|
Chapter 5 The Victims of Vigilance “We
will mercilessly destroy anyone who, “There
is nothing I can add to what Com. Stalin From 23 February to 4 March 1937, the VKP's Central Committee held a historic Plenum. The strident political rhetoric used by the Plenum's delegates and their relentless demands for vigilance were to have a profound impact on the mass repression which erupted in spring 1937. Two issues occupied the attention of the Plenum's delegates. The first was what to do about the "anti-party activities of Bukharin and Rykov;" the second centered on cadres policy.[1] During August 1936 and the January 1937 trial, Bukharin's and Rykov's names had been mentioned by defendants and both were subjected to interrogation, although neither had yet been arrested or charged. Ezhov presented the main report against the two men who, in 1928-29, had led the Right deviation that opposed Stalin's radical policies of collectivization and rapid industrialization. Since then, both had held responsible state positions and remained candidate CC members. In his speech, entitled "Lessons Flowing from the Harmful Activity, Diversion, and Espionage of the Japanese-German-Trotskyist Agents," Ezhov argued that the evidence available to the NKVD proved that Bukharin and Rykov knew of alleged Trotskyist conspiracies. The two defended themselves before their comrades. Bukharin denied the charges and offered an impassioned defense in which he concurred with the widely shared belief that a conpiracy of spies and enemy agents existed, but he insisted that he was not one of them. The delegates were unconvinced. Speaker after speaker denounced the two whose alleged "activities" "proved" the need for heightened vigilance. Dimitrov described Bukharin's speech as a "disgusting and pathetic spectacle!"[2] The discussion of the Bukharin-Rykov case occupied the delegate's attention for the better part of five days. No one present defended the two and some delegates demanded blood. Stalin cautioned the delegates against violating the letter and spirit of party rules, and the final resolution reflected his counsel--"Expulsion from the Party, turn the case over to the NKVD" for further investigation.[3] Although the Bukharin and Rykov case may have been the Plenum's most dramatic moment, the major debates centered on party cadres issues--the quality of party cadres and the relative roles of vigilance, education and democracy in restoring the party to health. But their solution was anything but simple. Ezhov and Molotov advocated the radical position that stressed the need for greater vigilance in unmasking and removing former oppositionists and enemy agents. They argued that enemies had penetrated not only the party, but also some high-ranking state offices. To them, Pyatakov's conviction was proof of how thoroughly the enemy had penetrated the country and how essential vigilance was to the USSR’s national security. They advocated a similar position towards the party. No one publicly disputed the need for vigilance. The real issue was how much power to give to the NKVD. Although vigilance might lead to the unmasking of enemies, it could not in and of itself improve the quality of party cadres. To achieve the latter goal, Andrei Zhdanov[4] emphasized the need for improved education of party members and the strengthening of inner-party democracy.[5] He argued that only sustained party education would improve the quality of cadres and, in the process, lay the basis for enduring inner-party democracy. Like Ezhov and Molotov, Zhdanov too called for vigilance and directed sharp attacks towards certain party officials, but offered a different solution. Specifically, he advocated a return to secret-ballot party elections. He criticized the "intolerable practice" of the cooptation of party officials and the longstanding tradition of voting for party committees by lists. These practices had to be ended, he argued, and be replaced by secret-ballot elections for individuals after party committees had openly revealed the shortcomings that afflicted their organization and leaders. Such inner-party democracy would enable the party's rank-and-file to remove those who had failed to properly or faithfully execute their duties and thereby to restore confidence in the party, confidence that ironically was eroded by the suspicions inherent in the continual calls for vigilance. Stalin delivered two speeches to the Plenum. In the first, entitled "Deficiencies in Party Work and Methods for the Liquidation of the Trotskyists and other Double-Dealers," he stressed the existence of widespread espionage and wrecking even among "responsible workers." He harshly criticized those who minimized the threats posed by "enemies" and who had "carelessly ignored the calls to improve political and organizational work and thus turn the party into an 'impregnable fortress'."[6] His call for "vigilance against enemies" convinced the delegates to strengthen the NKVD's powers and authority. Stalin stated bluntly that enemies had to "smashed," but he sidestepped defining who, other than the Trotskyists, constituted the "enemy." He noted that there were only "about 12,000 party members who sympathized with Trotskyism to some extent or other. Here you see the total forces of the Trotskyist gentlemen." To Stalin, the ranks of the enemy constituted a small percentage of the 130,000 to 190,000 members who comprised the party's "total command staff". "Enemies," not the party bureaucracy, not "real Bolsheviks," had to "smashed." Although he stressed vigilance, he also underscored the importance of "giving ideolgical training to our party cadres." In his second speech, and the concluding speech of the Plenum, Stalin discussed how to balance vigilance, education and party democracy. One historian has described it as "vintage Stalin--each point was treated as an attempt to find the mean between two extremes and pursue a pragmatic policy."[7] Given the relevance of Stalin's comments and cautions to what had already unfolded and would continue to unfold within the Comintern, it is worth examining them in some detail. Stalin tempered somewhat his earlier call for vigilance against Trotskyists. But here is the question--how to carry out in practice the task of smashing and uprooting the German-Japanese agents of Trotskyism? Does this mean that we should strike and uproot not only the real Trotskyists, but also those who wavered at some time toward Trotskyism, and then long ago came away from Trotskyism; not only those who are really Trotskyist agents for wrecking, but also those who happened once upon a time to go along a street where some Trotskyist or other had once passed? At any rate such voices were heard at the plenum. Can we consider such an interpretation of the resolution to be correct? No, we can not consider it correct. On this question, as on all other questions, there must be an individual, differientiated approach.... Among our responsible comrades, there are a certain number of former Trotskyists who left Trotskyism long ago, and now fight against Trotskyism not worse, but better than some of our respected comrades who never chanced toward Trotskyism. It would be foolish to vilify such comrades now."[8] Such statements apparently sought to moderate the more strident calls for vigilance made by Ezhov, Molotov and other "voices," and to caution party leaders and members, like Kotelnikov, not to prove their vigilance by denouncing those who had "wavered at some time towards Trotskyism," but who "now fight against Trotskyism." Stalin also joined Zhdanov in condemning violations of party democracy, especially cooptation and "familyness," that is the appointment to party offices of "personal friends, fellow townsmen, people who have shown personal devotion." "Familyness" discouraged constructive criticism and self-criticism, and created conditions that provided the family members with "a certain independence both of the local people and of the Central Committee of the party."[9] To eliminate that practice and other problems that beset the party bureaucracy, Stalin advocated "still another kind of verification, the check-up from below, in which the masses, the subordinates, verify the leaders, pointing out their mistakes, and showing the way to correct them. This kind of verification is one of the most effective methods of checking up on people."[10] Stalin made a point of telling party leaders that their positions did not make them omniscient and that they needed to heed the criticism and advice of the party masses, of the "little people.". In this vein, Stalin also condemned the "formal and heartless bureaucratic attitude of some of our party comrades toward the fate of individual party members" expelled from the party: "[O]nly people who in essence are profoundly anti-party can have such an approach to members of the party."[11] Taken together, Stalin's comments to the Plenum urged the party to greater vigilance in unmasking enemies, demanded that party members be better educated, and condemned the time-honored tradition of cooptation and its inevitable consequence, "familyness." For Stalin and others, vigilance, education and party democracy were complementary policies designed to achieve the same goal--improving the quality of party cadres. What Stalin advocated was steering balanced course between the Scylla of root-and-branch vigilance and the Charybdis of formalistic political leadership. While the "great helmsman" might possess the strength and experience to steer such a course without undue damage, not everyone did. Nor did everyone want to ignore the calls of the sirens of vigilance that had dominated the plenum. Over the next few months, the demands of the vigilance campaign overwhelmed efforts to improve party education. Indeed Stalin’s and the other CC delegates' calls for vigilance, smashing enemies, and the “check-up from below” created considerable pressure on party members and non-party people alike to denounce what they deemed to be suspicious behaviors by their bosses, comrades, co-workers, rivals and neighbors. Given the Plenum's explicit assumption that "enemies" were within the gates, Stalin's measured call for an “individual differentiated approach” to the verification of comrades was overwhelmed by the cacophony of calls for vigilance, for giving the NKVD increased powers, for “smashing the enemy.” Stalin’s cautions may have tempered somewhat the the Plenum’s resolution, but such nuances were drowned out by the rallying cries of the advocates of vigilance, comrades who believed that the August 1936 and January 1937 trials and other recent revelations proved that "enemies" threatened the party and national security. Of course, none of them believed that they themselves were "enemies." In the months following the Plenum, the political atmosphere within the VKP and the ECCI apparatus became increasing uncertain and confusing. Denunciations, scapegoating, and demands for still more vigilance became common responses to the plenum's challenge to root out "enemies." Arrests escalated notably during the spring. As they did, the lines between comrades and their denouncers, between comrades and "enemies," became increasingly blurred. In response, the members of the ECCI apparatus and party organization displayed two types of reactions. On the one hand, everyone conformed more strictly than ever to the rhetoric and behaviors expected of party members. On the other hand, subgroups of party members--leaders vs. rank-and-file, native-born vs. emigres--crystallized and each sought to prove their vigilance. Dimitrov and Manuilsky both attended the February-March Plenum. Dimitrov described it as a "truly historic Plenum" and felt that Stalin's concluding speech contained "invaluable instructions."[12] Manuilsky voted with Ezhov and four other CC members to expel Bukharin and Rykov from the VKP and "to transfer them to the court with application of the death penalty."[13] As the ECCI Secretary responsible for cadres, Manuilsky sought to translate the Plenum's resolution and calls for vigilance into concrete policies. Given that he was responsible for cadre affairs, it is difficult to separate Manuilsky's personal views from his formal responsiblities and to ascertain when he was the enthusiastic initiator and when the loyal executioner of policies that stressed heightened vigilance. For almost three years, Manulsky had repeatedly called for vigilance, especially vis-a-vis Trotskyists and political emigres. The Plenum reinforced his penchant for vigilance. But his was a viglance shared by Dimitrov and Moskvin, as well as many others in the ECCI apparatus. On 8 March 1937, a resolution of the ECCI Presidium and the ICC Bureau asserted that the penetration of "enemy agents" required still greater vigilance. It declared that fraternal party members who had joined the VKP and who were suspected of having abetted, even inadvertedly, the "enemy" should be "unconditionally expelled from the party."[14] On 1 April, Manuilsky drafted a letter on behalf of the ECCI Secretariat to Ezhov, Andreev and Shkiriatov in which he expressed concerns about enemy penetration of the VKP. He wasted no time in stating that such penetration had occured. The opening paragraph read: "The proverka [1935] and exchange of party documents [1936] showed that the enemy uses transfer to the VKP(b) to legalize its harmful activities and to cover its agents, Trotskyists, spies and saboteurs with a party card. It is essential, therefore, to change the procedure for transferring members of the fraternal parties to the VKP(b) so as to protect the party from enemy penetration." Manuilsky expressed particular concern about the need to establish rigorous procedures for admitting members of fraternal parties to the VKP given that the party, which had halted admissions in 1933 was now ready to consider applications for admission. He noted that since 1933 more than 10,000 fraternal party members had taken up residence in the USSR and that half of them had already submitted applications for VKP membership. Manuilsky viewed as unacceptable the previous method for transferring members of fraternal parties to the VKP. Before 1933, the Comintern leadership had relied on its section leaders to make recommendations. "[T]he Comintern apparatus mechanically accepted the recommendations of the Comintern's responsible sections, and the commission for transfers within the CC VKP(b) accepted almost automatically foreign communists into the VKP(b)." He then outlined the ECCI Secretariat's proposed guidelines. Only those members of fraternal parties who had lived in the USSR for three years would be considered for admission to the VKP. Qualifying applicants needed recommendations and full biographical information from their party’s CC. The ECCI's Cadre Department would verify those documents. Those applicants denied admission would be considered sympathizers. Such rules were to apply to all applicants except those from Poland. Manuilsky ended his letter, as he had his January 1936 letter to Ezhov, by expressing his deep concern about the Polish party: "Finally we recommend that in view of the penetration of agents of the class enemy in the Polish Communist Party that the transfer of members of the Polish Communist Party finding themselves on the territory of the USSR be temporarily suspended."[15] As we shall see, such was the least of the problems facing Polish communists in the spring of 1937. The Comintern's leaders devoted much of March to discussing how to translate the plenum's decisions into policy. In early April, those discussions began to bear fruit. On 9 April, the Secretariat ordered all fraternal parties "to form Central Control Commissions," the chief tasks of which would be "to carefully examine and consider the cases of Party members who: a) Violate the unity and solidarity of the Party ranks; b) Violate Party discipline and rules of conspiracy; c) Reveal insufficient class vigilance; d) Do not show Bolshevik firmness in facing the class enemy; e) Conceal their anti-party position under the cloak of loyalty to the party (double-dealers); f) Are agents of the class enemy who penetrated the ranks of the Party." The Control Commissions' relationship to their Central Committees was to be the same as that of the Central Control Commission to the VKP’s CC.[16] That same day, the ECCI Presidium and the Bureau of the ICC issued a resolution designed to end the "conciliatory attitude" among "leading Party members" towards "infringement of the rules of Party secrecy, [and] towards treachery and provocation." "Communists who betray the party...are subject to unconditional expulsion" as were those "showing a conciliatory attitude towards the disclosure of secrecy [sic], [and] toward treachery and provocation." Such sanctions were hardly new. But then the resolution turned to the issue that so worried Manuilsky: "The I.C.C. must bring to strict Party accounting leading party workers guilty of having recommended agents of the class enemy in their parties to the ranks of the leading sections of the Communist International," the VKP. Having announced its intention to continue to pursue a vigilant policy toward "enemies" and their abettors, the resolution then echoed one of Stalin's "invaluable instructions." "Pitilessly expelling from the Party traitors, alien and hostile elements, double-dealers, degenerates, demoralized elements, crooks, incorrigible factionalists and people who systematically violate the rules of Party secrecy, the control commissions must, however, be lenient with those Party members who have made a mistake [but] are still capable of being good Party members, and, realising the incorrectness of their actions, honestly undertake by their future conduct to repair their guilt before the Party."[17] Given the resolution's tone, the conclusion that ECCI leaders appear to have drawn from the February-March Plenum was that vigilance was the most pressing task of the moment. Such a view was not unfounded. The Plenum had addressed other issues and the ECCI Secretariat sought to do the same. On 15 May 1937, a commission created by the Secretariat met to discuss a proposed resolution drafted by Manuilsky, the commission's chair. Manuilsky's notes from and the transcript of the meeting reveal clearly that, although the commission's members spoke of the need for greater vigilance against Trotskyists, they viewed improved party education as essential to that struggle.[18] The draft resolution began by reiterating the Trotskyists’ alleged crimes, especially as they related to the international anti-war and labor movements. Troskyists were the agents of "the darkest forces of reaction" (fascism, Japanese military imperialism, Hearst, etc.), who "disguise[d their] undermining work here under the cover of 'Left' phrases." They acted as wreckers, provocateurs, and the "instigators of imperialist and counter-revolutionary war." The resolution stated that the "Presidium of the ECCI notes that many responsible workers of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries as well as workers in the Comintern have not displayed adequate vigilance in relation to Trotskyism." This was cause for special concern because the "Trotskyists have been able to penetrate into such organizations as the Independent Labour Party, the Socialist Party of America," and most critically "the POUM in Spain...[where] they work freely in the rear of the Republican forces and organize counter-revolutionary uprisings at the request of the fascist command."[19] In light of the "pernicious role of Trotskyism" and "the lessons of the Plenum of the CC CPSU," the ECCI Presidium proposed ten concrete measures to aid fraternal parties in their struggle. Half of them centered how to heighten vigilance and expose Trotskyist penetration; half on improving party education and propaganda. Such a division reflected faithfully the major themes expressed at the February-March Plenum. The suggestions designed to enhance vigilance were familar: To use "the records of the trials" to expose Trotskyist activities, to remove "double-dealing Trotskyite elements...especially former Trotskyites who have...not shown that they sincerely abandoned Trotskyism;" to have Central Committees "make a thorough examination of the entire illegal apparatus" to ensure that secrecy had not been compromised by hostile elements, and to "oblige the representatives of Communist Parties of the capitalist countries in the ECCI to carry through a serious campaign against Trotskyism among the Communist immigrants living in the USSR." There was, however, one new suggestion: "to audit all monetary records of Party property, paying particular attention to the detection of instances of embezzlement of Party funds by Trotskyite spies." Complementing such recommendations were those that urged "extensive systematic propaganda work in all links of the Party." The resolution announced the ECCI's intention "[t]o introduce into the curriculum of all Party schools and the people's universities under Communist influence a special course on the struggle against fascism and its Trotskyite agency." In these courses and in routine propaganda work, it noted the importance of using the "factual material on spying and provocative work of the Trotskyites." "Realising the importance of raising the ideological and political level of workers of the Comintern and its Sections in the interests of a successful struggle against Trotskyism," the Presidium further resolved to order the Cadres Department "to organize work for raising the theoretical level of the representative of the Communist Parties in the ECCI...[and] to organize for the Secretaries and members of the Polit-Bureaus of the Communist Parties periodic three-month courses to work on the basic problems of world economics and politics, the world labor movement, Socialist construction in the USSR and theoretical problems of interest to each of these comrades. To oblige the International Lenin School to organize one year post graduate courses and give editors of theoretical Party organs a higher ideological and political education. To oblige the Central Committees of the Communist Parties to raise to a higher level the study of the History of the [VKP]... Raising the ideological level of party members and strengthening the vigilance campaign were deeply intertwined both in the draft resolution and in Stalin's and Zhdanov's speeches to the plenum. They were also closely intertwined in the commission members' comments on the draft. Dimitrov's comments exemplified their inseparablity: "The struggle against Trotskyism should be argued theoretically, historically, politically...We should proceed from [the assumption] that 9/10 of the leading cadres of the communist movement do not know the history of the Russian revolution and the history of the VKP(b), and [that] this has created fertile ground for the activities of the Trotskyists....The serious study of Marxist-Leninist theory is necessary...to uncover the hidden Trotskyist enemies." The commission ended its deliberations by electing Manuilsky, Kuusinen and Ercoli to compose the final resolution to be entitled "On the Struggle with Trotskyism."[20] In light of the firestorm of repression that was soon to engulf the Comintern apparatus and fraternal parties, the discussions over how to balance vigilance and education remind one of Francisco Goya's painting "Two Men Fighting in Quicksand." But the discussion provides an important reminder that no one knew that mass repression was imminent and hence work proceeded as normal. It also allows us to reflect on some important points about how past Comintern behaviors set the stage for its destruction. Vigilance against critics of the VKP and USSR was a longstanding tradition in the Comintern, which had once dubbed Social Democrats as "social fascists." The anti-Trotskyist campaign was both its most enduring and recent manifestation. To Bolsheviks and the Comintern's leaders, vigilance was a precondition of strength. The expulsions of the Safarovs, Magyars, dubious political emigres and others from late 1934 to early 1937 was consistent with those of the Trotskyists, Brandlerites, Bukharinites, Lovestonites, etc. in the 1920s. Yet from 1935, vigilance had taken on an increasingly strident and anxious tone. Following Kirov's murder and Zinoviev's and Kamenev's conviction, the Trotskyist threat was presented as more sinister, more immediate. So too was the fascist threat and the fear of war. As anxieties about the foreign threat deepened in Moscow, foreign communists, the Comintern's raison d'etre and people once proudly heralded as proof of the Comintern's successes, fell under suspicion. While Stalin's and other party leaders’ suspiciousness initiated this rising xenophobia, Nazi Germany’s unchallenged military build-up and increasingly aggressive foreign policy, the Spanish Civil War, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, Japan’s military activities in East Asia, and the continual rebuffs to Soviet efforts to forge collective security agreements provided ample evidence to convince even the most skeptical that the threat posed by capitalist encirclement had increased alarmingly. The threat of a two-front war was a distinct possibility in mid-1937. That the defendants at the August 1936 and January 1937 trials, as well as others arrested from mid-1936, had "confessed" to being "enemy agents" convinced many in the USSR that there were enemies within the gates. The ECCI and its Cadres Department were quite convinced. The proverka of the fraternal parties and emigres had begun as a membership screening operation that reflected the Politburo's and the ECCI's fear that "enemy" agents disguised as emigres might be operating within the USSR. The proverka's early findings that many emigres waranted suspicion served to validate that fear, confirmed the need for greater vigilance, helped to justify the expansion of NKVD powers, and fueled the mounting spymania and xenophobia. The Comintern thus acted as both the agent and instrument of its own eventual demise. Although under Ezhov the NKVD’s dragnet widened markedly, Trotskyists remained the main enemy. The incessant calls for vigilance remained primarily calls to unmask Trotskyists. All of the crimes and threats from late 1934 to mid-1937 emanated from this miniscule and farflung group that within the USSR took on mythical proportions. They were the "spies," "wreckers," "provocateurs" in the service of the fascists, "nationalists," etc. The conspiratorial mindset is clear. In reality, the USSR and international communist movement faced multiple threats from multiple enemies and potential enemies. But to the endangered, Trotskyism came to embody those threats; multiple threats emanated from one "enemy" who acted as the agent of all enemies, who used the language and logic of Bolshevism to destroy it. A host of perceived dangers had one name. The longstanding culture of denunciation within the VKP and Comintern facilitated the vigilance campaign. Denunciations of oppositional groups and tendencies, criticism and self-criticism, and the use of denunciations by comrades, be they leaders or subordinates, to satisfy grievances and to settle personal and political scores meant that a tradition of denunciation so essential to a successful vigilance campaign existed. The calls for heightened vigilance were not calls to change behavior, but calls to focus accepted behaviors on designated and familar targets. That so many Cominternists had at one time or another denounced an oppositional group, a perceived deviation or a comrade made future denunciations easier, especially when the denunciations became a means of personal and political self-defense. The ECCI's leaders and its apparatus were not sheep being led blindly to slaughter, but rather the agents and instruments of their own demise, people who believed in vigilance and conspiracies, people who feared what Stalin feared and provided him with reasons for those fears, people who dutifully and unwittingly acted on those fears to unmask perceived threats, people who sought to prove their vigilance and loyalty by denouncing perceived enemies. Such acts that put all of them at risk. Consider the case of the former Polish section. As we have seen, the Communist Parties of Poland, Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, which comprised the former Polish section, conducted the proverka of their members in Soviet emigration with fervor and vigilance. The proverka commissions "unmasked" large numbers of "suspicious elements" or alleged "enemy agents." They sent their findings to the Cadres Department which forwarded them to the NKVD. Ezhov, in his capacity as the head of ORPO and the NKVD, undoubtedly felt vindicated and conveyed the information to Stalin. But until May 1937, the commissions themselves made the decisions about which party members to expel and which names to forward to the NKVD. The commissions provided the evidence that confirmed the suspicions that emigres from Poland posed a threat. As the commissions' progress reports indicate, by spring 1937 hundreds of emigres from Poland had been arrested. But most of the leaders of the CPP, CPWU, and CPWB remained free to urge their members on to greater vigilance. In the spring, the leaders began to be arrested, a development that transformed party members' fear of enemy agents into fear for themselves. Document 34 offers vivid evidence of that transformation. This document is a series of handwritten notes penned by Henryk Walecki, a founder of the CPP and, at the time of his arrest on 21 June 1937, a member of the ICC.[21] Walecki had addressed his notes to Ezhov. It is unclear whether he had kept the notes in his desk or had already sent them to Ezhov. Walecki had dated the notes 18 May 1937; the Cadres Department forwarded them to the NKVD five days afer his arrest. It is also unclear what precipitated his denouncing eight comrades, although the arrests of Brikke in April and Melnikov in early May suggest one reason--self-defense. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Document 34 Denunciations from Walecki to Ezhov RGASPI, f. 495, op. 252, d. 510, ll. 1-10. Original in Russian. Handwritten. Walecki’s original handwritten notes addressed to Ezhov were typed in the ECCI Cadres Department and sent to Ezhov by Belov (the head of the Department) on 26 June 1937. Copies of these notes were placed in the personal files of the people mentioned. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ That Walecki recorded his denunciations on a single day suggests that he feared for himself as the longstanding attacks on the CPP were reaching their climax. He was right. In June, he and many other CPP leaders were arrested (see below). How many other such denunciations were sent to Ezhov is unknown. Only a few were required to produce multiple arrests. If denunciations were lacking, other evidence of the alleged dangers posed by emigres from Poland existed. The final report of the Western Belorussian proverka commission was one such bit of evidence. Entitled "General Conclusions about Political Emigration from Western Belorussia," the “secret" report not only updated its earlier reports but drew clear and ominous political conclusions.[22] Glebov, the party's representative in the ECCI, began the report by identifying the four groups that the proverka commission targetted: People about whom there were doubts and who could be returned to Poland; "suspicious elements" who might have been sent by the Polish police and whose cases were sent to the NKVD; "dubious elements" to be removed (literally, "cleansed" (ochistka)) from the USSR; and all Western Belorussian party members who had been recommended to the VKP. In a clear example of the "heartless, bureaucratic" approach to cadres criticized by Stalin at the February-March Plenum, Glebov reported that only 80 to 90 of the almost 2,000 peope reviewed were interviewed in person; decisions about all others were made on the basis of personal files (lichnye dela). In Glebov's view, the proverka was a success that produced disturbing results. On the one hand, it enabled the party to establish "a more accurate accounting...of each polit[ical] emigre." But it also revealed a "colossal number of suspicious and doubtful elements (30% of all emigres)," many of whom had been recommended to the VKP. The commission sent materials on these people to "the responsible organs." Between 1920 and 1937, the CPWB had sent 875 people to the USSR as political emigres; another 1,124 arrived as refugees. In the commission's opinion, an "[a]bsolute majority" of the political emigres and refugees emigrated without clear cause, which it defined as justifiable fear of lenghty imprisonment in Poland. The vast majority of emigres and refugees had entered the USSR between 1926 and 1932 because, Glebov opined, during those years, Belorussian nationalists and police agents in Poland had obstructed the party's work and, in the ensuing confusion, had penetrated their agents and spies among those fleeing Poland for the USSR. The commission paid special attention to those emigres and refugees who had joined the VKP. A significant number (386) of the 875 emigres sent by the party joined the VKP without having received careful review. The NKVD had already arrested an unspecified number of them and the commission deemed another 105 "doubtful." But they were not the only persons arrested by the NKVD: 315 of the 875 emigres (35%) were arrested, and 274 of the 1,124 refugees (25%) were arrested. It is unclear if those arrested were arrested before or after the commission sent materials on them to the NKVD. Almost half of those whom the commission reviewed had been arrested in Poland, although many of them were not sent to prison, a seeming anomaly that caught the commission's eye. The commission concluded that "as a result of terrorizing them, the police won over many. In many cases, the police arrested or sent to prison their own agents so as to protect them within the ranks of the com[munist] party, creating for them an authority that they then used [so as] to be sent to the USSR." But not all of those arrested by the NKVD were Polish police agents, some were arrested for "Belorussian nationalist, counter-revolutionary activities," others as Trotskyist spies, and still others as Polish nationalists engaged in counter-revolutionary activities. In light of the above, the commission's general conclusions are hardly surprising. The first was that there existed "a very wide channel [kanal] through which hostile elements penetrated the com[munist] party [VKP] and the USSR," a conclusion reminiscent of Krajewski's, Ezhov's and Manuilsky's assertions in 1934-35. Among those who used this channel, the "so-called 'Polish road'," were "agents of Polish fascism and Belorussian nationalism" and "agents of Polish counter-intelligence." Many of them had taken up "responsible posts in the BSSR [Belorussian SSSR]." Second, many of those who had fled to the USSR after arrest in Poland had been "won over" by the Polish police and acted as their agents. The commission's report to the Cadres Department was undoubtedly also sent to the NKVD. Its conclusion that a "so-called 'Polish road'" existed and was well travelled by Polish agents and Belorussian nationalists validated the alleged correctness of the NKVD's earlier arrests of Belorussian emigres and provided the pretext for further arrests. One can not help but wonder how the commission was able to discern from files alone that so many enemy agents existed among its constituents. One can imagine a NKVD investigator asking the same question, and others: Why did the leaders of the Polish section or the CPWB not detect these "suspicious" elements earlier? Did they not do so because they had something to hide? Given that the commission took a "heartless bureaucratic" approach to the proverka, could its findings be trusted? Had its members condemned others in order to protect their own "hostile activities"? To the conspiratorial mindset, everything was potentially sinister. Late May and early June 1937 witnessed a sharp escalation of arrests. The convergence of several factors accounted for this. Chief among them was the arrest and conviction of members of the military general staff in May and June. Those arrests electrified the country. If the "enemies’" conspiracies included senior Red Army officers, who could be trusted? National defense and self-defense, therefore, required even greater vigilance, a perspective which in turn fueled denunciations and arrests. Shortly after the arrests of the military leaders, the NKVD arrested many highranking VKP members. Ezhov's belief that the Comintern had become a refuge for "enemy agents" put the ECCI apparatus and Cominternists at great risk. Acting on this assumption, in mid-May 1937, the NKVD began arresting members of the ECCI apparatus and fraternal parties. On 26 May, Dimitrov met with Ezhov to discuss the arrest of three important ECCI workers. Ezhov told him: "Major spies worked in the CI."[23] The arrest of ECCI personnel heightened the anxieties of all connected with the Comintern. Amidst the arrests, the ECCI continued to press the fraternal parties to be more vigilant and to rebuff the increasing criticisms of the repression published abroad. The Comintern journal published articles at the time that asserted the legitimacy of the show trials and charged that because “the majority of democratic newspapers were hostile to the USSR, their critiques of the trials served to facilitate fascist designs.[24] The journal heralded the arrest of the military’s leaders as “a significant blow to the fascist warmongers.”[25] The same issue published a resolution passed by the ECCI Presidium calling on communist parties “to purge double-dealing Trotskyist elements from party organizations” and demanded that they “discover and unmask the enemy” and intensify efforts to ascertain members’ attitudes on “their relations to the USSR and VKP(b) leadership.”[26] The ECCI Secretariat had responded to the strident calls for vigilance at the February-March Plenum by ordering another proverka of Comintern personnel.[27] The composition of this "Special Commission to verify the workers of the ECCI apparatus" differed from that of the Moskvin commission, but its charge was much the same. As in the past, the Comintern's leaders--Dimitrov, Manuilsky and Moskvin--passed judgement on those who worked for them. As Document 35 below makes clear, the representatives of the fraternal parties in the ECCI warranted special consideration. Comintern rules gave the ECCI the right to review them, but from mid-May, the atmosphere in which this verification took place was fraught with anxiety. That the commission deemed only five of the twenty-five people that it reviewed worthy of retaining suggests that it had raised vigilance to a new level. Heightened vigilance, especially against foreigners, seemed the surest means of personal and institutional self-defense. In and of itself, the commission's report provides little insight into what motivated Dimitrov, Manuilsky and Moskvin to remove 80% of the representatives in the ECCI. To remove so many implicitly raised doubts about the Secretariat's previous vigilance. We can not rule out the possibility that, by removing the representatives, the Secretariat actually sought to protect them since, once freed of their responsibilities, they could be returned to their native countries. In fact, about half of those removed survived the repression by leaving the country in 1937. Nor can we rule out the other possibility--that it sought to scapegoat the representatives for their having failed to "unmask" "enemies" and "suspicious elements" among their charges. About half of those removed were arrested. Whatever the Secretariat's motives, the results allowed its members to claim that they had been vigilant and to deflect the consequences of their vigilance to their staff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 35 PROTOCOL No. 6 OF THE SESSION OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION TO VERIFY THE WORKERS OF THE ECCI APPARATUS RGASPI, f. 495, op. 21, d. 52, ll. 63-64. Original
in Russian. Typewritten. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 22 June 1937, 166 VKP members and candidate members who worked in the offices of the ECCI Secretariat attended a closed party meeting. It was the first such meeting since the NKVD had begun arresting leading military, VKP, and Comintern members. Document 36 below is the stenographic report of that meeting, the atmosphere of which was tense. In the month before the meeting, the NKVD had arrested a number of prominent ECCI officials--Alikhanov and Chernomordik, two of the leaders of the Cadres Department; Mueller, the head of Communiciations; Walecki, a member of the ICC whose denunciation of others we have already read; Bronkowski, an ECCI member and the head of the Polish section; and others. The meeting began with Moskvin's report on the political situation within the ECCI apparatus. Then Kotelnikov, the secretary of the party committee, spoke on the "unmasking of enemies of the people working in the ECCI apparatus" and moved to expel from the party those who had already been arrested. To that point, the rituals that defined party meetings preceded as always. But following Moskvin' report, the rank-and-file addressed their comrades. Some played their prescribed roles, but others, apparently emboldened by Stalin's call for a "check-up from below" by the "party masses," departed from the ritual and called some of their bosses and leaders to account. The transcript speaks for itself, but several themes deserve to be highlighted. Based on Kotelnikov’s report, the meeting passed a resolution to expel “enemies of the people Walecki, Chernomordik, Chernin, Bronkowski, and Grossman.” Given that these five had already been arrested, what choice did the party committee have? Cause and effect were reversed. Theirs were not like other cases (e.g. see the case of Ludwig Magyar) when the ECCI party committee had expelled people before they were arrested. Nor would this be the last such instance. As he had done on other occasions, Kotelnikov presented the arrest of “15 members [who] occupied important positions here,” but whom “our party organization did not deal with,” as evidence of “our weakness in raising the revolutionary vigilance of each of us.” That the party organization had failed to unmask such “enemies” before the NKVD had arrested them increased the risks for all in the organization. But as Moskvin implied when he stated that “it is still impossible today to say whether or not they [those removed by the verification commission] were enemies or not,” amidst the escalating mass repression, no one was above suspicion. All party members, even "real Bolsheviks," were increasingly vulnerable. But as several speakers' comments made clear, the denouncing and scapegoating of foreigners had become commonplace and made them even more vulnerable. Moskvin's report makes clear that the decimation of the fraternal parties' members living in the USSR had begun. He reported that his own commission had expelled 65 members and the NKVD had arrested seventeen of them. He noted in particular the arrest of leading members of the German and Polish parties; there were others whom he did not mention. Indeed the mass repression of Germans and Poles was just beginning. Two days before this meeting, the Politburo passed a resolution permitting Ezhov to issue an immediate NKVD order to arrest all Germans working in defense plants and to exile some of those arrested from the country. It required him to send daily reports on the number of arrests to the CC. Before and after that resolution’s passage, the leaders of the CPP were arrested (see below). By such acts, Stalin, Ezhov, and the Politburo pushed vigilance and xenophobia to their logical administrative conclusion; the pace at which foreigners were arrested accelerated. The comments of some who spoke at the 22 June meeting conveyed a sense of shock about the recent arrests, which some stated were warranted. Many expressed the view that the party committee, and they themselves, had not appreciated that their arrested comrades had been "enemies." Shock melded indistinguishably with anxiety. Precisely because they had not "unmasked" those who had been arrested, they had reason to be fearful for themselves. Many who spoke went to considerable lengths to defend their personal failure in not detecting, not "unmasking" the "hostile activities" of their office mates. Their statements convey a sense that they harbored various fears--fear for their own well-being, fear of "enemies," fear of the disorienting uncertainties created by the recent arrests. Some who sought to make sense of the new situation did so by claiming that conspiracies had existed among the arrested "enemies." As Mingulin put it: "It is impossible [to believe] that there was nothing subversive in their work." Although their anxiety was notable, it did not cripple them. One of the meeting's most distinguishing features is the extent to which rank-and-file party members attacked or questioned the behavior not only of those arrested, but also of the party committee's leaders (especially Kotelnikov and Blagoeva) who presided over the meeting. Some speakers used Stalin's and Zhdanov's attacks on "familyness" to denounce such behavior within the Comintern apparatus. Others denounced what they alleged to be their boss's corruption and embezzlement. Still others criticized the inefficiency or incompetence of leading staff members. Many speakers' comments suggest that the ECCI apparatus and party committee suffered from their share of bureaucratic confusion and inefficiency, what Moskvin called "the idiotic disease, carelessness." Taken together, these criticisms and attacks convey a sense of rank-and-file discontent and anger with their leaders who heretofore had cajoled their subordinates to be more vigilant, to signal suspicious behaviors. The dynamics of vigilance had shifted somewhat. Many of the alleged incidents cited were not recent, a fact which suggests that Stalin's call for "check-up from below” emboldened some people to settle grievances with their superiors and their comrades. The shift heralded the arrival of a new clevage within the Comintern's headquarters. Following Kirov's murder, the line was drawn between "real Bolsheviks" and some former oppositionists, later it was between "real Bolsheviks" and all former oppositionists, and between native- and foreign-born comrades. The rank-and-file's criticism of their bosses and party leaders suggests that, in mid-1937, the former sought to redefine who the "real Bolsheviks" were. Document 36 provides an example of one of the under-appreciated dimensions of the mass repression--its populist element whereby the "party masses" attacked their bosses. As was custom, self-criticism often tinged such attacks. Whether this self-criticsm emanated from people's anxieties for themselves, honest yet defensible admissions of past "mistakes" in an uncertain present, or the parroting of Stalin's demand for kritika/samokritika is impossible to ascertain. And what is the point of doing so? Each were powerful motivators; each or all were present in those who spoke. Finally, Kotelnikov referred to shortcomings of the party chistka, proverka and exchange of party documents, and to Alikhanov's and Chernomordik's allegedly nefarious use of their powers to issue party cards. From 1934, the issues of party accountability and party cards had concerned the party leadership. One of their concerns was precisely what Kotelnikov alleged to have taken place--that enemies had secured positions that allowed them to issue party cards to other enemies. There is no proof that Alikhanov and Chernomordik had misused their powers to this end. But the logic inherent in the accusation put party members in responsible positions at much greater risk than it did rank-and-file members. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOCUMENT 36 Protocol of the closed meeting of VKP members and candidate members in the ECCI Secretariat. RGASPI, f.546 , op. 1, d. 388, ll. 49-87. Original in Russian. Typewritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Defense and denunciation dominated the remarks of the participants in the 22 June meeting. Although a few people’s comments (e.g. Vulfson and Mering) were of a purely defensive nature and designed to render innocuous previous contacts with arrested enemies, most who spoke blended defense and denunciation. The standard line of defense was that, although one worked with an arrested enemy, so skillful was the enemy that he or she did not detect the enemy’s methods. This defense was most common when people spoke of Alikhanov. Judging from some people’s comments, Alikhanov had been well respected because he was honest and straightforward. Those people viewed his arrest with incredulity. Kotelnikov’s concluding comment that “Alikhanov was an experienced enemy” served, therefore, to absolve those who had not suspected Alikhanov. But others, in particular Sholomov, transformed Alikhanov’s virtue into an enemy’s ruse--”Alikhanov gained trust with his seeming straightforwardness”--and in so doing conveyed not only the logic of the conspiratorial mindset, but also cast doubt over all behaviors. Given the wave of arrests of ECCI officials in May and June, defensive comments are hardly surprising, nor are denunciations of arrested "enemies." However, the denunciations levelled by the rank-and-file against the party committee’s leaders, Kotelnikov and Blagoeva, suggest that some speakers took advantage of Stalin’s call for a “check-up from below” to settle grievances with their leaders and to defend themselves from becoming scapegoats for their leaders’ shortcomings, mistakes or wrath.[28] Rogozhnikov was quite explicit on this last point: “Com. Stalin said it was essential to learn from the rank-and-file how to work, but Blagoeva did not pay attention to the workers’ signals.” That there were "voices here in favor of re-electing the party committee" makes clear that some rank-and-file members had defied the ritual of party meetings, choosing instead to augment their attacks on arrested "enemies" with attacks on their superiors. Those attacks had political and personal roots. Sholomov took a slightly different tact when he stated that the arrested enemies “Alikhanov and Chernomordik...were the leaders of the party committee,” thereby implying that Kotelnikov, the party committee secretary, did the "enemies’" bidding. To Sholomov, one of Chernomordik’s and Alikhanov’s, and implicitly Kotelnikov's and Blagoeva's, major offenses was that they “restrained criticism at the general [party] meeting. Do not go too far, they said.” Novikov expressed the same sentiment, but gave it a twist: "We are responsible for not criticizing high-ranking workers. One can not take refuge in the fact that these people had authority." By denouncing the arrested "enemies’" (and their former bosses') alleged misuse of ECCI funds to support their purported lavish lifestyle, several speakers expressed resentment of their leaders’ material comfort. Given that there existed within the ECCI a “problem of assistance to low-paid workers,” such attacks probably found some support. Nor were such attacks confined to those already arrested. Levchenko denounced Kozhevnikov for spending 25,000 rubles to decorate “rooms in the Rococo style” and having “dinners with the most exquisite wines and dishes.” “Kozhevnikov is a bureaucrat,” he asserted,” “it is necessary to purge such people.” Kozhevnikov rejected the accusation and, in time honored tradition, defended himself by appealing to his comrades’ frustration with their leaders: “It is not me who squandered the money, but those who were responsible for that money.” It was Samsonov who articulated most forcefully the sense that the arrested enemies “completely discredited...[and] are trying to buy honest people” like himself. He cast himself as an “honest” party member who “fought this gang from a position of principle.” Nor were the arrested enemies the only objects of his frustration. He too railed against Kotelnikov and Blagoeva who did not defend him when he was “unjustly criticized.” He went so far as too suggest that Kotelnikov and Blagoeva be removed as “members of the party committee.” Although Samsonov’s denunciations may have expressed the feelings of some at the meeting, he did not become the spokesman for the discontented, probably because he displayed signs of instability: “”[Alikhanov] created his secret headquarters that intercepted statements and spread rumors about me...more than half of [the party committee’s members] were Trotskyists.” But in the atmosphere of mid-1937, people like Samsonov had the right to speak their mind, and they did. Such incipient rebellion by the rank-and-file alarmed Moskvin whom Tsirul had criticized for his lack of vigilance toward arrested "enemies" Walecki, Mueller, Krajewski and Alikhanov. “It seems to me that the discussion has gone off in the wrong direction” Moskvin asserted before defending Blagoeva, criticizing Samsonov (“He did not keep a sense of proportion.”), and announcing that the Secretariat, i.e. the leadership, “planned a series of measures to clean up the apparatus,” i.e. the rank-and-file. As the resolution passed at the meeting indicates, the views enunciated by the leadership (Moskvin, Kotelnikov and Blagoeva) prevailed. Those expelled from the party were all rank-and-file members. The resolution’s call for greater vigilance and improved party education were the same as those passed in the previous three years. But on one point, rank-and-file demands to re-elect the party committee, the leaders responded by agreeing to seek permission to elect “additional members to the party committee.” With artful compromise, Kotelnikov endorsed the view that “[n]ew comrades will help to overcome difficulties and shortcomings.” "Familyness," so criticized by Moskvin and others, seems to have ensured the victory of the party committee’s leaders. Another factor suggests that the party committee's leaders cooperated to stem rank-and-file attacks on them. In September 1936, Kotelnikov had included Blagoeva's name on the "List of VKP(b) members, formerly in other parties, having Trotskyist and Rightist tendencies" (Document 21). Yet at the meeting, the ever-vigilant Kotelnikov gave no hint that she might have such "tendencies." His silence suggests that he appreciated that he and the other party committee leaders had more to lose than to gain by raising the issue at the 22 June meeting. The security organs by whatever their name--Cheka, OGPU, GPU, NKVD--had played a prominent role in Soviet politics and history before 1937. The Politburo's authorizing a dramatic expansion of the NKVD's powers in 1937-1938 transformed the police into an exceedingly powerful institution, rivalling even the party. As we have seen, the ECCI apparatus routinely cooperated with the police on a range of issues and people with police backgrounds, such as Moskvin, had served on the ECCI or in its apparatus since the Comintern's earliest days. Yet never before had the Comintern or its party committee felt obliged to pay public homage to the head of the police. Then again, never before had the head of the police been an ECCI member. But in July 1937, such homage was wise. Document 37 is a resolution sent by the party committee of the ECCI apparatus to Ezhov congratulating him on receiving the Order of Lenin, the highest honor that could be awarded. Although Ezhov was an ECCI member, given his belief that “major spies” worked in the Comintern and given that the NKVD had begun to round up leaders of the ECCI apparatus, there is reason to doubt the telegram's seemingly boundless appreciation. Fear and self-preservation probably account for the telegram's sycophantic tone. But as the vigilance campaign and widespread calls by many in the Comintern's headquarters to expose enemies suggest, one should not dismiss the party committee's "sincere congratulations" nor its promise to hunt down shared "enemies." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 37 RGASPI, f. 546, op. 1, d. 388, l. 98. Original
in Russian. Typewritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In early July 1937, Stalin authorized the mass arrests of selected "anti-soviet elements." Soon after, the NKVD issued operational orders which identified the "groups subject to punitive measures" and set regional quotas for punishments.[29] The arrests of political emigres and members of the ECCI apparatus accelerated. The arrests quickly decimated the ranks of the CPP's leaders and of Polish emigres living in the USSR.[30] On 9 August, after Ezhov had reported that members of the CPP’s CC had confessed to participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy, the Politburo authorized the NKVD to arrest suspected Polish spies and POW members.[31] To the ECCI's leaders, the CPP's fate became a serious concern as the arrest of its leaders became implicit "proof" of their guilt. Jan Bielewski,[32] the CPP’s representative in the ECCI, conveyed this belief in his 31 August letter to Moskvin: “Regarding the existing situtation in the CP Poland, I arrive at the following conclusions: 1) The arrest by NKVD organs of a series of CPP members, and especially of members of the CC CPP, indicates the existence of agents of the class enemy, particularly Pilsudskyites and Trotskyists, in the ranks of the CPP and its CC. 2) It is beyond doubt that the agents active in the party leadership had their own branches in the party aktiv and the party apparatus. In view of this, it is essential to start a careful selection of party workers so as to single out the healthy and reliable elements, and to reveal and dismiss all enemies of the party and all of the rotten and undesirable.”[33] On 4 September, Bielewski authored a "top secret" document entitled "On the issue of the the crisis of the leadership of the CPP.”[34] After noting the successful development of the USSR and growing progressive movements in Spain, France, China and Poland, the report focused on the dangers posed by fascists, reactionaries, and their agents, especially the Trotskyists. In light of the alleged dangers, Bielewski asserted that the destruction of these counter-revolutionary elements by the "NKVD under the direction of comrade Ezhov is a necessary act of self-defense." According to Bielewski, the arrested leaders of the CPP pursued an emigration policy designed to penetrate agents of the Polish Military Organization (POW) into the USSR. After listing and decrying the party leadership's errors, which dated back to 1919, and its repeated failure to promote workers' causes, Bielewski recommended that the party's "healthy elements" carry out a complete reorganization of the party and its leadership and enhance its ties to the masses.[35] As fantastic as this conspiratorial explanation seems, it was the assumption upon which Ezhov's NKVD built its case against present and former leaders of the CPP, including Bielewski who was arrested a week after writing his report. The NKVD’s assumption became the ECCI’s conclusion. But no summary of that paranoic accusation can do justice to its dimensions and flawed logic. Document 38 below makes painfully clear the nature and specifics of this accusation. The document is the handwritten notes made by Dimitrov who was allowed to read the "confessions" of nine members and candidate members of the CPP's CC: Lenski, Bronkowskii, Slawinskii, Henrykowski, Skulski, Bertynskii, Rylski, Stolarskii and Walecki. From whom Dimitrov received the "confessions" is unclear, but surely Stalin and Ezhov approved giving them to him. Dimitrov did not date his notes, although internal evidence suggests that he made them no sooner than early September 1937, that is about the same time that Bielewski wrote his report. Each of the nine men were accused of being POW agents. That organization was formed in 1914 and, during WWI, engaged in sabotage against the Russian, Austrian and German armies that occupied Poland. Following the war, the POW played an important role in the Pilsudski regime and engaged in efforts to de-stabilize radical Polish parties and the political situation in Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia. Around these kernels of truth, Ezhov and his NKVD interrogators devised a conspiracy so omnipresent, so fantastic as to warrant immediate dismissal. As a description of historical reality, it deserves to be dismissed. But to do so before pondering the conspiratorial mindset that gave birth to it would be ill-advised, for Dimitrov's notes on the "confessions" tell us more about the interrogators' worldview than they do about those CPP leaders who had played so important role in Comintern history. Because the "confessions" grossly distort the historical realities and the accused's behaviors, it is essential to bear in mind that NKVD interrogators used a variety of tortures, ranging from continuous interrogation over the course of days to vicious beatings in order to extract the "confessions." (For examples of the kinds of torture used, see the cases of Razumova and Terziev in chapter 7.) Such inhumane treatment explains not only the "confessions," but also the inconsistencies among them. In his notes, Dimitrov used a series of highlighting marks (e.g. double and triple bold lines next to a specific statement, exclamation marks, underlinings, etc.), the placement of which suggests that he realized some of the problems and contradictions of the "confessions." One example will suffice to convey the kind of contradictory evidence found in the "confessions." According to Lenski's confession, four members of the CPP's Politburo elected at the Sixth Congress and 90% of the delegates were POW agents. Yet in Slawinskii's confession, all of the Politburo's members elected at the Fifth Congress were POW members. NKVD interrogators apparently never pondered why the POW would relinquish absolute control of the Politburo. But focusing on inconsistencies in the evidence misses the point. Ezhov was not after the truth. He knew the truth--"Polish spies...had infiltrated all departments of the organs of the Cheka [NKVD]"[36] as well as the ranks of the VKP and Soviet bureaucracy--and he demanded that his subordinates share his assumptions and act on them. The confessions, therefore, reflected the interrogators' beliefs, not the victims' activities. M.P. Frinovskii, the head of the NKVD’s Main Department of State Security and a man who shared many of Ezhov’s views, testified after his own arrest that “often interrogators themselves gave the testimony and not those under investigation. Did the leadership of the People’s Commissariat, that is, Ezhov and I, know about this? They knew and they encouraged it. How did we react to it? I, honestly, didn’t react at all, and Ezhov encouraged it.”[37] Other testimony supports Frinovskii’s admission. Shneidman, a NKVD interrogator under Ezhov, testified that: “Ezhov’s authority in the NKVD was so high that I, like other employees, did not doubt the guilt of the individuals who were arrested on his direct orders even when the investigator did not have any materials which compromised the given individual. I was convinced of the guilt of such an individual even before the interrogation and then, during the interrogation, tried to obtain a confession from that individual using all possible means.”[38] Many NKVD agents shared Ezhov’s conspiratorial worldview. The more fervently they did so and the more alleged enemies they unmasked, the more Ezhov rewarded them. To such people, inconsistent testimonies were mere trifling details created by participants in an “omnipresent conspiracy” that the NKVD was committed to smashing.[39] An equally disturbing aspect of the "confessions" is that they contain the names of Poles and others who had not yet been arrested, but who soon would be arrested because they had been implicated in the "confessions." In fact, Document 38 contains a numbing array of names of people who would be arrested. One small example of this all-too-common practice is Stolarski's confession. Stolarski was arrested on 25 July 1936, and sentenced to five years of hard labor on 20 May 1937 for espionage. Precisely when during that ten month period of incarceration he confessed is unclear. Among those whom Stolarskii implicated as POW agents were his fellow Poles, Lenski and Skulski, and the German, Heckert, all of whom were prominent Comintern officials. Based on Stolarski's "confession," those three and others were arrested. In his "confession," Walecki named 34 people. In this way, the scale of the repression widened at an expotential rate. One "confession" implicated people who had to be arrested and made to sign "confessions" which, in turn, contained the names of still more people whom the NKVD arrested. The ranks of Cominternists and emigres were quickly decimated. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 38 Dimitrov’s notes from the investigation materials in the case of the Polish Communists. 1937. RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 411, ll. 1-62 Original
in Russian. Handwritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "confessions" were a surreal blend of facts imbedded in a conspiratorial fantasy that transformed these men's actual political activities into allegedly sinister plots in the service of Polish police and intelligence. They "proved" that Polish intelligence services had planted spies and saboteurs within the CPP and among Polish emigres, and that these agents had wreaked havoc in the economy, Comintern, Profintern and VKP. Taken together, the "confessions" provided "evidence" that a vast Polish conspiracy existed and that it was that conspiracy, not historical contingency nor inherent flaws in the Soviet system, that explained the problems that frustrated the USSR, VKP and the CPP--the 1920 Russo-Polish war, the peace treaty which ended that war, the deep divisions within the CPP, that party’s failure to gain worker and peasant support, opposition to the Popular (United) Front, etc. Coupled with the results of the proverka of CPP members living in the USSR, the "confessions" provided the NKVD with the "evidence" it needed to order a dragnet of CPP members and Polish emigres. At least 30 of the 37 members of the CPP's CC were purged. Precisely how many other CPP members and Polish emigres were arrested, executed or perished in 1937-1938 is still unknown. The numbers were substantial, well in excess of 100,000.[41] Precisely because the alleged espionage network was so vast, the "confessions" force one to reflect on the worldview of its NKVD creators. And they were its creators: Men who by torture, relentless interrogation and sleep deprivation extracted from their prisoners all the nuances and details that explained the CPP’s failure to foment revolution in Poland and the problems that affected the USSR; men who by their sheer persistence and addled sense of history and politics had melded fact and fear into "confessions" that they often wrote themselves, which distorted beyond recognition the sincerity and sacrifices of hundreds of Polish communists, and which destroyed the latter's life’s work and their lives. Sadly, the Poles were not the only foreigners ensnared in the web of perceived conspiracies. The NKVD's distorted sense of history and politics is succinctly exemplified in the fact that all who confessed claimed to be be POW agents. Yet by 1930 the POW was a defunct organization. Only Lenski and Walecki claimed to be agents of the Second Department of the Polish General Staff, the agency responsible for foreign intelligence and espionage. Why did the NKVD interrogators insist that those who confessed claim to be agents of a moribund organization and not of Poland’s major intelligence agency? In the absence of reliable evidence, any hypothesis is mere speculation. As surreal as the "confessions" were, one should not conclude that the Polish government (or other governments) did not engage in epionage within the USSR, that it did not have agents within the CPP, that it did not infiltrate agents into the USSR under the guise of emigres. In an era when intelligence and espionage were essential to the national defense of all Eurasian countries, to believe that there were no agents in the CPP or no Polish spies in the USSR is as naive as believing that there were no Soviet spies in Poland,[42] or that the "confessions" should be taken at face value. Delineating fact from fiction required a judicious investigation, but what occurred was a witch hunt. Two details in the Poles’ "confessions" are worth noting as they reveal the temporal limits of the mass repression All of the men listed on the first page of Dimitrov’s notes on the confession had been arrested except for Adolf Marek-Lampe and Martsel Nowotko, who were in prison in Poland at the time. Lenski, Slawinski and Rylski had accused Lampe of being a POW agent. But when Lampe arrived in the USSR in 1939 following his release, he was not arrested, nothing untoward happened to him. Rylski had denounced Nowotko as a POW agent. Upon his release, he too went to the USSR. Not only was he not arrested, Nowotko and a group sent to Poland from Moscow in late 1941 became the first leaders of the underground Polish Workers Party which, after WWII, became Poland’s ruling party. Ezhov’s removal from the NKVD in December 1938 appears to have marked the end of the imagined Polish threat. The repression of the CPP's leaders sheds light on Dimitrov's roles during this period. Until mid-1937, the Dimitrov who emerges from the available documents was a true believer, a man willing to carry out Stalin's and the VKP's policies because he believed them to be correct. His repeated calls for vigilance against Trotskyists and "enemy agents," his role in the verification of the ECCI apparatus, his belief that the accused at the August 1936 and January 1937 trials were guilty, his belief in Bukharin's guilt and his scornful disdain of Bukharin's defense at the February-March 1937 CC Plenum, all suggest a man who shared the assumptions, beliefs and logic that defined the period before the onset of mass repression in June 1937. He had had doubts about certain inconsistencies and anomalies; for example, he wondered why, given that Trotskyism had been “destroyed,” it was necessary to press the anti-Trotskyist campaign. But those doubts do not diminish his role in the vigilance campaign and verification of emigres. In fact, Dimitrov helped to secure the arrest of some of the CPP’s leaders. The CPP’s Politburo was headquartered in Paris. On 21 May 1937, Dimitrov and Moskvin sent a telegram to Lenski in Paris: “We request you to come [to Moscow] soon for the settlement of a series of urgent issues.” Three weeks later Dimitrov sent another telegram: “Urgently convey to Lenski that a visa for him and his wife has been sent.”[43] Dimtrov recorded in his diary the parade of Polish Politburo members to the NKVD: “Lenski arrived. Rylski, Skulski and Prukhin also summoned;”[44] L[enski] to Ezhov’s;”[45] “Walecki too;”[46] “Prukhin arrived at Ezhov’s.”[47] On 10 July, Dimtrov signed a telegram sent to Albacete, the headquarters of the International Brigades in Spain: “Kautsky [Jose Diaz]. We ask you to send Tsikhovski [commissar of an International Brigade] here to report on his work.” A 17 September telegram to Diaz stated: “Send Rwal, the representative of the Polish party, here.”[48] One can only wonder what Dimitrov thought of his role in the arrests of those whose "confessions" he read. In this respect, Dimitrov exemplifies many in the ECCI and the VKP during the period, people who by their beliefs, rhetoric, behavior, fulfillment of orders, denunciations or silence at various important political junctures supported, and thereby validated, the policies and behaviors that created the political conditions and mindset that made the mass repression possible or served to accelerate it. Of course, to have openly opposed the arrests or refused to send the telegrams abroad would have been tantamount to Dimitrov's admitting he was an "enemy agent." In mid-1937, party discipline and conforming to Stalinist norms were essential to political survival. But Dimitrov's behaviors prior to that time do not suggest that he blindly followed orders. Even prior to mid-1937, he had enthusiastically acted as the VKP's leaders' agent and instrument. Dimitrov was a "real Bolshevik" who wholeheartedly supported the VKP’s general line, its assumptions and its values. But as the decimation of the Comintern's ranks accelerated and increasing numbers of comrades whom he believed to be honest communists were arrested, he apparently began to have doubts. He did not express them publicly nor did he confide them to his diary, but the ways in which he quietly worked to right injustices and defend some of the Comintern’s members and workers suggest that he had developed reservations about the excesses of, and perhaps the necessity for, mass repression. One example shall suffice for now (for others see the case studies in chapter 7.) In his confession, Rylski claimed that Blagoi Popov,[49] Dimitrov’s co-defendant at the 1933 Leipzig trial, was a Bulgarian police agent and that he had betrayed Dimitrov. Yet after Popov’s arrest, Dimitrov appealed on his behalf. But not everyone had reservations. The arrest of fraternal party leaders, ECCI members, and staff of the the ECCI apparatus was enabled in part by denunciations from one's comrades, co-workers or subordinants. The precise role of denunciations in the selection of those arrested is unclear. But as the case of Nikolai Prokofiev,[50] the former head of the Cadres Department of the EC KIM and, from 1935 to late 1937, a Secretary of the EC KIM, suggests, denunciations contributed to the repression's dynamics and the selection of victims.[51] On 19 September 1937, Prokofiev had a "conversation" with the three leaders of the ECCI party committee--Kotelnikov, Blagoeva and Krylova.[52] Who initiated the "conversation" is unclear. What is clear was the reason for the "conversation"--the arrest on 15 September of Vasili Chemodanov,[53] the Secretary of the EC KIM from 1930 until his arrest and Prokofiev's comrade and co-worker. In the course of the "conversation," Prokofiev criticized or cast suspicion upon many aspects of Chemodanov's party and professional work as well as his personal life. He began by attacking Chemodanov's unwillingness to address and resolve problems relating to KIM cadres abroad, an issue that related directly to both men's work. He criticized Chemodanov's alleged refusal to address problems affecting fraternal parties in a half dozen countries. His comments on the German party are representative: "We spoke [with Chemodanov] about Germany several times, but he never carried the business to its conclusion. For this reason, today we don't have reliable and verified people [there]."[54] He also cast suspicions on Chemodanov's relations with people who had alredy been arrested, for example Lenski ("It seems that Chemodanov had many relations, and not [simply] formal, with Albert Lenski.")[55] and Pyatnitsky ("He was very well connected with Pyatnitsky...Pyatnitsky always showed him a special sympathy...I don't know how many times Chemodanov talked with Pyatnitsky, but undoubtedly he cried on his shoulder...")[56] Prokofiev also bluntly criticized Chemodanov's attitudes towards his political responsibilities--"he didn't like to go to meetings of the ECCI Secretariat and stubbornly ignored these meetings"--and his alleged "anti-party talk against the leadership." According to Prokofiev, "[i]t was clear to us [that] Chemodanov is a bureaucrat" who lacked proper party consciousness.[57] He was particularly loquacious about Chemodanov's personal life and alleged self-indulgence. He claimed that in 1935, "Chemodanov announced a new theory, that it was necessary to support himself better, to live life better..." Prokofiev then expounded upon Chemodanov's alleged womanizing and the exorbitant amounts of money that he had spent renovating his apartment.[58] Although Prokofiev spoke for himself, he frquently cast his allegations against Chemodanov as those of his co-workers and comrades: "We spoke time and again with Chemodanov;" "It was clear to us...;" "We had the impression that he was hostile" to certain comrades. Whether he deployed it consciously or subconsciously, such a technique served to universalize and justify Prokofiev's allegations. During the course of the "conversation," Prokofiev indicated that, in the past, he had denounced no less than a dozen other comrades. It was perhaps this aspect of the "conversation" that prompted Manuilsky, to whom a copy of the transcript of the "conversation" had been sent, to ask Prokofiev to write his "political biography." Document 39 is what Prokofiev sent to Manuilsky. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Document 39 N. Prokofiev's "political biography." RGASPI, f. 495, op. 10a, d. 395, ll. 31-38. Original in Russian. Typewritten with signature and handwritten notations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prokofiev was clearly quite proud of his vigilance and the role he had played in denouncing more than sixty people, many of whom were subsequently arrested. To Prokofiev, vigilance and denunciations were proper behaviors expected of any "real Bolshevik." Party discipline demanded nothing less. For his vigilance in the late 1920s and 1930, in 1931 the Orgburo had promoted him to the EC KIM apparatus. Later the CC Secretariat appointed him a Secretary of the EC KIM. The tone of his statement suggest that he was no mere careerist, but rather a true believer in the party line, a man who brooked no opposition to that line and who viewed any perceived deviance as "enemy" activity. His vigilance did not save him, however. On 19 February 1938, two months after penning his "political biography," Prokofiev was arrested as an "enemy of the people and the party." Prokofiev's remarks concerning the CPP are intriguing as they imply that Manuilsky, who had a longstanding distrust of that party, authorized him to ferret out compromising materials on that party's leaders from among its rank-and-file. Prokofiev reported his findings to Manuilsky, the NKVD and Dimitrov who ordered Lenski and others to return to Moscow to face arrest. Prokofiev's statement suggests that the role played by denunciations in the mass repression should not be underestimated. The Poles were but one of many groups arrested in large numbers from 1937. Fraternal party members and emigres living in the USSR, members of the ECCI apparatus, VKP members and others were rounded up by the NKVD. The mass arrests could not have come at a worse time for the Comintern. The USSR's active role in the defense of the Popular Front government in Spain and channeling the mounting international concerns about Germany's remilitarization and aggressive foreign policy had provided the Comintern with growing international support for its anti-fascist and Popular Front policies. Yet by October 1937, not only was international criticism of the repression mounting, but the arrests of members of the ECCI apparatus seriously affected its ability to function, let alone take advantage of its recent international success. On 10 October 1937, Dimitrov and Manuilsky sent the following letter to Ezhov, Zhdanov and Andreev, in their capacity as CC Secretaries, outlining the impact of mass arrests on the ECCI's ability to function and requesting the CC to help them alleviate the personnel crisis that was crippling the ECCI apparatus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 40 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 50, ll. 25-26. Original
in Russian. Typewritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two points in Document 40 deserve note. The first is that, in less than a year, the Moskvin Commission and its successor, “The special commission to verify the workers of the ECCI apparatus,” had already removed "about 100" workers from the apparatus. The fate of each of these people is unknown; some were arrested, some were not. Second, the arrest of all or virtually workers in the Communications Department, which played an integral role in illegal operations abroad, seriously hamstrung the Comintern's ability to engage in clandestine, anti-fascist activities at a time when the fascist threat loomed ever larger. The arrests had seriously weakened the Comintern. The agent and instrument of the Politburo had become its victim. By October 1937, the ECCI apparatus was virtually moribund. In this context, Dimitrov's letter to Ezhov dated 11 October 1937, the day after he sent Document 40, warrants mention. Dimitrov wrote that, in recent years, the Comintern archive had provided the NKVD with "documents, letters and other materials having historical value" from Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin Bela Kun, Pyatnitsky, Knorin and others. Despite repeated requests, the NKVD had refused to return these materials. Dimitrov's letter was but one more futile effort to have these materials returned.[59] For our purposes, the value of Dimitrov's letter rests in the light that it sheds on the NKVD's thorough efforts to cull from internal Comintern documents evidence to prove its assumption that those people and others had engaged in anti-Soviet conspiracies. Because those documents are still not available to historians, it is impossible to reconstruct the types of evidence that interrogators might have used to script "confessions" from their victims. Dimitrov's efforts in defense of the Cominern's institutional interests did not diminish his role in the ongoing vigilance campaign. At a party celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, at which Ezhov and Dimitrov were present, Stalin made clear his views on how to handle enemies: "We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts--yes his thoughts--threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, them and their clans!" Whatever doubts Dimitrov may have harbored about the repression, on that night he kept them to himself. In his toast to Stalin, he stated: "There is nothing I can add to what Com. Stalin has said about the merciless struggle against enemies That will be taken into account in the Party and I myself will do everything in my power to ensure that it is taken into account in the ranks of the Comintern as well..."[60] Four days later, Stalin told Dimitrov that the ECCI's repeated resolutions to "[i]ntensify the struggle aginst Trotskyists using all means" was "not enough." According to Stalin, "Trotskyists must be hunted down, shot, destroyed. They are world-wide provocateurs, fascism's most vicious agents."[61] There is no need to dissect Stalin's comments, which acted as the marching orders to Ezhov and his minions, and which put those who might challenge such views on the defensive. Yet one can not help but note the tragic irony the Comintern, which zealously directed the anti-Trotskyist campaign and provided lists of names of those engaged in "suspicious" activities, thereby validating Stalin's and Ezhov’s views, had become the victims of its own vigilance. The speed with which the NKVD arrested people associated with the ECCI not only hampered its ability to function, but appears to have also overwhelmed ECCI members' ability to react to events. There is a Kafkaesque quality to Document 41, which conveys the decision by half of the members of the International Control Commission to expel from their respective parties the other half who were, by that time, either dead or languishing in a prison or labor camp. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 41 RGASPI, f. 505, op. 1, d. 51, l. 88. Original
in Russian. Typewritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The expulsion of Grzhegozhevskii, Krajewski and Walecki, three Poles arrested as "enemies of the people," symbolized the fate of many Poles then living in the USSR. As the previous discussion has made clear, of all of the emigres living there, the Poles aroused the greatest suspicion; Germans, Japanese, and Balts were also arested in large numbers. The arrest of the CPP's leaders and many rank-and-file members in 1937-38 decimated the party. On 28 November 1937, the ECCI passed a resolution to dissolve the CPP, a decision reached five days earlier by Dimitrov, Manuilsky, Kuusinen, Moskvin and Pieck.[62] The Communist parties of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia were dissolved at the same time. The regrettably familar political justifications for the decision can be found in Document 42, the contents of which echoed the "confessions" of the CPP's leaders. On the same day that the ECCI passed the resolution to dissolve the Polish party, Dimitrov sent Stalin a copy of the resolution and a letter requesting his "advice and orders" on two issues: "the contents and character of the resolution," and when it should be issued. Stalin responded by writing across the letter: "The dissolution is about two years late. It is necessary to dissolve [the party], but, in my opinion, [this] should not be published in the press." Dimitrov's letter to Stalin is included in Document 42. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENT 42 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 402, ll. 2-6. Original
in Russian. Typewritten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Not until 16 August 1938, nine months after Stalin approved the ECCI’s resolution, did the ECCI Presidium pass a resolution that formalized the defunct CPP’s dissolution.[63] The reliability of political emigres had concerned the ECCI and VKP leaderships from at least 1935.[64] The verifications conducted by each fraternal party of its members living in the USSR had resulted in "evidence" that fueled those concerns and was used to justify mass arrests. But an administrative solution to the problems posed by political emigration remained illusive. By December 1937, the ECCI leadership had concluded that MOPR, the organization responsible for emigre affairs, was incapable of solving the problem. In early January 1938, the ECCI Secretariat announced the removal Elena Stasova, MOPR's head, and appointed a commission to investigate how to solve the problems posed by political emigration.[65] The ECCI's assertion that MOPR was unable to solve the problems relating to emigration and its decision to replace Stasova made political sense in a period of xenphobic mass repression. Such acts allowed the ECCI to demonstrate its vigilance. But one wonders why the decision was not made earlier. In January 1936, two years earlier, Manuilsky had written to Ezhov, when he headed ORPO, recommending replacing "the current MOPR leadership for not coping with its tasks and...[creating] a secretariat composed of a number of foreign comrades..."[66] Why had it taken the ECCI two years to implement its own recommendation? The available evidence does not provide a ready answer. The ECCI Secretariat’s appointment of a commission to investigate how to solve the problems posed by political emigration appears sisyphian in light of the Politburo resolution passed on 31 January 1938. That resolution ordered the NKVD to arrest suspected spies and wreckers from designated ethnic groups--Poles, Letts, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Kharbinites,[67] Chinese and Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Macedonians--be they Soviet citizens or foreign nationals. It gave the NKVD until 15 April 1938 to do so. A 26 May Politburo resolution extended the 15 April deadline to 1 August; the deadline for those suspected of espionage, wrecking, terrorist and other anti-Soviet activities was extended yet again until mid-November 1938. Xenophobia and vigilance, the perspectives of the fearful, had reached their terrifying logical conclusion. The nationalities designated by the Politburo are intriguing. Each had a sizable number of emigres living in the USSR. The native lands of all of them, save for the Germans, Bulgarians and Greeks, bordered on the USSR. A deepseated belief in capitalist encirclement and the fascist threat, apparently played a role in the selection of nationalities. So too did the belief that the "enemy" was within the gates. But the list was selective; not all foreigners were slated for arrest. Save for the Chinese, the designated nationalities came from countries where the communist party was illegal. The Politburo's anxieties about the threat posed by these "suspect" nationalities is evident in its 1 February 1938 decision relating to security in the Far East. It instructed the NKVD to evict from the region "all foreigners possessing neither Soviet nor foreign passports" and, in an effort to reduce the foreign population in gulag camps there, to execute "persons of Japanese, Korean, German, Polish, Latvian, Estonian and Finnish nationality as well as residents of Kharbin" sentenced to camps in the region.[68] Between the Kirov murder in December 1934 and the onset of the mass repression in spring 1937, the ECCI, its Secretariat, its apparatus, its party organization and many fraternal party members living in the USSR participated in the anti-Trotskyist campaign, the vigilance campaign, the verifications of the ECCI apparatus and of foreigners living in the USSR, denunciations of comrades, and the dissemination of propaganda to popularize the verdicts of the August 1936 and January 1937 trials. At each particular moment, doing so made sense to those who participated. The official investigation into the Kirov murder alleged that Trotskyist conspirators helped to orchestrate the murder, an allegation that underscored the need for intensifying the anti-Trotskyist and vigilance campaigns. The VKP leadership announced that the 1935 proverka of its ranks had revealed that "suspicious" elements, including foreigners, had secured party cards and infiltrated the VKP. That finding and Manuilsky's report to the December 1935 CC Plenum justified the need for the verification of the fraternal party members living in the USSR. The defendants at the three Moscow show trials (and others) confessed to participating in a "Trotskyist-fascist," "anti-Soviet conspiracy," and by so doing “proved” that enemies had infiltrated the highest reaches of the VKP and the Soviet government. We today know that there is still no evidence of a Trotskyist-fascist conspiracy, that the allegations reflected anxieties, fears and pathologies, not reality. But to those who believed that the allegations and "confessions" were true, that party leaders would do nothing to harm the party, vigilance “in deeds, not in words,” verifications, and denunciations of "suspicious" behavior were essential. Each response flowed logically from the available evidence, from the belief that each revelation was legitimate, from the logic of a particular political moment, from the need to protect the group, from the desire not to violate the group's norms. For those who may have harbored doubts, party discipline ensured compliance, be it in words or in deeds. As the "evidence" accumulated, the perception of the threats deepened. Perceived threats validated the assumption that conspiracies existed. As this process unfolded, the political influence of the advocates of heightened vigilance, such as Ezhov, grew. Ezhov’s power obviously increased markedly after he became the head of the NKVD and was able to extract "confessions" that "proved" his belief that conspirators had honeycombed the VKP, the state bureacracy, the ECCI apparatus, and the emigre communities. The "confessions," the results of the verifications of emigres, the escalation of denunciations, each and all provided Stalin and the Politburo with the "evidence" that, if the USSR were to survive, “the complete destruction of all enemies” was imperative. Some in the leadership needed little convincing by early 1937. Only the NKVD, the agency that used all means to prove its boss’s assumptions, could ensure that goal. To appreciate the Comintern’s role in this process, it is important to realize that it was an agent, instrument and victim of the repression. Its leaders’ and members’ behaviors and beliefs contributed to it, and they suffered as a consequence. Various motives, in varying degrees, accounted for their individual and collective behaviors. Consider the case of Skulski, a CPP member from 1921 and a member of its Politburo from 1935. In 1936-37, he served on the commission to verify CPP members living in the USSR. Despite his occasional expressions of frustration with the ECCI's leaders, he carried out his assignment with strict Bolshevik vigilance, seemingly convinced that doing so was essential to the VKP's and CPP’s well-being, and that "enemies" threatened both parties and the USSR. He and his fellow commission members deemed a substantial percentage of their fellow Poles to be suspicious enough to warrant isolating them from the party or sending their dossiers to the NKVD. For Skulski, being a "real Bolshevik" was apparently more important than being Polish. But to the NKVD, his being Polish cast doubts on his communist credentials. In mid-1937, based on denunciations extorted from his comrades by NKVD interrogators (see Document 38), he was arrested; in mid-September, he was sentenced to death. [1]For partial transcripts of Bukharin's and Rykov's speeches to the Plenum, see Getty, The Road to Terror, chapter 10. [2]See Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, entry of 23 February 1937. [3]Ibid., entry of 27 February 1937; Getty, The Road to Terror, document 141 and chapter 10. [4]Andrei Andreevich Zhdanov (1896-1948). A member of the VKP from 1915. In 1934, the CC Secretary and Secretary of the Leningrad city and regional party committees. After 1939, member of the Political Bureau of the CC VKP. [5]Getty, Origins, 141 and 137-149 passim. Translations of the quotes from Stalin's speeches are from Getty. [6]Ibid, 139. [7]Ibid., 143. [8]As quoted in ibid., 144-145. [9]As quoted in ibid., 145. On "familyness," see Harris, "The Great Urals". [10]As quoted in Getty, Origins, 146. [11] As quoted in ibid., 145. [12]Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, entry of 4 March 1937. [13] See f. 17, op. 2, d. 577, ll. 30-33; Getty, The Road to Terror, document 143. On 5 April 1937, Manuilsky gave the report on the February-March Plenum at the meeting of the ECCI Secretariat. F. 495, op. 18, d. 1192, ll. 1-36, esp. ll. 1-5. [14]F. 495, op. 20, d. 756, ll. 36-37. [15]F. 523, op. 1, d. 66, ll. 28-31. This letter is a typed draft with handwritten additions and corrections. Handwritten notes on the letter suggest that it was sent as edited. [16]The translations in the text are taken from the authorized English-language translation, dated 10 April 1937, which can be found in: F. 495, op. 20, d. 756, ll. 46-47. Given the Comintern's longstanding sectarian tradition and recent demands for heightened vigilance, one wonders why the ECCI had not ordered the creation of party Control Commissions before 1937. [17]The translations in the text are taken from the authorized English-language translation which can be found in: f. 495, op. 20, d. 756, ll. 45-46. The Russian version can be found in ibid., ll. 36-37. [18]Manuilsky's notes can be found in f. 523, op. 1, d. 66, ll. 1-27. The transcript of the meeting can be found in f. 495, op. 18, d. 1198, ll. 1-6. The commission's members were: Manuilsky (chair), Florin, Bogdanov, Kuusinen, Wang Ming, Marty, Ercoli, Kon'e, Anvelt, Arnot, Moskvin, Bronkowski, Wieden, Dimitrov, Kirsanova, and Chemodanov. Manuilsky's draft resolution is dated 14 May 1937, and can be found in f. 495, op. 20, d. 751, ll. 7-11. An English translation of the draft prepared for Arnot can be found in ibid., ll. 84-89. [19]On the Trotskyist penetration of the Socialist Party of America, see M. S. Venkataramani, "Leon Trotsky's Adventure in American Radical Politics, 1935-7," International Relations of Social History, 9, 1 (1964), 1-46; Constance Ashton Meyers, The Prophet's Army. The History of American Trotskyism (New York, 1972). The reference to the counter -revolutionary uprising in Spain is to the POUM uprising in Barclona which began in May 1937. On this, see: Alva and Schwartz; Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Civil War.; George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia. (London, 1951). [20]The final resolution is dated 31 May 1937. The English-language version can be found in f. 495, op. 73, d. 15, ll. 88-94. The resolution incorporated the suggestions made by the commission but is not notably different than the draft. Emphasis in the original. [21] Henryk Walecki (real name – Maksymiliam Horowitz) (1877-1937). One of the leaders of the left wing of the Polish Socialist movement, he took part in the creation of the CPP (1918). At its first congress, he was elected a member of its CC. In 1921-1924, he was the CPP representative in the ECCI. After 1925, he worked in the ECCI and as the editor-in-chief of the Kommunistichesky Internatsionale. At the 7th Comintern Congress, he was elected a member of the ICC. Arrested on 21 June 1937, he was sentenced to death by the Military Board of the USSR Supreme Court; he was shot on 20 September 1937. [22]The report, dated 26 June 1937, can be found in f. 495, op. 123, d. 248, ll. 2-14 [23]Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, entry for 25 May, notes the arrest of Mueller, Alikhanov and Dobrich. Dimitrov recorded Ezhov's statement in his entry for 26 May 1937. [24] Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, no. 2 (1937), 95-100. [25] Ibid., no. 6 (1937), 4-8. [26] Ibid., 101. [27]Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, entry for 27 May 1937, Dimitrov recorded "checking the apparatus." [28]This was not the only occasion on which Kotelnikov's political credentials were challenged. In June 1939, he penned two letters--one to Dimitrov and Manuilsky, the other to Dimitrov and Pugovkin in the CC--in which he defended himself against allegations that, when he worked in the Eastern Secretariat, he had knowledge of Trotskyist conversations and activities there. For the letters, see f. 546, op. 1, d. 434, ll. 9-21. [29]For Stalin's order, see ibid., document 169. For a NKVD operational order, see ibid., document 170. On 31 July 1937, the Politburo established a timetable for these operations. The orders were extended in January 1938. See ibid., document 182. [30]See Document 35 below. [31] Two weeks earlier, on 27 July 1937, the Politburo ordered the dismissal of the leaders of the CC of the Communist Party of Belorussia (KP(b)B) for failing to liquidate "the effects of sabotage committed by Polish spies." F. 17, op. 3, d. 989, l. 76, as cited in Getty, The Road to Terror, document 160. [32]Jan Bielewski (real name – Paszyn). A member of the SDPKPiL from 1913, and of the CPP from 1918. In 1919-1925, member of the CPP's Warsaw city committee; after 1925, a member of the CC CPP. In 1926-1930 and 1932-1937, he was a member of the Political Bureau of the CC CPP. In 1932, he went to Moscow after an exchange of political prisoners, and was the CPP representative in the ECCI. At the Seventh Comintern Congress, he was elected a candidate member of the ECCI. Arrested on 11 September 1937; the Military Board of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to be shot. [33] F. 495, op. 74, d. 400, l. 87. My thanks to Fridrikh Firsov for sharing this document with me. [34]f. 495. op. 74, d. 400, ll. 94-98 [35] Bielewski's recommendation that the party’s “healthy elements” clean out “all the rotten and undesirable” was not new. It faithfully reflected that issued by the Secretariat in 1936. He himself had drafted a similar resolution in September 1933, see chapter 3. [36]Ezhov made his assertion regarding "Polish spies" in his 3 February 1940 statement before a secret judicial session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR following his arrest for being an agent of Polish and British intelligence. That statement is reproduced in Getty, The Road to Terror, document 199, chapter 13. [37] As quoted in Starkov, “Narkom Ezhov,” 33. [38] As quoted in ibid., 33. Shneidman’s statement that he “was convinced of the [accused’s] guilt” echoes that of a NKVD officer captured by the Germans in 1941. In 1937-38, he had been assigned to monitor Comintern officials and foreigners residing in Moscow. The agent told his incredulous German interrogators of a “profession of conspiracies...[and] even presented a chart of the complicated relations among secret organizations of “leftist” and “rightist” groups that included...leading officials of the Komintern and NKVD.” Rittersporn, “Omnipresent Conspiracy,” 99. [39] For a discussion, see ibid., and Starkov, “Narkom Ezhov,” 29-33. For examples of NKVD interrogators conspiratorial view of the world, see the case studies in chapter 7. [40] This document consists of Dimitrov’s handwritten notes on confessions extracted during the NKVD’s investigation of Poles. Most of his notes are written in the past tense, but at times Dimitrov used the present tense. To make this document easier to read and to render it consistent, I have changed present tense verbs to the past tense when the latter was more appropriate (Trans.). [41]The figures on the number of CC members purged come from F. I. Firsov and S. Yazhborovskaia, "Komintern in Kommunisticheskaia partiia Polshii," Voprosy istorii, Nos. 11-12 (1988), 40-55. Walter Laqueur estimates that approximately 5,000 CPP members were arrested and killed in mid-1937. Walter Laqueur, The Glasnost Revelations (London, 1990), 108. Another author claims that as many as 50,000 Poles residing in the USSR were executed prior to 1939. Ex-Insider, "The Party That Vanished," Soviet Survey, No. 33 (1960), 105. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 231, argues that "nearly 50,000 Soviet Poles" were repressed, as were more than 25,000 Germans and many Latvians. Based on a review of archival materials, Barry McLouglin asserts: "During the 'Polish operation,' for instance, 140,000 prisoners were sentenced, 110,000 of them to death, between November 1937 and November 1938." Barry McLoghlin, "Documenting the Death Toll: Research into the Mass Murder of Foreigners in Moscow, 1937-38," AHA Perspectives, May 1999, 30. For a brief discussion of the estimates of arrests and deaths among the Polish and other emigre communities in the USSR, see McDermott, 147-148. [42]Examples of Soviet espionage activities abroad are numerous. Pavel Sudaplatov's recent memoirs, Special Tasks, provide insight into such activities on the USSR's western borders and the mindset of Soviet intelligence agents. Unfortunately, scholarly research into whether or not there were Polish intelligence networks in the USSR has been nil. [43] F. 495, op. 184, d. 11, Outgoing telegram for 1937, l. 17 and l. 42. My thanks to Fridrikh Firsov for sharing this material with me. [44] Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, entry for 17 June 1937. [45] Ibid., 20 June 1937 [46] Ibid., 21 June 1937 [47] Ibid., 7 July 1937. [48] F. 495, op. 184, d. 4, Outgoing telegram for 1937, l. 32 and l. 53. My thanks to Fridrikh Firsov for sharing this material with me. [49]Blagoi Popov (1902-1968). A CPBul member, he participated in the September 1923 insurrection in Bulgaria. After October 1924, he was in emigration and conducted underground work in Bulgaria. In 1931-1932, he was a member of the Political Bureau of the CC CPBul. In late 1932, the ECCI sent him to Berlin. On 9 March 1933, he was arrested along with Dimitrov and V. Tanev, and was one of the defendants at the Leipzig trial. After 1934, he lived in the USSR. In 1938, he was arrested and convicted. Released in 1954, he returned to Bulgaria. [50]Nikolai Fyodorovich Prokofiev (1905-1938). A member of the VKP from 1925, he worked as head of the Cadres Department of the EC KIM between February 1931 and 1935. Between 1935 and December 1937, he was Secretary of the EC KIM. On 19 February 1938, after he had been arrested, he was expelled from the VKP as “the enemy of the party and the people,” and repressed. [51]For other examples of denunciations, see "The Case of Petko Petkov" in chapter 7 below; see also, f. 495, op. 10a, d. 395, ll. 12-14; op. 73, d. 50, l. 22; op. 74, d. 398, ll. 98-99; op. 65a, d. 8364, l. 39. [52]For the transcript of that "conversation," see: f. 495, op. 109, d. 395, ll. 1-8. [53]Vasili T. Chemodanov. Born in 1903, he joined the VKP in 1924. From 1930 to 1937, he was the Secretary of the EC KIM and a candidate member of the ECCI. He was executed on 26 November 1937. [54]F. 495, op. 109, d. 395, l. 1. [55]Ibid., l. 2. [56]Ibid., ll. 3-4. [57]Ibid., l. 4. [58]Ibid., ll. 5-8. [59]F. 495, op. 73, d. 58, l. 27. For some reason, Dimitrov deemed the letter a "top secret" document. [60]See 7 November 1937 entry in Diary of Georgi Dimitrov. [61]See 11 November 1937 entry in ibid. [62]Dimitrov mentions this meeting in his diary entry for 23 November 1937. [63] F. 495, op. 2, d. 264, l. 211. During late 1937, the Polish Socialist Party's (PPS) newspaper, Robotnik, published a series of articles publicizing and criticizing the repression of Poles in the USSR. Shortly after, the Comintern’s journal published an article under the byline of Swentsitski, which harshly criticized the CPP and asserted that its former leaders “strove for the ideo-political separation of the Com[munist] Party of Poland from the Communist International and subjected the CPP to the criminal designs of the pilsudshchina.” Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 1 (1938), 93. True to Stalin’s advice, the article made no mention of the CPP’s dissolution, which by then was a fact. That article was not the only effort to justify the Poles’ arrests. In January 1938, someone in the ECCI apparatus prepared a letter from a non-existent “old PPS member” criticizing the PPS for slandering the USSR. The letter directly addressed the PPS’s criticisms: “To me these continual cries in Robotnik about the executions in the USSR are becoming stronger. Why are they executing [people] there? For treason, for espionage in the service of a fascist state, for wrecking and sabotage, for contaminating bread and drinking water, for organizing railroad accidents, for fires in mines, etc. To me as a worker, I think that the executions of these people are nothing bad. How else to defend oneself from such enemies, especially when the Soviet Union is surrounded by hostile capitalist states?” The letter was dated 14 January 1937, although it was in fact written in January 1938. The ECCI never published the letter. But that it was prepared at all is remarkable and suggests how anxious the ECCI’s leaders were about international criticisms of the repression. F. 495, op. 10, d. 273, ll. 5-6. For a discussion of the issues relating to the CPP's dissolution, see Firsov and Iazhborovskaia. [64]According to Hiroaki Kuromiya, anxieties about emigres in Ukraine dated from late 1934. In Decemer 1934, "anti-Soviet elements" were ordered removed from border zones. In 1935-36, hundreds of Poles and Germans were deported from border regions and/or arrested. In December 1935, Postyshev, the VKP leader in Ukraine, asserted that 90% of Polish emigres were enemy agents. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 207-208. [65]For materials relating to the Secretariat's discussion of MOPR on 17 December 1938, see f. 495, op. 18, d. 1229, ll. 24-30. Wilhelm Pieck replaced Stasova who was not arrested. For the announcement of Pieck's replacing Stasova, see ibid., ll. 34-35. For the resolution announcing the composition of the commission, see ibid., ll. 36-37. [66]See Document 5. F. 495, op. 18, d. 1147a, ll. 1-3. [67]Kharbinites refers to people who lived in the Manchurian city of Kharbin (Harbin) which was returned to the USSR as part of the Soviet government's sale of the Northern Chinese Railroad in 1935. [68]For this decision, see Getty, The Road to Terror, document 184. |
|
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS |