Chapter 26: The Used and the Spurned
As I have already mentioned in the previous chapters, in January 1937, just after the second Moscow trial, Stalin began a massive purge and elimination of all those who knew about the farce of the trial, from the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs down to the general staff.
After the execution of a large number of old Chekas, their places were gradually taken by people brought by Yerev from the center. But these “successors” were not yet familiar with interrogation work, and Stalin needed experienced internal affairs cadres to help him organize the next trial – the public trial of Bukharin, Likov, Krestinsky and others. For this reason, he decided, after making a selection, to leave behind for the Time being several senior NKVD officials whom he knew well, including Leonid Zakovsky, head of the Leningrad NKVD subdirectorate, Matvey Belman, head of the General Directorate of Labor Administration, and Mikhail Frinovsky, head of the Border Troops Administration. In addition, he pardoned the head of the Moscow Internal Affairs Sub-Directorate, Lenkens, who was his brother-in-law and brother-in-law of Nadezhda Aliluyeva.
To show that he had not intervened in the terrorist operation to eliminate the Cheka, Stalin awarded these men the highest state medals and appointed Vrinovsky Zakovsky and Belman as deputy people’s commissars of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to assist Yezhov. Yerov also gave a corresponding order to widely publicize these three deputy people’s commissars in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so that every new staff member would learn about the merits of the three of them for the motherland. At the meetings of the NKVD party, these three men were also doubly rewarded for their constant loyalty to the Party Central Committee.
What happened to these three men was like a magical fairy tale. At first, when other leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were arrested, the three of them were scared out of their wits, waiting for their future with fear and trepidation, but suddenly, the clouds opened up and the hand of a magician pulled them out of the ranks of the certain dead and sent them to the pinnacle of power.
The loyalty of Zarkovsky and Frinovsky seemed to be most trusted, and they were actually ordered to kill their former comrades. The most dramatic episode of this fratricide was the poisoning by Frinovsky of his own forgotten friend Slutsky.
Even those who thought that these three were pardoned purely by chance, after some time of observation, had to admit that they had misjudged. These three newly appointed deputies of Yezhov actually showed more and more that they had quite a few talents worthy of attention in their own right. For example, in the past, Zarkoski and Frinovsky never wrote anything but work reports. But now they were commissioned by the Central Committee to write a series of major articles for the party newspaper criticizing the former opposition leaders, and they also issued a public initiative to mobilize the Communist Youth to fight against the “enemies of the party. A July 1937 issue of Pravda. Pravda published a decree of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet awarding Zakovsky the Order of Lenin for “the creative accomplishment of important work in the country”. In the autumn of the same year, the Central Committee ordered the mass publication of Zarkovsky’s book “On Trotsky-Bukharin Gangs and Spies” and recommended that the spirit of this book be carefully studied by Party organizations at all levels throughout the country.
However, in March 1938, the third Moscow trial, which Zarkovsky and Frenovsky had prepared to the best of their ability and to which Berman had contributed, ended, and the three of them became Stalin’s lackeys no longer needed. Moreover, these three men knew too much, including the death of Nadezhda Aliluyeva, the assassination of Kirov, the tragedy of Yenukidze and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and even many secrets of the State Political Security Directorate and the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the early days of Mininsky and Yagoda. Zakovsky and Frinovsky actually learned another great secret of Stalin – the reason for killing Marshal Tukhachevsky and other generals of the Red Army. In a word, they had become extremely dangerous witnesses.
But Stalin could not get rid of them now without some scruples, that is, he could not just declare them spies or traitors, as he had done with others. You know, they are not long ago as “loyal sons of the party” into the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and also a lot of publicity, that they are different from the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they always remain loyal to the party. So, now to send them to God, we must go around a circle. So, the three men were transferred to different positions in other departments. One of them, Frinovsky, was appointed People’s Commissar of the Naval Fleet. But soon after their arrival in office, they all disappeared.
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