The confessions had been obtained with some difficulty. Stalin is said to have brought about 300 former oppositionists from prisons and isolators56 for the NKVD to test for suitability as accused. By May, about fifteen suitable confessions had been obtained, and more were coming in.
In mid-May, Stalin held a conference with a number of the leading NKVD officials, and ordered the NKVD to produce further links with Trotsky. Molchanov, much to the anger of the Foreign Department, nominated two more NKVD agents, who had been working as its representatives in the German Communist Party and in the Comintern, Fritz David and Berman-Yurin.57 They were arrested in June58 and had no choice but to accept their instructions. They, too, claimed that they had each visited Trotsky and received orders from him to kill Stalin.
Two more figures, Moissei Lurye, a scientist, and Nathan Lurye, a surgeon, whose conduct in court led even Western journalists to suspect them of being agents provocateurs, are also reported by fellow prisoners, in on different charges, as scarcely bothering to conceal this .59 They, too, were supposed to be Trotskyite terrorists. With their evidence, a mass of material was now accumulating.
“THE TROTSKYITE–ZINOVIEVITE CENTER”
In March, Yagoda had reported to Stalin on “the liquidation of the Trotskyite underground and the exposure of the terrorist groups.” On 31 March, Stalin instructed Yagoda and Vyshinsky to submit a concrete proposal on the trial of these Trotskyites, of whom they shortly gave eighty-two names. By April, the leading Trotskyites accused—I. N. Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, and Ter-Vaganyan—were under interrogation.60
As was later pointed out, the “Center” contained “not … a single one of the old political leaders” from the Trotskyite side.61 Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, and Ter-Vaganyan were all, however, men of repute in the Party. (Trotsky’s Army Inspector-General, the heroic giant Muralov, had been arrested on 17 April, and it was doubtless intended to use him too; but he held out until December, and this plan had to be postponed.)
Smirnov alone had been a member of the Central Committee, but he at least was a most distinguished Old Bolshevik. A factory worker, he had been an active revolutionary from the age of seventeen, and had often been arrested.62 He had spent many years in Tsarist prisons and in Arctic exile. He had fought in the 1905 Revolution, and in the Civil War had led the Fifth Red Army to its victory over Kolchak. Known as “the Lenin of Siberia,” he had ruled there for some years after the Revolution.
Smirnov had been proposed as the leading Secretary of the Party in 1922, just before the job went to Stalin.63 After being exiled with the other Trotskyites in 1927, he had recanted but, during the Ryutin period, had spoken approvingly of the proposals to remove Stalin and had been in jail ever since. Stalin thus had a particular grudge against him.
Perhaps it was this that led Stalin to insist on his inclusion in the “Center” in spite of the physical impossibility of his having participated in anything of the kind. For, as even Agranov is said to have tentatively objected, there would be some difficulty in making the charge plausible, since Smirnov had been held in jail throughout the period of the alleged plot. Stalin “gave Agranov a sullen look and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, that’s all.’”64
Mrachkovsky had also fought in Siberia. He had run Trotsky’s underground printing press in 1927, and had been the first oppositionist to be arrested. He was regarded as simply a “fighter.” He had been in jail since 1933. Ter-Vaganyan, an intellectual Armenian described as both honest and unambitious, had fought with great distinction in the Revolution and Civil War, and afterward had reverted to ideology and journalism. He, too, had been in exile in Kazakhstan since 1933.
A fourth Trotskyite was thrown in for some good measure—Dreitzer, the former head of Trotsky’s bodyguard and prominent in the 1927 demonstrations. He was not accused of being a member of the “Center,” but rather as the head organizer of assassin groups.
The first examinations of the leading prisoners were a total failure. Smirnov had gone on hunger strike for thirteen days on 8 May, and on 20 May was still replying, “I deny that; again I deny; I deny.” Ter-Vaganyan also twice undertook hunger strikes and wrote to Stalin that he had decided on suicide.65 Mrachkovsky’s key interrogation is said to have lasted ninety hours, without result, though Stalin rang up at intervals to inquire how things were going.66
So far the case was entirely Trotskyite. Stalin now ordered the implication of the Zinovievites. Yagoda was later to be accused of rejecting the evidence against them, and Agranov (or so he was to say when attacking Yagoda and Molchanov in 1937) went behind his back to the Moscow Provincial NKVD. He and Yezhov composed the full plan of the “United”—that is Trotskyite and ZinovieviteCenter, and with A. P. Radzivilovsky and other leading figures in the Moscow NKVD he obtained the necessary confessions. Radzivilovsky wrote later that “extraordinarily difficult work for three weeks on Dreitzer and Pikel” was needed before they gave testimony. Although Yagoda at first rejected it, Agranov said that it was only thus that the investigation was put on the right track. Richard Pikel, formerly Zinoviev’s secretary, had already given evidence in the “Kremlin Affair.” A writer and playwright who had served in the Civil War, he became more cooperative when transferred to the central NKVD, where a number of the leading figures were old friends of his. They promised him his life, an offer later confirmed by Yagoda.67
It was only in late June or early July that Zinoviev and his leading supporters were brought to Moscow from their isolators.68 At first Zinoviev made “obdurate denials.”69 Bakayev made “persistent denials.”70 In general, all the genuine oppositionists refused to confess and pointed out that they had been in prison or exile in the remotest parts of the country during most of the period, and under close NKVD supervision during the rest of it. Molchanov then gave the interrogators to understand that earlier orders about not using unlawful means of interrogation were not to be taken too seriously.71
The interrogation of Zinoviev and Kamenev was put in charge of the most senior officials: Agranov, Molchanov, and Mironov. Zinoviev was ill at the time with a liver ailment, and the routine interrogation was postponed.72 He had once again written to the Politburo vaguely accepting “responsibility” for the assassination of Kirov. This was returned with an insistence on “greater sincerity.”73
With Kamenev, the attempt was made to secure a confession by ordinary interrogative methods. Mironov conducted it. But Kamenev resisted him in spite of all his efforts, exposing Reingold at a “confrontation” and in general standing firm.
Mironov reported to Stalin that Kamenev was refusing to confess, and later gave an account of the conversation to a close acquaintance:
“You think that Kamenev may not confess?” asked Stalin, his eyes slyly screwed up.
“I don’t know,” Mironov answered. “He doesn’t yield to persuasion.”
“You don’t know?” inquired Stalin with marked surprise, staring at Mironov. “Do you know how much our state weighs, with all the factories, machines, the army, with all the armaments and the navy?”
Mironov and all those present looked at Stalin with surprise.
“Think it over and tell me,” demanded Stalin. Mironov smiled, believing that Stalin was getting ready to crack a joke. But Stalin did not intend to jest. He looked at Mironov quite in earnest. “I am asking you, how much does all that weigh?” he insisted.