Before his arrest, Bukharin had lived in fear for more than a year. Seeing that the First and Second Moscow Trials had killed all of his close friends, he certainly understood his future fate and could only wait for his end day after day.
In early 1937, Bukharin was finally thrown into prison. For the first two months after his arrest, he refused to confess his “crimes” or to sign the confessions that had been prepared for him, even though he was exhausted by the long wait for death.
It is important to add a little about Bukharin’s private Life. In 1933, at the age of forty-five, Bukharin met a beautiful woman, the daughter of the old revolutionary Larin. Although she already had a very young and attractive fiancé (the son of the famous party activist Grigory Sokolnikov), her heart was conquered by the small, slightly fat and already bald Bukharin. They got married and had a son. Looking at his wife and son, the affectionate Bukharin was completely intoxicated with excitement and happiness. In politics and career, he was unlucky, but in his personal life, Lady Luck smiled at him frequently. Little did he know that the executioners, who were planning the third and last Moscow trial, had already taken his wife and son hostage to force him to surrender.
In the name of Stalin, the Ministry of Internal Affairs promised Bukharin, as it did with the others on trial, that if he would meet “all the demands of the Politburo,” his wife and son would be safe and he would suffer only a little imprisonment. To prove the truth of this promise, Yerev ordered Radek to be transferred to Bukharin’s cell. It was known that Radek had not been sentenced to death in the second Moscow trial.
Letting Radek go to convince Bukharin was supposed to take effect. Although people were extremely distrustful of Radek, they could not deny the obvious reality – Radek listened to Stalin’s promises, fulfilled Stalin’s demands, and so survived. In fact, Radek behaved decently in this case and did not go along with the many false accusations against Bukharin. During the confrontation with Bukharin, he even refused to testify to a series of the most crucial accusations, which also aroused the apparent displeasure of the interrogators.
Stalin was well aware of Bukharin’s close relationship with Lenin. He knew that Bukharin cherished the warm words of praise that Lenin had spoken to him, Bukharin, on his deathbed. Therefore, Stalin was determined to deal a devastating blow to Bukharin’s heart. That is, to announce to the world through the court that Bukharin had never been Lenin’s close comrade, but Lenin’s most vicious enemy. Stalin ordered his interrogators to make Bukharin confess that he had tried to assassinate Lenin as early as 1918, during the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty.
In order to fulfill Stalin’s order, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had to arrest some former “left communists” and “left social revolutionaries” and force them to confess that Bukharin had spoken to them about the necessity of killing Lenin and forming a new government. Some witnesses were forced to confess that Kaplan, the Socialist-Revolutionary who assassinated Lenin in the summer of 1918, had shot him with Bukharin’s consent and encouragement.
Bukharin had categorically denied this accusation, but the numerous methods of torture and, more importantly, the fear for his wife and children, made this resistance appear to have little force from the beginning. Finally, after a long period of “work” under the supervision of Yerev and Stalin’s personal representative Voroshilov, the interrogators finally forced Bukharin to admit that he had really intended to kill Lenin since 1918. In this way, Stalin had added another key game.
However, two days later, when Bukharin read the “interrogation transcript” that Stalin had personally reviewed and revised, he suddenly retracted his confession and refused to sign it. It was written there that he, Bukharin, had begun to suspect Lenin of having some unseemly dealings with the Germans a long Time ago when he learned that the German government had provided Lenin with a train compartment to travel through Germany in war conditions. Later, when the Bolsheviks came to power and saw Lenin’s repeated insistence on signing a humiliating armistice with Germany alone, he, Bukharin, turned from suspicion to conviction and had the sinister idea of assassinating Lenin and setting up a new government with the participation of the left-wing social revolutionaries who opposed peace with the Germans. After reading these “confessions”, which he had to sign immediately, Bukharin was so angry that he threw himself on the floor: “Stalin is trying to put the dead Lenin in the dock!” It is true that Stalin wanted to revive the rumors that Lenin was a spy of the German General Command. For this reason, Bukharin resolutely refused to take part in this farce of a trial that was being intensively rehearsed.
Now it would be much more difficult to force Bukharin to cooperate again. The number of interrogators in charge and processing Bukharin under Yerev’s personal command has doubled, and they are engaged in a wheel war against Bukharin day and night. Voloshilov, a representative of the Politburo, also continued to participate in the interrogation of Bukharin. The key Trump card in this gamble, which Stalin could only win and not lose, was the young wife and baby son of the interrogated man.
But Bukharin refused to sign the confession that Stalin demanded. Stalin had no choice but to make concessions on two most important points: the alleged collusion of Lenin with the Germans would not be mentioned in court, and Bukharin’s suspicions arising from it would not be mentioned. In addition, Bukharin could refrain from slandering that he had attempted to kill Lenin and had only intended to have Lenin arrested and held for one day and one night in order to prevent the Brest Peace Treaty. Finally, Bukharin could refrain from slandering himself as a German interloper, but admit to having participated in the murders of Kirov and Gorky.
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