Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (born April 19 (May 1), 1895 - February 4, 1940) - Soviet statesman and party leader, head of the Stalinist NKVD, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, candidate for members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, People's Commissar for Water Transport of the USSR. The era of his leadership of the punitive organs went down in history under the name "Yezhovshchina".
Origin. early years
Nikolai - was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a foundry worker in 1895. His father was a native of the Tula province (the village of Volokhonshchino near Plavsk), but when he got into military service in Lithuania, he married a Lithuanian and stayed there. According to the official Soviet biography, N.I. Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg, but, according to archival data, it is more likely that his birthplace was the Suwalki province (on the border of Lithuania and Poland).
He graduated from the 1st grade of elementary school, later, in 1927, he attended courses in Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and from the age of 14 he worked as a tailor's apprentice, a locksmith, a worker at a bed factory and at the Putilov factory.
Service. Party career
1915 - Yezhov was drafted into the army, and a year later he was fired due to injury. At the end of 1916, he returned to the front, served in the 3rd reserve infantry regiment and in the 5th artillery workshops of the Northern Front. 1917, May - joined the RSDLP (b) (the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party).
1917, November - Yezhov commands the Red Guard detachment, and in 1918 - 1919 he heads the communist club at the Volotin plant. Also in 1919, he joined the Red Army, served as secretary of the party committee of the military subdistrict in Saratov. During civil war Yezhov was the military commissar of several Red Army units.
1921 - Ezhoav is transferred to party work. July 1921 - Nikolai Ivanovich married a Marxist Antonina Titova. For "intransigence" to the party opposition, he began to quickly move up the career ladder.
1922, March - he holds the post of secretary of the Mari regional committee of the RCP (b), and since October he becomes the secretary of the Semipalatinsk provincial committee, then head of the department of the Tatar regional committee, secretary of the Kazakh regional committee of the VKP (b).
Meanwhile in the area Central Asia Basmachism arose - national movement opposed to Soviet power. Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich led the suppression of the Basmachi in Kazakhstan.
Transfer to Moscow
1927 - Nikolai Yezhov is transferred to Moscow. During the internal party struggle of the 1920s and 1930s, he always supported Stalin and was now rewarded for this. He quickly went up: in 1927 - he became deputy head of the accounting and distribution department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in 1929 - 1930 - People's Commissar of Agriculture of the Soviet Union, took part in collectivization and dispossession. 1930, November - he is the head of the distribution department, the personnel department, the industrial department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
1934 - Stalin appoints Yezhov chairman of the Central Commission for the purge of the party, and in 1935 he becomes secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
In the "Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), written by Boris Nikolaevsky, there is a description of Yezhov as he was in those days:
In all my long life, I have never met such a repulsive person as Yezhov. When I look at him, I remember the nasty boys from Rasteryaeva Street, whose favorite pastime was to tie a piece of paper soaked in kerosene to the tail of a cat, set it on fire, and then watch with delight how the terrified animal would run down the street, desperately, but in vain trying to escape from the approaching fire. I have no doubt that in childhood Yezhov amused himself in this way, and that he continues to do something similar now.
Yezhov was short (151 cm). Those who knew about his inclinations towards sadism called him among themselves the Poison Dwarf or the Bloody Dwarf.
"Yezhovshchina"
The turning point in the life of Nikolai Ivanovich was the assassination of the communist governor of Leningrad, Kirov. Stalin used this murder as a pretext for intensifying political repressions, and he made Yezhov their main conductor. Nikolai Ivanovich actually began to head the investigation into the murder of Kirov and helped fabricate accusations of involvement in him of the former leaders of the party opposition - Kamenev, Zinoviev and others. The Bloody Dwarf was present at the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev, and he kept the bullets with which they were shot as souvenirs.
When Yezhov was brilliantly able to cope with this task, Stalin elevated him even more.
1936, September 26 - after the removal of Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda from his post, Yezhov becomes the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee. Such an appointment, at first glance, could not imply an increase in terror: unlike Yagoda, Yezhov was not closely connected with the "organs". Yagoda fell out of favor because he hesitated to repress the old Bolsheviks, which the leader wanted to strengthen. But for Yezhov, who had only recently risen, the defeat of the old Bolshevik cadres and the destruction of Yagoda himself - Stalin's potential or imagined enemies - did not present personal difficulties. Nikolai Ivanovich was personally devoted to the Leader of the Peoples, and not to Bolshevism and not to the NKVD bodies. Just such a candidate was needed at that time by Stalin.
At the direction of Stalin, the new people's commissar carried out a purge of Yagoda's henchmen - almost all of them were arrested and shot. During the years when Yezhov headed the NKVD (1936-1938), the Great Stalinist purge reached its climax. 50-75% of the members of the Supreme Council and officers of the Soviet army were removed from their posts, ended up in prisons, Gulag camps or were executed. "Enemies of the people", suspected of counter-revolutionary activities, and simply "inconvenient" for the leader of the people were ruthlessly destroyed. In order to pass a death sentence, the corresponding record of the investigator was sufficient.
As a result of the purges, people who had considerable work experience were shot or sent to camps - those who could at least slightly normalize the situation in the state. For example, repression among the military was very painful during the Great Patriotic War: among the high military command there were almost no those who had practical experience in organizing and conducting hostilities.
Under the tireless guidance of N.I. Yezhov, a lot of cases were fabricated, the largest falsified political show trials were held.
Many ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually based on far-fetched and non-existent "evidence") of treason or "sabotage". The “troikas” who passed sentences on the ground were equal to the arbitrary numbers of executions and imprisonments that descended from above by Stalin and Yezhov. The People's Commissar knew that most of the accusations against his victims were false, but human life had no value for him. The Blood Dwarf spoke openly:
There will be innocent victims in this fight against fascist agents. We are conducting a big offensive against the enemy, and let them not be offended if we hit someone with our elbow. Better to let dozens of innocents suffer than let one spy through. They cut the forest - the chips fly.
Arrest
Yezhov faced the fate of his predecessor Yagoda. 1939 - he was arrested on the denunciation of the head of the NKVD department for the Ivanovo region V.P. Zhuravlev. The charges against him included the preparation of terrorist attacks against Stalin and homosexuality. Fearing torture, during interrogation, the former People's Commissar pleaded guilty on all counts
1940, February 2 - the former People's Commissar was judged in a closed meeting by the Military Collegium, chaired by Vasily Ulrich. Yezhov, like his predecessor, Yagoda, swore his love for Stalin to the end. He denied being a spy, terrorist, and conspirator, saying he "prefers death to lies." He began to assert that his previous confessions had been forced out by torture (“they used severe beatings on me”). He admitted that his only mistake was that he “cleaned little” the state security organs from “enemies of the people”:
I purged 14,000 Chekists, but my great fault lies in the fact that I purged them a little... I will not deny that I drank, but I worked like an ox... If I wanted to carry out a terrorist act against one of the members of the government, I would not recruit anyone for this purpose, but, using technology, I would commit this heinous deed at any moment.
In conclusion, he said that he would die with the name of Stalin on his lips.
After the court session, Yezhov was taken to a cell, and half an hour later he was summoned again to announce his death sentence. Hearing him, Yezhov went limp and fainted, but the guards managed to catch him and led him out of the room. The request for mercy was denied, and Poison Dwarf fell into hysterics and weeping. When he was again led out of the room, he broke free from the hands of the guards and yelled.
execution
1940, February 4 - Yezhov was shot by the future chairman of the KGB, Ivan Serov (according to another version, Chekist Blokhin). They were shot in the basement of a small NKVD station in Varsonofevsky Lane (Moscow). This basement had sloping floors to drain and wash away the blood. Such floors were made in accordance with the previous instructions of the Bloody Dwarf himself. For the execution of the former People's Commissar, they did not use the main NKVD death chamber in the basements of the Lubyanka, to guarantee complete secrecy.
According to the statements of the prominent Chekist P. Sudoplatov, when Yezhov was led to the execution, he sang the Internationale.
Yezhov's body was immediately cremated, and the ashes were thrown into a common grave at the Moscow Donskoy cemetery. The shooting was not officially reported. The Commissar simply quietly disappeared. Even in the late 1940s, some believed that the former People's Commissar was in a lunatic asylum.
After death
The decision on the case of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR (1998) stated that “as a result of the operations that were carried out by the NKVD in accordance with the orders of Yezhov, only in 1937-1938 more than 1.5 million citizens, about half of them were shot.” The number of prisoners in the Gulag for 2 years of "Yezhovshchina" has increased almost three times. At least 140,000 of them (perhaps many more) died over the years from hunger, cold and overwork in the camps or on the way to them.
Pinning the label “Yezhovshchina” on the repressions, the propagandists tried to entirely shift the blame for them from Stalin to Yezhov. But, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, the Bloody Dwarf was, rather, a doll, an executor of Stalin's will, but it simply could not be otherwise.
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75 years ago, on April 10, 1939, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolai Yezhov was arrested, whom the poet Dzhambul called "Stalin's batyr", and his victims - "a bloody dwarf".
Few political figures, especially those who did not head the state, gave their name to the era. Nikolai Yezhov is one of them.
According to Alexander Tvardovsky, Stalin "knew how to transfer a heap of his mistakes to someone else's account." The mass repressions of 1937-1938 remained in history as Yezhovism, although it would be more fair to speak of Stalinism.
"Fiend of nomenclature"
Unlike the professional Chekists Menzhinsky, Yagoda and Beria, Yezhov was a party worker.
After graduating from three grades of elementary school, he turned out to be the most poorly educated head of the Soviet / Russian special services in history.
He was called a dwarf because of his height - only 154 centimeters.
Nikolai Yezhov was born on April 22 (May 1), 1895 in the village of Veivery, Mariampolsky district, Suvalki province (now Lithuania).
According to his biographer Alexei Pavlyukov, the father of the future Commissar Ivan Yezhov served in the police. Subsequently, Yezhov claimed that he was a hereditary proletarian, the son of a worker at the Putilov factory, and he himself managed to work as a locksmith there, although in reality he studied privately in tailoring.
He also, to put it mildly, reported incorrect information about the time of his joining the Bolsheviks: he indicated March 1917 in his autobiographies, while, according to the documents of the Vitebsk city organization of the RSDLP, this happened on August 3.
In June 1915, Yezhov volunteered for the army, and after being slightly wounded, he was transferred to the post of clerk. He was drafted into the Red Army in April 1919, and again served as a clerk at the school of military radio operators in Saratov. Six months later, he became the commissioner of the school.
Yezhov's career took off after being transferred to Moscow in September 1921. Five months later, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee sent him as secretary of the provincial committee to the Mari Autonomous Region.
At that time, narrow-minded wits called Stalin "comrade Kartotekov." While the rest of the "leaders", reveling in themselves, talked about the world revolution, Stalin and his collaborators fiddled all day with the cards that they brought to thousands of "promising party members."
Yezhov was distinguished by his natural intelligence and worker-peasant practical mind, flair, and ability to navigate. And endless devotion to Stalin. Not showy. Sincere! Vladimir Nekrasov, historian
In 1922 alone, the secretariat of the Central Committee and the Accounting and Distribution Department created by Stalin made more than 10 thousand appointments in the party and state apparatus, replaced 42 secretaries of provincial committees.
At that time, the nomenklatura did not linger for a long time in one place. Yezhov worked in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in December 1925, at the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b), he met Ivan Moskvin, who two months later headed the Organizing Department of the Central Committee and took Yezhov to his instructor.
In November 1930 Yezhov took the place of Moskvin. According to available data, his personal acquaintance with Stalin belongs to the same time.
“I don’t know a more ideal worker than Yezhov. Or rather, not a worker, but a performer. Having entrusted him with something, you can not check and be sure that he will do everything. Yezhov has only one drawback: he does not know how to stop. follow him in order to stop him in time,” Moskvin told his son-in-law Lev Razgon, who survived the Gulag and became a famous writer.
Moskvin came home every day for dinner and often brought Yezhov with him. The patron's wife called him "sparrow" and tried to feed him better.
In 1937, Moskvin received "10 years without the right to correspond." After imposing on the report the standard resolution: "Arrest", Yezhov added: "And his wife too."
Sofya Moskvina was accused of trying to poison Yezhov on the instructions of British intelligence, and was shot. If it were not for the intervention of a former friend at home, I would have got off with sending to the camp.
Yezhov became involved in Chekist affairs after the assassination of Kirov.
“Yezhov summoned me to his dacha. The meeting was of a conspiratorial nature. Yezhov conveyed Stalin’s instructions on the mistakes made by the investigation in the case of the Trotskyist center, and instructed me to take measures to open the Trotskyist center, to reveal a clearly undiscovered terrorist gang and Trotsky’s personal role in this matter ", one of his deputies Yakov Agranov reported to Yagoda.
The dream of a world revolution left with Trotsky, and even the Boss himself could not afford to offer the village lumpen who had risen from rags to riches the idea of universal equality and fraternity. All he had to do was to shoot some "red boyars" to intimidate others Mark Solonin, historian
Until 1937, Yezhov did not give the impression of a demonic personality. He was sociable, gallant with ladies, loved Yesenin's poems, willingly participated in feasts and danced "Russian".
The writer Yuri Dombrovsky, whose acquaintances knew Yezhov personally, claimed that among them "there was not a single one who would say bad things about Yezhov, he was a sympathetic, humane, gentle, tactful person."
Nadezhda Mandelstam, who met Yezhov in Sukhumi in the summer of 1930, recalled him as a "modest and rather pleasant person" who gave her roses and often drove them with her husband in her car.
All the more surprising is the metamorphosis that happened to him.
“Yezhov is deservedly considered the bloodiest executioner in the history of Russia. But any Stalinist appointee would have done the same in his place. Yezhov was not a fiend of hell, he was a fiend of the nomenklatura,” wrote historian Mikhail Voslensky.
Great terror
In the Soviet era, the opinion was cultivated that the crimes of the regime were entirely reduced to the notorious 1937, and everything was fine before and after. Under Khrushchev, it was unofficially suggested that the leader simply had a temporary clouding of his mind.
The idea was persistently imposed that Stalin's only fault was the repressions against the nomenklatura.
Stalin hit his own, the veterans of the party and the revolution! For this we condemn him! From the report of Nikita Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the first to say that the terror from 1918 to 1953 did not stop for a day. In his opinion, the only difference was that in the 37th it was the turn of high-ranking communists, it was their descendants who made the hype around the "damned nine hundred". At the same time, historical justice was done to the "Leninist Guard", although they were executed not by those who had the moral right to do so, and not for what they should have done.
Now we can say that he was right in part. The events, at the suggestion of the British historian Robert Conquest, known as the "Great Terror" were nevertheless exceptional.
Of the 799,455 people executed from 1921 to 1953 for political reasons, 681,692 people were executed in 1937-1938, with about a hundred ordinary people per "faithful Leninist". If in other periods about every twentieth of those arrested were sentenced to death, and the rest were sent to the Gulag, then during the Great Terror - almost every second.
In autocratic Russia, from 1825 to 1905, 625 death sentences were passed, of which 191 were carried out. During the suppression of the revolution of 1905-1907, about 2,200 people were hanged and shot.
It was in 1937 that the most severe torture and beatings of those under investigation took on a mass character.
Probably, even representatives of the nomenklatura had questions about this, since Stalin considered it necessary on January 10, 1939 to send an encrypted telegram to the leaders of the regional party organizations and departments of the NKVD, which said: "The use of physical force in the practice of the NKVD was allowed from 1937. permission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considers that the method of physical influence must necessarily be applied in the future."
For obvious reasons, the descendants of a thousand repressed peasants will never draw such attention to the tragedy of their families as the descendants of one repressed member of the Politburo Mark Solonin, historian
In addition to the 680,000 who were shot, about 115,000 people "died while under investigation," in other words, under torture. Among them was, for example, Marshal Vasily Blucher, who did not wait for his bullet.
“We noticed gray-brown spots on several pages of the protocol. We ordered a forensic chemical examination. It turned out to be blood,” recalled Boris Viktorov, deputy chief military prosecutor, who was reviewing the “Tukhachevsky case” in the 1950s.
One of the investigators in 1937 proudly told his colleagues how Yezhov came into his office and asked if the arrested person would confess. "When I said no, Nikolai Ivanovich would turn around and bang him in the face!"
Threefold Purpose
First, the blow was dealt to the "Leninist guard", in whose eyes Stalin, despite all the praises, remained not a god-like leader, but the first among equals.
Having committed horrific atrocities against the people, these people have become accustomed to relative freedom, inviolability and the right to their own opinion in relation to themselves.
Prince Vladimir Andrey Bogolyubsky, who is considered the first "autocrat" in Rus', was condemned (and subsequently killed) by the boyars because he wanted to make them "helpers". Stalin set himself the same task, so that, according to the well-known expression of Ivan the Terrible, everyone was like grass, and he alone was like a mighty oak.
After the war, the Communist Party of France was called the "Party of the Executed". But this name is especially suitable for Lenin's Bolshevik Party Mikhail Voslensky, historian
If in 1930 among the secretaries of the regional committees and the republican Central Committee 69% were with pre-revolutionary party experience, then in 1939 80.5% of them joined the party after the death of Lenin.
The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in 1934 and officially called the “Congress of the Victors,” turned out to be a “Congress of the Doomed”: 1,108 out of 1,956 delegates and 97 out of 139 elected members of the Central Committee were executed, and five more committed suicide.
Secondly, according to historians, Stalin decided to "clean up the country" before the big war: after the establishment of an illegitimate dictatorship, the confiscation of private property, the abolition of all political and personal freedoms, the Holodomor and mockery of religion, there were too many people who were severely offended by the Soviet government.
"It was necessary to strike a preemptive strike against a potential fifth column, insuring the existing regime in the country from possible upheavals in wartime," writes Aleksey Pavlyukov.
"It was a kind of summing up. A significant part of the country's population was among the offended. They were afraid. Stalin and his entourage wanted to secure themselves in advance," historian Leonid Mlechin believes.
"The fear of an impending war was the main engine of repression. They believed that everyone who was in doubt should be removed," Vyacheslav Nikonov, Molotov's grandson, told Mlechin.
A number of researchers are sure that Stalin was not afraid of the war, but purposefully and carefully prepared it, but in this case it does not matter.
Judging by the results, the terror did not reach its goal. According to minimal estimates, at least 900,000 Soviet citizens served the enemy with weapons in their hands during the war years.
Our contemporaries see this situation differently. Some argue that Stalin arranged the 37th year correctly, and also showed excessive softness, did not destroy all the enemies. Others believe that he would have been better off shooting himself, and given the nature of the regime, there were surprisingly few traitors.
The third task was to solder the nation with iron discipline and fear, to force everyone to work hard for a pittance, to do not what is profitable or pleasant, but what the state needs.
The dictatorship of the proletariat has turned into a dictatorship over the people, who without exception have been turned into a proletariat in the truest sense of the word - deprived of property and rights, doing work at the discretion of the owner and receiving just enough not to starve to death, or die if the owner so decides. The technique was developed in ancient times. The trick was different - to make the slaves sing in chorus, and even sing with rapture: "I don’t know another such country where a person breathes so freely Igor Bunich, historian
In 1940, the USSR adopted such ferocious anti-worker legislation that the most odious right-wing dictatorships did not know.
The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 26 "On the Prohibition of Unauthorized Leaving Enterprises and Institutions," following the deprivation of collective farmers' passports, turned the majority of the country's population into serfs and introduced criminal liability for being late for work more than 20 minutes.
In the seven pre-war years, about six million people were sent to camps and prisons in the USSR. There were approximately 25% of "enemies of the people" and criminals among them, and 57% were imprisoned for being late, "screwing up" a detail, failing to comply with the mandatory norm of workdays and other similar "crimes".
The Decree of October 2 "On State Labor Reserves" made tuition in the senior classes of secondary school paid, and for poor children from the age of 14 provided for "factory training" in combination with the fulfillment of adult production standards. The direction to the FZU was officially called a "conscription", and for escaping from there they were sent to camps.
According to historian Igor Bunich, after 1937, Stalin created a kind of state-masterpiece: everyone was in business, and no one dared to utter a word.
"Good job"
The party created by Lenin did not suit Stalin at all. A noisy, shaggy-bearded gang in leather jackets, greedy and always arguing with the leadership, constantly dreaming of moving the center of the world revolution from such an uncultured and dirty place as Moscow to Berlin or Paris, where they rode two or three times a year under various pretexts - such the party had to leave the stage, and leave quickly. The Stalinist nomenklatura was placed in a different framework. Raised by a thoughtful system of privileges to a standard of living unthinkable for the people, having virtually unlimited power over these people, she was well aware of her own insignificance Igor Bunich, historian
In February 1935, Yezhov was appointed one of the three secretaries of the Central Committee, responsible for organizational and personnel work, and chairman of the Party Control Commission, from that moment second only to Molotov in the number of meetings with Stalin.
The appointment of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs on September 26, 1936 was formally a demotion for him and was due to the special role assigned to him by Stalin.
According to historians, the former Chekist elite believed that the main work had already been done, and it was possible to slow down. It was Yezhov who was called upon to reverse these sentiments.
As early as December 1, 1934, after the assassination of Kirov, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution according to which cases "on the preparation or commission of terrorist acts" were to be investigated "in an expedited manner", and death sentences were to be carried out immediately without the right to appeal.
The fate of people began to be decided by "troikas", often in "packs", without the right to defense, and often in the absence of the accused.
Instead of the OGPU and the republican people's commissariats of internal affairs, the allied NKVD was formed.
The founder of the Gulag and the organizer of cases against Lenin's former comrades-in-arms Heinrich Yagoda Stalin, however, considered insufficiently energetic and decisive. He retained the remnants of reverence for the "old guard", at least he did not want to torture them.
On September 25, 1936, Stalin, while relaxing in Sochi with Andrei Zhdanov, sent a telegram to the members of the Politburo: “We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent to appoint Comrade Yezhov to the post of Commissar of Internal Affairs. The OGPU was 4 years late in this matter."
The next day Yezhov's appointment took place.
At the first meeting with the leadership of the people's commissariat, he showed two fists to those present: "Don't look that I'm short. My hands are strong - Stalin's. I will imprison and shoot everyone, regardless of rank and rank, who dares to slow down the deal with the enemies of the people " .
Soon he wrote a memorandum to Stalin: “Many shortcomings were revealed in the NKVD, which cannot be tolerated any longer. Among the leading elite of the Chekists, moods of complacency, calmness and bragging are growing more and more. Instead of drawing conclusions from the Trotskyist case and criticizing their own shortcomings, people dream only about orders for a solved case."
Yezhov said that he had carried out Stalin's order and reviewed the lists of those arrested in the latest cases: "We will have to shoot quite an impressive amount. I think we should go for it and put an end to this scum once and for all."
In February-March 1937, a plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks took place, which lasted a week and a half - longer than any other in history - and was almost entirely devoted to the fight against "enemies of the people." Most of its participants were soon repressed themselves, despite the fact that they unconditionally supported Stalin's line.
For several months I do not remember a case when one of the business executives, leaders of the people's commissariats, on their own initiative, would call and say: "Comrade Yezhov, such and such a person is suspicious to me." Most often, when you raise the question of the arrest of a traitor, a Trotskyist, comrades, on the contrary, try to defend these people From Yezhov’s speech at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)
On May 22, the arrest of Marshal Tukhachevsky marked the beginning of a mass purge of the command corps.
On August 1, the secret order of the NKVD No. 00447 came into force, which designated former "kulaks", "members of anti-Soviet parties", "members of rebel, fascist, espionage formations", "Trotskyists", "churchmen" as the "target group" of repressions.
The order established orders for all regions of the Soviet Union on the number of those arrested and "convicted in the first category."
The document said that "the investigation is carried out in a simplified and expedited manner," and its main task is to identify all the connections of the arrested person.
75 million rubles were allocated for the operation.
obedient tool
The first mass executions in pursuance of Yezhov's order took place at the Butovo training ground in the Moscow region on August 8, 1937. In 1937-1938, about 20 thousand people were killed there alone.
Initially, it was planned to shoot 76,000 people and send 200,000 people to the Gulag, but requests to "increase the limit" rained down from the secretaries of the regional committees and heads of the NKVD departments. According to reports, Stalin did not refuse anyone.
In the 1950s, there were rumors that at the corresponding address of the head of the party organization of Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev, he imposed a resolution: "Calm down, fool!", But there is no evidence for this.
In December, the NKVD reported on preliminary results: 555,641 arrested and 553,362 convicted. Of these, 239,252 were sentenced to death (former kulaks - 105,124; criminals - 36,063; "other counter-revolutionary elements" - 78,237; 138 588, criminals - 75 950, "other counter-revolutionary elements" - 83 591, without specifying the group - 16 001).
In total, over 18 months, the NKVD arrested 1 million 548 thousand 366 people for political reasons. An average of one and a half thousand people were shot a day. In 1937, 93,000 people were executed for "espionage" alone.
Many believed that evil comes from a little man, who was called "Stalin's people's commissar." In fact, everything was the opposite. Of course, Yezhov tried, but it's not about him Ilya Ehrenburg, writer
Stalin signed 383 lists for "sanctions of the first category", containing 44,465 names. In just one day, December 12, 1938, Stalin and Molotov sent 3,167 people to their deaths.
On the next confession knocked out by the investigators, Stalin imposed a resolution: "Persons marked by me in the text with the letters" Ar. "should be arrested if they are not already arrested." On Yezhov's list of people who are "checked for arrest": "It is necessary not to check, but to arrest."
Molotov wrote on the testimony of an old party member that did not satisfy him: "Beat, beat, beat."
In 1937-1938, according to the "Journal of Visits", Yezhov visited the leader almost 290 times and spent a total of about 850 hours with him.
Georgy Dimitrov wrote in his diary that at a banquet on November 7, 1937, Stalin said: "We will not only destroy all enemies, but we will destroy their families, their entire family to the last generation."
As Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, Yezhov "understood that Stalin was using him like a club, and filled his conscience with vodka."
At a solemn meeting in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD in December 1937, Anastas Mikoyan made a report: "Learn from Comrade Yezhov, as he studied and is studying from Comrade Stalin. The NKVD has done a good job during this time!".
Scapegoat
Stalin affectionately called his entourage "Blackberry", often invited him to the dacha and played chess with him.
On October 27, 1936, Yezhov was introduced to the Politburo as a candidate, on January 27, 1937 he received the new rank of General Commissar of State Security with marshal's stars on blue buttonholes, and on July 17 - the Order of Lenin. The city of Sulimov in the North Caucasus was renamed Yezhovo-Cherkessk.
"People's poet of Kazakhstan" Dzhambul composed a poem: "Ezhov lay in wait for all poisonous snakes and smoked reptiles from holes and lairs!". The Kukryniksy published in Pravda the famous drawing "Hedgehogs", in which the people's commissar strangled a three-headed hydra with a swastika at the end of its tail.
Lordly love, especially the love of a dictator, is short-lived. The change of command had an obvious plus for Stalin: Yezhov and his people could be blamed for all the "excesses" and mistakes. And people saw how fair Stalin was, how difficult it was for him when there were so many enemies around Leonid Mlechin, historian
However, already at the beginning of 1938, Yezhov began to fall out of favor.
As the former high-ranking Chekist Mikhail Shreider testified, once after drinking at the dacha, the people's commissar opened up with his subordinates: "All power is in our hands. ".
According to the researchers, Stalin did not like Yezhov's attempts to publish a book under his own name, extolling his struggle against "Zinovievism", and to become part-time editor of the journal "Party Construction", as well as his proposal to rename Moscow to Stalinodar. The leader believed that the people's commissar should mind his own business, and not self-promotion.
But main reason disgrace was in the well-known phrase: "The Moor has done his job - the Moor can leave."
The last time Yezhov was praised from a high rostrum was from the lips of the secretary of the Central Committee, Andrei Zhdanov, at a solemn meeting on the day of the next anniversary of Lenin's death in January 1938.
On January 9, the Central Committee adopted a resolution "On the facts of incorrect dismissal from work of relatives of persons arrested for counter-revolutionary crimes", and on January 14 - "On the mistakes of party organizations in the exclusion of communists from the party." At the plenum held on the same day, Yezhov's name was not mentioned, but the speakers urged "not to accuse people indiscriminately" and "to distinguish those who make mistakes from wreckers."
On April 8, Yezhov was made part-time people's commissar of water transport, where he was also given the opportunity to make some noise in connection with the "method of the Stakhanovist Blindman."
On August 22, Lavrenty Beria was appointed Yezhov's first deputy, who immediately began to take control. Orders on the people's commissariat began to come out for two signatures.
In November, the head of the Ivanovo department of the NKVD, Valentin Zhuravlev, sent a letter to the Politburo with accusations against Yezhov, which, under the then conditions, he would not have dared to do without a go-ahead from above.
Enemies of the people who got into the organs of the NKVD perverted Soviet laws, carried out massive unjustified arrests, at the same time saving their accomplices, especially those who had settled in the organs of the NKVD From the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of November 17, 1938
Zhuravlev soon headed the capital's administration, and following the discussion of the letter on November 17, a devastating resolution was adopted.
On November 23, Yezhov submitted to Stalin a request for resignation, in which he asked "not to touch my 70-year-old old mother." The letter ended with the words: "Despite all these big shortcomings and blunders in my work, I must say that under the daily leadership of the Central Committee of the NKVD, they defeated the enemies great."
On November 25, Yezhov was relieved of his post as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs (the report in Pravda and Izvestia appeared only on December 9).
Approximately two weeks before his removal from the Lubyanka, Stalin ordered Yezhov to hand over to him personally all the compromising material on top leaders.
On January 10, 1939, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Molotov, officially reprimanded Yezhov for being late for work. Anticipating the end, he drank heavily.
On April 9, Yezhov was removed from the post of People's Commissar for Water Transport. The next day, he was personally arrested by Beria in the office of Georgy Malenkov, secretary of the Central Committee, and sent to the Sukhanov special prison.
In certain circles of society, Beria has since had a reputation as a man who restored "socialist legitimacy" Yakov Etinger, historian
About 150,000 people were released, mostly technical and military specialists needed by the state, including future commanders of the Great Patriotic War Konstantin Rokossovsky, Kirill Meretskov and Alexander Gorbatov. But there were also ordinary people, for example, the grandfather of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Compared to the scale of repression, this was a drop in the ocean. But the propaganda effect was partly achieved: justice triumphs, we don’t get jailed in vain!
February 4, 1940 Yezhov was shot. He was accused of working for Polish and German intelligence, preparing a coup d'etat and the assassination of Stalin, allegedly planned for November 7, 1938, as well as homosexuality, which since 1935 was recognized as a criminal offense in the USSR.
Like most arrested high-ranking party members, Yezhov repented intensely. “Despite the severity of the conclusions that I deserved and accept on the basis of party duty, I assure you in good conscience that I will remain loyal to the party, comrade Stalin, to the end,” he wrote to Beria from Sukhanovka.
On the eve of the trial, Beria arrived at the prison and had a private conversation with Yezhov.
“Yesterday, in a conversation with Beria, he told me: “Don’t think that you will definitely be shot. If you confess and tell everything honestly, your life will be saved," Yezhov said in his last speech.
He also called "enemies of the people" Marshals Budyonny and Shaposhnikov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov and Prosecutor General Vyshinsky, and also said that he "purged 14,000 Chekists, but my great fault lies in the fact that I purged them little." In fact, the number of NKVD workers arrested under Yezhov amounted to 1862 people.
According to State Security General Pavel Sudoplatov, Yezhov, when he was led to his execution, sang the Internationale.
Yezhov's wife, journalist Yevgenia Khayutina, known for her friendship and rumored romance with Isaac Babel and Mikhail Sholokhov, took poison on November 21, 1938. Brother Ivan, sister Evdokia and nephews Viktor and Anatoly were shot.
Chekist stokers, working at the furnaces around the clock, with rapture and enthusiasm, after finishing their shift, also turned into fuel for the boilers of a huge ship. How many of them, sparkling with blue buttonholes, chrome-polished boots, creaking with new sword belts, descended into the stoker, not realizing that they would never go on deck again Igor Bunich, historian
At the inexplicable whim of Stalin, another brother, Alexander, was not only not touched, but also left in the position of head of the department of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR.
The adopted daughter of the Yezhovs, Natalia, who at the age of six was sent to a special detention center for the children of "enemies of the people," in 1988 applied to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR with a request for the rehabilitation of her father. The court refused, noting in the ruling that Yezhov, although he was not a conspirator and a spy, had committed grave crimes.
It is not known for certain whether Yezhov was beaten and tortured.
Unlike his own victims, he was dealt with in secret. There were no rallies of angry workers, not even information in the newspapers about the arrest and sentence. Only Khrushchev subsequently reported, without going into details, that "Yezhov got what he deserved."
In 1940, former subordinates of the "iron commissar" spread two rumors about him among the people: that he fell into violent insanity and is chained in a lunatic asylum, and that he hung himself, attaching a sign "I - g ... o" to his chest.
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov for the entire time of the leadership of the NKVD was the most terrible figure of all people's commissars, and his activities firmly entered the bloody history of the NKVD.
Peasant's son
Kolya's childhood years were difficult. The future head of the NKVD was born in 1895 in May, in St. Petersburg, in a poor family. His father was a former military man from the Tula province, and his mother was from a family of peasants from Lithuania. Yezhov graduated from three classes in Mariampol, and at the age of 11, his parents sent Nikolai to study a craft in the capital. According to one version, he worked at a factory, and according to another, he was an apprentice with a tailor and a shoemaker. Volunteered in the First World War, where he was slightly wounded. In March (according to other sources - in August) 1917, Yezhov managed to join the Bolshevik Party and become a member of the subsequent October coup in Petrograd.
Base Commissioner
In 1919, he was drafted into the Red Army, and received a referral to a regiment of radio formations in the Saratov region, where he began serving as a soldier, and then as a clerk for a commissar. In March 1921, Nikolai Ivanovich received the post of base commissar and began to make a career.
Moving to the capital
Having successfully played a wedding with Antonina Titova in 1921, Yezhov starts a family. The wife is sent to work in Moscow and Yezhov, following his wife, moves to the capital. Diligence and diligence helped to prove himself, and the young Yezhov was sent to work in leadership positions in the district and regional committees of the CPSU (b). During the XIV Party Congress, Nikolai Yezhov met Ivan Moskvin. Moskvin, who held a high position, noticed a hardworking party member and in 1927, being the head of the Distribution Department and the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, invited Nikolai to take the vacant position of instructor. In 1930, Moskvin earned a promotion, and Nikolai Yezhov was appointed to manage the Orgraspred Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and thanks to which he met the leader. In 1933-1934, Nikolai Yezhov was accepted into the ranks of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) for the "cleansing" of party cadres. In February 1935, Yezhov received a promotion and became chairman of the CPC under the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). This department was engaged in checking the activities of party workers, deciding whether they had the right to bear the high rank of communist.
"Yezhovshchina"
Joseph Stalin entrusted Yezhov with the investigation into Kirov's assassination. Nicholas carried out this investigation with his characteristic zeal. The Kirov Stream, which consisted of Zinoviev, Kamenev and their associates accused of treason, led to thousands of lives following the former party members. Subsequently, a start was given to what everyone calls the "great terror". It is believed that during the following 1937-1938 more than 1 million people were convicted on political charges, and nearly 700,000 were sentenced to death.
Yezhov's lists
Joseph Stalin, pleased with the defeat of the opposition, in August 1936 decides that the NKVD needs a tough leader and appoints Nikolai Yezhov as People's Commissar. On May 1, 1937, at the May Day parade, Yezhov was on the podium on Red Square (along with people who had already been prosecuted).
At the beginning of 1938, the verdict was announced in the case of Rykov, Yagoda, Bukharin and other conspirators - execution. Yagoda himself was shot last from a long list. An interesting fact is that Nikolai Yezhov saved Yagoda's things until his death. The Yagodinsky set consisted of several dozen pornographic photos, bullets seized from the corpses of Zinoviev and Kamenev, pornographic films, and a rubber dildo.
Yezhov and Sholokhov
Nikolai Ivanovich was known as an extremely cruel, but very cowardly person. Sending the unwanted into exile by wagons and shooting them by the thousands, he could fawn over those to whom Stalin was not indifferent. It is known that in 1938 Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov had an intimate relationship with Yezhov's second wife, Evgenia Khayutina (Faigenberg). Their intimate meetings took place in Moscow apartments, where wiretapping was carried out with special equipment. After each meeting, the records in detail fell on the table to the people's commissar. It is believed that Yezhov ordered the poisoning of his wife, staging suicide. But it is possible that it really was a suicide. With Sholokhov, Nikolai Yezhov decided not to get involved.
Taking into custody
Having virtually unlimited power, Yezhov is becoming more and more cruel and merciless, he personally supervised the interrogations and torture of those under arrest. Those close to Stalin began to frankly fear Yezhov, there were rumors that just a little and the NKVD would shift the levers of power.
On April 10, 1939, Nikolai Yezhov was arrested. They also participated in the arrest themselves. Judging by the notes of Sudoplatov, the personal file of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was under the personal supervision of Beria. The former People's Commissar of the NKVD was accused of plotting and preparing for a coup d'état. During the trial, Yezhov said that he had killed fourteen thousand Chekists, and said that he had carried out a sweeping operation poorly. On February 4, 1940, shots rang out - Yezhov was shot
Purge history
Nothing was reported anywhere about the fact of the detention and execution of Nikolai Yezhov - he simply evaporated. The fact that he disappeared and is not a Hero of the Soviet Republic became clear when they began to change the names of settlements and streets associated with his name. It was rumored that he fled to the Germans and became an adviser to the Fuhrer. After the death of the People's Commissar, all the photographs in which he was present, posters with his image began to be retouched, and any mention of him was punished.
Thanks to his zeal, diligence and toughness, Nikolai Yezhov rose from an ordinary shoemaker's apprentice to the head of the NKVD. But that is what killed him. People's Commissar Nikolai Yezhov is firmly inscribed in Soviet history as a vile and bloody executor of Stalin's will.
Continuing the topic started here
Who is this? Of course you recognized him.
One of the most odious and sinister Stalinist people's commissars, omnipotent, omnipotent, terrible and cruel. Irreconcilable and consistent. Faithful Leninist and Stalinist!
In the sparkle of lightning you became familiar to us,
Yezhov, a sharp-eyed and intelligent people's commissar.
Great Lenin's wise word
Raised for the battle of the hero Yezhov.
Great Stalin's fiery call
Yezhov heard with all his heart, with all his blood!
Thank you, Yezhov, that, waking up the alarm,
You stand guard over the country and the leader.
(Dzhambul Dzhabaev, translation from Kyrgyz)
We will not retell the biography of this man, let's talk about his ... wife for now.
Evgenia Solomonovna Ezhova
(née Feigenberg (Faigenberg); Khayutina by her first husband, was born in the family of a rabbi.
In September 1929, in Sochi, she met N.I. Yezhov. In 1931 she married him.
Beauty Shulamith)) Oh, how many people wanted to hug and kiss her...
Here she is with her daughter.
But, is it possible to imagine such a thing??? The wife of the People's Commissar of the NKVD !!!
With his name, children learned to read and write ...
It's scary! But it turns out that not everyone ... It turns out that many famous people have been in her bed. Writers Babel, Koltsov, polar explorer Schmidt, pilot Chkalov, writer Sholokhov.
Reports on this topic have been preserved. Here, for example, is
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Commissioner of State
first class security
Tov. Beria
In accordance with your order to control the writer Sholokhov according to the letter “N”, I inform: in the last days of May, an assignment was received to take control of Sholokhov, who arrived in Moscow, who stayed with his family at the National Hotel in room 215. Control on the specified object lasted from 03.06. to 11.06.38 Copies of reports are available.
Around the middle of August, Sholokhov again arrived in Moscow and stayed at the same hotel. Since there was an order to enter the hotel rooms on their own in their free time and, if there was an interesting conversation, take the necessary measures, the stenographer Koroleva joined Sholokhov’s room and, recognizing him by his voice, told me whether it was necessary to control, I immediately reported this to Alekhine , who ordered to continue control. Having evaluated the initiative by the Queen, he ordered to reward her, about which a draft order was drawn up. On the second day, the stenographer Yurevich took over the duty, transcribing the stay of Comrade's wife. Yezhov at Sholokhov's.
Control over Sholokhov's number continued for more than ten days, until his departure, and during the control, Sholokhov's intimate relationship with Comrade's wife was recorded. Yezhov.
Deputy head of the first department of the 2nd special department of the NKVD, lieutenant of state security (Kuzmin)
December 12, 1938
How so? Why? Could the bloody People's Commissar endure such humiliation? Or maybe not particularly worried about this? It is hard to imagine that such a person could forgive such a thing. It was a typical evil dwarf. His height, as they say, is a meter with a cap. And without a cap, to be precise - 151 cm. Even against the background of not tall Stalin and Molotov, whose height was 166 cm, he looked like a midget
But, mighty midget!
The answer, in fact, can be one. Didn't care about his wife! So what was the all-powerful People's Commissar interested in?
Statement of the arrested N.I. Yezhov to the Investigative Department of the NKVD of the USSR
I consider it necessary to bring to the attention of the investigating authorities a number of new facts characterizing my moral decay. We are talking about my old vice - pederasty.
The beginning of this was laid in my early youth when I lived in the apprenticeship of a tailor. From about the age of 15 to 16, I had several cases of perverse sexual intercourse with my peers, students of the same tailor's workshop. This vice was renewed in the old tsarist army in a front-line situation. In addition to one casual connection with one of the soldiers of our company, I had a connection with a certain Filatov, my friend from Leningrad with whom we served in the same regiment. The connection was mutually active, that is, the “woman” was either one or the other side. Subsequently, Filatov was killed at the front.
Twenty-year-old Nikolai Yezhov with an army colleague (Yezhov - on the right).
In 1919, I was appointed commissar of the 2nd radiotelegraph base. My secretary was a certain Antoshin. I know that in 1937 he was still in Moscow and worked somewhere as the head of a radio station. He is a radio engineer himself. In 1919, I had a mutually active pederastic connection with this same Antoshin.
In 1924 I worked in Semipalatinsk. My old friend Dementyev went there with me. With him I also had in 1924 several cases of pederasty active only on my part.
In 1925, in the city of Orenburg, I established a pederastic relationship with a certain Boyarsky, then chairman of the Kazakh regional trade union council. Now, as far as I know, he works as the director of an art theater in Moscow. Communication was mutually active.
Then he and I had just arrived in Orenburg, lived in the same hotel. The connection was short, until the arrival of his wife, who soon arrived.
In the same 1925, the capital of Kazakhstan was transferred from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda, where I also went to work. Soon F. I. Goloshchekin arrived there as the secretary of the regional committee (now he works as the Chief Arbiter). He arrived as a bachelor, without a wife, I also lived as a bachelor. Before my departure to Moscow (about 2 months), I actually moved to his apartment and often spent the night there. With him, I also soon established a pederastic relationship, which periodically continued until my departure. Communication with him was, like the previous ones, mutually active.
(Goloshchekin ??? And he? Filipp Isaevich Goloshchekin. In publications about the execution of the royal family, he is often mentioned: being the Ural regional military commissar, he was actually the main organizer of both the execution and the hiding of the bodies of the dead. In principle, before becoming a Bolshevik, worked as a dental technician in Vitebsk.Since 1905 - already in the capitals, forging a revolution.He was familiar with V.I.Lenin.After the liquidation of the royal family, he was promoted: he was first chairman of the Samara provincial executive committee, then first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, where with fire and sword achieved the transfer of nomads to a settled way of life.
He ended his career as the Chief State Arbiter of the USSR. In this position, he was arrested by Beria, placed in a pre-trial detention center, where he spent two years, and during the German offensive on Moscow in 1941, along with other VIP prisoners, he was evacuated to Kuibyshev and only shot there.)
In 1938 there were two cases of pederastic connection with Dementiev, with whom I had this connection, as I said above, back in 1924. The connection was in Moscow in the autumn of 1938 at my apartment after I had been removed from the post of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Dementiev lived with me then for about two months.
Somewhat later, also in 1938, there were two cases of pederasty between me and Konstantinov. I have known Konstantinov since 1918 in the army. He worked with me until 1921. After 1921, we almost never met. In 1938, at my invitation, he began to visit me often at my apartment and two or three times was at the dacha. I came twice with my wife, the rest of the visits were without wives. He often stayed overnight with me. As I said above, at the same time I had two cases of pederasty with him. Communication was mutually active. It should also be said that on one of his visits to my apartment, together with my wife, I also had sexual intercourse with her.
All this was accompanied by drinking.
I give this information to the investigating authorities as an additional touch characterizing my moral decay.
CA FSB. F. 3-os. Op.6. D.3. L.420-423.
That's how he was, the glorious head of the NKVD, Stalin's eagle!
Interestingly, in addition to accusations of preparing a putsch and terrorist attacks against the country's top leadership, there was also an accusation of sodomy, and it sounded like this:
Yezhov committed acts of sodomy "acting for anti-Soviet and selfish purposes"
That's how they were, the omnipotent People's Commissars ...
OGPU. Yagoda and Ezhov
My acquaintance with the OGPU took place in January 1926, when I found myself in the role of a "suspect". I then held the post of head of military intelligence in Western Europe of the 3rd department of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. Ill department collects information coming from all over the world, and compiles secret reports and special bulletins for twenty members of the top leadership of the USSR.
That morning I was summoned by Nikonov, who was in charge of Department III, and told me to immediately go to the special department of the Moscow regional OGPU.
“The entrance is through Dzerzhinsky Street, entrance number 14,” he said. - Here's the pass.
He handed me a piece of green cardboard sent from the OGPU. When I asked why they called me, he said:
“Honestly, I don't know. But when they call, one must go immediately.
Soon I was standing in front of the OGPU investigator. He dryly invited me to sit down, sat down at his own desk and began sorting through some papers. Ten minutes passed in silence, after which he quickly looked at me and asked:
- When was the last time you were on duty in the Third Department?
“Six days ago,” I replied.
“Then tell me, where did the seal of Section Three go?” he said with feigned drama.
- How should I know? I replied. - The duty officer at the exit would not have signed my pass if I had not handed over the keys and the seal to him.
The investigator was forced to admit that, judging by the duty log, I handed over the key, along with other attributes of power, to my replacement. However, the matter did not end there, and he began to ask me leading questions:
- Have you been a member of the Party for a long time, Comrade Krivitsky?
“You have no right to ask me such questions,” I said. “You know what position I am in. Until I report to my superior, Comrade Berzin, I have no right to subject myself to further interrogation. With your permission, I'll call him on the phone.
I dialed the number of my boss Berzin, explained the situation and asked if I should answer general questions.
“Not a word until you receive my instructions. I'll call you in fifteen or twenty minutes.
The investigator waited impatiently, pacing around the office. Twenty minutes later, a call came from Berzin.
“Answer only relevant questions,” he told me.
I handed the phone to the investigator, and Berzin repeated his instructions.
"All right," said the investigator in an unhappy tone. - You can go.
I returned to myself. Less than half an hour later, an intelligent young man with glasses who worked in our Far Eastern department came to see me. He was not a member of the party and was taken to our department only for his knowledge of the Persian language.
“You know what, Krivitsky,” he said to me with obvious fear. - They call me to the OGPU.
- For what? I asked him. - You are not on duty.
“Of course not,” he replied. “I would never have been trusted. I'm not a party member.
An intelligent young man went to the OGPU, but never returned.
A few days later, the missing seal was "found". I am sure that the OGPU officers stole it in order to concoct a case around our Intelligence Directorate and convince the Politburo of the need to extend their power over it. The intelligence agency jealously guarded its independence and was the last to fall into the power of the secret service, but this happened ten years later.
The fabrication of such cases was a favorite pastime of the OGPU. Having first convinced the apparatus of the Bolshevik dictatorship, and then Stalin personally, that their power rested solely on the vigilant vigilance of the OGPU, it expanded its omnipotence to such an extent that in the end it turned into a state within a state.
Having begun an “investigation” in a case that has nothing to do with the disclosure of crimes, it is forced, for the sake of the protocol, to find a victim at any cost, and this is the main cruelty of this institution. This also explains the disappearance of our expert on the Persian language.
The history of the creation of the OGPU dates back to December 1917, when a month after the October Revolution, Lenin sent Dzerzhinsky a draft decree on the creation of an organ for "the fight against counter-revolution, speculation and sabotage." This memorandum marked the birth of the Extraordinary Commission, authorized to fight against the enemies of Soviet power. The Cheka became an instrument of terror and mass repression, which began after the attempt on Lenin's life in the summer of 1918 and the murder of Uritsky.
The first chairman of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, was a merciless fighter for the cause of the revolution with a reputation as an incorruptible revolutionary. During the Civil War, he sent countless people to their deaths, being firmly convinced that there was no other way to protect Soviet power from "class enemies". No matter what horrors associated with the name of the Cheka in the first years of the October regime, neither Dzerzhinsky nor his closest collaborators were guided by any other motives than a fanatical zeal to be the punishing sword of the Revolution.
People who were loyal to the Soviet government did not yet feel fear of the Cheka.
As Soviet power became more and more totalitarian, the Bolshevik Party became more and more obviously a victim of what it had created in 1917, and the Soviet secret police increasingly took everything into their own hands, terror turned into an end in itself, and fearless revolutionaries were replaced by seasoned, licentious and immoral executioners.
In 1923, the Cheka became known as the OGPU (United State Political Administration). The name change was caused by the desire to get rid of unpleasant associations. However, the new name soon began to inspire much more fear.
The OGPU remained in the same building that was occupied by the Cheka, on Lubyanka, where the insurance company was located before the revolution. Initially, this building, overlooking Lubyanka Square, had five floors, but starting in 1930, it began to expand, three more floors of yellow brick were added and a luxurious 11-story building with a black marble plinth was added.
The main entrance to the OGPU is still through the old building, above the doors of which there is a bas-relief depicting Karl Marx. There are also other entrances from adjacent lanes, so that almost all the buildings of one block belong to the OGPU.
Ordinary citizens receive passes to enter the OGPU building at the Pass Office, located on Kuznetsky Most Street, opposite the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Relatives, wives and friends of prisoners always crowd into the Pass Bureau in the hope of obtaining permission for a visit or transfer. One glance at these queues is enough to get an impression of what kind of policy the Soviet government pursued in this or that period. In the early years of Soviet power, the wives of officers or merchants stood in these lines. Then they began to be dominated by relatives of the arrested engineers and professors. In 1937, I saw the relatives and friends of my friends, comrades and colleagues standing in long lines.
In the long, gloomy corridors of the Lubyanka, there are guards every twenty steps. Passes are checked at least three times before the visitor gains access to one of the OGPU offices.
In the place where the courtyard was once in the old building, a special prison was built for dangerous political criminals. Many of them are kept in solitary confinement, and the prison itself is called the Isolator. On the windows of the cell, not only iron bars are installed, but also iron shutters, so that only a thin ray of light can penetrate into it. The prisoner of the cell cannot see either the courtyard or the sky.
When an OGPU investigator wants to interrogate a prisoner in his office, he calls the head of the prison, and he is led to the main building under guard through the yard, up a narrow, dimly lit staircase. There is also an elevator that takes prisoners to the upper floors.
In the autumn of 1935, I saw on the Lubyanka one of its most famous prisoners, Lenin's closest comrade-in-arms, the first Chairman of the Comintern, who at one time stood at the head of the Leningrad Committee of the Party and the Soviet. Once it was a burly man. Now an emaciated man with an extinct look was walking along the corridor with a shuffling gait, in pajamas. So the last time I saw a man who was once Grigory Zinoviev. He was taken in for interrogation. A few months later he was shot.
In every investigator's office, the most important piece of furniture is the sofa, as he sometimes has to conduct interrogations around the clock with breaks. The investigator himself, in fact, is the same prisoner as his person under investigation. He was given unlimited rights, ranging from torture to execution on the spot. This is one of the features of the Soviet trial: despite numerous executions, there are no full-time executioners. Sometimes employees and guards descend into the cells of the Lubyanka to carry out the death sentence pronounced by the OGPU collegium. Sometimes investigators do it themselves. Imagine, for an analogy, that a New York district judge, having received a capital punishment order, rushes to Sing Sing to turn on the electric chair switch.
The largest number of executions at the Lubyanka occurred in 1937 and 1938, when the great purge swept the whole country. Even earlier, in 1934, Stalin set the OGPU against ordinary Bolsheviks. The periodic "cleansing" of the party ranks, which is the function of the Party Control Committee, was placed in the hands of the secret police. Then, for the first time, all members of the Bolshevik Party became the objects of individual police surveillance.
In March 1937, however, Stalin decided that all these purifications and purges were not enough. In 1933-1936, he retained power largely thanks to Yagoda and his secret collaborators, whose selfless loyalty helped him destroy the old leading cadres of the Bolshevik Party and the Red Army. But since Stalin's purge methods were too well known to Yagoda, and he himself became too close to the levers of power, Stalin decided to change the executioners without changing his policy. The one on whom the lot fell to become Yagoda's successor was Nikolai Yezhov, whom Stalin had planted a few years earlier in the Central Committee of the party as its secretary and head of the personnel department, on which a lot depended. In his post, Yezhov, in fact, was engaged in activities parallel to the OGPU, reporting directly to Stalin. When he took Yagoda's chair, he took with him two hundred of his reliable "guys" from among Stalin's personal OGPU. In 1937, Stalin's slogan was: "Intensify the purge!"
Yezhov turned this slogan into a bloody reality. First of all, he accused the employees of the OGPU of insufficient exactingness due to the fault of the decayed leadership and informed them that the OGPU should intensify the purge, starting with itself.
On March 18, 1937, Yezhov made a report at a meeting of senior officials in the OGPU club. All of Yagoda's deputies and all the heads of departments of the OGPU, with the exception of one, were already under arrest. The blow must now land on the heads of the higher authorities. The club's spacious premises were filled to overflowing with veterans of the Cheka, many of whom had served in the organs for almost twenty years. Yezhov made a report in his new capacity People's Commissar internal affairs. The name change was a new attempt to get rid of annoying associations. The newly minted commissar took up the matter seriously. It was his high point. He had to prove that he was irreplaceable for Stalin. Yezhov decided to expose Yagoda's activities to his surviving collaborators.
Yezhov began by saying that it was not his task to prove Yagoda's mistakes. If Yagoda had been a firm and honest Bolshevik, he would not have lost Stalin's confidence. Bugs Berries have deep roots. The speaker paused, and everyone present held their breath, feeling that the decisive moment was coming. Here Yezhov made a spectacular confession that since 1907 Yagoda had been in the service of the tsarist secret police. Those present swallowed this message without batting an eyelid. But in 1907 Yagoda was ten years old! But that's not all, Yezhov switched to shouting. The Germans immediately got wind of the true nature of Yagoda's activities and slipped him to Dzerzhinsky to work in the Cheka in the very first days after the revolution.
“Throughout the life of the Soviet state,” shouted Yezhov, “Yagoda worked for German intelligence!
Yezhov told his horrified listeners that Yagoda's spies had penetrated everywhere, occupying all the key posts. Yes! Even the heads of the departments of the OGPU Molchanov, Gorb, Guy, Pauker, Volovich are all spies!
“Yezhov can prove,” he shouted, “that Yagoda and his henchmen are nothing but thieves, and there is not the slightest doubt about that.
“Didn’t Yagoda appoint Lurie the head of the construction department of the OGPU?” And who, if not Lurie, was the link between Yagoda and the foreign intelligence service? “That was his main piece of evidence.
“For many years,” said Yezhov, “these two criminals, Yagoda and Lurie, deceived the party and their country. They built canals, paved roads, and erected buildings that cost a lot of money, but the reports indicated that the cost of them was extremely cheap.
“But how, I ask you, comrades, how did these scoundrels manage to do this? How, you ask?
Yezhov gazed intently into the eyes of the petrified listeners.
- Very simple. The budget of the NKVD is not controlled by anyone. From this budget, the budget of his own institution, Yagoda drew the sums he needed for the construction of expensive buildings at an extremely "cheap" price.
Why did Yagoda and Lurya need this construction? Why did they need to build roads? They did this in pursuit of popularity, in order to gain fame for themselves, to earn themselves awards! But can a traitor be satisfied with all this? Why was Yagoda so eager to gain popularity? He needed it because, in fact, he was pursuing Fouche's policies.
The long line of contradictory accusations launched by Yezhov into the public stunned those present. Yagoda served in the Okhrana for ten years. Then it turns out that this ordinary spy, provocateur and thief also wanted to compete with the notorious Napoleonic Minister of Police.
“This is a very serious question, comrades,” continued Yezhov. – The party has been forced all these years to resist the growth of fascism among us. That was not easy. Yes, comrades, I must tell you, and you will firmly remember this, that even Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky weakened the defense of the revolution here.
Yezhov moved on to a summary that boiled down to the following: we need a purge, a purge, and another purge. I, Yezhov, have no doubts, no hesitation, and no weaknesses. If one could ask the late Felix Dzerzhinsky, why should we reckon with the reputation of even the oldest and most seasoned Chekists?
The oldest employees of the OGPU, veterans of the October Revolution, feeling that it was their turn to fall victim, were pale and indifferent. They applauded Yezhov as if none of this concerned them. They applauded to show their devotion. Who knows? A timely confession of guilt may still save them from a bullet in the back of the head. Perhaps once again they can earn their right to live by betraying their friends...
While the meeting was going on, Artuzov, a Russified Swiss, a Bolshevik since 1914, took the podium. Artuzov knew what was at stake. The old security officer spoke with acting ardor:
- Comrades, in the most difficult days for the revolution, Lenin put Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky at the head of the Cheka. In an even more difficult time, Stalin put his best student Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov at the head of the NKVD. Comrades! We Bolsheviks have learned to be ruthless not only to our enemies, but also to ourselves. Yes, Yagoda really wanted to play the role of Fouche. He really wanted to oppose the OGPU to our party. Because of our blindness, we unwittingly participated in this conspiracy.
- In 1930, comrades, when the party first felt this trend and, wanting to put an end to it, appointed the old Bolshevik Akulov to the OGPU, what did we do to help Akulov? We met him with hostility! Yagoda did his best to interfere with his work. And we, comrades, not only supported Yagoda's sabotage, but went even further. I must honestly admit that the entire party organization of the OGPU was busy sabotaging Akulov.
Artuzov restlessly looked for even the slightest hint of approval on Yezhov's big-cheeked face. He felt that the right moment had come for a decisive blow to divert suspicion from himself.
- The question is, who was at that time the head of the party organization of the OGPU? He drew air into his lungs and exhaled: “Slutsky!
Leaving his comrade to be torn to pieces, Artuzov stepped down from the podium in triumph.
Slutsky, who at that time was the head of the Foreign Department of the OGPU, stood up to defend himself against the accusations. It was also an old, experienced Bolshevik. He, too, knew what was at stake. Slutsky began his speech uncertainly, feeling that the circumstances were not in his favor.
Artuzov tried to present me as Yagoda's closest collaborator. I will answer, comrades: of course, I was the secretary of the party organization of the OGPU. But who was a member of the OGPU board - Artuzov or me? The question is, was it then possible to be a member of the collegium, this highest organ of the OGPU, without having full confidence in Yagoda? Artuzov assures me that by my "faithful service" to Yagoda as secretary of the party organization, I earned myself a business trip abroad, that I received this as a reward for sabotaging Akulov. I used this business trip, as Artuzov assures me, in order to establish contact between Yagoda's spy organization and his masters abroad. But I affirm that my business trip took place at the insistence of Artuzov himself. For many years Artuzov was on friendly terms with Yagoda.
And then Slutsky struck his main blow:
- Tell me, Artuzov, where do you live? Who lived opposite you? Bulanov? Wasn't he one of the first arrested? And who lived on the floor above, Artuzov? Ostrovsky. He is also arrested. And who lived under you, Artuzov? Berry! And now I ask you, comrades, was it possible under certain circumstances to live in the same house with Yagoda and not enjoy his complete confidence? ..
Stalin and Yezhov thought and decided to believe both Slutsky and Artuzov, and at one time destroyed both.
Such was the nature of the intensified or great purge that began in March 1937. The apparatus of Soviet power has become like a madhouse. Discussions, similar to those described above, took place in every division of the OGPU, in every cell of the Bolshevik Party, at every factory, in a military unit, on a collective farm. Everyone became a traitor if he could not accuse someone else of betrayal. Cautious people tried to go into the shadows, to become ordinary employees, to avoid contact with the authorities, to make sure that they were forgotten.
Long years of loyalty to the party meant nothing. Even spells of loyalty to Stalin did not help. Stalin himself put forward the slogan: "The whole generation must be sacrificed."
We have been taught to think that the old must go. But now the purge has begun on a new one. That spring, Slutsky and I somehow got into a conversation about the scale of the arrests carried out since March of that year - there were 35,000, and possibly 400,000. Slutsky spoke bitterly:
“You know, we are really old. They will come for me, they will come for you, they will come for others. We belong to a generation destined to perish. After all, Stalin said that the entire pre-revolutionary and military generation should be destroyed, like a stone hanging around the neck of the revolution. But now they are shooting young - seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys and girls, born under Soviet rule, who did not know anything else ... And many of them go to their deaths shouting: "Long live Trotsky!"
Many examples could be cited to prove it. The best example of this is the case of Yagoda himself. Among the many wildest accusations brought against the chief of the OGPU at his trial in March 1938, the most senseless in essence was the accusation of conspiracy to poison Stalin, Yezhov and members of the Politburo. For many years, Yagoda was responsible for feeding Kremlin leaders, including Stalin and other high-ranking government officials. A special department of the OGPU, directly under Yagoda, controlled step by step the supply of food to the Kremlin, starting with special farms near Moscow, where products are grown under the vigilant supervision of Yagoda's employees, and ending with the tables of the Kremlin leaders, who are served by OGPU agents.
All agricultural work, up to the harvest, transportation, preparation and serving of dishes, was carried out by special employees of the OGPU, directly subordinate to Yagoda. Each of the members of his special section answered to Yagoda with his own head, and for many years Yagoda himself bore the heavy burden of this responsibility on his shoulders. Stalin, who more than once owed the saving of his life to his vigilant vigilance, did not eat any other food than that served to him by Yagoda's employees.
At the trial, it was "proved" that Yagoda was heading a gigantic poisoning conspiracy, into which he dragged even old Kremlin doctors. But that was not all. It was "proved" that Yagoda, the Kremlin's chef, so to speak, dissatisfied with the methods of poisoning, plotted Yezhov's slow assassination by spraying his office with poisonous substances. All these egregious "facts" became the property of an open process, and Yagoda himself "confessed" to the validity of many of them. They were published in the press. But throughout the whole process, no one in Russia dared to recall that Yagoda was the master of the Kremlin kitchen.
Of course, other charges were brought against him. It turns out that in addition to misappropriating the money allocated by the OGPU for construction, he tore bread out of the mouths of the Kremlin leaders, selling the Kremlin provisions to the side and appropriated the proceeds. He spent this money, according to the court, on organizing orgies.
Like other similar "facts" revealed at the Moscow show trials, this story of Yagoda's theft of bread and meat from Stalin's table has a tiny grain of truth in its basis. During a period of acute food shortages, Yagoda really started the practice of ordering a little more food than was required by the Kremlin. The surplus was distributed to them among the starving members of the OGPU. For several years in a row, senior officials of the OGPU unofficially received food parcels in excess of their allowance. Military intelligence officers grumbled with displeasure about this, and for some time Yagoda's favors extended to us, so I also joined these crumbs from the Kremlin table. When the accounts were checked, it turned out that Molotov, for example, had ten times more sugar than he could have consumed with all his will.
In addition to the accusation of an elaborate conspiracy to poison people whom he could have already sent to the next world with a wave of his hand, as well as the sale of Kremlin products, the Stalin tribunal also took into account the fact that these stolen products were partially distributed to them, allegedly for the purpose of gaining popularity following the example of Fouche ...
I am retelling these fantastic, or rather nightmarish facts, not to amuse the reader. I back up my assertion with facts that the very concept of guilt was lost in the OGPU during the purges. The reasons for the man's arrest had nothing to do with the charge against him. Nobody was looking for them. Nobody asked about them. Truth is no longer needed. When I say that the Soviet power apparatus has turned into a lunatic asylum, I mean it literally. Americans laugh when I tell them about these wild cases - and I understand them - but for us this is not a reason to laugh. There is nothing funny about your best friends and comrades disappearing into the night and dying.
Don't forget that I once lived in this crazy house.
The price of "confessions" obtained by the OGPU can be well illustrated by the case of an Austrian socialist who was outlawed in his country by Chancellor Dollfuss and found refuge in the Land of the Soviets. He was arrested in Leningrad in 1935. Zakovsky, the head of the Leningrad OGPU, allegedly received from him a confession that he served in the Vienna police. On this basis, he was imprisoned as an Austrian spy. Somehow the prisoner managed to send a letter to Kalinin, who was listed as President of the Soviet Union. The case was handed over to Slutsky. One day he called me about it.
“Walter, this is some kind of Schutzbund affair, I don’t understand anything about it. Help me. It's up to you,” he said.
- Send me the dossier, I'll try to figure it out.
The papers were soon brought to me by Slutsky's messenger. First, there was a report by Zakovsky to his Moscow authorities. He reported that a confession had been received from the prisoner. It's the most common thing. When giving evidence, the defendant did not resist, but I was overcome by doubts. Flipping through the papers, I came across a questionnaire of the type that every foreigner who enters the Soviet Union fills out. There was a detailed biography of the arrested person. It was reported that he joined the Austrian Socialist Party on the eve of the World War, served at the front, and after the war, at the direction of his party, which had a majority in Vienna, joined the municipal police. It was 90 percent socialist and part of the Amsterdam International. All this was indicated in the questionnaire. It also reported that when the socialists lost power in Vienna, he, along with other socialist officers, was dismissed from the police, and then commanded a battalion of the Schutzbund - socialist defense detachments - during the February 1934 battles against the fascist "heimwehr". I called Slutsky and explained all this.
“This Austrian socialist served in the police at the behest of his party, just as you do with us. I will send you a report on this.
Slutsky hastened to answer:
- No, no, no reports. Come to my office.
When I came to see him, I explained again that a socialist cannot be considered a spy for present-day Austria if he was a policeman under the rule of the socialists.
Slutsky agreed.
- I understand that Zakovsky forced him to confess that he worked as a policeman under the socialists! Now that's recognition! But do not try to write reports! Nobody writes them these days.
Despite the playful tone of his remarks, Slutsky interceded with Kalinin in defense of the Austrian.
Zakovsky acted in full accordance with the tasks of the OGPU. "Confessions" like those he allegedly received were the daily bread that the OGPU lived on. My Austrian socialist was no more to blame than the other hundreds of thousands of people who suffered an evil fate.
The conversation that I had at that time with Kedrov, one of the most experienced investigators of the OGPU, is indicative. I met him in our dining room, and we started talking about General Primakov, whose case he was working on. In 1934 this general, a member of the high command of the army, was arrested and handed over to Kedrov. The latter proceeded to process his victim with the help of all those methods that were then in use. He himself spoke of them with signs of embarrassment.
“But you know what happened,” he said suddenly. - As soon as he began to split, and we knew that a few days or weeks would pass - and we would receive his full recognition, when he was suddenly released at the request of Voroshilov!
From this episode it is clear that the accusations against the arrested person - even the one who is ready to "confess to everything" - have nothing to do with the reasons for which he is kept in custody. Outside the Soviet Union, people are arguing about whether the accusations made by the OGPU are true or not. In this institution, the question of this does not even arise, the investigation is not at all interested in it.
General Primakov, torn from the clutches of the OGPU on the eve of "full recognition", served his country for another three years, but on June 12, 1937, he was shot along with Marshal Tukhachevsky and seven other prominent military leaders on new, completely different charges.
Only once in my life, in August 1935, did I have to interrogate a political prisoner. It was Vladimir Dedushok, sentenced in 1932 to a ten-year term in the Solovetsky camps. He was arrested in connection with the scandalous case of our chief military intelligence officer in Vienna, allegedly connected with German military intelligence. Grandfather, whom I knew personally, was not to blame for anything, but our local chef was at that moment too important a person to plant him immediately. Grandfather became just a scapegoat. It was a Ukrainian who came to the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. He served in military intelligence for more than ten years. During my work in this institution, I have repeatedly encountered the consequences of the mentioned Vienna case, which is by no means clear. Deciding that Dedushok might perhaps help me clarify it, I asked Slutsky if it was possible to interrogate this convict. It turned out that the case was in the hands of the OGPU department headed by Mikhail Gorb. I contacted him.
“You are lucky,” said Gorb, “this Grandfather is on his way from Solovki at this hour.” He is being taken to Moscow for interrogations in connection with the conspiracy of the commanders of the Kremlin garrison.
A few days later, Gorb reported that Dedushok was in the Lubyanka, his investigator Kedrov.
I arranged with Kedrov to summon the prisoner to him by 11 o'clock that evening. According to my position, I had no right to interrogate those arrested. This was the function of the OGPU, but in exceptional cases it was allowed to meet with the person under investigation in the presence of a representative of the NKVD. I went to Kedrov's office in advance, to room No. 994 in Lubyanka, and explained what was connected with my case. I needed to find out more about the circumstances of the investigation and the sentencing of Grandfather.
“Read this and you will know everything,” said Kedrov, pointing to the thick dossier.
It contained several hundred pages - protocols of interrogations, affidavits, letters of recommendation received by Grandfather at one time, etc. Finally, I got to his cross-examination, which was not conducted by Kedrov. After a series of questions and answers of a more or less formal nature, the protocol was interrupted and a lengthy exposition followed, written by the person under investigation in his own hand. The OGPU investigator was either in a hurry or tired, as often happened, and instructed Grandfather to write everything he knew himself in the presence of a sentry. After reading his story, I realized that he was completely innocent, although he signed his formal confession. I said to Kedrov:
“What a strange thing all this scribbling is. 600 pages of text, from which nothing follows, and at the end: Grandfather admits his guilt and the investigator suggests that the OGPU board send him to Solovki for ten years. The Board, signed by Agranov, agrees.
“I ran it too,” said Kedrov, “but I didn’t figure out what the matter was.
It was already midnight when Kedrov called the commandant of the detention center and asked to bring Grandfather. Ten minutes later he was here, accompanied by a sentry. Tall, with sharp features, decently dressed, in a white shirt and clean-shaven, he seemed to me not changed at all. Only in the three years that I did not see him, his hair turned completely white. He looked straight at Kedrov, then noticed me sitting on the couch.
- What do you want from me? Why were they brought from Solovki? - he asked.
Kedrov was silent, Grandfather turned to me:
“I was requested by Section Four?”
“No, not the Fourth Section,” answered Kedrov. “We brought you here for other reasons. Krivitsky has some questions for you.
The atmosphere became tense. Grandfather looked from Kedrov to me. He froze, about to fight back against both of us. We both paused. Finally I broke the silence:
- Grandfather, I do not know your business and have no authority to touch it. But I'm on Case X - remember, from our intelligence service. I think you could clarify a few things for me. If you remember some of the details of this case, you can be of help to me. If not, I will try to figure them out in a different way.
- Yes, I have not forgotten this case. I'll try to answer your questions.
But I asked him another question:
How are things going for you in general?
He replied stoically:
“At first it was very bad. Better now. I am now in charge of the flour mill in our island camp. I regularly receive Pravda, sometimes books. This is how I live.
Now it was his turn to ask how my business was going.
“Good,” I replied. - We work with might and main, life goes on in the Soviet way.
So it took more than an hour to talk about this and that. When I started talking about what was the reason for this meeting, Kedrov interrupted:
You know, I'm damn tired. I see you are here for a long time. Let's make sure I can sleep!
Strict rules require that Kedrov be present during the entire conversation. He alone has the right to summon the prisoner and send him back to his cell. Kedrov advised to call Gorb and arrange with him.
Gorb was not a formalist.
“All right,” he agreed, “let’s make an exception. I'll tell the warden that you will sign a warrant to have the prisoner returned to his cell.
When Kedrov left, Grandfather relaxed somewhat. Pointing to his case, he asked in an impersonal tone, as if the papers were not about him:
– Have you read this writing?
I replied that I had read it.
- Well, what do you think about it?
I could only give one answer:
You confessed, didn't you?
Yes, I confessed.
Grandfather asked me to get him tea and a sandwich, and I immediately ordered. We soon forgot, talking, about the purpose of his call. He said that he was waiting in the camp to meet his wife, a reward for his good behavior, but now, after being summoned to Moscow, he was unlikely to see her. He did not linger on this topic, but turned with interest to the cabinets where there were books in Russian and foreign languages, picked up several volumes and looked at them eagerly. I promised to ask Kedrov to give him something to read. At four o'clock in the morning we had not yet reached the goal of our meeting. Grandfather well understood both his and my position. He guessed that I could easily find myself in his position, and did not want to present himself as a martyr. A few hours with a person from the outside world is too auspicious to waste them complaining about fate.
I promised him that I would tell the authorities of the OGPU that we should meet again in a day, since the interrogation was not over. At dawn, I called the head of the prison, asking for a sentry to escort the prisoner to the cell. As usual, misunderstandings began, the commandant on duty was replaced. There was a noise, and it was necessary to wake the Hump.
The next evening I appeared again, and Kedrov again left us alone. I armed Grandfather with a pen and paper and asked him to write about everything that he knew about the question that occupied me. He coped with this task in 20 minutes. We again got tea with a sandwich and talked again until the morning.
Why did you confess? I asked him, as if in passing, with feigned indifference, a question towards the end of the conversation, leafing through some book.
Grandfather did not immediately answer, measuring the room with steps, as if preoccupied with other thoughts. Then he spoke in fragmentary phrases that said little to an outsider, but were understandable to anyone who spends his whole life in the Soviet apparatus. Grandfather could not speak openly on this subject, just as I could not speak. The fact that I had asked my question already put me in a perilous position that he could easily use against me. With all the caution with which he spoke, I was able to understand what had happened to him. He was not subjected to third-degree torture. He was told only once by his investigator that he could get off with a ten-year sentence if he confessed his guilt. Knowing well the customs of the OGPU, he preferred to agree to this proposal. He was not, of course, implicated in the conspiracy in connection with which he was brought to Moscow.
But he never returned to his flour mill. He was shot...
One of the achievements that the OGPU especially boasted about was the “re-education” of peasants, engineers, teachers, workers who were not enthusiastic about the Soviet order, who were captured by the thousands and millions throughout the country and sent to labor camps, where they were introduced to the grace of collectivism. These opponents of Stalin's dictatorship, peasants tied to their fields, professors who greedily absorbed non-Marxist scientific concepts, engineers who disagreed with the provisions of the five-year plan, workers who complained about low wages - all these desperate people moved by the will of others in millions to a specially arranged for them a new, collectivist world, where they worked forcibly under the supervision of the OGPU and came out of there as obedient Soviet citizens.
The Council of Labor and Defense decided on April 18, 1931, that a 140-mile canal between the White and Baltic Seas would be built in 20 months. All responsibility for the construction was assigned to the OGPU.
Having forced five hundred thousand prisoners to cut down forests, blow up rocks, block water streams, the OGPU laid a great waterway exactly according to the established schedule. From the deck of the Anokhin steamer, Stalin himself, accompanied by Yagoda, watched the solemn opening ceremony.
When the canal was built, 12,484 "criminals" out of half a million workers received amnesty, and 59,526 people had their sentences reduced. But the OGPU soon came to the conclusion that most of the "liberated", like other builders, loved the collective work on the canal so much that they were sent to build another great project - the Volga - Moscow Canal.
In April 1937, I admired on Red Square a huge photograph of Firin, the chief builder of canals in the OGPU system, exhibited there. It's good, I thought to myself, that at least one of the big men hasn't been arrested! Two days later I met a colleague who had just been recalled from abroad. The first thing he said to me, barely recovering from his surprise that I was free:
- And you know, Firin is finished.
I replied that it was impossible, because his photograph was exhibited on the main square of Moscow.
“I tell you that Firin is finished. Today I was at the works of the Volga-Moscow Canal, but there was no Firin there! he said.
And in the evening I got a call from a friend who works at Izvestia. His editorial office was ordered to remove all photographs and references to Firin, the great OGPU canal builder ...
But the OGPU did not limit its operations to only Soviet Russia. Despite all the efforts of clever propagandists, the outside world was skeptical about the "confessions" of the old Bolsheviks at the Moscow trials. Stalin and the OGPU wanted to prove that the quality of Moscow performances was at the highest level, and they tried to arrange similar performances in Spain, Czechoslovakia, and the United States.
In October 1938, the OGPU prepared the trial of the leaders of the Spanish Marxist POUM party in Barcelona on charges of treason, espionage, and attempted assassination of members of the legitimate government. Moscow was going to prove by the POUM trial that the radicals in Spain, hostile to Stalinism, were none other than "Trotskyists" and "fascist conspirators." But Barcelona is not Moscow. The OGPU did their best, but, despite pressure, the defendants refused to admit that they were spies in the service of Franco.
For the first time, information about the plans for such trials abroad reached me in May 1937. It was in Slutsky's office. He ended a telephone conversation with a person unknown to me, and Slutsky, after hanging up the phone, remarked:
- Stalin and Yezhov think that I can make arrests in Prague, as in Moscow.
- What do you have in mind? I asked.
– A trial of Trotskyist spies in Europe is required. It would have a huge effect if it could be arranged. The Prague police should arrest Grilevich. Generally speaking, they are ready to cooperate, but the Czechs cannot be treated simply as we treat our own. Here, in Moscow, it is enough to open the gates of the Lubyanka wider and drive in as much as necessary. But there are still legionnaires in Prague who fought with us in 1918, and they are sabotaging our actions.
Anton Grilevich, former German communist leader, member of the Prussian Landtag, later defected to the Trotskyists and fled to Czechoslovakia after Hitler came to power. His arrest in Prague, which Slutsky expected, came immediately after the execution of Red Army commanders on June 12, 1937. From other sources, I learned about the further development of the idea that was born in Moscow.
On the day of his arrest, the Czech police presented Grilevich with a suitcase he had left with his friends several months earlier and which, according to him, he had not opened since October 1936. The suitcase contained brochures, leaflets, business correspondence and other harmless materials that did not fit into the category of items whose possession violated the laws of Czechoslovakia, all the more did not indicate military espionage. The police officer made no such charges. But in the evening another police detective appeared and started a conversation with Grilevich about the Moscow trials, thus hinting at what was the subject of his concern. And he immediately showed Grilevich three false passports, a negative photograph of the German military plan for the occupation of the Sudetenland with the date February 17, 1937, and a handwritten instruction on the use of invisible ink. This evidence, as the detective tried to assure Grilevich, was found in his suitcase. At the insistence of Grilevich, the regular police were invited, in whose presence he testified which of the things was really in the suitcase, and which was planted. Nevertheless, he was planted that same night.
Transferred soon to another prison, he became the subject of attention of authoritative representatives of the investigating authorities. They hinted that people from the Moscow OGPU were interested in him and had "reliable friends" in the Czech police.
Grilevich was finally released in November after he managed, point by point, to deny all charges and prove that the evidence they were trying to use against him was clearly anonymous. Thus the OGPU failed in their attempt to prove that the Trotskyists in Czechoslovakia were working for Hitler, against the government in Prague. If this attempt had succeeded, it would have helped a lot to convince the West that the evidence was worth something in the Moscow trials.
The OGPU even had a plan to conduct a "Trotskyist-fascist" trial in New York. But until the full story of the disappearance of Juliet Stuart Poyntz and the details of the Robinson-Reubens case are fully revealed, it is difficult to judge how far preparations for such a process have gone.
In any case, it has been established for certain that in late May - early June 1937, just at the time of the Grilevich case in Prague, Juliet Stuart Poyntz, a prominent leader of the American Communist Party in the past, left her room at the Women's Association Club at 353 West 57 I street in New York. Her wardrobe, books and other items were found in a condition that indicated she intended to return to her room that same day. But from that moment on, nothing more could be found out about her. She disappeared.
Donald Robinson, aka Rubens, was arrested in Moscow on December 2, 1937. His wife, an American citizen, was arrested soon after, allegedly for entering Russia on a false passport. Robinson was a Soviet military intelligence officer for many years, working in the United States and other countries, but has also been missing since his arrest. His wife was soon released from a Soviet prison, and in a letter sent to her daughter in the United States, she hinted transparently that she would never see her husband alive again. Mrs. Rubens, although an American citizen, was never allowed to leave the Soviet Union...
The clearest evidence of Moscow's serious work in preparing the espionage trial against Stalin's enemies in the United States I somehow got from a remark Slutsky made in a conversation with me a few days after he mentioned Grilevich. The conversation turned to my former colleague in the Third Department, Valentin Markin, who later became the chief of the OGPU agents in the United States. (In 1934, Markin's wife was informed in Moscow that he had been killed by gangsters in a New York nightclub.) In May 1937, Slutsky, turning to me, remarked:
- Do you know, it turns out that your friend Valentin Markin, who was killed three years ago in America, was a Trotskyist and started the entire service of the OGPU in the USA with Trotskyists.
In our circle, such remarks have never been regarded as mere gossip. Moreover, the head of the Foreign Department of the OGPU could not simply gossip. In the light of his own hints about the preparation of new trials by Moscow, the remark about “Trotskyists” in the American service of the OGPU obviously meant that something was being prepared in the United States. The word "Trotskyists" was used by Soviet officials to refer to any opponent of Stalin, without distinction.
It must not be overlooked that espionage in the United States was carried out, by the way, by real agents from among the Americans. Along with military espionage, they compiled lists of anti-Stalinists, especially among radicals and former communists. Therefore, we can assume that the main elements for the organization of show trials such as Moscow were, in essence, there. Moscow obviously believed that it would be able to get involved, along with real American agents, innocent anti-Stalinists, placed in one way or another in a position that compromised them.
Despite the existing prerequisites, the plan developed by the OGPU to present the American radicals - opponents of Stalin - as agents of the Nazi Gestapo was a complete failure. Nothing came to fruition either in the US or in the Soviet Union, despite the very likely kidnapping of Mrs Poyntz and the mysterious arrest of Robinson-Rubens.
In the midst of the Great Purge, when Stalin was terrorizing all of Russia, he delivered a speech about the bonds of love that bound the Bolsheviks to the Russian people. He learned somewhere about the Greek myth about Antaeus and cited it as proof: Antaeus's invincibility is in his connection with the soil, with the masses of the people. In the same way, according to Stalin, lies the invincibility of the Bolshevik leadership.
From the book Armored vehicles of Stalin, 1925-1945 [= Armor on wheels. History of the Soviet armored car, 1925-1945] author Kolomiets Maxim ViktorovichDesign Bureau of the OGPU Armored car BDD-1, left view. Leningrad, 1931 (ASKM). In addition to the military, the development of armored vehicles by the United State Political Administration (OGPU), actively using for this "enemies of the people" - arrested designers and engineers,
From the book The Secret History of the Stalinist Time author Orlov Alexander MikhailovichYezhov takes revenge on Anna Arkus Among those arrested in the case of the "Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist center" was a certain Anna Arkus. She was an attractive and intelligent young woman who had once been married to Grigory Arkus, a member of the board of the State Bank.
From the book of the Assassins of Stalin and Beria author Mukhin Yury IgnatievichYagoda in a Prison Cell In a nightmarish atmosphere of extrajudicial executions and unaccountable horror that gripped the whole country, preparations were vigorously made for the third Moscow trial, to which the last group of old Bolsheviks, Lenin's associates, was to be brought. Stalinist
From the book Armor on wheels. History of the Soviet armored car 1925-1945. author Kolomiets Maxim ViktorovichG.I. Kulik and N.I. Yezhov First, let's evaluate the pre-war biography of Marshal G.I. Kulik. I have already written that the malice with which Kulik is spoken of by his colleagues who wrote his memoirs must be justified. I think that Kulik in this context is, as it were, an ersatz-Stalin. On Stalin
From the book Everyday truth of intelligence author Antonov Vladimir SergeevichProjects of the OGPU Design Bureau In addition to the military, the development of armored vehicles by the United State Political Directorate (OGPU), actively using for this "enemies of the people" - arrested designers and engineers who worked in closed prison-type design bureaus - "sharagas". especially
"RUSSIAN LARK" of the OGPU In 1940, a Russian emigrant, the famous singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya, whose voice was admired by Leonid Sobinov, Fyodor Chaliapin, and even the Emperor of Russia himself, died under unclear circumstances in the French convict prison in the city of Rennes.
From the book "The Godfather" by Stirlitz author Prosvetov Ivan ValerievichThe national composition of the OGPU On December 1, 1922, out of 24 employees of the top management of the OGPU, there were 9 Russians, 8 Jews, 2 Poles, one Latvian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Italian-Swiss. On November 15, 1923, respectively, 54 Russians, 15 Jews , 12 Latvians, 10 Poles and 4 persons
From the book Yagoda. Death of the chief Chekist (compilation) author Krivitsky Walter Germanovich From the book Confessions of a Chekist [Secret war of the special services of the USSR and the USA] author Zhorin Fedor Lukic From the author's bookB. Bazhanov GPU AND BERRY (From Boris Bazhanov’s book “Memoirs of a Former Secretary
From the author's bookSVERDLOVS, YAGODA AND BLYUMKIN .. I get acquainted with the Sverdlov family. This is a very interesting family. Old Sverdlov is already dead. He lived in Nizhny Novgorod and was an engraver. He was very revolutionary, associated with all sorts of revolutionary organizations, and his work as an engraver
From the author's bookGPU AND YAGODA ... For the first time I saw and heard Yagoda at a meeting of the commission of the Central Committee, at which I was secretary, and Yagoda was among those called to the meeting. All members of the commission were not yet assembled, and those who arrived were talking among themselves. Yagoda spoke with Bubnov, who was still in