Bukharin:
During the year I spent in prison I was not once asked about it.
Vyshinsky:
We are asking you here in an open proletarian court, we are asking you here in this court before the whole world.
Bukharin:
But you did not ask me this before.
Vyshinsky:
I am asking you again, on the basis of the testimony which was here given against you: do you choose to admit before the Soviet Court by what intelligence service you were enlisted—the British, German or Japanese?
Bukharin:
None.
Vyshinsky:
I have no more questions to put to Bukharin.
119
The court adjourned on that note. The Prosecutor had been defeated.
When the session resumed, Bukharin listed his contacts with émigré Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and the concessions to be made to Germany. He again went out of his way to deny espionage, and say that the military conspirators had spoken to Tomsky of “opening the front” in case of war, but he had disapproved:
Vyshinsky:
And did you talk to Karakhan about opening the front?
Bukharin:
Karakhan said that the Germans were demanding a military alliance with Germany.
Vyshinsky:
And are the gates closed to an ally?
Bukharin:
Karakhan gave me an answer to this question.
Vyshinsky:
That the gates are closed to an ally?
Bukharin:
No.
Vyshinsky:
That means to open the gates?
Bukharin:
Pardon me, there was no alliance yet.
Vyshinsky:
But there were expectations, plans?
Bukharin:
Well, just now the Soviet Union has an alliance with France, but that does not mean that it opens the Soviet frontiers.
120
Vyshinsky now went on to the crime with which Bukharin alone of those on trial was charged—the plan to assassinate Lenin in 1918. The prosecution produced three prominent Left Communists of that period, Yakovleva, Mantsev, and Ossinsky—the last (originally Prince Obolensky) still a candidate member of the Central Committee elected in 1934.
At the time, Varvara Yakovleva, a candidate member of the small 1917 Central Committee, had been the more prominent, and with Bukharin, Pyatakov, and V. M. Smirnov had resigned when the decision to accept the Peace of Brest-Litovsk had been taken.
She now fully confirmed Vyshinsky’s story. Bukharin had no difficulty in showing that the alleged illegal activities of early 1918 were not illegal at all, and that in fact the Leftists, with the Trotskyites then roughly aligned with them, held a majority and hoped to enforce their views through ordinary Party channels. After this majority had been lost, he admitted, conversations had taken place with a view to arresting Lenin and forming a new government. (Bukharin had indeed thought of arresting Lenin for twenty-four hours with a view to making it easier to change the Government, and had given the whole story as long ago as 1924.)121
There had also been conversations with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had dropped out of the Soviet Government on the peace issue. What Bukharin denied was that there had been any sort of plan to kill Lenin or complicity with the Socialist Revolutionaries. He went on to point out that many who had been Left Communists at the time—including Kuibyshev and Menzhinsky—were not for that reason now regarded as enemies. He was ruled out of order. A series of points—including the fact that he had been wounded by a bomb thrown by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries at a time when he was now charged with conspiring with them—were similarly ruled on.
Mantsev’s evidence followed the same lines, and Ossinsky gave a rather more restricted account, omitting certain points against Bukharin. Bukharin denied the evidence about the assassination plan, and twice hinted strongly at the reason for the witnesses’ attitude:
Vyshinsky:
Consequently, you assert that Mantsev’s testimony in this part and the testimony of witness Yakovleva are false?
Bukharin:
Yes, I do.
Vyshinsky:
How do you explain the fact that they are not telling the truth?
Bukharin:
You had better ask them about it.
122
And later on:
Vyshinsky:
You must somehow explain the fact that three of your former accomplices are speaking against you.
Bukharin:
You see, I have neither sufficient material nor the psychological requisites to clear up this question.
Vyshinsky:
You cannot explain.
Bukharin:
Not that I cannot, I simply refuse to explain.
123
Getting no further with this, Vyshinsky called two new witnesses—the old Socialist Revolutionaries Boris Kamkov and Vladimir Karelin. They were in “neat blue suits,” their faces “grey and corpse-like.”124 They had been in prison for years. An even more important Socialist Revolutionary, Maria Spiridonova, was implicated with her comrades.125 She had been arrested on 8 February 1937, with twelve other former Left Socialist Revolutionaries, in Ufa, where they were living in exile. They were first accused of terrorist plots against the Bashkir Communist leadership. But then the whole of that leadership was itself arrested, and charges of plotting against Stalin and Voroshilov were substituted. On 25 December 1937 they were sentenced on these and other charges by the Military Collegium to various terms of imprisonment—in Spiridonova’s case, twenty-five years—the charges now including setting up a “center” to unite all opposition parties, preparing peasant uprisings, and so on. After a hunger strike, she was held in isolation, finally in Ore1.126 But she seems to have refused to cooperate in the present trial.
Kamkov had apparently been released during the 1920s, but was back in prison no later than 1933.127 Kamkov now said that he understood from others that Bukharin had been informed of Socialist Revolutionary intentions, but he could not himself testify to this directly. He denied that there was any “joint decision” by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Left Communists. Vyshinsky again became flustered at the firm attitude of the old revolutionist, and when Bukharin tried to ask a question, he burst out with “I request the accused Bukharin not to interfere in my interrogation. I am restraining myself enough, and I request my opponent to restrain himself….”128 Kamkov again denied the point. Vyshinsky abandoned the witness without putting the point about Lenin’s assassination.
Karelin was more amenable, and confirmed the plan to kill Lenin. He also brought in an entirely separate action—the genuine attempted assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918 by the freelance Right Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan. This, he said, had been insisted on by Bukharin, and his insistence transmitted through the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Ossinsky, called on to confirm this, said he had heard some vague gossip about Kaplan’s shot being inspired by the anti-Government stand of the Lefts, but “I can say nothing of Bukharin personally” in such a connection.
Bukharin denied the whole thing:
Vyshinsky:
Ossinsky spoke on the subject.
Bukharin:
Ossinsky said that he could say nothing about me.
129