There was one obvious motive for at least pretending suicide. If the doctors, or any of them, had seen the body and been told it was suicide, it is of course understandable that they could have been induced to hush up the scandal in the interests of Party and State. Kaminsky, at least, was to prove a brave critic of the new Terror over the months that were left to him; it may perhaps have been his direct connection with the Ordzhonikidze case which brought him to his moral decision. Hushed up or not, and even taking it as suicide and not murder, at his political level (as candidate member of the Central Committee) he might have guessed what a suicide in those circumstances signified. But if it had obviously been murder, he might well have taken a stronger line.
The decisive argument against any but a forced suicide (or murder) is different. If Ordzhonikidze had felt “unable to share responsibility,” if he “did not want to play the scoundrel” as an accomplice in Stalin’s plans, it is quite untrue that “the only thing to do was to depart,” as a Soviet account of the 1960s has it.176 On the contrary, the Central Committee was to meet the next day.177 When, after a postponement, the full plenum met on 23 February, some attempt was made to block the Purge. The natural, in fact the “only” thing for Ordzhonikidze to do was to throw himself into the struggle. Suicide at this moment was pointless.
Ordzhonikidze had been asked to prepare a report for the impending Central Committee plenum. This is still in the archives, and a Soviet historian describes Ordzhonikidze’s draft being returned by Stalin with coarse and hostile comments. This led to “stormy” exchanges.178 Another recent Soviet publication suggests that Ordzhonikidze indeed planned to make a stand against the purges at the February–March plenum, hoping for the support of “Postyshev, Chubar, perhaps Kalinin.”179 But from Stalin’s point of view, the opposite consideration prevailed. An opposition led by an angry Ordzhonikidze was likely to prove much more difficult to handle than one lacking his support. Voluntary suicide was pointless; but forced suicide (or murder) was logically indicated. A recent article by a Soviet historian tells us that those who saw him on the last day of his life reported him energetic, with no signs of depression, making appointments for the next day—as confirmed by his papers, still in the archives.180
It is not uninteresting that Vyshinsky described the death of Zinoviev’s secretary, Bogdan, who had allegedly been forced to commit suicide under the terms “Kill yourself or else we will kill you,” as “really murder.”181 In this sense, even accepting a forced suicide, we can in any case certainly speak of the murder of Ordzhonikidze. As I write, the question of whose hand held the gun must be left as recently put by a Soviet historian—that “Ordzhonikidze killed himself (or was shot).”182
On 19 February 1937,183 the first photographs of Ordzhonilcidze’s corpse show, grouped around it, his wife and Stalin’s own cabaclass="underline" Stalin himself, Yezhov, Molotov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, and Voroshilov. They all appear overcome with comradely sorrow.
A Central Committee announcement the same day spoke of him as “an irreproachably pure and staunch Party man, a Bolshevik.”184 And Ordzhonikidze continued to be honored by Stalin, just as Kirov did. There is one curious public sign of the dictator’s animus. Seven years later, in 1942, the main towns that had been named after Ordzhonikidze were quietly rechristened: Ordzhonikidzegrad (formerly Bezhitsa), Ordzhonikidze (formerly Yenakiyevo), and Sergo (formerly Kadiyevka) reverted to their earlier names, while Ordzhonikidze in the Caucasus (formerly Vladikavkaz), was given a new Ossetian name, Dzaudzhikau. Such action, in the Stalinist protocol, had hitherto invariably been a sign of disgrace (and was to be so in future under his successor as well, when the town of Molotov reverted to Perm, and so on).
As to Ordzhonikidze’s relatives (though without publicity), Papuliya Ordzhonikidze’s wife, Nina, was sentenced to ten years on 29 March 1938, and to death on 14 June 1938. Two other Ordzhonikidze brothers and a sister-in-law were jailed from 1939 through 1941; two other relatives were shot in 1937 and 1938; and another was imprisoned.185 Yet no further public degradation was inflicted.
Five days after Ordzhonikidze’s death, the Central Committee assembled. In the last trial of strength which now took place, his presence was to be sorely missed among the elements attempting to halt the Purge.
THE FEBRUARY – MARCH PLENUM
The agenda of the plenum as first circulated consisted of two items:
The question of N. I. Bukharin and A.I. Rykov
Organizational questions
Bukharin had already begun to think of suicide, and several times toyed with a revolver long ago presented to him, with ammunition, by Voroshilov. Another of Bukharin’s revolvers (as his wife was told in 1939 by Yezhov’s secretary Ryzhova, her cell mate in the Lubyanka) had been fixed so that it could not fire, presumably by the NKVD, which would perhaps have taken the same precaution with this one.
Bukharin now went on a hunger strike.
Just before the plenum opened, on 23 February, a new agenda was circulated:
The question of the anti-Party action of Bukharin in connection with his declaring a hunger strike to the Plenum
The question of N. Bukharin and A. Rykov
Organizational questions186
Livshits’s last words, as he was being led to execution, had been a cry of “What for?” Or so a story went that now circulated in the upper levels of the Party. Army Commander Yakir, a full member of the Central Committee, commented privately when he heard it that the question was a good one, as the men were quite clearly innocent.187 This appears to have been the mood among some members of the Central Committee as the “February–March plenum” opened.
The atmosphere was extremely tense. Stalin, though, was determined finally to overcome the hesitations and qualms which had for so long held him up and forced him to mark time. The struggle at the plenum is another of the cases in which long-standing rumor was, after decades of official silence, more or less confirmed by Khrushchev in 1956 and 1961.
The session was, of course, “managed” by Stalin’s men; the official rapporteurs were Yezhov, Zhdanov, Molotov, and Stalin himself. Formally speaking, they dealt with different subjects—Yezhov with police affairs, Zhdanov with Party organization, Molotov with the economic side, while Stalin made the political report. But in practice, all the reports centered on the Purge theme, from Yezhov’s “Lessons Emerging from the Harmful Activity, Diversion and Espionage of the Japanese-German-Trotskyite Agents,”188 through Zhdanov’s condemnation of wrongful methods of expelling Party members and Molotov’s “report on wrecking and sabotage,”189 to Stalin’s “Deficiencies of Party Work and Methods for the Liquidation of the Trotskyites and other Two-faced People.”
In fact there was, in reality, only one item on the agenda—the fate of Bukharin and Rykov.
Even now, one or two old colleagues, perhaps still hoping for successful resistance at the plenum, had the courage to show their feelings. Akulov said to Bukharin, “Play the man, Nikolai Ivanovich”; Uborevich pressed his hand.190
When Bukharin saw Stalin, Stalin told him to apologize to the plenum for his hunger strike and assured him that he would not be expelled. Bukharin then started proceedings by making the appropriate apology, and was then once again violently attacked by Yezhov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and later Kalinin.191
Yezhov in his report charged Bukharin and Rykov with all the available anti-Soviet crimes: implication in the conspiracies of Zinoviev and Pyatakov, planning the return of capitalism through fascist interventionists, organizing peasant rebellions, inspiring the Ryutin Platform, and plotting the murder of Stalin and the overthrow of the Soviet Government. Kossior then attacked Bukharin for having helped draft the Ryutin document. Bukharin retorted that he had been in the Pamirs at the time to which Kossior referred, and Kossior replied, “Nevertheless we must believe Yezhov.”192 Bukharin rejected this and all the other charges, and both he and Rykov bitterly protested their innocence: “They did not take the road of repentance.”193 Every point raised against them they denied “many times.”194