The “last letter” appeals to future leaders of the Party and denounces the NKVD and its use of the “pathological suspiciousness” of Stalin. This “hellish machine” can transform any Party member into a “terrorist” or “spy.” He was not guilty, would cheerfully have died for Lenin, loved Kirov, and had done nothing against Stalin. He had had no connection with Ryutin’s or Uglanov’s illegal struggle.
Bukharin’s wife, Anna Larina, was arrested soon after the trial. She is reported spending six months in a small cell permanently ankle-deep in cold water, but survived to serve eighteen years in labor camp and exile. Their small son was brought up by Anna’s sister and for twenty years knew nothing of his parenthood.219 It was Anna Larina who, in the final days before Bukharin’s arrest, had learned his “letter” by heart; it was finally published in Moscow in 1988.
Bukharin’s crippled first wife, Nadezhda, had written to Stalin several times asserting his innocence, and turned in her Party card after his arrest. She was arrested in April 1938, and her surgical corset taken from her so that she was in continual pain. However, she refused to confess. She was interrogated at intervals until March 1940, when she was shot. Her brothers, brother-in-law, and other relatives were also arrested and were shot, died in prison, or disappeared in camps.220
Bukharin’s daughter by his second marriage, Svetlana, had been left at liberty when he was arrested. At the end of the year, she was encouraged to write, and sketch, for an article in Pionerskaya pravda, which appeared on 28 December 1937. She later interpreted this as being a method of showing her father that the family was not being persecuted, but that if he gave further trouble, this unspoken bargain might be changed. She and her mother in fact were not arrested until later. She herself was convicted without an indictment: “is adequately convicted in being Bukharin’s daughter.”221
Ikramov’s wife and his four brothers were shot, and his elder son was arrested (Ikramov himself was informed of all this while in jail). His younger son, Kamil, ten years old at the time of the trial, was only arrested in 1943.222
Yagoda’s wife is reported in camp, though she was eventually shot, while two sisters and his mother seem to have died in camps as wel1.223 Ivanov’s wife is reported in camp,224 and the wives of Rakovsky and Ossinsky in the Butyrka.225 Rykov’s wife was also in the Butyrka, in 1937, anxious and ignorant of her husband’s fate.226 She did not survive, and their daughter was sentenced to eight years in camp “to be used only for general labor,”227 and in the event served twenty years. During 1938 at least, Bukharin’s father and Rosengolts’s wife are said not even to have been arrested228 As for the family of Tomsky, who had sensibly predeceased the other “conspirators”: his two elder sons were arrested and shot; his wife and youngest son were imprisoned.229
During the whole period of the trial, from the announcement on 28 February 1938 that it would take place until the actual executions, the papers had, of course, been full of the demands of workers’ meetings that no pity be shown to the “foul band of murderers and spies.” Leaders and articles rubbed it in. A Conference on Physiological Problems at the Academy of Sciences passed a resolution of thanks to the NKVD. The folk “poet” Dzhambul produced his usual verse contribution to Pravda, “Annihilate.” The verdict of the court was received with many expressions of public joy.
Life, which had cast the Bukharin reactionaries aside, was represented mainly by the heroes of the Soviet Arctic expedition who had been landed at the pole some months earlier and were now in the news. There was celebration first of their rescue from the ice floe and then, on 16 March, of their arrival back in Leningrad on the icebreakers Yermak and Murmanets. Papanin and his gallant comrades were, as before, given the full treatment day after day, with receptions, decorations, public meetings, and a vast press spread.
A further sign of the rejection by the forward-looking Soviet people of all the dark forces of the past was shown in the elections to Union Republic Supreme Soviets. As Stalin was to remark so tellingly in his Report to the XVIIIth Congress in 1939,230 the executions of Tukhachevsky and Yakir were followed by the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, giving the Soviet power 98.6 percent of all taking part in the voting. At the beginning of 1938, “Rosengolts, Rykov, Bukharin and others” had been sentenced, and after this, elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics gave the Soviet power 99.4 percent of all taking part in the voting.
As for the effects of the trial, once again neither the ineptitudes of the plot nor the partial denials of the accused made any difference. The extravagances included those long since established. Once more, a vast network of assassins was discovered. At least eight groups were working on the destruction of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Yezhov. And, this time, they were shown not simply to be under the protection of high officials in the Party and the Army, but actually to have been nourished and sponsored by the NKVD itself. Seldom can terrorists have had such advantages as those supposedly enjoyed by the plotters. Apart from half a dozen members of the Government, including the Head of the Secret Police itself, they actually had on their side the NKVD officers Pauker and Volovich, responsible for guarding their prospective victims. But the results had been negligible. Assassinations had indeed been carried out, but only by doctors. By adding these in, the total successes of all the groups of assassins exposed at the three trials consisted of Kirov killed; Molotov perhaps slightly shaken in a car accident; Kuibyshev, Gorky, and Menzhinsky “poisoned” by their doctors; and Gorky’s son given a chill and then doctored to death. It is an unimpressive result, and the conclusion—that the best way to assassinate anyone was to wait until he got ill—was not very encouraging to anyone desiring speedy action. A minor curiosity, again unnoticed by enthusiasts, is that the indictment cites against the accused diversionary acts in the Far Eastern Territory, and in particular certain specified train wrecks, on the instructions of Japanese intelligence, and the verdict finds them guilty of this, but no attempt at all is made to prove it in the evidence! The reason for this anomaly is not clear, though it might conceivably be that the relevant witness balked at the last moment.
Another oddity of the trial was again the implication of a whole series of important figures who were, however, not produced. As Grinko had remarked, the “bloc” included “a number of other people who are not now in the dock.”231 Major roles in the conspiracy, as important as those played by any of those appearing in court, were alleged to have been played by Yenukidze, Rudzutak,232 and Antipov,233 while A. P. Smirnov, Karakhan, Uglanov, V. Shmidt, and Yakovlev234 had roles notably more important than the second level of those appearing in the dock.fn6 Yenukidze and Karakhan had indeed been shot without public trial. But why? And as to the others, why did they not appear? Such questions were scarcely asked.
On an even more essential point, Bukharin’s calculation that his tactics would adequately expose the falsity of the charges against him seems to have been too subtle. It was, of course, plain that he denied all overt acts of terrorism and espionage. But who was affected by this? Serious independent observers in any case did not credit the charges, and would not have done so even if he had confessed to all of them—any more than they did in the case of Zinoviev. But to the greater political audience for whom the trials were enacted, the impression received was simply that “Bukharin had confessed.” For those who even noted that the confession had only been partial, the fact that he had admitted to organizing a terrorist conspiracy outweighed his rejection of actual terrorist acts. Indeed, this last even gave a certain color to Vyshinsky’s thesis that Bukharin, though driven to admit the essentials, was trying to wriggle out of particular crimes.