The Great Terror

First, no doubt under the influence of Smirnov’s example, he had already reverted from the complete confession the indictment had attributed to him to a refusal to admit that he was implicated in terrorism. He now said flatly that though he had passed it on, he (like Smirnov) “did not share” Trotsky’s point of view about the necessity of terror. Vyshinsky was only able to get him to admit that he had remained a member of the Trotskyite organization, and alleged that this amounted to the same thing.

The second point was different. Holtzman confessed that he had met Sedov in Copenhagen. In that city, he had arranged to “put up at the Hotel Bristol” and to meet him there. “I went to the hotel straight from the station and in the lounge met Sedov.”

When Holtzman’s testimony was published, Trotsky declared it false, and immediately published a demand that the court ask Holtzman on what sort of passport and in what name he had entered Denmark—a point which could be checked with the Danish immigration authorities. This was a matter that had not been prepared, and naturally the court paid no attention to it. But soon after the trial ended, the organ of the Danish Social Democratic Party pointed out that Copenhagen’s Hotel Bristol had been demolished in 1917.¹³⁵ Soviet propaganda had some difficulty with this point and belatedly settled for a story that Holtzman had met Sedov at a Café Bristol, which was near a hotel of a different name at which he was staying, a version inconsistent with the original testimony. There was, in addition, convincing evidence that Sedov had been taking examinations at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin at the time when (in 1932) he was supposed to have been in Copenhagen.

¹³⁶

The “Hotel Bristol” error is said to have arisen as follows. Yezhov decided that the alleged meeting should take place in a hotel, and asked Molchanov to provide a name. Molchanov referred to the Travel Section of the Foreign Department of the NKVD. To cover the inquiry, he asked the names of several hotels in Oslo as well as Copenhagen, ostensibly needed for a group of prominent Soviet visitors. Molchanov’s secretary jotted down the lists telephoned to him, and in typing them out accidentally put the Oslo hotels under the heading “Copenhagen.”¹³⁷

The prosecution case made much of better-established contacts between Smimov, Holtzman, the absent Gaven, Sedov, and others in the early 1930s, and the establishment of a “bloc” between them and the Trotskyists. These contacts had indeed taken place, and in the old sense of the coming together of factions in the prewar party (like the “August bloc”) the Trotskyists certainly thought that an opposition bloc had been established. When the accused were so charged, however, the Trotskyites in exile denied the whole story, apparently on the supposition that this would help the accused and discredit the trial.

And, given the incredibility of much of the other evidence, their calculation was reasonably correct. The result has been that the Trotskyite view has been widely accepted. We need merely note that these agreements, such as they were, between exiles and those still in the Soviet Union were political, with a view to a possible revival of the opposition. Conspiratorial from the NKVD point of view, they had no “terrorist” content whatever.¹³⁸

The two Luryes followed Holtzman. Their relationship is uncertain; they were not brothers. They had worked together. Nathan Lurye, the surgeon, confessed to having been sent by the Trotskyites abroad to make an attempt on Voroshilov’s life. He had worked on assassinating Voroshilov from September 1932 to the spring of 1933, with two accomplices, and “frequently went to Frunze Street and to the adjacent street armed with revolvers.”¹³⁹

President:

So that you would have committed the terroristic act had a favorable moment offered itself? Why did you not succeed in doing so?

N. Lurye:

We saw Voroshilov’s car going down Frunze Street. It was travelling too fast. It was hopeless firing at the fast-running car. We decided that it was useless.

¹⁴⁰

N. Lurye was then sent to Chelyabinsk, where he tried to meet Kaganovich and Ordzhonikidze when they visited the city. The plan, a simple one, was as follows. In Ordzhonikidze’s case, Moissei Lurye instructed Nathan Lurye “to take the opportunity of a possible visit to the Chelyabinsk Tractor Works by Comrade Ordzhonikidze to commit a terrorist act against him.” N. Lurye “tried to meet” both leaders, but “he failed to carry out his intention.”