Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

Eight outstanding commanders—Tukhachevsky, Iona Iakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Avgust Kork, Robert Eideman, Boris Feldman, Vitali Primakov, and Vitovt Putna—were “tried” on June 11, 1937. Ezhov’s penciled notes of Stalin’s wishes has their names with “a” for “arrest” and a tick for “arrested.” A ninth victim, Gamarnik, bedridden, shot himself before the NKVD came. Stalin sadistically appointed, under Ulrikh’s chairmanship, the victims’ comrades as judges: Jekabs Alksnis, Vasili Bliukher, Ivan Belov, Semion Budionny, Pavel Dybenko, Nikolai Kashirin, and Boris Shaposhnikov. Before the trial began, the accused were beaten into making incriminating statements against their judges. Just two of the judges—the superannuated cavalryman Budionny, famous for the slaughter of Poles and Jews by his Cossacks in 1920, and the untalented Shaposhnikov—survived; the rest were executed within eighteen months.³⁴ All the accused except Boris Feldman were badly tortured by Ezhov’s men. Feldman said whatever his interrogator wanted to hear,³⁵ and had a comfortable cell, cigarettes, apples, even biscuits with his tea.

For months Tukhachevsky had had forebodings: his trip to London for the coronation of George VI had been canceled “in case of an assassination attempt by German and Polish agents.” On May 13, 1937, Stalin received him in the Kremlin for forty-five minutes in the company of Ezhov, Molotov, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich; possibly Stalin at this meeting offered him his life in exchange for a confession. Nine days later he was arrested and, after a week, battered by the truncheons of Ushakov and Izrail Leplevsky, he told Ezhov in person that he had conspired with Trotsky. He then had to concoct his plan to let Germany defeat the Red Army; this, with everyone else’s statements, was sent to Stalin to edit. Tukhachevsky’s statements are stained with his blood. Ushakov later boasted how he worked without sleep right until the day of the trial, forcing Feldman, Tukhachevsky, and Iakir to incriminate each other. By June 7 all eight had ceased to deny the charges, and Stalin, Kaganovich, and Voroshilov summoned Ezhov and Vyshinsky to plan the trial. On June 9 Stalin received pleas for mercy. On the most heartfelt of them, Iakir’s, the Politburo scribbled their observations: “Swine and prostitute, I. Stalin,” “A perfectly precise definition, K. Voroshilov,” “For a bastard, scum, and whore there is only one punishment—the death penalty, L. Kaganovich.” That evening Stalin was visited by Vyshinsky, Ezhov, and Lev Mekhlis, editor of Pravda.

At the trial the accused apparently—the transcript is “edited”— kept to their scripts. When the discomfited judges sought further details, the accused said they were unable to add any. Feldman alone spoke at length, in support of the prosecution. Budionny made regular reports to Stalin; another judge, Ivan Belov, told Voroshilov that the accused “had not told all the truth, they have taken a lot to the grave.” Feldman was the only prisoner to nurse any hopes: “Where is the concern for the living human being if we’re not reprieved?” he asked. At 11:35 p.m. on June 11 Ulrikh sentenced all eight to death. Ezhov and Vyshinsky asked each condemned man if he had anything to say as they were led off one by one to be shot by Vasili Blokhin, the Lubianka’s senior executioner.

NKVD investigators received medals. A campaign was launched by Stalin and Voroshilov to advertise a new army “cleansed of rotten gangrene down to healthy flesh,” an army from which 34,000 officers, not counting NCOs and rank and file, were dismissed in the following eighteen months. ³⁶ The death toll was comparable to that of a major war, except that the highest ranks had a casualty rate typical of the rank and file. The lower the rank the smaller the chance of dismissal, and the greater the likelihood of avoiding subsequent arrest and execution. Of ninety dismissed komkory (generals) only six survived; of 180 divisional commanders dismissed just thirty-six escaped. Of captains 7,403 were dismissed and 5,613 escaped arrest, although a few received GULAG sentences and in 1941 were retrieved, variously crippled, to fight Hitler.

Even after Ezhov’s fall, when investigations were aborted and some interrogators arrested for falsification, Lavrenti Beria went on executing army officers. Some, like Bliukher, were beaten with a brutality exceeding even Ezhov’s. Bliukher died on November 9, 1938, under interrogation, blind in one eye, of a blood clot in the lung, after his abdominal organs had been reduced to pulp. Beria then telephoned Stalin, who ordered Bliukher to be cremated.