All this indicates that the situation is very tense. Moreover, there was a sentiment that troubled Stalin. Since the emergence of the famous terrorist organization “Populist Party”, revolutionary terrorism had become a symbol of a certain heroism and dedication to the struggle for the just cause in the minds of Russian youth, of which Stalin was well aware. And now. By spreading the rumor that the old Bolsheviks were going to assassinate him, he was in fact spreading revolutionary terrorism among the masses himself, for he had created an extremely dangerous perception among the people that even Lenin’s closest comrades had to see terror as the only way to free the motherland from Stalin’s dictatorship. In short, the Soviet working masses gave to the old Bolsheviks executed at the Moscow trials the kind of accolades that history had given to the heroes of the Populist Party, something that Stalin had never expected.
In preparing for the second Moscow trial, the NKVD chiefs, as in the past, used several more of their own internal agents to play the role of the accused. How many such impostors there were, I am not sure, but I know that there were at least two, namely, Shestov and Glasher.
Within the establishment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there was a kind of secret staff of “eyes and ears”, among which Shrestov and Glasher were included. As a special kind of spies, they were placed in the enterprises and institutions, responsible for secretly collecting information about the activities of the leaders and employees of the unit. Such agents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were disguised by their official positions, so they did not usually arouse the suspicion of the personnel of their units.
Shestov was the “eyes and ears” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Kuznev coal mine in Siberia. As one of the leaders of the Economic Department told me, Shestov was recognized as a very talented agent in secret service, but not so clean in economic matters. Another undercover agent, Grasher, held a leading position in the Foreign Relations Department of the Moscow Chemical Bureau. His overt duty was to hire foreign specialists and arrange their work after their arrival in the Soviet Union, while his covert task was to lead a secret intelligence network among the employees of the Agency and to carry out surveillance of foreign specialists from the point of view of national security.
Within the Economic Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Grasher was a very useful staff member. Born in Austria, he was fluent in the languages of several European countries and was very good at making connections with foreign experts. Thanks to his work, many foreign specialists became spies for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, continued to keep in touch with it even after their return to their home countries, and often betrayed the industrial situation of their enterprises to the Soviet intelligence stations in that country.
Both Shrestov and Glasher behaved actively at the Second Moscow Trial, believing that they were carrying out a major task of the Party Central Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (in fact, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the same as the Party Central Committee). But these two loyal party members could not have imagined that acting as impostor defendants would also be punishable by death, and that the execution would be immediate.
Chapter 16 – Yuri Pidarkov
The second Moscow trial, which took place in January 1937, had seventeen defendants. The most important of them were: Pidakov, Serebryakov, Radek and Sokolnikov.
Yuri Pidakov was one of the most gifted and respected Bolsheviks. He was only twenty-seven years old when the October Revolution broke out. Yet he already had twelve years of revolutionary history. In 1918, his brother, the head of the Kiev Bolshevik underground, was captured and tortured to death by White bandits. Immediately after learning this news, Yuri Pidakov asked Lenin to remove him from his post as the first political commissar of the National Bank and send him to Ukraine to participate in the underground struggle against the Rada.
After the success of the Ukrainian revolution, Pidakov was elected the first chairman of the Ukrainian Soviet People’s Committee. During the civil war, he commanded the Thirteenth and Sixth Armies, and later became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Sixteenth Army, fighting on the Polish front as one of the founders and outstanding generals of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.
However, Pidakov’s real talent was shown in the economic aspect. After the end of the civil war, the lack of fuel became the most acute problem facing the country. It was at this critical moment that Lenin entrusted him with the task of rapidly expanding the coal mining capacity in Lepas. Pidakov did not disappoint Lenin’s high expectations and fulfilled his task extremely well.
Lenin had a very high opinion of Pidarkov, as evidenced by the famous “will” of Lenin. Among the best party and state activists, the “will” mentions only six names, among them Pidakov. In this document Lenin warned the party against Stalin’s brutality, and at the same time said about Pidakov and Bukharin: “In my opinion, they are the most outstanding force (among the youngest). Moreover, Lenin added specifically about Pidakov: “Pidakov – he is undoubtedly a man of strong will and excellent talent, but too keen on administrative means ……”
Only thirteen years elapsed between the time Lenin wrote his “will” and the time Pidakov was taken to the dock at the second Moscow trial. In those thirteen years he had become an activist at the highest level of the state. It is perfectly possible to say this. The first and second Five-Year Plans were successfully completed thanks to Pidakov, who was the real and best organizer of production.
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