The Great Terror

The report on agitation and propaganda work in the countryside ought to have been delivered by the Propaganda Secretary, but it was Kostyukov, the head of the provincial agricultural land administration, who got up to speak. He was a great one for making speeches, especially when it came to plans, hectares and fertilizers, but this time you could see his lips moving but nothing was audible. Some bolder spirit in the hall shouted: “Louder!”

Kostyukov raised his eyes from his notes and I felt ill—his eyes had the glassy look of a corpse….

We heard him say:

“Two days ago Comrade Kazakov, Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee, and I paid a visit to the Budenny Collective Farm….”

The People’s Commissar put his hands on his hips and in a curious way, whether expressing astonishment or derision, asked the speaker: “With whom? Who did you visit the collective farm with?”

“With Comrade Kazakov …”

It was only then that I noticed the absence of Kazakov from the Presidium. “How’s that?” I thought to myself. “After all he is on the Bureau!”

The People’s Commissar continued in the same incomprehensible tone: “So that therefore, if I understand you correctly, you consider Kazakov a Comrade? Answer me!”

Kostyukov went white and started stuttering …“Of course … if that is the case … Why shouldn’t he be regarded … ?”

The People’s Commissar looked at his wrist-watch, then glanced at the wings and some person there, not one of ours, immediately rushed over to him. The People’s Commissar heard out this person’s brief, momentary report and then declared … “I don’t understand how you can conduct yourself in this way. I simply refuse to understand…. “He looked again at his wrist-watch and added, “The enemy of the people, Kazakov, was arrested twenty minutes ago….”

… One of those sitting in the Presidium started applauding. The others backed him up, at first timidly, and then more energetically. A deep bass voice cried out: “Hurrah for our glorious NKVD!”

And I, too, cried “Hurrah!”

Kostyukov completely collapsed and, mumbling a few more words, left the rostrum to the sound of his own heels clicking on the floorboards. He was seen no more—he disappeared into the wings for good.

The People’s Commissar again looked at his watch and in the same incomprehensible tone of voice addressed the Secretary for Propaganda: “Perhaps you can do duty for the last inadequate speaker?”

The Secretary walked across to the rostrum, as white as a sheet, gave a little cough, and started off relatively confidently:

“… As the previous speaker already stated, we must complete the harvesting in a shorter period…. At the same time, Comrade Kostyukov failed to point out that …”

At these last words the People’s Commissar again put his hands to his hips and inquired sneeringly: “Is Kostyukov your Comrade? Curious, very curious….” Again a glance at his watch and the pole-axing words:

“The accomplice of the enemy of the people Kazakov, his henchman Kostyukov, was arrested fifteen minutes ago….”

Within forty minutes the entire bureau of the Provincial Committee and the entire Presidium of the Provincial Executive Committee had been swept into oblivion.

At the end of June, Kaganovich appeared before a specially summoned meeting of the Smolensk Provincial Committee and announced that First Secretary Rumyantsev, who had held the area for Stalin since 1929, Second Secretary Shulman, and a large group of the old leadership were “traitors, spies of German and Japanese fascism and members of the Rightist—Trotskyite gang.”²³ They disappeared without trace.

In Smolensk, we chance to be able to trace the impact of the Purge at the local Party level. Belyi was a moderate-sized town and administrative area in the Smolensk province. The Provincial Committee, itself already in trouble following the February—March plenum, began to take it out on its subordinate bodies in March 1937. The Belyi First Secretary, Kovalev, was put up in a four-day ceremony, to be abused and denounced by his local subordinates. Various speakers attacked him for having lived with a Trotskyite in 1921, having behaved like a local dictator, having been a deserter from the Red Army, and so forth. There were more than 200 Communists present, accounting for a large section of the local Party membership, and it is clear that a number of them had not yet grasped the tone of the new-style Party. Questions from the floor pointed out that everyone approved of Kovalev at the time and asked why they had not said anything earlier. But one of Kovalev’s more sophisticated accusers claimed that he had been silent because Kovalev had, for four years, forbidden him to speak!

The representative of the Provincial Committee, while arranging the removal of Kovalev, spoke more moderately than some of the rank-and-file delators, saying, “I do not have sufficient basis to call Kovalev a Trotskyite,” but that the matter would be investigated.