A new crime was now developed—Yagoda’s attempt to kill Yezhov after the latter had taken over the NKVD in September 1936. Bulanov and another officer, Savolainen (whose case was sent for separate trial), had sprayed a mercury solution six or seven times in Yezhov’s office, and on the rugs and curtains, together with some other, unidentified poison.
Bulanov went on to describe a special poison laboratory that Yagoda had had fixed up under his personal supervision. Yagoda was, Bulanov said, “exceptionally” interested in poisons. This laboratory is believed to have really existed (Yagoda had been a pharmacist by profession before the Revolution). Given the characters and the motivations, this is one crime which appeared to be possibly genuine: Yezhov’s health, it was alleged, was “considerably impaired.”156 But a recent Soviet account quotes Yezhov at his own interrogation a year later as saying with a smile that obviously people could not get into his office so easily, and that he had made the whole thing up “to look better in Stalin’s eyes.”157
On the medical poisonings, Bulanov remarked, plausibly enough, “As far as I know, Yagoda drew Levin into, enlisted him in the affair, and in cases of poisoning generally, by taking advantage of some compromising material he had against him.”158
Bulanov asserted that Kazakov had indeed visited Yagoda, in spite of the latter’s denials. Kazakov again confirmed this. Vyshinsky then put it once more to Yagoda:
Vyshinsky:
After this testimony, which establishes your part in the poisoning, do you continue to deny it?
Yagoda:
No, I confirm my part in it.
And then:
Vyshinsky:
Accused Bulanov, and was the killing of Maxim Peshkov also Yagoda’s work?
Bulanov:
Of course.
Vyshinsky:
Accused Yagoda, what do you say to that?
Yagoda: I
admit my part in the illness of Peshkov. I request the court to hear this whole question
in camera.159
Yagoda is described as having looked cornered and desperate during the earlier session, but he now appeared crushed, and gave his evidence in a toneless voice.
Vyshinsky next tried to implicate Rykov in Gorky’s murder, on the grounds that Yenukidze had once allegedly said to him that an end should be put to Gorky’s political activity. Rykov answered that doubtless Yenukidze meant murder by this, but that he himself had not so understood it at the time. He then put a question to Bulanov, who had spoken about “Rykov’s archives” being looked after by Yagoda: What were the contents? Bulanov said that he did not know, but Rykov had clearly established that there was an alleged mass of documentary evidence which no one had produced in court.
Yagoda’s own evidence-in-chief followed. A recent Soviet account has it that Yezhov promised Yagoda his life if he incriminated Bukharin,160 but if so Yagoda’s confidence in Yezhov’s word cannot have been high. His voice was now utterly weary and so faint that it could barely be heard. He stumbled through a written statement, “reading it as though for the first time.”161 He confirmed his long connection with the Rightist plotters from 1928 on. In the early days, he had supplied Rykov and Bukharin with tendentious material from the NKVD secret files, for use in their anti-Party struggle. It was due to his activities in the NKVD that the Rights, and the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,” had not been uncovered and liquidated until 1937–1938. He had appointed conspirators to all the leading posts in the Secret Police—Molchanov (on Tomsky’s express instructions), Prokofiev, Mironov, Shanin, Pauker, Gay, and others. He had joined in Yenukidze’s plot to seize the Kremlin, and it was on Yenukidze’s orders that he had arranged for Zaporozhets’s collaboration in the Kirov assassination.
But when cross-examination started, he still showed a remnant of resistance. Bulanov’s evidence about trying to kill Yezhov, he said, had been wrong in detail, and correct only in “essence.”
Vyshinsky then taxed him with espionage. Yagoda replied, “No, I do not admit being guilty of this activity.” He admitted shielding spies in the NKVD:
Vyshinsky:
I consider that since you shielded this espionage activity, you helped them, assisted them.
Yagoda:
No, I do not admit being guilty of that. Had I been a spy, I assure you that dozens of states would have been compelled to disband their intelligence services.
162
This sensible remark did not deter the Soviet leaders from the practice of nominating the heads of their Secret Police as imperialist employees.
Rykov again raised the question of his “archives.” Yagoda said, “I had no archives of Rykov’s.” Bulanov then reaffirmed his evidence about these, and when Yagoda challenged him to mention any of their contents, he said he could not. Yagoda finally commented contemptuously, but tellingly, “In any case, had the archives really existed, in comparison with the other crimes, the Rykov archives are a trifle.”
Later he refused to admit that he had protected Mensheviks:
Vyshinsky:
But in any case you shielded this, even very insignificant role of the Mensheviks?
Yagoda:
I shall not be able to give you an answer to this question.
Vyshinsky:
Allow me to quote to Yagoda his testimony in Vol. II,
here
: ‘Question: You are shown a document from the materials of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, containing a report on the Menshevik center abroad and on its active work in the U.S.S.R.’ Do you recall this fact?
Yagoda:
Yes, I know, only I shall not be able to give you an answer to this here.
163
When it came to the medical numbers, he was still not entirely satisfactory. First he admitted his “part in causing Max’s [Peshkov’s] sickness,” but when Vyshinsky pressed him to plead “guilty to causing, as you express it, Peshkov’s sickness,” he simply answered that he would give all his explanations in camera. Vyshinsky asked twice more, with the same result. Finally:
Vyshinsky:
Do you plead guilty or do you not?
Yagoda:
Permit me not to answer this question
164
The only distinction between what Yagoda had admitted and Vyshinsky’s formulation was that the former spoke simply of “his part in causing” and the latter of “guilt for” Peshkov’s death. Yagoda seems to have been implying either that he had caused the fatal illness in an unintentional way or, more likely, that he did not accept the major guilt. Whether either version is true is another matter.
Yagoda went on to admit to killing Menzhinsky and to reluctantly becoming involved in the murder of Gorky, at Yenukidze’s insistence. When Vyshinsky went through his crimes at the end of the day, asking in turn whether Yagoda was guilty in the cases of Kirov, Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky, and Gorky, he did not refer to Peshkov—a minor victory for the accused.