“Well, okay, we’ll have a snack with the process” – Weekend – Kommersant
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On March 13, 1938, a verdict was passed in the case of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc”, better known as the Third Moscow Trial. By decision of the court, all the accused, except for three, were sentenced to death – including Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Genrikh Yagoda. The third Moscow trial became the final link in the chain of demonstrative repression against the party nomenklatura and the first trial in which Stalin was much more interested not in the behavior of the defendants, but in the reaction of the country’s population. This reaction was not unanimous.
1
Was at the morning session of the trial of Bukharin and others. Perhaps the most miserable impression is made by Yagoda. He turned gray, his eyes sunken. Bukharin’s hands tremble all the time. And yet, the general feeling from the defendants is that they are not criminals, but people in terrible trouble.
Alexander Gladkov, March 3, 1938
2
The process is staged to get rid of persons objectionable to the state. This fact is a vile thing, but on the other hand, you can hide behind this thing and say that they harmed you so much, that even Moscow was left without food. Okay, let’s get on with the process.
senior technician Pokrovsky, March 1938
3
Sentenced: Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda, Krestinsky, Rozengolts… to be shot. I did my homework, listened to the last words of the defendants, studied history – I have a report tomorrow.
schoolboy Oleg Chernevsky, March 15, 1938
4
Kitchen. Daddy washes after work. I sit waiting for dinner, and my mother fumbles around the stove. “Here’s Bukharin for you! – says mother. – And you also praised this scoundrel, he was your lover. Ah, bastards! You bastards, you bastards!” The father’s face, previously cheerful, somehow painfully changes, as if that of a person convicted of a terrible crime.
Anatoly Batyuto, March 14, 1938
5
We learned from the newspapers that tomorrow the trial of a gang of right-wingers—Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinsky, and Yagoda—was opening. Dogs – dog death. How much meanness this scum has done.
turner Nikolai Belousov, March 2, 1938
6
A hysterical cry, in which the unconditional, imperative “should” with a frenzy calls for the destruction of Bukharin and all the bastards. I look, together with bears, seals, walruses, at a human ice floe: it pricks, dies, still pricks … In this state communism there is not even a grain of humanity.
Mikhail Prishvin, March 9, 1938
7
After the trial, which ended on March 13, 1938, I mostly lay on the bunk, stunned by the horrific trial. In this camp, I was the only wife whose husband went through an open trial. The vast majority of women did not know anything about their husbands and hoped that they were alive. The wife of a Ukrainian party worker came up to me and said: “What a mess! History will justify Bukharin, but no one will ever know about our husbands.
Anna Larina (Bukharin), “Unforgettable”
8
March is the trial of the Bukharinites! Oddly enough, but any process echoed on the lives of prisoners, of course, first of all, counters – the regime was strengthened: they were vigilant!
prisoner Pavel Galitsky, memoirs
9
On Wednesday, the trial of Rykov, Bukharin and others will begin. They are accused of sabotage, espionage and assassination attempts. At the same time, the death of Menzhinsky, Kuibyshev and Gorky is imputed to them. It is impossible to combine so that normal people do it. Or is power corrupting people like that?! People who should have been morally crystal clear found themselves at the bottom of the most terrible betrayal, robbery and decay.
oilman Ivan Khodanovich, February 27, 1938
10
When Yagoda was accused of taking steps to bring Maxim Gorky to death as soon as possible, the arguments were as follows: Gorky liked to sit by the fire, came to Yagoda, Yagoda lit large fires in order to catch Gorky’s cold, thereby causing illness and shortening his life . This was a bit confusing to me. I also love bonfires and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like them. A healthy person simply regulates the fire himself. Gorky, after all, cannot be tied to a fire and roasted.
Nikita Khrushchev, memories
eleven
My wife and I are living these days just as we have always lived, only under the yoke of the biggest loss that we had to endure. The working day begins with the reading of telegrams about the Moscow trial. Despite everything, we have not forgotten how to be amazed or indignant. We look at each other with tired amazement at the testimony of the unfortunate defendants.
Leon Trotsky, March 8, 1938
12
I was in the Oktyabrsky Hall and saw in the dock, besides Bukharin, several people whom I knew—Krestinsky, Rakovsky. They told monstrous things, their gestures, intonations were unusual. They were, but I didn’t recognize them. I do not know how Yezhov achieved such behavior. No Western writer of sloppy police novels could print such fiction.
Ilya Ehrenburg, memoirs
13
It is not in our interests to make a farce out of this production. It is impossible to irritate Rakovsky and others, otherwise they may begin to say something completely different. One does not need to be very smart to see that this process is hanging by a thread, everyone can see that no one, except for Khodjaev, is talking about specific sabotage.
Assistant Prosecutor of the USSR Grigory Leplevsky, March 1938
14
The trial of Bukharin and Co. made a deep impression on everyone, including me. It makes a lot of things critically rework and rethink.
Vladimir Vernadsky, March 9, 1938
15
A more terrible image than Bukharin, I do not know, and it is difficult for me to express everything that I experience. Now they will be destroyed, but this does not weaken my hatred in the least. I would like a terrible execution for them: let them sit in cages specially built for them in the museum, “counter-revolutionaries”, and we would look after them as if they were rare exhibits … This would be terrible for them: citizens would come and look at them like they are animals.
Yulia Sokolova-Pyatnitskaya, wife of the old Bolshevik Iosif Pyatnitsky sentenced to death, March 13, 1938
16
In the late night issue of the latest news, I met with deep satisfaction and approval the message from the USSR prosecutor’s office about bringing Bukharin, Rykov, and Yagoda to trial. Thrice despicable scoundrels set themselves the task of forcibly overthrowing the Soviet government. He held a school-wide rally about bringing the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc” to trial.
schoolboy Yuri Nikiforov, February 27, 1938
17
Good people are being shot again because they don’t like the Soviet order. These people were really the defenders of the peasants. The time will come anyway, and all collective farms will be destroyed.
Feedback on the process from the report of the People’s Commissar of the NKVD of Belarus
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