The Great Terror

Bukharin had already begun to think of suicide, and several times toyed with a revolver long ago presented to him, with ammunition, by Voroshilov. Another of Bukharin’s revolvers (as his wife was told in 1939 by Yezhov’s secretary Ryzhova, her cell mate in the Lubyanka) had been fixed so that it could not fire, presumably by the NKVD, which would perhaps have taken the same precaution with this one.

Bukharin now went on a hunger strike.

Just before the plenum opened, on 23 February, a new agenda was circulated:

The question of the anti-Party action of Bukharin in connection with his declaring a hunger strike to the Plenum

The question of N. Bukharin and A. Rykov

Organizational questions¹⁸⁶

Livshits’s last words, as he was being led to execution, had been a cry of “What for?” Or so a story went that now circulated in the upper levels of the Party. Army Commander Yakir, a full member of the Central Committee, commented privately when he heard it that the question was a good one, as the men were quite clearly innocent.¹⁸⁷ This appears to have been the mood among some members of the Central Committee as the “February–March plenum” opened.

The atmosphere was extremely tense. Stalin, though, was determined finally to overcome the hesitations and qualms which had for so long held him up and forced him to mark time. The struggle at the plenum is another of the cases in which long-standing rumor was, after decades of official silence, more or less confirmed by Khrushchev in 1956 and 1961.

The session was, of course, “managed” by Stalin’s men; the official rapporteurs were Yezhov, Zhdanov, Molotov, and Stalin himself. Formally speaking, they dealt with different subjects—Yezhov with police affairs, Zhdanov with Party organization, Molotov with the economic side, while Stalin made the political report. But in practice, all the reports centered on the Purge theme, from Yezhov’s “Lessons Emerging from the Harmful Activity, Diversion and Espionage of the Japanese-German-Trotskyite Agents,”¹⁸⁸ through Zhdanov’s condemnation of wrongful methods of expelling Party members and Molotov’s “report on wrecking and sabotage,”¹⁸⁹ to Stalin’s “Deficiencies of Party Work and Methods for the Liquidation of the Trotskyites and other Two-faced People.”

In fact there was, in reality, only one item on the agenda—the fate of Bukharin and Rykov.

Even now, one or two old colleagues, perhaps still hoping for successful resistance at the plenum, had the courage to show their feelings. Akulov said to Bukharin, “Play the man, Nikolai Ivanovich”; Uborevich pressed his hand.¹⁹⁰

When Bukharin saw Stalin, Stalin told him to apologize to the plenum for his hunger strike and assured him that he would not be expelled. Bukharin then started proceedings by making the appropriate apology, and was then once again violently attacked by Yezhov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and later Kalinin.¹⁹¹

Yezhov in his report charged Bukharin and Rykov with all the available anti-Soviet crimes: implication in the conspiracies of Zinoviev and Pyatakov, planning the return of capitalism through fascist interventionists, organizing peasant rebellions, inspiring the Ryutin Platform, and plotting the murder of Stalin and the overthrow of the Soviet Government. Kossior then attacked Bukharin for having helped draft the Ryutin document. Bukharin retorted that he had been in the Pamirs at the time to which Kossior referred, and Kossior replied, “Nevertheless we must believe Yezhov.”¹⁹² Bukharin rejected this and all the other charges, and both he and Rykov bitterly protested their innocence: “They did not take the road of repentance.”¹⁹³

Every point raised against them they denied “many times.”¹⁹⁴

On 26 February, they made their final defense. Both again denied all the charges.

Bukharin is said to have made a strong and emotional speech, agreeing that a conspiracy existed but claiming that its leaders were Stalin and Yezhov, who were plotting to install an NKVD regime giving Stalin unlimited personal power.¹⁹⁵ The two men were hotly abused and shouted down with cries of “to jail!” Voroshilov cursed Bukharin. Molotov shouted that Bukharin was proving his fascist affiliations by casting doubt on earlier confessions, and thus supporting anti-Soviet propaganda.¹⁹⁶ Stalin interrupted him, saying that he was behaving in a manner unbecoming to a revolutionary, and he could prove his innocence in a prison cell.¹⁹⁷ Bukharin finally took his seat, saying that even in jail he would not change what he was saying.