The Great Terror

Although Cornford’s case is instructive, and not only as regards his own time, he was not among those actively responsible for propagating and compounding the falsehood; he was, rather, at the receiving end. Between those in the West who accepted the Stalinist version of events and those who originally issued that version, there stood a number of journalists, ambassadors, lawyers, and students of Russia, whose direct and admitted duty it was to study the facts in detail and pronounce on them. Not every Western Communist, or every left-wing intellectual, could be expected to read with a critical eye the official reports of the Great Trials. Those who did, or who had actually attended them, and who from incompetence and blind (or cynical) partisanship transmitted a false analysis to the larger audience, may reasonably be thought somewhat blameworthy. A few examples of inadequate skepticism have already been noted.

Any recorder of these events must be tempted to compile a vast sottisier of misjudgments made by his compatriots and others in the West. It is scarcely a point that should be ignored, but it has been thought best to give no more than a few examples of the type of error which was made by many with high claims to clear judgment, moral enlightenment, and political knowledge. The contemporary effect on world opinion was an important aspect of the whole Purge operation. Stalin had himself considered it when he ordered the Zinoviev Trial: “He is not impressed by the argument that public opinion in Western Europe must be taken into consideration. To all such arguments he replies contemptuously: ‘Never mind, they’ll swallow it.’”⁶⁷

The fact that so many did “swallow” it was thus certainly a factor in making the whole Purge possible. The trials, in particular, would have carried little weight unless validated by some foreign, and so “independent,” commentators.

Foreign intervention had, as late as the mid-1930s, been able to secure certain results, particularly in view of Stalin’s post-1935 policy of alliances. For example, in June 1935, the International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture was held in Paris. It was intended as a large-scale Popular Front occasion. Magdalene Paz insisted on raising the case of Victor Serge, arrested in 1932. After an uproar, in which she was supported by Salvemini and Gide, she was allowed to speak. The Soviet delegation consisted of Pasternak, Nikolai Tikhonov, Ilya Ehrenburg, Mikhail Koltsov, and the playwright Kirshon—the two last to perish shortly. Apart from Pasternak, these Soviet delegates resisted the debate strenuously and accused Serge of complicity in the Kirov murder, which had taken place two years after his arrest.⁶⁸ Afterward, Gide went and conveyed the writers’ displeasure to the Soviet Ambassador.

Serge was released at the end of the year. This is an almost unique occasion on which foreign opinion was able to influence Stalin. It seems to show, however, that if articulate Western opinion had condemned the Zinoviev Trial with sufficient unanimity and force, it is conceivable that Stalin might, in this Popular Front period, have acted at least slightly less ruthlessly. In fact, those who “swallowed” the trials can hardly be acquitted of a certain degree of complicity in the continuation and exacerbation of the torture and execution of innocent men.

The facts that were concealed from (or by) progressive opinion in the West were twofold: the existence and extent of the mass slaughter and imprisonment; and the inconsistency and falsehood of the public trials.

From the start, there were three basic objections to the evidence in the trials. First, the alleged plots were totally out of character with the accused leaders, who had always opposed individual assassination, and were now, moreover, charged also with having been enemy agents throughout their careers. Second, the allegations were often inherently absurd—like the charge against Zelensky that he had put nails into the masses’ butter with a view to undermining Soviet health. Third, some of the stories told in court were of events abroad, which could be checked; these contained demonstrable falsehoods—a meeting at a nonexistent hotel in Copenhagen, a landing at a Norwegian airfield during a month when no landings had taken place.