The Great Terror

I have philosophized that the severe years of the struggle have passed; Party members who lost their backbone broke down or joined the camp of the enemy, healthy elements fought for the Party. Those were the years of industrialization and collectivization. I never thought it possible that after this severe era had passed Karpov and people like him would find themselves in the camp of the enemy. And now, according to the testimony, it appears that Karpov was recruited in 1934 by the Trotskyites. I personally do not believe that in 1934 an honest Party member who had trod the long road of unrelenting fight against enemies, for the Party and for socialism, would now be in the camp of the enemies. I do not believe it…. I cannot imagine how it would be possible to travel with the Party during the difficult years and then, in 1934, join the Trotskyites. It is an odd thing.…²⁰⁷

Stalin, who was listening without apparent emotion, uttered a loud interjection, which made it clear to everyone that he was aware of what was going on.

This was perhaps the occasion on which Stalin turned to Postyshev and said, “What are you, actually?” to which Postyshev replied, “I am a Bolshevik, Comrade Stalin, a Bolshevik.”²⁰⁸

This reply, in any case, was at first represented in the Party as showing lack of respect for Stalin, and later “it was considered a harmful act and consequently resulted in Postyshev’s annihilation and in his being branded without reason as an enemy of the people”²⁰⁹—an exaggerated and compressed account.

Whatever Stalin said, Postyshev (according to one version)²¹⁰ faltered from the text of his speech and later withdrew his doubts. In any case, it is clear that his forlorn hope of swaying the plenum had failed.

Yezhov made a wide-ranging report. For instance, he complained that over recent months he could not think of a case in which the economic ministries had telephoned him to express suspicions about any of their staff; on the contrary, they had tried to defend them.²¹¹

A resolution on Yezhov’s report was accepted which repeated Stalin’s formulation about the NKVD’s failure under Yagoda to act four years previously—that is, against Ryutin:

The Plenum of the Party Central Committee considers that all facts revealed during the investigation into the matter of an anti-Soviet Trotskyite center and of its followers in the provinces show that the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs had fallen behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these most inexorable enemies of the people.…²¹²

Stalin severely criticized Yagoda.²¹³

This must have been the occasion when Yagoda turned on the applauding members and snarled that six months earlier he could have arrested the lot of them.²¹⁴

Ordzhonikidze’s report to which Stalin had objected had been supposed to cover sabotage in industry. Molotov, taking up Yezhov’s point, now performed this duty, saying that 585 people had been arrested in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry alone, and hundreds in other ministries concerned.²¹⁵ He sneered at those who urged caution “against conjuring up all sorts of conspiracies and sabotage and espionage centers,” and called on the Party to annihilate enemies of the people “hiding behind Party cards.” The present-day subversives and saboteurs were especially dangerous, he said, because they “pretend to be Communists, ardent supporters of the Soviet regime.”²¹⁶

On 3 March, Stalin made his political report, and on 5 March a short “final speech” closing the plenum. These two speeches were printed in full in the press on 29 March in a version believed to differ considerably, chiefly by omission, from what he had actually said. They were later in the year sponsored in England in one volume with a slightly compressed transcript of the Pyatakov Trial. Neil Maclean, M.P., the British commentator we have already quoted, commented in a preface: “These speeches in that simple and clear style of which M. Stalin is such a master form an interesting background and commentary on the Trial.…” They do indeed.

Stalin’s report developed the theoretical justification for the Terror. Quoting the Central Committee letters of 18 January 1935 and 29 July 1936, he propounded his view (to be denounced in the Khrushchev period) that as socialism gets stronger, the class struggle gets sharper.

He pointed out that the fact of there only being a few counter-revolutionaries should not comfort the Party: “Thousands of people are required to build a big railway bridge, but a few people are enough to blow it up. Tens and hundreds of such examples could be quoted….”

But his central theme was in effect a censure of leaders who had failed in their vigilance: