The Great Terror

The interrogator told Smirnov that it was useless for him to resist, as there were plenty of witnesses against him. And, moreover, it was not only Smirnov but his family too that would suffer—as the assassin Nikolayev’s had suffered. Smirnov knew nothing of the arrest of his family and took this simply to be a disgusting threat by the interrogator. But shortly afterward, on his way to an interrogation, he saw his daughter Olga at the other end of the corridor, held by two guards. She is reported later in prison. (Her mother, Smirnov’s wife Varvara, was sent to a women’s camp at Kotlas and was shot in the camp in April or May 1938, during a mass execution of 1,300 undesirables. However, his former wife, Safonova, who had testified against him, remained alive but imprisoned, until 1958, when she described her testimony as “ninety percent lies.”)⁹¹

Under all these pressures, Smirnov finally gave way, but he would only consent to make a partial confession. This would not have been accepted from anyone else, but time was getting short and Stalin wanted Smirnov in the trial at all costs. Smirnov also managed to have Safonova removed from the list of defendants, and she only appeared as a “witness.” All this rankled with Stalin, and Yagoda and Mironov were later charged with having shielded Smirnov.⁹² By 5 August,fn3 Smirnov was well into his confession. Even now, a final decision on who would appear in the trial had not been taken. On 7 August, Vyshinsky presented a formal indictment of twelve named accused. Stalin corrected some of the phraseology, and added “Lurye” twice, upon which the two Luryes were included. The revised indictment, presented to Stalin on 10 August, thus had fourteen names. He then added those of Ter-Vaganyan and Evdokimov. Neither had been mentioned in the Secret Letter of 29 July; Evdokimov had not even been questioned about the case: he is said to have been treated with particular brutality, in view, doubtless, of the short notice.⁹³

On 11 August, the official orders for holding the trial were given by the Central Executive Committee, and the final indictment is dated 14 August. On the same day, Ter-Vaganyan, who had vaguely admitted the existence of the “Center” on 16 July, was making a full confession.

The last confessions were eased, and the earlier ones fortified, on 11 August by a decree which (going back, to some extent, on that of 1 December 1934) reestablished public hearings and the use of lawyers, and allowed appeals from the accused for three days after the sentence.⁹⁴ The timing of this decree is decisive. While clearly intended to strengthen the accused’s hope that a reprieve would be granted, it was also designed, of course, to put the same idea about among the apprehensive Party membership. These included some of the interrogators themselves. It seems that reassurances that no death sentences would be carried out were believed by, for example, Boris Berman, and that this led him to quite sincere advice to Ter-Vaganyan that the best course open to him was to surrender.

⁹⁵ And with the publication of the indictment on 15 August, it was at last necessary to take such measures as would best put the case over to the Party as a whole. The preparatory work had been done in great secrecy. There was no preliminary discussion in the Politburo. “The trial came as a complete surprise not only for the rank and file of Party workers but also to members of the Central Committee and some members of the Politburo,” in the sense that they were only informed about it when the Secret Letter of 29 July reached them.⁹⁶

To objectors in the current leadership, Stalin now had a simple answer: the matter was in the hands of the Prosecutor and the court. It was they who were so keen on legality, after all. They must let justice take its course. And the 11 August decree was a considerable reassurance.

Opposition to the trial would in any case have been very difficult to organize once confessions had been obtained. But Stalin played safe by springing it on the country when he himself was on holiday, and many of the rest of the leadership were also scattered around the country. Molotov and Kalinin, for example, are said to have gone on holiday in ignorance of the forthcoming massacre.⁹⁷

Whether this is true of Molotov in quite this form seems dubious. However that may be, there now came a startling proof that Stalin was discontented with him.