Stalin replied that he and Voroshilov were a commission of the Politburo. Given Klim’s venom, it is easy to see why he was there, but where was Molotov? Perhaps the punctilious Iron-Arse was worried about the etiquette of lying to Old Bolsheviks: he certainly did not object to killing people.
Kamenev begged the Politburo for a guarantee of their lives.
“A guarantee?” replied Stalin, according to Orlov’s version. “What guarantee can there be? It’s simply ridiculous! Maybe you want an official treaty certified by the League of Nations? Zinoviev and Kamenev forget they’re not in a market-place haggling over a stolen horse but at the Politburo of the Bolshevik Communist Party. If an assurance by the Politburo is not enough, I don’t see any point in talking further.”
“Zinoviev and Kamenev behave as if they’re in a position to make conditions to the Politburo,” exclaimed Voroshilov. “If they had any common sense, they’d fall to their knees before Stalin…”
Stalin proposed three reasons why they would not be executed—it was really a trial of Trotsky; if he had not shot them when they were opposing the Party, then why shoot them when they were helping it; and finally, “the comrades forget that we are Bolsheviks, disciples and followers of Lenin, and we don’t want to shed the blood of Old Bolsheviks, no matter how grave their past sins…”
Zinoviev and Kamenev wearily agreed to plead guilty, provided there were no shootings and their families were protected.
“That goes without saying,” Stalin finished the meeting. 8
Stalin set to work on the script for the Zinoviev trial, revelling in his hyperbolic talent as a hack playwright. The new archives reveal how he even dictated the words of the new Procurator-General, Andrei Vyshinsky, who kept notes of his leader’s perorations.9
Stalin issued a secret circular of 29 July which announced that a terrorist leviathan named the “United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre” had attempted to assassinate Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Kirov, Sergo, Zhdanov and others. These lists of purported targets became a bizarre honour since inclusion signified proximity to Stalin. One can imagine the leaders checking the list like schoolboys rushing to the noticeboard to make sure they are in the football team. Significantly, Molotov was not on the team, which was interpreted as a sign of opposition to the Terror but it seems he was indeed temporarily out of favour because of a different disagreement with Stalin. Molotov boasted, “I’d always supported the measures taken,” but there is one intriguing hint in the archives that Molotov was under fire from Yezhov. The NKVD had arrested the German nurse of his daughter Svetlana Molotova[90] and the Premier had grumbled to Yagoda. A Chekist denounced Molotov for “improper behaviour… Molotov behaved badly.” On 3 November, Yezhov sent Molotov the denunciation, perhaps a shot across his bows.10
Yezhov was Stalin’s closest associate in the days before the trial while Yagoda, now in disfavour for his resistance to it, was received only once. Stalin complained about his work: “You work poorly. The NKVD suffers a serious disease.” Finally he called Yagoda, shouting that he would “punch him in the nose” if he did not pull himself together. We have Stalin’s notes from his 13 August meetings with Yezhov, which catch his mood. In one, he considers sacking an official: “Get him out?
The first of the famous show trials opened on 19 August in the October Hall upstairs in the House of Unions. The 350 spectators were mainly NKVD clerks in plain clothes, foreign journalists and diplomats. On a raised dais in the centre, the three judges, led by Ulrikh, sat on portentous throne-like chairs covered in red cloth. The real star of this theatrical show, the Procurator-General Andrei Vyshinsky, whose performance of foaming ire and articulate pedantry would make him a European figure, sat to the audience’s left. The defendants, sixteen shabby husks, guarded by NKVD troopers with fixed bayonets, sat to the right. Behind them was a door that led to the suite that might be compared to the “celebrity hospitality green room” in television studios. Here in a drawing room with sandwiches and refreshments sat Yagoda who could confer with Vyshinsky and the defendants during the trial.
Stalin was said to be lurking in a recessed gallery with darkened windows at the back where the orchestras once played for aristocratic quadrilles and whence puffs of pipe smoke were alleged to be emanating.
On the 13th, six days before the trial began, Stalin departed by train for Sochi, after a meeting with Yezhov. It is a mark of the impenetrable secrecy of the Soviet system that it has taken over sixty years for anyone to discover that Stalin was actually far away, though he followed the legal melodrama almost as closely as if he had been listening to it in his office. Eighty-seven NKVD packages of interrogations plus records of confrontations and the usual pile of newspapers, memos and telegrams arrived at the wicker table on the veranda.
Kaganovich and Yezhov checked every detail with Stalin. The protege was now more powerful than his former patron—Yezhov signed his name ahead of Kaganovich in every telegram. While the will of the great actor- manager controlled all from afar, the two in Moscow doubled as PR-men and impresarios. On the 17th, Kaganovich and Yezhov reported to the
The accused were indicted with a fantastical array of often bungled crimes ordered by the shadowy conspiracy led by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev (“The United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre”) that had successfully killed Kirov but repeatedly failed to kill Stalin and the others (though never bothering with Molotov). For six days, they confessed to these crimes with a docility that amazed Western spectators.
The language of these trials was as obscure as hieroglyphics and could only be understood in the Aesopian imagery of the closed Bolshevik universe of conspiracies of evil against good in which “terrorism” simply signified “any doubt about the policies or character of Stalin.” All his political opponents were
While these crushed men delivered their lines, Procurator-General Vyshinsky brilliantly combined the indignant humbug of a Victorian preacher with the diabolical curses of a witch doctor. Small with “bright black eyes” behind horn-rimmed spectacles, thinning reddish hair, pointed nose, and dapper in “white collar, checked tie, well- cut suit, trimmed grey moustache,” a Western witness thought he resembled “a prosperous stockbroker accustomed to lunching at Simpson’s and playing golf at Sunning-dale.” Born into an affluent, noble Polish family in Odessa, Vyshinsky had once occupied a cell with Stalin with whom he shared hampers from his parents, an investment that may have saved his life. But as an ex-Menshevik, he was absolutely obedient and ravenously bloodthirsty: during the thirties, his notes to Stalin constantly propose shooting of defendants, usually “Trotskyites preparing the death of Stalin,” always ending with the words: “I recommend VMN—death by shooting.”
Vyshinsky, fifty-three, was notoriously unpleasant to his subordinates but cringingly sycophantic to his seniors: he used the word “Illustrious” in his letters to Molotov and even Poskrebyshev (whom he cleverly cultivated). Even his subordinates found him a “sinister figure” who, regardless of his “excellent education,” believed in the essential rule of Stalinist management: “I believe in keeping people on edge,” but he was always on the edge himself, suffering bouts of eczema, living in fear and helping to breed it. Alert, vigorous, vain and intelligent, he impressed Westerners as much as he chilled them with his forensic mannerisms and vicious wit: it was he who later described the Romanians as “not a nation, but a profession.” He was very proud of his notoriety: presented to Princess Margaret in London in 1947, he whispered to the diplomat introducing them, “Please add my former title as Procurator in the famous Moscow trials.”13
Every day, Yezhov and Kaganovich, who must have been listening to the trial in the “hospitality suite,” reported to Stalin on the proceedings like this: “Zinoviev declared that he confirms the depositions of Bakaiev on the fact that the latter had made a report to Zinoviev on the preparation of a terrorist act against Kirov…” They revelled in recounting to the actor-manager-playwright the successful “unfolding” of this theatrical piece.
However, there was severe doubt among many of the journalists, exacerbated by the NKVD’s comical blunders: the court heard how Trotsky’s son, Sedov, ordered the assassinations in a meeting at the Hotel Bristol in Denmark—yet it emerged that the hotel had been demolished in 1917.
“What the devil did you need the hotel for?” Stalin is said to have shouted. “You ought to have said ‘railway station.’ The station is always there.”14
This show had a wider cast than the players actually onstage because others were carefully implicated, raising the prospect of other famous “terrorists” appearing in later trials. The defendants took great care to
