The Great Terror

I gave instructions to Levin to talk it over …

Vyshinsky:

With whom?

Yagoda:

With Kazakov, but I did not receive him personally.

Vyshinsky:

I am not asking you whether you received him or not; I am asking you whether you instructed Levin to talk it over with Kazakov.

Yagoda:

I gave no instructions to talk to Kazakov.

Vyshinsky:

You just said here that you gave Levin such instructions.

Yagoda:

I gave Levin instructions to bring about the death of Alexei Maximovich Gorky and Kuibyshev, and that’s all.

Vyshinsky:

And how about Menzhinsky?

Yagoda:

I did not bring about the death of either Menzhinsky or Max Peshkov.

¹⁴⁷

Vyshinsky called Kryuchkov, who confirmed his role in killing Peshkov on Yagoda’s orders. He then turned on Yagoda again and read from his evidence at the preliminary examination confessing to the Menzhinsky and Peshkov murders:

Vyshinsky:

… Did you depose this, accused Yagoda?

Yagoda:

I said that I did, but it is not true.

Vyshinsky:

Why did you make this deposition if it is not true?

Yagoda:

I don’t know why.

Vyshinsky:

Be seated.

    ‘I summoned Kazakov and confirmed my orders…. He did his work. Menzhinsky died.’

Did you despose this, accused Yagoda?

Yagoda:

I did.

Vyshinsky:

Hence, you met Kazakov?

Yagoda:

No.

Vyshinsky:

Why did you make a false deposition?

Yagoda:

Permit me not to answer this question.

Vyshinsky:

So you deny that you organized the murder of Menzhinsky?

Yagoda:

I do.

Vyshinsky:

Did you admit it in this deposition?

Yagoda:

Yes.

Vyshinsky:

When the Prosecutor of the Union interrogated you, what did you answer to this question about your part in the murder of Menzhinsky?

Yagoda:

I confirmed it also then.

Vyshinsky:

You confirmed it. Why did you confirm it?

Yagoda:

Permit me not to answer this question.

Vyshinsky:

Then answer my last question: Did you file any protest or complain with regard to the preliminary investigation?

Yagoda:

None.

Vyshinsky:

Are you filing any now?

Yagoda:

No.

¹⁴⁸

Taking up the Peshkov murder, Vyshinsky went on:

Vyshinsky:

So everything that Kryuchkov says …

Yagoda:

It is all lies.

Vyshinsky:

You gave him no such instructions regarding Maxim Peshkov?

Yagoda:

I have stated, Citizen Prosecutor, that with regard to Maxim Peshkov I gave no instructions. I see no sense in his murder.

Vyshinsky:

So Levin is lying?

Yagoda:

He is lying.

Vyshinsky:

Kazakov is lying?

Yagoda:

Yes, lying.

Vyshinsky:

Kryuchkov?

Yagoda:

Is lying.

Vyshinsky:

You gave Kryuchkov no instructions regarding the death of Maxim Peshkov? At the preliminary investigation you …

Yagoda:

I lied.

Vyshinsky:

And now?

Yagoda:

I am telling the truth.

Vyshinsky:

Why did you lie at the preliminary investigation?

Yagoda:

I told you. Permit me not to reply to this question.

¹⁴⁹

This last was spoken “with such concentrated venom and fury,” an American observer notes that the whole audience gasped with “dismay and terror.”When Ulrikh intervened, Yagoda turned on him and said (in a phrase not included in the official report): “You can drive me, but not too far. I’ll say what I want to say … but … do not drive me too far.”¹⁵⁰ Again everyone was shaken. If Stalin was present in the hidden room above the Tribunal, where during this trial a trick of the light at one point made him clearly visible,¹⁵¹ even he might for a moment have wondered whether his whole plan was not about to be wrecked.

Yagoda, more than any of the others, had reason to resent the trial. He, more than anyone, had performed irreplaceable services for Stalin. His arrest had so affected him that he could not sleep or eat, and Yezhov had feared for his sanity. Slutsky, the insinuating Head of the NKVD Foreign Department, had been sent to talk to him. Yagoda complained about the ruin of the police organization he had built up over fifteen years, and one day remarked that God must after all exist: from Stalin he deserved only gratitude, but from God the fate which had actually overtaken him.¹⁵²

But his present demonic outburst was left in the air. Vyshinsky turned back to Levin. Levin now developed the Kuibyshev and Gorky murders, and Yagoda confirmed them. Towards the end of the morning, when Levin was going into the detail of Gorky’s death, Yagoda suddenly said, “May I put a question to Levin?” Though such cross-examination by defendants had been usual practice in the previous days of the trial, Ulrikh hastily replied, “After Levin finished his testimony.” Yagoda, making it clear that his question was immediately relevant, insisted. “This concerns Maxim Gorky’s death!”

Ulrikh, evidently fearing the worst, cut him off, “When the accused Levin finishes, then by all means.” He shortly ordered a thirty-minute adjournment. After this Vyshinsky said, “… I think the accused Yagoda wanted to put questions to the accused Levin.”

The President:

Accused Yagoda, you may put questions.

Yagoda:

I ask Levin to answer in what year the Kremlin Medical Commission attached him, Levin, to me as my doctor, and to whom else he was attached.

¹⁵³

When this question had been answered, with no reference whatever to Gorky’s death or to any of the other crimes, Yagoda said he had no more questions. It will be seen that what he wanted to say before the adjournment cannot have been the same as what he actually asked after.

Levin was then questioned by his “defending lawyer,” Braude. Two points were made. First, Levin said of the “directing organization” behind the murders, “I knew nothing about it. I learnt about it only at the trial itself.” He then reiterated what was evidently, in one way or another, a powerful motive for obeying those capable of carrying out such measures: “What frightened me most was his threat to destroy my family. And my family is a good, working, Soviet family.”¹⁵⁴

The court had earlier announced an Expert Commission of five doctors. The morning session of 8 March concluded with the following exchange:

The President:

Have the expert witnesses any questions to ask the accused Levin?

Shereshevsky and Vinogradov:fn4

The expert witnesses have no questions to ask; everything is quite clear.

¹⁵⁵

The evening session of 8 March saw the evidence-in-chief of Bulanov (Yagoda’s personal assistant) and of Yagoda himself. Bulanov, a veteran NKVD officer—he had been in charge of the expulsion of Trotsky from the country in January 1929—testified to the special version of the planned coup involving Yenukidze, Yagoda, and the seizure of the Kremlin, and developed its links with the Tukhachevsky group and with Karakhan’s German negotiations. He went on to say that Yagoda had protected Uglanov and Ivan Smirnov in their interrogations and had ordered no search to be made when Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested. He implicated all the old NKVD chiefs in the plot, and described how Yagoda had ordered Zaporozhets to “facilitate” Kirov’s assassination, and how Zaporozhets had released Nikolayev on his first attempt and later killed Borisov. It must have seemed curious that Yagoda, arranging through Zaporozhets to let Nikolayev in to kill Kirov, had not thought to do something similar in Moscow by the agency of Pauker and Volovich, in charge of Stalin’s personal security, and both now implicated as plotters.