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Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"

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1938 trial during the Soviet Great Purge

The Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" (or "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites") (Russian: Процесс антисоветского «право-троцкистского блока»), also known as the Trial of the Twenty-One, was the last of the three public Moscow trials charging prominent Bolsheviks with espionage and treason. The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of the Soviet Great Purge. The accused were tortured to extract confessions and publicly admitted their guilt during the show trial. Most of the accused, including Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Genrikh Yagoda, were convicted to death. All charges are considered fabricated except those of Valerian Kuybyshev, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and Maxim Gorky who might indeed have been poisoned by NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda with the assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" Pletnyov and Lev Levin, but they did it on the orders from Stalin himself.

The bloc of oppositions

There was indeed a secret bloc of oppositions against Stalin. Trotskyists and rightist communists were its main members. It originated because the various open opposition groups that had tried to oppose Stalin in the Communist Party had failed, and their former members barely had any power. The former leader of the Left Opposition Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev held low ranks in the party, and the rights were sidelined. Some bolsheviks then decided to form underground opposition groups against Stalin and the party leadership. The bloc formed in late 1932, and was a loose alliance between many of them. Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev were some of its members. This bloc, according to some historians, helped organize the Ryutin affair, where a manifesto was passed among many party members that declared Stalin "must be removed by force" and for the immediate "liquidation of the dictatorship of Stalin and his clique".

Pierre Broué and a number of historians concluded the bloc and the opposition ceased to exist by early 1933, because many of its leaders were arrested. However, some documents found after Broué's search showed that the Underground Opposition stayed active even in prison, in fact, the prisons became the centers of activities of the trotskyists.

The charges

The third trial, in March 1938, known as The Trial of the Twenty-One, is the last of the Soviet Union trials. It included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites":

  1. Nikolai Bukharin – Marxist theoretician, former head of the Communist International and member of the Politburo
  2. Alexei Rykov – former premier and member of the Politburo
  3. Nikolai Krestinsky – former member of the Politburo and ambassador to Germany
  4. Christian Rakovsky – former ambassador to Great Britain and France
  5. Genrikh Yagoda – former head of the NKVD
  6. Arkady Rosengoltz – former People's Commissar for Foreign Trade
  7. Vladimir Ivanov – former People's Commissar for the Timber Industry
  8. Mikhail Chernov – former People's Commissar for Agriculture
  9. Grigori Grinko – former People's Commissar for Finance
  10. Isaak Zelensky – former Secretary of the Central Committee
  11. Sergei Bessonov
  12. Akmal Ikramov – Uzbek leader
  13. Faizulla Khodjayev – Uzbek leader
  14. Vasily Sharangovich – former first secretary in Byelorussia
  15. Prokopy Zubarev
  16. Pavel Bulanov – NKVD officer
  17. Lev Levin – Kremlin doctor
  18. Dmitry Pletnyov – Kremlin doctor
  19. Ignaty Kazakov [ru] – Kremlin doctor
  20. Venyamin Maximov-Dikovsky [ru]
  21. Pyotr Kryuchkov – secretary of Maxim Gorky

They were all proclaimed members of the Right-Trotskyist bloc that supposedly intended to overthrow socialism and restore capitalism in Russia, among other things.

Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it was alleged that Bukharin and others committed the following crimes:

All of the defendants confessed to these charges during the show trial with a few notable, but limited, exceptions. The charges have been characterized as "fantastic". The defendants supposedly organized explosions in mines, hoping to kill as many miners as possible, as well as railway accidents. The most nightmarish confessions were made by Zelensky: working in the trade sector he supposedly wanted to organize famine and "confessed" that in order to harm Soviet people his organization put glass and nails in the butter to cut the consumers' throat and stomach

The trial

The preparation for this trial was delayed in its early stages due to the reluctance of some party members to denounce their comrades. Stalin personally intervened to speed up the process and replaced Yagoda with Nikolai Yezhov. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn claimed that Stalin also observed some of the trial in person from a hidden chamber in the courtroom.

Only one defendant, Nikolai Krestinsky, initially refused to admit his guilt. He changed his position within a day, however, telling Public Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky: "I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally, and that I admit my complete responsibility for the treason and treachery I have committed."

Bukharin's confession was limited in a different fashion. Observers have speculated that Bukharin had reached some sort of agreement with the prosecution: while he admitted guilt to general charges, he undercut that by denying any knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Bukharin typically would admit only what was in his written confessions and refused to go any further; at one point in the trial, when Vyshinsky asked him about a conspiracy to weaken Soviet military power, Bukharin responded "it was not discussed, at least in my presence", at which point Vyshinsky dropped the question and moved to another topic.

There is other evidence that Bukharin had reached an agreement to trade his confession for personal concessions of some sort. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov claim that Bukharin was never tortured. Bukharin had been allowed to write four book-length manuscripts, including an autobiographical novel, How It All Began, a philosophical treatise, and a collection of poems – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s – while in prison. Bukharin also wrote a series of very emotional letters to Stalin protesting his innocence and professing his love for Stalin, which contrasts with his critical opinion of Stalin and his policies expressed to others and his conduct in the trial.

Yet Bukharin appears to have strayed from that agreement at trial. While he had accepted responsibility "even for those crimes about which I did not know or about which I did not have the slightest idea" on the theory that he was the head of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", he testified that the Bloc did not exist and its members had never met.

The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions and subtle criticisms of the trial. After disproving several charges against him (one observer noted that he proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case) and saying that "the confession of accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in the trial that was solely based on confessions, he finished his last plea with "the monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all."

Other defendants apparently still hoped for clemency. Yagoda, who had overseen the interrogations that led to the previous show trials, made a plea for mercy directly to Stalin, who may, according to Solzhenitsyn, have been observing the proceedings:

Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: "I appeal to you! For you I built two great canals!" And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen.

In his final word, Vyshinsky said: "All our country, from small one to old one, awaits and demands one thing: traitors and spies who sold to the enemy our homeland to be shot like mad dogs. Our people demands one thing: crush the accursed vermin!"

Verdict

All but three were found guilty "of having committed extremely grave state offenses covered by ... the Criminal Code ... sentenced to the supreme penalty—to be shot." Pletnyov was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Rakovsky to 20 years, and Bessonov to 15 years. Vasily Blokhin, the chief executioner of the NKVD, conducted all of the executions personally.

Reactions to the trial

Even sympathetic observers who had stomached the earlier trials found it hard to swallow new charges as they became ever more absurd and the purge by now expanded to include virtually every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin. For some prominent former communists, such as Bertram Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, Arthur Koestler, and Heinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism and turned the first three into ardent anti-communists.

Bukharin's testimony became the subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon and a philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror, among others. Koestler and others viewed Bukharin's testimony as a true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving a small amount of personal honor) whereas Bukharin biographer Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces of Aesopian language, with which Bukharin sought to turn the table into trial of Stalinism, while keeping his part of bargain to save his family. Bukharin himself speaks of his "peculiar duality of mind" in his last plea, which led to "semi-paralysis of the will" and Hegelian "unhappy consciousness", which presumably stemmed from the conflict between his knowledge of the reality of Stalinist rule and the threat of fascism, which led Bukharin and others to follow Stalin, who had become the personification of the Party.

Others were not so critical of the trial. Ambassador Joseph Davies, author of Mission to Moscow, wrote that "It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that the accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty". Beatrice Webb, the British Fabian, stated that she was happy that Stalin had "cut out the dead wood". Bertolt Brecht, whose lover Carola Neher had disappeared after her return to the Soviet Union, reportedly said "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die".

References in literature

Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon (1944) gives a haunting, if at least partly fictitious, portrayal of the atmosphere surrounding this trial. It tells of an old Bolshevik's last weeks trying to come to terms with the unintended results of the revolution he helped create. As a former member of the Communist party, Koestler rises above the dichotomy of much of the Cold War, showing a deep understanding for the origins of the Soviet Revolution, while at the same time severely criticizing its results.

Eastern Approaches

Fitzroy Maclean's autobiography Eastern Approaches has a chapter devoted to this trial, which he witnessed while working in Moscow for the British Foreign Office. He goes into great detail describing a number of the exchanges between the accused and the prosecutor. He also gives the history behind several of the people on trial, their service to the party and their positions before being tried.

A Russian Adventure

Halldór Laxness, the Icelandic author, was present at the trial and described it in detail in his travelogue from USSR in 1937–38, Gerska æfintýrið (The Russian Adventure), published in Iceland in 1938 and in a Danish translation in 1939. He seems to have believed in the guilt of the accused, but adds that it did not matter anyway: sacrifices have to be made to the cause of the revolution. In his 1963 memoirs, Skáldatími (A Poet's Time), Laxness returned to the trial, giving a totally different description of it, now much more sympathetic to Bukharin and his fellow defendants.

References

  1. Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, The Corporation. Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin, ISBN 1-59403-246-7, Encounter Books; 25 February 2009, description, pages 442-443.
  2. ^ "Pierre Broué: The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  3. Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin, Vol. II: Waiting for Hitler.
  4. "From Unity to Uniformity – IAGODA'S RISE – Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him – Donald Rayfield". publicism.info. Retrieved 2022-06-23.
  5. "[Dossier] The Soviet Left Opposition and the Discovery of the Verkhneuralsk Prison Booklets". Left Voice. January 1917. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  6. Тайная история сталинского времени By Александр Орлов
  7. "Бухаринско-троцкистский процесс".
  8. Судебный отчет по делу антисоветского право-троцкистского блока
  9. ^ See Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago Vol I-II, Harper & Row, 1973, ISBN 0-06-013914-5
  10. ^ Gudrun Person, "And They All Confessed" http://art-bin.com/art/amosc_preeng.html
  11. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Page 352
  12. New Internationalist, "The Trial of the 21" https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/misc-1/trialof21.htm
  13. ^ Gregory, Paul R. (2 July 2010). "Martyred for Communism". Hoover Institute. Hoover Digest. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  14. Report by Viscount Chilston (British ambassador) to Viscount Halifax, No.141, Moscow, March 21, 1938
  15. Robert Tucker, "Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Block of Rights and Trotskyites", Pg.667-8
  16. Bertram David Wolfe, Breaking with Communism, p. 10; Arthur Koestler, Darkness of Noon, p.258
  17. Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. Garden City: Garden City Press, 1941.
  18. Snyder (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books. p. 74. ISBN 9780465002399.

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