The Great Terror

These sentences struck observant NKVD officers as totally out of proportion to the charges, especially as those sentenced for mere “negligence” got two years, and those for “criminal negligence” (apart from Baltsevich) three years—only one year more! Stalin’s natural reaction to a criminal failure to guard against a genuine assassination attempt—of the sort which might strike him next—would have been the exemplary execution of all the NKVD defaulters; in fact, they could scarcely have avoided a charge of complicity in the actual crime. But the whole thing became even odder and more sinister when it was discovered that Medved and Zaporozhets were being treated as though the sentences were little more than a tedious formality.

As was later said at the 1938 Trial, Yagoda displayed “exceptional and unusual solicitude” towards them. He had “entrusted the care of the families of Zaporozhets and Medved” to his personal secretary, Bulanov; he had “sent them for detention to the camp in an unusual way—not in the car for prisoners, but in a special through car. Before sending them, he had Zaporozhets and Medved brought to see him.”⁵⁶

This is, of course, impossible to conceive as a personal initiative of Yagoda’s. A higher protection was being provided. Moreover, NKVD officers learned that Pauker and Shanin (Head of the NKVD Transport Department) were sending records and radio sets to Zaporozhets in exile—contrary to the strict Stalinist rule of instantly breaking even with one’s best friend, once arrested.⁵⁷

After the various odd circumstances of the whole Kirov Case, it was this above all which convinced many officials that Stalin had approved, if not arranged, the Kirov killing. The true story gradually filtered through the NKVD apparatus. Even then it was recounted with great reserve. Both Orlov and Krivitsky were told, as the former puts it, “The whole affair is so dangerous that it is healthier not to know too much about it.”⁵⁸

A prisoner from the White Sea Canal camps reports that Medved appeared at the headquarters of the camp complex, arriving by train in a special compartment and being put up by the head of the project, Rappaport, in his own house, where he gave a party for him. Medved was wearing an NKVD uniform without the insignia of his rank. He then went on, in the same style, to Solovetsk.⁵⁹

When the ice of the Okhotsk Sea made the move possible, Medved, Zaporozhets, and all the others we can trace were sent to Kolyma, where they were technically prisoners, but in fact given high posts—Zaporozhets as head of the road-building administration in the Kolyma complex.⁶⁰

As to the final fate of these NKVD exiles, Khrushchev was to remark twenty years later: “After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover the traces of the organizers of Kirov’s killing.”⁶¹

Khrushchev’s point is fairly taken, but it is too crudely put. No doubt, in a general way, Stalin favored silencing those who knew his secrets. In fact, during the Zinoviev–Kamenev Trial of 1936, the accused are represented as planning, “after their seizure of power, to put Bakayev in charge of the NKVD with a view to ‘covering up traces’ by killing all officials who might have knowledge of the plot, and also so that the conspiratorial group could destroy its own activists, its own terrorist gunmen.” As the conspiracy was simply an invention of Stalin’s with evidence faked to suit, this shows that he thought it natural to shoot NKVD men and others who knew too much.

But Stalin could scarcely liquidate everyone who knew of, or suspected, his crimes. It was not practical politics to execute Yagoda’s subordinates until there had been time for all sorts of leaks. If it comes to that, several men who were in possession of some of Stalin’s worst secrets—like Shkiryatov, Poskrebyshev, Vyshinsky, Beria, and Mekhlis—survived until 1953 to 1955, while Kaganovich is still alive.

It is true that in 1937 a great purge swept the NKVD in Kolyma. Once it was decided to expose Yagoda’s part in the Kirov murder, and to tell the whole story of the NKVD involvement, it was time to sacrifice all concerned. At the 1938 Trial, Zaporozhets’s role was plainly described, and it was announced that he had not appeared in court because he was being made the “subject of separate proceedings.” This seems to confirm that he was then still alive but that, if such was the case, he would not long remain so.