In 1929, shortly after Radek’s return to Moscow from exile, Yakov Ilyumkin, who worked in the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, visited him at his home. The two of them were old acquaintances from the civil war. Ilyumkin thought that Radek, although he had surrendered his arms to Stalin, must still be a loyal, strong-willed revolutionary at heart. Therefore, he revealed to Radek that he intended to use his recent business trip to Turkey to meet Trotsky, who had been expelled from the Soviet Union, and exchange views with him.
Radek immediately realized that fate had provided him with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Stalin and at the same time to restore his former position at once. No sooner had Bryumkin left than he entered the Kremlin and reported Bryumkin’s intentions to Stalin. Stalin was horrified to hear that the man who was prepared to risk his head for Trotsky existed even in the NKVD! He immediately summoned and ordered Yagoda to keep a close watch on Bryumkin to find out which opposition leaders the latter would be in contact with before he left the country. In this way Stalin tried to find out which members of the opposition had only verbally renounced their opposition position, to catch them in the act of disobedience, and then to charge them with duplicity and re-deport them to Siberia.
Buryumkin was a very experienced spy, so Yagoda did not believe that ordinary agents could keep an eye on him and decided to use another means to get the information Stalin requested. After consulting with the head of the Foreign Service, Yagoda summoned a staff member of the Service named Liza to his office. Liza was a pretty young girl who had already received “special attention” from Blumkin. Yagoda asked Liza to approach Blumkin and deliberately reveal to the latter her discontent with the party and her sympathy for Trotsky. Yagoda’s intention was clear: to use the “beauty ploy” to find out what Blumkin’s plans were, how he planned to meet Trotsky, and which opposition leaders he planned to contact upon his return. Yagoda also warned Liza that for the sake of the party, she must put aside all worldly prejudices and try to establish the kind of relationship with Bryumkin between men and women.
Buryumkin, whose life style was not particularly prudent, certainly did not refuse this beautiful girl who offered her body and soul to him, but he did not mention anything about Trotsky and other opposition leaders to her, even when they were sleeping together. Yagoda’s spies followed his every move, including his rendezvous with Liza, but not once did they find out which opposition leader he had met.
Liza’s romance with Buryumkin lasted three weeks. After that, having found nothing, Yagoda ordered the Foreign Service to “send” Buryumkin on a business trip to Turkey and arrest him on the way to the station, so that he would not even leave Moscow. As a result, Buryumkin and Liza, who had come to “see him off”, were intercepted halfway to the station. Bryumkin was put directly into the prison. During the interrogation, he defended his dignity as a human being and went to the execution ground with amazing bravery. When his life was about to end, Buryumkin shouted: “Long live Trotsky!”
Soon the “authorities” learned that the news of Radek’s betrayal of Bryumkin and the latter’s arrest and murder had somehow reached the ears of the opposition leaders. Yagoda immediately organized a special investigation, which led to the identification of the leaker as Rabinovich, a cadre of the secret political bureau. This shadowy supporter of the opposition was also shot without trial.
These two incidents also reached the ears of Trotsky, who was in exile in Turkey. Radek was as guilty as a spy who had betrayed his friends and comrades to Stalin’s investigative agencies. It was no longer possible for him to seek forgiveness from the opposition; he had only one way left – to tie his fate to Stalin’s chariot forever.
The secret shooting of Bryumkin, which took place in 1929, had a great shock and a very bad effect on the hearts of all those who knew about it. It was the first time in the history of the Soviet Union that a Bolshevik sympathizer with the opposition had been shot. Almost all the old Bolsheviks, even those who had no connection with the opposition, stopped coming with Radekla and did not even greet him on the road. The hostility of the old comrades made Radek stick more closely to Stalin, and since the order to shoot Blumkin, Stalin indeed began to regard Radek as his faithful servant.
Thus, the most shameless slanders and the most vicious diatribes against Trotsky continued to come out of Radek’s pen. As early as 1929, seven years before the farce of the Moscow trials, Radek in his public statements called Trotsky a Judas, “a lackey of the British spy agency. And, as time passed, this foul water of slander swelled geometrically.
Radek was rewarded by his master for his work: he regained the privilege of entering the Kremlin (he was even given a permanent pass). He began to appear again in Stalin’s office and even in the dachas with great pleasure. Later, when he answered the state prosecutor’s questions in court, he referred to this period as “a time when I had a sinister intention to penetrate the center of power”.
In 1933, with his characteristic literary genius, Rachuk wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Architect of Socialist Society”. In this original pamphlet, Radek used the form of a historical tutorial, spanning time, to create a glorious image of Stalin as the great genius who transformed human society through the recollections of his predecessors, i.e., a famous historian of the 1960s or 1970s.
Recent Comments