Clever, wasn’t it? Just try grinding that up in your mortar!
To be practical about it, Krylenko no doubt resented having to spend half a year getting ready for this trial, then another two months barking at the defendants, and then having to drag out his summation for fifteen hours, when all these defendants “had more than once been in the hands of the extraordinary Organs at times when these Organs had extraordinary powers; but, thanks to some circumstances or other, they had succeeded in surviving.”[227] So now Krylenko had to slave away to try and get them executed legally.
There was, of course, “only one possible verdict—execution for every last one of them”!37 But Krylenko qualifies this generously. Because this case is being watched by the whole world, the prosecutor’s demand “does not constitute a directive to the court” which the latter would “be obliged to accept immediately for consideration or decision.”38
What a fine court, too, that requires such an explanation!
And, indeed, the tribunal did demonstrate its daring in the sentences it imposed: it did not hand down the death penalty for “every last one of them,” but for fourteen only. Most of the rest got prison and camp sentences, while sentences in the form of productive labor were imposed on another hundred.
And just remember, reader, remember: “All the other courts of the Republic watch what the Supreme Tribunal does. It provides them with guidelines.”39
The sentences of the Verkhtrib are used “as directives for their guidance.”40 As to how many more would now be railroaded in the provinces, you can figure that out for yourself.
And, probably, on appeal the decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was worth the whole triaclass="underline" the death sentences were to remain in effect, but not to be carried out for the time being. The further fate of those condemned would depend, then, on the conduct of those SR’s who had not yet been arrested, apparently including those abroad as well. In other words: If you move against us, we’ll squash them.
In the fields of Russia they were reaping the second peacetime harvest. There was no shooting except in the courtyards of the Cheka. (Perkhurov in Yaroslavl, Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd. And always, always, always.) Beneath the azure sky our first diplomats and journalists sailed abroad across the blue waters. And the Central Executive Committee of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies thrust into its pockets eternal hostages.
The members of the ruling Party read all sixty issues of Pravda devoted to the trial—for they all read the papers—and all of them said: “Yes, yes, yes.” No one mumbled: “No!”
What, then, were they surprised at in 1937? What was there to complain about? Hadn’t all the foundations of lawlessness been laid—first by the extrajudicial reprisals of the Cheka, and then by these early trials and this young Code? Wasn’t 1937 also expedient (expedient for Stalin’s purposes and, perhaps, History’s, too, for that matter)?
Prophetically, Krylenko let it slip that they were judging not the past but the future.
Only the first swath cut by the scythe is difficult.
On or about August 20, 1924, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov crossed the Soviet border. He was immediately arrested and taken to the Lubyanka.[228] In all, the interrogation lasted for just one session, which consisted solely of voluntary testimony and an evaluation of his activity. The official indictment was ready by August 23. The speed was totally unbelievable, but it had impact. (Someone had estimated the situation quite accurately: to have forced false and pitiful testimony out of Savinkov by torture would only have wrecked the authenticity of the picture.)
In the official indictment, couched in already-well-developed terminology that turned everything upside down, Savinkov was charged with just about everything imaginable: with being a “consistent enemy of the poorest peasantry”; with “assisting the Russian bourgeoisie in carrying out its imperialist ambitions” (in other words, he was in favor of continuing the war with Germany); with “maintaining relations with representatives of the Allied command” (this would have been when he was in charge of the Ministry of War!); with “becoming a member of soldiers’ committees for purposes of provocation” (i.e., he was elected by the soldiers’ committees); and, last but not least, something to make even the chickens cackle with laughter—with having had “monarchist sympathies.”
But all that was old hat. There were some new items too—the standard charges for all future trials: money from the imperialists; espionage for Poland (they left out Japan, believe it or not); yes, and he had also wanted to poison the Red Army with potassium cyanide (but for some reason he did not poison even one Red Army soldier).
On August 26 the trial began. The presiding judge was Ulrikh—this being our earliest encounter with him. And there was no prosecutor at all, nor any defense lawyer.
Savinkov was lackadaisical in defending himself, and he raised hardly any objection at all to the evidence. He conceived of this trial in a lyrical sense. It was his last encounter with Russia and his last opportunity to explain himself in public. And to repent. (Not of these imputed sins, but of others.)
(And that theme song fitted well here, and greatly confused the defendant: “After all, we are all Russians together. You and we adds up to us. You love Russia beyond a doubt, and we respect your love—and do we not love Russia too? In fact, are we not at present the fortress and the glory of Russia? And you wanted to fight against us? Repent!”)
But it was the sentence that was most wonderfuclass="underline" “Imposition of the death penalty is not required in the interests of preserving revolutionary law and order, and, on the grounds that motives of vengeance should not influence the sense of justice of the proletarian masses”—the death penalty was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment.
Now that was a sensation! And it confused many minds too. Did it mean a relaxation? A transformation? Ulrikh even published in Pravda an apologetic explanation of why Savinkov had not been executed.
You see how strong the Soviet government has become in only seven years! Why should it be afraid of some Savinkov or other! (On the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution, it is going to get weaker, and don’t be too hard on us because we are going to execute thousands.)
And so, on the heels of the first riddle of his return, there would have been the second riddle of his being spared capital punishment had it not been overshadowed in May, 1925, by a third riddle: in a state of depression, Savinkov jumped from an unbarred window into the interior courtyard of the Lubyanka, and the gaypayooshniki, his guardian angels, simply couldn’t manage to stop him and hold on to his big, heavy body. However, just in case—so that there wouldn’t be any scandal in the service—Savinkov left them a suicide letter in which he explained logically and coherently why he was killing himself—and this letter was so authentically phrased, so clearly written in Savinkov’s style and vocabulary, that even Lev Borisovich, the son of the deceased, was fully convinced of its genuineness and explained to everyone in Paris that no one except his father could have written it and that he had ended his life because he realized his political bankruptcy.[229]
And all the major and most famous trials are still ahead of us.
228
41. Many hypotheses were advanced about his return. Only a little while ago, a certain Ardamatsky, a person obviously connected with the archives and personnel of the Committee for State Security, published a story which, despite being adorned with pretentiously inflated literary gewgaws, is evidently close to the truth. (The magazine Neva, No. 11, 1967.) Having induced certain of Savinkov’s agents to betray him and having deceived others, the GPU used them to set a foolproof trap, convincing Savinkov that inside Russia a large underground organization was languishing for lack of a worthy leader! It would have been impossible to devise a more effective trap! And it would have been impossible for Savinkov, after such a confused and sensational life, merely to spin it out quietly to the end in Nice. He couldn’t bear not trying to pull off one more feat and not returning to Russia and his death.
229
42. And we, silly prisoners of a later Lubyanka, confidently parroted to one another that the steel nets hanging in the Lubyanka stairwells had been installed after Savinkov had committed suicide there. Thus do we succumb to fancy legends to the extent of forgetting that the experience of jailers is, after all, international in character. Such nets existed in American prisons as long ago as the beginning of the century—and how could Soviet technology have been allowed to lag behind?
In 1937, when he was dying in a camp in the Kolyma, the former Chekist Artur Pryubel told one of his fellow prisoners that he had been one of the four who threw Savinkov from a fifth-floor window into the Lubyanka court-yard! (And there is no conflict between that statement and Ardamatsky’s recent account: There was a low sill; it was more like a door to the balcony than a window—they had picked the right room! Only, according to Ardamatsky, the guards were careless; according to Pryubel, they rushed him all together.)
Thus the second riddle, the unusually lenient sentence, was unraveled by the crude third “riddle.”
The story ascribed to Pryubel could not be checked, but I had heard it, and in 1967 I told it to M. P. Yakubovich. He, with his still youthful enthusiasm and shining eyes, exclaimed: “I believe it. Things fit! And I didn’t believe Blyumkin; I thought he was just bragging.” What he had learned was this: At the end of the twenties, Blyumkin had told Yakubovich, after swearing him to secrecy, that he was the one who had written Savinkov’s so-called suicide note, on orders from the GPU. Apparently Blyumkin was allowed to see Savinkov in his cell constantly while he was in prison. He kept him amused in the evenings. (Did Savinkov sense that death was creeping up on him… sly, friendly death, which gives you no chance to guess the form your end will take?) And this had helped Blyumkin acquire Savinkov’s manner of speech and thought, had enabled him to enter into the framework of his last ideas.
And they ask: Why throw him out the window? Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to poison him? Perhaps they showed someone the remains or thought they might need to.
And where, if not here, is the right place to report the fate of Blyumkin, who for all his Chekist omnipotence was fearlessly brought up short by Mandelstam. Ehrenburg began to tell Blyumkin’s story, and suddenly became ashamed and dropped the subject. And there is a story to tell, too. After the 1918 rout of the Left SR’s, Blyumkin, the assassin of the German Ambassador Mirbach, not only went unpunished, was not only spared the fate of all the other Left SR’s, but was protected by Dzerzhinsky, just as Dzerzhinsky had wanted to protect Kosyrev. Superficially he converted to Bolshevism, and was kept on, one gathers, for particularly important assassinations. At one point, close to the thirties, he was secretly sent to Paris to kill Bazhenov, a member of the staff of Stalin’s secretariat who had defected, and one night he succeeded in throwing him off a train. However, his gambler’s blood, or perhaps his admiration of Trotsky, led Blyumkin to the Princes’ Islands in Turkey, where Trotsky was living. He asked Trotsky whether there were any assignments he could carry out for him in the Soviet Union, and Trotsky gave him a package for Radek. Blyumkin delivered it, and his visit to Trotsky would have remained a secret had not the brilliant Radek already been a stool pigeon. Radek brought down Blyumkin, who was thereupon devoured by the maw of the monster his own hands had suckled with its first bloody milk.