The Great Terror

On 29 September 1936 (and again on 21 October 1936) circulars were issued from the Central Committee. They called in effect for the end of unfair expulsions from the Party and a stepping-up of fair ones. They were followed by press censures of a number of local leaders for failure in one or another of these respects. On 29 September, too, a secret directive (drafted by Kaganovich, accepted by the Politburo, and signed by Stalin) called for settling with the Trotskyite–Zinovievites, including not only those arrested whose interrogation was complete, and those like Muralov, Pyatakov, and Beloborodov, whose investigation had not yet ended, but also “those who were earlier exiled.”²⁶ That is to say, Ryutin and others who had never been Trotskyites or Zinovievites.

Yagoda handed over his office on 30 September 1936. On the same day, the announcement of M. D. Berman as Deputy Head of the NKVD was made, while Yagoda’s Second Deputy, G. E. Prokofiev, was transferred with him. On 17 October, a more sinister figure still, the puffy-faced M. P. Frinovsky, was also appointed a Deputy Head of the NKVD (and on 3 November, L. N. Bel’ski). Neither Berman nor Frinovsky nor Bel’ ski had been serving in the old Secret Police apparatus proper. Berman had headed the Labor Camp Administration, Gulag; Frinovsky commanded the Frontier Guards; while Bel’ski was Head of the Militia. Otherwise, the old NKVD chiefs were not yet disturbed. Even Yagoda’s personal assistant remained in the NKVD for some time. Molchanov and the other departmental chiefs kept their posts, though Yezhov brought in his own men from the Central Committee apparatus to help them in their work, and to learn how to supplant them.

A team of more than twenty-five interrogators headed by Agranov started to prepare the new trial.²⁷

The original script for this described Pyatakov and his fellow accused simply as a “Reserve Center” which had plotted but not acted. By this means, the case was represented as less serious than that of August, and one not implying the death penalty. It was no doubt partly by this means that Stalin had gained the leadership’s consent to go forward with the Pyatakov Case—which, it might be hoped, would be no more than a tidying-up of loose ends in a fairly restrained fashion.

But after the NKVD had proceeded on these lines for a few weeks, the line suddenly changed. Molchanov, in Yezhov’s presence, instructed a meeting of interrogators that “a new line of investigation” was to be pursued. The accused were to be required to confess that they had plotted to seize power and had worked with the Nazis for this purpose.²⁸

Stalin had not, since Radek’s recantation in the 1920s, had anything to complain about from him. He had betrayed Trotsky’s emissary, Blyumkin, who as a result was shot in 1929. In early September 1936, Radek wanted to remind the General Secretary of these services in exposing Trotskyites, but feared that if he himself wrote to Stalin, his message would be intercepted by the NKVD. So he had asked Bukharin to write to Stalin about it if he himself were arrested.²⁹ Radek was one man who had truly burned his bridges to the opposition; at the same time, he was nowhere regarded as a serious politician, and there was no question of his ever competing for even the lowest rung of power. What Stalin’s motive was in bringing Radek in particular into the plot at all is obscure. It may simply be that until he could secure the arrest of the Rightists, he was rather low on big names for another trial. And Radek was at least a very well-known man.

Sokolnikov seems to have had an interview with Stalin and to have been promised his life. It is not clear why Sokolnikov believed this promise. It was, in all probability, made before the execution of Zinoviev and his followers. But Sokolnikov seems to have been convinced of its efficacy even after the executions. But in any case, he had little choice. He had a young wife and a son by a previous marriage who was in his twenties.³⁰

Sokolnikov was brought to a “confrontation” with Radek immediately after the latter’s arrest.³¹ This did not lead to anything at once. Radek was worked on on the “conveyor” system by Kedrov and other interrogators.³² At first he resisted stubbornly.

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. He was regarded by the Trotskyites as a deserter. Trotsky’s son Sedov, chancing to meet him on the Unter den Linden, had publicly insulted him.³³ He had not liked, but he had honestly accepted, Stalin’s leadership. There was, in his case, no real question—as might have been thought of Zinoviev and Kamenev, and of Bukharin—of any desire to present an alternative leadership.