… The Kemerovo district power station was put into such a state that, if it were deemed necessary for wrecking purposes, and when the order was given, the mine could be flooded. In addition, coal was supplied that was technically unsuitable for the power station, and this led to explosions. This was done quite deliberately.92
He went on to the case of the Tsentralnaya Mine. He ended, but only after considerable bullying from Vyshinsky, with the confession that the plotters had hoped for as much loss of life as possible from the explosions. Although he had been in jail at the time of the disaster, he accepted responsibility.
Shestov, the NKVD agent, confirmed Sokolnikov on the old saboteurs. He gave a useful warning to engineers throughout the country: “… Although Ovsyannikov was not a member of our organization he was the sort of manager who left everything to the engineers and did not do anything himself, and he could quickly be converted into a Trotskyite.”93
His own excavation system in Prokopyevsk had resulted in no fewer than sixty underground fires by the end of 1935.94
Shestov explained that it was Trotskyites rather than Government policy which was rendering the worker’s life intolerable:
Instructions were issued to worry the life out of the workers. Before a worker reached his place of work, he must be made to heap two hundred curses on the heads of the pit management. Impossible conditions of work were created. Not only for Stalchanovite methods but even for normal methods.95
Norkin and Stroilov gave similar evidence of sabotage. Norkin had “planned to put the State District Power Station out of action by means of explosions. In February 1936 there were three explosions.”96 He had also been responsible for a faulty investment program.97 When asked the motives of his confession, he contrived to hint at the truth:
Vyshinsky:
And why did you afterwards decide to give way?
Norkin:
Because there is a limit to everything.
Vyshinsky:
Perhaps pressure was brought to bear upon you?
Norkin:
I was questioned, exposed, there were confrontations.
Vyshinsky:
You were confronted with evidence, facts?
Norkin:
There were confrontations.
98
Stroilov’s evidence is chiefly interesting for what is presumably Stalin’s view of Trotsky’s writings: “I said that I had read Trotsky’s book, Mein Leben. He asked me whether I liked it, I said from the literary point of view he, as a journalist, wrote well, but because of the infinite number of ‘I’s’ in it, I did not like it.”99
At the end of his testimony, Vyshinsky, who had not bothered to check the Oslo airfield situation, went through a long rigmarole to establish the reality of a minor contact of Stroilov’s from Berlin:
Vyshinsky:
I request the court to have attached to the records a statement by the Savoy Hoteclass="underline" ‘Foreign tourist H.V. Berg, born 1874, German subject, merchant by profession, Hotel Savoy, Room 223 (it is identical with the telephone number), December 1–15, 1930, arrived from Berlin.
‘In the room occupied by Berg there was a telephone No. 8–50, ext. 223. Director of the hotel. Seal and reference number.’
100
Immediately afterward, he was doing the same thing about an address in Berlin Stroilov had visited:
Vyshinsky:
I request the Court to have attached to the record this Berlin address and telephone number taken from this official publication [hands to the Court a big book in a red binding].
Here
, against No. 8563 there is Wüster, Armstrasse, and the address of this Wüster, which is mentioned also in Stroilov’s notebook.
101
The Court acceded to both these requests, so that the Telephone Address Directory of the German Reich, 7th edition, Volume 2, now forms part of the dossier, which, somewhere in the purlieus of the Soviet State Archives, has been gathering dust for half a century.
Like Drobnis, Muralov had been in jail at the time of the Tsentralnaya explosion. But he refused to accept responsibility.
The President:
Did you know that at the Kemerovo coal mines the Trotskyites had gassed the pits and created absolutely intolerable conditions of work?
Muralov:
Drobnis was at the Chemical Works—these are under one trust, and the mines are under another trust.
The President:
I understand. I am speaking about the Kemerovo mine.
Muralov:
I did not know that there they had adopted the course of gassing the Tsentralnaya Pit, and Drobnis did not report this to me. This occurred when I was already in prison.
The President:
One of the passages in your testimony contains this sentence: ‘At the Kemerovo mine the Trotskyites gassed pits and created intolerable conditions for the workers.’
Muralov:
I learned about that while I was in prison, as being a result of all the undermining Trotskyite work.
102
His main concern, in any case, was assassination. One of the weaknesses in the whole legend came to light:
Vyshinsky:
But was it not said that terrorism in general produces no result if only one is killed and the others remain, and therefore it is necessary to act at one stroke?
Muralov:
Both I and Pyatakov felt that it was no use working by Socialist-Revolutionary, guerrilla methods. We must organize it so as to cause panic at one stroke. We regarded causing panic and consternation in the leading ranks of the Party as one of the means by which we would come into power.
103
But while admitting to the preparation of attempts on Eikhe and Molotov, he warmly repudiated the accusation that Ordzhonikidze was another intended victim:
Muralov:
…About 1932 and Shestov’s reference to the attempt on the life of Ordzhonikidze, I categorically declare that this belongs to the realms of Shestov’s phantasy. I never gave such instructions.
Vyshinsky:
He is mixing things up?
Muralov:
I do not know whether is he mixing things up or whether he is simply letting his phantasy run away with him.
104
Vyshinsky was so annoyed that he referred to this is his closing speech: “Muralov, who will under no circumstances agree to having the preparation of an attempt on the life of Comrade Ordzhonikidze attributed to him … admits that he did indeed organize a terrorist act against Comrade Molotov.” And it certainly is anomalous. We can hardly see it as other than a demonstration of loyalty to, and hope of help from, Ordzhonikidze.
As to the attempt on Molotov, this is interesting as the only piece of action the terrorists had accomplished since the Kirov murder. The presumable truth of the matter was given in 1961:
Here is still another example of Molotov’s extreme cynicism. On a trip to the city of Prokopyevsk in 1934, the car in which he was riding went off the road, its right wheels landing in a ditch. None of the passengers was injured in any way. This episode subsequently provided grounds for a story about an “attempt” on Molotov’s life, and a group of completely innocent people was sentenced for it. Who knew better than Molotov that in reality there had been no such attempt? But he had not a word to say in defense of these innocent people.105