The Great Terror

When Army Commander Yakir was arrested, his interrogators had “sought an admission that Balitsky was a member of the military conspiracy.” On 7 June 1937, Yakir testified that Balitsky had done good work, but had falsified certain cases, including the one against Lyubchenko, and that Balitsky and Postyshev had falsely attacked Ukrainian nationalists, again meaning Lyubchenko and his circle.⁷⁹

Lyubchenko’s great detractor M. M. Popov, arrested on 17 June 1937, by 22 June was confessing to a “military fascist organization” aiming to kill Stalin and overthrow the Soviet regime. But now not only Balitsky, but also Lyubchenko (and Postyshev’s replacement as Ukrainian Second Secretary, M. M. Khatayevich) were implicated. At the same time, Popov testified more vaguely to the Polish “connections” of Kossior, Postyshev, and Lyubchenko.⁸⁰

Balitsky (who had just assumed his new post as Head of the Far Eastern NKVD) was arrested on 7 July. By 26 July, he had implicated many of his NKVD juniors in the Ukraine.

Signs began to accumulate of pressure being put on the Ukrainian leaders. When greetings were sent to Chkalov and his aircrew on 20 June 1937, those from Moscow were signed with the names of the leaders, but that from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine was anonymous, contrary to previous practice. On 15 July, “leading organs” in the Republic were attacked, in particular for the transfer of Postyshev’s “Trotskyites” from Kiev to other posts throughout the Ukraine. On 21 July, the Ukrainian Radio came under heavy attack.⁸² At the same time, the Ukrainian Komsomol was severely criticized, and one of its Secretaries, Klinkov, denounced as an enemy of the people;⁸³

and the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party was criticized as such for “tolerating the subversive work of the enemy among the youth.”⁸⁴

In “glorious, royal Kiev city,” commanding the great plain from the cliffs of the Dnieper, everything appeared normal to the uninformed observer. In the tranquil Ukrainian summer, the concerts went on regularly in the cypress-walled outdoor auditorium. But even the musicians were under pressure, with all the other cultural agencies, and the Director of the Ukrainian State Opera, Yanovsky, was soon to be among those denounced as fascists.

A plenum of the new Ukrainian Central Committee met on 29 August. Kossior, with the new NKVD Commissar, Leplevsky, ran it in the harshest Stalinist spirit. The agenda was “1. On the discovery of the nationalist anti-Soviet organization. 2. Other matters.”

First it was proposed that a number of enemies of the people who had already been arrested should be expelled from the Committee: Khatayevich, Sarkisov (Donets Provincial Secretary), and at least twenty others named. Kossior then announced that he had received a document from Yezhov with the confession of A. A. Khvylia, Head of the Ukrainian Arts Administration, implicating Lyubchenko.

Khvylia, also a former Borotbist, had been the subject of an NKVD accusation in the autumn of 1936, accused of being a nationalist and counter-revolutionary. Lyubchenko and Kossior had vouched for him and others in a “confrontation” in Stalin’s presence. However, he had been rearrested on 13 August 1937, with other former Borotbists, and he eventually confessed. By 23 August, evidence of a plot by former Borotbists was in Yezhov’s hands. And with this document as his text, Kossior denounced the new “bourgeois nationalist” organization just uncovered, which had had close contacts with “the previously unmasked anti-Soviet organization” headed by Yakir, Balitsky, and Popov. Lyubchenko was the leader of this new conspiracy.⁸⁵

At 11:00 A.M. on 30 August, Lyubchenko rose to defend himself, but was shouted down by Leplevsky and others. Zatonsky, a former physics teacher, now Ukrainian Commissar for Education, and one of the most prominent Ukrainian Old Bolsheviks, more vaguely implicated, tried to cover himself by allegations that not only Lyubchenko but also his wife were members of the nationalist organization. Many violently attacked Lyubchenko, though Petrovsky and a few others remained silent. Kossior then proposed the expulsion and arrest of Lyubchenko, and this was carried. The case of Zatonsky was referred to the Politburo.⁸⁶

Lyubchenko, still not under arrest, went back to his house and shot himself and his wife. Pravda (omitting reference to his wife), announcing his suicide on 2 September, attributed it to his “being entangled in anti-Soviet connections.” (But a recent Soviet analysis of the affair tends to the view that NKVD men came to arrest him, he resisted and was shot, and they then disposed of his wife as an inconvenient witness.)⁸⁷ Grinko, USSR People’s Commissar of Finance, the other major ex-Borotbist, was arrested in Moscow on the same day.⁸⁸