The Great Terror

But when I read about Olberg and asked others whether they had known of the existence of Olberg, and none of them had heard about him, it became clear to me that in addition to the cadres who had passed through his school, Trotsky was organizing agents who had passed through the school of German Fascism.¹³⁵

And finally he repeated the fact that it was only on his word, and Pyatakov’s, that the entire case was erected:

What proofs are there in support of this fact? In support of this fact there is the evidence of two people—the testimony of myself, who received the directives and the letters from Trotsky (which, unfortunately, I burned), and the testimony of Pyatakov, who spoke to Trotsky. All the testimony of the other accused rests on our testimony. If you are dealing with mere criminals and spies, on what can you base your conviction that what we have said is the truth, the firm truth?¹³⁶

The others took the more usual line. Drobnis, Muralov, and Boguslavsky referred to their splendid records and proletarian origins. Sokolnikov spoke at length, and Serebryakov very briefly. All the politicals, though to very different degrees, attacked Trotsky in person. Arnold pleaded “weak, low political development,” as well he might.

At 3:00 A.M. on 30 January, the verdict was pronounced. Death to all except Sokolnikov and Radek (as not “directly participating in the organization and execution” of the various crimes) and Arnold, who got ten years each, and Stroilov, who got eight. A story circulating in NKVD circles has it that Stalin was asked for Radek’s life to be spared by Lion Feuchtwanger, as the price for his agreeing to write his book (Moscow 1937)

justifying the trials, which Stalin was particularly anxious to have written to counter the effect of André Gide’s Retour de L’URSS.¹³⁷ The sentence on Arnold, supposed actually to have carried out a terrorist act, contrasts extraordinarily with those of the previous failed assassins like Fritz David. It has been suggested that Stalin had been so entertained by his evidence that, when he drafted the sentences he indulged the caprice of showing special clemency.

When Radek heard the verdict, his face showed relief. He turned to his fellow accused with a shrug and a guilty smile, as though unable to explain his luck.fn6¹³⁸ He is said to have been later retried on a charge of suppressing evidence against Tukhachevsky and sentenced to death but reprieved. A recent official account has him “killed in jail, 19 May 1939.” There have long been reports that he was murdered by a criminal prisoner, acting on orders,

¹³⁹ and it is now confirmed that both he and Sokolnikov were “killed in prison by cell mates in May 1939.” Stroilov and Arnold were shot in 1941.¹⁴⁰

The relations of several prisoners are identified in camps or jail. Radek’s daughter got eight years.¹⁴¹

Drobnis’s wife was seen in 1936 in the Krasnoyarsk isolator. She had become almost completely deaf as the result of treatment in the Lubyanka.¹⁴² Muralov’s brother was shot; his sixteen-year-old son was sentenced to labor camp, and died of dystrophy in Dalstroy in 1943; and a number of other relatives, including his niece Yelka, were also imprisoned.¹⁴³ Galina Serebryakova, who spent nearly twenty years in Siberia from this time, had been married to two leading victims, Serebryakov and Sokolnikov. Through all this, she retained her Party-mindedness, and after her rehabilitation spoke up warmly at writers’ meetings in 1962 and 1963 against the liberalizing trends. During the early months of 1963, when heavy pressure was being put on the “liberal” writers, Khrushchev was able to point to her as an example, comparing her with Ilya Ehrenburg, who during Stalin’s lifetime had praised him warmly and lived comfortably, but was now departing from Party principles.¹⁴⁴

There had been a progressive increase in the incredibility of the trials. At first (1936) the Party was only asked to accept the idea that Zinoviev and Kamenev, together with some genuine Trotskyites, had plotted to murder the leadership and had in fact been responsible for Kirov’s death. Although the execution of Zinoviev and the rest aroused a great revulsion, there were other factors. First of all, though it seems unlikely that many members of the Central Committee could have believed the charges literally, or taken the confessions at face value (and there were certainly rumors circulating about the true role of the NKVD in the Kirov killing), still the Zinoviev opposition had really fought Stalin by all the means at its disposal, in a political fight in which almost all the present Committee had been on Stalin’s side. They had compromised themselves by lying their way back into the Party, as was quite evident. And it was at least possible that the assassination of Kirov was “objectively” Zinoviev’s responsibility.