Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Yagoda seemed to undergo a Damascene conversion. “For the first time in my life, I’ll have to tell the whole truth about myself,” the world-weary Chekist sighed as if it was a relief. Vladimir Kirshon, the writer whom Stalin had advised on his plays and who was to be shot soon afterwards, was placed as the stool pigeon in his cell.

Yagoda asked what the town was saying about him, musing sadly: “I simply want to ask you about Ida [his wife] and Timosha [his mistress, Gorky’s daughter-in-law], the baby, my family, and to see some familiar faces before death.” He talked about death. “If I was sure to be allowed to live, I’d bear the burden of admitting murdering” Gorky and his son. “But it’s intolerably hard to declare it historically in front of all, especially Timosha.” Yagoda told his interrogator, “You can put down in your report to Yezhov that I said there must be a God after all. From Stalin I deserved nothing but gratitude for my faithful service; from God, I deserved the most severe punishment for having violated his commandments thousands of times. Now look where I am and judge for yourself: is there a God or not?”

Yagoda’s belladonna bore fatal fruit: the Hungarian hairdresser and favourite of Kremlin children, Pauker, forty-four, was arrested on 15 April, guilty of knowing too much and living too well: Stalin no longer trusted the old-fashioned Chekists with foreign connections. Pauker was shot quietly on 14 August 1937—the first courtier to die. Yenukidze was arrested too and executed on 20 December. The NKVD now belonged to Stalin, who turned to the army. 3

On the evening of 1 May 1937, after the May Day Parade, there was the usual party at Voroshilov’s but the mood was effervescent with blood-lust and tension. Budyonny [104] Semyon Budyonny published his conventional, cautious memoirs long after Stalin’s death but his personal notes, seventy-six mainly unpublished pages preserved by his daughter, provide fascinating glimpses of the time. I am grateful to Nina Budyonny for allowing me to use them. recorded how Stalin talked openly about the imminent slaughter with his inner circle: it was time, he said, “to finish with our enemies because they are in the army, in the staff, even in the Kremlin.” It is often claimed that Stalin planned the Terror alone with Yezhov and Molotov: this proves that, even socially, he was open with his entire circle, from his doctors to the Politburo, that they were about to “finish with” their enemies across the whole regime. “We must finish with them, not looking at their faces.” Budyonny guessed that this meant Marshal Tukhachevsky and senior commanders like Jonah Yakir and Jan Garmarnik, all of whom had been standing on the Mausoleum with them earlier that day. Budyonny claimed that he hoped this was not so. Yet the archives show how Voroshilov and Budyonny had been urging Stalin to “destroy” Enemies within the Red Army for over a year. It is most likely that Voroshilov’s guests not only backed Stalin but wildly encouraged him: a year earlier, Voroshilov, for example, sent Stalin an intelligence intercept of the German Embassy’s reports to Berlin on how Tukhachevsky had suddenly ceased to be a “Francophile” and now displayed “big respect for the German Army.” 4

Tukhachevsky, Stalin’s Civil War foe and probably his most talented general, was bound to be his main target. That “refined nobleman, handsome, clever and able,” as Kaganovich described him, did not suffer fools gladly which was why he was hated by Voroshilov and Budyonny. The dashing womanizer was so forceful and charismatic that Stalin nicknamed him “Napoleonchik,” while Kaganovich paraphrased Bonaparte’s dictum: “Tukhachevsky hid Napoleon’s baton in his rucksack.”

He was as ruthless as any Bolshevik, using poison gas on peasant rebels. In the late twenties and early thirties, this “entrepreneur of military ideas,” as a recent historian calls him, advocated a huge expansion of the Red Army and the creation of mechanized forces to be deployed in so-called “deep operations”: he understood the era of Panzers and air power which brought him into conflict with Stalin’s cronies, still living for cavalry charges and armoured trains. Stalin tried to indict Tukhachevsky for treason in 1930 but Sergo among others resisted and helped bring him back as Deputy Defence Commissar. But there was another row with the touchy, vindictive Voroshilov in May 1936. Voroshilov became so heated with Tukhachevsky’s justified criticism that he shouted “Fuck you!” They made up but it was just at that time that the first of the Red Army generals was arrested and interrogated to implicate Tukhachevsky. More generals were mentioned in the January trial. Yagoda, Yenukidze and the benighted generals delivered more kindling for this bonfire.

On 11 May, Tukhachevsky was sacked as Deputy Commissar and demoted to the Volga District. On the 13th, Stalin put his hand on Tukhachevsky’s shoulder and promised he would soon be back in Moscow. He was as good as his word, for on the 22nd, Tukhachevsky was arrested and returned to Moscow. Yezhov and Voroshilov orchestrated the arrest of virtually the whole high command.

Yezhov took personal control of the interrogations. At a meeting with Stalin, Vyshinsky curried favour by recommending the use of torture.

“See for yourself,” Stalin ordered his Blackberry, who rushed back to the Lubianka to supervise the Marshal’s agonies, “but Tukhachevsky should be forced to tell everything… It’s impossible he acted alone.” Tukhachevsky was tortured. 5

Amid this drama, Stalin’s mother died on 13 May 1937, aged seventy-seven. Three professors and two doctors signed her death certificate, testifying to her cardiosclerosis. Poskrebyshev approved the official announcements. [105] Her apartment contained busts of Stalin and portraits of Lenin and Stalin. She owned 505 roubles in bonds but left 42 roubles and 20 kopeks in cash and 4,533 roubles to her lady friends plus lottery tickets worth 3 roubles. In her bedroom, there were a few packs of cigarettes, and more portraits of Stalin and, tellingly, Beria. Stalin himself wrote out his note for her wreath in Georgian, which read: “Dear and beloved mother from her son Joseph Djugashvili,” using his original name perhaps to signify the distance between Soso and Stalin. Embroiled in the Tukhachevsky plot, he did not attend the funeral: Beria, his wife and son Sergo presided in his stead but later Stalin asked about it as if guilty not to be there. 6

A few days later, as Yezhov buzzed in and out of Stalin’s office, a broken Marshal Tukhachevsky confessed that Yenukidze had recruited him in 1928, that he was a German agent in cahoots with Bukharin to seize power. Tukhachevsky’s confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was found to be blood spattered by a body in motion.

Stalin had to convince the Politburo of the soldiers’ guilt. Yakir, one of the arrested commanders, was best friends with Kaganovich who was called into the Politburo and interrogated by Stalin about this friendship. Kaganovich reminded Stalin that it was he who had insisted on promoting Yakir, at which the Vozhd muttered, “Right, I remember… The matter’s closed.” Faced with the amazing confessions beaten out of the generals, Kaganovich believed “that there was a conspiracy of officers.” Mikoyan too was friends with many arrested. Stalin read him extracts from Uborevich’s confessions as a German spy.

“It’s incredible,” admitted Stalin, “but it’s a fact, they admit it.” They even signed on each page to avoid “falsification.”

“I know Uborevich very well,” said Mikoyan. “A most honest man.” So Stalin reassured him that the military themselves would judge the generals: “They know the case and they’ll figure out what’s true and what’s not.” 7