Chapter 24 – Nikolai Krestinsky
With Bukharin in the dock was a very old Bolshevik member, Nikolai Nikolayevich Krestinsky. During the most difficult years of the early Soviet regime, he helped Lenin, as the secretary of the Central Committee, to solve many state problems. While Lenin was alive, Krestinsky was the People’s Commissar of Finance, but abroad he was known first of all as a talented diplomat. He lived in Germany for ten years as an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Soviet Union, and later returned to his country as a deputy People’s Commissar of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, becoming an assistant to Maxim Livinov.
Although Krestinsky belonged to the most distinguished, strongest and Time-tested revolutionaries of the old generation, he was still, by temperament, no less than a typical, good-hearted intellectual. He held a high state position without turning into an egotistical bureaucrat. He treated his subordinates, even the most ordinary employees, with great sincerity, frankness and kindness, as if they were also important officials in the Kremlin. He loved humble and honest people and did not tolerate double-crossers and fame seekers. Therefore, he had no liking for the cruel and scheming Stalin. Once he said to some good friends, “I hate that ugly guy and his yellow eyes.” Of course, this happened at a time when saying such things would not have gotten you killed.
In 1936, Stalin was determined to “settle the score” with Lenin’s comrades, and Krestinsky naturally became one of the victims. In fact, Krestinsky had known Stalin 25 years earlier, and they had worked together underground in Petersburg, but this history did not save him, but hastened his death: as we already know, Stalin was most intolerant of people who knew a lot about his history. These people will point out, in connection with his criminal acts of recent years, those points in his biography that in the past probably would not have attracted any special attention.
The clutches of the first and second Moscow trials spared Krestinsky, and he is safe for now. But the fact that almost all those shot were his close friends could not but make him guess what his future would be. His only secret hope was that, as deputy People’s Commissar of the Foreign Ministry, he had established personal contacts with many prominent European leaders whom even Stalin had to respect. Obviously, he hoped that Stalin would be dissuaded from “purging” him, and that the bloody wave of repression would subside more quickly ……
However, on March 27, 1937, all his hopes were dashed. On that day he was removed from his post as Deputy People’s Commissar of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and transferred to the post of Deputy People’s Commissar of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. What this demotion meant was not difficult for anyone to guess.
Most of the people who were suppressed by Stalin were thrown into the prisons of the Ministry of Internal Affairs without changing their posts. But sometimes, in order not to draw too much attention to a person’s arrest, Stalin would temporarily give him a lower position, a so-called “transition”. For example, Yagoda, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications before he was put in the dock at the Third Moscow Trial. For example, Antonov Oversonko, one of the most famous figures of the October Revolution, was recalled by Stalin from Spain in 1937 and was first transferred to an unoccupied post in the Russian Federation. In 1937, Stalin recalled him from Spain, first to an unoccupied post as People’s Commissar for Justice of the Russian Federation, and then disappeared. Now Krestinsky, another man who was to be executed, has become a deputy People’s Commissar of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Krestinsky was not arrested immediately after assuming his new post. Stalin intended to keep him in this “state of immortality” for more than two months. Obviously, it was Stalin’s idea that Krestinsky would wait for his arrest day by day, hour by hour, in a state of extreme terror, which would lead to a mental breakdown and loss of resistance to the torture. Indeed, Krestinsky, who was put in the “mousetrap” by Stalin, had a taste of the endless struggle before he died ……
Besides, Krestinsky also had to worry about the fate of his wife and only daughter. His daughter, Natasha, had reached the age of fifteen, and therefore the law promulgated by Stalin on April 7, 1935, concerning the possibility of imposing the death penalty on juvenile offenders, was in force for her. I had known the girl since she was only five years old, so I knew exactly how much her Parents doted on her. Natasha resembled her father in many ways, inheriting not only his physical appearance and high myopia, but also his active mind and amazing memory.
Klystinsky was arrested at the end of May. Since so many senior party cadres had fought to discredit him in the previous two trials, he had no need to worry that his false confession would undermine the prestige of the Bolshevik Party. Everything he had cherished in the past had been thrown into the sludge and trampled on by Stalin and his accomplices, soaked in the blood of his close comrades. Krestinsky did not dare to hope to save his wife’s Life, but he knew that if he agreed to pay the price Stalin demanded, he could still save his daughter.
Krestinsky had been a judicial cadre, so he knew better than anyone else what Stalin’s torture and trials meant. Long before his arrest, he had warned himself that it was useless to resist; since he had fallen into the hands of the NKVD, he should immediately compromise with the head there. Indeed, he signed the first “confession” even before June had passed.
But when he came to court, he did something that took the world by surprise. Of course, for the director of this trial farce, this thing is not a surprise.
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