The Great Terror

The decree, decided on without consultation in the Politburo,¹² was to be a Charter of Terror over the following years. It ran:

Investigative agencies are directed to speed up the cases of those accused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror.

Judicial organs are directed not to hold up the execution of death sentences pertaining to crimes of this category in order to consider the possibility of pardon, because the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR does not consider as possible the receiving of petitions of this sort.

The organs of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs are directed to execute the death sentence against criminals of the above-mentioned category immediately after the passage of sentences.

This was published the following day, and the Politburo, presented with a fait accompli

, approved it “casually” the day after that.¹³ This was the first exercise in Stalin’s new technique, by which the state of emergency was used to justify personal, and technically unconstitutional, action. In the circumstances any attempt at disapproval would have been extremely difficult. And thus even what poor guarantees Soviet law gave to “enemies of the State” were destroyed. On 10 December new Articles 466 to 470 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR were enacted to bring it into line. We are told that the extrajudicial bodies set up at this period were instituted on the basis of a draft by Kaganovich.¹⁴

Stalin then turned to the inquiry. He at once discovered various snags. First, Borisov, whose devotion to Kirov was well known, had become suspicious. This was dealt with at once. On 2 December “an accident occurred to the automobile which took Borisov to the Smolny. Borisov was killed in the accident, and in this way they got rid of a dangerous witness” (Bulanov’s evidence in the 1938 Trial). This was, much later, interestingly expanded by Khrushchev:

When the chief of Kirov’s bodyguard was being taken for questioning—and he was to be questioned by Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov—the car, as its driver said afterward, was involved in an accident deliberately arranged by those who were taking the man to the interrogation. They said that he died as a result of the accident, even though he was actually killed by those who accompanied him.

In this way, the man who guarded Kirov was killed. Later, those who killed him were shot. This was no accident but a carefully planned crime. Who could have done this? A thorough investigation is now being made into the circumstances of this complicated affair. It transpires that the driver of the car in which the chief of Kirov’s bodyguard was being taken for questioning is alive. He has said that an NKVD operative sat with him in the cab during the drive. They went in a lorry. It is, of course, very strange why a lorry was used to take the man for questioning, as if no other vehicle could be found for the purpose. Evidently, everything had been planned in advance and in detail. Two other NKVD operatives were in the back of the lorry, together with Kirov’s chief bodyguard.

The driver continued his story. When they were driving through one street, the man sitting next to him suddenly took the steering wheel from his hands and steered the car directly at a house. The driver regained control of the wheel and steered the car, and it only hit the wall of the house sideways. He was told later that Kirov’s chief bodyguard lost his life in this accident. Why did he die when no other person in the car suffered? Why were both officials of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, escorting Kirov’s chief bodyguard, later shot? This means that someone wanted to have them liquidated and to remove all traces.¹⁵

Why did Stalin dispose of Borisov in such a roundabout way? It seems that in view of Borisov’s known loyalty to Kirov, to have him shot or “disappear” as an accomplice of Nikolayev’s would have aroused instant incredulity in the Leningrad Party organization. It was not until 1938, when such considerations no longer applied, that Borisov was alleged to have been an accomplice.¹⁶

And here we may note that the Khrushchevite version of the Kirov affair, with all its air of throwing fresh light, did not produce any facts incompatible with Stalin’s own final version. As we see, on the murder of Borisov, the essentials had emerged as to the 1938 Trial. Almost every detail of Yagoda’s and Zaporozhets’s involvement was given at that trial. Why, then, we may ask, did Khrushchev produce the same material—with insubstantial additional detail—as though it amounted to a great revelation? The answer clearly is that he meant to imply something further. And this method of dealing with the case—of implication—is the one that was pursued in the Soviet Union from 1956 to 1964.