The Great Terror

It seems certain that Stalin himself was really afraid of assassination. He must have known that the leading oppositionists could scarcely organize such plots, so closely did he have them watched. But at a lower level in the Party, there were thousands and thousands of potential enemies. Individual assassination was indeed contrary to established Marxist principles. In fact, Zinoviev had been supposed to be banking on this idea. Reingold remarked: “Zinoviev told me … ‘When under examination the main thing is persistently to deny any connection with the organization. If accused of terroristic activities, you must emphatically deny it and argue that terror is incompatible with the views of Bolsheviks-Marxists.’ “Nikolayev, the assassin of Kirov, had been a dupe; but, himself a Communist, he had shot down a Party leader with a quite clear idea of what he was doing. That others should refrain on Marxist principle from individual terror was not a certain hope. Desperation had already, for example, driven the Bulgarian Communist Party to the bomb outrage in Sofia Cathedral in 1925.fn7

Again, the selective assassination of NKVD defectors and of other political enemies in the West was soon to become routine. And Stalin himself—an Old Communist too!—had organized the killing of Kirov. In the circumstances, we may agree with the idea that after all assassinations by Zinoviev and Kamenev were

possible, that Reingold could have been telling the truth when he deposed: “In 1932, Zinoviev, at Kamenev’s apartment, in the presence of a number of members of the united Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre argued in favor of resorting to terror as follows: although terror is incompatible with Marxism, at the present moment these considerations must be abandoned…”¹⁶⁷

Moreover, some of the ideas placed in the mouths of Zinoviev and Kamenev were plausible. It was quite reasonable to suppose that if Stalin had been assassinated, as a result of the leadership struggle that would ensue, “negotiations would be opened with us.” As Kamenev said, “Even with Stalin we, by our policy of double-dealing, had obtained, after all, forgiveness of our mistakes by the Party and had been taken back into its ranks.”¹⁶⁸ And it was also plausible that they had anticipated the rehabilitation of Trotsky as a later result.

But to support either view of the case, there was very little genuine reference to the facts. Yet at this level, the only one worth a sensible examination, the outward semblance of an established plot could easily be shown to rest on absurdities and contradictions. For its composition, as in later cases, bears many marks of crudity. It seems that these are not attributable to Molchanov and Yagoda, but to Stalin himself, who personally insisted, for example, on the inclusion of Smirnov.

In spite of the inconsistencies and incredibilities, Pravda, on 4 September 1937, was able to give prominence to a statement by “the English jurist Pritt” from the London News Chronicle

on the complete propriety and authenticity of the trial. And this was one case among many.

But Zinoviev and Kamenev had been in exile or prison for most of the period of the active plot. Mrachkovsky had been in exile in Kazakhstan. Smimov had been in a prison cell since 1 January 1933. Vyshinsky had spoken of ways in which “even those not at liberty” had been able to take part in the plot. But no evidence had been produced of their methods of liaison. It might have been thought that even observers like Pritt would have found it odd that a conspiracy directed from outside the country should, when one of its members was actually in prison in a distant area, have continued to pass instructions through him, rather than use alternative channels--of which, the evidence implied, they had a profusion.

A further striking point is the proportion between the number of assassinations planned and those carried out. Two separate plans to kill Stalin at the meeting of the Communist International had been made, another to shoot Voroshilov, a third to assassinate Kaganovich and Ordzhonikidze, and many others simply decided on in principle.

No reference was made during the trial to some of the previous trials in connection with the Kirov assassination. The action of NKVD officers in Leningrad was not referred to. The allegation about the Latvian Consul was not mentioned.