80 years ago, on March 2, 1938, at the peak of the “Great Terror” in Moscow, in the October Hall of the House of Unions, the trial of the “Anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc” began - the last of three trials in which Vladimir Lenin’s closest associates, other famous Bolsheviks and three doctors.

This time, Nikolai Bukharin, called by Vladimir Lenin in the “Letter to the Congress” the “favorite of the party,” and the Bolshevik leader’s successor as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, Alexei Rykov, appeared before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In 1928–1929, they, together with another member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Mikhail Tomsky, opposed Stalin’s methods of modernizing the country, for which they paid. First, the three “right-wing deviationists” were removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, deprived of their former authority and influence. True, unlike the Trotskyists and Zinovievites, they were not expelled from the party until the beginning of the “Great Terror.”

Nikolai Bukharin

However, despite the fact that in the 1930s Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky no longer contradicted the General Secretary of the Central Committee Joseph Stalin, regularly demonstrating their loyalty to him, this did not save them. In 1936, during the trial in the case of the “Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center”, in which Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Grigory Evdokimov, Ivan Smirnov, Sergei Mrachkovsky, Ivan Bakaev and 10 other defendants were involved, it was announced that an investigation into the case had begun former leaders of the "right deviation". As soon as Soviet newspapers wrote about this, on August 22, 1936, Tomsky shot himself at a dacha in Bolshevo near Moscow. Bukharin, protesting against the charges brought forward, went on a hunger strike. In February 1937, the Plenum of the Central Committee decided to expel Bukharin and Rykov “from the ranks of the CPSU (b) and transfer the matter to the NKVD.” Directly from the plenum, two of Lenin’s comrades were sent to the Lubyanka.

Alexey Rykov

In March 1938, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the former People's Commissar of Communications of the USSR, Genrikh Yagoda, was in the dock with them. To justify the name of the trial, Christian Rakovsky and Nikolai Krestinsky were seated nearby. In the 1920s, they were on diplomatic work, and during the internal party struggle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, they supported the latter. And the “leader of the peoples” usually did not forgive such “pranks”.

The remaining 17 defendants were not so well known. They were: former People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR Vladimir Ivanov, former People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR Mikhail Chernov, former People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR Grigory Grinko, former People's Commissar of Foreign Trade of the USSR Arkady Rosengoltz, former Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR Prokopiy Zubarev, former adviser to the USSR Plenipotentiary Mission in Germany Sergei Bessonov, former chairman of the Central Union Isaac Zelensky, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Vasily Sharangovich, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan Akmal Ikramov, former chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Uzbekistan Faizulla Khodzhaev, former employee of the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR Veniamin Maksimov-Dikovsky, former employee of the NKVD Pavel Bulanov, former secretary Maxim Gorky Pyotr Kryuchkov and doctors Dmitry Pletnev, Ignatiy Kazakov and Lev Levin.

It is noteworthy that all the defendants, except Levin, Pletnev and Kazakov, refused defense lawyers at the trial. But they were charged with a whole “bouquet” of various charges. Some of them were accused of espionage against the USSR and treason. For example, the indictment stated that “the accused Krestinsky N.N. on the direct instructions of the enemy of the people, Trotsky entered into a treasonous relationship with German intelligence in 1921,” and “the accused Rakovsky H.G. - one of L. Trotsky’s especially trusted ones - was an agent of the British Intelligence Service since 1924 and of Japanese intelligence since 1934.”

Not everyone accepted the validity of the accusations of espionage. In his last word, Yagoda uttered words that the judges and state prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky could not like: “I am not a spy and have not been one... I had no direct connections with foreign countries, there are no facts of my direct transmission of any information. And I’m not joking when I say that if I were a spy, dozens of countries could close their intelligence services..."

Andrey Vyshinsky

Along with espionage, the defendants were accused of sabotage, terrorism, sabotage, and undermining military power countries, provoking an attack by foreign powers on the USSR, the murders of Sergei Kirov, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Valerian Kuibyshev, Maxim Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov, the assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin in 1918, the preparation of assassinations on Joseph Stalin and the People's Commissar of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov. With a feeling of particular indignation, the state prosecutor branded “the most shameful practice of throwing glass and nails into food items, in particular into oil, which affected the most pressing vital interests, the interests of the health and life of our population.” Indignant, Vyshinsky made far-reaching conclusions: “Glass and nails in oil! This is such a monstrous crime, before which, it seems to me, all other crimes of this kind pale.
In our country, rich in all kinds of resources, there could not and cannot be a situation where any product would be in short supply. That is why the task of this entire wrecking organization was to achieve such a situation that what we have in abundance would be made scarce, to keep the market and the needs of the population in a tense state. Let me remind you here of just an episode from Zelensky’s activities - the story of 50 wagons of eggs, which Zelensky deliberately destroyed in order to leave Moscow without this essential food product.

Now it’s clear why we have interruptions here and there, why suddenly, despite our wealth and abundance of products, we don’t have this, we don’t have that, we don’t have a tenth. Precisely because these traitors are to blame for this... By organizing sabotage, all these Rykovs and Bukharins, Yagodas and Grinkos, Rosengoltzes and Chernovs, and so on and so forth, pursued a specific goal in this area: to try to strangle the socialist revolution with the bony hand of hunger. It didn’t work and it never will!”

At the very beginning of the trial, all defendants, except Krestinsky, pleaded guilty to the charges. But the old Bolshevik, who headed the Secretariat of the Central Committee even before Stalin, and later worked as Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, unexpectedly declared: “I do not plead guilty. I'm not a Trotskyist. I was never a member of the “right-Trotskyist bloc,” the existence of which I did not know. “I have also not committed any of the crimes that are charged against me personally; in particular, I do not plead guilty to having connections with German intelligence.” True, the very next day Krestinsky fully confirmed his testimony at the preliminary investigation (historian Isaac Rosenthal claims that the day before he was beaten). Justifying himself, he explained that “yesterday, under the influence of a momentary acute feeling of false shame caused by the situation in the dock and the heavy impression of the announcement of the indictment, aggravated by my painful condition, I was unable to tell the truth.”

Alas, the organizers of the trial did not need a real picture. During the trial, the defendants, broken and worried about the fate of their relatives, mostly confessed. Bukharin was no exception, who, however, rightly noted that the confessions of the accused, on which the prosecution bases its conclusions, are “a medieval legal principle.”

As a result, on March 13, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Armenian military lawyer Vasily Ulrich, sentenced 18 defendants to death.

Dmitry Pletnev, Christian Rakovsky and Sergei Bessonov, who received 25, 20 and 15 years in prison respectively, served their sentences in the Oryol prison. They were shot as units of the German Wehrmacht approached on September 11, 1941 in the Medvedevsky forest near Orel.

Afterword

The accusations made at the trial echoed loudly throughout the country. Less than two weeks had passed since the verdict was pronounced, and on March 25, the grandfather of the author of the article, Ananiy Eremeevich Kolesnikov, was arrested. On this day, his daughter (the author's mother) turned 17 days old. Anania Kolesnikov was accused of spying for Romanian intelligence, and also of spoiling sausages and other products while working as the manager of store No. 38 of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky trade. He did not admit his guilt, and on July 2, 1938, at a special meeting of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, he was sentenced to 8 years in forced labor camps. He served his sentence at the Shirokiy mine, 600 km from Magadan.

After four days of discussing their case, Bukharin and Rykov reached a state of extreme exhaustion and depression. N.A. Rykova recalls that in the first days of the plenum, her father often repeated: “They want to put me in jail.” In the following days, he hardly spoke to his family, did not smoke or eat.

In accordance with the scenario of the “party investigation,” Bukharin and Rykov had to make final speeches.

Since the lengthy discussion added little to the testimony sent out before the plenum, Bukharin was unable to add anything significant to the arguments he had previously made. He unsuccessfully repeated that he could not “fully or even half explain a number of questions about the behavior of people pointing at me.”

Assuring that he “absolutely did not want to discredit new line-up People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs,” Bukharin only dared to remind that, according to Yezhov’s theses presented at the plenum, many double agents were uncovered in the NKVD, and in this regard, he suggested: “Perhaps the [NKVD] apparatus was not completely cleaned up.”

Another line that Bukharin did not dare to cross was the expression of doubts about the “Trotskyist trials.” When Molotov began to persistently interrogate him whether he considered the testimony of the defendants at these trials plausible, Bukharin, to the laughter of the audience, declared: everything in this testimony is plausible, except for what relates to him.

Throughout his speech, Bukharin was interrupted by angry and sarcastic remarks, the tone of which was set by Molotov and Kaganovich. At one of the most dramatic moments of Bukharin’s explanation, Molotov interrupted him with the words: “The devil knows what you’re doing, anything can be expected from you.” When Bukharin began to talk about his previous services to the party, Molotov remarked: “Even Trotsky did some good things, but now he’s a fascist agent, he’s screwed!”, which Bukharin immediately hastened to confirm: “True, true.”

In addition to the “leaders,” Stetsky and Mezhlauk were especially zealous in their remarks, fairly frightened by Bukharin’s reminder of their past affiliation with his “school” (Mezhlauk’s name was even mentioned in a criminal context in one of the testimonies). It was enough for Bukharin to begin to disavow accusations of an “attack on the NKVD” when Stetsky hastened to shout: “You borrowed everything from Trotsky. Trotsky wrote the same thing in the American press during the trial.”

Responding to all these malicious attacks, Bukharin continued to blame exclusively the “double-dealing Trotskyists” for creating a confrontational atmosphere around him. “The whole tragedy of my situation,” he said, “is that Pyatakov and all the others so poisoned the whole atmosphere, it’s just that the atmosphere has become such that they don’t believe human feelings - neither emotions, nor the movement of the soul, nor words. (Laughter.)"

At the end of Bukharin’s speech, shouts began to be heard from the audience: “It’s high time to go to prison!” Bukharin responded to this with the last words heard in his speech: “Do you think that because you are shouting to go to prison, I will speak differently? I won’t talk."

Rykov began his final speech with words that he clearly understood: “This meeting will be the last, the last party meeting in my life.” With despair, he repeated that the situation that had developed at the plenum was directly pushing him to thoughts of self-incrimination: “I sometimes whisper that it won’t somehow make my soul easier if I go and say something that I didn’t do... The end is the same, doesn't matter. And the temptation - maybe there will be less torment - is very big, very big. And here, when I stand before this whole row of accusations, because it takes a huge will in such conditions, an exceptionally huge will, not to lie...”

This tragic confession served as a pretext for Stalin to try to push Rykov onto the path of self-slander, setting him as an example the behavior of the executed defendants in recent trials. “There are people,” said Stalin, “who give truthful testimony, although they are terrible testimony, but in order to completely cleanse themselves of the dirt that has stuck to them. And there are people who do not give truthful testimony, because they have fallen in love with the dirt that has stuck to them and do not want to part with it.”

During Rykov’s speech, he was persistently reminded of the only “crime” to which he confessed—reading Ryutin’s leaflet with other “rightists.” When Rykov mentioned this episode again, he was showered with reproaches for failure to inform, which the Stalinists had long elevated to the rank of a party and state crime.

Voroshilov: If, luckily for you, you came across it [the leaflet], you should have taken it into your pocket and dragged it to the Central Committee...

Lyubchenko: At the plenum of the Central Committee, why didn’t he say that Tomsky had already read it?

Khrushchev: Our party candidates, if they come across an anti-party document, they take it to the cell, and you are a candidate member of the Central Committee.

Responding to these remarks, Rykov stated that he had made a “completely obvious mistake.” Not satisfied with this, Molotov reminded Rykov of another fact of his “double-dealing”: when discussing the issue of the “Ryutin Platform” at the plenum of the Central Committee in 1932, Rykov said that if he had found out that someone had this platform, he would have dragged such a person person in the GPU. In response to this, Rykov said: “Here I am guilty and admit my guilt entirely... I need to be punished for what I did, but I cannot be punished for what I didn’t do... it’s one thing if I am punished for what I didn’t bring Tomsky and others where necessary, it’s completely different when they claim that I supported this program, that this program was mine.” Not satisfied with Rykov’s qualification of his behavior, Shkiryatov made another remark: “If you didn’t report it, that means you were a participant.”

In an effort to prove his utmost loyalty to the “general line,” Rykov reported on his conversation in 1930 with a certain Trofimov, who spoke with indignation about how “dekulakization” took place. “I answered him then,” said Rykov, “that in such a business that is now going on in the village, there will be certain production costs.”

Proving the impossibility of his contacts with the “Trotskyists,” Rykov emphasized his long-standing personal hatred of them. “I repeat, I wasn’t with any Trotskyist bastard, I fought with you, I didn’t shy away from you, and I was never with them for a single minute... I fought with Zinoviev and didn’t appreciate him in any way, never anywhere... I always considered Pyatakov a hypocrite who cannot be trusted... the most disgusting person."

In response to this dissociation of Rykov from the “Trotskyists,” Stalin recalled his “bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev the day after taking power against Lenin.” This well-known fact of the collective resignation of several party leaders in 1917 after the refusal of the majority of the Central Committee to form a coalition government together with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries - Rykov confirmed: “It happened.” Then Stalin made a new, this time false accusation that Rykov, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, opposed the October Uprising. Rykov objected: “This did not happen.”

At the end of the speech, which took place under a hail of furious shouts from the seats, Rykov said with despair: “I am now a finished person, this is absolutely indisputable to me, but why mock me so in vain?.. This is a wild thing.” He concluded his speech with the words: “I repeat again that to admit to something that I did not do, to make myself... a scoundrel, as I am portrayed here, I will never do this... And I will maintain this as long as I live.”

In the nightmarish atmosphere of extrajudicial executions and unaccountable horror that gripped the entire country, preparations were vigorously underway for the third Moscow trial, to which the last group of old Bolsheviks, Lenin’s associates, was to be brought out. Stalin's inquisitors now operated more confidently. First, their methods were successfully tested on the first two processes. Secondly, the psychosis of general fear generated by the mass terror of these years armed investigators with additional means of influencing the accused.

Now, when it was necessary to break their will, threats noticeably prevailed over promises. If during the preparation of the two previous trials not all those arrested believed that Stalin could carry out wild threats regarding their children, now none of the accused doubted the seriousness of such threats. To ensure that there were no illusions on this score, Yezhov ordered that arrested NKVD agents be planted in each prison cell under the guise of being arrested. These agents were supposed to tell other prisoners stories about how ten- and twelve-year-old children were taken to be shot along with their parents. In the sadistic atmosphere of moral torture, executions and suicides, one could believe anything.

Here I would like to mention a few actual facts relating to the fate of the children of the Old Bolsheviks. I remember in the autumn of 1937 before foreign employees The NKVD heard a rumor that Yezhov ordered the heads of NKVD departments in the peripheral regions of the country to arrest the children of executed party members and sentence them based on the same articles of the Criminal Code that were applied to their parents. The rumor seemed so incredible that neither I nor my comrades took it seriously. Indeed, how could anyone believe that Stalin would be able to accuse ten- and twelve-year-old children of plotting to overthrow the Soviet government? However, the rumors were very persistent and reached us again and again, moreover, through well-informed people.

At that time, I was unable to obtain specific information about the fate of the children of executed party members, and after my break with Stalinism, it was generally difficult to expect that this data would ever fall into my hands. But life is full of surprises - the situation, to some extent, became clear quite quickly, and quite openly, with the help of the official Soviet press.

At the end of February 1939, a message appeared in Soviet newspapers about the arrest of a certain Lunkov, head of the NKVD department in Leninsk-Kuznetsk, and his subordinates for arresting young children and extorting testimony from them that they took part in a conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet Union. government. According to this report, children were held in overcrowded cells, along with ordinary criminals and political prisoners. The newspapers described a case when a ten-year-old boy named Volodya, as a result of an interrogation that lasted all night, confessed that he had been a member of a fascist organization for three years.

One of the prosecution witnesses testified at the trial:

– We asked the guys, for example, how they know what fascism is. They answered something like this: “We only saw fascists in the movies. They wear white caps.” When we asked the guys about Trotskyists and Bukharinites, they answered: “We met these people in the prison where we were kept.”

Since the children met Trotskyists and Bukharinites in prison, it means that the Trotskyists and Bukharinites, in turn, saw the children there and, of course, knew that they were accused of an anti-state conspiracy and other crimes punishable by death. It is not surprising that the accused, who appeared before the court at the third of the Moscow trials, were ready at any cost to save the lives of their own children and protect them from Stalin’s torture investigation.

Let no one be surprised by the fact that Stalin decided to bring to open court some facts discrediting his system. This was a common tactic for Stalin: when his crimes became public, he rushed to absolve himself of any responsibility and shift the blame onto his officials, exposing them in open trials. They, too, valued their own lives, and at such trials not a word was said that they committed crimes, guided by direct instructions from above.

At the third Moscow trial, which began in Moscow in March 1938, the main defendants were: Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Comintern, member of Lenin's Politburo and one of the party's leading theoreticians; Alexei Rykov, also a former member of the Politburo and Lenin’s deputy in the Council of People’s Commissars, who headed the Soviet government after Lenin’s death; Nikolai Krestinsky, former secretary of the party's Central Committee and Lenin's deputy for organizational issues; Christian Rakovsky, one of the most respected old members of the party, who had enormous services to the revolution and was appointed, at the direction of Lenin, the leader of Soviet Ukraine.

Nikolai Bukharin (back row left) and Stalin, who would later shoot him

And now, next to these illustrious party leaders, in the dock was an odious figure, whose appearance among Lenin’s arrested friends and associates was a sensation of world significance.

We are talking about the former head of the NKVD Genrikh Yagoda. The same Yagoda who, a year and a half ago, on the fateful August night of 1936, stood with Yezhov in the basement of the NKVD building, watching the execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev and other convicts at the first trial. And now Yagoda himself, by order of Stalin, is put in the dock as a participant in the same conspiracy and one of the closest accomplices of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and other old Bolsheviks, whom he tortured and executed.

It would be difficult to imagine a more monstrous absurdity. It seemed that Stalin had spent all his talent as a falsifier on organizing the first two trials and his “creative” imagination had exhausted itself...

The true explanation of what might seem simply absurd to a superficial observer is one of the most important secrets of all three Moscow trials. The fact is that Stalin did not use such an “idiotic” move out of thoughtlessness. On the contrary, he was extremely shrewd and devilishly clever when it came to political intrigue. He simply could not avoid the specific difficulties that all counterfeiters face when traces of their forgeries become apparent.

So, having invented the monstrous absurdity that Yagoda was an accomplice of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin completely abdicated responsibility for some long-standing crime, the traces of which were not sufficiently erased and led directly to him, Stalin. This crime was the same murder of Kirov.

I have already written that the morning after the murder of Kirov, Stalin, leaving all his affairs, arrived in Leningrad - ostensibly to investigate the circumstances of the murder, but in reality to check whether all the necessary precautions were observed. Having discovered that the “hand of the NKVD” was clearly visible in the case, he did everything to cover up the traces of this participation. He hastened to give the order to shoot Kirov’s killer and ordered the liquidation without trial of everyone who knew about the role of the NKVD in this matter.

However, it was in vain that Stalin thought that the mystery of Kirov’s murder would remain a mystery forever. He clearly miscalculated, not paying attention to, say, the fact that Kirov’s deputies were surprised by the mysterious disappearance of his guards from the ill-fated corridor. Kirov's deputies also knew that his killer - Nikolaev - had already been detained in Smolny two weeks earlier, that he had a loaded revolver with him even then, and nevertheless, two weeks later he was again given a pass to Smolny.

But the most suspicious thing, which confirmed the rumors that Kirov was “liquidated” by the authorities themselves, was Stalin’s order to Agranov and Mironov: to clear Leningrad of the “Kirovites.” Hundreds of prominent figures who formed the basis of the Kirov political and economic apparatus were summoned to the Leningrad NKVD department. Each of them was ordered to leave Leningrad within a week and move to a new place of work, which was selected, as a rule, in remote areas of the Urals and Siberia.

For the first time in the history of the Soviet state, party officials received new appointments not from the party, but from the NKVD. The deadline assigned for departure was so short that many enterprise directors did not have time to transfer cases. Attempts to protest this arbitrariness or obtain some kind of clarification were met with a stereotypical reply: “You have stayed too long in Leningrad.” During the summer of 1935, about 3,500 people were expelled from Leningrad in this way. This whole campaign was very reminiscent of the purge of city organizations from “Zinovievites” several years earlier, after the defeat of the Zinovievist opposition. It is not surprising that there was a rumor in party circles that Kirov led the new opposition, but it was destroyed in the bud.

The NKVD employees also knew more than they should have, and, apparently, through them the information that the Leningrad NKVD department had a hand in the murder of Kirov leaked to the Central Committee apparatus.

In those circles of party members who were aware of the situation, it was known that Yagoda was only the nominal head of the NKVD, and the real owner of this department was Stalin. These circles perfectly understood (or guessed) that since the NKVD was involved in the murder of Kirov, it means that the murder was committed on the orders of Stalin.

Stalin learned belatedly that the mystery of Kirov’s murder had, in general, ceased to be a secret. Yagoda, who supplied him with a variety of information, including reports of various rumors and sentiments, was afraid to report this. Yagoda’s ears were still ringing with Stalin’s furious remark: “Asshole!”, thrown at him in Leningrad. Prominent members of the Central Committee, who gradually learned the secret of Kirov's murder, were also in no hurry to inform Stalin about it, since this would automatically place themselves in the category of people who know “too much.”

In general, when all this became known to Stalin, it was already too late to think about a more thorough concealment of the truth. There was only one thing left; declare openly that the murder of Kirov was the work of the NKVD, and attribute everything to Yagoda. And since in the first two Moscow trials responsibility for this murder was assigned to Zinoviev and Kamenev, now Yagoda was supposed to become their accomplice. Thus, the tortuous subterfuges that usually accompany any fraud forced Stalin to bring together two mutually exclusive versions. Thus was born this absurd legend that Yagoda, who led the preparation of the first Moscow trial and then executed Zinoviev and Kamenev, was in fact their accomplice.

The appearance of the all-powerful chief of Stalin's secret police in the dock created a furor in the country. Moreover, Stalin, according to his custom, accused him of many incredible sins. It turns out that Yagoda, who headed Soviet counterintelligence for fifteen years, was himself a foreign spy. That alone sounded fantastic. But moreover, Yagoda, known throughout the country as the ferocious executioner of Trotskyists, himself turned out to be a Trotskyist and Trotsky’s trusted agent.

It was Yagoda who sprayed the walls of Yezhov’s office with poison to kill Yezhov. It was he who recruited a whole team of doctors to “heal to death” those whom he did not dare to kill openly. When such techniques were mentioned, legends about killing opponents with the aroma of poisonous flowers and the smoke of poisoned candles were resurrected in the mind.

However, the people could not regard everything that was happening as just a nightmarish legend. Prosaic transcripts of court hearings and reports of executions of the accused gave these nightmares a frightening reality. From everything that was happening, people could draw the only important conclusion for themselves: if the almighty Yagoda was so unceremoniously thrown into prison, then no one in the USSR could feel safe. Since the creator of the inquisitorial machine himself could not withstand its pressure, then no mortal should hope for mercy.

If Stalin had not had an urgent need to accuse Yagoda of Kirov’s murder, he, of course, would not have put him in the dock. Losing Yagoda, refusing his invaluable services, was a serious sacrifice for Stalin. Over the fifteen years that they worked hand in hand, Yagoda became almost Stalin’s “second self.” No one understood Stalin as well as Yagoda. None of those close to him did so much for him. Stalin trusted no one as much as Yagoda.

Possessing Stalinist traits - the same resourcefulness and suspicion - and almost Stalinist virtuosity in the art of political intrigue, it was Yagoda who entwined Stalin's potential rivals with a treacherous web and carefully selected unprincipled but reliable assistants for him.

When Stalin began to suspect one of the people's commissars or members of the Politburo, Yagoda appointed one of his trusted employees to deputize the suspect. Thus, Yagoda’s assistant Prokofiev alternately held the posts of Deputy People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry and People’s Commissar of State Control. The heads of the NKVD departments, Blagonravov and Kishkin, were appointed assistants to Lazar Kaganovich, People's Commissar of Railways. Yagoda's assistants Messing and Loganovsky were sent as deputies to the People's Commissar of Foreign Trade, and Yagoda's deputy Trilisser was appointed assistant to Pyatnitsky, who at that time led the Comintern. I could name many others, selected by Yagoda to strengthen Stalin’s dictatorial power in the state and party apparatus.

Yagoda collected compromising information for Stalin concerning the top leaders of the state. When the behavior of such a leader began to show the slightest signs of independence, Stalin only had to reach out to the dossier collected by Yagoda. In such a dossier, along with serious documents, for example, evidence of the former affiliation of a Soviet statesman with informants of the tsarist police, one could find ridiculous reports such as that the wife of this figure beats her housekeeper or that on Easter she secretly went to church to bless Easter cakes. The most common sin was this: almost all of Stalin’s comrades, filling out party forms, ascribed to themselves pre-revolutionary party experience, which in reality they did not have.

The dossier also reflected scandals related to the sexual promiscuity of the “leaders.” I happened to see a report of this kind relating to Kuibyshev, who held the position of deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Once he “kidnapped” the wife of the chairman of the board of the State Bank from a banquet and hid in her company for three days in a row, so that all meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars scheduled for these days had to be cancelled. Another report dated back to 1932 and was related to the adventures of Politburo member Rudzutak. At one of the receptions, he heavily treated the thirteen-year-old daughter of the second secretary of the Moscow Party Committee to alcohol and then raped her. Another report relating to the same Rudzutak: in 1927, having arrived in Paris, he invited a group of employees of the Soviet embassy with their wives to go to dubious establishments and there distributed tips to prostitutes in large bills. As a rule, Stalin did not use these incriminating reports until he considered it necessary to specifically call one or another of his dignitaries to order.

Yagoda could be called Stalin's eyes and ears. He installed camouflaged microphones in the apartments and dachas of members of the Politburo and people's commissars and reported all the information obtained in this way to Stalin. Stalin knew all the ins and outs of his comrades, and was often aware of their most secret thoughts, carelessly expressed in a conversation with his wife, son, brother or friend. All this protected Stalin’s one-man power from any unexpected surprises.

By the way, Stalin was extremely jealous of all manifestations of friendship among his associates, especially members of the Politburo. If two or three of them started meeting in their free time, Yagoda had to prick up his ears and make a corresponding report to Stalin. After all, people connected by personal friendship tend to trust each other. And this could already lead to the emergence of a group or faction directed against Stalin. In such cases, he tried to provoke a quarrel between new friends, and if they were difficult to understand what was required of them, then to separate them by transferring one of them to work outside Moscow or using other “organizational measures.”

The services that Yagoda provided to Stalin were serious and varied. But Yagoda’s main value was that he persecuted Stalin’s political opponents with unprecedented cruelty, wiping out the remnants of the opposition and the old Leninist guard from the face of the earth.

For all that, Yagoda was the only one whom, despite his enormous power, Stalin could not fear as a rival. He knew that if Yagoda decided to put together a political faction directed against his, Stalinist, leadership, the party would not follow him. The path to an agreement with the old guard was forever closed for him by the corpses of the old Bolsheviks, whom he shot on Stalin's orders. Yagoda could not put together a new opposition from those who surrounded Stalin - members of the Politburo and government hated him with fierce hatred.

They could not come to terms with the fact that Stalin entrusted Yagoda, a man without a revolutionary past, with such broad power that Yagoda even received the right to interfere in the affairs of the People's Commissariats, subordinate to them, the old revolutionaries. Voroshilov ventured into a protracted struggle with the special departments of the NKVD, created by Yagoda in all military units and engaged in tireless surveillance in the army. Kaganovich, People's Commissar of Railways, was irritated by the interference of the NKVD Transport Directorate in his work. Members of the Politburo who led industry and trade were stung by the fact that the Economic Directorate of the NKVD regularly uncovered scandalous cases of corruption, embezzlement and theft at their enterprises.

In the departments under his command, Yagoda kept thousands of secret informants, with the help of whom he could at any moment scrape together many unpleasant facts that would discredit their work. The general hostility towards Yagoda was also explained by the fact that all these big shots from Stalin’s retinue felt constantly as if under a glass bell, and could not take a step without the “personal guard” assigned to them by the same Yagoda.

All this suited Stalin very much: he knew that Yagoda would never enter into any kind of conspiracy with members of the Politburo, and if an illegal group arose among the members of the Central Committee, it would not be difficult for Yagoda and the powerful apparatus of the NKVD to deal with it. For a dictator always afraid of losing power, it was extremely important to have a head of security and personal protection on whom he could rely.

In general, Stalin and Yagoda needed each other. It was an alliance in which there was no place for a third partner. They were connected by terrible secrets, crimes and the hatred felt by the people for both. Yagoda was Stalin's faithful watchdog: by protecting his power, he also protected his own well-being.

In 1930, one of Yagoda’s deputies, Trilisser, an old party member who had served ten years in tsarist penal servitude, on his own initiative undertook research into the biography of his boss. Yagoda’s autobiography, written at the request of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, turned out to be false. Yagoda wrote that he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1907, was sent into exile by the tsarist government in 1911, and subsequently took an active part in October revolution. Almost all of this was untrue. In fact, Yagoda joined the party only in the summer of 1917, and before that he had nothing in common with the Bolsheviks. Trilisser went to Stalin and showed him the fruits of his labor. However, this investigation had unpleasant consequences not for Yagoda, but for Trilisser himself. Stalin drove him out, and Yagoda soon received a promotion. However, it would be naive to think that Trilisser really incurred Stalin’s wrath. On the contrary, Stalin was glad to receive information compromising Yagoda, moreover, information that Yagoda himself would never have decided to add to his dossier. Stalin always preferred to surround himself not with impeccably honest and independent revolutionaries, but with people with secret sins, so that on occasion he could use them as an instrument of blackmail.

Members of the Politburo still remembered the time when they decided to openly oppose Yagoda. They then tried to persuade Stalin to remove Yagoda and appoint one of them to such an important post. For example, I know that in 1932 Kaganovich was eager to take this post. However, Stalin refused to cede such a powerful lever of his one-man dictatorship to the members of the Politburo. He wanted to use it alone. The NKVD was supposed to remain in his hands a blind weapon, which at a critical moment could be turned against any part of the Central Committee and the Politburo.

By pitting Stalin against Yagoda, Kaganovich and some other members of the Politburo tried to convince him that Yagoda was the Fouché of the Russian revolution. This meant Joseph Fouché, the famous Minister of Police during the French Revolution, who successively served the Revolution, the Directory, Napoleon, Louis the Eighteenth, without being loyal to any of these regimes. This historical parallel, according to Kaganovich, should have aroused bad feelings in Stalin and prompted him to remove Yagoda. By the way, it was Kaganovich who insidiously assigned Yagoda the nickname “Fouche”. A translation of Stefan Zweig’s talented book dedicated to the French Minister of Police was just published in Moscow; the book was noticed in the Kremlin and made an impression on Stalin. Yagoda knew that Kaganovich had nicknamed him “Fouche,” and was pretty annoyed by this. He made many attempts to appease Kaganovich and establish friendly relations with him, but was not successful in this.

I remember how funny vanity Yagoda’s face exuded just three or four months before his unexpected dismissal from the post of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs (he was appointed People’s Commissar of Communications, and soon after that he was arrested). Yagoda not only did not foresee what would happen to him in the near future, on the contrary, he never felt as confident as he did then, in the summer of 1936. After all, he had just rendered Stalin the greatest of all services: he prepared the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev and “recruited” other close Leninist comrades to them.

In 1936, Yagoda's career reached its zenith. In the spring, he received the rank of General Commissar of State Security, equivalent to a marshal, and a new military uniform, designed especially for him. Stalin showed Yagoda an unprecedented honor: he invited him to take an apartment in the Kremlin. This indicates that he introduced Yagoda into the close circle of his associates, to which only members of the Politburo belonged.

There are several palaces, cathedrals and administrative buildings located on the territory of the Kremlin, but there are almost no apartments in the modern sense of the word. Stalin and other members of the Politburo occupied very modest-sized apartments there, in which servants lived before the revolution. At night everyone went to their country residences. However, Stalin’s dignitaries considered having an apartment in the Kremlin, even the smallest one, to be incomparably more prestigious than living in a magnificent mansion outside the Kremlin walls.

As if fearing that Stalin would take back his invitation, Yagoda moved to the Kremlin the next day, however, leaving behind a luxurious mansion built especially for him in Milyutinsky Lane. Despite the fact that the days were hot, Yagoda came from here to his country residence Ozerki only once a week. Obviously, he liked the Moscow dust and stuffiness more than the coolness of the park in Ozerki. The fact that Yagoda became an inhabitant of the Kremlin was discussed in the highest spheres as a major political event. No one had any doubt that a new star had risen over the Kremlin.

The following story was told among NKVD employees. Stalin was allegedly so pleased with the capitulation of Zinoviev and Kamenev that he said to Yagoda: “Today you have earned a place in the Politburo.” This meant that at the next congress Yagoda would become a candidate member of the Politburo.

I don’t know how the old foxes Fouche or Machiavelli felt in such situations. Did they foresee the storm that was gathering over their heads to sweep them away in a few months? But I know well that Yagoda, who met Stalin every day, could not read anything in his eyes that would give cause for alarm. On the contrary, it seemed to Yagoda that he was closer than ever to his long-standing goal. While members of the Politburo looked down on him and remained aloof with him, now they will have to make room and give him a place next to them as an equal.

Yagoda was so inspired that he began to work with an energy unusual even for him, striving to further improve the NKVD apparatus and give it even greater external shine. He ordered to speed up work on the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, hoping that the canal, built by prisoners under the leadership of the NKVD, would be named after him. There was more than just vanity here: Yagoda hoped to “equal” to Kaganovich, after whom the Moscow metro was named.

The frivolity shown by Yagoda during these months reached the point of ridiculousness. He became interested in dressing up NKVD officers in new uniform with gold and silver braid and at the same time worked on a charter regulating the rules of conduct and etiquette of NKVD members. Having just introduced a new uniform in his department, he was not satisfied with this and decided to introduce a super uniform for the highest ranks of the NKVD: a white gabardine jacket with gold embroidery, blue trousers and patent leather boots. Since patent leather was not produced in the USSR, Yagoda ordered it to be imported from abroad. The main decoration of this super uniform was to be a small gilded dirk, similar to the one worn by naval officers before the revolution.

Yagoda further ordered that the changing of the NKVD guards take place in full view of the public, with pomp and music, as was customary in the Tsar’s Life Guards. He was interested in the regulations of the tsarist guard regiments and, imitating them, issued a number of completely stupid orders relating to the rules of conduct of employees and the relationship between subordinates and superiors. People who just yesterday were on friendly terms now had to stretch out in front of each other, like mechanical soldiers. Clicking heels, dashingly saluting, laconic and respectful answers to questions from superiors - this is what was now revered as mandatory signs of an exemplary security officer and communist.

All this was just the beginning of a whole series of innovations introduced into the NKVD and, by the way, into the Red Army too. There was only one goal: to make it clear to the workers Soviet Union that the revolution, with all its seductive promises, was over and that the Stalinist regime crushed the country as thoroughly and firmly as the Romanov dynasty, which lasted three centuries.

It is not difficult to imagine how Yagoda felt when the hand of unfaithful fate toppled him from the pinnacle of power and pushed him into one of the countless prison cells where thousands of innocent people languished for years. Protecting the dictator's power and scrupulously following Stalin's punitive policy, Yagoda signed sentences for these people without even considering it necessary to look at them. Now he himself was destined to follow the path of his countless victims.

Yagoda was so shocked by the arrest that he resembled a tamed animal that could not get used to the cage. He paced the floor of his cell non-stop, lost the ability to sleep and could not eat. When the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Yezhov, was informed that Yagoda was talking to himself, he became alarmed and sent a doctor to him.

Fearing that Yagoda would lose his mind and be unsuitable for the court spectacle, Yezhov asked Slutsky (who was then still the head of the Foreign Directorate of the NKVD) to visit Yagoda in his cell from time to time. Yagoda was delighted at the arrival of Slutsky. He had the ability to imitate any human feeling, but this time he seemed to really sympathize with Yagoda and even sincerely shed a tear, however, not forgetting to record every word of the arrested man, so that he could then convey everything to Yezhov. Yagoda, of course, understood that Slutsky did not come of his own free will, but this, in essence, did not change anything. Yagoda could be sure of one thing: Slutsky, who himself feared for his future, would have felt much happier if his boss had not been Yezhov, but still he, Yagoda. It would be better for Slutsky to visit Yezhov here, in a prison cell...

Yagoda did not hide in front of Slutsky. He openly outlined to him his hopeless situation and complained bitterly that in a few months Yezhov would destroy such a wonderful NKVD machine, which he had to work on for fifteen whole years.

During one of these meetings, one evening, when Slutsky was about to leave, Yagoda said to him:

– You can write in your report to Yezhov that I say: “Probably God still exists!”

- What's happened? – Slutsky asked in surprise, slightly confused by the tactless mention of the “report to Yezhov.”

“Very simple,” Yagoda answered, either seriously or jokingly. – From Stalin I deserved nothing but gratitude for my faithful service; I had to deserve the most severe punishment from God for breaking his commandments a thousand times. Now look; where I am, and judge for yourself: there is a God or not...

1) Based on the investigative materials of the NKVD, the confrontation of Comrade Bukharin with Radek, Pyatakov, Sosnovsky and Sokolnikov in the presence of members of the Politburo and the confrontation of Comrade Rykov with Sokolnikov, as well as a comprehensive discussion of the issue at the Plenum - the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks establishes, at least that vol. Bukharin and Rykov knew about the criminal terrorist, espionage and sabotage activities of the Trotskyist center and not only did not fight it, but hid it from the party without reporting it to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and thereby contributed to it.

2) Based on the investigative materials of the NKVD, the confrontation of Comrade Bukharin with the rightists - with Kulikov and Astrov, in the presence of members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the confrontation of Comrade Rykov with Kotov, Schmidt, Nesterov and Radin, as well as a comprehensive discussion issue at the Plenum of the Central Committee - the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks establishes, at a minimum, that vol. Bukharin and Rykov knew about the organization of criminal terrorist groups on the part of their students and supporters - Slepkov, Tsetlin, Astrov, Maretsky, Nesterov, Radin, Kulikov, Kotov, Uglanov, Zaitsev, Kuzmin, Sapozhnikov and others, and not only did not fight them, but they encouraged them.

3) The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks establishes that Comrade Bukharin’s note to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, where he tries to refute the testimony of the Trotskyists and right-wing terrorists named above, is in its content a slanderous document, which not only reveals the complete powerlessness of Comrade Bukharin refute the testimony of Trotskyists and right-wing terrorists against him, but under the guise of a lawyer challenging this testimony, he makes slanderous attacks against the NKVD and allows attacks on the party and its Central Committee unworthy of a communist, which is why Comrade Bukharin’s note cannot be considered otherwise than as completely untenable and undeserving of any -trust document.

Taking into account what has been said and taking into account that during Lenin’s lifetime Comrade Bukharin led a struggle against the party and against Lenin himself both before the October Revolution (the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat) and after the October Revolution (Brest-Litovsk Peace, party program, national question, trade union discussion) that Comrade Rykov also fought against the party and against Lenin himself both before the October Revolution and during the October Uprising (he was against the October Revolution), as well as after the October Revolution (demanded a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries and in the form of a protest left the post of People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, for which he received the nickname of a strikebreaker from Lenin), which undoubtedly indicates that the political fall of comrade. Bukharin and Rykov is not an accident or a surprise - taking all this into account, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks believes that vol. Bukharin and Rykov deserve immediate expulsion from the party and trial by the Military Tribunal.

But based on the fact that vol. Bukharin and Rykov, unlike the Trotskyists and Zinovievites, have not yet been subjected to serious party penalties (they have not been expelled from the party), the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decides to limit itself to: 1) Excluding comrade. Bukharin and Rykov from the list of candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and from the ranks of the CPSU (b). 2) Transfer the case of Bukharin and Rykov to the NKVD.

Political biography of Stalin. Volume 2 Kapchenko Nikolai Ivanovich

2. Presumption of guilt: the trial of Bukharin - Rykov and others.

The trial of the military shocked the whole country. But even greater shocks awaited her. Stalin’s plans also included holding a public trial, which would become a kind of crown of this entire campaign. The outlines of the preparation for the most grandiose of all processes were clearly visible in the queue. And it was quite obvious that Bukharin and Rykov should become the central figures in the upcoming legal action. The decisions adopted at the February-March plenum could not but receive their logical development in the organization of the process. Apparently, Stalin experienced a feeling of dissatisfaction with the way the two previous court performances were conducted, since in their course, as already noted, despite careful preparation, there were significant overlaps that caused some, especially abroad, to have reasonable doubts about the guilt of the convicted . The new process, among other tasks, was designed to dispel these doubts. But the main thing is that he had to demonstrate the complete and unconditional bankruptcy of all the leader’s former political opponents. Moreover, it was important to present them before the whole country and before the whole world not as political opponents, but as a group of political bandits, spies of foreign intelligence services, terrorists and traitors, people who had nothing in common with the Bolshevik Party. The scale of Stalin's plans, of course, suggests that his sense of proportion and common sense, because he decided to combine incompatible things into one whole. The idea of ​​the existence of a united right-wing Trotskyist bloc, which the leader laid as the basis for the process being prepared, could not but raise great doubts for anyone familiar with the history of the internal party struggle in the 1920s.

After all, Bukharin in practice showed himself to be an irreconcilable opponent of Trotsky and his political concepts. At times, in the fight against Trotskyism, he showed himself to be even tougher than Stalin himself. It is known that in a number of cases Stalin took a softer position towards Trotsky than adherents of the right line. And now the leader decided to unite them into something single. Although it must be said that they were most likely united only by the fact that they found themselves in the same dock. Apart from, of course, hatred of the leader, which is equally inherent in both. Stalin, of course, knew from history and his own experience of political struggle that common hatred sometimes unites much stronger and more reliably than communal ideological platforms, etc. In short, the leader had his own weighty calculations and all kinds of moral, ethical and other considerations of his were not particularly worried, they receded into the background before the prospect of constructing some kind of general right-wing Trotskyist conspiracy, in which Trotsky played the main role, and Bukharin, Rykov and others danced to his tune.

Preparing a new trial, due to its, one might say, universal nature (both in terms of the content of the charges brought and the personal composition of the defendants) required a lot of time and effort. It was necessary to break the resistance, first of all, of the main figures of the upcoming legal spectacle - Bukharin and Rykov. Bukharin presented a particular difficulty in this regard. Stalin, of course, knew not only his weaknesses, but also strengths and was aware that it would not be as easy to break Bukharin as it was with Zinoviev and Kamenev, as well as Pyatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov.

Moreover, after his arrest on February 27, 1937, right at the plenum of the Central Committee, Bukharin showed steadfastness during interrogations and a lack of any readiness to meet the investigation halfway. The interrogation protocols were sent personally to Stalin, and he, one might say, gave the main direction to the course of the entire investigation. For his part, Bukharin repeatedly sent personal letters to Stalin, in which he decisively rejected the accusations brought against him. And these accusations, in particular, were based on the testimony of secret NKVD officer V. Astrov, who at one time belonged to Bukharin’s school. This sexot diligently played the role of a provocateur, which he later admitted himself when, in post-Stalin times, the validity of the verdict and the entire process was checked.

As investigators processed him, Bukharin became increasingly aware of the ominous inevitability that he could no longer escape. He is desperately trying to awaken at least some remnants of humanity in Stalin. It comes to the point that in a letter dated October 10, 1937, he writes to him: “When I had hallucinations, I saw you several times and once Nadezhda Sergeevna(N.S. Alliluyeva, Stalin’s late wife - N.K.). She came up to me and said: “What did they do to you, N.I.? I’ll tell Joseph to bail you out.” It was so real that I almost jumped up and started writing to... you bail me out! So my reality was shuffled with delirium. I know that N.S. would never have believed that I was plotting against you, and it was not for nothing that the subconscious of my unfortunate “I” caused this nonsense. And I talked to you for hours".

Of course, it was naive on Bukharin’s part to resort to such methods to dissuade Stalin and beg him for mercy. Such argumentation clearly could not move the leader. And in confusion, Bukharin moves from flattery to hidden threats not to obey the will of the investigators, that is, the will of Stalin himself. He repeatedly states in his letters to Stalin that he, Bukharin, should not count on “cooperation” with investigators, that he will not admit his guilt in court: “I know very well that absolutely anything can be done to me now (both “technically” and politically). But at these points all the strength of my soul immediately gathers for protest, and under no circumstances will I go to such meanness as to slander myself out of fear or other similar motives.”

Bukharin's letters are the cry of the human soul. And, of course, an objective person will not have the desire to accuse him of groveling before his executioner. You had to be in his place to have any right to reproach him for his immoderate enthusiasm for Stalin and his policies. Although, of course, Bukharin was well aware of what was really happening and what fate awaited him in the coming months. In his address to the future generation of party leaders, he gave a sober assessment of the current situation: “...At present, for the most part, the so-called NKVD bodies are a degenerated organization of unprincipled, decomposed, well-to-do officials who, taking advantage of the former authority of the Cheka, for the sake of Stalin’s morbid suspicion, I’m afraid to say more, in the pursuit of orders and glory, do their vile deeds , by the way, not realizing that they are simultaneously destroying themselves - history does not tolerate witnesses to dirty deeds!

These “miraculous” bodies can grind any member of the Central Committee, any member of the party into powder, turn into a traitor-terrorist, saboteur, spy. If Stalin had doubted himself, confirmation would have followed instantly.”

The last thought is especially curious - “if Stalin had doubted himself,” then his fate would also have been sealed. I think that in in this case Bukharin is clearly exaggerating, paying tribute to some kind of incomprehensible historical fatalism that stands above the human mind. Stalin simply could not become a victim of a campaign that he himself launched. And it is hardly legitimate to assume that the NKVD would dare to raise a hand against their true master. This is an obvious exaggeration that has no real confirmation by facts or even the semblance of facts. The NKVD did not determine the strategy of repression; it was only the main implementer of this strategy. Subsequent events confirmed this with complete convincing.

In this context, the arguments on the issue of repression by one of Stalin’s biographers, R. Payne, are interesting. He wrote: “Only a person with absolute power in the country could carry out these processes. They weren't necessary and they weren't even dangerous to him, but he wasn't bothered by issues of necessity or threat. They did not add anything to his power, since he had already brought the Russian people into a state of humiliating submission to his will. His real enemies were not among the accused, but in Berlin. But he needed a bloodbath. And then R. Payne makes a very categorical and, in my opinion, rather dubious conclusion: Stalin has already "couldn't stop the purges or change them in any way even if I wanted to".

How could he, if he wanted! But so far everything was going according to the developed plan.

From March 2 to March 12, 1938, a trial was held in the House of Unions in Moscow in the case of the so-called. anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc. Three former members of the Politburo were in the dock: N.I. Bukharin, A.I. Rykov and N.N. Krestinsky. Together with them there were former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G.G. Yagoda, former People's Commissar of Foreign Trade A.P. Rosengoltz, former People's Commissar of Agriculture M.A. Chernov, Yagoda’s secretary P.P. Bulanov, former employee of the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR V.A. Maksimov-Dikovsky, former head of the Soviet government of Ukraine and former active figure in the Comintern X.G. Rakovsky, former People's Commissar of Finance G.F. Grinko, former chairman of the Central Union I.A. Zelensky, former People's Commissar of the Timber Industry V.I. Ivanov, former Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture P.T. Zubarev, former adviser to the USSR Embassy in Germany S.A. Bessonov, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan A.I. Ikramov, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus V.F. Sharangovich, former Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek SSR F.U. Khodzhaev. The tragic fate of high-ranking party and Soviet workers in this process was shared by non-party people - doctors D.D. Pletnev, I.N. Kazakov and L.G. Levin, as well as personal secretary A.M. Gorky P.L. Kryuchkov.

The personal composition of the defendants testified to the universal nature of the trial itself: it was designed to demonstrate with maximum conviction the breadth and ramifications of the anti-Soviet conspiracy and at the same time made it possible, through such a selection of defendants, to motivate the nature of the charges brought. It is not known whether Stalin thought of this process as the last, summing up a kind of general result of all previous processes. But there are good reasons to believe that this was indeed the case, since there were no longer any prominent figures left from the leader’s former political opponents who could be brought to public trial.

Here it is necessary to make one important addition: in addition to open trials, the Stalinist purge also included a series of closed trials, during which sentences (usually the most severe) were handed down in a simplified and accelerated manner to those accused who, for one reason or another, could not be brought to trial open court. Either the defendants were not amenable to processing by the investigators, or for other reasons they preferred to be liquidated without unnecessary publicity. There were significantly more such cases than those that appeared during public trials. It should be noted that Stalin, when organizing court performances, did not pay primary attention to how they would be received abroad, although this circumstance played by no means a secondary role. The main emphasis was placed on the significance of these processes for broad sections of the population of the country itself.

In accordance with this idea, the accusation formula was drawn up. I will briefly outline the main points of the accusation, which to one degree or another concerned all those who appeared before the court. They were accused of organizing a conspiratorial group called the Right-Trotskyist bloc, which aimed to overthrow the existing socialist social and state system in the USSR, restore capitalism and the power of the bourgeoisie in the USSR, dismember the USSR and tear it away from it in favor of states hostile to our country ( meant primarily Germany and Japan) Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Primorye. Specifically, they were charged with espionage against the Soviet state and treason, with the murder of Kirov, Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky and conspiracy against Lenin in 1918. Along with these main points, the accusation formula also included sabotage, sabotage, terror, undermining the military power of the USSR, and provoking a military attack on the Soviet state. The charge of conspiracy against Lenin was expanded and formulated as an intention to physically destroy Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov.

Stalin took an active personal part in preparing the trial. This was expressed in the fact that he determined the main directions of the indictment, and at the stage of the preliminary investigation he also participated in interrogations of Bukharin in confrontations. So, he accused N.I. Bukharin is that during the period of the Brest Peace he blocked with the Socialist Revolutionaries and hid it. To which N.I. Bukharin replied: “What’s the point in lying to me about the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. One day the Left Social Revolutionaries came and said: “Let's create a cabinet. We will arrest Lenin and form a cabinet.” I told this to Ilyich later. “Give me your word of honor that you won’t tell anyone about this,” Ilyich told me. Then, when I fought with you against Trotsky, I cited this as an example - this is what factional struggle leads to. This then caused a bomb explosion.".

Despite the absurdity of this accusation, it was included in the indictment and during the trial appeared as almost the main “fact” designed to discredit Bukharin as a party favorite. Things even got to the point of obviously ridiculous things: the direct perpetrator of the judicial farce, Yezhov, even included in the crime of the accused an attempt to poison him himself by spraying a mercury solution in his office. In a word, both the scriptwriters and the directors of the trial clearly had enough, piling up an incredible pile of charges, which, in their opinion, should have finally pilloried the defendants.

I will not go into details of this process. But I believe that it is worth dwelling on some of his most remarkable moments, primarily on Bukharin’s behavior during the court hearings. It should be noted that in general the process, at first glance, seemed to be successful from the point of view of its main organizer. However, in reality, not everything proceeded as originally planned. All the accused, with the exception of Krestinsky, pleaded guilty. Although, as it later became clear during the trial, these confessions cannot be considered complete, since the defendants categorically denied their guilt on a number of counts. Krestinsky generally refused to plead guilty on the first day of the trial. However, he soon took back his refusal, and motivated it as follows: “I admit that my refusal to admit guilt was objectively a counter-revolutionary step, but subjectively for me it was not a hostile attack. I'm just everything last days before the trial I was under the heavy impression of the terrible facts that I learned from the indictment and, especially, from its second section. My negative attitude towards the criminal past after becoming familiar with these facts, of course, did not decrease, but only worsened, but it seemed beyond my strength to admit guilt in the face of the whole world, in the face of all working people. It seemed to me that it was easier to die than to create an idea for the whole world of my even remote participation in the murder of Gorky, about which I really knew nothing.”.

It is difficult to say what was hidden behind this episode: either Krestinsky’s real reluctance to admit his guilt in heinous crimes or some kind of not-so-subtle idea of ​​the organizers of the trial to demonstrate its objective character from beginning to end. It is curious that Trotsky predicted this version even before the start of the trial. He, in particular, wrote literally the day before the opening of the trial: “We can expect some improvements in the new process compared to the previous ones. The monotony of the defendants’ repentance at the first two trials made a depressing impression even on patented “friends of the USSR.” It is possible, therefore, that this time we will see defendants who, in the course of their role, will deny their guilt and then, under cross-examination, admit themselves defeated. It can, however, be predicted in advance that none of the defendants will cause any difficulties to Prosecutor Vyshinsky.”.

The course of the trial confirmed Trotsky’s hypothesis, although, it must be said, it is still difficult to give a clear and precise answer to the question: was the episode with Krestinsky staged or did the defendant really show willpower and courage by rejecting the accusations against him. However, these details do not change the overall contours of the picture.

But Bukharin showed the most effective line of behavior during the trial. Although he admitted his guilt in general, when it came to specific charges, he often skillfully refuted them or gave them an interpretation that, upon careful analysis, generally called into question many of the points in the indictment and their evidence base. The main thing is that he quite skillfully and legally competently devalued the main evidence base of the prosecution - the confessions of the defendants themselves. He, as if in passing, threw the phrase into the hall: “Confessions by the accused are not necessary. Confessions of the accused are a medieval legal principle.". If we take into account that essentially the entire evidence base of the prosecution consisted of the confessions of the accused themselves, then it becomes obvious that the use of this medieval principle, when torture played the role of the main tool for finding the truth, under the existence of Soviet power looked like a return to the Middle Ages. With just this phrase, Bukharin seemed to be putting the entire process beyond the limits of what was permissible and legally justified.

His counterarguments to prosecutor Vyshinsky’s statements are also interesting. Bukharin: “Citizen Prosecutor explained in his indictment that members of a gang of robbers can rob in different places and are still responsible for each other. The latter is true, but the members of a gang of robbers must know each other in order to be a gang and be in more or less close connection with each other. Meanwhile, for the first time I learned Sharangovich’s last name from the indictment and for the first time I saw him at the trial. For the first time I learned about the existence of Maksimov. I never knew Pletnev, I never knew Kazakov, I never talked with Rakovsky about counter-revolutionary affairs, I never talked about the same subject with Rosengoltz, I never talked about the same thing with Zelensky, I never talked with Bulanov in my life and etc. By the way, the Prosecutor did not interrogate me about these persons even a single word.

The “right-Trotskyist bloc” is, first of all, a bloc of right-wingers and Trotskyists. How can this even include, for example, Levin, who here at the trial showed that even now he does not know what the Mensheviks are? How can Pletnev, Kazakov and others be included here?

Consequently, those sitting in the dock are not any group; they are accomplices of the conspiracy on different lines, but not a group in the strict and legal sense of the word. All the defendants were in one way or another connected with the “right-Trotskyist bloc”, some of them with intelligence services, but that’s all. But this does not give any reason to conclude that this group is a “right-Trotskyist bloc”.

Bukharin categorically denied his involvement in espionage. He asked: “Citizen Prosecutor claims that I, along with Rykov, was one of the largest organizers of espionage. What evidence? Testimony of Sharangovich, whose existence I had never heard of before the indictment.”. He also denied his involvement in organizing the murder of Kirov and other figures of the Soviet state.

Another distinctive feature Bukharin’s behavior at trial was that he sometimes played a role that should have been played not by the defendant, but by the prosecutor. This, apparently, according to his plan, was to demonstrate the inconsistency and absurdity of the accusations not only against him, but also against the other defendants. For example, he stated: “The grave nature of the crime is obvious, the political responsibility is immeasurable, the legal responsibility is such that it will justify any most severe sentence. The most severe sentence will be fair because for such things you can be shot ten times. I admit this absolutely categorically and without any doubt.”.

Bukharin’s attempts to “defend” Stalin and refute possible doubts and suspicions regarding the legality of this process are also noteworthy. Quite a strange irony of historical fate when the victim, in his last word at the trial, seeks to exalt the person who doomed him to death! It is quite possible that in this way he hoped that at the last minute Stalin would appreciate his efforts and grant him life. It is difficult to explain in any other way the following passage from the last word of the doomed man: “I accidentally came across a book by Feuchtwanger from the prison library, which dealt with the trials of the Trotskyists. She made a great impression on me. But I must say that Feuchtwanger did not get to the very essence of the matter, he stopped halfway, for him not everything is clear, but in fact everything is clear. World history is a world judgment. A number of groups and leaders of Trotskyism went bankrupt and were thrown into the pit. This is right. But you cannot do what Feuchtwanger does in relation to Trotsky in particular, when he puts him on the same level as Stalin. Here his reasoning is completely wrong. For in reality, the whole country stands behind Stalin, the hope of the world, he is a creator. Napoleon once remarked that fate is politics. Trotsky's fate is counter-revolutionary politics".

Bukharin, as if foreseeing that abroad, and primarily from Trotsky, the trial itself and the truly fanatical confessions voiced at it would cause a whole ocean of indignation and criticism, considered it necessary to reject this kind of defense in advance. “I can assume a priori that Trotsky and my other allies in crimes, and the Second International, especially since I talked about this with Nikolaevsky, will try to defend us, in particular, and especially me. I reject this defense, because I stand on my knees before the country, before the party, before all the people. The enormity of my crimes is immeasurable, especially at the new stage of the USSR’s struggle. Let this process be the last hardest lesson, and let everyone see the great power of the USSR, let everyone see that the counter-revolutionary thesis about the national limitations of the USSR hung in the air like a pathetic rag. Everyone can see the wise leadership of the country, which was ensured by Stalin.".

Reading these praises of Stalin, you involuntarily wonder: maybe Bukharin was motivated not only by the desire to win the leader’s leniency in this way, but also by other calculations? It cannot be ruled out that, by turning the dock into a platform for praising Stalin, Bukharin in this way wanted to highlight the idea that this whole process is nothing more than a reductio ad absurdum, that is, a reduction to the absurd. The defendant used his remarkable talent as an orator to historically justify Stalin and his political course - after all, there is something unnatural in this, beyond the bounds of common sense. And it is quite possible to assume that in this way Bukharin appealed to those in our country who have not lost the ability to think independently, analyze facts and draw their own conclusions.

What is noteworthy is not only the above statements by Bukharin, but also the fact that in his last word, along with a disguised interpretation of this trial as a legally untenable farce, he also in every possible way refuted the then-expressed assumptions that confessions were obtained through torture and use of all kinds of psychotropic drugs. He dismissed as empty fiction the version about some mysterious Slavic nature, Tibetan powder and other, as he put it, fables and absurd counter-revolutionary tales. He motivated his confession as follows: “I locked myself away for about 3 months. Then I began to testify. Why? The reason for this was that in prison I reevaluated my entire past. For when you ask yourself: if you die, for what will you die? And then suddenly an absolutely black void appears with astonishing brightness. There is nothing for which one would have to die if one wanted to die without repenting. And, on the contrary, everything positive that sparkles in the Soviet Union, all of this takes on other dimensions in the human consciousness. In the end, this completely disarmed me and prompted me to bow my knees to the party and the country. And when you ask yourself: well, okay, you won’t die; If by some miracle you remain alive, then again, for what? Isolated from everyone, an enemy of the people, in an inhuman position, in complete isolation from everything that constitutes the essence of life... And immediately the same answer is given to this question. And at such moments, citizen judges, everything personal, all the personal scum, the remnants of bitterness, pride and a whole series of other things, they are removed, they disappear.”.

I believe that the statements quoted above are quite enough to imagine at least in the most general view what happened during the trial, and above all the line of behavior of the main accused - Bukharin. The reaction of the Soviet public to the trial was pre-programmed. Mass rallies were held, angry articles were published with the only demand - to severely punish the criminals, to shoot them like rabid dogs. I think that the following lines from the great Russian poet N. Nekrasov are quite suitable for characterizing the prevailing atmosphere at that time:

“Pound your soul into your heels

The rule was then..."

Abroad, however, the trial itself and especially Bukharin’s behavior during it evoked completely different responses than in our country. One American correspondent gave the following assessment of Bukharin’s last words: “Only Bukharin, who, uttering his last word, quite obviously knew that he was doomed to death, showed courage, pride and almost insolence. Of the fifty-four people who stood trial in the last three open processes in the case of high treason, he was the first not to humiliate himself in the last hours of the trial...

In all of Bukharin’s speech there was not a trace of pomposity, causticity or cheap rhetoric. This brilliant speech, delivered in a calm, indifferent tone, had enormous persuasive power. He entered the world stage for the last time, where he used to play big roles and gave the impression of simply a great man, not feeling any fear, but only trying to tell the world his version of events.”

During the trial, there were some other, to put it mildly, shortcomings on the part of the investigation, and, one might say, on the part of Stalin, since he personally determined what charges should be brought against the main defendants. Thus, refuting the accusation of espionage, the most odious figure in this trial, former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yagoda, quite reasonably objected: “The prosecutor categorically considers it proven that I was a spy. This is not true. I am not a spy and never was one. I think that we will not disagree on the definition of what a spy or espionage is. But a fact is a fact. I had no direct connections with foreign countries, there are no facts of my direct transmission of any information. And I’m not joking when I say that if I were a spy, then dozens of countries could close their intelligence services - they would have no need to keep such a mass of spies in the Union, which have now been overfished.”.

However, all these were nothing more than piquant episodes of this process, perhaps going beyond the scope of the pre-written script for its course. The final verdict of the court did not come as a surprise to anyone, since the court itself was guided not by the presumption of innocence - as a fundamental principle of justice - but by the principle of the presumption of guilt. The defendants were actually convicted before the trial - this was Stalin’s attitude. The trial itself only acted as a legal cover for the massacre.

The verdict was as follows: 18 defendants were sentenced to capital punishment - execution, doctor Pletnev - to imprisonment for a term of 25 years, Rakovsky and Bessonov, as not taking direct part in organizing terrorist and sabotage-sabotage actions - to imprisonment for the first - twenty years, the second - for fifteen years. The sentence was carried out. Even on the eve of the trial, Bukharin, in a letter to Stalin, asked not to use such a form of execution as execution against him. He wrote: “...If I am facing a death sentence, then I ask you in advance, I conjure you directly with everything that is dear to you, to replace the execution with the fact that I myself drink poison in the cell (give me morphine so that I fall asleep and don’t wake up). For me this point is extremely important, I don’t know what words I should find to beg for this as a mercy: after all, politically it won’t hinder anything, and no one will know that. But let me spend my last seconds the way I want. Have mercy! You, knowing me well, will understand... So if I am destined for death, I ask for a morphine cup. I pray for this..." But the leader remained deaf to this request of Bukharin. He simply did not like deviations from the rules.

So, the most important public trial is over. Thus, Stalin seemed to sum up the struggle with his political opponents that had lasted for more than 18 years. The leader prepared a purely criminal ending for the political struggle. He, of course, could triumph, because the victory was not just complete and final, but also total - it ended with the physical destruction of his opponents. There is still passionate debate surrounding this entire issue. For me personally, the following question is fundamentally important: did Stalin really believe what his opponents were accused of? Or did he cold-bloodedly follow the path of not only political, but also physical destruction? It is difficult to answer this question unequivocally. On the one hand, Stalin, of course, was not so naive and primitive as to seriously believe in the monstrous charges that were brought against the defendants. On the other hand, his inherent suspicion obviously played a sinister role in all this. He never forgot how his political opponents repeatedly changed their positions and often closed ranks, despite the significant differences that sometimes separated them. He did not believe them and believed that they would never, under any circumstances, give up the fight against him personally and against his political course. Everything suggests that he proceeded from the principle that a political battle finally ends only with the physical elimination of the enemy. This is where his harshness and cruelty stemmed, his fierce intransigence towards his defeated political opponents.

Concluding this section, I would like to make one more remark. When some authors, sometimes very respectable ones, refer to the testimony of the accused given at public trials as evidence of one or another position they defend, it is difficult to resist a sardonic grin. Only infinitely naive people or people who think in a predetermined direction can seriously believe that the Bolshevik leaders, who devoted themselves to the revolution, to the establishment of Soviet power almost immediately after the completion of Civil War(from the beginning of the 20s) took the path of betrayal and espionage against the Soviet state. It seems even more fantastic and incredible that these same people were preparing conspiracies to restore capitalism in the USSR. They professed Marxist views and were well aware that such a profound social revolution, such as the restoration of capitalism, belonged to the category of completely different historical processes, so that it could be carried out through any even the most extensive palace conspiracy.

Defending Stalin from unfair accusations does not mean justifying his real criminal acts. For him, politics had no moral dimensions. Politics, in his opinion, could be right or wrong. He essentially did not share any other characteristics for its definition. Stalin's political course in the 20s and 30s was certainly justified in its main parameters, and those who opposed this course ultimately found themselves bankrupt from the point of view of history. Their political bankruptcy is obvious not only because Stalin turned out to be the winner. It was due to the fundamental defects and flaws of the entire political strategy of Stalin’s opponents. The same reasons can explain Stalin's natural victory. These are things of fundamental importance. As for the physical destruction of his defeated opponents, there is no excuse for the leader. Perhaps there are some arguments to explain this action of his. But not as an excuse.

I may be accused of inconsistency and internal contradictions inherent in my argumentation. They say this is expressed in the fact that I defend the overall correctness of Stalin’s general political strategy, which undoubtedly played a decisive role in strengthening the power of the Soviet Union. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, I criticize the policy of repression, which was expressed not only in the political, but also in the physical elimination of the leader’s opponents. This inconsistency and internal contradiction are not internal, substantive, but rather formal and logical in nature. Because in essence we are talking about phenomena of different types, although organically interconnected with each other. Anyone who believes that Stalin had no choice but to physically destroy opponents of his political line, in my opinion, defends a one-sided and clearly tendentious position. Along with this completely obvious fact, the leader’s defense of the chosen course, fears that this course would be radically revised in the event of a compromise with former opponents, often pushed him to take steps that clearly went beyond the limits of political expediency. Of course, history is not a card game of solitaire, where you can play with different layouts, and what happened sometimes appears to us as a fatally inevitable course of events. However, objective lighting political biography Stalin involves an analysis of various options for the possible development of events, since this allows us to delve deeper into the very essence of his political philosophy.

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