We had first started "going to see" Bukharin in 1922 when M. had asked him to intercede for his brother, Evgeni, who had been arrested. M. owed him all the pleasant things in his hfe. His 1928 volume of poetry would never have come out without the active intervention of Bukharin, who also managed to enlist the support of Kirov. The journey to Armenia, our apartment and ration cards, contracts for future volumes (which were never actually published but were paid for—a very important factor, since M. was not allowed to work anywhere)—all this was arranged by Bukharin. His last favor was to get us transferred from Cherdyn to Voronezh.
In the thirties Bukharin was already complaining that he had no "transmission belts." He was losing his influence, and was in fact very isolated. But he never hesitated to help M., worrying only about whom it would be best to approach. At the height of his glory at the end of the twenties—he was hardly yet forty—he was at the very center of the world Communist movement and used to drive up to his gray headquarters, where he received representatives of all races and nations, in a black automobile escorted by three or four others carrying his guards. Already he was saying things which gave some hint of the future. When, from a chance conversation in the street, M. learned about the impending execution of the five old men and went around the city in a fury, demanding that they be reprieved, everybody just shrugged their shoulders, and he pleaded with Bukharin for all he was worth, as the only man who listened to his arguments without asking "What business is it of yours?" As a final argument against the execution he sent Bukharin a copy of his recently published volume of Poems with an inscription saying: Every line here is against what you are going to do. I have not put these words in quotation marks, because I do not remember the exact phrasing, only the general sense. The sentence was repealed and Bukharin informed M. by sending him a telegram in Yalta, where he had come to join me after he had done everything he could in Moscow. At first Bukharin had tried to fend M. off with words like "We Bolsheviks have a simple approach to these things: we each know that it could happen to him as well. There's no point in swearing that it can't." And as an illustration he mentioned the recent shooting of a group of Komsomols in Sochi for debauchery. M. remembered these words during Bukharin's trial.
From what quarter did Bukharin think the danger came? Did he fear the return of his defeated enemies, or did he sense the threat from his own side? We could only guess; to a direct question this slight man with the red beard would have replied with a joke.
In 1928, sitting in an office which was at the pivot of some of the most grandiose developments of the twentieth century, these two doomed men talked about capital punishment. Both were going to their own death, but in different ways. M. still believed that his "oath to the fourth estate" obliged him to come to accept the Soviet regime—everything, that is, except the death penalty. He was reconciled to the new state of affairs by Herzen's doctrine of prioritas dignitatis, which had powerfully undermined all his notions of popular rule. "What is a mechanical majority!" M. would say, trying to justify the abandonment of the democratic forms of government. Unfortunately, the idea of indoctrinating the people also went back to Herzen, though he added the proviso that it must be done "through the laws and institutions." Isn't this the basic error of our times, and of each one of us? What do the people need to be indoctrinated for? What satanic arrogance you need to impose your own views like this! It was only in Russia that the idea of popular education was replaced by the political concept of indoctrination. When M. himself became a target for it, he was one of the first to revolt.
Bukharin's path was quite different. He clearly saw that the new world he was so actively helping to build was horrifyingly unlike the original concept. Life was deviating from the blueprints, but the blueprints had been declared sacrosanct and it was forbidden to compare them with what was actually coming into being. Determinist theory had naturally given birth to unheard-of practitioners who boldly outlawed any study of real life: Why undermine the system and sow unnecessary doubt if history was in any case speeding us to the appointed destination? When the high priests are bound together by such a bond, renegades can expect no mercy. Bukharin was not a renegade, but he already felt how inevitable it was that he would be cast into the pit because of his doubts and the bitter need which one day would drive him to speak out and call things by their real name.
M. once complained to him that in the Land and Factory Publishing House* one felt the lack of a "healthy Soviet atmosphere." "And what," asked Bukharin, "is the atmosphere like in other organizations?
• See the note on Narbut in the Appendix.
The same as in a cesspool—it stinks!" And another time, when M. told him: "You have no idea how people can be persecuted here," Bukharin just gasped: "We have no idea?" and together with Т., his secretary and friend, he burst out laughing.
The fundamental rule of the times was to ignore the facts of life. Holders of high office were supposed to see only the positive side of things and, once ensconced in their ivory towers (it was they, not we, who were shut off like this!), to look down indulgently at the writhing human masses below. A man who knew that you cannot build the present out of the bricks of the future was bound to resign himself beforehand to his inevitable doom and the prospect of the firing squad. What else could he do? We were all prepared for the same end. When M. said goodbye to Akhmatova in the winter of 1937, he said, "I am ready for death." I have heard the same phrase, in slightly different words, from dozens of people. "I am ready for anything," Ehrenburg said to me once as I was leaving his apartment —this was at the time of the "Doctors' Plot" * and the campaign against "cosmopolitans," and his turn was coming. As one era followed another, we were always "ready for anything."
Thanks to Bukharin, M. got a vivid impression of the first fruits of the "new world" as it was created in front of our very eyes, and was hence one of the first to learn where the threat lay. In 1922 when he was trying to help his arrested brother, M. approached Bukharin for the first time. We went to see him in the Metropole Hotel. Bukharin at once phoned Dzerzhinski and asked him to see M. A meeting was fixed for the next morning, and M. now made his second visit to the organization for which Bliumkin had foretold such a great future—he was thus able to compare the period of revolutionary terror with the age in which a new concept of government was being born. Dzerzhinski had not yet given up the old ways. He received M. in simple fashion and suggested he stand surety for his brother—a solution actually proposed by Bukharin. Dzerzhinski picked up the phone and gave the necessary instructions on the spot. The next morning M. went to see the interrogator in charge of his brother's case and returned full of impressions. The interrogator wore a uniform and was flanked by two bodyguards. "I got the instruction," he said, "but we cannot let you stand surety for your brother." The reason he gave was: "It will be awkward to arrest you
* In 1952 a large group of Kremlin doctors, mostly Jewish, were accused of trying to poison the Soviet leaders. They were all released shordy after Stalin's death. "Cosmopolitans" was a frequent euphemism for "Jews" in the anti-Semitic campaigns of the last years of Stalin's life.
if your brother commits a new crime." The implication of this was that some crime had already been committed. "A new crime?" M. said when he got back home. "What can they have cooked up now?" We had no illusions, and we were afraid that they were going to try and frame Evgeni Emilievich. It also occurred to us that Dzer- zhinski might have given his instruction over the phone in a manner suggesting that the interrogator did not have to take it seriously.