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

Menzhinsky’s success with Ramzin left Stalin hungry for more compromising material for future use. He and Menzhinsky fed each other’s paranoia. A letter of October 1930 to Menzhinsky shows Stalin’s obsession with micromanaging OGPU’s work and an uncritical belief, simulated or not, in universal conspiracies. He writes as if a Franco-Polish-Romanian army, financed by the Nobel brothers, really proposed invading the USSR. Stalin’s cynicism about human behavior is matched by his autosuggestion that the fabrications OGPU had beaten or cajoled from prisoners reflected reality:

Ramzin’s statements are very interesting. I think the most interesting thing in his statements is the question of intervention in general, or, in particular, of the date of intervention. It turns out that intervention was planned for 1930, but was put off to 1931 or even 1932. This is very plausible and important. It’s all the more important that it comes from a primary source, i.e. from the group of Riabushinsky, Gukasov, Denisov, Nobel [émigré businessmen and alleged co-conspirators, some of whom were in fact dead], a group which is the most powerful social-economic group of all within the USSR, and the emigration, the strongest group in capital and in their links with the French and English governments. It might seem that the Labor Peasant Party or the Industrial Party or Miliukov’s party [Miliukov led the Russian Constitutional Democrats, the liberals of the Tsar’s Duma] are the main force. But this is not true. The main force is the Riabushinsky-Denisov-Nobel group, i.e. Trade and Industry, [the other parties] are just errand boys for Trade and Industry. . . .

Hence my suggestions:

a) make the question of intervention one of the most important key points for new future statements by the leaders [of the other parties] and especially by Ramzin: 1) why was the intervention in 1930 put back? 2) is it because Poland was not ready yet? 3) perhaps because Romania isn’t ready? 4) perhaps because the Baltic States and Romania haven’t yet united with Poland? 5) why has the intervention been put off to 1931? 6) why “might” they put it off to 1932? 7) etc., etc. [ . . . ]

d) Make Messrs Kondratiev, Iurovsky, Chaianov et al. run the gantlet, they have been deviously evading the “tendency to intervention,” but they are (indisputably!) interventionists and they must be interrogated very severely about dates. (Kondratiev, Iurovsky and Chaianov must know about this just as Miliukov, whom they visited for a “chat,” knows.)