The Great Terror

    ‘The Consular Department of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs hereby informs the Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. that according to information received by the Embassy of the U.S.S.R. in Norway the Kjeller Airdrome near Oslo receives all the year round, in accordance with international regulations, airplanes of other countries, and that the arrival and departure of airplanes is possible also in winter months.’

(

To Pyatakov):

It was in December?

Pyatakov:

Exactly.

⁸¹

Thus another agency of the Soviet Government “certified” not the fact, but merely the technical possibility, of Pyatakov’s flight. It might well be thought that this debacle alone would have discredited the whole trial in foreign eyes. Anyone who may have hoped so soon found that Stalin’s ideas about political gullibility were even better based than had first appeared.

Radek, who had been partly responsible for the script of the trial, made a brilliant showing over the morning of 24 January. While the other accused spoke flatly and drearily, he put real feeling into his evidence. He developed the post-1927 history of Trotskyism, and the complex links between those now accused and the Zinoviev group. He then listed a number of fresh terrorist bands, implicated Bukharin, spoke of the “Bonapartist” regime Trotsky intended, which would in fact be under fascist control, and added that Trotsky was already prepared to sacrifice the Ukraine and the Far East to the aggressors.

He aptly explained the belated Trotskyite call for Party democracy: “People begin to argue about democracy only when they disagree on questions of principle. When they agree they do feel the need for broad democracy, that goes without saying.”⁸²

In spite of his agreement to cooperate, he made several points against the indictment, in an oblique fashion. When he complained, “For nothing at all, just for the sake of Trotsky’s beautiful eyes—the country was to return to capitalism,”⁸³ he was in effect saying that the charge of a gratuitous wish to restore capitalism for no other motive than to put Trotsky in power was an extraordinary idea, especially as regards “such men as Yakov Livshits or Serebryakov, with decades of revolutionary work behind them,”⁸⁴ whose “moral fibre” must now be “utterly broken” if they “could descend to wrecking” and “act on the instructions of the class enemy.”

On the whole, Radek was a most cooperative and convincing defendant. Even so, when he had completed the main body of his evidence, Vyshinsky started to bully him, eliciting several sharp retorts, such as “You are a profound reader of human hearts, but I must nevertheless comment on my thoughts in my own words.”⁸⁵ Or again:

Vyshinsky:

You accepted this? And you held this conversation?

Radek:

You have learned it from me, that means that I did hold it.

⁸⁶

Finally, Vyshinsky reminded him that he not only had failed to report the conspiracy, but also had refused to confess for three months, and said, “Does not that cast doubt on what you said about your vacillations and misgivings?”

Radek became irritated and snapped out the weak point in the whole case: “Yes, if you ignore the fact that you learned about the programme and about Trotsky’s instructions only from me, of course, it does cast doubt on what I have said.”⁸⁷

In the course of Radek’s evidence, he had been made to remark that in 1935 “Vitaly [sic] Putna came to see me with some request from Tukhachevsky.”⁸⁸

Thus Corps Commander Putna was once again implicated. More striking still was the mention of Tukhachevsky’s name, even in an innocent context. Moscow was shaken by what appeared to be, conceivably, the first hint of trouble for the Marshal.

During the evening session, Radek was recalled and exculpated Tukhachevsky in a long exchange with Vyshinsky (see here). The threat had nevertheless been made, and understood.

The same day, Sokolnikov was called. He had little to add, apart from identifying a few more terrorist groups. He had, it appeared, little direct connection with terror or sabotage, and unlike the case with Pyatakov, Vyshinsky did not put questions implying the opposite. His main contribution of substance was to make the point about the older generation of saboteurs:

Sokolnikov:

… It was pointed out that former wrecking organizations among the specialists should be found.

Vyshinsky:

Among the former wreckers of the period of the Industrial Party and the Shalchty Trial. Well then, what was your line?

Sokolnikov:

Trotsky’s line, which permitted the wrecking groups of the bloc to establish contact with these groups.

⁸⁹