one of his killers who complained that he had not “lost his teeth” but had become somewhat dazed: “The sharper the teeth the better. J.St.” This is just one of the many notes in the newly opened archives that show not merely Stalin’s bureaucratic orders but his personal involvement in encouraging even junior officials to slaughter their comrades. The teeth were never sharp enough.11
While all the leaders could save some of their friends—and not others—Stalin himself could protect whoever he wished: his whims only added to his mystique. When his old friend from Georgia, Sergo Kavtaradze, was arrested, Stalin did not approve his death but put a dash next to Kavtaradze’s name. This tiny crayon line saved his life. Another old friend, Ambassador Troyanovsky, appeared on a list: “Do not touch,” wrote Stalin.[114] However much someone was denounced, Stalin’s favour could be well nigh impregnable, but once his trust was shattered, damnation was final though it might take years to come. The best way to survive was to be invisible because sometimes ghastly coincidences brought people into fatal contact with Stalin: Polish Communist Kostyrzewa was tending her roses near Kuntsevo when she found Stalin looking over her fence: “What beautiful roses,” he said. She was arrested that night—though this was at the time of the anti-Polish spy mania and perhaps she was on the lists anyway.
Stalin often forgot—or pretended to forget—what had happened to certain comrades and years later assumed an air of disappointment when he heard they had been shot. “You used to have such nice people,” he later remarked to Polish comrades. “Vera Kostyrzewa for example, do you know what’s become of her?” Even his remarkable Rolodex of a memory could not remember all his victims.12
Stalin enjoyed rattling his colleagues: one such was Stetsky, formerly in Bukharin’s kindergarten of young proteges who had successfully joined Stalin’s CC Cultural Department. Now Bukharin, at one of his “confrontations” with his accusers, gave Stalin an old letter Stetsky had written criticizing him: “Comrade Bukharin,” Stalin wrote to Stetsky, “gave me your letter to him [from 1926–27] with the hint that everything about Stetsky is not always clean. I have not read the letter. I’m giving it back to you. With Communist greetings, Stalin.”
Imagine Stetsky’s terror on receiving this handwritten note. He wrote back immediately: “Comrade Stalin, I’ve received your letter and thank you for your trust. On my letter… written when I was not clean… I belonged to the Bukharin group. Now I’m ashamed to remember it…” He was arrested and shot. 13
Stalin played games even with his closest comrades: Budyonny, for example, had performed well at the trial but when the arrests reached his own staff, he went to Voroshilov to complain with a list of innocent men under investigation. Voroshilov was terrified: “Speak to Stalin yourself.”
Budyonny confronted Stalin: “If these are the Enemy, who made the Revolution? It means we must be jailed too!”
“What are you saying, Semyon Mikhailovich?” Stalin laughed. “Are you crazy?” He called in Yezhov: “Budyonny here claims it’s time to arrest us.” Budyonny claimed that he gave his list to Yezhov who released some of the officers.14
Stalin himself specialized in reassuring his victims and then arresting them. Early in the year, the wife of one of Ordzhonikidze’s deputies at Heavy Industry was called by Stalin himself: “I hear you’re going about on foot. That’s no good… I’ll send you a car.” Next morning, the limousine was there. Two days later, her husband was arrested.
The generals, diplomats, spies and writers, who had served in the Spanish War, sunk in a quagmire of betrayals, assassinations, defeats, Trotskyite intrigues and denunciations, were decimated even when they had apparently done little wrong. Stalin’s Ambassador to Madrid, Antonov-Ovseenko, an ex-Trotskyite, entangled himself by trying to prove his loyalty; he was recalled, affably promoted by Stalin, and arrested the next day. When Stalin received the journalist Mikhail Koltsov, he teased him about his adventures in the Spanish Civil War, calling him “Don Miguel,” but then asked: “You don’t intend to shoot yourself? So long, Don Miguel.” But Koltsov had played a deadly game in Spain, denouncing others to Stalin and Voroshilov. The “Don” was arrested.15
Stalin’s office was bombarded with notes of execution from the regions: a typical one on 21 October 1937, listed eleven shot in Saratov, eight in Leningrad then another twelve, then six in Minsk then another five… a total of 82. There are hundreds of such lists, addressed to Stalin and Molotov.16
On the other hand, Stalin received a stream of miserable cries for help. Bonch-Bruevich whose daughter was married into Yagoda’s circle, insisted: “Believe me, dear Joseph Vissarionovich, I’d bring a son or daughter to the NKVD myself if they were against the Party…”17 Stalin’s own secretary from the twenties, Kanner, who had been in charge of his dirty tricks against Trotsky and others, was arrested. “Kanner cannot be a villain,” wrote a certain Makarova, perhaps his wife. “He was friends with Yagoda but who could think the Narkom of Security could be such scum? Believe, Comrade Stalin, that Kanner deserved your trust!” Kanner was shot.
Often the appeals were from Old Bolsheviks who had been close friends, such as Viano Djaparidze whose tragic letter read: “My daughter’s been arrested. I cannot imagine what she could have done. I ask you dear Joseph Vissarionovich to ease the terrible fate of my daughter…”18
Then he received letters from doomed leaders desperate to save themselves: “I am unable to work, it’s not a question of Party-mindedness, but it’s impossible for me not to react to the situation around me and to clear the air and understand the reason for it… Please give me a moment of your time to receive me…” wrote Nikolai Krylenko, the People’s Commissar of Justice no less and signer of many a death sentence. He too was shot.19
Yezhov was the chief organizer of the Terror, with Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov as enthusiastic accomplices. But all the magnates had the power over life and death: years later Khrushchev remembered his power over a junior agronomist who crossed him: “Well of course I could have done anything I wanted with him, I could have destroyed him, I could have arranged it so that, you know, he would disappear from the face of the earth.” 20
21. THE BLACKBERRY AT WORK AND PLAY
Stalin received Yezhov 1,100 times during the Terror, second only to Molotov in frequency—and this only counted formal appointments in the Little Corner. There must have been many meetings at the dacha. The archives show how Stalin noted down those to be arrested in little lists to discuss with the Blackberry: on 2 April 1937, for example, he writes in his blue and red pencils to Yezhov a list of six points, many ominous, such as “Purge State Bank.”[115] Sometimes Stalin gave him a lift home to his dacha.1
Yezhov followed a punishing schedule of work, intensified by the terrible deeds he supervised and the pressure, from both above and below, to arrest and kill more: he lived the Stalinist nocturnal existence and was constantly exhausted, becoming paler and nervier. We now know how he worked: he tended to sleep in the morning, dine at home with his wife, meet his deputy Frinovsky for a drink at their dachas—and then drive to Butyrki or Lubianka to supervise the interrogations and tortures.2 Since Yezhov had been in the top echelons of the Party for about seven years, he often knew his victims personally. In June 1937, he signed off on the arrest of his “godfather” Moskvin and his wife, whose house he had often visited. Both were shot. He could be brutal. When Bulatov, who had run a CC Department alongside Yezhov and had visited his home, was being interrogated for the fifth time, the Commissar-General appeared through a door in the wall: “Well, is Bulatov testifying?”
“Not at all, Comrade Commissar-General!” replied the interrogator.
“Then lay it on him good!” he snapped and departed. But sometimes he clearly found his job difficult: when he had to witness the execution of a friend, he looked distressed. “I see in your eyes that you feel sorry for me!” said the friend. Yezhov was flustered but ordered the executioners to fire. When another old buddy was arrested, Yezhov seemed moved but drunkenly ordered his men “to cut off his ears and nose, put out his eyes, cut him to pieces,” yet this was for show: he then chatted to his friend late into the night but he too was shot. The Politburo greatly admired Yezhov who, thought Molotov, “wasn’t spotless but he was a good Party worker.”3
Sometimes, amid all the murder and thuggery, Yezhov showed his old side. When he received Stalin’s doctor, Vinogradov, who had to testify in the upcoming Bukharin trial against his own teacher, Yezhov tipsily advised him: “You’re a good person but you talk too much. Bear in mind that every third person is my person and informs me of
