The Great Terror

After the war, the extreme re-Stalinisation has been blamed in Russia on Stalin’s fear of the new spirit to be found among the returning veterans. At the more senior level we have Generals Gordov and Rybalchenko, in 1946, bugged by the Secret Police. They speak of ‘only the government living, the broad masses beggared’; that ‘it was necessary for us to have genuine democracy’; that ‘the people is silent, it is afraid’.25 Both were arrested in January 1947 and, together with ex-Marshal Kulik, shot.

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We must remember that both Stalin and the refractory members of the leadership were Old Bolsheviks. So those who, to one degree or another, tried in the early thirties to ‘liberalise’ the Soviet regime were as much committed as Stalin himself not only to a variety of Marxism-Leninism, but also to Stalin’s collectivisation and industrialisation projects – but not to unconditional obedience.

The circumstances of the Kirov murder on 1 December 1934 are still disputed. The sticking point, for those who do not credit Stalin’s responsibility, is the supposed absence of any sign of his distrust of Kirov – indeed, of any post-1930 dispute in the Politburo. This can be refuted on several grounds. We now know from his personal records of Kirov’s own notably ‘incorrect’ attitudes over the whole period – and, indeed, even earlier.26 A long-known, and heated, dispute between Stalin and Kirov over food supplies in Leningrad was confirmed in Khrushchev’s time. Even lesser documents give evidence of such clashes, including a sharp dispute between Kirov’s number two, I. F. Kodatsky, and Molotov – i.e. between the Party and State machines (which the Russian historian Oleg V. Khlevniuk covers at length). They balked, in general, at what they saw as an unjustified extension of the class struggle to include themselves on the wrong side.

We do not have final ‘proof’ or ‘certainty’ of Stalin’s responsibility for the murder. Let me quote a competent historian. Macaulay writes, in his essay on Warren Hastings, ‘The rules of evidence in law save scores of culprits whom judges, jury and spectators firmly believe to be guilty… But it is clear that an acquittal so obtained cannot be pleaded in bar of the judgement of history.’ Instead of proof, we have an accumulation of suspicious facts and a highly suspicious suspect. Khlevniuk, when it comes to the Kirov murder, does not exculpate or accuse Stalin, saying merely, ‘there are not enough facts available to settle the question.’ ‘Political murders’, he adds, ‘are prepared in strict secrecy, and orders for them are not registered in documents.’27

As to the absence of direct written evidence, let us look at the murder of the Soviet Yiddish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels in 1948. If Stalin had survived Beria, or the latter had not repudiated the anti-Semitic line, no evidence of this supposed car accident would have emerged. As it is, we know the order came directly from Stalin to the MGB chief Viktor Abakumov, and from him to the actual murderers.

As to Kirov, it is not hard to construct a scenario: Stalin lets it be known to Yagoda that the interests of the Party require a terrorist act – and also the removal of a member of the Politburo, Kirov. Half of that membership was eliminated over the next few years, so that Stalin’s own attitude is clear, and that would also apply to the portion of the Party mind to be expected in Yagoda. Kirov had opposed and prevented an attempt of his to impose as head of the Leningrad NKVD the appalling E. G. Evdokimov. We now know that Evdokimov lasted three days. Kirov would not accept him, so he clearly got the post behind Kirov’s back. My unofficial source gave the date wrong (it was 1931, not 1933), but as so often is the case with these indirect reports, the facts were right.

But the case for Stalin’s supposed innocence seriously distorts a more important question: did Stalin meet any opposition, or reluctance, from the wholly pro-Stalin, anti-opposition Politburo after 1930? The argument put forward was that there was no ‘record’ of such. But this was based not on records of discussion, which indeed hardly existed, but on the documents finally agreed on in the Politburo. There have always been reports, from several good sources, of sharp disagreements.