This article was first published in 1998 in V. Tretyakov's Nezavisimaya Gazeta, causing a storm of anger among our democrats at the time. Almost all central newspapers demanded the blood of the author, and even Tretyakov himself branded him in print as a saboteur who secretly penetrated into a respectable newspaper ... Since then, a lot of tribune water has flowed under the bridge, and disputes about Bukharin's guilt, within the framework of the general discussion about Stalin and the USSR, have not subsided. But the arguments in them are most often from the field of general judgments, therefore I consider it useful to repeat this article, which addresses the very texture of the unforgettable Bukharin trial.
Poet Sergei Alikhanov released a rather unexpected book. A thick, almost 700 pages, folio under the stingy title "Court Report" contained a transcript of the 1938 trial of the Bukharin-Trotskyist bloc.
The history of this publication is slightly reminiscent of a detective story. The Bukharin process was open, including to the Western press; some of his materials were published in ours. But the case is so voluminous and complex (there are 21 people accused of it) that until now it is a white spot for the general public. Although the hypothesis that the trial was fabricated, and the Yakovlev commission of all those convicted in it, with the exception of Yagoda, was acquitted back in 1989, it received the most circulation. But on the basis of what - this again, no one knew.
And in 1938, after the end of the trial with the sentence of 18 central "co-trial" to death, his transcript was duplicated and sent to the country's NKVD departments for review. However, then our secretomaniacs issued a circular: return all numbered copies to the center, and remote points destroy.
But there was a brave man who kept his copy - and already in his old age he told his grandson about his act. Say, foreseeing that our history will deceive everything over time, he decided to save the whole truth for posterity. And he bequeathed: if there is a chance, to publish this extremely frank document of the era, which the grandson did in our time. But trusting Alikhanov with this edition, the costs of which he took upon himself, he asked to keep quiet about it until the edition was published. As a result of all these precautions, the book came out under such a name that does not say too much - so as not to light up in advance where it is not necessary.
Now about herself. Already its voluminousness and stenographic accuracy, which has preserved even the manners of speech of the participants in the process, give the reader the opportunity to feel its true atmosphere. And, comparing the masses of evidence, arguments, try, taking the place of an impartial judge, to decide what is true and what is not.
The chairman of the trial is the chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, military lawyer Ulrich. The state prosecutor is the USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky. Among the defendants are top state and party leaders: Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, Ikramov and others. They are accused of “constituting a conspiratorial group called the ‘right-wing Trotskyist bloc’, which set as its goal espionage, sabotage, sabotage, undermining the military power of the USSR and separating Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan from it and overthrowing the existing state system ... » That is, almost literally in what happened 55 years later - and this, of course, arouses the most keen interest in the book.
In addition, doctors Levin, Kazakov and others, tied to the bloc through Yagoda, are charged with bringing to death Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov. In addition, the head of the OGPU-NKVD, Yagoda, attempted to poison his successor Yezhov with mercury vapor and organized the assassination of Kirov.
Although Ulrich formally heads the process, in fact the entire judicial investigation is conducted, and very thoroughly, by Vyshinsky alone. A man of colossal pressure, a brutal memory, not missing a trifle from the darkness of details on each of the accused, an outstanding polemicist in his own way. The latter is best seen from his constant skirmishes with his main and, perhaps, the only enemy trying to fight back - Bukharin.
VYSHINSKY: I'm not asking about the conversation in general, but about this conversation.
BUKHARIN: In Hegel's "Logic" the word "this" is considered the most difficult...
VYSHINSKY: I ask the court to explain to the accused Bukharin that he is not a philosopher here, but a criminal, and it is useful for him to refrain from talking about Hegelian philosophy, this will be better, first of all, for Hegelian philosophy ...
BUKHARIN: He said "should", but the meaning of these words is not "solden", but "mussen".
VYSHINSKY: Leave your philosophy behind. Must in Russian - it means must.
BUKHARIN: "Must" has two meanings in Russian.
VYSHINSKY: And here we want to have one meaning.
BUKHARIN: You like it that way, but I have the right to disagree with that...
VYSHINSKY: You are accustomed to negotiating with the Germans in their language, and here we speak Russian…”
And Vyshinsky, with his "proletarian directness", although by no means simple, in these duels, sometimes for entire pages, now and then takes the upper hand, not allowing the enemy to transfer the game into the field of his favorite sophistry. This style of his is well illustrated by Bukharin's former comrade-in-arms Yakovleva, a witness to the plan for Lenin's arrest in 1918: “He spoke about this in passing, enveloping it with a number of confusing and unnecessary theoretical arguments, as he generally likes to do; he, like in a cocoon, wrapped this thought in the sum of lengthy reasoning.
Of course, behind Vyshinsky's back is the full power of the punitive machine. But with her, Bukharin does not enter into a duel, realizing that "I may not be alive, and even almost sure of it." His whole line at the trial, in some places rising to the most dramatic pathos, has one amazing goal: to morally justify himself for the “things” he admits to himself, for which “you can shoot ten times.” This duality of position - yes, he is terribly sinful, but let me show you the whole height of the delusions that have thrown him into a criminal maelstrom - and does not give him victory over the destructive interpretation of his personality by Vyshinsky:
“Bukharin organizes sabotage, sabotage, espionage, but he has a humble, quiet, almost holy look, and the humble words of Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky “Holy work, brothers!” Are heard. from the lips of Nikolai Ivanovich. This is the height of monstrous hypocrisy, treachery, Jesuitism and inhuman meanness.”
There are no words, the cruel leaven of time is here, as in another catchphrase Vyshinsky, born on the same trial: "Crush the damned reptile!" - very permeable. But the picture of the crime, which for ten days, from a lot of confessions, denials and cross-examinations, is dragged out by the iron prosecutor, is terrible.
“BUKHARIN: I answer as one of the leaders, and not as a switchman of a counter-revolutionary organization. VYSHINSKY: What goals did this organization pursue? BUKHARIN: Its main goal was the restoration of capitalist relations in the USSR. VYSHINSKY: With help? BUKHARIN: In particular, with the help of the war, which was prognostic in perspective. VYSHINSKY: On conditions? BUKHARIN: If you put all the dots over the "i", on the terms of the dismemberment of the USSR.
Bukharin explains the ideological origins of the conspiracy to overthrow the Stalinist leadership as follows:
“In 1928, I myself gave a formula regarding the military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry ... We began to shrug our shoulders, with irony, and then with bitterness, look at our huge, gigantically growing factories, as if they were some kind of voracious monsters that take away the means of consumption from the masses..."
And already in the early 1930s, a “contact block” was formed, controlled by Bukharin, Pyatakov, Radek, Rykov and Tomsky, and from abroad by Trotsky. The coup was first conceived on the wave of mass protests within the country. But when the hope for them did not come true, the emphasis shifted to "opening the borders" for foreign interventionists, who, for helping them, would put the leaders of the bloc in power in the Kremlin. Trotsky and Karakhan, a Soviet diplomat, a participant in the conspiracy, negotiated this with Nazi Germany:
Bukharin: In the summer of 1934, Radek told me that Trotsky had promised the Germans a whole series of territorial concessions, including the Ukraine. If my memory serves me right, there were also territorial concessions to Japan…”
The military group of Tukhachevsky was supposed to open the front:
“KRESTINSKY: In one of the conversations, he (Tukhachevsky. - A.R.) named several people on whom he relies: Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman. Then he raised the question of accelerating the coup ... The coup was timed to coincide with the German attack on the Soviet Union ... "
But since the conspirators saw the growth of patriotic sentiments in the country, they were preparing another such Jesuit move. Transfer the blame for the intervention to the current government and “bring to justice the perpetrators of the defeat at the front. This will give us the opportunity to captivate the masses, playing with patriotic slogans.”
However, the intervention expected by the Bukharinites in the thirty-seventh did not happen, and then the last bet remained - on a "palace coup":
“BUKHARIN: The strength of the conspiracy is the forces of Yenukidze plus Yagoda, their organization in the Kremlin and the NKVD, and Yenukidze managed to recruit the former commandant of the Kremlin Peterson ...
ROSENGOLTS: Tukhachevsky indicated a deadline, believing that before May 15 (1937 - A.R.) he would be able to carry out this coup ... One of the options is the opportunity for a group of military men to gather in his apartment, penetrate the Kremlin, seize the Kremlin telephone exchange and kill the leaders..."
In fulfillment of the main task of seizing power, the bloc carried out extensive work both within the USSR and abroad. Relations were established with the intelligence services of Germany, France, Japan, Poland, which supplied the foreign, Trotskyist part of the bloc with money:
“KRESTINSKY (diplomat, then Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. - A.R.): Trotsky suggested that I suggest Seeckt (General of the Reichswehr - A.R.) that he provide Trotsky with a systematic monetary subsidy ... If Seekt asks for the provision of services to him in area of espionage activities, then it is necessary and possible to go for it. I put the question before Seeckt, called the amount of 250 thousand marks in gold a year. Sect has agreed…”
But besides that, Trotsky also had a fair amount of replenishment from the USSR:
“ROZENGOLTS: I was People’s Commissar for Foreign Trade, and with my sanction, 15 thousand pounds were transferred to Trotsky, then 10 thousand pounds ... According to Exportles since 1933, 300 thousand dollars ... GRINKO (Narkomfin - A.R.): I helped Krestinsky use foreign exchange funds that accumulated on exchange rate differences abroad and which he needed to finance the Trotskyists ... The Bukharin formula was given - to hit the Soviet government with the Soviet ruble. The work tended to undermine financial discipline and to the possibility of using state funds for the purposes of a conspiracy ... Zelensky (Chairman of the Centrosoyuz. - A.R.), on the instructions of the "Right-Trotskyite bloc", imported a large mass of goods to non-inhabited areas, and sent less goods to high-yielding areas, which created overstocking in some areas and a need for commodities in others.
The secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Sharangovich, the leaders of Uzbekistan Ikramov and Khodzhaev are abundantly recognized in the same actions to arouse the discontent of the masses and in preparation for secession from the USSR. The vocabulary of the latter is quite remarkable:
“KHODZHAEV: Although it seemed to me that I had outlived nationalism, this was not enough ... VYSHINSKY: So, did you maneuver? KHODZHAEV: I maneuvered, double-dealed... After that, we filed a statement that we were wrong, we acted incorrectly, that we agreed to follow the party line. VYSHINSKY: Did you maneuver a second time? KHODZHAEV: The second time I double-dealed ... "
Then the organizer ominously adjoins all this. political assassinations Yagoda is the exact opposite of the ideological leader Bukharin. It is felt that Bukharin was pushed into the hell of betrayal most of all by political ambitions: to prove to the dead Lenin and the living Stalin that his, Bukharin's, line of the country's development was more correct and fruitful. Hence his preoccupation not only with the seizure of power itself, but with everything that follows:
“GRINKO: He pointed out that, since politics prevails in this case, sabotage should be allowed; on the other hand, the establishment of broad economic ties with the capitalist world will make it possible to make up for the losses that will be.
But on the way to an ambitious goal, as Bukharin completely capitulates in his last word, “the bare logic of struggle was accompanied by a rebirth of ideas, a rebirth of ourselves, which led us to a camp very close in its attitudes to kulak praetorian fascism.”
Quite different moved Yagoda. Although he says “not to mitigate his guilt, but only in the interests of establishing the truth that the attempts of some of the accused to present me as a professional terrorist are wrong” and “that none of these (terrorist - A.R.) acts committed by me without a directive from the “center-right bloc”,” it is difficult to believe him. The very first murder imputed to him - Gorky's son Max in 1934 - generally had, as he confesses elsewhere, a purely personal motive. Namely: a love affair with the wife of the murdered.
Further. The assassination of his boss Menzhinsky, which he then organized in order to head the OGPU after him, was allegedly ordered by Yenukidze, who was already deceased by the time of the trial. But none of the “co-processors” confirms this. Rather, it seems that Yagoda was driven by a purely selfish interest to kill the boss, who was already breathing heavily from illness: to grab the chair promised to him, until the whirlpool of events gave birth to another applicant.
In the murder of Kirov in the same 1934, Yagoda only admits to being an accomplice:
“Yenukidze insisted that I should not obstruct this... Zaporozhets (Leningrad Chekist - A.R.) informed me that Nikolaev was detained by the NKVD, who had a revolver and Kirov's route, Nikolaev was (by order of Yagoda - A.R.) R.) released. After that, Kirov was killed by this Nikolaev.
The motives for this murder are unclear from the process, but Gorky is talked about a lot and in detail. The Bukharinites feared that the world authority of Gorky, who stood a mountain behind Stalin, would interfere with them after " palace coup» put on the togas of the deliverers of the fatherland. The old man will still begin to trumpet God knows what to the whole world - and thereby spoil their victorious mass.
With the motive according to Yezhov, it is also clear. In 1936, he oversaw the investigation on Kirov from the Central Committee, was close to the truth, and then completely took over the post of Yagoda. And he, freeing the office, ordered his secretary Bulanov to sprinkle a solution of mercury there:
BULANOV: I prepared large vials of this solution and handed them over to Savolainen. He sprayed it from a spray bottle. I remember it was a big metal balloon with a big pear. He was in Yagoda's dressing room, a foreign atomizer.
Pictures equal in strength to Shakespeare's Macbeth appear from descriptions of how Yagoda drew doctors into his intent:
"VYSHINSKY: Yagoda puts forward a cunning idea: to achieve death, as he says, from an illness ... To slip some kind of infection into a weakened body ... to help not the sick, but the infections, and thus bring the patient to the grave."
And so, playing devils skillfully and in a variety of ways on foul human strings, Yagoda turns the Kremlin Sanupr into a kind of squad of "murderers with a guarantee of non-exposure":
“LEVIN: He gave me a very valuable gift: he gave me a dacha near Moscow ... He let me know at the customs that I could be let through from abroad without inspection. I brought things to my wife, to the wives of my sons ... He told me: Max is not only a worthless person, but also has an impact on his father bad influence. He went on to say: Do you know the head of which institution is talking to you? I am responsible for the life and work of Aleksey Maksimovich, and therefore, since it is necessary to eliminate his son, you must not stop before this sacrifice ... You cannot tell anyone about this. Nobody will believe you. Not to you, but to me they will believe.
And at first smeared with insidious gifts, and then frightened to death, Dr. Levin has a hand in the death of Max and Menzhinsky. But after that, his soul is not released for repentance, but is drawn even deeper, as he says, “into the satanic dance”:
“LEVIN: Yagoda said: “Well, now you have committed these crimes, you are entirely in my hands and must go to a much more serious and important one (the murder of Gorky. - A.R.) ... And you will reap the fruits when the new government comes ... »
And doctors Levin and Pletnev, under the guise of Gorky's secretary Kryuchkov, prescribe a deliberately vicious treatment to the classic, which brings him to the grave. Another luminary, Dr. Kazakov, rests on pride, which does not leave him even in court:
“KAZAKOV: I still have to say that at the congresses they didn’t even give me a final word ... I final word not given, for the first time in the history of medicine!.. You ask why I did not report this (assistance to Levin in the murder of Menzhinsky - A.R.) to the Soviet authorities? I must say - the motives of base fear. And the second point: in the medical unit there were most of the doctors - my scientific opponents. I thought maybe the moment will come when Yagoda will be able to stop them.
VYSHINSKY: As a reward for your crime?
Kazakov: Yes...
VYSHINSKY: Did the Soviet state give you an institute?
KAZAKOV: But to print my works….
VYSHINSKY: The government cannot order your works to be printed. And I ask you, was the institute given?
Kazakov: There was.
VYSHINSKY: The best in the Union?
KAZAKOV: The best…”
To Kryuchkov, Yagoda, who knows the ins and outs of each, selects the following key:
KRYUCHKOV: I wasted Gorky's money, using his full confidence. And this made me dependent on Yagoda ... Yagoda said that Alexei Maksimovich might soon die, and his son Max would remain the manager of the literary heritage. You are accustomed, Yagoda said, to live well, but you will remain in the house as a hanger-on.
And Kryuchkov, unable to withstand the insidious pressure, first contributes to sending Max to the other world, then his father. At the same time, the extraordinary magnitude of villainy promises him an extraordinary dividend:
"KRYUCHKOV: I will remain a person to whom Gorky's great literary legacy can pass, which will give me funds and an independent position in the future ... "
It seems that through these murders, Yagoda wanted, in addition to everything, to get himself some special capital and weight among the conspirators, aiming in the future for the main post in the country:
“BULANOV: He was fond of Hitler, he said that his book “My Struggle” was really worthwhile ... He emphasized that Hitler had made it from non-commissioned officers to such people ... He said that Bukharin would be no worse than Goebbels ... He, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, with such a secretary like Goebbels, and with the Central Committee completely obedient to him, he will govern as he wants.
In any case, it seems that Yagoda managed to really achieve one thing. The conspirators indicate every now and then that they traveled abroad, where they contacted agents of foreign intelligence services for treatment. Although our medicine, with a lot of glorious names from pre-revolutionary times, was no worse than Western. But it is felt that, knowing about the tricks of the real owner of the Kremlin Sanupr, the patients assigned to him were simply terribly afraid to go there.
The same apprehension was caused by the conspirators and their second security official - Tukhachevsky:
"BUKHARIN: Since we are talking about a military coup, then the specific gravity of the military group will be unusually large, and hence a kind of Bonapartist danger may arise. And the Bonapartists, I, in particular, had in mind Tukhachevsky, will first of all deal with their allies ... I always called Tukhachevsky a “potential Napoleonchik” in conversations, and it is known how Napoleon dealt with the so-called ideologists.
Now, finally, the main thing: how much can you trust the confessions of the participants in the process? For there is a version that they were simply tortured in dungeons to indiscriminate self-incrimination. But the transcript hardly leaves the possibility that two dozen people, meticulously interrogated by Vyshinsky, took upon themselves a slander composed by someone.
Firstly, in order to compose and link such a darkness of factual, psychological, lexical details, a whole team of Shakespeare's geopolitics would be needed. The preliminary investigation was led by Sheinin, later known for his "Notes of the Investigator". But in those of his “Notes”, dedicated to every kind of everyday life, there was not even a tenth of the depth and drama of the collisions that surfaced at the trial, which, most likely, only life itself could create.
But even if we allow a performance written by someone's hand, it still had to be brilliantly played in front of Western audiences by those whose reward for success was quite clear in terms of the fate a little earlier than the condemned Tukhachevsky group. And the conspirators are revolutionaries, hardened by the tsarist prisons, to break them - more than once to spit. And from their activity, their struggle for every fact in court, the lengthy arguments that Bukharin turns into whole lectures, it is not clear that they are ironed to complete self-forgetfulness.
“BUKHARIN: I accidentally got a book by Feuchtwanger from the prison library... It made a great impression on me... PLETNEV: More than 20 books in four languages were delivered to me from my library. I managed to write a monograph in prison ... "
So Pletnev, in his last word, wants to show that he has already begun to atone for his guilt by serving his native science. But both remarks are touches on how the “co-processors” were kept in captivity. And why they admitted a lot, although by no means everything, of which they were accused, one of them explained this:
“BULANOV: ... They are not shy here, in the dock, to drown their own accomplice, to sell them with giblets and legs, in order to wriggle out of themselves for at least one thousandth of a second ...”
And, of course, it is difficult not to correlate the confessions of the Bukharinites in their preparation to "open the front" with what actually happened in 1941, when the Germans, the main allies and recipients of the traitors' secret information, broke into the USSR without hindrance.
It is difficult not to draw a parallel with recent history when the collapse of the USSR occurred exactly as Bukharin and Trotsky thought. But in the late 30s, an attempt to dismember the country was brutally suppressed. In the late 80s and early 90s, that state cruelty did not smell even close. And yet, all the terrible cruelty, as if inscrutable, contrary to all slogans, one more humane than the other, poured out. Only in the first place on those for whom everything was supposedly done: millions of refugees, hungry, homeless, killed in interethnic brawls, and so on.
That is, Stalinist cruelty, frank, under the slogan "Crush the vermin!" - or liberal hypocritical cruelty - but cruelty as a result is all the same.
And still involuntarily arising after reading of all effect. Already knowing after the fact how many millions of lives the treacherous “opening of the front” cost, I want, against everything hardened, to mentally reproach Stalin not for excess in the fight against adversaries ready for anything for power, but for inflexibility!
It is this impression, apparently, that made this process, which has not been declassified officially to this day, even more closed just in the era of democracy and glasnost. But how, without having sorted out your past reliably, can you build your future reliably?
P.S. A few years after the first publication of this article, the historical work by Grover Furr (USA) and Vladimir Bobrov (Russia) “The First Confessions of N. I. Bukharin at the Lubyanka” was published, where my hypothesis was already scientifically confirmed.
Alexander Roslyakov
Case No. 18856: the defendant, Bukharin's first wife, pleaded neither his guilt nor her own. She suffered from a severe spinal disorder. Because of this, she wore a special plaster corset. She hardly left the house. She worked lying down, at a special table attached to the bed. It was probably at this table that she wrote those three letters to Stalin.
Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina was born in 1887. She became Bukharin's wife in 1911. Together they stayed for more than ten years. “Having ceased to be Bukharin’s wife,” the investigator writes down her testimony, “I maintained friendly relations with him until the moment of his arrest and lived in the apartment he occupied.” She suffered from a severe spinal disorder. Because of this, she wore a special plaster corset. She hardly left the house. She worked lying down, at a special table attached to the bed. It was probably at this table that she wrote those three letters to Stalin.
From the interrogation protocol:
Investigator question.Did you write statements in defense of Bukharin?
Answer. Yes, I wrote three letters addressed to Stalin, in which I defended Bukharin, since I considered him innocent. I wrote my first letter during the trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev and others... I wrote that I did not doubt for a single minute that Bukharin had nothing to do with any terrorist activity. I wrote the second letter during the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1936. I wrote the third letter after Bukharin told me about the testimony of Tsetlin, Radek, I think, at the end of December 1936 or at the beginning of January 1937. In this In a letter, I, in general, repeated my doubts again ...
There is a version that, protesting against the accusations brought against Bukharin, Nadezhda Mikhailovna sent Stalin her party card. I have not found documentary evidence of this. In life, perhaps, everything was more complicated and tragic. Remaining a convinced member of the party, Nadezhda Mikhailovna could not accept the line of the Central Committee, the line of Stalin.
April 19, 1937 Nadezhda Mikhailovna writes a statement to the party organization State Institute « Soviet Encyclopedia”, where she was registered:“ Obeying the decisions of the Plenum of the Central Committee in the case of Bukharin and Rykov, I cannot hide from the party organization that it is extremely difficult for me to convince myself that Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin belonged to an open criminal bandit terrorist organization of the right or knew about its existence ... It is difficult for me to convince myself of this, because I knew Bukharin closely, had the opportunity to observe him very often and hear his, so to speak, everyday statements ... With communist greetings, N. Lukin-Bukharin.
A few days later, at the end of April, Nadezhda Mikhailovna was expelled from the party. It is said that every day she waited for the arrest. However, she has not been touched for a whole year. I read in the newspapers the materials of the trial of Bukharin, he was accused of being a traitor, going to overthrow the Soviet power, dismember the country, give Ukraine, Primorye, Belarus to the capitalists. I read the verdict of the military board, the editorial in Pravda: "The pack of fascist dogs has been destroyed." Stormy rejoicing on this occasion of the Soviet people. She has read all of this. Nadezhda Mikhailovna was arrested only on the night of May 1, 1938, just before the holiday.
From the story of Wilhelmina Germanovna Slavutskaya, a former employee of the Comintern:
“…I can’t name the exact time. Time was lost in the cell, you don’t know what month it is, what day it is. I only remember: the door opens, and two escorts drag a woman in. She could not move on her own. They threw her on the floor and left. We ran up to her. We see: eyes full of horror, despair, and she shouts to us: "They broke my corset." I didn’t understand, I asked: “What corset?” “Plaster,” he screams, “I can’t move without it.” We soon learned that the woman's name was Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina-Bukharina. On the same day, she went on a hunger strike. She was force-fed. They came twice a day, twisted their hands, inserted them into their nostrils through a hose and fed them. She struggled, struggled, it was impossible to look... Ten days later she was dragged out of the cell. We tried to find out what happened to her, where she was, but we didn’t find out anything ... I saw a lot in those years, but Nadezhda Mikhailovna is my particular pain ...
Here is the thing. The cover number is 18856.
The condition in which Nadezhda Mikhailovna was taken away is evidenced by a pencil mark on the “Arrested Questionnaire”: “Cannot fill it out.” Later, on November 30, the investigator in charge of the Lukina-Bukharina case, senior assistant to the head of the department of the Main Directorate of State Security, Lieutenant of State Security Shcherbakov, justifying himself to his superiors that he did not fit into the time allotted to him, reported: N.M. Lukina-Bukharina, who is being held in Butyrskaya prison, “was ill after her arrest, and it was absolutely impossible to summon her for interrogation on the basis of a doctor’s opinion.” However, order is order, and the ill Nadezhda Mikhailovna is brought for signature by Shcherbakov's decree on the choice of a measure of restraint and the indictment: “It is enough to expose that ...” She refused to sign this decree.
Judging by the documents, her first interrogation took place only seven months after her arrest, on November 26, 1938.
By that time, in the case of N.M. Lukina-Bukharina has already collected 63 sheets of evidence incriminating her.
The first among those 63 sheets, filed in strictly chronological order, as required by the instructions printed on the cover, are the handwritten testimony of Nadezhda Mikhailovna's younger brother, Mikhail Mikhailovich Lukin. He was interrogated on April 2 and 23, 1938 (Nadezhda Mikhailovna was still at large) and on May 15, 1938 (she was already in Butyrskaya prison). MM. Lukin confessed to the investigator that he learned about the assassination attempt on Stalin being prepared by Bukharin from his older sister Nadezhda Mikhailovna, he had a conversation with her about this assassination attempt, and subsequently told her that, being a military doctor, he, M.M. Lukin, “is conducting subversive work on the sanitary service of the Red Army, aimed at disrupting its readiness for war time". He repeatedly "received instructions about this "subversive, treacherous work" from Bukharin himself."
From the story of V.G. Slavutskaya:
“…How could a brother testify against his sister?” I will tell you. A German woman was sitting with me in the cell, I used to work with her in the Comintern. Almost every night she was taken out for interrogation. One morning she returned to her cell, sat down next to me, gave the name of one of our Comintern workers, and said: “You know, I would have strangled him with my own hands. They read his testimony to me, you have no idea what he said!” But some time passes, they bring her back after a night of interrogation, and I see that there is no face on her. “How could I! she says. How could I! Today I had a confrontation with him, and I saw not a person, but living raw meat ”... I’ll tell you: then any brother could give the most terrible, most monstrous testimonies against his beloved sister.
To try to understand what these people were experiencing then, one must read all their testimonies. In detail, word by word, without missing anything. No, we will not offend their memory with this. His deafness, bashful silence about what was - it was after all! - a relieved explanation of what happened, a readiness not to seek an answer to the end, to stop halfway - one can insult their memory. But recognition and compassion - no, you can't. Means of pain relief, facilitating the study of our national history, do not exist and cannot exist.
... On November 26, 1938, Nadezhda Mikhailovna was finally taken out for the first interrogation. How she moved without a corset, how they dragged her to the investigator's office is unknown. They say that she was carried on a stretcher for interrogations.
Judging by the documents, the first interrogation began at one in the afternoon.
The investigator is primarily interested in what reasons forced her to write statements in defense of Bukharin.
“I strongly doubted Bukharin's guilt,” she replies.
- But didn't Bukharin tell you about the interrogations in the NKVD, which he was subjected to even before his arrest? the investigator asks.
- Yes, - she answers, - Bukharin told me that during interrogations in the NKVD he was charged with organizing terrorist activities, that he was given a confrontation with Pyatakov, Sosnovsky, Radek, Astrov, and written testimony of a large number of people was presented …
- And, nevertheless, you stated that you do not believe in the guilt of Bukharin?
“Yes, it is,” she replies. - I strongly doubted Bukharin's guilt.
What did you do to dispel your doubts? the investigator asks.
“I could not take any measures to dispel my doubts,” she answers, “because the investigation was conducted behind the scenes.
The protocol was made in a clear calligraphic handwriting of the investigator Shcherbakov. Some phrases, however, are corrected by her own hand. So, before putting her signature, she carefully rereads the protocol.
Investigator. You pointed out that you had friendly relations with Bukharin right up to his arrest. Specify on what basis these relations have been preserved for you?
Answer.I knew Bukharin since childhood. Later, in her youth, having joined the RSDLP, she shared political convictions with Bukharin and worked with him in the same party. AT recent times was convinced that he had abandoned his theoretical and tactical errors.
“You are not telling the truth,” the investigator explodes. - You are an accomplice of Bukharin in his atrocities against the Soviet people. Do you want to hide it from the investigation? If you can't do it, we'll expose you. We suggest not to evade truthful testimony, but to tell the whole truth to the end.
“I’m telling the truth…” she replies.
The protocol ends with the entry: "The interrogation is interrupted on November 26 at 6 o'clock." It went on for about five hours.
For almost two months, she was not taken out again for interrogations. She was brought to investigator Shcherbakov already on the night of January 21-22, 1939. “The interrogation began at 24:00,” the protocol says.
We are talking again about the investigation that was carried out in relation to Bukharin in 1936. At the last interrogation, she confessed that Bukharin shared with her the details of this investigation.
“So,” Shcherbakov asks, “you knew about Bukharin’s anti-Soviet activities to the extent that he testified at the preliminary investigation in the NKVD before his arrest?”
“No,” she retorts. - During the interrogations of Bukharin in the NKVD in the presence of members of the Politburo of the CPSU (b), he showed, as I heard from his words, about anti-party, and not about anti-Soviet activities ...
“You are not telling the truth,” the investigator explodes. - Didn't the rightists gather in 1928 for their underground meetings, where the question of the struggle against the Stalinist Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was discussed? How was this struggle conceived?
“This struggle was conceived, as I know from Bukharin, as winning over the majority of the Party to the side of the Rights…” she replies.
Such is the detail: following the protocol of each interrogation, a second copy of its typewritten copy is filed into the file. Where is the first copy? Has anyone been sent for information? To whom?
For six months she is not interrogated again. The third interrogation - again at night. Begins June 15, 1939 at 23:30.
Investigator.The investigation has materials that you participated in the anti-Soviet organization of the right, knew about the anti-Soviet gatherings at your ex-husband Bukharin and took part in the anti-Soviet affairs of Bukharin. Do you plead guilty to this?
Answer.No, I don't admit...
Investigator.For a long time you do not want to give frank evidence ... Your sister's husband Mertz A.A. testified: “I was a repeated participant in anti-Soviet gatherings at Bukharin’s apartment ...” Don’t you want(so in the protocol. - A. B.)accept what is proven. When will you stop denial?
Answer.Mertz shows a lie. I never knew about Mertz's anti-party and anti-Soviet views. I also did not know that Mertz was present at some anti-Soviet gatherings at Bukharin's... I categorically deny Mertz's testimony...
By this time, Mertz was no longer alive: on September 17 of the last, 1938, he was sentenced to death.
Probably, the conversation about “anti-Soviet gatherings” at Bukharin’s apartment did not give Nadezhda Mikhailovna peace of mind, and ten days later, on June 26, from her cell she passes the statement to the investigator Shcherbakov: “I ask you to add to the protocol of interrogation of June 16, 1939 ... apartment in the Kremlin, they were registered and received a pass in the pass booth at the Kremlin commandant's office ... The pass booth was serviced by employees of the OGPU, later the NKVD.
Check everything is in your hands.
August 14, 1939 Mikhail Mikhailovich Lukin, younger brother Nadezhda Mikhailovna, made an attempt to retract his previous testimony. He called them fictitious. What preceded this and what measures followed, we do not know. However, already 22 days later, on September 5, a completely trampled, broken man was again sitting in front of Shcherbakov.
Investigator.During the interrogation on August 14, you testified that you gave fictitious testimonies in relation to your sister Nadezhda, with the exception of two facts about which you intend to testify. What are these facts?
MM. Lukin named them.
Ten days later, on the night of September 14-15, he repeated his testimony. Probably, it was one of the most terrible nights in the life of Nadezhda Mikhailovna.
She was brought to Shcherbakov at 24:00. In addition to the investigator, Lieutenant of State Security Dunkov and the prosecutor were present in the office.
Shcherbakov asked:
Did Bukharin tell you about his anti-Soviet conversations with Zinoviev?
She answered:
Investigator.You are telling a lie, wanting to hide your crimes from the investigation. We will convict you with face-to-face bets.
The brother of Lukina-Bukharina N.M. is introduced. arrested Lukin M.M.
Investigator. Do you know each other and are there any personal accounts between you?
N.M. Lukin-Bukharin.I know my brother Mikhail Mikhailovich, who is sitting opposite me. I had no personal accounts with him.
MM. Lukin. I was on good terms with my sister Nadezhda.
MM. Lukin. Yes confirm.
Investigator. Describe what Sister Nadezhda told you in connection with the fact that Zinoviev spent the night at Bukharin's.
MM. Lukin. My sister Nadezhda reported that after Zinoviev's visit to Bukharin, the latter, that is, Bukharin, told my sister Nadezhda: "Better 10 times Zinoviev than 1 time Stalin." This phrase that Bukharin told her, my sister Nadezhda was afraid to say out loud, fearing that we might be overheard, and wrote this phrase to me on a piece of paper ... In 1929-30, when Bukharin was defeated by Stalin, who opposed Bukharin's platform, Rykov and, in my opinion, Yefim Tsetlin came to Bukharin. They were talking in a separate room, and Sister Nadezhda went there. She told me then that the coup had taken place. She conveyed this using the French word that I cited in my testimony ... In the family circle, my sister Nadezhda spoke inappropriately about Molotov, calling him by a nickname that Bukharin invented ...
And again I ask myself: stop? lay down your pen? close the folder with the case? To bring flowers to the foot of the memorial to the victims of Stalinist repressions, to know that they are victims, and not to know anything else about them? The dead have no shame. Tortured - they do not have all the more. Eternal memory to them! No, you need to know everything. The full extent of their pain. All stages of their humiliation. All their attempts to save their human face. And all the failures of these attempts.
The investigator asked Nadezhda Mikhailovna:
- Do you confirm the testimony of your brother Lukin Mikhail Mikhailovich?
“No, I don’t,” she replied.
What questions do you have for your brother Mikhail? - he asked.
“I have no questions for Lukin Mikhail,” she replied.
The confrontation ended at 3:30 am.
A confrontation, an arrest warrant, a search warrant, witnessed during a search - everything that, under other conditions and with other tasks, is called upon to protect human rights, to protect him from arbitrariness, then, with non-existent justice, became, on the contrary, a form of unlimited arbitrariness, a tool reprisals against a person.
The criminal process was not cancelled. He was turned into murder ritual.
On September 25, 1939, the signature of the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Commissar of State Security of the 1st rank L. Beria appears in the file. Investigator Shcherbakov writes a decision on seizure personal diary and correspondence N.M. Lukina-Bukharina kept by her aunt A.V. Plekhanova, and the people's commissar personally approves this decision.
On November 26, warrant No. 3397 was issued for production at A.V. Plekhanov search. The search protocol is marked with the same number. “Seized,” it says, “various letters, 17 pieces.”
These letters are also attached to the case.
March 25, 1930 Gulripsh. Anna Mikhailovna Lukina to her sister Nadezhda Mikhailovna.“Nadyusha, my dear! It seems that spring is coming for us ... Yesterday, Lakoba finally arrived and promised to arrange me somehow in a private apartment in Sukhumi ... He offered to arrange me in a rest house named after Ordzhonikidze, but I do not want to move there, since all Georgian to know other wives. And now I have some idea about them. Praise to Soso with his unpretentious Nadezhda Sergeevna. Your letter + Stivino + verses Precious Fox received. In the style of sustained hexameter, he undoubtedly improves. Kiss him for me... I ask Lisanka to drop a line to Lakoba. Kiss hard". (The investigator Shcherbakov’s certificate explains: Lakoba is the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Abkhazia, Stiva is A.V. Plekhanova, Lis is Bukharin’s family nickname. “Further on, Comrade Stalin is mentioned in the letter as Soso and Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva.”)
Left for eternal storage, living human voices tearing our souls. Here, in this case, they are evidence.
A month later, at the beginning of October 1939, M.M. Lukin again made an attempt to retract his testimony. The protocol records this as follows: “You, Lukin, retracted your testimony. Why are you twisting and confusing the investigation? You, as a conspirator, are caught by your accomplices. And you'll have to speak real truth. Tell the truth, Lukin, about your conspiratorial ( So! — A. B.) work". “I confess,” it is written in the protocol, “that in my previous testimony, along with the truth, I also showed a lie. I firmly decided to repent of everything and show only the truth during the investigation. Among the "questions that are false", M.M. Lukin calls, in particular, "terror against Yezhov." On the calendar - October 1939. The need for "terror against Yezhov" has already disappeared. The investigator reminds Lukin of Nadezhda Mikhailovna, and Lukin admits that "Sister Nadezhda told me that" in which case, "meaning her possible arrest, she intends to hold out to the end."
This recognition of her sibling must confirm that the sister's stubbornness only proves her involvement in anti-Soviet wrecking work.
Meanwhile, the interrogations continued. The incredible, almost unthinkable resistance of the seriously ill, barely moving woman to the investigator Shcherbakov continued.
Investigator.Which of your friends visited your apartment recently?
Answer.Visited Dr. Vishnevsky. But after September or October 1936 he refused to visit Bukharin's apartment. Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova visited ...
Investigator.Your relatives convict you... and you stubbornly resist... When will you testify about your crimes against the Soviet authorities?
Answer.I did not participate in the anti-Soviet organization... In 1929, when the "bends" during collectivization began, I really doubted the possibility of implementing collectivization at such a pace as was carried out on the ground.
Investigator.Were you present during the conversations that Bukharin had with Rykov and Tomsky?
Answer. Yes, sometimes I was.
Investigator. What conversations did you hear?
Answer. When they met, they carried on conversations in the spirit of those right-wing deviationist views that they officially defended. At the same time, Rykov and Tomsky, as far as I know, did not visit Bukharin ...
Investigator.Did they talk about underground work against the Party in your presence?
Answer.No, they never did. On the contrary, in my presence they spoke in the spirit that they did not want to conduct any underground work.
Investigator.Was any of the military named as Bukharin's like-minded?
Answer. No, it was never named before me.
Investigator.Despite a number of pieces of evidence against you, you stubbornly deny your affiliation with an anti-Soviet right-wing organization. When will you speak the truth?
Answer.The evidence against me is false.
Investigator.Why did you refuse to sign in 1938 that you had been informed of the decision to bring charges?
Answer.I thought that the accusation ... had nothing to do with me ... I am of the same opinion now and I will not sign this decree ...
Investigator.According to reports, you know the connections of Yezhov's wife, Evgenia Yezhova, with the Trotskyists... What do you know about Evgenia Yezhova's Trotskyist connections?
Answer.I saw Yezhova Evgenia once in my life, returning from a resort in the autumn of 1931. We were traveling by train to Moscow, in the same compartment ... When later, upon arrival in Moscow, Yezhova called me twice on the phone, apparently wanting to continue acquaintance with me, I did not support this acquaintance ...
It didn't work to break her. But that didn't change anything. The court will accept the case and stamp it.
However, there was a misfire.
On the letterhead of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR:
“February 20, 1940 No. 0022320. Top secret. Print 2 copies. Head of the 1st Special Department of the NKVD of the USSR.
Investigation file No. 18856 is being returned on charges of N.M. Lukina-Bukharina according to Art. 58-10, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which I ask you to transfer to the head of the special department of the NKVD of the USSR Art. Major of State Security T. Bochkov to re-charge Lukina-Bukharina N.M. (Signature is illegible.)
What happened? Why was the charge brought by Lukina-Bukharina not to the satisfaction of the Military Collegium? Why was it necessary to "re-present" it?
Nadezhda Mikhailovna was subject to trial under the law of December 1, 1934 "On the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against workers Soviet power". These cases were heard without the participation of the parties, the cassation appeal and petition for pardon were not allowed, the sentence to capital punishment was carried out immediately. Hung on N.M. Lukin-Bukharin Art. 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (participation in a counter-revolutionary organization) formally allowed the defendant to be dealt with by the simplified methods of this law. However, there was also a special clarification according to which Art. 58-11 of the Criminal Code was not to be applied independently, "but only in connection with the crime, the implementation of which was part of the criminal intent of the counter-revolutionary organization." For example, if some terrorist act was planned (Article 58-8 of the Criminal Code). But the insufficiently vigilant or not too skilled investigator Shcherbakov lost sight of this, did not indicate Article 58-8 in the charge. There was a miss.
Nothing then prevented the killing of an innocent, the killing of millions of innocents. But it was meant to be done legally competent. For us, for future generations, the most solid foundation of "the strictest socialist legality" was being laid.
A week later, on February 26, a new charge was brought against Nadezhda Mikhailovna: “... Taking into account that Lukina-Bukharina N.M. is sufficiently exposed that she is a member of the anti-Soviet terrorist organization of the right, knew about the villainous plans of Bukharin against the leaders of the October Socialist Revolution, Lenin and Stalin ... to attract Lukina-Bukharin N.M. as accused under… Art. 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ... "Now everything was as it should be. Now, by law.
The meeting of the Military Collegium took place on March 8, 1940. V.V. Ulrich, members of the court - L.D. Dmitriev and A.G. Suslin.
Protocol."Top secret. Print 1 copy... The presiding judge ascertained the identity of the defendant and asks her if she received a copy of the indictment and familiarized herself with it. The defendant replies that she received a copy of the indictment and she familiarized herself with it ... No challenges were filed to the composition of the court, no petitions were received ... The defendant ... does not plead guilty on any item of the indictment ... She absolutely does not consider herself guilty of anything. She believed Bukharin ... "
The verdict is short, only one and a half handwritten pages. “In the name of the USSR ... It has been established that Lukina-Bukharin, being the like-minded enemy of the people N.I. Bukharin, took part ... The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Lukin-Bukharin N.M. to the highest measure of criminal punishment - execution ... "
I don't know how she, who was seriously ill, was taken out to be shot. Dragged, carried out on their hands? Was she silent or did she say something? Was it early in the morning or late at night? Where was it? Who was in charge? Nothing is known.
But already done, we must think, as expected. No gag. By act.
"Reference. The sentence of execution Lukina-Bukharina N.M. carried out in the city of Moscow on March 9, 1940. The act on the execution of the sentence is stored in the archives of the First Special Department of the NKVD of the USSR, volume 19, sheet 315 ... "
The act is kept. For the edification of us, the descendants. And it will probably last forever. So that we know what neat clerks, what law-abiding executioners performed then non-existent justice. So that we always remember this, never forget.
An ax in the hand of a murderous criminal is, of course, scary. But it is even more terrible when he has a law in his hand, a stack of codes, rules approved by the state. When a crime is committed loudly, in front of everyone, openly, in the name of your country, in your name.
Sheets of archival file No. 18856 bring us back to those times by the strength and accuracy of the document itself. They return - never to return there again.
In September 1988, by the decision of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR N.M. Lukina-Bukharin has been rehabilitated.
Alexander BORIN
80 years ago, on March 2, 1938, at the peak of the “Great Terror” in Moscow, in the October Hall of the House of Unions, a trial began in the case of the “Anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky Bloc” - the last of three trials in which the closest associates of Vladimir Lenin, other famous Bolsheviks and three doctors.
This time before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Nikolai Bukharin, called by Vladimir Lenin in his “Letter to the Congress” the “darling of the party”, and Alexei Rykov, the successor to the leader of the Bolsheviks as chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, appeared before the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. In 1928-1929, together with another member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Mikhail Tomsky, they opposed the Stalinist methods of modernizing the country, for which they paid the price. First, the three "right deviators" were removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, depriving them of their former authority and influence. True, unlike the Trotskyists and Zinovievists, they were not expelled from the party until the beginning of the Great Terror.
Nikolai Bukharin
However, despite the fact that in the 1930s Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky Secretary General The Central Committee no longer contradicted Joseph Stalin, regularly demonstrating their loyalty to him, this did not save them. In 1936, during the trial of the Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center, which involved Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Grigory Evdokimov, Ivan Smirnov, Sergei Mrachkovsky, Ivan Bakaev and 10 other defendants, the opening of an investigation into the case was announced. former leaders"right bias". As soon as Soviet newspapers wrote about this, on August 22, 1936, Tomsky shot himself at a dacha in Bolshevo near Moscow. Bukharin, protesting against the accusations, went on a hunger strike. In February 1937, the Plenum of the Central Committee decided to expel Bukharin and Rykov "from the ranks of the CPSU (b) and transfer the case to the NKVD." Directly from the plenum, two of Lenin's comrades-in-arms were sent to the Lubyanka.
Alexey Rykov
In March 1938, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the former People's Commissar of Communications of the USSR Genrikh Yagoda found themselves in the dock with them. To justify the name of the court, Christian Rakovsky and Nikolai Krestinsky were planted nearby. In the 1920s, they were in diplomatic work, and during the intra-party struggle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, they supported the latter. And the “leader of the peoples” usually did not forgive such “pranks”.
The remaining 17 defendants were not so well known. They were: the former People's Commissar of the USSR Forestry Industry Vladimir Ivanov, the former People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR Mikhail Chernov, the former People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR Grigory Grinko, the former People's Commissar for Foreign Trade of the USSR Arkady Rozengolts, the former Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR Prokopy Zubarev, the former adviser to the USSR Embassy in Germany Sergei Bessonov, former chairman of the Central Union Isaac Zelensky, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Vasily Sharangovich, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan Akmal Ikramov, former chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Uzbekistan Faizulla Khodzhaev, former employee of the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR Veniamin Maksimov-Dikovsky, former employee NKVD Pavel Bulanov, former secretary Maxim Gorky Pyotr Kryuchkov and doctors Dmitry Pletnev, Ignatiy Kazakov and Lev Levin.
It is noteworthy that all the defendants, except for Levin, Pletnev and Kazakov, refused to defend themselves during the trial. But they were presented with a whole "bouquet" of various charges. Some of them were accused of espionage against the USSR and treason. For example, the indictment stated that “the accused Krestinsky N.N. on the direct instructions of Trotsky, the enemy of the people, entered into a treacherous relationship with German intelligence in 1921, and “the accused Rakovsky H.G. - one of the especially trusted L. Trotsky - was an agent of the British "Intelligence Service" since 1924 and Japanese intelligence - since 1934.
Not everyone recognized the validity of the accusations of espionage. In his last speech, Yagoda uttered words that the judges and state prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky could not like: “I am not a spy and I was not ... I had no direct connections with foreign countries, there are no facts of direct transfer of any information by me. And I’m not jokingly saying that if I were a spy, then dozens of countries could close their intelligence services ... "
Andrey Vyshinsky
Along with espionage, the defendants were accused of sabotage, terror, sabotage, undermining the military power of the country, provoking an attack by foreign powers on the USSR, the murders of Sergei Kirov, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Valerian Kuibyshev, Maxim Gorky and his son Maxim Peshkov, the assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin in 1918, preparation of assassination attempts on Joseph Stalin and People's Commissar of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov. With a feeling of special indignation, the public prosecutor denounced "the most shameful practice of throwing glass and nails into food items, in particular oil, which hit the most acute vital interests, the interests of the health and life of our population." Indignant, Vyshinsky drew far-reaching conclusions: “Glass and nails in oil! This is such a monstrous crime, before which, it seems to me, all other similar crimes pale.
In our country, rich in all kinds of resources, there could not and cannot be such a situation when any product was in short supply. That is why the task of this entire wrecking organization was to achieve such a situation that what we have in abundance, make it scarce, keep the market and the needs of the population in a tense state. Let me remind here only an episode from Zelensky's activities - the story of 50 carloads of eggs that Zelensky deliberately destroyed in order to leave Moscow without this essential food product.
Now it is clear why here and there we have interruptions, why suddenly, with the wealth and abundance of products, we do not have one, there is no other, there is no tenth. Precisely because these traitors are to blame for this... Organizing sabotage, all these Rykovs and Bukharins, Yagoda and Grinko, Rozengoltsy and Chernovs, and so on and so forth pursued a specific goal in this area: to try to strangle the socialist revolution with the bony hand of hunger. It didn't work and never will!"
At the very beginning of the trial, all the defendants, except for Krestinsky, pleaded guilty to the charges. But the old Bolshevik, who headed the secretariat of the Central Committee even before Stalin, and later worked as the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, unexpectedly declared: “I do not plead guilty. I am not a Trotskyist. I have never been a member of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc”, the existence of which I did not know. I also did not commit any of the crimes that are personally charged to me, in particular, I do not plead guilty to links with German intelligence. True, the very next day, Krestinsky fully confirmed his testimony at the preliminary investigation (historian Isaac Rosenthal claims that he was beaten the day before). Justifying himself, he explained that “yesterday, under the influence of a momentary acute feeling of false shame caused by the situation in the dock and the heavy impression of the reading of the indictment, aggravated by my morbid condition, I was not able to tell the truth.”
Alas, the organizers of the trial did not need a real picture. During the trial, the defendants, broken and worried about the fate of their relatives, mostly confessed. Bukharin was no exception, who, however, rightly noted that the confessions of the accused, on which the prosecution draws its conclusions, are "a medieval legal principle."
As a result, on March 13, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by military lawyer Vasily Ulrikh, sentenced 18 defendants to death.
Dmitry Pletnev, Christian Rakovsky and Sergei Bessonov, who received 25, 20 and 15 years in prison respectively, served their terms in the Oryol prison. They were shot at the approach of parts of the German Wehrmacht on September 11, 1941 in the Medvedev forest near Orel.
Afterword
The accusations made at the trial reverberated throughout the country. Not even two weeks had passed since the verdict was passed, and on March 25, the grandfather of the author of the article, Ananiy Eremeevich Kolesnikov, was arrested. On this day, his daughter (the mother of the author of the article) turned 17 days old. Anania Kolesnikov was accused of spying for Romanian intelligence, and also that, while working as the head of store No. 38 of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky trade, he spoiled sausage and other products. He did not admit his guilt, and on July 2, 1938, by a special meeting under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, he was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He served his term at the Shiroky mine, 600 km from Magadan.
THE CASE OF THE "ANTI-SOVIET RIGHT-TROTSKYIST BLOC", case and open trial of an allegedly counter-revolutionary organization engaged in terrorist and anti-Soviet activities (1938).
The main defendants in the case were N.I. Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, and also M.P. Tomsky. All of them occupied high party and official positions.
Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky appealed to Stalin with a categorical denial of the accusations against them and asked to look into the slander, but their requests were not satisfied. Tomsky could not stand the unfolding persecution and committed suicide on August 22, 1936. The next day, Pravda published a report stating that "a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, M.P. Tomsky, having become entangled in his connections with the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-Zinovievist terrorists, committed suicide."
On September 10, 1936, a message was published in the press about the termination of the investigation against Bukharin and Rykov due to the lack of grounds for bringing them to justice, but the investigation continued to work. For Bukharin and Rykov, increased surveillance was established: they were actually under house arrest. A number of their former comrades-in-arms in the inner-party struggle were transferred from the camps and exile to Moscow. Soon testimonies were obtained from individual arrested persons about the existence in the USSR of a terrorist organization of the right, led by Bukharin and Rykov. N.I. Yezhov, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, immediately informed I.V. Stalin of these testimonies.
First, the question of Bukharin and Rykov as candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was raised in December 1936 at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, where Yezhov made a report “On anti-Soviet, Trotskyist and right-wing organizations”. He accused Bukharin and Rykov of blocking with the Trotskyists and Zinovievists and of being aware of their terrorist activities. The defendants flatly denied this. At the suggestion of Stalin, the plenum decided: “Consider the question of Rykov and Bukharin unfinished. Continue further verification and postpone the matter by decision until the next Plenum of the Central Committee.
At the February-March (1937) plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the question of Bukharin and Rykov was placed first on the agenda. Yezhov, the speaker, stated that "comprehensive testimony" had been received confirming the charges previously brought against him. At the suggestion of Stalin, Bukharin and Rykov were removed from the candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, expelled from the party, and arrested on the same day.
The investigation of the case was carried out with violations and application to the arrested physical methods impact. In one of Yezhov's notebooks there is his entry: "To beat Rykov." As a result, all those arrested pleaded guilty.
In February 1938, prosecutor A.E. Vyshinsky submitted to Stalin a draft report in the press about the forthcoming open trial in the case of Bukharin, Rykov and others. Stalin made a number of additions and changes to the draft and wrote the wording of Bukharin and Rykov’s accusation in the following form: “They are accused of being hostile to Soviet Union foreign states constituted a conspiratorial group called the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, which set itself the goal of espionage in favor of foreign states, sabotage, sabotage, terror, undermining the military power of the USSR, provoking a military attack by these states on the USSR, defeat of the USSR, dismemberment of the USSR and separation from him Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Primorye on Far East- in favor of the mentioned foreign [states], and finally - the overthrow in the USSR of the existing socialist social and state system and the restoration of capitalism, the restoration of the power of the bourgeoisie. The message edited by Stalin on February 28, 1938 was published in the press, and the accusation formulated by him was fully included in the indictment in the case.
The indictment also contained accusations of sabotage and sabotage in industry, agriculture and in transport, in organizing the murder of S.M. Kirov and the killing of V.V. Kuibyshev, V.R. Menzhinsky, A.M. Gorky and his son Peshkov, as well as the attempted poisoning of Yezhov. Bukharin, in addition, was charged with the fact that in 1918 he, together with the Left Social Revolutionaries and a group of "Left Communists", tried Brest Peace, arrest and kill Lenin and Stalin and form a new government.
In the case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists, 21 people were convicted, including the editor of the Izvestia newspaper Bukharin, the People's Commissar of Communications of the USSR Rykov, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR G.G. Yagoda, the First Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR N.N. Krestinsky, People's Commissar of Foreign Trade of the USSR A.P. Rozengolts, People's Commissar of the USSR Forest Industry V.I. Ivanov, People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR M.A. Chernov, People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR G.F. Grinko, Chairman of the Central Union I.A. Zelensky, First Secretary Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Uzbekistan A. Ikramov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek SSR F. Khodzhaev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Belarus V.F. Sharangovich, doctors L.G. Levin and D.D. Pletnev and others.
The case was considered in an open court session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on March 2–13, 1938. 18 people, i.e. almost all those involved in the case were sentenced to death. D.D. Pletnev, Kh.G. Rakovsky and S.A. Bessonov, sentenced to imprisonment in September 1941, were also shot in absentia among the prisoners of the Oryol prison.
In connection with the case of the "Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists" was arrested big number citizens who in the past did not share the views of the right-wing opposition, cases were initiated about various peripheral “centers” that carried out espionage, sabotage, sabotage and terrorist activities on the ground on the instructions of the “Right-Trotskyist bloc”.
Ikramov, Sharangovich, Ivanov, Grinko and Zelensky were rehabilitated in 1957–1959, Krestinsky in 1963, and the rest (except Yagoda) in 1988.
1) On the basis of the investigation materials of the NKVD, the confrontation of comrade Bukharin with Radek, Pyatakov, Sosnovsky and Sokolnikov in the presence of members of the Politburo and the confrontation of comrade Rykov with Sokolnikov, as well as a comprehensive discussion of the issue at the Plenum - the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks establishes, at least that tt. Bukharin and Rykov knew about the criminal terrorist, espionage and sabotage activities of the Trotskyist center and not only did not fight against it, but hid it from the party without reporting it to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), and thereby contributed to it.
2) On the basis of the investigation materials of the NKVD, the confrontation of comrade Bukharin with the rightists - with Kulikov and Astrov, in the presence of members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the confrontation of comrade Rykov with Kotov, Schmidt, Nesterov and Radin, as well as a comprehensive discussion issue at the Plenum of the Central Committee - The Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) establishes, at a minimum, that tt. Bukharin and Rykov knew about the organization of criminal terrorist groups from their students and supporters - Slepkov, Tsetlin, Astrov, Maretsky, Nesterov, Radin, Kulikov, Kotov, Uglanov, Zaitsev, Kuzmin, Sapozhnikov and others, and not only did not fight them, but encouraged them.
3) The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks establishes that Comrade Bukharin's note to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, where he tries to refute the testimony of the above-named Trotskyists and right-wing terrorists, is a slanderous document in its content, which not only reveals the complete impotence of Comrade Bukharin refute the testimonies of the Trotskyites and right-wing terrorists against him, but under the guise of a lawyer challenging these testimonies, he makes slanderous attacks against the NKVD and allows attacks unworthy of a communist on the party and its Central Committee, in view of which Comrade Bukharin’s note cannot be considered otherwise than as completely untenable and not deserving of any - either trust document.
Taking into account what has been said and taking into account that even during Lenin's lifetime, Comrade Bukharin waged a struggle against the party and against Lenin himself both before the October Revolution (the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat) and after the October Revolution (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the program of the party, the national question, the trade union discussion) that Comrade Rykov also fought against the party and against Lenin himself, both before the October Revolution and during the October uprising (he was against the October Revolution), as well as after October coup(he demanded a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and, in the form of a protest, left the post of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, for which he received the nickname of a strikebreaker from Lenin), which undoubtedly indicates that the political fall of Comrades. Bukharin and Rykov is not an accident or surprise - given all this, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) believes that TT. Bukharin and Rykov deserve immediate expulsion from the party and trial by the Military Tribunal.
But based on the fact that Bukharin and Rykov, unlike the Trotskyists and Zinovievists, were not yet subjected to serious party penalties (they were not expelled from the party), the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decides to limit itself to: 1) To exclude Comrades. Bukharin and Rykov from among the candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and from the ranks of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. 2) Transfer the case of Bukharin and Rykov to the NKVD.
