The Great Terror

A typical case from the times, of which dozens might be related, was that of the writer Alexander G. Lebedenko, who was arrested in Leningrad in January 1935 and exiled. One and a half years later—that is, in mid-1937—he was sentenced without trial or investigation, by decision of an NKVD Troika, to twenty years’ isolation, and was released after the XXth Congress in 1956.²⁹

Meanwhile, Agranov had been working on the Zinoviev connection. He established a connection between Nikolayev and the men who had been leading figures in the Leningrad Komsomol during Zinoviev’s ascendancy in the city. The most prominent was I. I. Kotolynov, former member of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. It had been Kotolynov who had boldly protested at the Stalinist bully boys who were then taking over the youth organization, saying of them, “They have the mentality—if he is not a Stalinist, put on the screws, let him have it, chase him so hard that he won’t open his mouth again.”³⁰

He had, in fact, been a real oppositionist, and one against whom a real grudge persisted. Right through the Purge, this was to be a bad combination.

Agranov found that Kotolynov and some others of this group had met for discussion in 1934 because the local Party Institute was talking of producing a history of the Leningrad Komsomol. These meetings, encouraged by Kirov, were quite open and under Party control, but unorthodox views had been expressed. Agranov built this up into a “conspiracy.” Nine other men who had been present, including another former member of the Komsomol Central Committee, Rumyantsev, were arrested. They were under arrest, or some of them were, by 6 December.³¹ “Severe” interrogation methods were employed.

Even so, most of the young oppositionists refused to capitulate. This method of dealing with Party members was new, and they could not have had the feeling of hopelessness which later set in in similar circumstances. On the contrary, the whole thing must have seemed a dangerous and horrible lunacy of the interrogators, which might be overruled at any moment. By 12–13 December,³²

Agranov nevertheless had one or two confessions ready. These connected the former oppositionist Komsomols of Leningrad with Kamenev and Zinoviev, who had met their former supporters once or twice in an innocent way.³³ Agranov’s report to Stalin represented this as Kamenev and Zinoviev going back on their various promises to “disarm” politically and in effect as a sort of conspiracy.

When this report came before the Politburo, in “an atmosphere of extreme tension,”³⁴

the majority still supported the liberalization envisaged by Kirov. Stalin accepted this warmly, but added that it should be amended at one point: since the opposition had failed to disarm, the Party should in self-defense undertake a check of all former Trotskyites and Zinovievites. This was agreed to with some hesitation, and as to the assassination itself, it was to be left to the investigating authorities.³⁵

Before the middle of the month, G. E. Evdokimov, former Secretary of the Central Committee, Bakayev, who had been Zinoviev’s head of the Leningrad GPU, and others were arrested. Zinoviev then drafted a letter to Yagoda saying that he was disturbed by these arrests and asking to be summoned so that he could establish that he had no connection with the murder. Kamenev dissuaded him from sending it.³⁶

On 16 December, Pauker, Head of the Operations Department of the NKVD, and Bulanov, Yagoda’s personal assistant, arrested Kamenev, and at the same time Molchanov, Head of the Secret Political Department, and Volovich, Deputy Head of the Operations Department,fn3 pulled in Zinoviev.³⁷ It says something for the respect which leading Old Bolshevik oppositionists even then commanded in the Party that the routine “search” was dispensed with.³⁸

For the first four or five days after the murder, the press had been full of the demands of workers’ meetings for revenge, accounts of Kirov’s life, descriptions of his lying in state and his funeral, listings of executed “White Guard” terrorists, and so on. Then came, for a week or ten days, a curious pause. But now, on 17 December, the Moscow Committee of the Party passed a resolution to the effect that “loathsome, hateful agents of the class enemy, foul dregs of the former Zinoviev anti-Party group, have torn Comrade Kirov from our midst,” the first public reference to the alleged political feelings behind the murder.³⁹ The Leningrad Committee, which had just “elected” Andrei Zhdanov as Kirov’s replacement (on 16 December), passed a resolution in almost identical terms.