The Road to Terror

NIKOLAI IVANOVICH BUKHARIN and Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov had both joined the party before the 1917 revolutions and therefore belonged to the exclusive group of “Old Bolsheviks.”

Bukharin was of the Lenin type: a highly educated intellectual who spoke and wrote several languages. Like Lenin, Bukharin was a theoretician who produced an impressive corpus of published works within the Marxist tradition. Even as he languished in a Stalinist prison awaiting trial, he wrote several extensive philosophical and economic works as well as a novel.¹ His theoretical writings had been cornerstones of Bolshevik politics. They were widely read and discussed by the leadership and in the 1920s had formed the theoretical basis for the New Economic Policy.

Yezhov, on the other hand, belonged to the Stalin type of practical Bolshevik organizer and administrator. A factory worker by profession, Yezhov never finished primary school. (Bukharin graduated from Moscow University.) In the Civil War and through the 1920s, while Bukharin edited newspapers, Yezhov served on party committees in the provinces, working his way up the ladder to a post in a provincial party administration. Bukharin, like Lenin, was an intelligent. Yezhov, like Stalin, was an organizer and committeeman.

Both had sided with Stalin in the 1920s in the struggle against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and the “left opposition.” Bukharin, from his lofty seat in the Politburo, brought the weight of his wit (and the controlled press) to bear on Stalin’s enemies, while in the provinces numerous Yezhovs organized and purged the party committees. Their paths diverged in 1929, when Stalin veered to the left and launched the collectivization and industrialization campaigns. Bukharin protested and defended the mixed, gradualist approach of the New Economic Policy. Yezhov supported Stalin and was assigned to vet party personnel in the radical new USSR Commissariat of Agriculture, then in industry, and finally in the party personnel department itself. Yezhov thus helped to remove Bukharin’s supporters from key positions.

The two knew each other. Back in 1936 Bukharin had greeted Yezhov’s appointment as head of the NKVD with relief. Bukharin had blamed Yagoda for various frame-ups against the opposition, and told his wife that Yezhov was an “honest person” who “won’t falsify things.”² For his part, Yezhov had at first taken a soft line on Bukharin when the latter was under suspicion for “organizing terror.” Yezhov wrote to Stalin in 1936 that the Bukharinists were not as guilty as the Trotskyists. The latter, he thought, should be shot, but he recommended milder punishment for the rightists.³

The two had much in common. As Old Bolsheviks, both believed absolutely in the party dictatorship. Both believed that dangerous enemies existed, that they had to be “mercilessly crushed.” Both believed in the discipline of democratic centralism and, as Trotsky had said, that it was impossible to be right against the party. Both believed that the truth was whatever the party said it was. Both, in their separate ways, were ready to die for the party and for the Revolution. Ultimately, both had occasion to do so.

We present below the last known appeals of each of them to Stalin. These texts are so important and interesting, especially juxtaposed with each other, that we offer rather long quotations from them. These two documents are surrounded with irony. Bukharin had been glad when Yezhov came to head the NKVD in 1936, believing him to be an honest man. But soon Yezhov became Bukharin’s chief tormentor at the December 1936 and February 1937 plenums of the Central Committee. Although they became bitter enemies, both praised Stalin and invoked his name even while both must have known that Stalin was the author of their downfalls. For both Bukharin and Yezhov, as their statements show, it was desperately important that Stalin know of their innocence and loyalty.

The two texts are vastly different in style. Bukharin’s letter, although rambling, is full of theoretical, historical, and literary references. Yezhov’s statement, reflecting his different background, is direct and angry. But both texts suggest a similar psychological twist in their attitudes toward Stalin. On one level, of course, each man knew that Stalin had ordered his arrest and would decide his fate. At the same time, in their texts both maintained a kind of separation between the process and its author. For Bukharin, his “case” was impersonally “moving” as if pushed along by some machine or process. For Yezhov, the fault was hidden enemies within the NKVD who had done him in. Neither blamed Stalin, even indirectly or implicitly. Was this simple etiquette or perhaps a deliberately false and flattering exoneration aimed at winning Stalin’s pardon? Or could they really have believed on some level that the process and Stalin were two different things?

Bukharin had been arrested immediately after his expulsion from the party in March 1937. He had begun to confess to the charges made against him in June, and by December of 1937 his participation in the scenario of the third show trial was confirmed. It was at that time that he wrote personally to Stalin in the following document.

Bukharin’s Letter to Stalin, 10 December 1937⁴

Very Secret [ves’ma sekretno]

Personal

Request no one be allowed to read this letter without the express permission of I. V. Stalin.

To: I. V. Stalin 7 pages + 7 pages of memoranda.⁵

Iosif Vissarionovich:

This is perhaps the last letter I shall write to you before my death. That’s why, though I am a prisoner, I ask you to permit me to write this letter without resorting to officialese, all the more so since I am writing this letter to you alone: the very fact of its existence or non-existence will remain entirely in your hands.

I’ve come to the last page of my drama and perhaps of my very life. I agonized over whether I should pick up pen and paper,—as I write this, I am shuddering all over from disquiet and from a thousand emotions stirring within me, and I can hardly control myself. But precisely because I have so little time left, I want to take my leave of you in advance, before it’s too late, before my hand ceases to write, before my eyes close, while my brain somehow still functions.

In order to avoid any misunderstandings, I will say to you from the outset that, as far as the world at large (society) is concerned: a) I have no intention of recanting anything I’ve written down [confessed]; b) In this sense (or in connection with this), I have no intention of asking you or of pleading with you for anything that might derail my case from the direction in which it is heading. But I am writing to you for your personal information. I cannot leave this life without writing to you these last lines because I am in the grip of torments which you should know about.

1) Standing on the edge of a precipice, from which there is no return, I tell you on my word of honor, as I await my death, that I am innocent of those crimes which I admitted to at the investigation.

2) Reviewing everything in my mind—insofar as I can—I can only add the following observations to what I have already said at the Plenum:

a) I once heard someone say that someone had yelled out something. It seems to me that it was Kuz’min, but I had never ascribed any real significance to it—it had never even entered my mind;

b) Aikhenval’d told me in passing, post factum as we walked on the street about the conference which I knew nothing about (nor did I know anything about the Riutin platform) (“the gang has met, and a report was read”)—or something of the sort. And, yes, I concealed this fact, feeling pity for the “gang.”

c) I was also guilty of engaging in duplicity in 1932 in my relations with my “followers,” believing sincerely that I would thereby win them back wholly to the Party. Otherwise, I’d have alienated them from the Party. That was all there was to it. In saying this, I am clearing my conscience totally. All the rest either never took place or, if it did, then I had no inkling of it whatsoever.

So, at the Plenum I spoke the truth and nothing but the truth, but no one believed me. And here and now I speak the absolute truth: All these past years, I have been honestly and sincerely carrying out the Party line and have learned to cherish and love you wisely.

3) I had no “way out” other than that of confirming the accusations and testimonies of others and of elaborating on them. Otherwise, it would have turned out that I had not “disarmed.”

4) Apart from extraneous factors and apart from argument #3 above, I have formed, more or less, the following conception of what is going on in our country:

There is something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge. It is a) connected with the pre-war situation and b) connected with the transition to democracy. This purge encompasses 1) the guilty; 2) persons under suspicion; and 3) persons potentially under suspicion. This business could not have been managed without me. Some are neutralized one way, others in another way, and a third group in yet another way. What serves as a guarantee for all this is the fact that people inescapably talk about each other and in doing so arouse an everlasting distrust in each other. (I’m judging from my own experience. How I raged against Radek, who had smeared me, and then I myself followed in his wake … [ellipsis Bukharin’s]) In this way, the leadership is bringing about a full guarantee for itself.

For God’s sake, don’t think that I am engaging here in reproaches, even in my inner thoughts. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know all too well that great plans, great ideas and great interests take precedence over everything, and I know that it would be petty for me to place the question of my own person on a par with the universal-historical tasks resting, first and foremost, on your shoulders. But it is here that I feel my deepest agony and find myself facing my chief, agonizing paradox.

5) If I were absolutely sure that your thoughts ran precisely along this path, then I would feel so much more at peace with myself. Well, so what! If it must be so, then so be it! But believe me, my heart boils over when I think that you might believe that I am guilty of these crimes and that in your heart of hearts you yourself think that I am really guilty of all of these horrors. In that case, what would it mean? Would it turn out that I have been helping to deprive [the Party] of many people (beginning with myself!), that is, that I am wittingly committing an evil?!In that case, such action could never be justified. My head is giddy with confusion, and I feel like yelling at the top of my voice. I feel like pounding my head against the wall: For, in that case, I have become a cause for the death of others. What am I to do? What am I to do?

6) I bear not one iota of malice towards anyone, nor am I bitter. I am not a Christian. But I do have my quirks. I believe that I am suffering retribution for those years when I really waged a campaign [against the Party line?]. And if you really want to know, more than anything else I am oppressed by one fact, which you have perhaps forgotten: Once, most likely during the summer of 1928, I was at your place, and you said to me: “Do you know why I consider you my friend? After all, you are not capable of intrigues, are you?” And I said: “No, I am not.” At that time, I was hanging around with Kamenev (“first encounter”).⁶ Believe it or not, but it is this fact that stands out in my mind as original sin does for a Jew [sic]. Oh, God, what a child I was! What a fool! And now I’m paying for this with my honor and with my life. For this forgive me, Koba. I weep as I write. I no longer need anything, and you yourself know that I am probably making my situation worse by allowing myself to write all this. But I just can’t, I simply can’t keep silent. I must give you my final “farewell.” It is for this reason that I bear no malice towards anyone, not towards the [party-state] leadership nor the investigators nor anyone in between. I ask you for forgiveness although I have already been punished to such an extent that everything has grown dim around me, and darkness has descended upon me.

7) When I was hallucinating, I saw you several times and once I saw Nadezhda Sergeevna.⁷ She approached me and said: “What have they done with you, Nikolai Ivanovich? I’ll tell Iosif to bail you out.” This was so real that I was about to jump and write a letter to you and ask you to … bail me out! [Ellipsis Bukharin’s.] Reality had become totally mixed up in my mind with delusion. I know that Nadezhda Sergeevna would never believe that I had harbored any evil thoughts against you, and not for nothing did the subconscious of my wretched self cause this delusion in me. We talked for hours, you and me…. Oh, Lord, if only there were some device which would have made it possible for you to see my soul flayed and ripped open! If only you could see how I am attached to you, body and soul, quite unlike certain people like Stetsky or Tal’. Well, so much for “psychology,”—forgive me. No angel will appear now to snatch Abraham’s sword from his hand. My fatal destiny shall be fulfilled.

8) Permit me, finally, to move on to my last, minor, requests.

a) It would be a thousand times easier for me to die than to go through the coming trial: I simply don’t know how I’ll be able to control myself—you know my nature: I am not an enemy either of the Party or of the USSR, and I’ll do all within my powers [to serve the party’s cause], but, under such circumstances, my powers are minimal, and heavy emotions rise up in my soul. I’d get on my knees, forgetting shame and pride, and plead with you not to make me go through with it [the trial]. But this is probably already impossible. I’d ask you, if it were possible, to let me die before the trial. Of course, I know how harshly you look upon such matters.

b) If I’m to receive the death sentence, then I implore you beforehand, I entreat you, by all that you hold dear, not to have me shot. Let me drink poison in my cell instead (let me have morphine so that I can fall asleep and never wake up). For me, this point is extremely important. I don’t know what words I should summon up in order to entreat you to grant me this as an act of charity. After all, politically, it won’t really matter, and, besides, no one will know a thing about it. But let me spend my last moments as I wish. Have pity on me! Surely you’ll understand,—knowing me as well as you do. Sometimes, I look death openly in the face, just as I know very well that I am capable of brave deeds. At other times, I, ever the same person, find myself in such disarray that I am drained of all strength. So if the verdict is death, let me have a cup of morphine. I implore you….

c) I ask you to allow me to bid farewell to my wife and son. No need for me to say good-bye to my daughter. I feel sorry for her. It will be too painful for her. It will also be too painful to Nadya and my father. Anyuta, on the other hand, is young.⁸ She will survive. I would like to exchange a few last words with her. I would like permission to meet her before the trial. My argument is as follows: If my family sees what I confessed to, they might commit suicide from sheer unexpectedness. I must somehow prepare them for it. It seems to me that this is in the interests of the case and its official interpretation.

d) If, contrary to expectation, my life is to be spared, I would like to request (though I would first have to discuss it with my wife) the following:⁹

*) that I be exiled to America for x number of years. My arguments are: I would myself wage a campaign [in favor] of the trials, I would wage a mortal war against Trotsky, I would win over large segments of the wavering intelligentsia, I would in effect become Anti-Trotsky and would carry out this mission in a big way and, indeed, with much zeal. You could send an expert security officer [chekist] with me and, as added insurance, you could detain my wife here for six months until I have proven that I am really punching Trotsky and Company in the nose, etc.

**) But if there is the slightest doubt in your mind, then exile me to a camp in Pechora or Kolyma, even for 25 years. I could set up there the following: a university, a museum of local culture, technical stations and so on, institutes, a painting gallery, an ethnographic museum, a zoological and botanical museum, a camp newspaper and journal.

In short, settling there with my family to the end of my days, I would carry out pioneering, enterprising, cultural work.

In any case, I declare that I would work like a dynamo wherever I am sent.

However, to tell the truth, I do not place much hope in this since the very fact of a change in the directive of the February Plenum speaks for itself (and I see all too well that things point to a trial taking place any day now).

And so these, it seems, are my last requests (one more thing: my philosophical work, remaining after me,—I have done a lot of useful work in it).

Iosif Vissarionovich! In me you have lost one of your most capable generals, one who is genuinely devoted to you. But that is all past. I remember that Marx wrote that Alexander the First lost a great helper to no purpose in Barclay de Tolly after the latter was charged with treason. It is bitter to reflect on all this. But I am preparing myself mentally to departing from this vale of tears, and there is nothing in me towards all of you, towards the Party and the cause but a great and boundless love. I am doing everything that is humanly possible and impossible. I have written to you about all this. I have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s. I have done all this in advance, since I have no idea at all what condition I shall be in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, etc. Being a neurasthenic, I shall perhaps feel such universal apathy that I won’t be able even so much as to move my finger.

But now, in spite of a headache and with tears in my eyes, I am writing [this letter]. My conscience is clear before you now, Koba. I ask you one final time for your forgiveness (only in your heart, not otherwise). For that reason I embrace you in my mind. Farewell forever and remember kindly your wretched

N. Bukharin 10 December 1937.

Yezhov fell from power at the end of 1938 and was arrested early in 1939. After a lengthy interrogation at which he was accused of being a spy for Poland and England, he was confessing by the middle of 1939. It is not known whether he wrote personally to Stalin, as Bukharin had. The document below represents part of his final statement at his secret trial in February 1940.

A Statement Made Before a Secret Judicial Session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. 3 February 1940.¹⁰

For a long time I have thought about what it will feel like to go to trial, how I should behave at the trial, and I have come to the conclusion that the only way I could hang on to life is by telling everything honestly and truthfully. Only yesterday, in a conversation with me, Beria said to me: “Don’t assume that you will necessarily be executed. If you will confess and tell everything honestly, your life will be spared.” After this conversation with Beria I decided: It is better to die, it is better to leave this earth as an honorable man and to tell nothing but the truth at the trial. At the preliminary investigation I said that I was not a spy, that I was not a terrorist, but they didn’t believe me and beat me up horribly. During the 25 years of my Party work I have fought honorably against enemies and have exterminated them. I have committed crimes for which I might well be executed. I will talk about them later. But I have not committed and am innocent of the crimes which have been imputed to me by the prosecution in its bill of indictment….

I did not organize any conspiracy against the Party and the government. On the contrary, I used everything at my disposal to expose conspiracies. In 1934, when I began conducting the case of the “Kirov affair,” I was not afraid to report Yagoda and other traitors on the Extraordinary Commission (ChK) [the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, or Cheka] to the Central Committee. Sitting on the Cheka, enemies such as Agranov and others led us by the nose, claiming that this was the work of the Latvian Intelligence Service. We did not believe these Chekists and forced them to reveal to us the truth [about] the participation of the rightist-Trotskyist organization. Having been in Leningrad at the time of the investigation into the murder of S. M. Kirov, I saw how the Chekists tried to mess up the whole case. Upon my arrival in Moscow, I wrote a detailed report concerning all this in the name of Stalin, who immediately after this called for a meeting….

One may wonder why I would repeatedly place the question of the Cheka’s sloppy work before Stalin if I was a part of an anti-Soviet conspiracy….

Coming to the NKVD, I found myself at first alone. I didn’t have an assistant. At first, I acquainted myself with the work, and only then did I begin my work by crushing the Polish spies who had infiltrated all departments of the organs of the Cheka. Soviet Intelligence was in their hands. In this way, I, “a Polish spy,” began my work by crushing Polish spies. After crushing the Polish spies, I immediately set out to purge the group of turncoats. That’s how I began my work for the NKVD. I personally exposed Molchanov, and, along with him, also other enemies of the people, who had infiltrated the organs of the NKVD and who had occupied important positions in it. I had intended to arrest Lyushkov but he slipped out of my hands and fled abroad. I purged 14,000 Chekists.¹¹ But my great guilt lies in the fact that I purged so few of them. My practice was as follows: I would hand over the task of interrogating the person under arrest to one or another department head while thinking to myself: “Go on, interrogate him today,—Tomorrow I will arrest you.” All around me were enemies of the people, my enemies. I purged Chekists everywhere. It was only in Moscow, Leningrad and the Northern Caucasus that I did not purge them. I thought they were honest, but it turned out, in fact, that I had been harboring under my wing saboteurs, wreckers, spies and enemies of the people of other stripes….

I have never taken part in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. If all the testimonies of the members of the conspiracy are carefully read, it will become apparent that they were slandering not only me but also the CC and the government….

I am charged with corruption as pertaining to my morals and my private life [moral’no-bytovoe razlozhenie]. But where are the facts? I have been in the public eye of the Party for 25 years. During these 25 years everyone saw me, everyone loved me for my modesty and honesty. I do not deny that I drank heavily, but I worked like a horse. Where is my corruption? I understand and honestly declare that the only cause for sparing my life would be for me to admit that I am guilty of the charges brought against me, to repent before the Party and to implore it to spare my life. Perhaps the Party will spare my life when taking my services into account. But the Party has never had any need of lies, and I am once again declaring to you, that I was not a Polish spy, and I do not want to admit guilt to that charge because such an admission would only be a gift to the Polish landowners, just as admitting guilt to espionage activity for England and Japan would only be a gift to the English lords and Japanese samurai. I refuse to give such gifts to those gentlemen….

I’ll now finish my final address. I ask the Military Collegium to grant me the following requests: 1. My fate is obvious. My life, naturally, will not be spared since I myself have contributed to this at my preliminary investigation. I ask only one thing: Shoot me quietly, without putting me through any agony. 2. Neither the Court nor the CC will believe in my innocence. If my mother is alive, I ask that she be provided for in her old age, and that my daughter be taken care of. 3. I ask that my nephews not be subjected to punitive measures because they are not guilty of anything. 4. I ask that the Court investigate thoroughly the case of Zhurbenko, whom I considered and still consider to be an honest man devoted to the Leninist-Stalinist cause.¹² 5. I request that Stalin be informed that I have never in my political life deceived the Party, a fact known to thousands of persons, who know my honesty and modesty. I request that Stalin be informed that I am a victim of circumstances and nothing more, yet here enemies I have overlooked may have also had a hand in this. Tell Stalin that I shall die with his name on my lips.

Both Yezhov and Bukharin defended their personal honor. Bukharin, as he had done at his trial, made it clear that while he was prepared to admit to the overall charges against him, he was innocent of the specifics and had always been a loyal Bolshevik. Yezhov took a stronger line in his statement by repudiating the confession he had given to the NKVD interrogators and finally insisting on his complete innocence and constant loyalty to the cause.

Here there is a significant difference, and that difference tells us a great deal about two Bolshevik attitudes toward the party and terror. Yezhov admitted to nothing in connection with the charges against him. In his statement, however, Bukharin admitted to a bit more than he had at the February 1937 Central Committee plenum. There he had denied any knowledge of the activities, conspiratorial or otherwise, of his former followers after 1930. In this letter, however, he admitted to having known that they were up to something as late as 1932 and to not having told Stalin about it out of pity or a belief that he could reform them: “Aikhenval’d told me in passing … ‘the gang has met, and a report was read’—or something of the sort. And, yes, I concealed this fact.”

Knowing of underground activities of others and not reporting them was precisely what Bukharin had been accused of. It is difficult to see how such an admission could have done anything other than destroy any credibility he may still have had. Stalin might thus have legitimately wondered at what point Bukharin was telling (or would tell) the whole truth about his connections and knowledge of others’ activities.

Both Yezhov and Bukharin knew that they would almost certainly be shot. Yet both pleaded for their lives on the bases of a lack of major sin in the past and of potential usefulness in the future. Each thought, or wanted to think, that there was some chance that Stalin would spare him. Bukharin in particular displayed an amazing naïveté when he suggested that Stalin exile him to America but warned that he would have to discuss it first with his wife. Bukharin and Yezhov pursued different discursive strategies to try to save their lives. Each, while intimating that his death was probably politically necessary, in different ways tried to give Stalin a reason to spare him. Each offered to Stalin a possible public narrative and construction of reality that could explain saving his life. The documents can therefore be seen as dialogues, although their interlocutor, Stalin, remained silent.

Bukharin’s letter was that of one insider and longtime comrade writing to another. By surmising Stalin’s “great and bold” idea for a purge, Bukharin spoke to Stalin as a fellow senior leader, as one of the top group that since before 1917 had originated and implemented great and bold ideas. Bukharin assured Stalin that he would confess at his trial and participate in the required apology/scapegoating ritual, but by drawing a distinction between that performance and the real truth, Bukharin’s text explicitly recognized that the campaign against enemies was constructed and not reflective of political reality.

By alluding to Stalin’s late wife, drawing on the long personal relationship between Stalin and Bukharin, and mentioning his physical ailments, Bukharin was also trying to evoke personal intimacy as well as political loyalty. Essentially, Bukharin was saying to Stalin, “You and I have been insiders together for a long time, and I want you to know that I understand the symbolic rituals and am willing to play along to show my loyalty. But we have been friends for so long; can’t you help me in my misery and at the same time find some use for me?” Because of Stalin’s history of saving Bukharin at the last minute, Bukharin must have thought he had a reasonable chance to save himself.

Yezhov took a different tack, and although he recognized the likelihood of his own death, he may have also been pursuing a strategy to save his life. Even though his text was technically a statement to the court, it was clear that it was addressed to Stalin. Because of his different relationship to Stalin, as subordinate rather than onetime equal and friend, Yezhov’s position was more complicated, and he could not draw on the same discursive strategies as Bukharin; he did not have the long personal connection to Stalin that Bukharin, as a fellow member of Lenin’s guard, had.

Because he really believed that spies were everywhere, Yezhov could not “nod and wink” at the invention and political construction of the hunt for enemies as Bukharin had. Nor could he follow what might have seemed an obvious strategy to the court: to argue that he was innocent of everything because “Stalin told me to do it” would have been not only suicidal but disloyal to Stalin and the party.

Unlike Bukharin, Yezhov calculated that to confess to the espionage charges against him at his trial not only would help the enemy but would deprive Stalin of a reason to save him. So Yezhov’s text followed what was really the only potentially saving rhetorical strategy available to him: he did not make any distinction between true/false constative speech and useful performance, as Bukharin had done. The performative was, in fact, the real. He was saying to Stalin, “Unlike others, I accept as truth the basic premise that enemies are everywhere. See? They even smeared me. It’s not necessary to scapegoat me for excesses. One could say that what happened was not false and there were no excesses; I [we] did what was necessary and it is defensible. I do not and will not refer to your role in this in any way, and as a loyal executor of a correct policy I could still be useful to you.”

Both Bukharin and Yezhov were shaped by the texts and language of Stalinism, but in different ways. Yezhov, the comparatively simple party man, really believed that the victims of the terror were enemies and that they were guilty. He bragged about the number of enemies he had destroyed and said that his mistake consisted in not destroying more of them. He accepted at face value that all his assistants had turned out to be spies. The idea that the country had been riddled with literally millions of traitors and agents did not seem outlandish or absurd to him. He believed it to the end. At his trial Yezhov refused to confess to the scenario provided him. Instead, he told the “truth” as he understood it. He was not lying or being coy when he expressed fear that confessing to being a Polish spy would give comfort to the enemy. In Yezhov’s black-and-white mentality, the enemy without really consisted of Polish pans, English lords, and Japanese samurai. For the Yezhovs, with no knowledge of the outside world, these were not shorthands or caricatures but real foes: the master public narrative was true on the face of it. For him, discourse merely described reality.

Bukharin, on the other hand, because he had sat in the highest councils for so long and understood the Bolshevik utilitarian attitude toward the “truth,” could understand “something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge” of the guilty, the potentially guilty, and the merely suspicious. Truth, guilt, and innocence were defined by the party as whatever furthered the cause. Bukharin was prepared to give his life for that cause, telling Stalin, “If I were absolutely sure that your thoughts ran precisely along this path, then I would feel so much more at peace with myself.” For Bukharin, the official public narrative and accompanying ritual were instruments. For him, discourse was an artifice to create a reality for the masses, and he understood that his death was to be a symbolic act to further the party’s goals of unity. For Yezhov, on the other hand, party discourse was objective reality.

Which was the more authentic Stalinist? On one level, Bukharin was. He understood what was being asked of him; in his time he had demanded similar sacrifices from other Bolsheviks. He believed in the party’s need for his ritual confession as part of its “universal-historical tasks,” understood his party duty, and, within his personal limits, did it. Like Arthur Koestler’s protagonist Rubashov in the novel Darkness at Noon, Bukharin was caught in a kind of Bolshevik intellectual trap. His education and Western logic told him that he was innocent and that he did not deserve to die. But his whole political life in the Bolshevik milieu told him otherwise and forced him to play out the political sequence he himself had helped to create: everything is justified for the party. As for Rubashov, part of Bukharin’s tragedy was that he had devoted his life to the Revolution, and now the Revolution was destroying him.

On another level, however, Yezhov’s statement also reflected genuine Bolshevism. Its uncompromising tone, lack of personal emotion, and true belief in the need to crush all enemies spoke more to the traditional iron-willed Bolshevik than Bukharin’s intensely personal pleading. There is no reason to think that Yezhov understood anything of Bukharin’s dilemma. For him, things were much simpler, and political utility or epistemological relativism did not enter into the matter. His situation was as clear-cut as a battlefield. Enemies were numerous and dangerous; his Civil War experience, social background, and party leadership told him so. The counterrevolutionaries had to be destroyed. He just did not happen to be one of them.

Part of the difference between the two was, of course, class background. Workers like Yezhov had never been part of the theoretical world of Bolshevik politics, and intellectuals like Bukharin could relate to their plebeian followers only with great difficulty. But another difference had to do with their different positions in the party. Yezhov’s belief in the “correctness” of the leadership was absolute. He was a soldier who marched, understood, and indeed shot when, what, and whom the party dictated. Bukharin, on the other hand, had long been a general, accustomed to interpreting the world for the party (and population) and presenting various layers of the party with texts, transcripts, and discourses deemed suitable for them.

Yezhov, although vicious and probably unbalanced, died simply, even honestly. One is certain that he saw his end as a martyr’s death, believing that what he had done was right and that he had been dragged down by the omnipresent evil enemies he had tried to destroy. Bukharin also understood his execution as a martyr’s fate. But he died the death of an intellectual plagued at the end by self-doubt, whose death was the result of a web of defensive political language, symbols, and rituals self-consciously built up to keep a certain idea (and group) in power, even if it meant the members of the group volunteering to die one by one. Conditioned as it was by elite party discipline, the constructed reality that the Bukharins had built eventually facilitated their deaths. Bukharin died in a complex reality he helped create. Yezhov died in a simple reality he believed.

CHAPTER TEN

Two Bolsheviks