One interrogator tried to evade this new task by running into the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital after the meeting, telling the truth about his condition and hoping to get a sick note. But this “door” was also quickly blocked.
In this way, the Ministry of Internal Affairs again into the second trial pre-trial work. This trial will put another group of Lenin’s comrades in the dock.
Before this work began, the ruthless Stalin had carried out a dictatorial act. On September 1, 1936, he summoned Yagoda and gave a secret order that would have made even the most ruthless swordsman shudder.
On that day, the sixth day after he had shot the old Bolsheviks whose lives he had promised to preserve, he ordered Yagoda and Yezhov to select from the prisons and camps five thousand of the most active Bolsheviks who had joined the Trotskyists in the past and to shoot them in secret, although he had promised not to harm their lives either.
This was the first mass killing of Communists in Soviet history, and not even a formal trial was held. Later, in the summer of 1937, when Yerev became People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, Stalin ordered him to prepare a second list of 5,000 members of the former opposition. These 5,000 people were also shot en masse without trial. How many such massacres took place, I am not sure, but probably, the bloody killings did not stop until the last member of the former opposition was eliminated.
The end of 1936. I was sent to Spain as an advisor to the government of the Republic. Far from my homeland, I could no longer witness the preparations for the second and third Moscow trials aimed at dissipating the old Bolsheviks. However, I still learned a great deal about the inner workings of the two trials through the mouths of some “well-informed” members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who were sent to France and Spain on assignment.
As I said earlier, in the first trial Stalin imposed only one charge on the former opposition leaders who appeared before him – assassination and terrorist activities. He thought that this charge alone would be enough to kill the opposition, because according to the criminal law, such a crime as “conspiracy to assassinate the head of the party and the government” was punishable by death. Moreover, Stalin thought that the political opposition, which had failed miserably, was determined to use extreme terror to regain the lost power, which sounded clean and would not arouse the suspicion of domestic and foreign public opinion.
It was on the basis of this judgment that Stalin began to plan a second trial. At the end of 1936, the interrogators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were instructed to force Radek, Serebryakov, Sokolnikov and other prisoners to confess their participation in the so-called “parallel headquarters”. According to Stalin’s plan, this “parallel headquarters” was intended to carry out terrorist activities after the arrest of the members of the “joint Trotsky-Zinoviev headquarters” headed by Zinoviev and Kamenev, but it was destroyed before it could realize its criminal plans. They were dismantled before they could realize their criminal plans.
In fact, it was not very difficult for the investigators to force their interrogators to accept this charge, because it was very different from the last one, which was planted on Zinoviev and Kamenev, etc. This time the defendants were not accused of planning and committing specific terrorist acts, but only of participating in a “parallel headquarters” that did not actually do anything. “. On this basis alone, the person on trial could be convinced that he or she would never be shot.
However, this policy of interrogation, which was being implemented, suddenly changed: the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs suddenly ordered one day to interrupt all interrogations and wait for new instructions. The interrogators were puzzled: could it be that Stalin, seeing the ridicule and indignation caused by the results of the first Moscow trial, had decided not to hold such trials anymore? However, only a few days later, the interrogators were summoned by Molchanov to an emergency meeting. The instructions given at the meeting were, in their opinion, a fool’s errand: to force the interrogator to confess to the crime of trying to seize power through the power of the German and Japanese empires and to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union! The interrogators could not believe their ears, and if they had not seen Yernov sitting in the conference room with a straight face, they would have thought that Molchanov was crazy.
According to this new statement, the defendants would be “upgraded” from members of the “parallel headquarters”, who were less guilty, to spies for German fascists. Considering the fact that the interrogators would have difficulty telling their own interrogators (who, it should be noted, had all wished and explained to their own interrogators). Molchanov ordered them to exchange interrogators with each other. In this way, facing a new interrogator, the interrogator did not have to be responsible for his past promises or explanations.
The charges imposed on this group of old Bolsheviks were clearly provocative and extremely absurd. But what exactly motivated Stalin to do this? Why did he suddenly change the tone he had set for the trial?
It is not surprising, to say the least. When Stalin returned to Moscow from his vacation, he was briefed by Yagoda and came to the unpleasant conclusion that the first Moscow trial, which had just ended, was more than worth the loss to him. Of course, getting rid of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Smirnov could be considered a great victory for Stalin. But from all other aspects. The trial, however, cannot be considered a fiasco. First of all, the trial was considered by foreign public opinion as a poor and absurd farce, a purely public act of Stalin to revenge and cut off his political opponents. From a legal point of view. The world was gradually exposed to the far-fetched and poorly presented evidence and the reversed “facts”. The most humiliating of these was the “Hotel Bristoli”, which did not exist in Copenhagen. More importantly, the trial aroused the sympathy of the working people of the Soviet Union for the repressed, and this sympathy grew stronger, many even regretting that the old revolutionaries had not been able to overthrow the Stalinist dictatorship. Yagoda had reflected in a confidential report. Such slogans appeared on the walls of certain Moscow factories: “Down with the murderers of the leaders of the October Revolution!” “What a pity they didn’t finish off this Georgian villain!”
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