Stalin eventually created the myth of Bukharin’s attempt to assassinate him personally. Since he had already made himself a hero of the October Revolution and the Civil War, Lenin’s closest comrade, by falsifying history, it was only natural that Bukharin should have arrested not only Lenin but also Stalin in his plot to overthrow the Soviet regime in 1918. Could it be otherwise? As a result of these changes, Bukharin’s “confession” had to be rewritten. This Time, Bukharin was forced to sign it.
However, Stalin was soon no longer satisfied with being a mere “close comrade of Lenin”. Since he could do whatever he wanted to the disarmed “witnesses”, why could he not, through their mouths, relegate Lenin to second place and blow him up to the top of the Party and the head of Soviet power? Obviously, Stalin was unable to resist this temptation. For this reason, Mantsev, the former head of the Ukrainian Political Security Service, as one of the “witnesses”, was given the “honorable task” of spreading a lie concocted by Stalin himself while testifying according to party discipline.
“Trotsky said,” Mantsev testified in court, “that he intended to arrest Stalin while he was at the front. …… I remember his exact words, and he said: In this way, Lenin and the Party Central Committee would have to surrender their arms!”
Both the accused and the witnesses understood that when Stalin was mentioned in court, it was necessary to show more reverence than for Lenin. This was true not only of Mantsev’s statement, but also of Bukharin’s statement, which was clearly marked by such feelings. When Bukharin stressed in court that he had no intention of killing Lenin, but only of arresting him, state prosecutor Vyshinsky asked.
“What if Vladimir Ilyich resists arrest?”
Bukharin answered, as pre-approved.
“He will not resist arrest. It is well known that Vladimir Ilyich always avoids arguments and is not a troublemaker.”
This answer of Bukharin, from the standpoint of the Bolsheviks, was tantamount to saying that Lenin was not a daring fighter and lacked a brave personality. The prosecutor and the judge were “magnanimous” in listening to such a blatantly derogatory answer to Lenin. Obviously, they knew very well the “taste” of their superiors. One can easily imagine how violently Bukharin would have been reprimanded if he had used the same words about Stalin.
Like the other defendants, Bukharin was warned before he appeared in court not to include “personal stuff” or “double entendre” in his statements; his Life and the fate of his Family depended not only on what he would say, but also on how he would say it. . A careful analysis of Bukharin’s words in court reveals that in his intermittent statements he tried to convince the court that he was responsible not only for the crimes he committed, but also for the crimes of the other defendants, whether he knew them or not.
“I am trying to say,” Bukharin said in court, “that I was not only a screw in the counterrevolutionary machine, but also one of the counterrevolutionary leaders, so that as the leader …… I should bear a much greater responsibility than any of my other co-defendants I should bear a much greater responsibility as a leader than any other co-accused. Therefore, I do not expect to be forgiven.”
In any court worthy of the name, the accused would have used the right to defend himself. But Stalin’s courtroom was a different situation. When presiding judge Ulrih loudly prompted Bukharin to say that he was already defending himself, Bukharin excitedly replied.
“No, this is not self-defense. This is …… self-accusation! I haven’t defended myself a single word!”
Bukharin’s ability to save his life depended entirely on how he went about fulfilling Stalin’s instructions. But Bukharin had already set up a cross for his fate and was simply doing everything in his power to save his wife and son. In the courtroom, he not only framed himself as “the most vicious fascist” and “a traitor to the socialist fatherland”, but even refuted the attacks of the foreign press and tried to justify the farce of the Moscow trial.
Unlike Radek and some of the other defendants, Bukharin did not use his remarkable eloquence to hoodwink the Prosecutor General and the judges and to side-step the farce of Stalin’s trial. He paid the full ransom without compromise for the sake of his loving wife and son, and, as insurance, spared no effort to sing the praises of his executioner: “Truly, the whole country is following the example of Stalin.
“Truly, the whole country is following Stalin’s march. He is the hope of the world; he is the maker of the new world. Stalin’s wise leadership has penetrated into the heart of every person in the country ……”
However, not these words were enough to satisfy Stalin’s desire for revenge. For Stalin, the pleasure of life was to take revenge to the fullest, and he could not give up this pleasure, even once ……
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