The Great Terror

Clearly, this expulsion was an action totally contrary to the whole spirit of the Purge and particularly to Central Committee decisions of 29 September and 21 October 1936, which may indeed have already been aimed at Postyshev. Everywhere, as the “Yezhovshchina” got going, it was precisely through the denunciation by such types that the police got their grip on the leaders of the Party organizations. It was later to be alleged that in Kiev, more than anywhere else in the Ukraine, Trotskyites had been able to gain important posts.⁴⁸ Postyshev’s attitude is thus plainly established as being against this system, even before the showdown. In November, Stalin, seeking a pretext, took over the Nikolayenko case.⁴⁹

The Central Committee apparatus in Moscow, that is to say, examined her appeal against expulsion in a favorable fashion. She was later found to have the execution of “some eight thousand people” on her conscience.⁵⁰

The New Constitution finally passed into law amid a fanfare of speeches, ovations, and a press campaign which culminated in a speech by Stalin on 27 November. He went at great length into the questions which had arisen about how best to guarantee democracy, freedom of the subject, and all the other attributes of a State fully attuned to the people’s will.

Meanwhile, the issue of Bukharin and Rykov again came to the fore. Even before Yagoda’s fall, the NKVD was sending Stalin the interrogation records of E. F. Kulikov and others, which implicated Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. On 7 October, Tomsky’s former secretary, Stankin (admitting to implication in a terrorist act planned against Stalin for November 6), gave testimony that Tomsky had told her of a “Right Counter-Revolutionary Center” consisting of “Tomsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Uglanov, [V. V.] Shmidt and Syrtsov.” The former director of the Lenin Library, V. I. Nevsky, gave testimony on 23 November that Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky were the leaders of the counter-revolutionary Rightist organization. (In January 1937, he was to withdraw this, and at his secret trial on 25 May 1937 he said that the NKVD had insisted on his signing it in the interests of the Party.)⁵¹

The Central Committee plenum met on 4 to 7 December. On 4 December, Yezhov reported on “the Trotskyite and Rightist anti-Soviet organizations” and said that Bukharin and Rykov had not “laid down their arms” but had gone underground. He produced the evidence of Kulikov and others, and Bukharin and Rykov were violently denounced by Kaganovich, Molotov, and Voroshilov. Although many seem to have remained silent, and Ordzhonikidze is reported as making remarks implying distrust of Yezhov,⁵²

many speakers demanded the expulsion of the two Rightists from the Central Committee and the Party (all the Central Committee—including Bukharin and Rykov themselves—had been receiving confidential copies of the testimony against the two men). They strongly denied the accusations. During intervals they were brought to confrontations with Kulikov and with Pyatakov and Sosnovsky. But Stalin again temporized, and the plenum accepted his proposal “to consider the question of Rykov and Bukharin as incomplete. Further investigation to be undertaken, a decision postponed until the next plenum.”⁵³

It was now that many of the accused in the Pyatakov Case were beginning to confess. This may show that a reluctant compromise had been reached among the leadership about the trial. At any rate, Ordzhonikidze already seems to have obtained from Stalin a promise to spare Pyatakov’s life. Comparable tactics, combined with the conveyor and the stoika

, helped with others.⁵⁴ On 4 December, Radek gave his first evidence. He had in the end decided to surrender if Stalin would give him the same guarantee he had given Sokolnikov. For some time Stalin refused to see him—but finally, it is said, he visited the Lubyanka and had a long talk with Radek in the presence of Yezhov. Radek then became the closest collaborator of the interrogation, and helped replan the scenario of the plot.⁵⁵ Muralov, who had held out so long, now gave in—reportedly under Radek’s influence—and on the following day he too was confessing. Norkin started confessing about the same time. By January, hundreds of pages of evidence from all the defendants were in the files.

On the anniversary of the founding of the Secret Police, 20 December 1936, Stalin gave a small banquet for the heads of the NKVD. Yezhov, Frinovsky, Pauker, and others were present. Afterward, an account of what happened circulated among the NKVD. When everyone had drunk a good deal, Pauker, supported by two other officers acting the parts of warders, played for Stalin the part of Zinoviev being dragged to execution. He hung by their arms, moaning and mouthing, then fell on his knees, and, holding one of the warders by the boots, cried out, “Please, for God’s sake, Comrade, call up Yosif Vissarionovich!”