The Great Terror

At the same time, certain cases which had become more of a nuisance than they were worth were dropped. For example, for the physicist Weissberg an agitation had been raised in the West to which even very left-wing scientists had subscribed. Moreover, papers in his investigation had been inadequate and muddled. It was now abandoned. (Weissberg explains how technical difficulties arose: when it was more or less accepted that the charges against him would be withdrawn, it was found that there were over twenty witnesses who had provided the evidence and it would be necessary to examine them all over again, and by this time they were, of course, scattered in camps throughout the country.)

The gross result of Beria’s assumption of the NKVD was that a proportion of those in prison awaiting trial were released, making a good impression on the populace. Of those already in camp, apart from certain special rehabilitations, like those of some military men in 1940, almost none were freed. An NKVD officer, himself under arrest, predicted this:

‘Some of us will be released just to make it clear there has been a change; the remainder will go off to the camps to serve their sentences just the same.’

‘What will be their criterion?’

‘Chance. People are always trying to explain things by fixed laws. When you’ve looked behind the scenes as I have you know that blind chance rules a man’s life in this country of ours.’⁹⁸

But in the towns and villages of the Soviet Union, the pressure of haphazard mass arrests greatly eased. The country had been broken, and henceforward a limited number of arrests of men who had given some sort of cause for suspicion of disloyalty was sufficient to maintain the habit of submission and silence.

In general, Beria consolidated and institutionalized the system. From the “Yezhovshchina,” he developed, rather than an emergency operation against the people, a permanent method of rule.

STALIN AND BERIA CONSOLIDATE

The imprisoned Politburo members were not among those fortunate enough to benefit by the fall of Yezhov. While Ushakov and Nikolayev were at work on Eikhe, their colleague Rodos was submitting Kossior and Chubar to “long tortures,” receiving “detailed instructions from Beria.”⁹⁹

Rodos was to be described by Khrushchev as “a vile person with the brain of a bird and morally completely degenerate.”¹⁰⁰ Summoned in 1956 before the Central Committee Presidium, he said, “I was told that Kossior and Chubar were enemies of the people and for this reason, I, as an investigative judge, had to make them confess that they were enemies…. I thought I was executing the orders of the Party.”¹⁰¹ Khrushchev expressed great indignation at this answer, but all the same it is the only justification he gives for the activities of himself and his surviving colleagues during the same period.

On 22 to 26 February 1939, Kossior, Chubar, and others came to trial with another group of figures from politics and the Army, who appear to have been called the “Military–Fascist Center.” Corps Commander Khakanian was shot on 22 February, and Marshal Yegorov on 23 February (though we are recently told that Yegorov, reported by Ulrikh to Stalin as “tried” and shot, died under interrogation).¹⁰²

On 23 February also came the execution of Kosarev, after a trial which lasted for ten minutes; he had been severely tortured, but had not confessed. The charges included espionage for Poland.¹⁰³ Presumably, the remainder of the Komsomol leadership was tried on the same day.

On 25 February the three survivors of the abortive Leningrad Center that Zakovsky had mounted in 1937 were shot—B. P. Pozern, P. I. Smorodin, and A. I. Ugarov. So were others, including the chairman of the Uzbek Council of People’s Commissars, S. Segizbayev.

On 26 February came the turn of Kossior, Chubar, and Postyshev. Kossior had been produced by Yezhov, before the latter’s fall, at a “confrontation” with Petrovsky in the presence of Stalin. Kossior, completely broken, had admitted that he was a Polish spy and, on another account, to terrorism.¹⁰⁴ Postyshev had also confessed.¹⁰⁵

Others shot that day include Army Commander Fedko. He had confessed to being a German spy when Beria brought Voroshilov to see him in Lefortovo.¹⁰⁶ Mirzoyan, too, was now shot, having confessed to being an agent of Bukharin, and implicating all the other Kazakh leaders.¹⁰⁷

Others shot at this time included several of the most prominent NKVD men, such as Boris Berman (sentenced on 22 February).¹⁰⁸ Among them was Zakovsky (who had been badly tortured). He is said to have been a British spy.¹⁰⁹ Thus by a certain irony, Zakovsky seems to have perished in the same case as the Lenin-graders who had been his intended victims.