Yezhov made a wide-ranging report. For instance, he complained that over recent months he could not think of a case in which the economic ministries had telephoned him to express suspicions about any of their staff; on the contrary, they had tried to defend them.211
A resolution on Yezhov’s report was accepted which repeated Stalin’s formulation about the NKVD’s failure under Yagoda to act four years previously—that is, against Ryutin:
The Plenum of the Party Central Committee considers that all facts revealed during the investigation into the matter of an anti-Soviet Trotskyite center and of its followers in the provinces show that the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs had fallen behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these most inexorable enemies of the people.…212
Stalin severely criticized Yagoda.213 This must have been the occasion when Yagoda turned on the applauding members and snarled that six months earlier he could have arrested the lot of them.214
Ordzhonikidze’s report to which Stalin had objected had been supposed to cover sabotage in industry. Molotov, taking up Yezhov’s point, now performed this duty, saying that 585 people had been arrested in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry alone, and hundreds in other ministries concerned.215 He sneered at those who urged caution “against conjuring up all sorts of conspiracies and sabotage and espionage centers,” and called on the Party to annihilate enemies of the people “hiding behind Party cards.” The present-day subversives and saboteurs were especially dangerous, he said, because they “pretend to be Communists, ardent supporters of the Soviet regime.”216
On 3 March, Stalin made his political report, and on 5 March a short “final speech” closing the plenum. These two speeches were printed in full in the press on 29 March in a version believed to differ considerably, chiefly by omission, from what he had actually said. They were later in the year sponsored in England in one volume with a slightly compressed transcript of the Pyatakov Trial. Neil Maclean, M.P., the British commentator we have already quoted, commented in a preface: “These speeches in that simple and clear style of which M. Stalin is such a master form an interesting background and commentary on the Trial.…” They do indeed.
Stalin’s report developed the theoretical justification for the Terror. Quoting the Central Committee letters of 18 January 1935 and 29 July 1936, he propounded his view (to be denounced in the Khrushchev period) that as socialism gets stronger, the class struggle gets sharper.
He pointed out that the fact of there only being a few counter-revolutionaries should not comfort the Party: “Thousands of people are required to build a big railway bridge, but a few people are enough to blow it up. Tens and hundreds of such examples could be quoted….”
But his central theme was in effect a censure of leaders who had failed in their vigilance:
Some of our leading comrades, both in the centre and locally, not only failed to discern the real countenance of these wreckers, diversionists, spies, and murderers, but proved so unconcerned, complacent and naïve, that at times they themselves assisted in promoting the agents of the foreign States to one or other responsible post.217
“The espionage-diversionist work of the Trotskyite agents of the Japanese-German secret police,” he added,
was a complete surprise to some of our comrades…. Our Party comrades have not noticed that Trotskyism has ceased to be a political tendency in the working class, that from the political tendency in the working class that it was seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism has become a frenzied and unprincipled band of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers, acting on instructions from intelligence service organs of foreign States.218
He made a sinister suggestion, which was to prove a fair statement of his plans: “First of all it is necessary to suggest to our Party leaders, from cell secretaries to the secretaries of province and republic Party organizations, to select, within a certain period, two people in each case, two Party workers capable of being their real substitutes.”219
His final speech fully implicated Bukharinites as well as Trotskyites:
Two words about wreckers, diversionists, spies, etc. I think it is clear to everybody now that the present-day wreckers and diversionists, no matter what disguise they may adopt, either Trotskyite or Bukharinite, have long ceased to be a political trend in the labour movement, that they have become transformed into a gang of professional wreckers, diversionists, spies and assassins, without principles and without ideals. Of course, these gentlemen must be ruthlessly smashed and uprooted as the enemies of the working class, as betrayers of our country. This is clear and requires no further explanation.220
The bulk of the speech concentrated on a different matter—the censure, in effect, of his next batch of victims. His theme was incorrect conduct, and unjustified expulsions, by leading Communists still in high positions. Then, after remarking that
we, the leaders, should not be conceited, and should understand that if we are members of the Central Committee or People’s Commissars, this does not yet mean that we possess all the knowledge required to give correct leadership. The rank in itself gives neither knowledge nor experience. Still less so does the title.221
he went on to deal with the unfortunate case of Nikolayenko in Kiev:
Nikolayenko—is a rank and file member of the Party, she is an ordinary ‘little person’. For a whole year she had signalled about a wrong situation in the Party organization in Kiev, exposing the family atmosphere, philistine approach to workers, gagging of self-criticism, high-handed action by the Trotskyite wreckers. She was shunned like a bothersome fly. At last, in order to get rid of her, they expelled her from the Party. Neither the Kiev organization nor the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine helped her to obtain justice. It was only the intervention of the Central Committee of the Party which helped to disentangle that twisted knot. And what was revealed by an examination of the case? It was revealed that Nikolayenko was right, while the Kiev organization was wrong.222
and he added, of the inhuman attitude to such expulsions by some Party bureaucrats, “Only people who are essentially deeply anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.”223
With these sinister words ringing in their ears, the defeated “moderates” dispersed to their posts, where worse awaited them.
In Postyshev’s old fief, a “Ukrainian Trotskyite Center” came to some sort of trial straight away—Kotsiubinsky being shot on 8 March, Golubenko on 9 March, and Musulbas on 10 March, together with O. P. Dzenis of the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Their accomplice V. F. Loginov (named as a prominent Ukrainian “Trotskyite,” and giving satisfactory evidence as a “witness” at the Pyatakov Trial) was held over and only executed on 11 October 1938.
On 17 March, the Ukrainian Central Committee relieved Postyshev of his post as Second Secretary .224 He was demoted to be First Secretary in Kuibyshev province. There, though still officially retaining his rank as candidate member of the Politburo, he was to moulder, under constant criticism, for a year. The new post was supposed to be an opportunity to “correct his errors,” it was later to be said,225 with the verdict that he had failed to measure up.
In Kiev, a resolution was passed saying that as a result of Postyshev’s leadership, and its “un-Bolshevik style of work” which suppressed criticism and formed a solid clique, enemies of the Party had been able to penetrate the organization and sometimes to persecute honest Communists.226
In the following months, the implications grew. At the Ukrainian Congress in May, Kossior attacked Postyshev. In Kiev more than anywhere, he said, Trotskyites had been able to gain important posts.227 Other speakers upbraided those in Kiev “who had let in enemies.” Over several years of complacency, the main thing had been a personality cult involving “Greetings to Postyshev!” as the restored and rehabilitated Nikolayenko smugly remarked to the uneasy delegates.228 He had been, in fact, “intoxicated with success” because of “the noise our press made round his name.”229