Molotov is named as suggesting sentencing “by lists,” rather than by consideration of individual cases. It is certainly true that orders went out to arrest categories rather than individual suspects. A former Chairman of the Byelorussian Council of People’s Commissars tells of being present when the local NKVD chief, Boris Berman, complained to the local First Secretary, A. A. Volkov, “Yezhov has sent again an order to arrest old Communists. But where shall I find them? There are none left.”116
As in the rest of the country, the new offensive had started in May 1937.
Fitzroy Maclean, watching Stalin on the Red Square reviewing stand on 1 May, was already struck by the rest of the Politburo, who “grinned nervously and moved uneasily from one foot to the other, forgetting the parade and the high office they held and everything else in their mingled joy and terror at being spoken to by him.” Stalin’s own expression varied between “benignity and bored inscrutability.”117
They might well feel alarm, for one of their members was absent. His colleagues had perhaps already “discussed” his case, in the same way that Zhdanov’s Leningrad Committee was to “discuss” Chudov’s. Yan Rudzutak, member of the Party since 1905, who had spent ten years in Tsarist prisons and exile, a former full member of the Politburo and now a candidate member, was not among his old comrades. His arrest had apparently just taken place.118 He was seized at a supper party after the theater. The NKVD arrested everyone present. Four women among them are reported in the Butyrka, still in bedraggled evening dress, three months later.119 His dacha was taken over by Zhdanov.120
Rudzutak was arrested as allegedly a Rightist, leader of a “reserve center” ready to take over if Bukharin’s was exposed, because “nobody had ever known of any difference between him and the Party.”121 This is, in fact, an admission that Stalinists of long standing were now, for the first time, being arrested—especially (but not only) if they showed any signs of opposing the Purge. Rudzutak, in particular, had one very black mark against him: his failure to recommend the death penalty for Ryutin when Head of the Control Commission in 1932.
Through May, another great heroic diversion, parallel to the exploits of the aviators of the previous year, was spread in the papers day after day. This was the landing, under the direction of 0. Shmidt, of Papanin’s group at the North Pole, a fine exploit. The officers of the airlift that took them in and set them up were welcomed by the Party leaders, decorated, and publicized round the usual celebrations. At the same time, the camp on the ice drifted through the months, from time to time sending loyal greetings from—and receiving thanks at—the farthest-flung outpost of the Party and State.
Through the spring and early summer, the other great nonpolitical news was a series of plays and ballets attended by the leaders of the Party and the announcement of long lists of awards to People’s Artists in these fields.
Meanwhile, as a particularly fine summer lay on the great plain, the arrests went on. Former oppositionists continued to fall. Nilcolai Krestinsky, former member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee, had been removed from the Foreign Commissariat to be Assistant People’s Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR in March.122 On his transfer, he spoke approvingly of his removal to the Party cell, saying that even ex-oppositionists should not, in present circumstances, work in the Foreign Commissariat, where leading figures should have the absolute confidence of the leadership and a spotless past.123
At the end of May, he was arrested. After a week-long interrogation,124 he started to confess on about 5 June.125 He had been severely tortured, and is described in a recent Soviet article as being in the Butyrka prison hospital for some days with his whole back like a single wound.126 Bukharin, with whom he was to appear in court as a fellow conspirator nine months later, had just begun his evidence.127
The way in which any sort of connection with the arrested oppositionists was made a crime can be seen in the case of the veteran Lomov, Party member since 1903, who, representing the Moscow Bureau of the Bolshevik Party, had (after Trotsky) been Lenin’s most enthusiastic supporter in the Central Committee in pressing for the seizure of power in November 1917.
In June 1937, an official of the U.S.S.R. State Planning Commission sent a letter to Stalin alleging that G. I. Lomov (Oppokov) a member of the Bureau of the U.S.S.R. Council of People’s Commissars’ Soviet Control Commission, had been on friendly terms with Rykov and Bukharin. Stalin wrote on this letter the instructions: “To Comrade Molotov. What to do?” Molotov wrote: “I’m for arresting this scum Lomov immediately, V. Molotov.” A few days later Lomov was arrested, charged with membership in a Right Opportunist organization, and shot.128
Lomov was to be mentioned at the Bukharin Trial as a fellow conspirator with Bukharin against Lenin.129
But even now, opposition was not entirely crushed. In the last week of June, another plenum of the Central Committee was held—ostensibly to discuss vegetable production. It was the scene of mutual denunciations and disappearances on the spot. Nazaretyan (not, indeed, a member of the Central Committee, but of the lesser Central Revision Commission), whom Ordzhonikidze had saved in the early 1930s, was arrested while actually on his way to the Kremlin to attend the plenum.130 In a few months, Stalin had progressed far in his ability to loose the Secret Police, without attention to political protocol, on to his opponents. His speech is said to have been in ruthless style, demanding, for example, less “coddling” of prisoners.131
In the meeting hall, many faces were already missing—Bukharin’s and Rykov’s, Rudzutak’s and Chudov’s, Gamarnik’s and Yakir’s, Yagoda’s and a dozen others. But the spirit of resistance had not yet been entirely quelled. “After the February plenum of the Central Committee a campaign was raised in the conspirators’ circles against Yezhov … an attempt was made to discredit Yezhov and the work he was doing in the Party, to slander him.”132 Even as late as this June plenum, there was an attempt to block the terror. Pyatnitsky, Kaminsky, and others had met for what came to be called “the cup of tea” to discuss resistance. Filatov, Mayor of Moscow, was among those present and appears to have given them away (he himself was shot later).133
At the plenum, when it was proposed to grant extraordinary powers to Yezhov and the NKVD, Pyatnitsky spoke strongly against it, and said that, on the contrary, the NKVD was now out of hand and should be more tightly controlled. During the break, several members of the Central Committee advised him to withdraw his statement, and Molotov suggested that he should think of his wife and family. However, he stuck to his guns.
The next day, Yezhov announced that the NKVD had evidence of Pyatnitsky having been an agent of the Tsarist police. Krupskaya defended his character on the grounds that Lenin had regarded him as one of the best Bolsheviks. Yezhov proposed a vote of censure against Pyatnitsky. Kaminsky and Krupskaya voted against. Stalin asked why Pyatnitsky did not say what he thought about this. Pyatnitsky then said that if he was not needed he would go, and left. On 7 July, he was arrested.134 (As Molotov had foreseen, Pyatnitsky’s wife was arrested and not seen again. His son Igor spent many years in labor camp, and his younger son was placed first with foster parents and then in an NKVD children’s home.)135 Kaminsky also spoke against the purges. Among other things, he attacked Beria, denouncing him as a former agent of the Azerbaijan nationalist intelligence service.136 Kaminsky, who had joined the Bolshevik Party as a medical student some years before the Revolution, was arrested that day and was later shot.”137 His wife was only jailed for two years, and survived.138