The Great Terror

One further case, this time of two individuals, is equally illustrative. Henrik Ehrlich and Viktor Alter, the leaders of the Jewish Bund Socialists in Poland, fell into Russian hands in September 1939 at the time of the Soviet–German invasion of Poland. They were both veterans of the Social Democratic movement in the old Russian Empire, and Ehrlich had been a member of the Executive of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. They were taken to the Butyrka, charged with acting for the Polish Government in various infiltrations of saboteurs from 1919 to 1939. Ehrlich, who was on one occasion interrogated by Beria personally, insisted on writing all his answers. Alter replied simply to each question, “It is absolutely false, and you know it well.”

After eighteen months, in July 1941, they were transferred to Saratov and condemned to death. They both refused to appeal, but after ten days their sentences were commuted to ten years’ imprisonment. The amnesty granted to all Polish prisoners shortly afterwards resulted in their release in September and October, respectively. They were asked to organize a Jewish antifascist committee, and it was clear that their connections with old members of the Bund in the American trade unions—such as David Dubinsky—were much valued. Ehrlich became president and Alter secretary of this new organization, and the Soviet actor-producer Mikhoels was named a member of its Presidium. Beria personally sponsored the organization, while telling them that on all international questions Stalin took the final decision.

On 4 December, they went out of their hotel in Kuibyshev, and were never seen again. At first, the pretense was kept up that what had happened to them was unknown. But after protests from Clement Attlee and from the leading trade unionists in America and England, and also from important world figures like Albert Einstein and Reinholdt Niebuhr, Litvinov finally, in February 1943, sent a letter to the Head of the American Federation of Labor, William Green, explaining that Ehrlich and Alter had been arrested and executed for trying to persuade Soviet troops to cease contesting the advance of the German armies and to conclude an immediate peace with Nazi Germany. He added that they had been executed in December 1942—but their colleague, Lucjan Blit, who was with them in Kuibyshev until the moment of their arrest, believes that this is probably a mistake for December 1941.

Katyn and the Ehrlich–Alter Case are representative of a host of similar actions, both having exceptionally come to the notice of the world public through special circumstances. Apart from continuous attrition in the old lands of Russia, particular operations provided a flow of victims. After the Poles and Baits in 1939 to 1941, various other minorities were deported. In 1941, the Soviet Germans; in 1943 and 1944, seven entire nations, mainly from the Causasus, were arrested and deported en bloc.¹² German and Japanese prisoners of war filled the camps. In 1945 and 1946, the Western territories were again ravaged, and with the end of the war those Russian soldiers who had fought for, or merely been captured by, the Germans were mostly sent to camps on their return.

THE PURGE AND THE WAR

Meanwhile, in 1941 to 1945, the country had felt the effects of the measures taken by Stalin against his military leaders.

Figures given over the past years vary slightly, depending on (for example) whether they refer to those holding ranks at the time of the original appointments in 1935, or include promotions made later. As now given in the Soviet press, the Purge accounted for

3 of the 5 Marshals

13 of the 15 Army Commanders

8 of the 9 Fleet Admirals and Admirals Grade I

50 of the 57 Corps Commanders

154 of the 186 Divisional Commanders 16 of the 16 Army Commissars

25 of the 28 Corps Commissars

58 of the 64 Divisional Commissars¹³

All 11 of the Vice Commissars of Defense went, as did 98 out of 108 members of the Supreme Military Soviet. Nor was the effect confined to the upper echelons. Between May 1937 and September 1938, 36,761 Army officers and “over three thousand” Navy officers were dismissed (of whom 9,579 had been arrested even before dismissal). But from 1939 to 1941, we are told, some 13,000 of these dismissed were re-enrolled, so that the total permanently repressed may be as low as 27,000. (This omits, of course, those repressed after September 1938, for which Soviet figures almost as high as those for 1937 and 1938 have been given, for a total over the whole period of 43,000)¹⁴ As Khrushchev later said, the Purges started “at company and battalion commander level.”¹⁵ And the chances of the repressed seem to have been lower than those in any other field: of one group of 408 Army men tried by the Military Collegium, 401 were shot and 7 sent to labor camp.¹⁶