Among the foreign envoys in Moscow there was a widespread talk about the “madman in the Kremlin”. It was believed that only a person who was insane, a persecutionist, could do such bizarre and cruel things. But they were not right: the dictator who did what he wanted was not a madman. Once the full story of the Tukhachevsky case was revealed, the world would understand that Stalin knew exactly what he had done.
I did my best to learn the details of the Tuchachevsky tragedy, and I was particularly interested in knowing what the marshal and his comrades had said in court. I had met a number of friends and acquaintances who had come to Spain on assignment and who, by virtue of their position, were fully expected to know the details of this trial, since the task of interrogating and guarding the accused was, as a rule, performed by them. However, when I asked them about the Tushchevsky case, they shrugged their shoulders: they had not even heard about the trial until the newspapers announced that the Red Army generals had been arrested and shot.
It was not until October 1937 that I heard from Shpigelglias what I wanted to know. It turned out that no court trial had been organized for Tukhachevsky and his seven comrades, who had all been shot in secret on Stalin’s orders.
“This is a real conspiracy!” Shpigelglias said angrily. “One can deduce this from the panic-stricken behavior of the chiefs alone. At that Time, all passes to and from the Kremlin were suddenly declared null and void, and our troops were put on alert! As Frinovsky said: ‘The whole country was in a Life-and-death situation,’ and it was impossible to try them first and then shoot them, as in normal times; they had to be shot first, and then the court would pass judgment!”
As Shpigelglias had concluded, it was only after Tukhachevsky and others were executed that Yerev summoned several senior generals, including Marshal Bujoni and Marshal Buryukher, to a meeting at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He informed them about Tukhachevsky’s “conspiracy” and asked them to sign the pre-prepared “court verdict”.
These “judges” were forced to sign, knowing very well that if they did not sign, they would be arrested immediately and become Tukhachevsky’s “accomplices”.
Soon after, news began to spread among the Soviet military personnel in Spain that Voroshilov had also been arrested. At first glance, this rumor sounded perfectly logical: Voroshilov was a People’s Commissar of Defense and had special responsibility for the cadres under his command. This rumor frightened H., who was working as a senior military adviser to the government in Spain at that time. Once, during a military meeting, he called me aside. He asked me if I had heard about the arrest of Voroshilov. If I didn’t know from whom the news came, H.’s fear was justified, knowing that he had been a close friend of Voroshilov for many years. Of course, he was afraid of suffering the same fate as Voroshilov, even though it was only a rumor, and even after it was found out that the news was pure fabrication, H. could not rest easy. This rumor is not true today, but tomorrow it may become a fact. In any case, Voloshilov was the People’s Commissar for Defense, and it was in his Ministry of Defense that the so-called anti-Stalin conspiracy was now uncovered.
H decided, under the pretext of reporting to Voroshilov on the war in Spain, to go back to Moscow to deepen the facts. He stayed in Moscow for about two weeks. He was promised a meeting with Stalin to report on the war in Spain, but for some reason Stalin did not receive him, and he asked to see Yerev, who was second only to Stalin in power, but he refused to see him. At that time, Yerev was not only the People’s Commissar of the NKVD, but also in charge of the General Directorate of Reconnaissance of the Red Army, which was another power granted to him by Stalin after the “Tukhachevsky case”.
When H. returned to Spain, he was no longer as restless as before, but not without worries. As soon as he returned, he announced to me that the Politburo would take a “new course” toward Spain. In the past, the Soviet policy toward Spain had been to assist the Republican government with arms, planes and tanks as much as possible, so that it could quickly defeat Franco. The Politburo now believed that it was in the best interest of the Soviet Union to have two “equal forces” in Spain, so that the civil war would continue and Hitler could be “held in check” for a long time. This was the basis of the Politburo’s view. I was no less surprised by this Machiavellian (hegemonic) decision than H was. In order to gain time to defend against Hitler, Stalin’s Politburo actually wanted to let the Spanish people bleed endlessly.
After talking about other news he had heard in Moscow, H. suddenly changed the subject to the Tukhachevsky case.
“Klim Efremovich is still confused. Fortunately, the situation was controlled thanks to Stalin’s decisiveness and Yerev’s improvisation. Yerev’s men shot them down without any request …… Klim said it was not even possible to delay for an hour ……”
In our later conversation, H. returned to this topic once again, saying.
“What surprised Clem the most was the mutiny of Gamalnik. Really, it was simply impossible! You know, in the eyes of all of us, Gamalnik was like a weirdo ……”
Gamalnik was the deputy People’s Commissar for the political work of the whole army under “Klim”. According to Soviet newspapers, he committed suicide eleven days before the purge of Tukhachevsky and others.
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