The Trotskyites and Bukharinites, that is to say, the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’ , the leading lights of which are now in the prisoners’ dock, is not a political party, a political tendency, but a band of felonious criminals, and not simply felonious criminals, but of criminals who have sold themselves to enemy intelligence services, criminals whom even ordinary felons treat as the basest, the lowest, the most contemptible, the most depraved of the depraved.188
Interrupting his argument with remarks about “a foul-smelling heap of human garbage,”189 he traced the continuity of counter-revolution back to the Shakhty and “Industrial Party” Trials.
Attacking the entire past careers of Bukharin and the others, he rehearsed their current crimes. Of Zelensky, for example, he said:
I shall refer here to the most abominable practice of mixing glass and nails with foodstuffs, butter in particular, which hit at the most vital interests, the health and lives of our population. Glass and nails in butter! This is so monstrous a crime that, in my opinion, all other crimes of the kind pale before it.
He went on to explain:
In our country, rich in resources of all kinds, there could not have been and cannot be a situation in which a shortage of any product should exist….
It is now clear why there are interruptions of supplies here and there, why, with our riches and abundance of products, there is a shortage first of one thing, then of another. It is these traitors who are responsible for it.190
A method of explaining economic failure which any Government might envy.
He attacked the line taken by Bukharin—“the damnable cross of a fox and a swine”—and Rykov:
The former wanted to prove here that, actually speaking, he did not favour the defeat of the U.S.S.R., that he did not favour espionage, nor wrecking, nor diversive activities, because in general he was not supposed to have any connection with these practical matters, for he was the ‘theoretician’, a man who occupied himself with the problematics of universal questions.191
He was particularly incensed with the refusal of Bukharin and Rykov to accept responsibility for the Kirov murder:
Why did people who had organized espionage, who had organized insurrectionary movements and terrorist acts, and who, on their own admission, had received instructions from Trotsky on terrorism, suddenly, in 1934, stand aloof from the assassination of one of the greatest comrades-in-arms of Stalin, one of the most prominent leaders of the Party and the Government? …
Bukharin and Rykov have admitted that the assassination of leaders of the Party and the Government, of members of the Political Bureau, was part of their plans…. Why should we assume that, having entered into negotiations with Semyonov for the organization of the assassination of members of the Political Bureau, Bukharin deletes from this list of persons who are to be slain one of the most influential members of the Political Bureau who had distinguished himself by his irreconcilable fight against the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites? Where is the logic in such behaviour? There is no logic in it….
Finally Rykov admitted that in 1934 he instructed Artemenko to keep a watch on the automobiles of members of the Government. For what purpose? For terrorist purposes. Rykov was organizing the assassination of members of our Government, of members of the Political Bureau. Why should Rykov make an exception in the case of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, who nevertheless was assassinated on the decision of this accursed bloc? He made no such exception!192
In the medical murders, too, Vyshinsky pointed out that Bukharin admitted everything but actual knowledge or responsibility. Dismissing “an opinion current among criminologists that in order to establish complicity it is necessary to establish common agreement and an intent on the part of each of the criminals, of the accomplices, for each of the crimes,”193 he demanded the death penalty for all except Rakovsky and Bessonov.
He concluded that the others
must be shot like dirty dogs! Our people are demanding one thing: crush the accursed reptile! Time will pass. The graves of the hateful traitors will grow over with weeds and thistles…. Over the road cleared of the last scum and filth of the past, we, our people, with our beloved leader and teacher, the great Stalin, at our head will march as before onwards and onwards, towards Communism!194
In the evening, the doctors’ defense lawyers made their pleas, putting the blame on Yagoda.
Then came the last pleas of the accused. Bessonov remarked that he had loyally returned to Moscow from abroad even when under suspicion. Most of the others simply accused themselves, Bukharin, and Rykov. Ivanov put in the remark, a sinister foreshadowing of future cases:
The reason, I think, why Bukharin has not told the whole truth here is because throughout the whole period of the revolution he has fought the revolution and to this day has remained its enemy, and because he wants to preserve those remnants of the hostile forces which are still lurking in their dens.195
Krestinsky went into his splendid record in the Party, starting as an eighteenyear-old boy in 1901, his leadership in Bolshevik underground organizations, his many arrests, his work as Lenin’s “organizational assistant.” He made the telling point, “I consider it necessary to stress the fact that I had absolutely no knowledge of the terrorist acts enumerated in the second section of the indictment, and that I learnt about them only when I was handed a copy of the indictment,”196 and went on to explain his retraction as due in part to the fact that “it seemed to me easier to die than to give the world the idea that I was even a remote accessory to the murder of Gorky, about which I actually knew nothing.”197
Rykov, trembling and livid, made a sound defense. He admitted his general guilt, and then added:
… But the State Prosecutor has charged me with something in which I had no direct part, and which I cannot admit. He has charged me with adopting a decision, or with giving directions for the murder of Kirov, Kuibyshev, Menzhinsky, Gorky and Peshkov….
The evidence brought against me in this connection has been set forth here in detail; it is based upon the statements of Yagoda, who refers to Yenukidze. Nothing more incriminating was brought against me at the trial….
The assassination of Kirov has formed the subject of two trials. Both the direct perpetrators and the organizers and leaders of this assassination have appeared in court. I do not recall that my name was mentioned then.198
He went on to rub in one extremely telling point. When it came to the alleged attempt on Lenin of twenty years previously, the prosecution had produced eyewitnesses, there were confrontations, and in fact direct evidence.
Why then, on the question of my participation in the assassination of five most important political figures, should a decision be taken on the basis of indirect evidence?
This, it seems to me, would be incorrect. At any rate, I deny any charge of my participation in these five assassinations.199
Until his arrest, he had believed that Gorky had died a natural death. It was only at the trial itself that he had “first learnt of such members of our counter-revolutionary organization as Ivanov.”200
He concluded with a formal plea of guilty—“This responsibility of mine of course transcends all the discrepancies which still remain regarding certain facts and certain details”—and called on any surviving Rightists to “disarm.”201
Rakovsky said:
I confess to all my crimes. What would it matter for the substance of the case if I should attempt to establish here before you the fact that I learned of many of the crimes, and of the most appalling crimes of the ‘bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’ here in court, and that it was here that I first met some of the participants?202