basically
the best, though not infallible, source is rumour at a high political or police
level”[16]. Hearsay and
rumours among fascists and Nazi collaborators are the sources Conquest has used
for the alleged ‘terror’ in the Soviet Union of the 30-ies, but they
are good enough for the “historian” Englund. Serious historians do not accept
“hearsay and rumour” as evidence.
The
purges of 1933
During the
1930-ies the party underwent three great purges: 1933, 1935 and 1937-1938.
The first
purge 1933 took part in a clime of great enthusiasm in society when the
agricultural cooperatives spread all over the Soviet Union with great steps
forward, and the industrial production attained results never before seen. The
party had opened its doors for all who wanted to fight for socialism and
hundreds of thousands new members had been elected during the first three years
of the 1930-ies. Because of the great onslaught, the party leadership
considered it to be a necessity to evaluate the new party members. They were seeking
for opportunists, corrupt bureaucrats, criminals, anti-Semites, alcoholics or
members violating party discipline.
The party
directives clarified that the purges should take place in a comradely
atmosphere not allowing any deep digging into people’s private lives. Moreover,
the party leadership encouraged base members to be openly critical against the
local bureaucrats and warned the local party leaderships against expelling base
members for passivity or political ignorance. The mistakes of 1929 were not to
be repeated. Attention should be paid to the general development of members and
in those cases it was deemed necessary party members could be degraded to
candidates or sympathisers until they had improved their political knowledge or
increased their participation in the activities of the party. Expulsion should
be avoided as far as possible.
In spite of
the directives, the purge of 1933 turned out differently from what the Central
Committee had intended. In a country so vast as the Soviet Union the
local party secretaries had a great power, which sometimes proved fatal. Facts
show that local party secretaries did their best to avoid criticism from
striking them or their near ones. Just in order to demonstrate their interest
in a successful purge, some local secretaries threw out many base members,
workers and farmers; faithful members, precisely the ones who should not have
been expelled. The majority of those expelled were people who had entered the
party between 1930 and 1933, who had not had time to get knowledge of all the
party issues. Many had not been able to study the party programme at depth and
Marxism-Leninism, and they were regarded to be all too ignorant by the party
secretaries. Others were people who had difficulties in taking full part in
party life because of their work situation or family problems. During the purge
of 1933 18.5 per cent of party members and candidates were expelled, circa
792,000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Getty:
Origins of the Great Purges)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reason for
expulsion per
cent
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moral
corruption, careerist,
bureaucrat 17,5
Alien
elements / hiding alien past 16,5
Violation
of party
discipline 20.9
Passivity 23.2
Other 17.9
Not mentioned
in “Origins of the Great Purges” 4.0
The purge
of 1933, which was terminated in the middle of 1934, revealed a serious
contradiction within the party. The Central Committee wanted to throw out
thieves and corrupt bureaucrats, but the biggest group expelled – in fact
almost one fourth – were expelled for passivity. Passivity did not figure among
the party directives as a criterion for expulsion. With the assistance of
bureaucratic methods or authority gained for earlier merits, local party leaders
whatever they wanted without paying attention to the directives of the Central
Committee. The extension of the antagonisms is implied by the one fourth
expelled for passivity. The Central Committee had to do something about the
local party leaders contravention of the party directives, but as the future
was to show, it was not very easy. This became very timely during the following
years when the Soviet Union was forced to increase the pace of
development to survive.
Another
aspect of the statistics found by Getty concerns the allegation by Conquest and
other rightists that the purge of 1933 was organised to throw out old
Bolsheviks – old party cadres from the days of Lenin – who had come into
opposition with Stalin. According to Getty, the allegation is improbable. The
great majority by far of those expelled, two thirds in fact, had entered the
party after 1928 and were for that reason to be considered relatively new party
members. The distribution of those expelled as 23 per cent agricultural workers/farmers,
14.6 per cent civil servants and approx. 62 per cent workers shows, that the
overwhelming majority, 85 per cent, were ordinary working men rather than party
cadres from Lenin’s time. In The Great Terror Robert Conquest
touches upon the purge of 1933 and hints that over a million members were
expelled for political reasons. If one has knowledge of the history of the
purges, it becomes evident that Conquest’s allegation is a lie.
“Proverka”
– the control of the party cards in 1935
The purge
of 1933 revealed a very serious disorder in the party organisation all over the
country. The party membership list did not correspond to reality: In may parts
of the country the number of members did not tally with the number in the
lists. Many members moved, left the party, were expelled or died without it
being noted in the membership lists. The local party secretaries were absorbed
by the financial work with the five year plan and the collectivisation. For
that reason or for pure negligence or lack of interest that did not care to
have the membership lists updated. As a consequence of this there was a great
disorder in the party financial accounts. When this was discovered and the
party central got a total picture of the disastrous situation with the membership
cards it became clear that a revision of the party cards of all members was a
must.
In October
1934 the Central Committee decided that the whole party would undergo a new
registration of the party members. The Central Committee sent representatives
to the party regions of the country both to examine the true situation of the
party documentation and, if possible, to demand a solution while assisting the
work of registration.
Comrade
Ostrovskij was sent to the city committee (gorraikom) of Smolensk. He started
by demanding some simple decisions by the city committee like the installation
of a head for the documentation, who should see to it that the party documents
were kept in a locked facility or safe. He also demanded that no new party
cards be distributed to people who had lost theirs, unless a careful
investigation had been carried out beforehand. Ostrovskij also demanded that a
new list of members be initiated from January 1935 and that all party
committees under the city committee undergo the same procedure.
As it soon
turned out, the problems were too big for Ostrovskij to handle. The same
experience was made by Central Committee representatives in many parts of the
country. Towards the end of April 1935 very little had been achieved of the new
registration. A report from the city Committee of Smolensk showed that “in the
process of investigation of party documents, were revealed a series of massive
deficiencies, demanding an especially careful working out and verification”[18].
The
Communist party in the beginning of the 1930-ies.
For readers
of this brochure this may appear hard to understand. The bourgeois media have
brought up most people in the Western world to believe that a totally blind
discipline reigned in the Soviet Communist party, whereby everything and
everybody were registered and controlled carefully, preferably several times on
long name lists – nobody could escape this all pervading control, which
allegedly went on continuously in the society and which furthermore would have
cost masses of money while investing party bureaucrats with extensive power.
This
picture is entirely false. As a matter of fact, one gets much closer to the
truth by turning all these allegations upside down. Absorbed, as they were, in
the struggle for production and drunk by the incredible production results
which had set repeated world records, many local party secretaries ignored
other party matters. They considered production results to be the most
important thing which would solve all problems and everything else was peanuts.
Even such a fundamental question for a party – and especially a party in power
– namely that only party members should own a party card, was considered in
many places as a question of secondary interest only. The party cards were, as
a rule, kept in an ordinary writing desk a or a cupboard easily accessible in
the party facility, and they did disappear too in their thousands all over the
country. In the same irresponsible manner, party cards were handed out to all
who said they had lost theirs. Mostly, no investigation was carried out what
had become of the card lost. Even members who had been expelled retained their
party cards, nobody demanded them back . When it came to deceased members, the
families did not, as a rule, return the card to the party, which oftentimes
resulted in the card of the deceased person to be used for misuse and
corruption. The production results, which were so overwhelming, made the local
party leaders convinced that there would soon be such surpluses as to sweep
away all other difficulties.
Two
hundred thousand party cards on the spree.
In the
beginning of 1935 the Central Committee had to conclude that more than 200,000
party cards were out on the spree! Most had been given to people who had lost
their party cards or had had them stolen. More than 1,000 new, unused cards had
been stolen in the party facilities and 47,000 party cards had been given
people who had not had time to get registered in the party. The party card was
an important document. A person with a party card could i.a. enter all party
facilities everywhere in the country, where significant documents were kept and
important meetings took place. For that reason, the party cards were attractive
items for enemies, spies, oppositional elements and foreign agents. All the
worse it was then, as it turned out, that these people had little difficulties
in acquiring a party card to the Communist party, which they could use to
protect there undermining activities. In the year of 1935 the situation was
such that it was not at all self-evident that there was a faithful and loyal
party member behind a party card. It could in fact just as well be an enemy, a
spy or a saboteur.
On 13 May,
1935 the Central Committee decided that a new, national control of the party
documents – “proverka” – should take place. The control of the party cards was
led centrally by a commission in the secretariat of the Central Committee led
by Ezhov and, as his deputy, Malenkov. The control meant that each party member
was to interrogated by the party secretary in that community or that working
place concerning his life, history, work and other things; facts which were
used to up-date the party registers. If there was any irregularity, a closer
scrutiny of the person concerned was carried out, and in the meantime the party
card was revoked. Those who could not confirm their party membership were
expelled and the party card was taken back. All those who had been expelled
had, according to the party statutes, the right to appeal to a higher instance,
which was supposed to carry out a new investigation and make a new decision
within two weeks.
Bolshevik
order.
It was time
to “to introduce Bolshevik order in our own party house”[19]. The Central
Committee addressed itself especially to the local party leaders, the real
cause of the disorder: “the Central Committee warns leaders of party
organisations from primary to region, that if they do not provide … leadership
for this important task … and immediately restore order in this important
business, then the Central Committee VKP(b) will take measures of strict party
penalty up to and including the question of expelling them from the party”[20].
Contrary to
earlier purges, in the control of the party cards 1935 there were no particular
political or social reasons, which could result in an expulsion. 1935 the only
thing valid was whether the party card was authentic or not. This should be
noted. In the bourgeois propaganda there is a lot of talk of the control of
1935 as part of a campaign of purging oppositional elements from the party
leadership. The allegation is totally false. We return to this question later
in the text.
Which
was the result of the control of the party cards?
It turned
out that, many of the local party secretaries, does who were responsible for
the control, did not take the task very seriously. They did not attribute to
the task the priority which the Central Committee had demanded. Reports started
to flow in to the Central Committee showing that there was a general tendency
to carry out a quick control to have it done with. Often, the commitment of
local party secretaries was practically zero. The problems of the Western
region were noticeable. The second party secretary of the region A.L. Shil’man
and the local head of the control commission, Kiselev, were publicly severely
criticised by the Central Committee as an example of how the work with card
control should not be done. The party secretary Stepanov, leader of a district
in the Western region, was expelled from the party. He had done the party card
control in his district by devoting at the most five minutes per member to
investigate the authenticiy of the membership. The Central Committee demanded
personal commitment in this very important question, but the party secretary
only thought of showing high percentages of how many he had managed to control
and how many false members he had detected. The Central Committee objected to
this bureaucratic way of solving the task. They wanted thorough investigations,
so that they could be sure that the members on the list were real members.
A new
party card control.
The Central
Committee had to conclude that the party card control was risking to fail. On
27 June 1935 the Central Committee decided on a second round of the party card
control, which should now be carried out at general membership meetings. All
members were now given the opportunity to make pronouncements against those
whom they did not consider worthy to be party members. Hereby, the matter
changed completely. The Central Committee had been publicly criticising the
party secretaries for a job badly done. This encouraged the members to demand
criticism and self-criticism at the meetings, whereby these turned into
enormous places of debate. Those party secretaries who had something to hide
got frightened for a continued control which could reveal faults in the local
party leadership. Some tried to check the urge to debate by telling that the
campaign was a control of the party cards rather than a purge. It was still not
possible to completely stop the criticism of the members. Getty in Origins
of the Great Purges gives us an interesting insight into the
accusations at the membership meeting of the Smolensk town committee
in July 1935. At the meeting 616 accusations were raised.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Getty:
Origins of the Great Purges)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kulaks,
traders,
families 226
Degenerates,
drunks, womanizers, violators of
discipline 143
Official
malfeasance, theft,
embezzlement 106
Lost or
dubious party
cards 62
Trotskyists,
Mensheviks etc. 28
White Army
officers, Tsarist
police 41
Anti-Semites 10
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 616
As can be
seen, more than a third of the accusations concerns kulaks and men who enriched
themselves during NEP (the new economic policy). Another third plus of the
accusations pointed at people who had committed severe moral and economic
crimes. Only a small part of the accusations, hardly five per cent, had to do with
political opposition. Simultaneously, one of six accusations, (circa 17 per
cent) related to the criminal activities of leading cadres and political civil
servants. On the national level, the party card control resulted in the
expulsion of 170,000 members out of the 1.8 million investigated, i.e. 9.1 per
cent.
The party
meetings during July 1935 became a forum in the campaign against arrogant party
functionaries and other bullies. In spite of the circumstance that criticism
and self-criticism was the policy of the party, it was not always certain that
this was in fact applied at the ground level. But now, at least during a
period, these circumstances changed radically in favour of the base members.
Stalin pronounced himself on the need for criticism and self-criticism and
pointed out the lack of criticism as a fatal mistake, which “destroyed the
cadres” by not bringing up their faults to discussion. The control of the party
cards 1935 also showed another very serious shortcoming of the party: It was
easy to forge party cards, and they were not reliable. The need for new party
cards was an issue demanding an immediate solution.
The
campaign of lies of the bourgeoisie and the reality.
Let us now
for a moment discuss some of the lies being divulged in capitalist mass media
about the control of 1935. As we can see in the examples from the membership
meetings in Smolensk the open debates dealt a hard blow against the
bourgeois elements who had sneaked into the party, people who were hunting for
economic and social gains. Anything from kulaks and merchants to thieves,
former white army officers and tsarist policemen. Contrary to the version of
the history falsifiers the opposition was hardly at all affected. What happened
during the party card control was above all that the workers of the party threw
out from the party bourgeois elements who had been smuggled in. This is what
makes the history falsifiers raging mad. They are used to having special rights
in society and to workers, “the mob”, being kept at short leash, they totally
lose their temper when forced to realise that the workers are in command in the
party of the workers and that the discovery of inimical, bourgeois values led
to expulsion. The chances of the bourgeoisie to grip some power after years of
undermining work were annihilated.
Another lie
is that the party card control would have been an act of revenge by the party
leadership – by which is meant Stalin of course – for the assassination
of Kirov. Kirov, who was a member of the Central Committee and chairman of
the party in Leningrad was assassinated on December 1st 1934
in the party headquarters of the city. (The murderer Nikolajev entered the
party headquarters by using an old, invalid party card.) The allegation of a
revenge, which was to have been horrible and bloody with a huge number of
executions, originates with the police agent Robert Conquest. Anybody reading
his book The Great Terror without being familiar with these
historical issues will have difficulties in detecting his lies. But for those
who care to seek knowledge about the history, the allegation of a revenge is
nothing but non-sensical. The party card control 1935 was just a consequence of
the Central Committee decision concerning a new registration of the members in
October 1934. As a matter of fact, Kirov took part in this decision,
which took place two months prior to his assassination! Is it so
that Kirov would have decided on an act of revenge for his own
assassination, which was to take place two months later?!
Conquest
confuses.
Moreover,
Conquest mixes up the party card control with the very events connected with
the police investigation of the assassination of Kirov. This is a typical
Conquest-method of confusing, distorting and falsifying. The investigation of
the assassination of Kirov led to the unveiling of
the Leningrad group, a terrorist group which had planned the
conspiracy in which Kirov was assassinated. The murderer Nikolajev
and his companions were condemned to death. But the investigation also led on
to the so called Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in January 1935, in which a
number of well known personalities and highly placed politicians were condemned
to prison or to exile far from the great cities. Those who were prosecuted were
found guilty of having had knowledge of the terrorist atmosphere prevailing
among the opposition in Leningrad, where the murderer of Kirov, Nikolajev,
had his political domicile and of having stimulated this atmosphere. The
murderer Nikolajev had carried out his deed in the conviction that he had the
support of the accused in the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial. The accused admitted in
court that they bore the moral and political responsibility for the
assassination of Kirov.
Note that
the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial took place between 16th and 23rd January
1935. This was during the new registration of party members which had been
decided in October 1934 and which, in January 1935 had almost died out without
any result. The party card control, which according to Conquest was a revenge
against the opposition, was a result of the earlier control having proved
insufficient for the great problems revealed. It started only in June 1935,
five months after the termination of the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial and after the
prison sentences for the opposition. The party card control could not have
influenced the trial, nor could it have been a revenge on the accused. Conquest
is aware of the great ignorance about the historical questions of socialism and
does not hesitate to use the ignorance of people to divulge his dirty
propaganda.
Eliminate
Old Bolsheviks?
Another lie
originating from the police agent Robert Conquest is that the objective
for the control of 1935 was to eliminate the Old Bolsheviks. It is the same
old, recurring story about a power crazy Stalin wanting to eliminating all the
other Old Bolsheviks leaving him alone in power. The elimination of old
Communists is an invented story which has nothing to do with reality. Arch
Getty affirms in The Origins of the Great Purges that “Of the 455 expelled from
the Smolensk City Committee, 235 had joined the party in 1929-32”[22]. At least
half of those expelled could not have been old Bolsheviks.
Getty says
further “Although the Great Purges are often associated with the decimation of
the “Old Bolsheviks” the opposite seems to have been the case
in Smolensk in 1935. On the average, party secretaries who were
demoted or removed from office had joined the party in 1928, whereas their
replacements had joined on the average two years earlier, in 1926. The
replacement secretaries were about 3.7 years older as well. Thus those “not
providing leadership” were replaced by older and more experienced party
workers. New secretaries in the city party organisations included slightly more
workers by social origin (30 of 39 compared to the previous 26 of 39) and
slightly fewer persons of peasant and employee social backgrounds”[23]. This
statement shows that “the elimination of the Old Bolsheviks” is not confirmed
by the research that has been done in the Smolensk archives. Worker’s
increased power within the party of the workers is precisely what irritates the
reactionary rabble from Conquest to Ahlmark and Skott.
1936 –
exchange.
After the
control of the party cards in 1935 and as a consequence of it, the Central
Committee decided on an exchange of party cards for all party members. There
were efforts to have the party cards distributed to genuine members only;
devoted Communists who really did honour to their membership, as far as
possible. The directives of the Central Committee were very precise and full of
details which nobody was entitled to bypass. Firstly, no exchange of party
cards could take place until the control of 1935 in the area was
terminated. Secondly, none other than the party secretaries were entitled to
issue new cards. Then, the exchange of these could only take place in the
building itself where the party secretary had his office and only in the
presence of the member concerned and the party secretary of the cell to which
the member belonged. The member was then requested to fill out a form in two
copies and provide the necessary personal data. He was asked to sign the new
party card and the two forms, having as a witness the party secretary. The
party secretary did likewise and then stamped the new card. All cards had to
bear a picture of the member, otherwise it was invalid. The new cards were sent
to the regional party secretaries only and that by the NKVD mail, and they
could be filled out only with a special ink sent by the Central Committee. The
signatures of all party secretaries (i.e. those who had been authorised to
issue party cards) were kept in a special archive at the party central.
Exchange of the party cards for millions of members was a serious effort by the
party central to establish genuine proofs of membership, which would be very
difficult to falsify.
The
exchange of party was not intended to additionally discover and expel party
enemies in a new purge. The Central Committee focused on the opposite in its
directive for the change of party cards: “If, in the proverka, party
organisations paid special attention to the uncovering of hidden penetrations
of the party by enemies, rogues, and swindlers, then, in the exchange, they
must turn their principal attention toward freeing themselves of passive members
not deserving the high title of member of the party; of the people who
accidently find themselves in the VKP(b).”[24].
Merely
two per cent expulsions.
The
exchange of party cards was supposed to have taken place from February to April
1936 but in some places it was terminated as late as November 1936. There are
no national statistics on the members expelled during period, but the figures
from Smolensk indicated that relatively few were expelled. In the
party organisation of Smolensk 4,348 party cards were issued and 97
persons were expelled, circa 2.1 per cent of the party organisation[25]. Approx. the
same percentages are accounted for by other districts in the Western region.
Unfortunately, the great majority of those expelled were ordinary base members
with a worker background, who had been stamped passive.
The change
of party cards in 1936 has also been used by Robert Conquest and the other
history falsifiers in the dirty war against socialism. Conquest claims that
there were massive purges undertaken during the exchange, and that the purges
were higher in number than any before in the party. All this was, according
Conquest, provoked by Stalin as a manoeuvre to ignite the moods against the
opposition awaiting the trials 19-24 August 1936 against the Trotsky-Zinoviev
centre where Zinoviev, Kamenev and Smirnov were the main actors. They were, at
the time, accused of having taken part in a conspiracy led from abroad by
Trotsky to kill the leading persons of the Soviet government and grab power.
Conquest’s allegations about mass expulsions 1936 have for many years stood
uncontradicted. The figures in Getty’s research in
the Smolensk archives prove that the statements by Conquest are
complete lies. In fact, the purges during 1936 were the lowest in the history
of the party, between two and three per cent of the members.
The
political trials of 1936-1938 in the Soviet Union.
The
political trials and the purges in the Communist party were two separate things
which did not directly have anything to do with each other. The party members
who were expelled and tried at court for having been involved in criminal or
counter revolutionary activities were a small minority of all those who were
expelled. In order to understand this, it is important to know the history of
the political trials during the 1930-ies. Bourgeois history writings exclude
such possibilities. They have made the events of the 1930-ies into a totally
confused story and a grossly falsified mixture of happenings and myths, lies
and half-truths, a falsification which presents the purges and the treason
trials as the same one occurrence.
The
political trials were started by the trial against the Trotsky-Zinoviev centre
in August 1936, the first of four between 1936 and 1938. In bourgeois
mass media they are usually called the Moscow trials and are always
depicted as macabre histories of “Stalin’s revenge”, whereby millions of people
were dragged from their homes in the middle of the night to be killed in the
most dire circumstances imaginable. According to the book by Peter
Englund Letters from point zero they were killed by shots in
the neck in “soundproof” rooms with a “tarpaulin” on the floor or “grooves sunk
into the floor like the ones to be seen in slaughterhouses”. According to him,
“the corpses were freighted away” by people “dressed in dark protective coats,
aprons, rubber gloves and meat hooks” and were thrown up “on a truck where
other undressed corpses were lying and waited”. The trucks were running in a
shuttle traffic, according to Englund, and they left traces of dripping bloods
in the streets of Moscow[26].
Englund’s
stories have been taken from Conquest and writers paid by the CIA. Englund
himself is an ignorant wretch, who has no ambition to give the Swedish readers
knowledge of what really happened in the Soviet Union during the
1930-ies. For a good pay he happily lends his name to any attacks against
Socialism and the Soviet Union.
In the so
called Moscow trials 55 people got capital punishment and 7
imprisonment. Most of those prosecuted were persons in high positions in the
party, the state apparatus and the army accused of treason, espionage,
terrorism, sabotage, corruption or collaboration with the enemy, Nazi Germany.
The Moscow trials were followed by trials in other parts of the
country against companions of the traitors tried in Moscow, and hundreds
of saboteurs, spies and all kinds of traitors were condemned to prison or
death. The trials were public except trials against military personnel, which
were held behind closed doors because of the secrecy in the defence
preparations against Nazi Germany. In Moscow the trials were
monitored by the international press and the accredited diplomatic corps, for
which seats were reserved in the court room. Minutes from the three
public Moscow trials were published as books by the Soviet government
and translated into many languages, Swedish among others.
The
background to the treason trials and party purges of 1936-1938.
The
freedom period of 1920.
Bourgeois
historians and petty bourgeois political activists of a “Socialist” or
“Leftist” origin often describe the Soviet 1920-ies with some nostalgia as
opposed to the “hard” 1930-ies. According to them the 1920-ies was the decade
when freedom was ruling, there were discussions all around in society, arts and
culture flourished and on the whole there were great opportunities for the
individual to express him/herself and to influence the course of social
development. This is a skewed representation of the historical development.
It is true
that there was ample space during the 1920-ies for debate and participation in
extensive cultural activities, but this was not specific for that decade.
Parallel with the social development and the socialist construction during the
thirties ever larger sectors of the Soviet population could take part of the
political debate and of a rich cultural life in an extent never before seen.
This refers to the tens and tens of million people who during this decade got
access to the possibilities for culture, debate and knowledge in the new,
modern society. The few thousands of wise geniuses from the “freedom era of the
1920-ies” could be good enough as it were. But this was still only an extremely
small privileged minority profiting from the cultural possibilities and from
the political debate. No comparison with the tens of millions who got these
possibilities during the great leap of the Soviet Union during the
1930-ies.
Counteracted
the introduction of Socialism.
What the
bourgeoisie praises in the Soviet 1920-ies is not the political debate and the
cultural development but the possibility for the political opposition to
counteract the fight for Socialism. The bourgeoisie praises not least the
constant fractional activities which different opposition groups devoted
themselves to during the 1920-ies in the name of freedom of debate. All these
groups were constituted during all years by more or less the same persons with
people like Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Smirnov, Rykov, Pyatakov,
Radek and Sokolnikov heading a programme of counteracting the introduction of
Socialism. To the minority in the Central Committee the possibility of introducing
Socialism in the retarded Russia was non-existent. That was the
position of Trotsky. They wanted instead to use market relations awaiting a
favourable international development in order to attain the socialist society
in a distant future.
Another example
of the character of the antagonisms is Bukharin’s view on the development of
country 1925. Bukharin, who was a member of the Central Committee asked then
the peasants, in a speech about agricultural policy, to “enrich themselves”.
This was hiss message concerning the potential for agriculture to develop in
the Soviet Union. Even though Bukharin did self-criticism of his statement
and although Stalin accepted this personally[27], the ideas
remained and did not disappear with the self-criticism. There is only one way
to enrich oneself and that is by the exploitation of other human beings. That
is what the big farmers, the kulaks could do. The idea must have been that
richer farmers gave new employment opportunities whereby ruined petty peasants
got jobs, while at the same time the state got higher income from taxes. In
this way the wheels would “start to roll”.
Capitalism
or Socialism.
The
antagonism between opposition and the majority of the Central Committee
concerned the future of the country, either capitalism or Socialism. This
question was the principal one at the 14th party congress in
December 1925. The Congress declared that the Soviet Union “the country of the
proletarian dictatorship, has all needed to construct the perfect socialist
society” and further that the main task of the party was “the fight for the
victory of the construction of Socialism in the Soviet Union”[28]. This
resolution taken was defined as the position of the party and binding for all
party members. The resolution established in a decisive way the continued
political development of the Soviet Union and in the Communist party.
But the resolutions were never followed by the opposition. Immediately after
the congress the opposition started to counteract the work of the Central Committee
for Socialism. As the years passed and the concrete proof for the correctness
of the policy of the Central Committee was ever more evident, such as the
fantastic production results during the first five year plan, the opposition
got increasingly isolated and lost its positions of power within the party and
state apparatus. Thereby, the organised, secret opposition work turned into a
conspiracy against the government of the country, where anything was allowed
from murder and sabotage to espionage and collaboration with the enemy, Nazi
Germany.
Lack of
education.
Another
antagonism, one of a completely different kind, was also to be found within the
Communist party during the 1930-ies. As a legacy from the 1920-ies, when
literacy was very low bureaucracy had a strong position within the party.
During the 1920-ies the party was compelled at times to be lenient to get
people who could read for the posts as party functionaries. Some of these had
unfortunately come to the party to acquire personal advantages. As time went
by, these party functionaries got more and more power and in some cases the
party bureaucracy was threat to the workers power in the party. The lack of
education among the workers also resulted in their oftentimes not having the
courage to attack functionaries who abused their power or were corrupted, but
alas how eloquent! After the party had definitely taken the road of Socialism,
after the 15th party congress in December 1927, when the
opposition was politically annihilated, the struggle between the workers’ power
and the bureaucracy within the party apparatus was put on the agenda. Prominent
persons in this struggle were Stalin, Sjadanov and other comrades in the
Central Committee of the party. Kirov who was assassinated seven years later,
on December 1st 1934, was one of these. According to Stalin
struggle was about the “thinking of the people”. Stalin explained together
with Kirov and Sjadanov that the greatest part of the problems within
the party could be resolved by political up bringing of the party members,
something constantly present during the following years.
Struggle
against the bureaucracy in the party apparatus.
At the 17th congress
of the party in January 1934 the issue of struggle against the bureaucracy had
a space reserved. The party leadership was fighting for a renewal of the
Communist ideals by calling for studies, self-criticism, reorganisation and
attacks against bureaucracy at all levels in the party. The congress took part
at a time when fantastic results were attained in the industrial production and
collective farms and was named the “congress of victory” in history. Stalin
summarised the situation in his speech to the congress: “During this period,
the U.S.S.R. has become radically transformed and has cast off the aspect of
backwardness and mediaevalism. From an agrarian country it has become an
industrial country. From a country of small individual agriculture it has
become a country of collective, large-scale mechanized agriculture. From an
ignorant, illiterate and uncultured country it has become – or rather it is
becoming – a literate and cultured country covered by a vast network of higher,
secondary and elementary schools functioning in the languages of the
nationalities of the U.S.S.R.”[29].
Following
the murder of Kirov in December 1934 this orientation was not
changed, on the contrary, the campaign for the self evident power of the base
members was strengthened against the corrupt administrative staff in the party
bureaucracy. The party leadership called for a membership control of leading
cadres and self-criticism. Moreover, the party leadership made conditions on a
correct application of the party statutes, which would guarantee the inner
democracy and counteract abuse of power. There were also demands for an
increased contact between the local leaders and party members. The party
leadership considered it an important step to get away from the impersonal
party-bureaucracies.
In many
quarters there were demands from the members, and the new strains were not
always welcome by the regional leaderships. The purges started to pull along
increasing numbers of local party leaders accused of abuse of power
or just passivity and ignorance. But in many places the Central Committee
failed to penetrate the problems. The calls to party members to purge corrupt
or uninterested party leaders were only partially successful, sometimes not at
all. The local party apparatuses showed a great capacity of defence against
criticism from the members.
The
successes of the Soviet Union and the threat from Nazi Germany.
That is how
the political situation presented itself in the Soviet Communist party in the
middle of the thirties. The party had led the Soviet Union to
incredible successes in production and the construction of society both among
the workers in the towns and in the rural areas with the powerful cooperative
movement. The Soviet Union was a power in the world which could stand
on its own feet. Life for ordinary working people had started to get many
beautiful aspects never before known by them. But in the middle of the 1930-ies
fascism too began to have a position of power in Europe threatening the very
existence of the Soviet Union. Supported and financed by German big
finance since the end of the 1920-ies Hitler had built the Nazi party and won
great election victories in a country with an unemployment of up to ten million
people. I January 1933 Hitler was nominated Chancellor of the Reich and the
Nazis soon got omnipotent in Germany. Of course, the Soviet government
took note of the Nazi advances in Germany and had to calculate with
it when planning the development of the Soviet Union and its defence.
The Nazis had come to power with promises, among others, to eradicate Communism
and the Soviet Union.
The five
biggest parties.
Unemployment
under this years.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1924 1928 1930 1931 1932 1932 1932 1934
20
May 14
Sept. 31
July 6
Nov.
Social-democrats 9,1 8,6 8,0 7,3
Communists 3,3 4,6 5,3 6,0
Centrists 4,7 5,2 5,8 5,3
Nationalists 4,4 2,5 2,2 3,0
Nazis 0,8 6,4 13,7 11,7
Unemployment 2
millions 4
millions 6
millions 10
millions
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number
of members of parliament.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1928 1930 1932 1932 1933
20
May 14
Sept. 31
July 6
Nov. 4
Mars
Social-democrats 153 143 133 121 120
Communists 54 77 89 100 81
Centrists 62 68 75 71 73
Nationalists 73 41 37 51 52
Nazis 12 10 7 230 196 288
Bavarian
Peoples Party 16 19 22 19 19
Germany Peoples
Party 45 30 7 11 2
Germany States
Party 25 20 4 2 5
Germany Industrial
Party 23 23 2 2 0
Other Parties 28 49 9 9 7
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 491 577 608 582 647
Please note
that Hitler came to power on 30th January 1933 and that the
elections on 4th March 1933 took place during Nazism. They were
the last elections with several parties. The Communists of DKP had been
mendaciously accused of the German house of parliament fire
in Berlin 27th February 1933. DKP was ruthlessly
persecuted during the election weeks by the Nazis. Thousands of DKP’s members
were already taken prisoners to the concentration camps during the elections
and the Gestapo had already murdered hundreds of leading comrades. Still, the
election results of the DKP were very good for these conditions: 4.6 million
votes and 81 members of parliament. During the limited freedom, which existed
towards the end of the 1920-ies in Germany and until Hitler’s
ascension to power, the Communists were winning an ever-greater support among
the German working class for their line of class struggle, class against class.
Simultaneously, the German Social democracy with its policy of class
collaboration retired markedly.
Nazi
Germany was a threat against the Soviet Union, which grew in military
strength year by year. In the middle of the 1930-ies Hitler had rejected all
international treaties limiting Germany’s armaments and was making Nazi
Germany the strongest military power of Europe. In the year
1937 France had not more than three hundred military aircraft
against Germany two thousand and barely half as many bombers. When it
came to armoured cars, there were a few hundred in France,
but Germany had already acquired thousands. For its part,
the Soviet Union, had started a great re-armament of the army as part of
its preparations for defence against Nazi Germany. The budget for 1937 for the
armament of the Soviet army was double the amount
for England and Francetaken together. A living Communist party
was more needed than ever in the Soviet Union to lead society in the
war of defence which, as it was well understood, was to come. That was the
reason why the struggle against bureaucracy and corruption in the Soviet
Communist Party and the struggle for a party which was truly governed by the
base members as one of the most important issues.
The
trial against the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre 19-24 August 1936.
(The
Zinoviev-Kamenev process)
After the
trial against the murderer of Kirov, Nikolajev, and the
terrorist Leningrad group as well as the trials against Zinoviev,
Kamenev and others in January 1935, there was suspicion raised on the
possibility of existing more opposition groups planning terror and
attempts and which was part of a conspiracy to oust the Soviet government. The
suspicions, which were developed during the investigation of Nikolajev’s Leningrad group
and its connections with the Zinoviev-Kamenev group, indicated a common
denominator for the terror groups – they were inspired and led from a centre
with, as its principal personages those opposition elements condemned to
imprisonment and exile in the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in January 1935. This was
something unheard of in the Soviet Unionof that period. The gravity of the
moment, with the threat from Nazi Germany, should instead have led the thought
to a common effort to construct and arm the country against Nazism.
In the
middle of 1935 another process of investigation was opened against formerly
highly positioned politicians and administrators in the Zinoviev-Kamenev group
and its activities during earlier years. The process resulted in the trial
against the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre or “Moscow centre”
in August 1936. Sixteen old Trotskyistes and Zinoviev followers, most of them
highly positioned functionaries in the Communist party and state (Zinoviev,
Kamenev, Evdokimov, I. Smirnov, Bakayev, Ter-Vaganian, Mrachkovsky, Dreitzer,
Golzman, Reingold, Pickle, Olberg, Berman-Yurin, Fritz David [Krugljansky], M.
Lurye, N. Lurye) were then accused of – in conspiracy with the Trotsky’s
organisation in Nazi Germany – having organised sabotage, espionage,
terrorist activities and attempts against important personages in the Soviet
government and the Communist party. The former political opposition had changed
to organised violence. Having been defeated in the party referendum about the
political line of the party, whereby the opposition got less than one per cent
of the votes, the accused saw violence and a coup d’etat as the only
possibility for grabbing the political power in the Soviet Union. The
fantastic production results from the first five year plan and the collective
farms had even more squeezed out those accused. The production results did not
leave space any more for a political platform against the government.
Organised
terror
During the
interrogation Kamenev explained this with his own words.
“… However,
our banking on the insuperability of the difficulties which the country was
experiencing, on the state of crisis of its economy, on the collapse of the
economic policy of the Party leadership had obviously failed by the second half
of 1932. Overcoming the difficulties, the country, under the leadership of the
Central Committee of the C.P.S.U, was successfully advancing along the road of
economic growth. We could not help seeing this. One would have thought that we
should have stopped fighting. But the logic of the counter-revolutionary
struggle, the nakedly unprincipled striving to seize power led us in the other
direction. The emergence from the difficulties, the victory of the policy of
the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., caused us a new wave of animosity and
hatred towards the leaders of the Party, and primarily towards Stalin.”.[32]
The common
denominator for those accused was that anything was permitted in order to
combat Stalin’s government or, as Zinoviev said during one of the secret
meetings of the group in 1932, “… although terror is incompatible with Marxism,
at the present moment these considerations must be abandoned.”.[33]Among other
things, the accused confessed that it was the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre,
which had prepared and carried out the murder of Kirov. Details concerning
failed attempts against the lives of Stalin and Voroshilov also got known.
Simultaneously, other attempts in the making were revealed against them and
against Shadow, Kaganovich and others. A plan concerning a coup d’etat was also
revealed in the court.
Trotsky
in the centre
During the
trial, which was public and witnessed by the diplomatic corps as well as the
international press and where all the accused could always speak freely, many
unexpected revelations were disclosed. It came out, for instance, that the
leading personality of the conspiracy was Trotsky, who from abroad was sending
directives and demanding attempts on the lives of members of the Soviet
government and acts of sabotage and terror. According to the story delivered by
the accused at court, Trotsky came several times from the exile
to Berlin and Copenhagen to have direct contacts with some
of the members of the group. Otherwise, Trotsky’s terror against the Soviet
government was led by his son Leo Sedov, resident in Berlin and
constituting the very centre of the conspiracy.
Three of
the sixteen accused in the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre (I.
Smirnov, Dreitzer, Goltsman) were repeatedly
in Berlin or Copenhagen on duty tours and they took the
opportunity to meet Trotsky or Sedov, from whom they received direct
instructions concerning the murder attempts and the terrorist activities in
the Soviet Union. Five of the sixteen accused (Olberg, Berman-Yurin, Fritz
David [Krugljansky], M. Lurye, N. Lurye) were residing in Nazi Germany and were
sent by Trotsky to the Soviet Union to carry out the attempted
murders. Some of them had got help from the Gestapo to acquire passports,
weapons and other equipment. At court they confirmed that they had started to
organise a communication network in 1933 between the German Trotskyistes and
Gestapo to be established with the approval of Trotsky. On their arrival to the
Soviet Union several of them got help by Nazi agents placed by Gestapo in the Soviet
Union. The trial against the accused in the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre
terminated with their conviction. The court found the sixteen guilty and
convicted them to “… all to the supreme penalty – to be shot, and all property
personally belonging to them to be confiscated.”[34].
Connections
in the Communist party
During the
trial it was revealed that leading personalities of the terror centre,
Zinoviev, Kamenev and Reingold had been in touch with highly positioned members
of the Soviet Communist party in order to collaborate politically with a
conspiratory purpose. This was something sensational. Could it come about that
high party functionaries would conspire against the Communist party? A
conspiracy with sabotage, terror and murder? Because of this revelation the
prosecutor Vyshinsky informed during the very trial, 21st August,
“I consider it necessary to inform the Court that yesterday I gave orders to
institute an investigation of these statements of the accused in regard to
Tomsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Uglanov, Radek and Pyatakov, and that in accordance
with the results of this investigation the office of the State Attorney will
institute legal proceedings in this matter. In regard to Serebryakov and
Sokolnikov, the investigating authorities are already in possession of material
convicting these persons of counter-revolutionary crimes, and, in view of this,
criminal proceedings are being instituted against Sokolnikov and Serebryakov.”[35]. General
Putna too, an old Trotskyite, was pointed out during the trial as having been
active in the terrorist activities of the Trotskyistes.
The
diplomatic corps present at the trial, a congregation of genuine bourgeois and
anti-socialist individuals, never doubted the veracity of the trial, its
impartiality and fairness. An internationally well known lawyer of the period,
the judge Denis Nowell Pritt, member of the British Parliament, was present
during the whole trial and later wrote about it in
the London newspaper News Chronicle. Judge Pritt had received his
education in jurisprudence at the Universities of Winchester
and London and studied justice procedures
in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the Soviet Union.
He was well acquainted with the conditions at the Soviet courts. Judge Pritt
gave evidence in the News Chronicle of the impartiality and fairness of the
trial. According to Pritt the crimes of the accused were proven at court.
Later, in a
brochure entitled “The Moscow Trial was Fair” judge Pritt publicly challenged
those who doubted the genuineness of the trial. Today, it is of a special
historical interest to present the opinion of judge Pritt. The campaigns of
lies against the Soviet Union are larger than ever. We take the
liberty of introducing a long quotation from judge Pritt. In addition, his
analysis of the trial is applicable to the ensuing political trials of 1937 and
1938, since the procedures were always the same, all in accordance with Soviet
practice. Let us then read what an English lawyer has to say of the legal
procedure in the Soviet Union.
“I studied
the legal procedure in criminal cases in Soviet Russia somewhat carefully in
1932, and concluded (as published at the time in "Twelve Studies in Soviet
Russia") that the procedure gave the ordinal accused a very fair trial.
Having learnt from my legal friends in Moscow on my return this summer that the
principal changes realised or shortly impending were all in the direction of
giving greater independence to the Bar and the judges and greater facilities to
the accused, I was particularly interested to be able to attend the trial of
Zinoviev and Kamenev and others which took place on August 1936. Here was, born
the point of view of a lawyer, a politician, or an ordinary citizen, a very
good test of the system. The charge was a serious one. A group of men, almost
all having earned high merit for their services at various stages of the
anxious and crowded history of Soviet Russia, still not two decades old, almost
all having been under some measure of suspicion for counter-revolutionary or
deviationist activities, and most of them having had such activities condoned
in the past on assurances of the loyalty in the future, were now charged with
long, cold-blooded, deliberate conspiracy to bring about the assassination of
Kirov (who was actually murdered in December, 1934), of Stalin, of Voroshilov
and other prominent leaders. Their purpose, it seemed, was merely to seize
power for themselves, without any pretence that they had any substantial
following in the country and without any real policy or philosophy to replace
the existing Soviet Socialism. With all its difficulties and shortcomings, with
all the opposition, military or commercial, of the outside world, Soviet
Socialism has raised a terribly backward Asiatic State in some 19 years to a
State of world importance, of great industrial strength, and above all of a
standard of living which, starting somewhere about the level of the more
depressed peoples of India, has already overtaken that of many races of Eastern
Europe and will soon claim comparison with that of the most favoured of Western
industrial people.
And the
charge against the men was not merely made. It was admitted, admitted by men
the majority of whom were shown by their records to be possessed of physical
and moral courage well adapted to protect them from confessing under pressure.
And at no stage was any suggestion made by any of them that any sort of
improper treatment had been used to persuade them to confess. The first thing
that struck me, as an English lawyer, was the almost free-and-easy dameanour of
the prisoners. They all looked well; they all got up and spoke, even at length,
whenever they wanted to do so (for the matter of that, they strolled out, with
a guard, when they wanted to). The one or two witnesses who were called by the
prosecution were cross-examined by the prisoners who were affected by their
evidence, with the same freedom as would have been the case in England.
The prisoners voluntarily renounced counsel; they could have had counsel
without fee had they wished, but they preferred to dispense with them. And
having regard to their pleas of guilty and to their own ability to speak,
amounting in most cases to real eloquence, they probably did not suffer by
their decision, able as some of my Moscow colleagues are. The most
striking novelty, perhaps, to an English lawyer, was the easy way in which
first one and then another prisoner would intervene in the course of the
examination of one of their co-defendants, without any objection from the Court
or from the prosecutor, so that one got the impression of a quick and vivid
debate between four people, the prosecutor and three prisoners, all talking
together, if not actually at the same moment -- a method which, whilst
impossible with a jury, is certainly conducive to clearing up disputes of fact
with some rapidity. Far more important, however, if less striking, were the final
speeches. In accordance with Soviet law, the prisoners had the last word -- 15
speeches after the last chance of the prosecution to say anything.The Public
prosecutor, Vyshinsky, spoke first. He spoke for four or five hours. He looked
like a very intelligent and rather mild-mannered English business man. He spoke
with vigour and clarity. He seldom raised his voice. He never ranted, or
shouted, or thumped the table. He rarely looked at the public or played for
effect. He said strong things; he called the defendants bandits, and mad dogs,
and suggested that they ought to be exterminated. Even in as grave a case as
this, some English Attorney-Generals might not have spoken so strongly; but in
many cases less grave many English prosecuting counsel have used much harsher
words. He was not interrupted by the Court or by any of the accused. His speech
was clapped by the public, and no attempt was made to prevent the applause.
That seems odd to the English mind, but where there is no jury it cannot do
much harm, and it was noticeable throughout that the Court’s efforts, by the
use of a little bell, to repress the laughter that was caused either by the
prisoners’ sallies or by any other incident were not immediately successful.
But now came the final test. The 15 guilty men, who had sought to overthrow the
whole Soviet State, now had their rights to speak; and they spoke.
Some at great length, some shortly, some argumentatively, others with some
measures of pleading; most with eloquence, some with emotion; some consciously
addressing the public in the crowded hall, some turning to the court. But they
all said what they had to say. They met with no interruption from the
prosecutor, with no more than a rare short word or two from the court; and the
public itself sat quiet, manifesting none of the hatred it must have felt. They
spoke without any embarrassment or hindrance. The executive authorities of
U.S.S.R. may have taken, by the successful prosecution of this case, a very big
step towards eradicating counter-revolutionary activities. But it is equally
clear that the judicature and the prosecuting attorney of U.S.S.R. have taken
at least as great a step towards establishing their reputation among the legal
systems of the modern world.”
The
Swedish embassy in Moscow
It may be
of interest to know what the Swedish embassy in Moscow reported to
the Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm about the situation in
the Soviet Union during the days of trial in August 1936. Let us
render two short commentaries from long reports to the department. Consider
that the documents were written by authentic rightists with all the
corresponding, preconceived ideas against the Soviet Union and
Socialism. The first one relates to the political situation in the country.
“Submitted
to the Royal by His Majesty’s diplomatic representation
Moscow, 24th September
1936
Eric
Gyllenstierna (Ambassador)
Confidential
Concerning
the inquisition within the Communist party
(11 pages,
this being the final part of page 10, my note, M.S.)
Perhaps it
should be noted towards the end –although it could be an act of exaggeration–
that the cock-and-bull stories, which have been so freely disseminated in the
foreign press and could give a naïve general population the impression that the
whole Soviet realm were in the process of collapse, that these and similar
media excesses are devoid of any support in reality, even if one could, in
singular instances, imagine tracing some connection between the battle
paintings by the foreign press and certain facts in the Soviet Union.”[37]
The
inflammatory propaganda by the Capitalist countries against the Soviet Union
during the days of the trial took such proportions in organised campaigns in
the press that the Swedish Moscow embassy felt compelled to deny them to the
Department of Foreign Affairs, in order to avoid to great errors of
judgement of the Soviet Union. The next quotation concerns the process of
trial itself and the guilt of the accused. After having been indignant for the
trial against these people who were so nice, the Ambassador Gyllenstierna still
had to conclude that the terrorism indeed was part of the picture.
“Moscow 25th September
1936
Légation de
Suède
The great
trial of conspiracy
Confidential.
(8 pages,
this being page 3, my note, M. S.)
By that it
is not implied, of course, that the accused (Zinoviev and Kamenev, my note M.
S.) can be freed from every suspicion of having nurtured more or less well
defined plans for the overthrow of the present, hated leaders of government
with Stalin on top to grip the power for themselves. That the application of
such plans in a certain conspiracy activity to the extent of using terrorism
has at least been talked over by the inner circles of those dissatisfied
individuals, also appears probable.
Eric
Gyllenstierna (Ambassador)”[38]
Court
Proceedings against the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre January 23-30 1937
(The
Pyatakov-Radek trial)
A living
party in the hands of the base members was not a welcome idea in some quarters.
A genuine workers’ party was a threat to the political opposition within the
party, which had allied itself with the Trotsky group abroad. The conspiracy
against the party leadership had continued in secret ever since the political
defeat at the party referendum of 1927. But after the assassination
of Kirov in December 1934 the society was vigilant and the
conspirators met with more and more difficulties to realise their intentions.
At the same
time the successes in the economic life of the country including the results of
the first five years plan and the collective farms had shattered the unity of
the conspiracy group. Some of those who had been striving for years in secret
to defeat the Soviet government and the socialist societal development could
not help but be impressed by the production results, which proved the
correctness of the Central Committee policies. It was now not just a question
of theories, but one could in fact se the results in real life. The divisions
within the conspiracy group resulted in the political police obtaining an
increasing knowledge of the activities of the group. Repenting conspirators
gave information with unforeseen consequences.
Confessing
their crimes
In January
1937 there was a lot of commotion in Moscow after seventeen highly positioned
functionaries of the Soviet state had been brought to trial before the military
board of the Soviet superior court accused of treason (Pyatakov, Sokolnikov,
Radek, Serebryakov, Livshitz, Muralov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Knyazev,
Rataichak, Norkin, Shestov, Turok, Hrasche, Pushin, Stroilov and Arnold). The
principal characters constituting the very centre of the organisation were
Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Radek and Serebryakov. During the public trial
in Moscow the accused confessed the crimes of which they were accused
and told about their own activities and those of the others. The seventeen
functionaries accused were members of a secret organisation, which had contacts
with and were led by the Trotskyist group in Germany. The purpose of the
secret organisation was to prepare for the violent ousting of the Soviet
government. Among the activities of the group there was theft of public funds,
espionage, sabotage and terrorism.
The
interrogation during the public trial of Pyatakov, the principal leader of the
group, is of particular interest. Pyatakov was remorseful and felt cheated by
Trotsky and understood well that his crime was such that nothing could save him
from the capital punishment. Pyatakov produced at court detailed information
about the terrorist conspiracy which he led together with Radek, Smirnov and
Serebryakov. Pyatakov was an old Trotskyist who in 1928 had left the group of
Trotsky. In 1931 Pyatakov was a highly positioned functionary of state in
the Superior council of public economy and chairman of the main board
of the chemical industry. One year later he would become the deputy people’s
commissary for the heavy industry. Pyatakov was in a decision making position
for many of the big industrial projects during the first and partly during the
second five years plan. His possibilities of sabotaging the socialist
construction was enormous and he made use of that possibility, as we shall see.
All quotations which follow are taken from the public minutes of the trial.
Pyatakov
back to Trotskyism
Pyatakov
told at court that he was recruited back to the Trotskyite organisation by I.
Smirnov whom he knew well from the Trotskyite workings during the 1920-ies. It
happened during an official trip to Berlin Spring/Summer 1931, where Pyatakov
spent some months. Pyatakov’s brief this time was to buy heavy machines and
lifts for the Soviet coal-mining industry. Ivan Smirnov was also a member of
the Soviet delegation. During his period as a Red Army officer he had a leading
position in the guard of Trotsky. Other Trotskyists like Loginov, Moskalov and
Shestov were part of the Soviet delegation. The policy of the Soviet government
after the hard fights against the opposition in the end of the 1920-ies giving
a new chance to all those opposing the socialist construction was not very
successful. All these Trotskyists and others belonging to the political right
and the so called left within of the party, which had fought the Soviet
government, were allowed to keep or got back their highly positioned posts,
which caused considerable damage to the Soviet union during the 1930-ies.
Smirnov
profited from his duty travels to Berlin to keep in touch with
Trotsky through his son Leo Sedov who was leading the Trotskyist organisation
in the Soviet Union from Berlin. Smirnov told of this to Pyatakov
in Berlin, of which Pyatakov gave an account at court. Also at court,
Pyatakov told how Smirnov had explained to him that Trotsky had instructed him
that the fight against the Soviet regime and party leadership should now be
reinitiated but with renewed energy, but that the circumstances were such that
one had to keep outside the political struggle. According to Pyatakov Smirnov
had explained that “mass methods of struggle should be abandoned and that the
principal method of struggle that should be adopted was the method of terrorism
and the method of counteracting the measures of the Soviet government”[39]. According
to Trotsky, the opposition should leave the political struggle and revert to
terror, sabotage and attempts against the Soviet regime as well as the
principal personalities of the Central Committee. Smirnov also told Pyatakov
that Sedov would like to have a meeting with him. Pyatakov assented and the
meeting took place some days later. On that occasion Sedov confirmed to
Pyatakov Trotsky’s new line for the taking of power through terrorism, sabotage
and attempts and the subversive work underway in the Soviet Union. They
were well into setting up an organisation covering the whole country including
the adherents of Zinoviev and to which the right, with people like Bukharin,
Rykov and Tomskyj were invited. According to Sedov the opinion of Trotsky was
that “struggle confined to one country would be absurd ” and that “In this
struggle we must also have the necessary solution for the international
problem, or rather, inter-state problems”[40].
Sedov
incites to theft.
Towards the
end of this meeting Sedov told clearly that Trotsky had put the question of
Pyatakov’s readiness to join their struggle. Pyatakov had answered in the
affirmative. The prosecutor at the trial asked Pyatakov:
”Vyshinsky:
How is it to be explained that you so quickly consented to resume this fight
against the Party and the Soviet government?
Pyatakov:
The talk with Sedov was not the cause of this, it only served as a fresh
impetus.
Vyshinsky:
Consequently, you held your old Trotskyite position even before this?
Pyatakov:
Unquestionably, the old Trotskyite views still survive in me, and they
subsequently grew more and more”[41].
In that way
Pyatakov established contact anew with Trotsky. Before Pyatakov left Berlin Sedov
insisted on meeting Pyatakov once more. Referring to this brief meeting
Pyatakov told the court that Sedov had been very direct declaring ”money is
needed. You can provide the necessary funds for waging the fight”. Pyatakov
continued telling of Sedov’s proposal.
”Pyatakov:
He was hinting that my business position enable me to set aside certain
government funds, or, to put it bluntly, to steal. Sedov said that only one
thing was required of me, namely, that I should place as many orders as
possible with two German firms, Borsig and Demag, and that he, Sedov, would
arrange to receive the necessary sums from them, bearing in mind that I would
not be particularly exacting as to prices. If this were deciphered it was clear
that the additions to prices that would be made on the Soviet orders would pass
wholly or in part into Trotsky’s hands for his counter-revolutionary purposes”[42].
Subsequently
Pyatakov tried to implement Sedov’s requests.
Littlepage
about Pyatakov
It may be
interesting to recall that one of these orders from the Spring of 1931, which
was supposed to reinforce Trotsky’s cash, never came off. The story has been
told earlier in “Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union –
From Hitler to Hearst, from Conquest to Solzhenitsyn”, Mario Sousa 1998. The
American engineer John Littlepage, expert on the mining industry who was let to
Soviet told of this in his book “In search of Soviet gold”. Littlepage
accompanied Pyatakov’s big trade delegation in Berlin in the Spring
of 1931 representing the leaderships of the gold mining industry. Littlepage
refused to approve a big order on industrial elevators, which were of an inferior
quality – which had been done by Pyatakov – and the deal never came off.
Littlepage’s account for sabotages in the copper and lead mines and his
suspicions against the top leadership of the copper-lead trust, with Pyatakov
as its top chief, were not known in 1937 when the trial against Pyatakov took
place. The book by Littlepage was published in London 1939. The book
is in many aspects a compilation of proofs against the political opposition in
the Soviet Union for industrial espionage.
Littlepage
writes: ”It naturally wasn’t my business to warn my Communist employers against
their fellow Party members, but some Russians can bear witness that I mentioned
my suspicions to them as early as 1932, after I had worked for some months in
the Ural copper-mines”[43].
The copper
mines were part of the great copper-lead trust having as its topmost chief
Pyatakov, deputy people’s commissioner for the heavy industry. The state of the
mines was a disaster both in relation to the production and the welfare of the
workers. Littlepage’s conclusion was that the sabotages were organised by the
highest leadership of the copper-lead trust.
Pyatakov
organizes the Trotskyist centre and sabotage.
In the
Soviet Union Pyatakov worked on organising a new counter-revolutionary centre
to function as a reserve to Zinoviev-Kamenev’s organisation in case this fell
into the hands of the police. Later, Pyatakov’s organisation with the approval
of Trotsky became a purely Troskyist centre, the so called parallel centre, an
alternative to the activities of Zinoviev and the old party left. The
activities of the parallel centre spread from Moscow to Urals, West
Siberia and Ukraine, to cities like Charkov,
Djnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Kiev and others. Pyatakov used the
power which he had from his high position to send saboteurs and murderers all
over the Soviet Union. (Shestov: head of Schachtstoj in the Kustnesk tank;
Livshitz: head of the railway line in Ukraine; Kartsev: chief engineer of the
Kemerovo-Combine; Drobnis: deputy head of the construction work at the
Kemerovo-combine, Kolegayev: head of Uralsredmed – the copper works of mid
Urals; Rataitjak: head of the Glavhimprom –the main board of the chemical
industry; Maryasin: head of construction of the railways in Urals, and others.)
Pyatakov gave a detailed account of the Trotskyist organisation’s activities at
court. Let us give some examples.
Pyatakov
about sabotage in Ukraine, Western Siberia and Urals
Pyatakov:
”I have already testified that wrecking activities were developed in
the Ukraine, chiefly in connection with the coke and chemical industry.
The wrecking activities consisted in the fact that newly-built were put ingo
operation in a still unfinished condition, as a result of which they rapidly
deteriorated, and, chiefly, the chemical sections of these plants were being
delayed or almost not being built at all, thanks to which the vast means
invested in the coke and chemical industry were rendered valueless to the
extent of one-half, if not two-thirds their worth. The most valuable part of
the coal, its chemical content, was not utilised and was allowed to escape into
the air. On the other hand, new coking batteries were damaged.
The
West-Siberian Trotskyite group carried on active wrecking work in the coal
industry. This activity was carried on by Shestov and his group. There was a
fairly large group there which chiefly worked along the lines of causing fires
in the coking-coal mines. Wrecking work was conducted in the Kemerovo Combined
Chemical Works. At first the work consisted in delaying the putting into
operation of newly-built units, funds were diffused on secondary units, with
the result that vast structures were in a perpetual state of construction and
were not brought to a state where they could be put into operation. With regard
to electric power stations, work was performed aiming at reducing the effective
power resources of the whole Kuznetsk area.”
”In the
Urals there were two main objects on which wrecking activities were
concentrated. One was the copper industry and the other was the Urals Car
Construction Works. In the copper industry efforts were chiefly directed
towards preventing the copper plants that were in operation from being utilised
to their full capacity. The Krassno-Uralsk Copper Works and the Karabash Copper
Works did not fulfil their program of production; there was a tremendous waste
of the copper delivered to the works and there were tremendous losses. The
Karabash Works were in a perpetually feverish state. At the Kalatinsk Works the
concentration plant worked badly all the time; wrecking activities were being
carried on there too… In the main this work was carried on by Kolegayev – the
manager of the Central Urals Copper Trust”[44].
Discouragement
and confusion spreads among the Trotskyists
During the
trial Pyatakov continues his description of the sabotages and demonstrates that
most often the heads he had installed at the factories were the ones leading
the destructive activities. With regard to the industry of defence Pyatakov
entrusted Norkin ”that preparations must be made so that the enterprises in the
defence industry could be put out of action by means of incendiarism and
explosions”[45]. Little by
little, however, Pyatakov and Radek turned hesitant. The reason was that
Trotsky in his instructions to Pyatakov and Radek expressed the opinion that
the Trotskyite parallel centre ”were just talking” and demanded that ”definite
acts should be committed both in the way of terrorism and wrecking”. According
to Trotsky’s letter this was ”not something fortuitous not simply one of the
sharp methods of struggle he proposed, but an essential part”[46] of his
policies.
And
Pyatakov goes on. ”In the same directive he raised the question – this was in
the middle or 1934 – that now that Hitler had come to power it was quite clear
that his, Trotsky’s line on the impossibility of building up socialism in one
country alone had been completely justified, that war was inevitable, and that
if we Trotskyites wished to preserve ourselves as a political force of some
sort, we must in advance, having adopted a defeatist position, not merely
passively observe and contemplate, but actively prepare the way for this
defeat. But in order to do so, cadres must be formed, and cadres could not be
formed by talk alone. Therefore the necessary wrecking activities must be
carried on now. I recall that Trotsky said in this directive that without the
necessary support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could
neither come to power nor hold power. (by bloc is meant the opposition in a
body lead by the Trotskyists, my comment M.S.) It was therefore a question of
arriving at the necessary preliminary agreement with the most aggressive
foreign states, like Germany and Japan, and the he, Trotsky, on his part had
already taken the necessary steps in establishing contacts bothe with the
Japanese and the German governments”[47].
Trotsky’s
directive to work for a defeat in the war
With Trotsky’s
directive a new possibility emerged as an alternative for the Trotskyite
organisation to take over power. It was no longer the case that they would
cause a political instability in the country merely by killing important
personalities in the Central Committee and government and by committing acts of
sabotage. Now that was something new! Now, the Trotskyite organisation would
work for the defeat of the Soviet Union in the coming war and take
over the state power with the help of Nazi Germany and the Fascist Japan.
According to Trotsky it was necessary “to retreat to capitalism” and “that
meant obtaining the necessary support to maintain ourselves in power by making
a number of concessions to these countries on terms to be agreed upon
beforehand”[48].
When asked
by the prosecutor Vyshinsky, Pyatakov’s foremost confidant Radek, answered that
Trotsky’s directives concerning the Trotskyite bloc’s take over at the defeat
of the Soviet Union in the coming war against Nazi Germany was “ the
return to capitalism, the restoration of capitalism. This was veiled. The first
variant would strengthen the capitalist elements; it meant handing over
considerable economic interests to the Germans and Japanese in the form of
concessions and assuming obligations regarding deliveries of raw materials,
foodstuffs and fats to Germany at less than world prices”. The
interior consequences of this were evident. ”The interests of private capital
in Russia would concentrate around the German and Japanese
concessionaires”. According to Radek Trotsky thought it necessary ”handling
over to the Germans, if they demanded it, those factories which would be
particularly valuable to their economy”[49].
Further on
Radek told that Trotsky in his letters had explained that ”territorial
concessions would probably be necessary … it was a question of satisfying
German expansion in the Ukraine. As regards Japan, Trotsky spoke of
ceding the Amur region and the Maritime Province”[50].
Trotsky
confirms collaboration with the Nazis
Pyatakov
and Radek were astonished and frightened at Trotsky’s directives and decided to
ask for a personal encounter with him. The opportunity presented itself in
December 1935 when Pyatakov went to Berlin on a duty tour. In very
conspirative ways, organised by the German Trotskyites and with a German
passport, which Pyatakov got by Sedov, he flew on to Oslo, where Trotsky
was residing at the time. They held a two-hour parley and Trotsky confirmed the
contents of the letter. Moreover, he was dissatisfied with the activities of
the Trotskyite parallel centre, which he thought was very bad. In short Trotsky
demanded much more extensive sabotage and destruction of installations and
factories and that a series of attempts should be carried out to kill the
leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin first and foremost. Referring to the
concessions to the Germans, Trotsky told Pyatakov that ”he had conducted rather
lengthy negotiations with the Vice-Chairman of the German National-Socialist
Party – Hess”[51] and
that an agreement had been reached.
But Trotsky
went even further. He demanded from Pyatakov that the parallel centre should
”train cadres for the event of war, that is to say, to train diversionists and
those who would engage in destruction, helpers for the fascist attack on
the Soviet Union”[52].
Pyatakov
told the court that a new factor had entered with this conversation with
Trotsky. ”Pyatakov: What was new, if you like, was formulated distinctly
enough: in essence, the Trotskyite organisation was being transformed into an
appendage of fascism. To me it became clear only then”[53]. Pyatakov
goes on telling the court that the conversation with Trotsky, ”caused an
unpleasant reaction both in Radek and in me, and we thought of doing something:
but we did not reject it, and continued to carry on with what we were doing”,
and Pyatakov realised ”that we had got into a blind alley”[54].
The
Trotskyite parallel centre continued to carry out Trotsky’s requests, now they
had got to carry out attempts to kill leading members of the Central Committee
– Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovitj, Vorosjilov, Ordzjonikidze and others. Pyatakov
related all this at the public trial in front of the international press and
the diplomatic corps. The activities of the parallel centre continued until the
beginning of 1936 when it was discovered and its members arrested.
Trotskyist
activities in Nazi Germany and the USA
The reports
about Trotsky’s collaboration with the Nazi party and Gestapo are received with
great scepticism by to-day’s Trotskyites as well as their liberal and
anti-Communist admirers. They do not want to accept facts delivered at several
public trials. But one does not need to keep only to the public statements at
the trials to reach the conclusion that Trotsky and Gestapo collaborated. Since
1934 Nazi Germany had become complete police state where several thousand
German Communists had already been killed just a year after the Nazi take over
and where another tens of thousands of Communists were locked up in the German
concentration camps. Nothing happened in Nazi Germany without Gestapo’s
permission. Absolutely no political activities and least of all such in which
Russian revolutionaries were involved. The vast organisational work, which Leo
Sedov devoted himself to could only take place with the permission by and in
collaboration with Gestapo and with their money and material aid. In the USA a
Trotskyite group was organised to support Trotsky’s struggle against the
government. The main objective of the group was by propaganda to get a broad
support from the public against the Soviet Union. The group organised a
row of well-known intellectuals and got the possibility to have a big space in
the press. But it was not just any newspapers, which could publish Trotsky’s
manuscripts. Trotsky delivered his articles directly to the pro-Nazi
Hearst-press. William Hearst was the American newspaper tycoon who openly
vented his sympathies for Hitler and Nazism. After 1934, the year when Hearst
met Hitler, the Hearst press became the great propaganda medium in
the USA for Nazism. That was where Trotsky sent his articles to be
published. Side by side with Trotsky’s writings Mussolini’s chronicles could be
found —he had his own column in the Hearst press— and the overt Nazi propaganda
of Göring. Trotsky’s articles had a given position among the Nazi propaganda
against the Soviet Union.
The verdict
against the members of the Trotskyite centre was pronounced on 30th January
1937 at three a.m. Thirteen of the accused —Pyatakov, Serebryakov, Muralov,
Drobnis, Livshitz, Boguslavsky, Knyazev, Rataichak, Norkin, Shestov, Turok,
Pushin, and Harsche — were convicted to the highest penalty, execution by a
firing squad. Three of the accused —Radek, Sokolnikov and Arnold— were
convicted to ten years imprisonment. Stroilov was convicted to eight years
imprisonment. Those convicted to imprisonment were deprived of their political
rights for five years after the term. All those convicted got their private
property confiscated[55].
US ambassador
Joseph Davies about the Pyatakov-Radek process
A witness
to the trial who has left a very extensive material about this and other
subjects concerning the situation in the Soviet Union 1936 to 1938 is Joseph E.
Davies, the US ambassador to Moscow during this period.
Davies has written a book, which we strongly recommend. It was published
in New York 1941 with the title “Mission to Moscow”. The
book is “A record of confidential dispatches to the State Department, official
and personal correspondence, current diary and journal entries, including notes
and comment up to October 1941” written by Davies in his
correspondence with President Roosevelt, the Foreign office and his family back
in the USA. Ambassador Davies also wrote a small brochure prior to the first
anniversary of the Second World War 1942 with the title Our Debt to Our
Soviet Ally. The brochure treats the Soviet union and the Second World
War and urges the USA to open a second war front
in Europeagainst Nazi Germany.
Joseph
Davies was not a professional diplomat but a lawyer, capitalist and
businessman. He was a man from the capitalist establishment of
the USA and a personal friend of President Franklin Roosevelt. Davies
was a great admirer of the American democracy and an outright anti-Socialist.
In his farewell speech to the Embassy staff when his mission
to Moscow ended he said, inter alia ”the dignity of manhood and
womanhood, the sanctity of human life and liberty, the self-respect of the
human spirit, are the best product which civilisation has brought into this
world. These are found in the United States of America to a degree
that is found no place else in the world. I don’t care how much totalitarian
states or dictatorships may provide in material benefits or social benefits to
childhood or old age. If liberty and freedom have to be sacrificed, then the
price is too high to pay”[56]. What makes
Davies interesting is that he during his stay in the Soviet
Union made a genuine effort to get to learn about the country and the
Socialist government. He asked from the government of the Soviet
Union to be allowed to travel around the country, which was granted with
all possible support. Ambassador Davies travelled criss cross over the whole
country examining a uncountable cities, factories, cooperative farms, schools,
hospitals etc. He described what he saw in an objective vocabulary to the
Foreign office and in letters to his family in the USA.
Davies
letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Concerning
the trial against the Pyatakov-Radek group Davies wrote on 17th February 1937
a “Strictly Confidential” letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs.
“With an
interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must
confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of
these defendants. The unanimity of their confessions, the fact of their long
imprisonment (incommunicado) with the possibility of duress and coercion
extending to themselves or their families, all gave me grave doubts as to the
reliability that could attach to their statements. Viewed objectively, however,
and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the
tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the
reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the
extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the
political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes
established the crimes set forth in the indictment”[57].
Conquest
and the treason trial
It may be
of interest to know what the bourgeoisie has got to say about the treason trial
in February 1937. As usual, the main book of the bourgeoisie is The
great terror by the police agent Robert Conquest. Other so called authors
in Sweden and other countries who tackle this subject are just
apprentices of Conquest. It is impossible here to mention all lies in
Conquest’s description of the trial. We have to content ourselves with his
description of the case against Pyatakov.
Conquest
writes: ”The sacrifice of Pyatakov is perhaps the clearest sign of Stalin’s
motives. He had been, it was true, an oppositionist, and an important one. But
he had abandoned opposition in 1928 and had worked with complete loyalty ever
since…What was there to be said against him? … He had been a major critic of
Stalin’s in the 1920s. He had made it clear that he regarded his rise to power
as unfortunate. Above all, he was even now, whatever his own desires,
leadership timber.”[58]. We have
already read about Pyatakov’s “complete loyalty” in the minutes of the trial.
But even Conquests allegation that Pyatakov “still” would be “leadership
timber” has nothing to do with reality. At this time the opposition had been
politically vanquished long ago and had no political influence in
the Soviet Union. That, for example, is the opinion of the Swedish
Ambassador to Moscow, Eric Gyllenstierna in a letter to the Swedish
Department of Foreign Affairs dated 28 January 1937 commenting the
Pyatakov-Radek trial. Gyllenstierna confirms, that “there cannot be question of
any political opposition which represents a real danger for those in power”.[59]
According
to conquest, the treason trial was just a way for Stalin to get rid of yet some
potential rivals, naturally, in order to remain in power himself! For those who
have knowledge of Pyatakov’s testimony at the public trial, Conquest’s writings
appear ridiculous. Littlepage’s book from 1939 also crushes Conquest’s lies,
revealing Pyatakov as a thief and saboteur. Still, the myths of Conquest are
the ones given publicity in mass media influencing people who are unprepared.
Such are the myths served by the upper class to the people. Within the circles
of the same upper class the language was and is different. Let us consider a
confidential document by the Swedish ambassador to Moscow, Eric
Gyllenstierna, to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm.
Ambassador
Gyllenstierna about the Pyatakov trial
“Légation
de Suède
Some
comments on the confessions in the latest Trotsky trial. (6 pages)
Moscow,
February 3rd 1937
Confidential”
(page 3:)
“It was
striking, that the accused, with few exceptions, in spite of the long period of
detention and the exacting mental –and probably in most cases also physical–
torture they had undergone, did not appear particularly depressed or dejected.
Rather, they seemed to be lively and alert; one or two among them even had a
faint smile on his lips.”
(page 4:)
“It is
difficult to find a psychologically satisfying explanation to the behaviour of
the accused and their efforts to produce the best possible collaboration with
the prosecutor. Like during earlier trials of the same kind, one has been lost
in different guesses about this. As you may know, even the hypothesis has been
put forth that the accused have been subjected to some narcotic or hypnotic
influence –a hypothesis which, lacking any evidence, will be left without
consideration for the time being.
The most
commonly accepted explanation is that the hope of saving one’s own life, or at
least that of some close family member, has been decisive for the strangely
passive behaviour of the accused vis-à-vis the prosecutor, and the
grotesque enthusiasm for confessions would derive from a pure instinct of
survival. As for myself, I have doubts about this explanation. The experience
from the Zinoviev and other similar trials should have provided the insight,
that not event the most frenetical self accusations and blaming of the
co-accused sufficed to move the court to mildness in the punishment.
Moreover,
it did not appear as if the majority of the accused, when stating their
confessions, were motivated by a fawning eagerness to please the court and
those in power. Their entire conduct, as I have endeavoured to hint,
contradicts this assumption. --- Suffice, it is not worth the while to try and
penetrate to the bottom of this mystery of confessions. It is and will probably
remain an unsolvable, psychological riddle.
Eric
Gyllenstierna.”[60]
Gyllenstierna
1937 and Arch Getty 1999
According
to Ambassador Gyllenstierna the accused in the Pyatakov trial were “lively and
alert; one or two among them even had a faint smile on his lips” when they were
interrogated and confessed their crimes. The accused could, moreover, talked
freely and confessed their crimes which for the Ambassador was “an unsolvable,
psychological riddle.” It never fell Gyllenstierna in that the accused were in
fact guilty and that they choose to confess their crimes confronted by the
strong evidence of the prosecutor. But Gyllenstierna is not the only one. With
few exceptions the whole of the united bourgeois class and its scribes were,
just as they are now, completely perplex at the confession by the accused. When
the subject has been brought up during the years as when new research has been
presented or a new book published, new theories have been formulated just to
explain away the fact that the accused were in fact guilty of they crimes they
had been accused of.
The last in
the series of sometimes totally unprecedented theories without any foundation
except the imagination of the author can be read in Arch Getty’s latest
book The Road to Terror, Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the
Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. Professor Getty who has been one of the
few serious bourgeois researchers of the topic of Soviet Union’s history,
has in this instance concerning the confessions of the accused in the political
trials hit his head against the wall.
Professor
Getty cannot accept the simple fact that the accused were guilty. Such things
are not “as they should be” in the academic circles where Getty belongs, where
an inimical and prejudiced attitude towards the Soviet Union and a
sanctification of Trotsky are completely dominating. Getty has consequently
built his own theory to explain the confession of the accused. It is what he
calls “a confession ritual”[61]. For Getty
the confessions were just part of a ritual constituting the basis of all
phenomena occurring in the Bolshevik party since Lenin’s time. The aim of the
ritual was to subject all party members to the superiority of the party or the
nomenclature and to confess crimes when it was demanded of them, even when they
were innocent. According to Getty the innocent lied about themselves and
allowed themselves to be dishonoured in front off all comrades, all the working
people of the Soviet Union and the whole world and for all eternity and allowed
themselves to be condemned to death and be shot just to show respect to the
nomenclature and for the unity of the party! And those who did not accept
Getty’s confession ritual and refused to accept guilt for crimes which they had
not committed were condemned to death anyhow! It is far fetched to say the
least, not to say ridiculous. It can be conceived, of course, that a deranged
person would have been thinking along such lines, but that all the accused
would declare themselves guilty in spite of their innocence, only a confused
researcher can accept. Such a one cannot be searching for truth but rather the
verification of one’s own theory.
Getty’s
intrigues and follies
Furthermore,
one has to point out that most of the accused in the Moscow trials
were former functionaries in high positions in the Communist party, people in
the so called party establishment, the nomenclature. Why then would one part of
that nomenclature strike against another part if there were no crimes nor any
ones guilty? In spite of hundreds of tiresome pages of documents and intricate
theories turning history into a mace of intrigues and follies of many kinds,
Getty fails to give a reply to this question in The Road to
Terror. What finally creeps out is –like always– that all was of
Stalin’s making anyhow, he was behind everything with his craving for power and
he struck in fear of losing control over the political system. And Getty goes
to the extreme of ending his book by telling that, “there was no worker’s
revolution” in the Soviet Union and that “the nomenklatura survived socialism
and did in fact inherit the country” and ”become not only the ”new” governing
elit of the 1990s but the legal owners of the country’s assets and property”[62].
Is this
history? To make us believe that all is so simple, that the nomenclature
present 60 years ago is the same which in 1990 sold the country to the capital?
To make a 60 years long leap and close the eyes for everything that happened in
the meantime just to make one’s “theory” land? To close one’s eyes for all
class struggle in the fight for Socialism and a society without classes. And
not the least to close the eyes to the greatest tragedy of mankind, World War
II against Nazism and Fascism. A war which to a great extent was fought and won
by the Soviet Union and where many of the best Communists and young people gave
their lives for freedom not just for their own country but for the whole
mankind. A war which had demanded a decade of work fighting against time and
which had left vast areas of the Soviet Union in ashes and with enormous social
and economical problems. Can one disregard all this? Could it be that the
greatest tragedy of mankind had no influence on the social development of the
country where it had taken place? With The Road to Terror Getty
has created an acceptable product for the ruling capitalist class. He questions
some old lies about the Soviet Union which are impossible to defend
after the archives have been opened. But he knows to tell new mendacious
theories slandering the Soviet Union and casting suspicion on it.
The purge
of the party 1937 and the fight against bureaucracy
In the
middle of 1937 it was clear that to great problems had to be taken very
seriously and that a solution of them was a must if Socialism was to continue
being built in the Soviet Union. One of the problems had been brought to
light by the Zinoviev-Kamenev and Pyatakov-Radek treason trials. By now it had
been proven that the old opposition had not laid down arms. Earlier
auto-criticism had been a play for the galleries only, a way to get at commanding
positions in society again. Their underground activities had been continuing
without interruption ever since the beginning of the 1930-ies; the number of
those involved was unknown. The other problem was the fight against
bureaucracy, corruption and opportunism within the party. It related especially
to the local and regional potentates whom the base members could not or did not
dare to denounce and who were therefore in stable a sure positions in the local
and regional leaderships.
The Central
Committee convened in a meeting in February 1937 in order to treat
these two principal questions. This meeting turned out to be the starting point
in the party struggle which was raging during 1937-1938. At the beginning of
the meeting Bukharin and Rykov, members of the Central Committee, were present.
They were accused of having collaborated with the enemies of the party and also
to have been part of a counter revolutionary league with Trotsky and to fell
the government of the Soviet Union. The accusations were founded in
material from the investigations of the recently concluded Pyatakov-Radek
trial. The allegations against Bukharin and Rykov were presented by Pyatakov
and Radek during the trial itself. Bukharin and Rykov tried to defend
themselves but they were convicted traitors by the Central Committee and
evicted from the party. Their case was handed on to the attorney for
investigation and prosecution. We shall return further down to the trial
against Bukharin, Rykov and the others in their organisation.
Stalin’s
speech
During the
meeting of the Central Committee Stalin gave a very important speech entitled
”Defects in party work and measures for liquidating Trotskyites and other
double-dealers”[63]. This speech
and Stalin’s “Speech in Reply to Debate” at the meeting are fundamental
documents for all that seriously want to get into the question of the
occurrences in the Soviet Union during the 1930-ies. Other comrades
like Molotov, Zhdanov and Ezhov also brought up important questions
during the meeting.
During his
speech, Stalin turned to the others comrades of the Central Committee with the
question how it was possible for foreign agents, Trotskyistes and their
political allies, to penetrate the economical and administrative organisations
of the Soviet state as well as the party organisations and carry out sabotage,
espionage and damage. Moreover, Stalin asked how it had come about that these
alien elements had managed to get responsible positions and even some help from
some leading comrades to snatch the responsible positions.
Stalin went
on to present a list of sabotage and espionage during the preceding years and
the warning letter of the Central Committee to the party organisations and
continued:
”The facts
shows that our comrades reacted to these signals and warnings very slowly. This
is eloquently show by all the known facts that have emerged from the campaign
of verifying and exchanging Party documents. How are we to explain the fact
that these warnings and signals did not have the required effect? … Perhaps our
Party comrades have deteriorated, have become less class-conscious and less
disciplined? No, of course not! Perhaps they have begun to degenerate? Again,
of course not! There are no grounds whatever for such an assumption. What is
the matter then? Whence this heedlessness, carelessness, complacency,
blindness? The matter is that our comrades carried away by economic campaigns
and by colossal successes on the front of economic construction, simply forgot
about certain very important facts which Bolsheviks have no right to forget.
They forgot about the main fact in the international position of the U.S.S.R. …
They forgot that the Soviet power is victorious only on one-sixth of the globe
… there are, besides, many other countries, bourgeois countries, which continue
to lead the capitalist mode of life and which surround the Soviet Union,
waiting for an opportunity to attack her, to crush her, or, at all events, to
undermine her might and weaken her”[64].
Spies
from the capitalist countries
Stalin then
went on to point out the relationships between the capitalist countries.
”It has
been proved as definitely as twice two are four that the bourgeois states send
to each other spies, wreckers, diversionists, and sometimes also assassins,
instruct them to penetrate into the institutions and enterprises of these
states, set up their agencies and ”in case of necessity” disrupt their rear, in
order to weaken them and to undermine their strength. … Today France and England are
swarming with German spies and diversionists, and, on the other hand,
Anglo-French spies and diversionists are busy
in Germany; America is swarming with Japanese spies and
diversionists, and Japan is swarming with American spies and diversionists.
Such is the law of the relations between bourgeois states. The question arises,
why should the bourgeois states treat the Soviet socialist state more gently
and in a more neighbourly manner than treat bourgeois states of their own type?
Why should they send to the Soviet Union fewer spies, wreckers,
diversionists and assassins than they send to their kindred bourgeois states?
Why should you think so? Would it not be more correct from the point of view of
Marxism to assume that the bourgeois states would send twice and three times as
many wreckers, spies, diversionists and assassins to the Soviet
Union as they send to any bourgeois state? Is it not clear that as long as
the capitalist encirclement exists we shall have wreckers, spies, diversionists
and assassins sent to us by agents of foreign states?”[65].
These were,
according to Stalin important circumstances which the leading comrades had
forgotten, and that was the reason why the sabotages and espionage being
unexpected for many of them. The economical achievements explained the laxity
and carelessness. The really great steps forward in the socialist construction
resulted in a tendency to boasting, a tendency to overestimate the power on
one’s own side and to underestimate that of the enemy. The great successes
gives rise to an ”atmosphere of success-success after success, achievement
after achievement, overfulfilment of plan after overfulfilment of plans – gives
rise to carelessness and self-satisfaction, creates an atmosphere of showy
triumphs and mutual congratulations, which kills th sense of proportion and
dulls political intuition, takes the spring out of people and causes them to
rest on their laurels”[66].
The
capitalist encircling?
And Stalin
continues ironically to present the thoughts on the subject of a local, party
functionary. ”Capitalist encirclement? Oh, that’s nothing! What does capitalist
encirclement matter if we are fulfilling an overfulfilling our economic plans?
The new forms of wrecking, the struggle against Trotskyism? Mere trifles! What
do these trifles matter if we are fulfilling and overfulfilling our economic
plans? The Party Rules, electing Party bodies, Party leaders reporting to the
Party members? Is there really any need for all this? Is it worth while
bothering about all these trifles if our economy is growing and the material
conditions of the workers and peasants are becoming better and better? Mere
trifles! The plans are being overfulfilling, our Party is not a bad one, the
Central Committee of the Party is also not a bad one – what else do we need?
They are some funny people sitting there in Moscow, in the Central
Committee of the Party, inventing all sorts of problems, talk about wrecking,
don’t sleep themselves and don’t let other people sleep…”[67]
Party
courses and Lenin courses
Stalin then
elaborates upon a number of errors in the party work and the measures he
regards as being necessary to correct the errors that have arisen. He concludes
by presenting a proposal for organised studies for leading party cadres, from
cell leaders to leaders for the regions and the party organisations of the
Soviet republics. ”For the Party instruction and the re-training of secretaries
of Party organisations (cells), four months’ ”Party courses” should be
established in every Regional centre”. ”For the political re-training of first
secretaries of District organisations, eight months’ ”Lenin courses” should be
established in, say, ten of the most important centres in the U.R.S.S.”. ”For
the ideological re-training and political improvement of secretaries of city
organisations, six months’ “Courses for the study of Party history and policy”
under the C.C. of the C.P.S.U.(b) should be established”. “Finally, a six
months’ “Conference on questions of internal and international policy” under de
C.C. of the C.P.S.U.(b) should be established. The first secretaries of
Regional and Territorial organisations and of Central Committees of national
Communist Parties should be sent here.”[68] Studies
is the right way to solve the problems and the contradictions in the party; a
line which Stalin, Zhdanov and Kirov decided since January
1934.
In the
“Speech in reply to debate” Stalin brought up some important controversies,
which had emerged during the debate. Among other things Stalin pointed out that
those who had once been Trotskyistes or Trotsky sympathisers but who had
changed since then and worked well being loyal to the party were not targets in
the fight against the Trotskyite wrong-doers and spies. “In this matter, as in
all others, an individual, discriminate approach is required. You cannot
measure everybody with the same yardstick”.[69]
Control
the party functionaries
The other
questions in the epilogue were all focused at a sharp criticism of the
relationships of party functionaries with the base members. Stalin did not
mince his words. He started by criticising the selection of party
functionaries. “Most often, (party)workers are chosen not for objective
reasons, but for casual, subjective, philistine, petty bourgeois reasons. Most
often, so-called acquaintances, friends, fellow-townsmen, personally devoted
people, masters in the art of praising their chiefs are chosen without regard
for their political and business fitness. Naturally, instead of a leading group
of responsible workers we get a little family of intimate people, an artel, the
members of which try to live in peace, try not to offend each other, not to
wash dirty linen in public, to praise each other, and from time to time send
vapid and sickening reports to the centre about successes. It is not difficult
to understand that in such a family atmosphere there can be no place for
criticism of defects in the work, or for self-criticism by leaders of the work.
Of course, such a family atmosphere creates a favourable medium for the
cultivation of toadies, of people who lack a sense of self-respect, and
therefore, have nothing in common with Bolshevism.”[70]
Further on
Stalin commented on the necessity of controlling the party functionaries not
just by their superiors but, even more importantly, by the base members. “Some
comrades think that people can be tested only from above, when leaders test
those who are led by the results of their work. That is not true. Of course,
testing from above is needed as one of the effective measures for testing
people and verifying the fulfilment of tasks. But testing from above far from
exhausts the whole business of testing. There is another kind of test, the test
from below, when the masses, when those who are led, test the leaders, draw
attention to their mistakes and indicate the way in which these mistakes may be
rectified. This sort or testing is one of the most effective methods of testing
people.”[71]
Applying
Leninism
Stalin also
criticised strongly those who were unwilling to auto criticism with the
argument that this would be taken as a weakness by the enemy and taken
advantage of, and which could also lead to disorganisation and enfeablement.
“That is nonsense, comrades, sheer nonsense. On the contrary, the open
admission of our mistakes and their honest rectification can only strengthen
our Party, raise the prestige of our Party … To spare and take care of cadres
by glossing over their mistakes means killing these very cadres for certain.”[72] In the
end Stalin urged the leaders of the party organisations to listen to the voice
of the masses, a certain way of practising a correct leadership. He criticised
firmly “the formal and heartlessly bureaucratic attitude of some of our Party
comrades towards the fate of individual members of the Party, to the question
of expelling members from the Party, or the question of reinstating expelled
members of the Party.”[73]
According
to Stalin the leaders had to get to know the members, their development and way
of life to be able to make a fair and individual judgement of each one. Lacking
such knowledge “they usually act in a haphazard way: either they praise them
wholesale, without measure, or roundly abuse them, also wholesale and without
measure, and expel thousands and tens of thousands of members from the Party”.[74] Stalin
opposed all expulsions for alleged passivity or for the members not having
appropriated the party programme. Only tested and theoretically instructed
Marxists could appropriate the party programme.
Stalin
appealed to the leaders of the party to apply the Leninist formula for
membership in the party according to which “a member of the Party is one who
accepts the program of the Party, pays membership dues and works in one of its
organisations.”[75] No
party member should be expelled for lacking a deep knowledge of the party
programme or party policies. Stalin called it a heart-less policy and an
enormous bureaucratism to exclude workers for small errors like being late to
party meetings or unpaid party fees. Before the question of an expulsion was
treated, a criticism, warning or a certain time be given to the person in
question to allow him or her to improve. Party leaders were required to have a
genuine concern for the members “this is exactly what some of our comrades
lack”[76], Stalin concluded.
Party
members start criticising
When
Stalin’s speeches were published, they became the starting point for a debate
in the society, just like other speeches by Molotov, Zhdanov and
Ezhov. The leading themes were Stalin’s “Speech in reply to debate”
and Zhdanov proposal for secret votes in party elections, which had
been accepted at the Central Committee meeting. Thus, the questions which
aroused the greatest interest concerned the power of the party leaders and
their actions as well as party democracy. The Bukharin-Rykov trial and the
necessity to be vigilant against spies and saboteurs was also discuss and
moreover criticism against the breach of party discipline by individual
members. But the main question remained the omnipotence and corruption among
local party leaders.
During the
entire 1930-ies the Central Committee had urged party members to initiate
criticism against the leadership and to denounce corrupt and uninterested party
secretaries. Now, at last, the discussion got underway! Party meetings were
organised everywhere in the society because of the February meeting of the
Central Committee. Meetings, which had been recently done away with in a
routine and bureaucratic fashion suspected of friendship corruption, had to be
repeated suddenly following massive demands by the members.
The Smolensk archives provide plenty of instances of meetings where
local leaders were literally put against the wall and were forced to
auto-criticism in front of the members. The masses of members were not
indulgent. At many meetings in District Committees and in Work place or
Residence cells, the party leaders were so thoroughly unmasked that they were
bereft of their positions on the spot, new leaders having the confidence of the
members being elected directly. These elections were not part of the Central
Committee plan for new party elections with secret election of the party
leaders. By that time the plan was only being prepared. But nothing could
prevent the members from take over power from the corrupt bureaucrats.
Example
in the district of Belyi
A typical
example of the atmosphere in the working class after the Central Committee
meeting February 1937 must be told here. In the Belyi district (Belyi Raion) a
meeting took place to analyse the activities of the party, a meeting which took
four days. Minutes of the meeting are available in the Smolenskarchives[77]. Base
members who had seldom spoken at meetings or who had been stamped passive, took
the word on this occasion and did not mince their words “regardless of person”[78]. 220 of the
240 members were present at the meeting of the Belyi district committee (Belyi
Rakom). Seventy-seven spoke at the meeting and presented harsh criticism
against the district secretary Kovalev. He was accused of having become a bureaucrat
without consideration for the members. He had falsified reports about political
education and closed study halls with the excuse that they were not needed. His
methods were dictatorial, partial and brutal. Members who were for some reason
called to the district office felt uneasy knowing that they would have to wait
long hours or return without completing the business at hand.
The NKVD
head in Belyi, Vinogradov, came to Kovalev’s help. He asked the party members
not to discuss party work. According to him, the directives from the February
meeting of the Central Committee meant that the members were to discuss the
Spring’s sowing. Kovalev, on his part, tried to remit the criticism down to
lower levels, the party cells. According to him, that was where the errors were
to be sought, not in the district. Even Golovashenko, the representative of the
obkom (the regional Committee) came to Kovalev’s aid. He tried to calm the
debate and counter attacked the members who had been severely criticising
Kovalev. But there was nothing that could help Kovalev. The criticism from the
members continued without interruption during the entire meeting and the list
of accusation grew long. The meeting ended by the members then and there giving
Kovalev the foot electing Karpovsskij first secretary in the party district.
Stalin’s
“Speech in reply to debate” a tool in the struggle
The history
does not end here. The local NKVD head had tried to help Kovalev and so had the
regional representative. A decision by the regional secretariat stopped the
newly elected district Karpovsskij and proposed another member, Boradulin. A
new, large membership meeting took place during which Boradulin was declared
even more incompetent than Kovalev and where the members once more elected Karpovsskij
district secretary. This occurred in spite of Karpovsskij urged the members to
accept the proposal of the regional secretariat.
That was
the atmosphere following the February meeting of the Central Committee. With
Stalin’s “Speech in reply to debate” in their hands the base
members started immediately to throw out careerists and corrupt bureaucrats
electing their own leaders irrespective of superior instances. It was a
spontaneous struggle as is clearly shown by the reports in
the Smolensk archives having far reaching consequences within the
near future. At the same time corrupt bureaucrats in positions of power
continued protecting each other. To mention Kovalev who got a good job at the
personnel department of the region. But on the other hand the struggle had only
just begun.
The 1937
party elections
One of the
important resolutions passed at the February meeting of the Central Committee
was a to hold general party elections following a precise and rigorous
democratic regulation with secret ballot for election of persons. Two weeks
after the Central Committee meeting, 20th March 1937,
a decree was issued by the Central Committee concerning Elections
to the party organisation and started a debate in the press about the
necessity for auto criticism, democracy in the party and control of leading
party functionaries. The central leadership did its best to prevent corrupt
party leaders from manipulating the election meetings.
The
elections took place during April 1937. The local leaderships were widely
criticised during the election meetings. Earlier, the party meetings for
discussion and criticism had been a forum to criticise the base members for
lack of party discipline or bad conduct. Now, the situation was reversed. This
time, the local leaderships were at the centre of criticism. As a rule, many
members were nominated to the party boards at the meetings. The discussions
were long and careful minutes were taken. The secret elections came last. There
are many documents in the Smolensk archives concerning the party
elections including ballot papers.
Old
leaderships exchanged
The
national results of the party elections were reported in the press later. Among
54.000 party organisations, the election results of which were known in May
1937, the old leadership had been exchanged in 55 per cent. This was an
incredible result. First of all it showed that the lack of confidence in the
old leaderships was very great and secondly that the base members in practice
had the collective strength needed to throw out politicians who were
incompetent or abusing their power. Evidently, the Central Committee meeting
had formulated a dissatisfaction which was already present.
The party
elections, however, had another aspect too. Among the party leaders who were expelled
most were active on local level, in the districts and cells, the level where
ordinary members could easily decide what was right and wrong and discover
corruption, abuse of power or sabotage. Higher up in the municipal and regional
Committees the party elections did not give similar results. The regional party
leaderships showed a great competence in surviving criticism. Cases of corrupt
politicians at regional level, which were known, acting like little kings,
managed to get the vote to their advantage. The base members did not have the
same possibilities to evaluate the events around these leaders as around the
local ones. There was yet another factor speaking against the base members.
Corrupt and incompetent regional and municipal secretaries always surrounded
themselves with a group who supported them in all weathers. It was not easy for
the base members to penetrate all this seeking the truth.
Regional
leaderships exchanged
But the
struggle against the bureaucracy and corruption within the Communist Party
continued on higher levels too. In the beginning of June the annual regional
party conferences started as usual. These conferences were not accorded any
particular importance, they were usually discussing reports concerning the work
of the regional leaderships. This time, however, something new occurred. Even
at the regional conferences the party leaders were criticised. The party
central knew that it would be much more difficult for the base members to make
their voices heard at the regional level. This time the party central decided
to send representatives from the Central Committee to the regional conferences.
These representatives came, sometime totally unannounced, took a seat and
participated in the discussions. This had the effect of tipping scales at
several regional conferences to the disadvantage of the regional party leaders.
Among the twenty-five regional conferences reported in the press, four ended by
the party leadership having to leave. The problem had been remedied but in many
quarters the regional satraps continued ruling and doing as they wished without
caring for the party directives.
The
military trial against the generals
It was at
the moment for the regional party conferences when something decisive for the
future of the country took place in the Soviet political life. On June 11,
1937, Pravda announced that Marshal Tukhachevskii and the generals Putna,
Iakir, Uborevich, Feldman, Kork, Primakov and Eideman were arrested and charged
with treason. These generals had been arrested in Mai 26th, 1937,
charged of during a long time for “habitual and base betrayal of military
secrets to a certain hostile Fascist power, and working as spies to encompass
the downfall of the Soviet state and to restore capitalism.”[79]
The
conspiracy of the generals was the military part of the struggle of the
opposition against the Soviet government. The treason trial of Pyatakov-Radek
had dealt a severe blow to the opposition, but the generals had not cancelled
their plans for a coup d’etat. On the contrary they realised that any delay
would be to their disadvantage. The plans were finalised already before; it was
time to act. Following the trial of Pyatakov and the denouncement of the
Bukharin-Rykov group, who were now under arrest, the military conspirators
increased their efforts. Towards the end of March 1937 they decided on the time
for the coup. It was to take place within six weeks or March 15th the
latest.
The
return of the political commissars
Having
knowledge of the plans for a coup the Soviet government acted swiftly. On May 8th an
important resolution was taken: the political commissars were reinstated in the
army at all levels. The system of political commissars supervising the officers
and the military decisions had been abandoned ten years earlier, May 13th 1927,
on Frunze’s proposal. He was an old Bolshevik and highly positioned party
cadre who had become one of the leading officers of the army. He abolished the
political commissars and reinstated the power of the officers. Moreover, on May
11th 1937 marshal Tukhachevskii was demoted from his post as
deputy war commissar and sent to lower mission in the Volga area.
General Gamarnik, one of the conspirators who committed suicide, was demoted on
the same day as deputy war commissar. The generals Iakir and Uborevich were,
they also, moved to lower posts while the generals Kork and Eideman were
arrested, accused of spying for the Nazi Germany. The conspirators no longer
had any practical means of directing a military coup.
The
Socialist society defends itself
The Soviet
government’s quick intervention this time averted the attempted coup d’etat
against the Socialist Soviet Union, but the size of the conspiracy in the
civilian society and among the military was not known in all its parts. The
generals had a contact net with many important party functionaries and
officers. There was a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity during the
political life, which ensued. The total width of the conspiracy was not
revealed until the Bukharin trial in 1938. For instance, the conspirators had
already made up lists of thousands of party functionaries who were to be
arrested and eliminated. The Socialist society however, could defend itself by
following the traces left by the generals and the Pyatakov-group.
Before the
military trials started, the evidence for the guilt of the generals was
submitted a vast number of officers, representatives of all the military
districts of the Soviet Union, at a big military conference in Moscow. The
court proceedings were held behind closed doors because of the military secrets
treated during the trials. Only high-ranking officers were admitted to the
trial. The court consisted of the judge Ulrich and eight senior army officers.
The court found all the accused guilty and condemned them to death. Two of the
court members marshal Blücher and the old Bolshevik hero marshal Budjonnyj,
pronounced the death verdict. On May 12th Pravda published the
execution by a firing squad of the eight condemned.
The
conspirators and the foreign links
The
military trial against the general has been the subject of interminable
speculations during the years, which have resulted in many crazy conclusions.
All the speculations do have in common that there was in fact a conspiracy
within the Soviet army to oust the government by force in a coup d’etat. Even
the most reactionary interpreters of history admit that there was such a
conspiracy. The difference between the authors is revealed only when one looks
at who were allegedly the allies of the generals in this conspiracy. The
historical research of later years has, however, confirmed the accusation of
the Soviet government, namely that Tukhachevskii and his group had sought
support from Nazi Germany for its coup d’etat and that the groups of Pyatakov
and Bukharin were part of the conspiracy.
In 1937 an
attempted coup in Soviet Union would have had very serious consequences,
which are difficult to gauge entirely. On the one hand the Soviet government
had a very strong support among the population and among the rank and file of
the Soviet army. On the other hand, the conspirators had been working in secret
for many years preparing their effective. To a large extent they were people
who, like Tukhachevskii had come from the old corps of officers from the Tsar’s
army. Many of them had been trusted to continue in the Red Army and in 1937 had
high posts of command. At the time of the trials, the Soviet army had grown to
a great, modern and strong army with several million in arms. To have a
confrontation in such an army between troops loyal to the government and
conspirators, even if these latter were much fewer, would have had widespread
consequences and led to great losses.
From
similar situations in history we know that this type of events leads to
confusion, whereby the rank and file follow their commanders without having
much opportunity to consider the correctness of their action. If the coup
d’etat of the generals had come off, one could have expected a minor war with
devastating consequences. This was also what the conspirators were hoping for.
In order for them to reach a final victory exterior assistance was indispensable.
That assistance could come from the strong military states, which had for a
long time been threatening the Soviet Union: Nazi
Germany, Japan and Italy. That was how the plan was conceived.
The Nazis would initiate an invasion to “liberate” the Ukraine and Japan would
occupy the Soviet Pacific coast.
The
regional party meetings and the struggle against counter-revolution
In June
1937 the situation in Soviet Union was extremely tense. Nobody knew
exactly the size of the military conspiracy but there were many indications
that it was larger than the group discovered. The Central Committee decided to
start a comprehensive investigation. The military conspiracy came from the top
and its roots in the civilian society were to be sought among people with
leading posts. A number of extra ordinary membership meetings were arranged in
the regions to evaluate the work of the regional party leaderships and to find
out the size of the conspiracy. In the Western region the meeting to place
during three days between June 19th and 21st 1937.
Kaganovich took part at the meeting as the representative of the Central
Committee. The central question was the evaluation of the regional party
secretary Rumiantsev and his close associates.
Rumiantsev
subject to criticism
Ivan
Petrovich Rumiantsev was an “old Bolshevik” who had joined the party as early
as 1905. In 1929 he was named by the Central Committee first
secretary of Smolensk, and Rumiantsev took a number of old comrades to be
installed in several of the leading posts of the region. This nepotistic
procedure was stamped anti-Marxist by Stalin at the February meeting of the
Central Committee, but it did not impress Rumiantsev. In June 1937 Rumiantsev
was 61 and member of the Central Committee with a strong standing in the
Western region, where several companies and factories had been named after him.
In practice, Rumiantsev was immune to criticism. The “old Bolshevik” Rumiantsev
had in the course of years been replaced by a pompous bureaucrat mostly
interested in his own welfare. The dissatisfaction with Rumiantsev in the
Western region was evident, but the possibilities of felling him were slight.
The
conditions had changed radically prior to the meeting of June 19-21, 1937. It
was not only due to the presence of Kaganovich and his support of the critical
voices. Another matter was of an even greater importance to the members being
so outspoken. It turned out that one of the conspiring and condemned generals,
Uborevich, was a member of the regional Committee collaborating optimally with
Rumiantsev. There were suspicions that Rumiantsev was one of the high party
functionaries who were involved in the military conspiracy. Old injustices
committed by Rumiantsev and his group against individual members were brought to
light without pardon.
The
situation for the leadership of the Western region became increasingly glum.
Among other questions the dismissal of the party secretary Kovalev was brought
out. Kovalev had been kicked out by the party members at the membership meeting
in the district of Belyi but he got a comfortable job for his retirement by …
Rumiantsev. Now the members brought up what had happened and they were of the
opinion that it was Rumiantsev who had shaped Kovalev’s behaviour against the
will of the party members. He was the one causing the transgressions and abuse
of power in the district of Belyi. By using such familyness and patronage,
Rumiantsev had “suppressed criticism and self-criticism, creating a circle of
‘his people’ ”[80]. The list of
accusations of corruption and omnipotence against the leadership of the Western
region grew ever longer. As a consequence, the whole leadership was dismissed
at the meeting. At a subsequent investigation, Rumiantsev and his group were
arrested, accused of corruption and abuse of power.
The Central
Committee launches a vast counter attack
In July
1937 the Central Committee had collected sufficient evidence of the military
conspiracy having been part of a scheme involving many high party
functionaries. The situation was extremely serious. Even in the Central
Committee itself there were corrupt members involved in the conspiracy. The
construction of Socialism bore with it consequences which some old Bolsheviks
and newer high party functionaries could not accept. The distant and somewhat
romantic picture of worker’s power during the days of the revolution 1917 had
now become reality in the Soviet Union ruled by workers. This was a
scary development for some who had been living well and acquired privileges.
They choose the road of counter- revolution. They found their indispensable
allies outside the Soviet Union to stop the Socialist development.
The Central Committee decided to fight the white terror and treachery firmly.
The task to
follow up the traces of the attempted coup by the traitors was handled by the
security police NKVD under the leadership of Ezhov. All over the country people
who were known to have had connections with the conspirators in the group of
Pyatakov or the generals were investigated. Many were arrested. The political
situation was insecure and the foreign links of the conspirators still unclear
in their entity. The generals had divulged secrets about the defence of
the Soviet Union and it was unclear to what extent this had weakened
the country.
Nazism
wins in Europe
In Europe the
fascist armies had began to act without restraint. The war
in Spain was in full swing supported by Italy, which had sent
50,000 men to the aid of Franco. Nazi Germany contributed economically, and
with fighter and bomb planes, guns, tanks and other war machines to equip the
Italians and the fascists of Franco. One of the first terror attacks by plane
took place with the bombings of Madrid and Barcelona. In Africa
Italy occupied the kingdom of Ethiopia-Abessinia following
a ruthless war against a people without defence against a modern army. In March
1938 the Nazis occupied Austria and in March 1939 Checkoslovakia. In
the same month Madrid fell to fascism and in September 1939 Nazi
Germany vanquished and occupied Poland. In April
1940 Denmarksuccumbed to the Nazi invasion and in June
1940 Norway had to surrender after a brave resistance. The same
month Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the great military
power France fell after five weeks of German attacks. There was a
British army to assist France, but it found itself beaten and had to
retire with great losses.
The Soviet
Union was living a dangerous life. The Fascist aggression was approaching
with great strides. The damage done by the treason of the general was a threat
against the country, which would take a long time to repair. The government
knew that the country had a long way to go before it could resist the forces of
Nazi Germany, the greatest and best equipped army in the world. When the day of
invasion came in June 1941 Nazi Germany had an army of eight million men. Never
in the history of mankind had there been such a big army. The Soviet
Union had constructed a modern industry and enlarged the army to five
million men, with great speed.
The
purges hit the highest ranks
The purges
in the party got momentum after the Central Committee had questioned the
loyalty of the regional party leaders to Socialism. The party meetings were
strongly influenced by the tense situation in the community, and the base
members turned more and more vociferous against corrupted and inefficient
functionaries. People who considered themselves totally protected all of a
sudden where thrown out from a directing role to the party masses some were
directly delivered to justice for their crimes. Bourgeois history in the West
talks of terror against leading functionaries and company administrators,
people who had much better economic conditions than most. “Nobody could sleep
in their beds”, say the Bourgeois historians.
But why
should one not question individuals who had traded the property of the people
“under the table”, who had used the money of the state for business of their
own and who had liberally handed out presents and bribes to friends and
acquaintances? Why should one be particularly considerate to party leaders who
used power to oppress base members and mistreat them? Why should one not
persecute generals and other high officers who had betrayed the secrets of the
country and collaborated with the enemy? Why should they go free or be treated
better than other criminals? In the Soviet Union, in contrast to the
bourgeois democracies in the West, all were equal before the law. Moreover, a
high position in society was an honorary assignment implying that one should be
a good example and abide by the laws very carefully. One could say, that this
is remarkable for the capitalist bourgeoisie only, those who have always made a
living from crimes, crooked dealings and speculation.
The
expulsions and “the old Bolsheviks”
Bourgeois
historians have had much to say about the persecutions of “the old Bolsheviks”,
allegedly those most affected by the purges. Research into
the Smolensk archives does not support such a theory.
If “old Bolsheviks” were purged or arrested it was simply because
they were leading cadres and had been pointed out by the base members as
corrupted, arrogant or uninterested in their task. Investigations made about
the 127 leading “old Bolsheviks” from Stalin’s generation, which had taken part
in the October revolution 1917 in Moscow show that they were not
a special target for the purges. If they fell, the reason was their leading
position and the criticism made by the members. Of these 127 “old Bolsheviks”
109 could be followed the whole life. Among these 38 were expelled or put to
trial during 1937.[81]
A
comparison between the years 1934 and 1937 also yields an interesting result.[82] The
number of “old Bolsheviks” was 182,600 at the 17th Party
congress in 1934. At the 18th party congress 1939 they had
diminished to 125,700. The reduction of “old Bolsheviks” during these five
years, all causes included, even natural death and diseases, was 56,900 or approximately
31 per cent. A part of these 56,900, and probably a big part, were expelled
during the purge 1937. But still in 1939 125,700 “old Bolsheviks” were active,
and the majority in leading positions in the party, all over the country. The
myth that “Stalin had exterminated the “old Bolsheviks” is nothing but a myth,
yet another lie by Conquest-CIA once initiated by Trotsky.
Research
also shows that most of those expelled during this time were people from the
leading circles of the party. Let us give a concrete example from the party
district of Belyi.[83] Out of
244 members and candidates in the party organisation of Belyi 36 were expelled
during 1937. 29 of those expelled were in leading positions. Two first party
secretaries of district committees, one chairman and two deputy chairmen of the
district soviet executive committee, one Komsomol district secretary, the
district prosecutor, the chief of the district NKVD and one of his fellow
officers, the directors of the three largest schools in the district, the head
of the district land office, the director of the Belyi Machine Tractor Station,
four heads of industrial undertaking, two heads of trade organisations, five
collective-farms chairmen and five chairmen of the rural soviets.
The myth
of the expulsions of 1937
The myth
about the terrible year 1937 which the bourgeoisie has made one of its top
items, not surprisingly through the police agent Robert Conquest and CIA / MI5,
the true fathers of the myth are unmasked by the statistics about the purges
during the whole of the 1930-ies.
Party
expulsions by year[84]
Operation Number
expelled Percent
of party
1929 170.000 11
1933 792.000 18.5
1935 170.000 9
1936 -- --
1937 100.000 5
1938 70.000 2
Note! There
are no national statistics for 1936. In Smolensk two/three per
cent of the members were expelled.
Analysing
the statistics one can perceive the dimension of the bourgeois lie. In fact,
1937 was one of the years of the lowest number of people expelled, not more
than five per cent! How comes, that the bourgeoisie and its lackeys have
transformed 1937 into the “Stalin’s incredible year of 1937 with “millions
false accusations, millions deported, millions murdered”[85] as
Peter Englund likes to formulate it. Which are the interests behind this? We
understand that in such a mass movement of criticism and self-criticism with
millions of people involved, wrong decisions have been made and innocent people
affected. But such things occurred at earlier purges too. Tens of thousands
party members had expelled on the wrong grounds and got their membership back
after simply having appealed to the party central. These injustices which
affected ordinary workers, more than others, are of no interest to the West.
How to explain such an interest for 1937? Why precisely 1937 taken as the worst
that befallen the Soviet Union?
The
class question gives the answer
The
explanation is related to class. The great difference between the purges of
1937 and other purges in the party is that during the other purges mainly base
members, ordinary workers were expelled – they constituted up to 80 per cent of
all those expelled. The relationship was just the opposite 1937. Of all those
expelled around 80 per cent were corrupted party bigwigs and high level
individuals of the army.[86] These
were people who had acquired privileges and financial advantages and who were
prepared even to collaborate with Nazi Germany to keep them. These were people
who did not mind stepping on the base members and who readily threw out those
who did not accept the transgressions. In 1937 party functionaries and officers
with inclinations to the West and a bourgeois thinking were kicked out. They
lost their position of power, were thrown out from the party and brought to
trial. We can understand the hatred of the bourgeoisie against the Soviet year
of 1937.
The
policy of the party and difficulties of the mass struggle
The aim of
the purges was to throw out corrupted bureaucrats and traitors in the party and
army. Such a far reaching struggle with millions of party members involved
could not be carried out without mistakes. Old personal contradictions could
lead to unfair decisions. On the other hand a strong mistrust against all party
cadres in a party organisation could easily spread when a highly positioned
party functionary was proven to be corrupt bureaucrat. The Central Committee
was aware of the difficulties and warned from the outset against exaggerations.
The
struggle was aimed at bureaucracy and treason and not against party cadres in
leading position in general. In some quarters this principle was difficult to
apply. Party members who, for instance, were working with white collar jobs and
had not shown a genuine interest for party life could easily be expelled in spite
of the loyalty to Socialism they had demonstrated in their work. The Central
Committee opposed this and corrected the injustices when they got the appeal of
those expelled. In October 1937 during a reception for technical cadres from
Donbas Stalin gave a statement in person against those who questioned all
leading cadres. According to Stalin the new technicians and economists of
the Soviet Union came from the proletariat and deserved the respect
of the people.
NKVD and
the power struggle
The security
police NKVD and its head Ezhov, who had had an important role in the unveiling
of the conspiracy in the army, were warned too by the Central Committee. The
police could not put itself above the Socialist society but it was its servant
only and had to respect socialist legislation. The work of the security police
was important, it saved the country from civil war, but its power was submitted
to the party of the workers and peasants. Within NKVD there were some forces
headed by the member of the Central Committee Ezhov decide for themselves who
was a counterrevolutionary and what characterised an enemy. These forces wanted
far reaching purges, without consideration for the least error. They wanted to
purge the party radically from everybody who showed the least insecurity or who
was not totally dedicated. They would throw out everybody who in their
neighbourhood or in their work had had dealings with corrupt bureaucrats or
traitors. Evidently, this was a political issue to be decided upon by the
Central Committee not by the security police. Ezhov was criticised strongly for
sometimes having led NKVD into exaggerations in the hunt for traitors,
exaggerations that meant that innocent people were imprisoned and submitted to
severe hardships.
Further,
there was a tendency in society and the mass media, not withstanding the
criticism from the Central Committee to glorify NKVD and Ezhov’s actions.
Stalin himself opposed this glorification. At the anniversary of NKVD 20th December
1937, which was celebrated with pomp at a public meeting in honour of the
police force at the Bolshoi theatre, the chair of honour was empty. Stalin
absented himself from the meeting and Mikoian had to act an improvised chairman
of the meeting. The criticism against Ezhov and NKVD should be taken seriously.
Stalin boycotted the NKVD meeting but demonstratively attended a musical
concert at the Bolshoi later in the evening. The absence of Stalin must be
considered in relation to the fact that he was often seen at meetings,
everything from hero pilots, polar researchers and kolchos women to meetings
with factory leaders or voters in his electorate.
Bukharin-Rykov’s
treason trial 2-13th March 1938
27th February
1938 it was announced officially in the press that 21 important people were to
be tried at court for high treason. Among these there were nine former members
of the Central Committee and other highly positioned functionaries (Bukharin,
Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, Rakovsky, Rosengoltz, Ivanov, Chernov, Grin,
Zelensky, Bessonov, Ikramov, Khodjayev, Sharangovich, Zubarev, Bulanov, Levin,
Pletnev, Kazakov, Maximov-Dikovsky, Kryuchkov)[87]. They were
accused of having constituted a group denominated the “Bloc of the Rights and
Trotskyites” to topple the government of the Soviet Union and return
the country to capitalism.
Sabotage,
terror, collaboration with Nazi Germany, Japan and England, attempts at the
lives of outstanding members of the Central Committee of the Communist party
and government, participation in the murder of Kirov, and murder of the author
Maxim Gorky, his son Maxim Peshkov, the chairman of the security police
Menzhinsky and the member of the polite bureau Kuibyshev were part of the
activities of the group.
Pleading
guilty
The accused
had, moreover, during many years had knowledge of the conspiracies revealed in
the trials of Zinoviev-Kamenev and Pyatakov-Radek, and they had had close
collaboration with theses groups. Moreover the accused had been part of the
conspiracy of the military and the attempted coup d’etat in May 1937. The most
important among the accused were Bukharin and Rykov, earlier members of the
Central Committee and Yagoda the former head of the Security police; people
with a political clout and power in society. But several of the other accused
were functionaries who had power over the socialist construction of
the Soviet Union. Heaps of books and articles have been written about this
trial, and almost all of them deny the guilt of Bukharin and his companions.
Yet, all the accused have pleaded guilty to the crimes they were accused of.
The general opinion among the diplomats present at the trial was also that the
accused were indeed guilty. A testimony about the authenticity and impartiality
of the trial was delivered among others by the then US Ambassador Joseph Davies
who was present at all the days of the trial. We shall return to this later.
On guard
against fascism
The Bukharin-Rykov
trial was public and was eagerly monitored by the diplomatic corps and the
world press. As usual at Soviet trials all the accused were present during the
whole trial seated side by side. During the whole trial they were fully free to
talk at any time and to comment on the accounts of the others and even to pose
questions to the other accused when they deemed it necessary. More than ever it
is important today to have knowledge of this trial, the accusations of the
attorney and the responses of the accused as well the possibilities to defence
and freedom to speak. Knowing the facts is the best way to fight the smear
campaign of the right against the Soviet Union and Socialism.
In the
continuation we shall produce material from the minutes of the public trial
which was published in French, English and German in the Soviet Union1938
and in Swedish by Arbetarkulturs Förlag (På vakt mot fascismen). For
lack of space this survey will be limited although it will be a very long
account with many long quotations. To those who have the possibility to get
hold of the official minutes we strongly recommend it for reading. We start by
treating parts of the interrogations of three of the accused, Chernov, Zelensky
and Ivanov, to illustrate the general activities of the rightist group for
later to move on to the leader of the rightist group Bukharin, Rykov and
Yagoda.
Research
equal to zero
Such a
work, with facts on hand to present the Bukharin-Rykov trial (and
Pyatakov-Radek) has rarely been carried out. The opinions about these trials
are time and time again published in newly written books and articles in
capitalist mass media. But most of the time they are but simple copies of the
books and articles of police agents (like Conquest), Fascists or Trotskyites.
The research into these trials is practically zero. The author of this study
could experience this state of affairs, when he wanted to borrow the English
edition of the minutes of the trial concerning Pyatakov-Radek and
Bukharin-Rykov at the University library of Uppsala in November 1999.
It was discovered that the minutes were on loan and had been so to the same
person since May 1967! The books of the University library can remain with the
borrower until the day that somebody requests it. I was the first person in 32
years who asked to borrow the minutes. The writer Peter Englund living in
Uppsala, who is a member of the Swedish Academy and of the Swedish Royal
Academy of Science of War, has never borrowed the minutes of the trials but he
has wrote books and articles about the trials. We must tell also that the
minutes of the trials in English, French and German do not exist anymore at the
Uppsala University Library. I discovered that when I was preparing the English
and French translations of this work in 2002. I put the question in the
newspaper of the town. I got the answered that they were send to the fire! The
University Library said they have short of money to pay for the house rent and
they decided to send a lot of old books and journals to the fire. Almost all
the important books for the story of socialism were send to the fire. That is a
good example of the bourgeois respect for culture.
The
interrogation Chernov, people’s commissary for agriculture
During the
trial the accused admitted horrible crimes whereby sabotages against the
production apparatus was a wide spread practice. Chernov, People’s Commissar of
Agriculture of the U.S.S.R[88]., earlier
People’s Commissar of Trade of Ukraine[89], told during
the interrogation at court that he had got the task by Rykov to carry out his
work in Ukraine in such a way “as to incense the middle peasants”.
The tactics of the right was to sabotage and make impossible the fight for
collective farms. Among Rykov’s directives to Chernov it was to “accentuate the
distortions of policy, to take special account of the national feelings of the
Ukrainian population and to explain everywhere that these distortions were a
result of the policy of Moscow”[90]! Moreover,
Chernov told at court that he had also been assigned “to form a Right
organisation among my acquaintances, if there should happen to be such on the
staff of the Trade Representation and the Embassy”[91] in Berlin.
Chernov did
so after his arrival in Germany. In this case Rykov’s directive was for
Chernov “through the parties of the Second International to rouse
the public opinion of capitalist countries against the Soviet government” in
order “to get the bourgeois government to intensify the hostile attitude
towards the Soviet Union”. The rightist bloc was prepared to
“after the Right came to power … would consent to an arrangement with the
bourgeois governments both on economic questions and, if necessary, on
territorial questions”[92]. Rykov had
informed Chernov that “since we needed the defeat of the Soviet Union for the
conquest of power in the country, we should expedite this defeat, and should
likewise expedite the outbreak of the war itself by diminishing the economic
and defensive power of the Soviet Union”[93]. At the
public trial and in front of the international press Rykov admitted that he had
given Chernov all these instructions. The right was prepared to work for a
defeat in the war and to give away Ukraine and parts of Byelorussian
to Germany and the Pacific coast to Japan for aid to
overthrow the Soviet government and take over the state power.
Agent
for Nazi Germany
But the
activities of Chernov in Germany suddenly took another turn. A member
of the right bloc working for the German police too, told the German police
about Chernov’s conspiratory activities. Chernov was given an ultimatum to
either work for Germany or be denounced to the Soviet authorities. He
told at court that he took the assignment for the Germans. He started to
provide the German police regularly with secret information about the results
of agriculture and industry as well as carrying out sabotage demanded by the
German police.
Chernov
told at court “The chief task assigned to me by the German
intelligence service at that time was to arrange to spoil grain within the
country. This involved delaying the construction of storehouses and elevators,
so as to create a discrepancy between the growing size of the grain collections
and the available storage space. In this way, two things would be achieved:
firstly, the grain itself would be spoilt; and, secondly, the indignation of
the peasants would be aroused, which was inevitable when they saw that grain
was perishing. I was also asked to arrange for the wholesale contamination of
storehouses by pests, and especially by corn beetle”[94]. All this
horrible work of sabotage Chernov carried out for the Germans causing great
losses to the Soviet Union. Consider that Chernov was one of the highest
ranking party functionaries in the area of agriculture during several years.
Sabotage
in agriculture
Chernov
also told at court of other parts of his counter revolutionary activities.
Among other things to “muddling up seed affairs” by “mixing up sorted seed and
thus lowering the harvest yield in the country” and when it came to cultivation
“the idea was to plan the crop area incorrectly and thus place the collective
farm peasants in such a position that they would be virtually unable to
practise proper crop rotation”. This, according to Chernov had to “this
would reduce the size of harvests in the country and at the same time rouse the
indignation of the peasants”[95].
As regards
the machine and tractor stations, “the aim was to put tractors, harvester
combines and agricultural machines out of commission, to muddle the financial
affairs of the machine and tractor stations”[96]. In relation
to animal husbandry Rykov’s directives were among other things to “to kill off
pedigree breed-stock and to strive for a high cattle mortality, to prevent the
development of fodder resources and especially to infect cattle artificially
with various kinds of bacteria in order to increase their mortality”[97]. To his aid
in the sabotage work Chernov had the members of the right organisation of the
whole country. Among other things they saw to it that no remedies against
cattle epidemics were imported to Eastern Siberia resulting in a
cattle pest which in Spring 1936 carried away twenty five thousand horses. The
members of the right also spread infections and created a swine pest in the
district of Leningrad and in Voronezj and Asov-Black sea area. The material
carrying the infection was produced in factories in Kasjinzev, Orlovsk
and Stavropol controlled by the right bloc. One can estimate that ten
thousand swine perished this time. This was the type of activity Chernov
devoted his time together with a great number of helpers, he who had been
entrusted the organisation of the Soviet agriculture for the people’s benefit.
Allow us to
give another example of the activities of a traitor. Zelensky himself told at
court how he had been working for the secret police during the Tsar’s epoch
denouncing his Communist party comrades for money. He was among those who
managed to hide their past and continue to be active and make a career within
the Communist party. He was recruited in 1929 to the organisation of Bukharin
and Rykov by Smirnov. His first task was to sabotage the collectivisation of
Middle Asia. He got the directive by Smirnov to “to preserve the big farms,
meaning kulak farms” and “check and disrupt the organisation of collective
farms”[99].
In Moscow it
was the assignment of Zelensky to cause damage to the co-operative associations
of Moscow and in the Centrosoyuz where Zelensky was the chairman.
(Centrosoyuz: The central organisation of the Soviet Union for
planning, transporting and distributing the agricultural products as well as
the acquisition and distribution of Soviet and foreign products to the
agricultural producers. The Centrosoyuz had subdivisions in all republics of
the Soviet Union, which in turn had subdivisions all the way down to
village level.) The aim was to disorganise ““the disorganisation of those
branches of economy which most immediately affected the population: housing,
co-operatives, trade, commodity circulation” in order “to arouse discontent
among the population with regard to the supply service”[100]. Zelensky
told how in 1936 they had “engineered interruptions in the sugar supply in the
Kursk Region” where “many shops were out of sugar for two or three weeks”[101]. Zelensky
told of a similar sabotage of tobacco products in Leningrad, bread in
Byelorussian and salt all over the country.
The
butter which tore apart the throat and stomach
When the
prosecutor Vyshinsky made a direct question about the sabotage of the butter
organised by the Right and Trotskyite bloc, Zelensky first tried to deny that
he knew it. But Vyshinsky continued to pose questions and at last, Zelensky had
to present the whole story. The right organisation saw to it that periodically
only high quality butter at a very high price was produced. This caused a great
dissatisfaction among the people. But it got worse. To be sure that they had
cased dissatisfaction, the members of the right organisation mixed nails and
glass in the butter “which hacked the throats and stomachs of our
people”. Zelensky was responsible for these acts of sabotage and even for
the sabotage against eggs. According to Zelensky “in 1936 fifty carloads of
eggs were allowed to spoil” and leaving Moscow without eggs. The
motto was “to wreck wherever possible”[102].
The
English Labour positive to a coup d’etat
Consider
that Zelensky was the chairman of Centrosoyuz and that his work was to provide
the population with alimentation and other necessities. Zelensky also told at
court of his organising “freezing of trade by despatching goods to the wrong
districts or at the wrong times. For example, there were cases when summer
goods were sent in winter, and, vice versa, when winter goods arrived in the
shops in summer”[103], such as
felt boots in Summer and Summer shoes in Winter. Apart from this Zelensky’s
counter revolutionary activities extended to the embezzlement of money from the
great organisation Centrosoyuz and the use of the departments of Centrosoyuz
all over the country as a centre to organise counter revolutionaries in secret.
Zelensky also made use of his post as the chairman of Centrosoyuz to enter in
contact with the English Labour party and ask about help in case of a rightist
coup in the Soviet Union. Labour welcomed a counter revolutionary state
coup and offered credits from the English cooperative movement.
The
accounts of Chernov and Zelensky at court are horrible crimes against the
working people. Yet, they are only a few of all the crimes committed by the
organisation led by Bukharin and Rykov. Another of the accused, Ivanov, the
second secretary of the party in North Caucasus, told at court of the
assignments he had got by Bukharin “of proceeding to prepare the way through
the forces of the Right organisations for the defeat of the Soviet power in
case of intervention, in a war with the capitalist fascist states” and in this
context to “give every assistance to the residential agent who will be sent
there, so as to fulfil the requirements of the British Intelligence Service”.
Ivanov did as he had been told by Bukharin and discovered that “the directions
received from the British Intelligence Service fully coincided with the
directions I received from the Right centre”[105].
According
to Ivanov Bukharin had said about the interests of England in North
Caucasus
that “He said that the Right centre had an agreement with that country about
helping the Rights to overthrow the Soviet power and abort helping the Rights
to maintain the power seized”. In this agreement they had “provided for
securing the interests of British timber firms with timber of the Northern
Territory”. According to Ivanov Bukharin had said “the sawmills should be
handed over as a concession to the British, while the new sawmills that had been
built under the Soviet power would have to be surrendered in payment of the
tsarist debts”. And further that Bukharin ever since 1934 “suggested that we
must already begin to make real payments in real values. He said that we must
give advances to the British bourgeoisie so as, on the one hand, not to lose
support, and, on the other, not to forfeit confidence”. In accordance with
these instructions by Bukharin “the following measures were carried out through
Rosengoltz and Lobov. The most valuable timber was sold at reduced prices. This
involved a loss to Soviet state of several million rubles in foreign currency”[106].
Terror
in North Caucasus
Ivanov also
told at court that he had got the task by Bukharin to set up a terrorist group
in North Caucasus. Following the assassination of Kirov Bukharin had told
Ivanov “that isolated terrorist acts could yield no results, that mass terrorist
acts must be organised, and only then would we have results. His line was to do
away with the leadership of the Party”. If it were not to succeed prior to the
impending war with Nazi Germany “we were to do so during a war; and this would
cause great dismay, undermine the fighting efficiency of the country and help
radically to bring about the defeat of the Soviet power in a war with the
imperialists”. Ivanov’s terrorist group was acting from Archangels “so as, to
the moment of intervention, to cut off communication
between Archangel and the central arteries of our country, and thus
make it easier for the British to seize this timber region and most valuable
port”[107].
Ivanov’s
terrorist group also organised sabotage against the forestry in North
Caucasus “aimed at preventing the technical re-equipment of the
timber industry, filling it with unreliable elements, wrecking the machinery
centres and hampering timber-floating” so that the shortage of wood
increased. What is more the group worked “to hindering the
technical re-equipment of lumbering, preventing the fulfilment of the plants of
capital construction, especially in the cellulose and paper industry, in this
way placing the country on a short paper ration and aiming a blow at the
cultural revolution, interrupting the supply of exercise books and thus rousing
discontent among the masses”[108].
But
gradually Ivanov started to doubt the possibilities of winning this struggle,
which he related to Bukharin. “I put it to Bukharin that the organisation was
falling to pieces … and that here and there the masses themselves were exposing
our followers. And I put it to him whether it did not follow from the situation
that had developed in the country that we had suffered complete bankruptcy. …
The whole organisation was in a state of fear; I would say that the activities
of the Right were virtually on the eve of thorough exposure”[109].
Bukharin
concerning the interrogation of Ivanov
Ivanov’s
confession of his crimes was at the same time a very grave accusation against
Bukharin sitting just a few steps from his chair in the hall of the court. The
prosecutor Vyshinsky turned to Bukharin during the interrogation of Ivanov and
took the opportunity to pose questions to Bukharin to confirm or deny the data
provided by Ivanov.
“Vyshinsky:
The accused Ivanov testified that you proposed that he should form an
organisation of Rights in the North Caucasus with certain definite
aims. Do you confirm that too?
Bukharin:
He has got the dates mixed up.
Vyshinsky:
First of all, do you confirm the fact itself?
Bukharin: I
confirm the fact itself that I instructed him to form an organisation.
Vyshinsky:
A secret one?
Bukharin: A
secret, illegal, counter-revolutionary one. But at that period the acute
struggle against the Party and the Soviet government had not taken the forms…
Vyshinsky:
I am just now interested in the testimony of the accused Ivanov, which the
Court has heard. He says that Bukharin gave me, i.e., Ivanov, instructions to
proceed to form a secret organisation of Rights in the North Caucasus. Do
you confirm this?
Bukharin:
That part I do confirm.
Vyshinsky:
Consequently, in 1928 you had adopted the method of illegal, underground
activities?
Bukharin:
That was a moment of such transition…
Vyshinsky:
I am not asking you when it was. Is this a fact, or not a fact?
Bukharin:
That I confirm.
Vyshinsky:
Did you also tell Ivanov at the time that a centre of the Right organisation
was already functioning?
Bukharin: I
did.
Vyshinsky:
Consisting of whom?
Bukharin:
Consisting of three persons: Tomsky, Rykov, and myself, Bukharin.
Vyshinsky:
Did you tell him that this centre was preparing for the overthrow of the Soviet
power?
Bukharin: I
did, but this refers to a later period.
Vyshinsky:
To which exactly?
Bukharin: I
think it refers roughly to 1932-33.
Vyshinsky:
That is, somewhat later. But the fact that you had such a conversation with
Ivanov you do confirm?
Bukharin: I
do. I do not remember the date, nor the month, but that was the general
orientation of the Right centre.
…
Vyshinsky:
And when did you raise the question of insurrectionary bands?
Bukharin:
The adoption of violence roughly relates to 1932.
…
Vyshinsky:
Ivanov states that he learnt from you of the existence of a bloc between the
Trotskyistes, the Right groups and the nationalist groups. Do you corroborate
this?
Bukharin: I
do.
Vyshinsky:
And did you know about the negotiations which Ivanov and others carried on with
capitalist countries?
Bukharin:
Yes, this was at a much later period.
Vyshinsky:
Hence, Ivanov’s statements about connections with the British Intelligence
Service…
Bukharin: I
was totally uninformed about the Intelligence Service and about plans.
Vyshinsky:
What were you informed about?
Bukharin: I
informed Ivanov of the foreign-political orientation of the Right centre, I
told him that in the fight against the Soviet power it was permissible to take
advantage of a war situation, and a number of other things. In short, as one of
the leaders of the Right centre, it was my duty to communicate our line to one
of the leaders of the periphery centre. What was this line? Briefly, this line
was that in the fight against the Soviet power it is permissible to utilise a
war situation and to make certain concessions to capitalist states for the
purpose of neutralising them, and sometimes for the purpose of obtaining their
assistance.
Vyshinsky:
In other words, orientation towards assistance from certain foreign states.
Bukharin:
Yes, it can be put that way.
Vyshinsky:
In other words, orientation towards the defeat of the U.S.S.R.
Bukharin:
In general, summarised, I repeat, yes.”[110]
The
interrogation of Bukharin
Let
us now proceed to the interrogation of the three main accused: Bukharin, Rykov
and Yagoda. We start by Bukharin, the real ideological leader of the rightist
centre which, together with Rykov, decided over the organising in practice.
Suspicious history falsifiers have sometimes alleged that the prosecutor
Vyshinsky lost in the discussion with Bukharin, that Bukharin had used the
court to make a brilliant piece of propaganda for his political standpoints. It
is easy to make the audience fall into this trap since extremely few people are
familiar with the court proceedings. With the papers in your hands, judge for
yourselves. Let us continue quoting the court protocols.
“Vyshinsky:
Formulate briefly what exactly it is you plead guilty to.
Bukharin:
Firstly, to belonging to the counter-revolutionary “bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites.”
…
Vyshinsky:
What aims were pursued by this counter-revolutionary organisation?
Bukharin:
The principal aim it pursued although, so to speak, it did not fully realise
it, and did not dot all the “i’s” – was essentially the aim of restoring
capitalist relations in the U.R.S.S.
Vyshinsky:
The overthrow of the Soviet power?
Bukharin:
The overthrow of the Soviet power was a means to this end.
Vyshinsky:
By means of?
Bukharin –
As is known…
Vyshinsky:
By means of forcible overthrow?
Bukharin:
Yes, by means of the forcible overthrow of this power.
Vyshinsky:
With the help of?
Bukharin:
With the help of all the difficulties encountered by the Soviet power; in
particular, with the help of a war which prognostically was in prospect.
Vyshinsky:
Which was prognostically in prospect, with whose help?
Bukharin:
With the help of foreign states.
Vyshinsky:
On condition?
Bukharin:
On condition, to put it concretely, of a number of concessions.
Vyshinsky:
To the extent of…
Bukharin:
To the extent of the cession of territory.
Vyshinsky:
That is?
Bukharin –
If all the “i’s” are dotted – on condition of the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R.
Vyshinsky:
The severance of whole regions and republics from the U.S.S.R.?
Bukharin:
Yes.
Vyshinsky:
For example?
Bukharin:
The Ukraine, the Maritime Region, Byelorussian.
Vyshinsky:
In whose favour?
Bukharin: In
favour of the corresponding states, whose geographical and political…
Vyshinsky:
Which exactly?
Bukharin:
In favour of Germany, in favour of Japan, and partly in favour
of England.”[111]
Bukharin
told also under the interrogation that in summer 1934 he got to know through
Radek “that directions had been received from Trotsky, that Trotsky was
conducting negotiations with the Germans, that Trotsky had already promised the
Germans a number of territorial concession, including the Ukraine.”[112]
The
assassination of Kirov
Further on
in the public interrogation the prosecutor Vyshinsky proceeds to the question
of attempts against leading members of the party.
“Vyshinsky:
Did the bloc stand for the organisation of terrorist acts, the assassination of
leaders of the Party and the Soviet government?
Bukharin:
It did, and I think that the organisation of this must be dated back roughly to
1932, the autumn.
Vyshinsky:
And what was your relation to the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov? Was
the assassination also committed with the knowledge and on the instructions of
the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites”?
Bukharin:
That I did not know.
Vyshinsky:
I ask you, was this assassination committed with the knowledge and on the
instructions of the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites”?
Bukharin:
And I repeat that I do not know, Citizen Procurator.
Vyshinsky:
You did not know about this specifically in relation to the assassination of S.
M. Kirov?
Bukharin:
Not specifically, but…
Vyshinsky:
Permit me to question the accused Rykov.
The
President: You may.
Vyshinsky:
Accused Rykov, what do you know about the assassination of Sergei Mironovich
Kirov?
Rykov: I
know nothing about the participation of the Rights or the Right part of the
bloc in the assassination of Kirov.
…
Vyshinsky:
Were you connected with Yenukidze?
Rykov: With
Yenukidze? Very little.
Vyshinsky:
Was he a member of the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites”?
Rykov: He
was, since 1933.
Vyshinsky:
Which part did he represent in this bloc, the Trotskyites or the Rights? To
which did he gravitate?
Rykov: He
must have represented the Right part.
Vyshinsky:
Very well; please be seated. Permit me to question the accused Yagoda. Accused
Yagoda, do you that Yenukidze, of whom the accused Rykov just spoke,
represented the Right part of the bloc and that he had direct relation to the
organisation of the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov?
Yagoda:
Both Rykov and Bukharin are telling lies. Rykov and Yenukidze were present at
the meeting of the centre where the question of assassinating S. M. Kirov was
discussed.
Vyshinsky:
Did the Rights have any relation to this?
Yagoda:
Direct relation, because it was a bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.
Vyshinsky:
Did the accused Rykov and Bukharin in particular have any relation to the
assassination?
Yagoda:
Direct relation.
Vyshinsky:
Did you, as a member of the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,” have any relation
to this assassination?
Yagoda: I
did.
Vyshinsky:
Are Bukharin and Rykov telling the truth when they say that they knew nothing
about it?
Yagoda:
That cannot be so, because when Yenukidze told me that they, that is, the “bloc
of Rights and Trotskyites,” had decided at a joint meeting to commit a
terrorist act against Kirov, I categorically objected.”[113]
Embittered
counter revolutionaries
The
revelation by Yagoda of Bukharin and Rykov as partners in the murder
of Kirov in December 1934 was met by complete silence from Bukharin
and Rykov. They knew that the former head of the Security police, Yagoda, had
knowledge of all details around the assassination of Kirov and did
not want to continue a discussion, which would demonstrate how deeply involved
they were. Vyshinsky then passes on to the question why the bloc of the Rights
and Trotskyites were carrying out this criminal battle against the Soviet
power.
“Bukharin:
… I am an accuse person who must bear responsibility as a criminal, facing the
Court of the proletarian country. … The Court and the public opinion of our
country, like the public opinion of other countries, as far as progressive
mankind is concerned, can judge how people sank to such depths, how we all
became rabid counter-revolutionaries, traitors to the Socialist fatherland, and
how we turn into spies, terrorists and restorers of capitalism, and what, in
the end, were the ideas and political standpoint of the “bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites.” We embarked on treachery, crime and treason. But for the sake of
what did we embark on this? We turned into an insurrectionary band, we
organised terrorist groups, engaged in wrecking activities, wanted to overthrow
the valiant leadership of Stalin, the Soviet government of the proletariat.
…
Vyshinsky:
Tell me, accused Bukharin, how all this took shape in practice in your
anti-Soviet activities.
Bukharin:
If my program stand were to be formulated practically, it would be, in the
economic sphere, state capitalism, the prosperous muzhik individual, the
curtailment of the collective farms, foreign concessions, surrender of the
monopoly of foreign trade, and, as a result – the restoration of capitalism in
the country.
Vyshinsky:
What did your aims amount to? What general prognosis did you make?
Bukharin:
The prognosis that there would be a heavy list toward capitalism.
Vyshinsky:
And what transpired?
Bukharin:
What transpired was quite different.
Vyshinsky:
What transpired was the complete victory of Socialism.
Bukharin:
The complete victory of Socialism.
Vyshinsky:
And the complete collapse of your prognosis.
Bukharin:
And the complete collapse of our prognosis.”[114]
The
conspiracy against Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov 1918
During the
interrogation of Bukharin new accusations against him came up, which, as the
prosecutor Vyshinsky said, asked for the guilty, not before the court that must
considered the prescription time, but the court of history that have no
prescription time and no pardon. This case concerned the events of 1918 around
the peace treaty with Germany in Brest, at the end
of the First World War. The prosecutor Vyshinsky brought up these events during
the interrogation and asked Bukharin whether he was in favour of having Lenin
arrested. After some hesitation Bukharin answered that “The first time it was
proposed to keep him under restraint for twenty-four hours.” Vyshinsky went on
with the interrogation:
“
Vyshinsky: And I ask you, did you have a plan for the arrest of Comrade Stalin
in 1918?
Bukharin:
Not of Stalin, but there was a plan for the arrest of Lenin, Stalin and
Sverdlov.
Vyshinsky:
And what about the assassination of Comrades Stalin, Lenin and Sverdlov?
Bukharin:
Under no circumstances.”[115]
Then the
prosecutor Vyshinsky asked the court to call the witnesses Yakovleva, Ossinsky
and Mantsev, three former active members of Bukharin’s fraction from that time
(1918) the so called leftist Communists as well as Karelin and Kamkov, two
former members of the Central Committee of the “leftist”-Social
revolutionaries. According to the prosecutor Vyshinsky the 1918 conspiracy had
been staged by Bukharin’s “leftist Communists”, the “leftist”-Social
revolutionaries and Trotsky’s group to hinder the peace agreement
of Brest. Trotsky who was in charge of the negotiations with the Germans
refused to sign the peace agreement and proclaimed the theory
of “neither war nor peace, a holy war against the bourgeoisie of the
whole world”. This in an epoch after a lengthy and horrible First World War,
when a continuation of the war did not have a chance of success, not the least
since the Tsarist army was crushed and there was no Red army.
Prepared
a coup d’etat
The refusal
of Trotsky to sign the peace treaty resulted in the German’s continued advance
into Russia almost unhindered. Lenin managed after a debate in the
Central Committee to isolate Trotsky and Bukharin and convinced the Central
Committee to approve the peace treaty. But the opposition did not want to
accept this decision or Lenin’s policy but prepared a coup d’etat instead. The
Central Committee knew that something was in the making to contravene Lenin’s
proposal but did not at the time find a space to follow up on the intrigues of
the opposition.
All the
witnesses told at court that a conspiracy by Bukharin’s and Trotsky’s groups
together with the leftist Social revolutionaries had prepared the arrest of
Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov as well as a transformation of the government.
Moreover these groups had agreed to “And if the struggle were to become more
acute, we must not shrink even from their physical extermination.”[116], as
formulated by the witness Yakovleva. Heading the conspiracy and being one of
its main organisers and instigators was Bukharin. Bukharin admitted this at
court but declared that there had been no decision taken on what was to be done
with those arrested. We render the exchange of words between Vyshinsky and
Bukharin after Vyshinsky had put the question of whom the conspirators were
going to arrest in 1918.
Who was
to be arrested?
“Bukharin:
Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov.
Vyshinsky:
Also for 24 hours?
Bukharin:
This formula was not employed then.
Vyshinsky:
And how were they to be arrested? And what for?
Bukharin:
In order to form a new government.
Vyshinsky:
And what was to be done with the arrested?
Bukharin:
There was no talk of physical extermination.
Vyshinsky:
But it was not precluded?
Bukharin:
On the contrary, we all thought that the safety of these persons must be guarded
at all costs.
Vyshinsky:
When a government is overthrown and arrested, are not forcible methods resorted
to?
Bukharin:
Yes.
Vyshinsky:
Did you envisage adoption forcible methods when making the arrest? Is this true
or not?
Bukharin:
It is.
Vyshinsky:
But what do forcible methods involve? Did you determine that precisely?
Bukharin:
No, we did not.
Vyshinsky:
And so you decided to act as circumstances permitted and dictated?
Bukharin:
Just so.
Vyshinsky:
But circumstances might dictate very decisive action?
Bukharin:
Yes, but the fact is that neither did the “Left Communists” hold a fatalistic
standpoint, but reckoned with the circumstances. This did not mean that
circumstances dictated anything and everything.
Vyshinsky:
Let us for the present establish what is undisputed. Before the Brest-Litovsk
Peace there was talk about the arrest of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin; after the
Brest-Litovsk Peace there were negotiations about the arrest of Lenin, Stalin
and Sverdlov and the forcible overthrow of the government. Is that correct?
Bukharin:
It is correct on the whole.
Vyshinsky:
Moreover, when the forcible overthrow of the Soviet power and the arrest of
Comrades Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov were spoken of, forcible methods were
actually spoken of, but which exactly were not mentioned?
Bukharin:
That is so. All that was said was that their safety must be guaranteed at all
costs.
Vyshinsky:
Witness Yakovleva, what do you say to this? Is Bukharin speaking the truth?
Yakovleva:
I was present during his negotiations with the “Left”
Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Vyshinsky:
What did he tell you?
Yakovleva:
He told me that such a possibility was not precluded.
Vyshinsky:
What possibility?
Yakovleva:
That the possibility of physical extermination, that is, assassination, was not
precluded.”[117]
The witness
Jakovleva, one of Bukharin’s closes comrades 1918 was quite positive as to the
course of events and what the discussion was about.
The
interrogation of Rykov
In the very
centre of the rightist organisation consisting of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky,
Rykov was the foremost organiser of the practical activities. Rykov set of his
underground conspiracy against the Soviet government 1928. He recruited highly
positioned party functionaries like Yagoda, Antipov, Rasumov and Rumiantsev to
the counter revolutionary organisation, but they did not overtly declare
themselves as adherents to the party right. Rykov disclosed at court how he and
his best friend Bukharin (sitting next to him) were active in organising the
Kulak uprisings in Caucasus and Siberia, where they sent the saboteurs of
the rightist organisation. Bukharin was compelled to admit all these events at court.
Both Rykov and Bukharin confessed that from 1932 their counter revolutionary
work had changed into high treason. According to Rykov “ Terrorist moods began
to develop as far back as 1930, as far as I know” and “Approximately in 1932
our positive attitude toward the application of terrorism took shape as a
method of struggle for power and found practical expression.”[118] And
Rykov continues:
In
alliance with the socialist revolutionaries
“Rykov: As
soon as the line was adopted, corresponding organisational an practical
conclusions were drawn from it at once; that is to say, a number of terrorist
groups were formed. I myself gave a number or terrorist instructions
to a number of persons, apart from those who stood close to me, like Nesterov
and Radin. I conveyed these instructions also to the nationalist organisation;
I discussed the question of terrorism with the members of the Pan-Tyurkic and
Byelorussian nationalist organisations, and soon the terrorist line and the
corresponding conclusions drawn from it were widely adopted. In addition to
these discussions on this question I had others. Nesterov later reported that
on my instructions an organisation had been formed in Sverdlovsk, in the
Urals.
Later on,
in 1935, I had a talk about terrorism with Kotov, I had a talk about terrorist
with Kotov, a leading member of the Moscow Right organisation. Approximately in
1934, I instructed my former secretary Artemenko to watch for passing
government automobiles.
Other
members of our counter-revolutionary organisation adopted similar measures. But
we never passed any definite decision that such-and-such a member of the
government is to be killed. The centre of the Right organisation never adopted
such a decision; but its work consisted of preparing such an attitude towards
terrorism and such a state of terrorist cadres as would enable such a decision
to be carried out whenever the centre adopted one.
In this
period also terrorist connections were established with the
Socialist-Revolutionary Semyonov through Bukharin. I did not know Semyonov
personally. Bukharin told me that through Semyonov he was preparing for an
attempt on the life of Stalin.”[119]
The
prosecutor Vysijinskij wants this last allegation confirmed by Bukharin.
“Vyshinsky:
And so, in 1932 you and Semyonov talked about this, that an attempt should be
organised on the lives of Comrade Stalin and Comrade Kaganovich.
Bukharin: I
did not say that it should; I am saying what happened.
Vyshinsky:
I say that in 1932 you had a talk on this, that an attempt was being prepared
on the lives of Comrades Stalin and Kaganovich.
Bukharin:
If you formulate it like that, it gives it an absolutely concrete character.
Vyshinsky:
Very concrete.
Bukharin:
At that time we talked about terrorist acts against the leading men of the
Party.
Vyshinsky:
Was it a theoretical talk?
Bukharin:
No. Organising groups is not a theoretical talk.
Vyshinsky:
What did you talk about?
Bukharin:
We talked about terrorist plans on the organisation of preparation to carry out
this plan against members of the Political Bureau.
Vyshinsky:
Including whom?
Bukharin:
Including Stalin and Kaganovich.
Vyshinsky:
That, then, is concrete.
Bukharin:
Quite concrete. I wanted to decipher and say exactly what actually happened.
Vyshinsky:
I ask the Court to permit me to read the testimony given by the accused
Bukharin during the preliminary investigation.
The
President: You may.
Vyshinsky:
Pages 105-6; when the Procurator of the Union interrogates you on
December 1, you, accused Bukharin, testified as follows: “I want to state the
truth and I declare that I reported this proposal” (this is preceded by the
reference to Semyonov’s proposal) “to a conference of the centre and we decided
to instruct Semyonov to organise terrorist groups.”
Bukharin:
Yes.
Vyshinsky:
This is right?
Bukharin:
Right.
Vyshinsky:
This precisely refers to 1932.
Bukharin:
Quite true.
Vyshinsky:
Thus, in 1932, you on the decision of the centre of the Right organisation
instructed Semyonov to organise a terrorist group. Is that so, or not?
Bukharin:
It is so.
Vyshinsky:
Why did you instruct him to organise a terrorist group?
Bukharin:
In order to commit terrorist acts.
Vyshinsky:
Against whom?
Bukharin:
Against members of the Political Bureau.
Vyshinsky:
Including whom?
Bukharin:
Including Stalin.”[120]
During the
interrogation Rykov also entered the question about collaboration with the
Nazis.
“Rykov:
Those who persist in their counter-revolutionary struggle resort to the
measures, methods and allies that we resorted to in the period after1933. This
refers to the “center’s” connections with the German fascists. Naturally, we,
and I personally, tried to tone down our testimony on this question because
this is a very bad thing. We depicted the situation so as to make it appear
that we had not discussed these connections in the centre beforehand. Actually
the situation was that Tomsky had taken the initiative. Bukharin and I heard
about it afterwards. But all these are formal points, because all of us, I and
Bukharin, never hesitated for a moment in deciding that Tomsky was right, and
had he asked us, we would have said it was the proper thing to do.”[121]
The
contact centre
Another
very important question raised by the prosecutor Vyshinsky with Rykov was, who
they were who made up the bloc of the joint conspiracy, the so called contact
centre.
“
Vyshinsky: This bloc, you said, included the Rights. Who else was included in
this bloc?
Rykov: The
Rights, the Trotskyites and the Zinovievites.”
….
“
Vyshinsky: Accused Krestinsky, do you know that the Trotskyites belonged to the
“bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” of which we are speaking here?
Krestinsky:
I learnt from Pyatakov, when he spoke to me about this in February 1935, that
an organisation had been formed, which united the Rights, Trotskyites and
military men, and which set itself the aim of preparing for a military coup. I
also knew that the leading centre included Rykov, Bukharin, Rudzutak and Yagoda
from the Rights, Tukhachevsky and Gamarnik from the military, and Pyatakov from
the Trotskyites.
…
Vyshinsky:
Were you personally a member of this centre?
Krestinsky:
In 1937, after a number of arrests, this centre comprised Rosengoltz and myself
from the Trotskyites, Rudzutak and Yagoda from the Rights, and Tukhachevsky and
Gamarnik from the military group.”[122]
In
alliance with Tukhachevskii
During the
ensuing interrogation Rykov confirmed the alliance with the military and also
told of Tukhachevskii’s military group which “which aimed at taking
advantage of a war to overthrow the government”. It was “the idea of opening
the front” for Germany and to make use of the defeat to take over
state power. Rykov also told of plans which were discussed in the centre to
permit the severing of Byelorussian, which was to be subjected a Polish
protectorate.
The
prosecutor Vyshinsky turned to Bukharin and put the question of which military
were supposed to open the front. Bukharin replied that they were “Tukhachevsky,
and Kork, if I am not mistaken; then the Trotskyites”. On a question by
Vyshinsky Krestinsky explained that he had learned from Tukhachevskii that he
was leaning on “among others, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork and Eidemann”[123]. During
the interrogation with Rykov the chairman of the court Ulrich intervened to put
the question about the existence of provocateurs in the Communist
organisations. Rykov confirmed that it was true the rightist organisation in
Byelorussian in collaboration with the Polish Generalstaff had smuggled in
provocateurs in foreign Communist organisations.
With every
interrogation during the trial one gets an ever more distinct picture of the
treason being organised by the right. Consider that all these traitors had in
their time been leading personalities of the Soviet society. They did not
accept a political defeat but rather converted to fight Socialism on the side
of the counter-revolution. Rykov himself had once been the Chairman of the
Council of the People’s Commissaries, i.e. the prime-minister of
the Soviet Union.
Yagoda
and the murder of Maxim Gorky
The
interrogation of Yagoda, former head of the security police OGPU, revealed
horrible crimes. Yagoda entered Bukharin’s and Rykov’s secret right
organisations 1928 via Rykov, with whom Yagoda had friendly relations. At that
time Yagoda was deputy head of the secret police OGPU (later NKVD) and for that
reason had exceptional possibilities to protect the right organisation from
being detected or arrested and even possibilities to install people from the
right organisation at leading posts. Yagoda made extensive use of these
possibilities. Through his own post, as he was the head of the guard of Kremlin
as well as troop detachments under his command, Yagoda became the key person of
the coup d’etat being planned.
Like the
others of the right organisation Yagoda confessed that he had planned and carried
out sabotage, espionage and attempts to topple the Soviet power and reinstate
Capitalism. Yagoda also confessed that he had stolen big amounts of money,
which he had put at the disposal of Trotsky and that he was a co-culprit in the
preparations for the murder of Kirov. What makes the case of Yagoda
different from that of all the others is the type of attempts and murders
carried out under his command. Yagoda made use of his power in order to compel
a number of doctors and other people to carry out criminal acts and to murder
Maxim Gorky, his son Maxim Peshkov, the politburo
member Kuibyshev and his own chief, the OGPU chairman Menzhinsky. The
doctors who carried out the assassination were Levin, Gorky’s personal
physician; Pletnev, the medical adviser to Levin; Kazakov, personal physician
of Menzhinsky; and Vinogradov another assistant to Levin, who had died for
natural causes at the beginning of the process. The others who were involved in
these assassinations were Yagoda’s secretary Bulanov, Gorky’s secretary
Kryuchkov, and Kuibyshev’s secretary Maximov.
Trotsky
versus Gorky
Originally
the threat against Gorky came from
Trotsky. Gorky dissociated himself strongly from Trotsky, whom he
classified a political adventurer. Trotsky had no possibility to
win Gorky’s sympathy for the struggle against the Soviet
government. Gorky strongly supported the socialist construction and
had friendly relationships with Stalin. Nobody had been able to change this
situation even if several traitors had been in contact with Gorky and
tried to win his sympathies. Zinoviev had done so as well as Kamenev and Tomsky
too. Gorky was a threat to the counter-revolution. He had very good
contacts among the intellectuals in many countries of Europe and in
the event of a coup d’etat he would have used his authority and condemned the
counter revolutionaries. For that reason, the right and the Trotskyites centre
decided to kill Gorky. It was a demand of Trotsky.
Kryuchkov,
Gorky’s secretary told at court that he had got the assignment by Yagoda to
kill Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov to break Gorky down and to turn
him into a harmless old man. Yagoda tempted with the opportunity for Kryuchkov
to become Gorky’s heir. That was the first step. Kryuchkov enticed Peshkov
to a constant drinking of wines, which he got from Yagoda. A weakened organism
gradually gave way to disease. This made it possible for the doctors Levin and
Vinogradov to examine Peshkov and prescribe medicines, which aggravated his
disease, finally causing his death in May 1934. Gorky was shattered
but continued actively to defend the revolution and Socialism. Kryuchkov’s next
task was to see to undermine Gorky’s health so that the doctors had reason
to prescribe medicines for Gorky.
Maxim Gorky
had chronic tuberculosis since his youth. The next instruction from Yagoda to
Kryuchkov was to see to it that Gorky got a cold. After having failed
several times, a possibility presented itself to make Gorky ill. As
instructed by Yagoda, Kryuchkov got Gorky to return to his home in a
rainy and cold Moscow from his vacation on Crimea in Tesseli to
Peshkov’s widow and Gorky’s grandson. This grandson had a bad cold and
Gorky, who liked him very much was soon infected. Gorky got ill 31st May
1936. At last the doctors Levin and Pletnev got a chance to act. An erroneous
treatment of Gorky turned his disease into pneumonia. The doctors
gave remorseful testimonies at court on the treatment to which they had
submitted Gorky. It was successful a few weeks after his falling ill. Gorky died
18th June 1936.
More
assassinations
Maxim Gorky
and his son Maxim Peshkov were not the only victims of Yagoda’s, Bukharin’s and
Rykov’s conspiracies with the help of the doctors. The politburo
member Kuibyshev and the OGPU chairman Menzhinsky fell in this
conspiracy. Through Yagoda, the right centre wanted to kill as many leading
personalities of the Central Committee as possible to create disorder and a
lack of cadres. In the case of Menzhinsky it was of importance that his death
would lead to the promotion of Yagoda to head the OGPU. Menzhinsky who had a
cardiac condition died from the medicine, which had a detrimental effect on the
cardiac activity. He died the day preceding the death of Gorky’s son
Peshkov 10th May 1934. This therapy was organised by the
doctors Levin and Kazakov.
The
assassination of the polite bureau member Kuibyshev was organised by
the doctors Levin and Pletnev and the secretary of Kuibyshev,
Maximov. Kuibyshev’s heart disease was ignored on purpose. The doctors
gave him the wrong medicines. Maximov was given the task to “in the event of
acute illness, attacks of any kind, not to hurry in calling in the doctor, and
if it is necessary, to call in only those doctors who are treating him”[124] the
doctors Levin and Pletnev. An ordinary working day when Kuibyshev was
at his office he felt ill and was very pale. Maximov understood that the
opportunity had come. He refrained from calling a doctor
and Kuibyshev had to walk all the way home and mount three flights of
stairs. As a consequence he died of a heart attack shortly after his arrival at
home. The polite bureau member Kuibyshev was among the most important
people behind the first and second five- year plans. Together with Molotov he
was one of the speakers at the 17th party congress of the
CPSU(b) in 1932 which summed up the first five year plan and made a proposal
for the second.
Bukharin-Rykov’s
treason trial, a summary
All the
accused in the treason trial of Bukharin-Rykov confessed their criminal acts in
front of the court and told how everything had been agreed upon and carried
out. There are thousands and thousands of facts revealed at the trial where the
21 accused were at total liberty to plead their cases and even deny their
guilt. It happened that new data were presented about the course of events and
that one or other of the accused felt he had been misled by the main
personalities of the conspiracy and rose to declare this. During the speech for
the defence by Bukharin towards the end of the trial one or other by the
accused felt he had been misled by the leaders of the conspiracy and rose to
declare this. During the Bukharin’s speech of defence, towards the end
of the trial, when Bukharin denied that he “was one of the major
organisers of espionage, on a par with Rykov”. Bukharin was interrupted and
accused by Sharangovich with the words, “Stop lying, for once in your life at
least. You are lying even now in Court.”[125]
An
exemplary prosecutor
The
prosecutor Vyshinsky, the top state prosecutor of the Soviet Union, has
been subjected a defamation campaign by the bourgeois press, which knows of no
restraint when it comes to mendacious allegations. All the falsifiers of
history from the police agent Conquest to their Swedish similarities, have told
lots of fantasies about Vyshinsky’s role and behaviour during the trial. But
reality was something completely different. It is easy find this out when
reading the minutes of the court. The prosecutor Vyshinsky presented strong
evidence, which hardly left any other possibility for the accused than to tell
the truth. This is what makes the falsifiers of history completely mad. He had
a thorough knowledge of the case and did not leave anything out. He made it
impossible for the accused to refrain from tell what they had been involved in
and to reveal all the details. During the whole trial the prosecutor Vyshinsky
kept a correct attitude towards the accused. Vyshinsky carried out his task as
a prosecutor in an exemplary way and drew the right conclusions from the
accounts of the accused. He concluded his plea with the famous statement, which
has been falsified so often by the bourgeois press: “Our whole country, from
young to old, is awaiting and demanding one thing: the traitors and spies who
were selling our country to the enemy must be shot like dirty dogs!”[126]
The court
condemned 18 of the accused to the hardest punishment of the law – execution
and confiscation of all personal belongings (Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda,
Krestinsky, Rosengoltz, Ivanov, Chernov, Grinko, Zelensky, Ikramov, Khodjayev,
Maximov-Dikovsky and Kryuchkov). The three remaining were sentenced to prison
and the loss of their rights as citizens during five years after the expiry of
the imprisonment as well as the confiscation of all their personal properties.
(Pletnev 25 years, Rakovsky 20 years and Bessonov 15 years).
Russian
quislings are the heroes of the capitalists
After
having read the minutes of the trial it is easy to understand that this was the
only correct end of this trial against traitors, spies and murderers. Some
authors oppose the death penalty, against the fact that 18 were condemned to
death. Today the death penalty is obsolete in human society. But over 60 years
ago, the death penalty was the usual punishment applied to high treason in the
whole world. But the death penalty in this context is not the true question
raised by the history falsifiers but only an excuse to get present day people
to condemn the trials of the 1930-ies. The question raised in reality by the
critics against the Soviet Union is that the trial was a farce, that
the aim of the trial was to kill off the opposition against the government, an
opposition which, according to the critics, was a group of thinkers,
philosophers, poets, world reformers etc.
That is how
the Swedish writers Ahlmark, Skotte and Englund write in their books and
magazines. But the heroes of these history falsifiers are a group of criminals
of the worst kind who entered an alliance with Nazi Germany and the Fascist
Japan to get at state power in Soviet Union. They are Nazi and Fascist
allies whom Ahlmark, Skotte and Englund have made their heroes and want to put
as examples to the children at the Swedish schools. They are murderers who
killed Maxim Gorky and Kirov, people of the same calibre as those who killed
Olof Palme. They are people who sabotaged the provision of paper to the country
to stop the cultural-revolution and make it impossible to provide writing books
to the school children of the countries. They are saboteurs who blew up
factories, mines and trains and without hesitation murdered thousands of
workers, such as put nails and glass in the butter which lacerated the throat
and stomach of people, such as spread cattle pest killing horses and cattle in
their tens of thousands. They are the Russian Quislings and Nazi collaborators
who are the idols of the Capitalist mass media and the heroes of the Swedish
right.
The
Swedish Moscow embassy about the Bukharin-Rykov process
The
benevolent and admiring attitude of today’s bourgeois towards the condemned
in Moscow in March 1938 has nothing in common with the reports by the
Swedish Moscow embassy to the Swedish Department of foreign affairs at that
time. And then we should not forget that the Swedish Department of foreign
affairs and the embassies have always been populated by rightists, people from
the upper crust of the Swedish bourgeoisie. People from the embassy informed
the Swedish Department of foreign affairs by mail that those found guilty were
indeed involved in a conspiracy to topple the Soviet government and take over
state power.
“Légation
de Suede
What has
been shown by the latest Trotsky process.
Moscow 30th March
1938
Confidential
To His
Excellency the Minister for foreign affairs
To which
extent the accused in the recently finished process against the “right and
Trotsky bloc” have been guilty to that of what they have been accused has never
been fully investigated. If truth has difficulties in being heard in the world
then that applies especially to Russia, where objectivity has always been
a rare bird and in case it appeared at all, it has been trampled under the
feet. During the factual discussion still going on in the foreign circles
present here, it seems an opinion has crystallised in a certain direction.
After having taken part of the accusations against the twenty one revolutionary
veterans many have had to admit that the accusations, in spite of
improbabilities and material inconsistencies in a number of aspects, still
contain a significant kernel of truth to the extent that those now condemned
are determined to eliminate the click in charge and that those now condemned
are spirited by a strong will to eliminate the click in power at the first
occasion, and that they have taken preliminary steps to realise their aims.”[127]
Also, of
the general atmosphere in the Soviet society after the Moscow trials,
which was described and is described as chaos with millions people purged and
sentenced to dead, the Embassy has given a different picture.
“Legation
de Suède
About the
terrorist purge.
Moscow 14
July 1938
Confidential
His
Excellency
Mr Sandler,
Minister for Foreign Affairs.
There may
be a relationship with the high Summer temperature that sensational stories
from the Soviet Union addressing terrorism, of course, at this time
starting to spread in the foreign press. Doubtless there is now, as there has
always been during the last twenty years, more than enough for exceptional
stories from this country, but it is certain that these stories would get
another appearance if they were rendered realistically rather than ornamented
by an alien, tendentious imagination. As for the reports by the foreign press
from here, one must say that to a little, genuine kernel, a strong dose of
journalist sensation is given, and the main ingredients are probably in most
cases misunderstandings and an active imagination, coupled with a strong
political tendency from those who are biased against the Soviet land.”[128]
Having gone
through some “clarifying examples” and told of “unsuitable” persons and persons
with “a mediocre capacity” or such who “are not up to the mark” or the corrupt
people’s commissary who ”has been transferred from the commissariat to jail”
the ambassador continues to the cause of the purges. According to the raporteur
the opponents of the regime are given leave (“in reality relatively few in
number”), but to a greater extent they are thrown out those who have
distinguished themselves for abuse of power, disorder and incompetence and
shown themselves to be substandard and damaging. The Soviet government aspired
to a rejuvenation of the administration with people from the working classes
which was in fact done and the Swedish embassy report confirms that “what is
happening here in reality cannot and should not be regarded as signs of
dissolution and degeneration but on the contrary signs of a Socialist
consolidation”. We may add, that this was very important. The war was already
coming with the invasion of Austria and soon the Nazis were to invade
the Soviet Union. In this situation the government had to be able to rely
on the civilian, military and economic administrations. The ambassador’s report
continues,
“But the
important aspect of the, if one may say so, epidemic terror in the Soviet
country, lies, as we have had reason to remind repeatedly, not in these single
falls from high positions, which for an exterior observer naturally may offer a
more shattering spectacle but in reality relatively few in number and
representative mainly for the smallest group in society which is concerned by
the terror. The importance lies in the ever since 1935 with varying force
on-going mass purges through all branches of the administration, civilian,
military, economic etc. and all strata of society. This procedure of purge
which has not precedent is meant to eliminate the opponents of the present
government, to which group belong the people in the highest positions and for
that reason have had the deepest fall, and to purge as far as possible who
either through corruption and abuse of power or incompetence have shown
themselves to be substandard and damaging. This violent procedure is driven by
a conscious effort to on the one hand social renovation and on the other a
rejuvenation of the whole administration, an effort to introduce personnel
taken from those social groups which have essentially carried the revolution
and nowadays have reasonable demands on enjoying the fruits of the new order.
This means first and foremost the endeavour to select the ones, so to say, who
have been brought up and educated in unmixed Soviet circumstances, the young
age groups from the ranks of workers and peasants, who nowadays through the
numerous high schools of different kinds, howsoever they may be otherwise, are
thrown out into life and demand a place in the sun and the right to act … This
should, in my opinion, be of importance even for practical reasons to note and
even to remember, since this shows that what is happening here at present in
reality cannot and should not be considered signs of dissolution and
degeneration but on the contrary should be considered a socio-political
consolidation, albeit from our points of view highly strange. And they are
strange for the natural reason that the conditions prevailing in this country
–historical, ethnographic, geographic etc.— are certainly strange.”[129]
Ambassador
Joseph Davies about the Bukharin-Rykov process
A person
who was present in the court-room all days during the trial was
the US ambassador at the time Joseph Davies. On behalf of his
government he had to acquire a thorough knowledge of the whole process and
report on about the circumstances around the accused and the credibility of the
trial. We cite Joseph Davies from his book Mission to Moscow. The
first quotation is from Davie’s letter of 8th March 1938
to his daughter Emlen who was then in the USA but who had earlier
lived with her family in Moscow.
“Bukharin
treason trial
Mach 8,
1938
Dear
“Bijou”:
For the
last week, I have been attending daily sessions of the Bukharin treason trial.
No doubt you have been following it in the press. It is terrific. I found it of
much intellectual interest, because it brings back into play all the old
faculties involved in assessing the credibility of witnesses and sifting the
wheat from the chaff-the truth from the false-which I was called upon to use
for so many years in the trial of cases, myself.
All the
fundamental weaknesses and vices of human nature-personal ambitions at their
worst-are shown up in the proceedings. They disclose the outlines of a plot
which come very near to being successful in bringing about the overthrow of
this government.
This
testimony now makes clear what we could not understand and what happened last
spring and summer. You will recall that the folks at the chancery were telling
us of extraordinary activity around the Kremlin, when the gates were closed to
public; that there were indications of much agitation and a changing of the
character of the soldiers on guard. The new guards, you will remember we were
told, consisted almost entirely of soldiers recruited from Georgia,
Stalin’s native land.
The
extraordinary testimony of Krestinsky, Bukharin, and the rest would appear to
indicate that the Kremlin’s fears were well justified. For it now seems that a
plot existed in the beginning of November, 1936, to project a coup d’état, with
Tukhachevsky at its head, for May of the following year. Apparently it was
touch and go at that time whether it actually would be staged.
But the
government acted with great vigor and speed. The Red Army generals were shot
and the whole party organisation was purged and thoroughly cleansed. Then it
came out that quite a few of those at the top were seriously infected with the
virus of the conspiracy to overthrow the government, and actually working with
the Secret Service organisations of Germany and Japan.
The
situation explains the present official attitude of hostility toward
foreigners, the closing of various foreign consulates in the country, and the
like. Quite frankly, we can’t blame the powers-that-be much for reacting in
this way if they believed what is now being divulged at the trial.
Again, it
should be remembered that it cannot be conclusively assumed because these facts
were adduced through statements of confessed criminals that they were therefore
untrue.
I must stop
now as the trial reconvenes at 11 A.M. and I’ll have to run.”[130]
Letter
to the US secretary of state for foreign affairs
This is how
a senior lawyer from the West writes about the Bukharin trial. Let us now quote
ambassador Davies’ confidential dispatch no. 1039 of 17th March
1938 to his superior the US secretary or state for foreign affairs.
“So-called
Bukharin mass treason trial
No. 1039
Moscow,
March 17, 1938
To the
honorable the secretary of state
Confidential
“Notwithstanding
a prejudice arising from the confession evidence and a prejudice against a
judicial system which affords practically no protection for the accused, after
daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious
corroborations which developed, and other facts in the course of trial,
together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my
opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes
under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by
the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty of
treason and the adjudication of the punishment provided by Soviet criminal
statutes. The opinion of those diplomats who attended the trial most regularly
was general that the case had established the fact that there was a formidable
political opposition and an exceedingly serious plot, which explained to the
diplomats many of the hitherto unexplained developments of the last six months
in the Soviet Union. The only difference of opinion that seemed to exist
was the degree to which the plot had been implemented by different defendants
and the degree to which the conspiracy had become centralised.”[131]
The
Nazis occupy Europe
Ambassador
Joseph Davies understood the size of the crimes of the accused, the
consequences of which could have been awfully dramatic. The Nazis were in fact
marching in Europe and in the midst of the judicial proceedings 11th March
1938 Nazi Germany occupied Austria. Soon Czechoslovakia would
follow, then Poland and then the whole of Europe. And in
the Soviet Union which Nazi Germany had promised to the capitalist
world to crush, the very principal aim of the Nazis, there was a group of
highly positioned politicians who collaborated with the Nazis in order to kill
the government in power and to partition the country and divide it between
themselves and Nazi Germany!
The
government of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s correct actions stopped a
looming catastrophe for the Socialist Soviet Union and for the Slavish people.
Hitler’s threat to annihilate the Slavish people was no mere boasting. Consider
that during more than three years war and the occupation of Ukraine,
Byelorussian and other areas of Western Soviet Union the Nazi armies
killed more than 25 million people. The purging of the traitors was a question
of life and death for the Soviet Union and decisive for the victory
of the country in World war II.
The
projection of it was decisive for the extermination of Nazism and the
possibility of the world to enjoy the liberty and democracy we have today. Had
the Nazis conquered The Soviet Union, they could have taken the whole world.
But not only we Communists realise this and declare it openly. Honest bourgeois
too, in this case, put themselves on the same side of the barricades as we
ourselves.
The
treason trials crushed Hitler’s fifth columnists in Russia
Let us once
more render a quotation from ambassador Joseph Davie’s book Mission to Moscow. He
treats the activities of the fifth columnists in Soviet Union. The fifth columnists
is the name given to traitors serving an exterior enemy. The term emanates from
the attacks of the Fascists against Madrid during the Spanish civil
war. The Fascists advanced in four columns and proclaimed that they had a fifth
one, which would attack the defenders in their back. Let us hear what
ambassador Davies had to say about the “fifth columnists” in the Soviet
Union. Note that this chapter of Mission to Moscow was written
during the Summer of 1941 but is inserted in the book right after the
confidential despatch to the US state secretary for defence 17th March
1938.
Ambassador
Joseph Davies:
“Fifth
Columnists in Russia.
A study
in hindsight – 1941
Note:
Although this was written after the German invasion of Russia in the
summer 1941 it is inserted here because this seems the logical place to
illustrate how the treason trials destroyed Hitler’s Fifth Column in
Russia.-J.E.D.
Passing
through Chicago, on my way home from the June commencement of my old
University, I was asked to talk to the University Club and
combined Wisconsin societies. It was just three days after Hitler had
invaded Russia. Someone in the audience asked: “What about Fifth
Columnists in Russia?” Off the anvil, I said: “There aren’t any-they shot them.”
On the
train that day, that thought lingered in my mind. It was rather extraordinary,
when one stopped to think of it, that in this last Nazi invasion, not a word
had appeared of “inside work” back of the Russian lines. There was no so-called
“internal aggression” in Russia co-operating with the German High
Command. Hitler’s march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the
active military support of Henlein’s organisations in Czechoslovakia. The
same was true of his invasion of Norway. There were no Sudeten Henleins,
no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Soviet
picture.
Thinking
over the things, there came a flash in my mind of a possible new significance
to some of the things that happened in Russian when I was there. Upon my
arrival in Washington, I hastened to reread my old diary entries and, with
the permission of the State Department, went through some of my official
reports.
None of us
in Russia in 1937 and 1938 were thinking in terms of “Fifth Column”
activities. The phrase was not current. It is comparatively recent that we have
found in our language phrases descriptive of Nazi technique such as “Fifth
Column” and “internal aggression”.
Generally
speaking, the well informed suspected such methods might be employed by Hitler;
but it was one of those things which many thought just couldn’t really happen.
It is only within the last two years, through the Dies Committee and the
F.B.I., that there have been uncovered the activities of German organisations
in this country and in South America, and that we have seen the actual work of
German agents operating with traitors in Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Austria,
who betrayed their country from within in co-operation with a planned Hitler
attack.
These
activities and methods, apparently, existed in Russia, as a part of the
German plan against the Soviets, as long ago as 1935.
It was in
1936 that Hitler made his now famous Nuremberg speech, in which he
clearly indicated his designs upon the Ukraine.
The Soviet
government, it now appears, was even then acutely aware of the plans of the
German high military and political commands and of the “inside work” being done
in Russia, preparatory to German attack upon Russia.
As I
ruminated over this situation, I suddenly saw the picture as I should have seen
it at the time. The story had been told in the so-called treason or purge
trials of 1937 and 1938 which I had attended and listened to. In re-examining
the record of these cases and also what I had written at the time from this new
angle, I found that practically every device of German Fifth Columnist
activity, as we now know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and
testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed “Quislings”
in Russia.
It was
clear that the Soviet government believed that these activities existed, was
thoroughly alarmed, and had proceeded to crush them vigorously. By 1941, when
the German invasion came, they had wiped out any Fifth Column which had been
organised.
Another
fact which was difficult to understand at the time, but which takes on a new
significance in view of developments, was the manner in which the Soviet
government was “bearing down” on consular agencies
of Germany and Italy in 1937 and 1938. It was done in a
very highhanded manner. There was a callous and almost brutal disregard of the
sensibilities of the countries involved. The reason assigned by the Soviet
government was that these consulates were engaged upon internal, political, and
subversive activities; and that because of these facts they had to be closed
up. The announcements of the trials and executions (purges), all over Russia
that year, invariably charged the defendants with being guilty of treasonable
and subversive activity in aiding “a foreign power” to overthrow the Soviet
state.”
Ambassador
Joseph Davies then goes on with his account by going through some court cases
in the treason trials and finishes the chapter with the words:
“The
testimony in these cases involve and incriminated General Tukhachevsky and many
high leaders in the army and in the navy. Shortly after the Radek trial these
men were arrested. Under the leadership of Tukhachevsky these men were charged
with having entered into an agreement to co-operate with the German High
Command in an attack upon the Soviet state. Numerous subversive activities
conducted in the army were disclosed by the testimony. Many of the highest
officers in the army, according to the testimony, had either been corrupted or
otherwise induced to enter into this conspiracy. According to the testimony, complete
co-operation had been established in each branch of the service, the political
revolutionary group, the military group, and the High Commands of Germany
and Japan.
Such was
the story, as it was brought out in these trials, as to what had actually occurred.
There can be no doubt but what the Kremlin authorities were greatly alarmed by
these disclosures and the confessions of these defendants. The speed with which
the government acted and the thoroughness with which they proceeded indicated
that they believed them to be true. They proceeded to clean house and acted
with the greatest of energy and precision. Voroshilov, Commander in Chief of
the Red Army, said:
It is
easier for a burglar to break into the house if he has an accomplice to let him
in. We have taken care of the accomplices.
General
Tukhachevsky did not go to the coronation in London as he had
planned. He was reported to have been sent down to command the army of the
Volga district; but it was understood at the time that he had been removed from
the train and arrested before he arrived at his command. Within a few weeks
thereafter, on June 11, he, along with eleven other officers of the High
Command, were shot pursuant to judgement, after a trial by military
court-martial, the proceedings of which were not made public. All of these
trials, purges and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and
shocked the world, are now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined
effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from
within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clean up
and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were
resolved in favour of the government.
There were
no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941 – they had shot them. The purge
had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.”[132]
Ambassador
Davie’s account is more important today than ever. It poses the question about
the purges in the correct light. But it raises other questions too, which are
never treated by bourgeois historical writers. An important question in this
context is how it was at all possible for the Nazis to vanquish the great
military power France, which had additionally got an English army to help
it! The treachery of the French upper class against its country and other
issues from the period between the two World Wars are questions which beg an
explanation.
The
traitors and the threat against the Soviet Union
Those who
browse through ordinary daily newspapers from the 1930-ies can easily see how
the threat against the Soviet Union grew from one day to the other.
The threat came from Nazi Germany but from the other capitalist countries in
the West too, among others from France and Great Britain. It
went on like that during the entire 1930-ies. When the Nazis
invaded Poland in September 1939 France and Great
Britain declared war against Germany but did not undertake any
acts of war nor tried to save Poland. It was the so called “fanny war”.
The real war between France/Great Britain and Nazi Germany did not start until
nine months later with the invasion by the Nazis of France in June 1940. But
during the period September 1939 – June 1940, France and Great
Britain were not passive.
The
anti-Soviet policies dominated in these countries. In France an
Ukrainian legion was created with defectors from the Soviet Union and
national combat units of Caucasians in the army of the French general Weygand.
When Finland started the war against the Soviet Union in December
1939 France and Great Britain took position
on Finland’s side. Great Britain sent 144 war planes, 114 heavy guns
and hundreds of thousands of grenades and air bombs. France sent 179
war planes, 472 guns, 5,100 machine guns and approx. one million
grenades of different kind. Simultaneously these countries made up plans to
send in an army of 150,000 men to fight on the Finnish side against
the Soviet Union. The governments of France and Great
Britain wanted to show Nazi Germany where they belonged. The massive
threat against the Soviet Union was evident during all of the
1930-ies. Everywhere in capitalist Europe the governments prepared the public
opinion for a war against the Soviet Union. There, this threat was
perceived as real.
The soviet
leadership had to realise that the country would perish unless they managed in
uniting everybody in the work for a quick development of the society and the
enormous necessary defence preparations which absorbed a large part of the
social production. In this strained social clime the soviet government
discovered that the countries threatening the Soviet Union had their
own mercenaries inside the countries, connections reaching high up in the state
and the party. In this very strained situation where everybody had to work very
hard for the survival of the Soviet Union, there were others who helped
the enemy with information and sabotaged the production and the defence.
The Soviet
government was hard on the traitors and the circles all over the Soviet
Union where these traitors moved or had connections. Many were condemned
to prison or to death. “All doubts were resolved in favour of the government”
Davies says. It is unfortunate if innocent people were affected. But in the
prevailing situation there was nothing better to do. The Nazi invasion and the
war of extermination against the Soviet Union was fast approaching.
For the administration and state apparatus it would be suicide to retain people
who were prepared to collaborate with the Nazi invaders and who were inimical
against the Socialist State. With their powerful actions the Soviet
government succeeded in saving the country –and the world— from the Nazi barbary
and to eradicate Nazism. How would history have judged the Soviet government if
the Soviet Union had perished and the Nazis taken over the whole
world?
Some
conclusions
Let us
return to the beginning of this brochure to Merle Fainsod’s book Smolensk under
Soviet rule from 1958. With facts in our hand we can establish that
Fainsod’s book is gravely misleading, as a matter of fact a falsification of
the historical events. It is even worse that this book has shaped generations
of intellectuals and opened up for a cheap police agent like Robert Conquest to
appear as an authority on the subject of the Soviet Union. Arch Getty’s Origins
of the Great Purges clearly shows that the wave of purges allegedly
planned according to Fainsod to grow ever bigger just did not exist. Fainsod’s
allegation that the Central Committee had started a wave of terror when the
party cards were changed in 1936 have not the least basis in reality either.
The trials at court which according to Fainsod were a farce to exterminate all
opposition against Stalin turn out to be judicial processes against traitors
who had entered a collaboration with Nazi Germany.
In fact the
political movement in the Soviet Union during the 1930-ies was a
radical questioning of the bureaucracy power in the party and society. Not
everything was good or impeccable, but the struggle was necessary for
the Soviet Union to develop the Socialist production and survive the
Nazi invasion. Let us quote the concluding words in professor Arch
Getty’s Origins of the Great Purges.
“The
evidence suggests that the Ezhovshchina (the time under Ezhov, MS) –
which is what most people really mean by the “Great Purges” – should be
redefined. It was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy’s stamping out
dissent and annihilating old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been
just the opposite. It is not inconsistent with the evidence to argue that the
Ezhovshchina was rather a radical, even hysterical, reaction to
bureaucracy. The entrenched officeholders were destroyed from above and below
in a chaotic wave of voluntarism and revolutionary puritanism.”[133]
Conclusion
Ambassador
Joseph Davies has few similar in the neo liberal society of today. A magnifying
glass the size of a telescope is needed for to find an honest bourgeois
intellectual today. Bourgeois mass media are dominated by clowns like Conquest,
Skotte, Ahlmark, Englund and other greedy and unscrupulous “authors” filling
the universities, the political editorial offices of the newspapers and not
least the so called trusts meant to investigate the crimes of Communism. The
bourgeois intellectuals of today remind us more than anything of spiritual dwarfs
who, wielding their plastic cards, willingly listen to their master’s voice.
The honest intellectuals who exist, in spite of all, seldom dare to lift their
heads, they are almost always on the defensive and have difficulties in
pointing out the impostors and call them history falsifiers as they are. Some
more audacity and civil courage could give the public another understanding of
the debate and lift it to a decent level. Moreover the passive submission of
the intellectuals to the “market powers” constitutes yet another yoke on the
workers. In order to liberate the workers from exploitation and the blunting of
their intellect the conceited fools of the bourgeoisie must be fought.
Knowledge of history is important to understand our present and to break the
lies of the bourgeoisie! In the society of today only we Communists, with few
exceptions, want to give back the knowledge of history to the working people.
We shall not fail this duty.
Mário
Sousa, 2001
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