Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The GULag Archipelago Volume 1 - An Experiment in Literary Investigation

On one occasion, Bukharin was summoned by Kaganovich, who arranged a confrontation between him and Sokolnikov in the presence of high-ranking Chekists. Sokolnikov gave testimony about “the parallel Rightist Center” (parallel, in other words, to that of the Trotskyites), and about Bukharin’s underground activity. Kaganovich conducted the interrogation aggressively and then ordered Sokolnikov to be taken away. And he said to Bukharin in a friendly tone: “He lies in his teeth, the whore!”

Despite that, the newspapers continued to report the indignation of the masses. Bukharin telephoned the Central Committee. Bukharin wrote letters beginning “Dear Koba,” in which he begged that the accusations against him be publicly denied. And then the prosecutor’s office published a roundabout declaration: “Objective proofs for the indictment of Bukharin have not been found.”

Radek telephoned him in the fall, wanting to see him. Bukharin shunned him: We are both being accused; why add another cloud? But their Izvestiya country houses were next to each other, and Radek dropped in on him one evening: “No matter what I may say later on, please know that I am not to blame for anything. And anyway you will come out of it whole: you were not connected with the Trotskyites.”

And Bukharin believed he would come out of it whole and that he would not be expelled from the Party. For that would be monstrous! In actuality, he had always been hostile to the Trotskyites: they had put themselves outside the Party and look what had come of it! They had to stick together. Even if they made mistakes, they had to stick together on that too.

At the November demonstration (his farewell to Red Square), he and his wife went to the reviewing stand for guests on his newspaper editor’s press card. All at once an armed soldier came up to him. His heart stopped! They were going to do it here? At a time like this? No. The soldier saluted: “Comrade Stalin is surprised at your being here. He asks you to take your place on the mausoleum.”

And that’s the way they tossed him back and forth from hot to cold for the entire half-year. On December 5 they adopted the Bukharin constitution with fanfare and celebration and named it the Stalinist Constitution for all eternity. At the December Plenum of the Central Committee, they brought in Pyatakov, with his teeth knocked out, and not a bit like himself. Behind his back stood silent Chekists (Yagoda men, and Yagoda, after all, was also being tested and prepared for a role). Pyatakov delivered himself of the most repulsive sort of testimony against Bukharin and Rykov, both of whom were sitting right there among the leaders. Ordzhonikidze put his hand up to his ear (he was hard of hearing): “See here, are you giving all this testimony voluntarily?” (Note that down! Ordzhonikidze will get a bullet of his own!) “Absolutely voluntarily”—and Pyatakov swayed on his feet. And during the recess, Rykov said to Bu-kharin: “Tomsky had will power. He understood it all back in August, and he ended his own life. While you and I, like fools, have gone on living.”

At this point Kaganovich made an angry, condemnatory speech (he wanted so much to believe in Bukharchik’s innocence, but he couldn’t any longer). And then Molotov. And then Stalin! What a generous heart! What a memory for the good things! “Nonetheless, I consider that Bukharin’s guilt has not yet been proven. Perhaps Rykov is guilty, but not Bukharin.” (Someone had drawn up charges against Bukharin against his will!)

From cold to hot. That’s how will power collapses. That’s how to grow used to the role of a ruined hero.

Arid then they began to bring to his home day after day the records of interrogations: the depositions of young ex-students in the Institute of Red Professors, of Radek, and all the rest of them. And they all provided the gravest proofs of Bukharin’s black treason. They took these documents to his home, not as if he were a defendant—oh, by no means! Merely in his position as a member of the Central Committee—merely for his information.

Usually, when he received a new batch of these materials, Bukharin would say to his twenty-two-year-old wife, who only that spring had given him a son: “You read them. I can’t.” And he would bury his head in his pillow. He had two revolvers at home. (Stalin was giving him time too.) And yet he did not commit suicide.

Is it not clear that he had grown used to his ordained role?

And one more public trial took place. And they shot one more batch of defendants. And yet they continued to be merciful to Bukharin. They had not taken Bukharin.

At the beginning of February, 1937, he decided to go on a hunger strike at home, in order to force the Central Committee to hold a hearing and clear him of the charges against him. He announced it in a letter to “Dear Koba,” and he honestly went through with it too. Then a Plenum of the Central Committee was convened with the following agenda: (1) the crimes of the Rightist Center; (2) the anti-Party conduct of Comrade Bukharin, as evidenced by his hunger strike.

Bukharin hesitated. Had he perhaps really insulted the Party in some particular way? Unshaven, thin, wan, already a prisoner in appearance, he dragged himself along to the Plenum. “What on earth were you thinking of?” Dear Koba asked him cordially. “But what was I to do in the face of such accusations? They want to expel me from the Party.” Stalin made a wry face at the absurdity: “Come on, now. No one is going to expel you from the Party!”

Bukharin believed him and revived. He willingly assured the Plenum of his repentance, and immediately abandoned his hunger strike. (At home he said: “Come on now, cut me some sausage! Koba said they wouldn’t expel me.”) But in the course of the Plenum, Kaganovich and Molotov (impudent fellows they were, indeed!—paid no attention to Stalin’s opinion!) [253]both called Bukharin a Fascist hireling and demanded that he be shot.

And once again Bukharin’s spirits fell, and in his last days he began to compose his “Letter to the Future Central Committee.” Committed to memory and thereby preserved, it recently became known to the whole world. However, it did not shake the world to its foundations. 38For what were the last words this brilliant theoretician decided to hand down to future generations? Just one more cry of anguish and a plea to be restored to the Party. (He paid dearly in shame for that devotion!) And one more affirmation that he “fully approved” everything that had happened up to and including 1937. And that included not only all the previous jeeringly mocking trials, but also all the foul-smelling waves of our great prison sewage disposal system.

And that is how he himself certified that he, too, deserved to plunge into those waves.

So, at long last, he had matured to the point of being turned over to the prompters and the assistant producers—this muscular man, this hunter and wrestler! (In playful tussles in the presence of the Central Committee, how many times had he landed Stalin flat on his back! And this, too, was probably something Koba couldn’t forgive him.)

And in the case of one so fully prepared, so demolished, that no torture was called for, how was his position any stronger than that of Yakubovich in 1931? How could he not be susceptible to the same two arguments? He was in fact much weaker, because Yakubovich longed for death, and Bukharin dreaded it.

There remained an easy dialogue with Vyshinsky along set lines:

“Is it true that every opposition to the Party is a struggle against the Party?” “In general it is, factually it is.” “But a struggle against the Party cannot help but grow into a war against the Party.” “According to the logic of things—yes, it must.” “And that means that in the end, given the existence of oppositionist beliefs, any foul deeds whatever might be perpetrated against the Party [espionage, murder, sellout of the Motherland]?” “But wait a minute, none were actually committed.” “But they could have been?” “Well, theoretically speaking.” (Those are your theoreticians for you!) “But for us the highest of all interests are those of the Party?” “Yes, of course, of course!” “So you see, only a very fine distinction separates us. We are required to concretize the eventuality: in the interest of discrediting for the future any idea of opposition, we are required to accept as having taken place what could only theoretically have taken place. After all, it could have, couldn’t it?” “It could have.” “And so it is necessary to recognize as actual what was possible; that’s all. It’s a small philosophical transition. Are we in agreement?… Yes, and one thing more, and it’s not for me to explain to you, but if you retreat and say something different during the trial, you understand that it will only play into the hands of the world bourgeoisie and will only do the Party harm. Well, and it’s clear that in that case you yourself will not die an easy death. But if everything goes off all right, we will, of course, allow you to go on living. We’ll send you in secret to the island of Monte Cristo, and you can work on the economics of socialism there.” “But in previous trials, as I understand it, you did shoot them all?” “But what comparison is there between you and them! And then, we also left many of them alive too. They were shot only in the newspapers.”