The Great Terror

These were, he exclaimed, the sentiments with which every honest man had condemned the Zinovievites. And now the cry should be raised again. For “the conversion of the Trotskyite groups into groups of diversionists and murderers operating as the instruments of foreign secret services and of General Staffs of aggressors merely crowns the struggle Trotskyism has been waging against the working class and the Party, against Lenin and Leninism, for decades.”¹¹⁸

This was “not a political party. It is a gang of criminals, merely the agency of foreign intelligence services.”¹¹⁹ In fact, they were worse than the Whites; “they sank lower than the worst Denikinites or Kolchakites. The worst Denikinites or Kolchakites were superior to these traitors. The Denikinites, Kolchakites, Milyukovites, did not sink as low as these Trotskyite Judases….”¹²⁰

Rataichak was cited as a typical conspirator. Vyshinsky remarked, in a rather unbalanced fashion, “Whether he is a German or a Polish spy is not clear, but that he is a spy there cannot be any doubt; and as is appropriate to his profession, a liar, a swindler and a rascal.”¹²¹

Such analyses, which may be translated as defining anti-Stalinism as criminal Fascism, naturally fitted in with Stalin’s own predictions, now reinforced by Stalin’s own court:

… Comrade Stalin’s forecast has fully come true. Trotskyism has indeed become the central rallying point of all the forces hostile to socialism, the gang of mere bandits, spies and murderers who placed themselves entirely at the disposal of foreign secret services, became finally and irrevocably transformed into lackeys of capitalism, into restorers of capitalism in our country.¹²²

More interesting than the direct assaults in Vyshinsky’s speech were the preparations for further action. He said pointedly:

I would like to remind you of how, in the case of the united Trotskyite–Zinoviev centre, say, certain of the accused vowed, right here, in this very dock, during their last pleas, some begging, others not begging for clemency, that they had spoken the whole truth, that they had said everything, that in their hearts no opposition whatever remained against the working class, against our people, against our country. And later, when the revolting skein of monstrous crimes committed by these people became more and more unravelled, we found that at every step these people had lied and deceived when they already had one foot in the grave.

… I think that all these circumstances enable me to say that if there is any shortcoming in the present trial, it is not that the accused have said what they have done, but that, after all, the accused have not really told us all they have done, all the crimes they have committed against the Soviet State.¹²³

The further charges to be made against Bukharin the following year were implicit in a particularly sinister passage:

Vyshinsky:

… It was Pyatakov and Co. who in 1918, in a period of extreme danger for the land of Soviets, carried on negotiations with the Socialist-Revolutionaries with a view to bringing about a counter-revolutionary

coup d’état

and arresting Lenin so that Pyatakov might occupy the post of head of government, of chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars. It was through the arrest of Lenin, through a

coup d’état

, that these political adventurers wanted to lay for themselves the road to power.

¹²⁴

Finally, he quoted Sokolnikov, on the essential unity of all the oppositions, based on the Ryutin program:

As for the lines of the programme, as far back as 1932 the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites and the Rights all agreed in the main on a programme which was characterized as the programme of the Rights. This was the so-called Ryutin platform; to a large extent, as far back as 1932 it expressed the programme policy common to all three groups.¹²⁵

Further personnel for new trials had already been adumbrated. In addition to Bukharin and Rykov, Rakovsky was implicated (by Drobnis).¹²⁶ Mdivani in Georgia was now incriminated by name.¹²⁷

The present case had, Vyshinsky pointed out, been proved with a rigor not demanded in bourgeois courts:

With the assistance of the experts, we verified the evidence of the accused, and although we know that according to the laws of certain European countries the confession of an accused person is regarded as sufficient proof of guilt and the court does not consider itself obliged to call corroborating evidence, we, however, in order to observe strict impartiality, notwithstanding the confessions of the criminals themselves, verified their statements once again from the technical side and obtained a categorical reply concerning the explosion of 11 November, the fires in the Prokopyevsk mine, and the fires and explosions at the Kemerovo plant. Malicious intent was established without any possibility of doubt.¹²⁸