The Great Terror

The reason, paradoxically, seems to be that this is the one case in which Stalin did not produce his evidence. From Stalin’s point of view, it was the best method. If a real military plot had suddenly been discovered, immediate court-martial and execution were natural-looking reactions. They had many precedents in other countries and, indeed, in Russia. Moreover, while the likelihood of the plots hitherto exposed in court was on the face of it dubious, the seizure of power by Tukhachevsky appeared a perfectly rational and possible move. In this case, public “proofs” were not required. In a sense, this is itself a curious irony, as this is the only case in which Stalin did dispose of documentary evidence. It was, of course, faked, but it really was of German origin.

But Stalin had the wit not to publish these documents. They had not been devised solely for his benefit, and perhaps did not entirely suit his intention. And if they had been made public, it might, for all he knew, have been possible for experts to detect flaws, or even for the Germans to blow the gaff.

Thus the result of Stalin’s sudden blow, and the absence of specific evidence, was that people found it easier to believe that a plot genuinely existed. As the Minister of War remarks in Penguin Island of the efforts of his Chief of Staff in providing reams of proofs against the accused Jewish officer,

Proofs! Of course it is good to have proofs, but perhaps it is better to have none at all … the Pyrot affair, as I arranged it, left no room for criticism; there was no spot at which it could be touched. It defied assault. It was invulnerable because it was invisible. Now it gives an enormous handle for discussion.

It was not so much that people believed the precise charges. Some of these, as later developed, were incredible—in particular that Yakir and Feldman, both Jews, had really worked for Nazi Germany. What was found tolerable was simply the central thesis that the generals were plotting to use their power against Stalin.

The essence of the plot, according to evidence in the Bukharin Tria1,¹³ was Tukhachevsky’s “favorite plan”—the seizure of the Kremlin and the killing of the leadership by a group of military men. Gamarnik had proposed also seizing the NKVD headquarters. He is represented as believing that “some military under his direct command” would obey him. He considered he had sufficient Party and political prestige in the Army and that some of the commanders, “especially the daredevils,” would support him.¹⁴

A curious sidelight is that Gamarnik, with a choice of “daredevil” officers allegedly at his disposal, and Yakir, the fighting general, are supposed to have instructed the Chief of the Department of Savings Banks of the Ministry of Finance, Ozeryansky, to prepare a terrorist act against Yezhov.¹⁵ This is another of those little touches which might perhaps have fortified the skepticism of Western dupes.

Various versions were planted. For example, the American Ambassador, Joseph Davies, says in his memoirs that he was told by Ambassador Troyanovsky on 7 October 1937, when he had queried the idea that Tukhachevsky would have become a German agent simply for money, that the Marshal had a mistress who was herself a German agent. This story was evidently planted elsewhere: Davies reports hearing it also from the French Ambassador on the authority of the Deuxième Bureau, which is supposed to have got it from Prague. Walter Duranty recounts a similar story. There is no reason to believe it.

As we have said, the apparent suddenness of the blow at the Army, the great air of urgency, contributed to the plausibility of Stalin’s story. And this theme was put about even in the outer circle of the NKVD. A senior NKVD officer, as late as October 1937, was telling his subordinates in Spain, “That was a real conspiracy! That could be seen from the panic which spread there on the top: all the passes to the Kremlin were suddenly declared invalid; our [i.e., NKVD] troops were held in a state of alarm: as Frinovsky said, ‘the whole Soviet Government hung by a thread….’”¹⁶

To another, Frinovsky remarked that the NKVD “had uncovered a giant conspiracy—we have got them all!”¹⁷ though this seems to have been said around 20 May, when the “uncovering” was accomplished, but three key arrests were yet to come.

This notion of a sudden secret emergency was doubtless useful in providing a panic tension in military, Party, and NKVD circles. But it was not in accord with the facts. The pressure against the Army, though little publicized, had, on the contrary, been gradual and cumulative.

It was eleven months since Stalin had in fact made the first moves against the High Command, which had now borne such fantastic fruit.