Stalin kept Molotov in a desperate situation for six weeks before finally deciding to “forgive” him. After all, Stalin still needed Molotov. With the exception of Molotov, Stalin’s politburo was almost entirely made up of uneducated, uneducated mediocrities. Molotov’s extraordinary ability to work was well known. Only he could free Stalin from the burden of running the country’s daily affairs. Moreover, only Molotov had the right to call himself the old Bolshevik in the politburo at the time, apart from Stalin, because he did have some records in the party’s early revolutionary history.
Molotov returned to his post as chairman of the People’s Council after a sabbatical, much to the surprise of the interior ministry chiefs. This means that Stalin and Molotov are back together, though probably only temporarily.
Indeed, Molotov returned to his post, but his name did not immediately return to the blacklist. But this was entirely due to the lack of time. The trial had dragged on, and it was impossible to add Molotov’s name, because that would mean rewriting a lot of the transcript of the interrogation and giving numerous defendants new instructions about when and where to try to assassinate him. Moreover, psychologically, Stalin could not immediately restore his affection for Molotov, and he always prescribed a “trial period” for such “lawbreakers” to test the depth and authenticity of their repentance.
Thus, at the first Moscow trial, Molotov’s name was never mentioned. Even Mr Visinski, in his concluding remarks, omitted Molotov from the lauded list of four “Stalin’s closest comrades-in-arms”. At that time, the dimension of Eric hinske says: “for all like mother love, love the motherland, with all my heart that the best the bolsheviks, our country the most genius and diligence of the creator of the name, is the most kind, sweet and precious, these are the names of the men: cher, brother of Mr., leave, clym voroshilov, lazar moi xie also vicki kagan Norwich, Ukraine Bolshevik leader KeXiuEr steed, and wave, and Bolshevik leaders day Dan’s” Leningrad.
Visinski, as we can see, did not include Molotov on this list, but this was definitely not his own “invention”, since he had special instructions from Stalin’s private secretary, according to which he had been given them. Molotov was excluded from the list of “the best Bolsheviks, the most gifted and diligent builders of our country.”
But then, at the second and third Moscow trials, things were quite different. Molotov, once again in Stalin’s good graces, was put back on the terrorist blacklist at the direction of his “master”. Now the defendants in the court are beginning to admit in one voice that they had evil thoughts about Molotov’s murder. What’s more, the “conspirators” who were later tried insisted that Molotov’s assassination was planned by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had been judged and shot at the first trial. It was Stalin’s orders that Zinoviev and Kamenev were careful to deliberately omit Molotov’s name in their pleas. Of course, this is not surprising, since Stalin had not yet decided what to do with Molotov: make him the conspirators’ Nemesis, or vice versa…
What happened to Molotov might have happened to any other politburo member who fell out of Favor with Stalin. We can say with certainty that Molotov was already on the threshold of the prison, and that the slightest mistake would have led him straight from the resort to the prison of the Ministry of the Interior. In that case, the defendants would almost certainly have described him as an accomplice in an anti-Stalin plot, and Molotov, who was put on the stand, would certainly have confessed when it was his turn to speak. I have no doubt of that; he has his own wife and children, you know.
Chapter 14 The Moment of Truth
According to Stalin’s earliest plans, at least 50 defendants were supposed to appear in the first Moscow trial. But as the investigation progressed, the number of people able to appear in court dwindled to just 16 defendants. Only these people promise to repeat their pretrial testimony in court.
Of the 16, five were tools that directly helped the Interior Ministry prepare for the trial farce. Of these five accomplices, Oliberge, Fritz Davide, and Bermann Juppe were spies; the rest, Reinhold and Pickel, were agents sent by the agency to carry out the central secret orders, and were not defendants at all.
The last week before the trial was devoted to “rehearsals” : the defendants practiced their roles over and over again under the direction of Mr. Visinski and investigators from the interior Ministry, and recited their “lines” under detailed instructions.
Choose the right place for public trial. It was so important that Stalin himself presided over the special meeting. Argoda suggested several locations, and Stalin chose the smallest of them, the October auditorium in the Soviet Palace. The hall had only 350 seats in total, and the Soviet Palace had a large hall for several thousand people, known as the “Columned Hall.” To make matters worse, Stalin ordered Yagoda that the audience in the trial hall must be composed entirely of interior ministry personnel and that no “outsiders”, not even members of the Central Committee or the government, should be allowed to enter. The interior ministry would then have to guarantee the court not only the accused, but also the audience.
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