The Great Terror

One officer describes a last conversation with Tukhachevsky. He was looking gloomy. When this was mentioned, he said that he had indeed had bad news. He had just learned of Feldman’s arrest. “What a monstrous provocation!” he commented.⁸⁴ Tukhachevsky knew, in fact, that he was cornered. Driving to the station on his way to Kuibyshev, his chauffeur suggested that he should write to Stalin to clear up the obvious misunderstandings. The Marshal replied that he had already written.⁸⁵

On about 24 May, Stalin, after consultation with Molotov, Voroshilov, and Yezhov, gave the order for Tukhachevsky’s expulsion from the Central Committee and arrest.⁸⁶ On his arrival in Kuibyshev on 26 May, Tukhachevsky gave a short address in the evening to the District Military Conference. One who had known him well noted that in the two months since he had last seen him, his hair had begun to turn gray.⁸⁷

He did not turn up at the next session.⁸⁸

For he had been asked to call in at the offices of the Provincial Committee of the Party on the way to his headquarters. After a while, Dybenko, who he was relieving, came out pale-faced and told his wife that Tukhachevsky had been arrested.⁸⁹

On the evening of 28 May, news of the transfer of Tukhachevsky’s case to the “investigative organs” had reached the other generals, through some official though confidential channe1.⁹⁰ So it is plain that the arrests after Tukhachevsky’s were by no means bolts from the blue.

Tukhachevsky was interrogated by Yezhov personally, aided by the new Head of the NKVD Special Department, I. M. Leplevsky, and the ubiquitous Ushakov, now Deputy Head of that Department. By 29 May, the Marshal was confessing to espionage, links with the Germans, and recruitment by Yenukidze into Bukharin’s conspiracy. Here and here of his testimony, when examined twenty years later, had on them forensically verifiable bloodstains.⁹¹

Army Commander Uborevich was the next to go. He was at a meeting in Minsk on 29 May when his A.D.C. passed him a note calling him urgently to Moscow. He excused himself and went to the station, where he was arrested as he entered his train. He told his wife and daughter, who were present, not to worry.⁹² In the Lefortovo, Uborevich denied the charges, even after a “confrontation” with Kork. But after “physical methods” had been applied, he too confessed.⁹³

Yakir was normally a cheerful man. A general who was present reports him as looking gloomy and distrait at a conference of the Kiev Military District, immediately after Tukhachevsky’s arrest had become known to those present.⁹⁴

On 30 May, Voroshilov telephoned Yakir and ordered him to come urgently to a meeting of the Military Revolutionary Soviet. Yakir offered to fly, but Voroshilov told him to take the train—a clear indication that the Defense Commissar knew the plans of the NKVD in detail.⁹⁵

Yakir took the 1:15 P.M. train from Kiev on the same day. At dawn on 31 May, the train stopped at Bryansk, where NKVD men boarded it and arrested him. His A.D.C., Zakharchenko, was not taken, and Yakir was able to send a message to his wife and son that he was innocent.

Yakir asked to see the warrant for his arrest, and when it was shown to him he asked to see in addition “the decision of the Central Committee.” He was told that he could wait for that until he got to Moscow. He was bundled into a Black Maria; they drove to Moscow “at a hundred kilometers an hour”; and he was lodged in a solitary cell in the Lubyanka, where his chevrons and medals were ripped off.⁹⁶

On 31 May, the last of the “conspirators” was dealt with. It was announced the next day that “former member of the Central Committee, Ya. B. Gamamik, having entangled himself in connections with anti-Soviet elements and evidently fearing that he would be arrested, has committed suicide.”⁹⁷

There are several slightly different accounts of Gamamik’s end. The latest Soviet one, derived from his daughter, says that on 30 May, Blyukher visited Gamamik, who was sick. Gamarnik was told that he would be a member of the court which was to try the Tukhachevsky plotters. Blyukher implied that if Gamarnik refused, he would himself be arrested. Gamarnik told his wife that he knew Tukhachevsky was innocent. On 31 May, Blyukher (or, in another account, Bulin) came in and said that Gamarnik had been fired. NKVD men sealed up his safe. When they had gone, he shot himself.⁹⁸ He was publicly attacked as a Trotskyite, fascist, and spy on 6 June.⁹⁹

Meanwhile, from his cell in the Lubyanka, Yakir had written at once to the Politburo demanding immediate release or a meeting with Stalin. He assured Stalin of his complete innocence.

He wrote: “… My entire conscious life has been spent working selflessly and honestly in full view of the Party and its leaders …—Every word I say is honest, and I shall die with words of love for you, the Party, and the country, with boundless faith in the victory of Communism.”