Mercader, coming to trial after Siqueiros, seems to have hoped that he, too, might get a light sentence. Perhaps the judge would hold that he had been teaching Trotsky how to climb the Alps. But he was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, which he served. Even after his identity had been established by fingerprints, he refused to admit who he was or why he had committed the murder. The official Stalinist version was that he was a disgruntled Trotskyite, and that the NKVD had nothing to do with it.
Mercader’s imprisonment was passed under conditions superior to those prevailing in Soviet prisons and camps. The Mexican Revolution had effected genuine reform. A visitor notes, “His cell, spacious and sunny … with a little open-air patio in front, contained a neat bed and a table loaded with books and magazines.” He was also, under Mexican law, allowed women in his cell. (On his release, he went to Czechoslovakia, moving from that country, when it became too liberal, to Moscow in 1968, though he is later reported in Havana.)
Eitingon and Seilora Mercader left by the prepared escape route. She was received in Moscow by Beria, presented to Stalin, and decorated, for her son and herself.96
And, indeed, the destruction of Stalin’s last great opponent must have caused great satisfaction in the Kremlin. For once, it might have been noted, a prediction of Trotsky’s had been literally fulfilled. He had written of Stalin, in 1936: “He seeks to strike, not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull.”
14
CLIMAX
Each day too slew its thousands six or seven.
Byron
After the Bukharin Trial, Stalin and Yezhov turned their attention to the remnant of opposition at the top.
This final wave of the Purge in the inner Party, directed against his own supporters, was well defined by a circular put out under Stalin’s instructions, in April 1938, calling for a “liquidation of the consequences of wrecking” in which the “’silent’ politically spineless people should also not be forgotten.”1
Various loose ends were tied up; for example, the First Secretary in Kazakhstan, L. I. Mirzoyan, whom Stalin had attacked at the January plenum, was arrested “on Stalin’s personal orders.”2
There remained bigger game. Postyshev’s arrest was not immediately followed up. Eikhe, Kossior, and Chubar, the doomed members of the Politburo, still featured, though not regularly, with the other members in formal listings, telegrams from the Soviet expedition at the North Pole, and so forth.
Eikhe and Kossior, appearing in good standing until the last week in April, went first. Eikhe was arrested on 29 April, and Kossior (mentioned in an electoral list as late as 28 April) at about the same time3—inaccordance with the NKVD custom of arresting people just before holidays, during which no attempt could be made to trace them.
Stalin was now wholly ignoring the formalities. We are told that there was no “exchange of opinions or Political Bureau decisions” about the arrest of Kossior—or in any “other case of this type.”4
No announcement was made, then or ever, though his arrest must have become known immediately to those interested, for Kiev Radio just ceased to announce itself as Radio Kossior, as it had done for some years.5 The press had other matters to think of. For most of May and June, the new election campaign built up in newspapers, meetings, and any other feasible fashion, on the lines of the fanfares of the previous winter. (When the elections finally took place on 26 June, it was to the accompaniment of another exploit by “Stalinist falcons’—a nonstop flight to Khabarovsk in the Far East by Kokkinaki.)
The absence of both men from the 1 May demonstrations was noted. Chubar was still there. He can be traced as receiving official greetings as late as 9 June. By 1 July, he was no longer listed.
Chubar was later said to have been concerned with shortcomings in industry, and to have had qualms about the new agricultural system. He had been closely associated with Ordzhonikidze and was not pleased with the development of the cult of personality. In the period before his own removal, he is reported as “deeply indignant” about the facts he had learned about illegal repressions. He did not believe that people he had known and worked with for years were really spies. His views on this became known to those in charge of the Purge. On his removal from membership in the Politburo and Vice Chairmanship of the Council of People’s Commissars, he was sent for the moment to work at Solikamsk in the Urals. But he remained there for only “a few months … soon he was arrested.”6
Meanwhile Eikhe, in the new torture center for top officials at Sukhanovka, was being interrogated by the notorious Z. M. Ushakov. Soon his ribs were broken, and he was confessing to being leader of a “reserve net supposedly created by Bukharin in 1935.”7
This was presumably what was mentioned at the Bukharin Trial as “another reserve centre,” allegedly existing at the end of 1935 or the beginning of 1936, when Rykov was supposed to have urged Chernov to get in touch with it “through Lyubimov.”8 It was “another” reserve center because there was also reference to “the parallel group of Rights” allegedly led by Antipov.
There is at least some slight logic in this representation of the latest victims as “Rightists.” They had had no connection whatever with the Trotsky or Zinoviev oppositions, and though they had equally opposed the Bukharinites in 1929–1930, they had been in favor of a lessening of the Terror and reconciliation with Bukharin .
The plan for the next trial was, in any case, changed. Eikhe was instructed to remove his name as reserve center leader and substitute Mezhlauk’s.9
This left a number of ready victims for the first trial planned wholly against Stalinists, leaving the more recently arrested Politburo members and some others in reserve for future use.
On 28 July, Yezhov sent Stalin a list of 138 names, asking for permission to execute them. Stalin and Molotov signed, “Shoot all 138.”10 Thereupon, on 27 to 29 July, and after the weekend on 1 August, there took place in secret by far the largest massacre of the leadership in the whole period. We have already noted the twenty-four known military victims (see here). In addition, at least twenty-two leading political, diplomatic, and cultural names can be identified. They included Rudzutak, formerly full member and more recently candidate member of the Politburo; V. I. Mezhlauk; Pyatnitsky; Rukhimovich; Knorin; Stetsky; M. I. Frumkin, who had been the leading Rightist spokesman in the late 1920s; Ya. A. Yakovlev; and Krylenlco. V. M. Kirshon, a playwright with strong political connections, was among the other victims. In every case we can trace, they were “tried” by the Military Collegium. How the military and political elements in the supposed plot were melded is not clear, but (for example) the civilian Rudzutak was directly linked to the Army figure Berzin, as a Latvian spy, as was Army Commander Alksnis, who was “savagely beaten” by a special team.11
Rudzutak pleaded his innocence. He had made a confession, but now retracted it and asked that
the Party Central Committee be informed that there is in the NKVD an as yet not liquidated center which is craftily manufacturing cases, which forces innocent persons to confess; there is no opportunity to prove one’s non-participation in crimes to which the confessions of various persons testify. The investigative methods are such that they force people to lie and to slander entirely innocent persons in addition to those who already stand accused. He asks the court that he be allowed to inform the Party Central Committee of all this in writing. He assures the court that he personally never had any evil designs in regard to the policy of our Party because he had always agreed with the Party policy pertaining to all spheres of economic and cultural activity.12