Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Minutes before midnight, Stalin sent this laconic telegram: “Okay.” 1During the first hour of 25 August, a number of limousines cruised through the gates of the Lubianka prison, containing the officials to witness the executions.

A dignified Kamenev and a feverish Zinoviev were led out of their cells and down the steps. Yezhov and Yagoda were accompanied by the ex-hairdresser, Pauker. Vyshinsky as Procurator-General was meant to attend important executions but was said to be so squeamish that he usually sent one of his chief investigators, Lev Sheinin. Mikoyan supposedly said that Voroshilov represented the Politburo.

Stalin never attended torture or execution (though he witnessed a hanging as a child and must have observed violent death in Tsaritsyn) but he respected his executioners. Execution was officially called the “Highest Measure of Punishment,” usually shortened to the terrible letters “VMN” or the acronym Vishka , but Stalin called it “black work,” which he regarded as noble Party service. The master of “black work” under Stalin presided over this sombre but brisk ritual: Blokhin, a pugnacious Chekist of forty-one with a stalwart face and black hair pushed back, was one of the most prolific executioners of the century, killing thousands personally, sometimes wearing his own leather butcher’s apron to protect his uniform. Yet the name of this monster has slipped through history’s fingers. [93] There were many Chekists who sometimes doubled as executioners but Blokhin himself, assisted by two murderous brothers, Vasily and Ivan Zhigarev, handled important cases. V. M. Blokhin, a veteran of the Tsarist army in the First World War and a Chekist since March 1921, had risen to head the Kommandatura Branch that was attached to the Administrative Executive Department. This meant he was in charge of the internal prison at Lubianka; among other things, he was responsible for executions. Major-General Blokhin was retired after Stalin’s death and praised for his “irreproachable service” by Beria himself. After Beria’s fall, he was stripped of rank in November 1954 and died on 3 February 1955. In the theatre of Stalin’s court, Blokhin henceforth lurks in the background, but is rarely offstage. 2

Zinoviev shouted that this was a “Fascist coup” and begged the executioners: “Please, comrade, for God’s sake, call Joseph Vissarionovich! Joseph Vissarionovich promised to save our lives!” Some accounts have him actually hugging and licking the Chekist’s boots. Kamenev reportedly answered: “We deserve this because of our unworthy attitude at the trial” and told Zinoviev to be quiet and die with dignity. Zinoviev made such a noise that an NKVD lieutenant took him into a nearby cell and despatched him there and then. They were shot through the back of the head.

The bullets, with their noses crushed, were dug out of the skulls, wiped clean of blood and pearly brain matter, and handed to Yagoda, probably still warm. No wonder Vyshinsky found these events sickening. Yagoda labelled the bullets “Zinoviev” and “Kamenev” and treasured these macabre but sacred relics, taking them home to be kept proudly with his collection of erotica and ladies’ stockings. [94] When he was arrested they were found among his belongings and passed on to Yezhov who also kept them until his downfall. The bodies were cremated.

Stalin was always fascinated by the conduct of his enemies at the supreme moment, enjoying their humiliation and destruction: “A man may be physically brave but a political coward,” he said. Weeks later, at a dinner to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, Pauker, Stalin’s comedian, acted the death and pleadings of Zinoviev. To the raucous guffaws of the Vozhd and Yezhov, plump, corseted and shiny-pated Pauker was dragged back into the room by two friends playing the role of guards. There he performed Zinoviev’s cries of “For God’s sake call Stalin” but improvised another ingredient. Pauker, a Jew himself, specialised in telling Stalin Jewish jokes in the appropriate accent with much rolling of “R”s and cringing. Now he combined the two, depicting Zinoviev raising his hands to the Heavens and weeping. “Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” [95] Zinoviev seems unlikely to have recited the Shema prayer, the holiest in Jewish faith, since he, like all the Jews among these internationalist Bolsheviks, despised religion, but equally he would have remembered it from his childhood. Stalin laughed so much that Pauker repeated it. Stalin was almost sick with merriment and waved at Pauker to stop. 3

Bukharin was hill climbing in the Pamirs when he read in the newspapers that he had been implicated in the Zinoviev trial. He frantically rushed back to Moscow. Bukharin had seemed forgiven for past sins. As the editor of Izvestiya , he had returned to prominence with frequent access to Stalin. In 1935, at a banquet, Stalin had even publicly toasted Bukharin: “Let’s drink to Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. We all love… Bukharchik. May whoever remembers the past, lose an eye!” Whether to preserve Bukharin for his own trial (after Tomsky’s suicide), because of a lingering fondness or just feline sadism, Stalin proceeded to play with beloved Bukharchik who waited anxiously in his Kremlin apartment.

On 8 September, the Central Committee summoned Bukharin to a meeting with Kaganovich, where, along with Yezhov and Vyshinsky, he was amazed to encounter his childhood friend Grigory Sokolnikov, a venerable Old Bolshevik, who was delivered to the room by the NKVD. The “confrontation” was one of Stalin’s bizarre rituals in which, like an exorcism, Good was meant to confront and vanquish Evil. They were presumably designed to terrify the accused but also, and this may have been their main function, to convince the presiding Politburo members of the victim’s guilt. Kaganovich played impartial observer while Sokolnikov declared there was a Left-Right Centre, involving Bukharin, which was planning the murder of Stalin.

“Can you have lost your reason and not be responsible for your own words?” Bukharin “turned on the tears.” When the prisoner was led out, Kaganovich boomed: “He’s lying, the whore, from beginning to end! Go back to the newspaper, Nikolai Ivanovich, and work in peace.”

“But why is he lying, Lazar Moisevich?”

“We’ll find out,” replied an unconvinced Kaganovich who still “adored” Bukharin but told Stalin his “role will yet be uncovered.” Stalin’s antennae sensed that the time was not right: on 10 September, Vyshinsky announced that the investigation against Bukharin and Rykov had been closed due to lack of criminal culpability. Bukharin returned to work, safe again, while the investigators moved on to their next trial—but the cat did not stop caressing the mouse. 4

Stalin remained on holiday, directing a series of parallel tragedies in his escalating campaign to eliminate his enemies while devoting much of his energy to the Spanish Civil War. On 15 October, Soviet tanks, planes and “advisers” started arriving in Spain to support the Republican government against General Francisco Franco, backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin treated this less as a rehearsal for World War II and more as a replay of his own Civil War. The internecine struggle with the Trotskyites on his own side and the Fascists on the other created a war fever in Moscow, stoking up the Terror. Stalin’s real interest was to keep the war going as long as possible, embroiling Hitler without offending the Western powers, rather than helping the Republicans win. Furthermore, like an accomplished “barrow boy,” Stalin systematically swindled the Spanish of several hundred million dollars by rescuing their gold reserves and then tricking them into paying inflated prices for their arms. [96] On the subject of Stalin’s “barrow boy” tendencies, he was always interested in discounts in his foreign dealings: “How much was the purchase of the Italian warship?” he wrote to Voroshilov. “If we buy two warships, what discount can they give us? Stalin.”