The Great Terror

As the old cadres were annihilated, Zhdanov promoted his own men. Some of them (like Voznesensky, who became chairman of the local Planning Commission and then deputy chairman of the town Soviet before transfer to the central Government and eventual membership of the Politburo; A. A. Kuznetsov, promoted through District Secretaryships to Second and later First Secretary of the Provincial Committee, and later to become Secretary of the Central Committee; and Popkov, later also First Secretary of the Leningrad Committee) were shot in 1950 in a later “Leningrad Case.”

These Leningrad events were repeated in the Provincial Committees throughout the country, with the amendment that (except in Beria’s Caucasian fief and under Khrushchev in Moscow) the local First Secretaries could not be trusted, as Zhdanov was, to conduct their own purges.

So Kaganovich was sent to Ivanovo, Smolensk, and elsewhere; Malenkov to Byelorussia, Armenia, and so on; Zhdanov to Orenburg, Bashkiria, and other provinces; Shkiryatov to the North Caucasus. Everywhere they destroyed the old leaderships. As long as the Provincial Secretaries had to countersign orders for the arrest of prominent “Trotskyites” (which Eikhe mentions as one of his prerogatives as First Secretary in West Siberia),¹⁶ they were, at the earlier stages, able and willing to block action—or, anyhow, to block the type of action now required by Stalin and Yezhov. In most cases, Moscow itself had to destroy the local leaderships. (The other method used by the Secretariat was to intrude, under the reluctant First Secretaries, Second Secretaries from the purging faction, as N. G. Ignatov was to be sent to undermine Postyshev.)

And so, we are told,

The investigative materials of that time show that in almost all territories, provinces and republics there supposedly existed “Rightist–Trotskyite, espionage-terror and diversionary-sabotage organizations and centers” and that the head of such organizations as a rule—for no known reason—were First Secretaries of Provincial Party Committees or Republic Central Committees.¹⁷

When Kaganovich went to Ivanovo on 3 August, immediately on arrival he telegraphed Stalin: “First acquaintance with the material shows that Provincial Secretary Yepanechnikov must be arrested at once. It is also necessary to arrest Mikhailov, head of the Provincial Committee’s Propaganda Department.” Soon he was sending another telegram: “Acquaintance with the situation shows that Right–Trotskyist sabotage has assumed wide scope here—in industry, agriculture, supply, trade, public health services, education and Party political work. The apparatus of provincial institutions and the Provincial Party Committee are deeply infected.”¹⁸ His three-day visit to the city became known as “the black tornado”:

He accused the entire Party organization, which had great revolutionary traditions, of supposedly standing aloof, of being off to the side of the high road. At a plenary session of the Provincial Committee he pinned the label “enemy of the people” on the majority of executive officials without any grounds.¹⁹

When one of the city Secretaries, A. A. Vasilev, began to express doubt about enemy activity, Kaganovich had him expelled from the Party and arrested on the spot.²⁰ The local First Secretary, I. P. Nosov, followed, together with a whole list of other officials. Kaganovich was in frequent telephone contact with Stalin, who told him “not to be too liberal” and to make the operation larger and more ruthless—instructions he repeated to the local NKVD chief, Radzivilovsky, who was already “beating and torturing” officials to give testimony against more and more of their colleagues. (He was soon instructed to shoot 1,500 of them.)²¹

A Soviet account, in fictional form but evidently based on personal experience, describes the sort of scene which often occurred at the Provincial Committees.²²

On 23 July 1937 a member arrives at a meeting of one of these. It has been called at a few hours’ notice and no agenda announced. When he arrives, the atmosphere is tense and silent. Everyone, as far as possible, sits in the back rows.

The first man to appear

was then very powerful, both a People’s Commissar and a Secretary of the Central Committee, virtually one man with seven faces. The hall was quiet. The People’s Commissar frowned and was evidently displeased at how he had been greeted, being used to a triumphal reception. Some bright lad came to his senses and started clapping. Other people joined in and things took their proper course.

After that the Bureau members of our Provincial Committee, headed by the First Secretary, appeared. They too were given a round of clapping, though a more feeble one….