Ep 70 - The Stalin Eras, Part 3.5: War Is Already Here (1936-1939)

In late nineteen forty one, three years after his ambassadorship ended, and mere months after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Davies felt compelled to publish a short article in an American magazine titled How Russia Blasted Hitler's Spy Machine. In it, he reflected on the series of high-profile trials against Soviet agents that took place in the USSR under his tenure.

Western media today, as they did eighty years ago, almost exclusively portrays these court proceedings as a series of sham show trials. Former US Ambassador Davies, a witness to these proceedings, was of a different opinion. We reproduced the majority of his article to open this episode.

No, no.

Practically every device of the German fifth column as we know it, in Europe, South America, and even the United States was disclosed in the testimony of the Soviet Quislings. But the Russians were acutely aware of the menace as early as nineteen. As fast as the Germans and Japanese built, the That, in brief, is the real story behind the Russian purges, and one of the chief explanations for the magnificent Russian Renaissance to the Nazi juggernaut.

I attended the treason trials probably more assiduously than any other member.

In my reports I find that I refer to the second charges quite casually, and as of comparatively little importance. One reason was that the phrases descriptive of the Nazi technique, such as fifth column and internal aggression, were unfamiliar to our thoughts. These terms came to have meaning for us only after we saw these activities in the conquest of one after another of the victims of Hitler's diplomacy and military prowess.

It was only after the taking of Prague that we began to recognize the fact that there had existed in Germany as part of the Foreign Office, under the administration of a man named Ernst Bohl, a huge organization for fifth column instruction. It was in fact a school for the purpose of instructing Germans and German agents in the methods and techniques of propaganda and for the breakdown of morale. And undoubtedly.

More sinister methods of aggression all were designed to weaken the victim before attack, and to supply centers of traitor's help back of the lines.

Was that we all seemed to be thinking in terms of the struggle for power that was going on within Russia, between the ins and the outs, between Stalin on the one hand, and on the other, the late Leon Trotsky, who had been exiled earlier. and was mysteriously murdered in Mexico last year. One of the primary issues between Trotsky and Stalin was the question of which policy the Soviet Union should pursue.

Stalin, a practical realist, was convinced that his primary job was to develop socialist democracy and make communism work within Soviet Russia. Trotsky, on the other hand, was an extreme advocate of world revolution, and held that. the system could not be successful if surrounded by capitalist states. We knew that Trotsky had a great many followers in Russia, and we regarded the treason trials as Stalin's method of destroying his internal enemy.

Of cooperation with the German and Japanese high commands seemed like so much bizarre window dressing. A facade to cover the liquid.

Working through Red Army leaders inside Russia, Trotsky agreed to cooperate with the Germans and pave the way through espionage and sabotage for an effective invasion. Indicative of the degree to which the Soviet government was alarmed by these subversive. Activities is the fact that Stalin. Completely reversed a policy laid down in nineteen twenty six. Prior to the banishment of Trotsky in 1928, many of Stalin's associates urged that Trotsky be tried for treason.

To this Stalin replied, in effect, quote, No, we must not do that. When the leaders of the French Revolution began to kill each other, it was the beginning of the end. The Soviet Revolution must not chew up its own children. We will not do it.

From 1927 to 1935, that policy was sustained. But it changed suddenly when the Russian leaders learned of the activities of the Fifth Column. And there followed the trials, the purges, and executions, which were pressed with the greatest vigor and religious. When they were over, the fifth column had been smashed once and for all, and the road was clear to build up the magnificent morale and the military machine that is checkmating the Germans today.

The fireworks started in December nineteen thirty-four with the murder of Stalin's personal friend, a man by the name of Sergei Kirov, who was the Soviet leader for the Leningrad district. The result was that the trial of the murderer and a group of prominent Soviet leaders, formerly associated with Trotsky, who were charged with aiding and abetting in the crime, and in a conspiracy to overthrow the Stalin government. They were judged guilty, and sixteen were shot.

Subsequently, in January 1937, apparently as a result of investigations arising out of this trial, seventeen men, including five or six prominent leaders, as well as a number of engineers and professional killers, were tried on similar charges. Conspiracy and treason. This was the so-called Raddock trial, named for one of the best-known prisoners, Karl Radek, a brilliant communist and editor of a great Moscow newspaper.

Thirteen of the defendants were shot, and three were given terms of ten years. Another year passed and in March 1938 came the Bukharin trial, in which the chief defendant was Nikolai Bukharin, another prominent intellectual and editor. Eighteen of these defendants were shot, among them Bukharin. One was given a term of twenty five years, and two others were given terms of fifteen years.

It was these last two trials that I attended. The Raddock trial which lasted six days was drenched with drama. The sessions were held in a long, high ceilinged room, which had formerly been part of a fashionable Moscow club of the old revolution.

I sat with the diplomatic corps just in front of the newspapermen, not more than twelve feet from the prisoner's dock. The testimonies and confessions of these defendants were startling. They all pleaded guilty, literally beating their breasts as they heaped guilt upon themselves.

But as a trained lawyer, not without experience in testing the credibility of witnesses in criminal trials, I watched the defendants' faces, studied their conduct on the stand, and I arrived at the conclusion that the state had unquestionably proved their case.

As a matter of fact, on the record, it would be difficult for me to conceive how any court could have done other than judge the defendants guilty as charged. To have assumed that the proceedings were staged as political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of Shakespeare.

The indictment at the Bukharin trial was similar to that of the preceding trial. It charged conspiracy to overthrow the Stalin government by the defendants, but charged with much greater detail the alleged treason of the defendants in conspiracy with Germany and Japan. The conspirators confessed that under the leadership of Trotsky they had 1. agreed to aid Germany and Japan in the military attack on Russia, 2

seven. Cooperated with German representatives in espionage and sabotage. The plan, in short, contemplated complete cooperation with Germany. The conspirators, as a reward, were allowed to take over smaller but technically independent Soviet states, which would turn over White Russia into Ukraine to Germany, and the Maritime Provinces, and the Sakhalin oil fields to Japan.

Further, after German conquest, German firms were to receive concessions and favors in connection with the development of iron ore, manganese, oil, coal, timber, and other great resources of the Soviet Union. If these original Fifth Columnists had succeeded in their plans, Germany would be poised today for the final attack upon Great Britain with the natural wealth of the Russian territory behind her.

To appreciate fully the character and significance of this testimony, it should be borne in mind that the confessions came not from obscure, impoverished citizens ready to be.

But from such prominent personalities as two cabinet members, the Commissar of the Treasury, the Commissar of Foreign Trade, a former Premier of the Government, Two former ambassadors who had served in London, Paris, and Tokyo, a former Under Secretary of the State, and the Acting Secretary of the State of the Government, as well as two of the Soviet Union's foremost editors.

It was as if the Secretary of Treasure Morgenthau and Secretary of Commerce Jones Under Secretary of State Wells, Ambassador Phillips, Ambassador Winnant, and Secretary to the President Early confessed conspiring with Germany to cooperate in an invasion of the United States.

Here are a few excerpts from the testimony in open court which are revealing. Kristensky, under Secretary of State, quoted I established espionage connections with the Germans on the direct instructions of Trotsky. We came to an agreement that we would help the Reichswehr create a number of espionage bases on the territory of the USSR by permitting the unhindered entry of spies by the Reichswehr.

And that we would supply the Reichswehr with espionage materials, that is, to put it plainly, that we would be German spies. In return the Reichswehr undertook to pay us two hundred and fifty thousand marks a year, end quote. Rosengutz, Commissar of Foreign Trade, quote, I handed various secret information to the commander in chief of the Reichswehr, Siet, and to the chief of the German general staff, Has.

I received instructions from Trotsky through Kristinsky to carry on wrecking activities in the sphere of foreign trade with the object of rendering direct assistance to Germany and Japan, end quote. Bessinov, Councillor of the Soviet Embassy at Berlin.

Kristinsky told me that the agreement reached by the Trotskyites with the German National Socialist Party on the possibility of hastening war, which would facilitate the coming to power of the Trotskyites, must be expedited at all costs. End quote. Grinco, Commissar of Finance, quote. One of the organizers of the Ukrainian National Fascist Organization, I operated particularly in the Ukraine, at the main gates through which German fascism is preparing its blow against the USSR, end quote.

Minor defendants confessed that they had connection with the German and Japanese intelligence services and cooperated with them in systematic espionage and sabotage. For instance, one official stated that he had organized two explosions at fertilizer plants, which entailed enormous property losses as well as the loss of human life.

Another assumed responsibility for disasters at the chemical plant. A third described the manner in which cadres or centers were organized for the purpose of cooperating with the German invaders when they arrived.

Still another told how he had planned and wrecked troop trains on the express directions from Foreign Intelligence Services, Among the routine orders which this last conspirator had received were instructions not only to quote organize incendiaryism in the military stores, canteens, and army shipments, end quote, but also to use. of bacteriological means in time of war, with the object of contaminating troop trains and army camps with virulent basili, end quote.

From the testimony it was disclosed that contact between the German High Command and General Tukachevsky had been established.

It was suddenly announced in april nineteen thirty seven that General Tukachevsky, who had been designated by the government to attend the coronation in London as the representative of the USSR, would not go to London. He was reported to have been sent down to command the army of the Volga district, but it was understood at the time that he had been removed from the train and arrested before he arrived at his command.

Within a few weeks thereafter, on june eleventh, along with eleven other officers of the High Command, he was shot after a coil. Many commentators have concluded that the purges seriously weakened the Red Army. I believe that the exact opposite is the truth.

The house cleaning of traitors eliminated some of the highest commanders, but it brought about the promotion of younger and frequently more imaginative men who, while lacking the experience of their predecessors, made up for it in initiative and loyalty. The Persians also gave the average soldier a greater sense of security, and the conviction that his fate was now in the hands of the more trustworthy officers than the

The result is that he doesn't dream of analyzing the acts of his government. When the government brands a man a traitor, the man is a traitor. And nobody bothers his head about that. The extensive military and industrial preparations that were launched immediately after the smoke of the purge is cleared away go far to explain the Russians' resistance today and their ability to withstand German science and German panzer divisions.

But this all out program could easily have been nullified if Stalin and his associates had not cleaned out all treasonable elements within the country three years before the invasion was launched. Today, when the Russian generals order a bridge blown up or a section of earth scorched, the bridges are blown and the earth is scorched. There are no saboteurs, secret agents, or fifth columnists to cooperate with the invaders.

because the Russians were sufficiently far sighted to eliminate them before it was too late. That is a fact which other liberty-loving nations might well ponder.

We do suggest listening to the episodes in order so that you are better able to understand the complex tapestry of connecting threads which make up the big picture. So if you've somehow stumbled on this without listening to the beginning, we highly recommend you start with episode 63, The Stalin Eras, an Introduction, 1878 to 1970.

War is Already Here is the title of this narrative. A title we believe captures both Stalin's mindset as well as the material reality faced by the USSR during these years. We will be covering 1936 through 1939 in Part 3.5, focusing in detail on the ins and outs of the various trials of anti-Soviet agents. revealing new archival information not yet readily accessible, which demonstrates, contrary to popular opinion, their legitimacy.

By the end of this episode, we will have followed up on the international geopolitical threads spun in the previous narrative, which will come together in the eventual signing of the controversial Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. By the way, if you like our work and you want to support our show, we ask that you head over to Patreon.com.

Where starting from just$5 a month, you can get access to bonus content, QRay episodes, the Theory Beats project, surprise drops, and other things that you won't find anywhere. If you don't have the discretionary income to support our work, no problem. Even the free tier has access to the study guides. Head over to patreon.comslash pearls.

Another party member, D. A. Chabelin, considered it fully inappropriate to allow the former Lashensi, who were deprived of their rights because of their social character, to be elected. as they might utilize the organs of the worker state to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. These examples, which were in no way fringe opinions, reflected the instability in the countryside and anxiety about the lingering influence of former ruling and privileged classes.

Citizens who opposed the expansion of voting rights utilized party messages addressing the struggle between forward-thinking workers and peasants against the remnants of the old regime to justify their opposition. protesting that the people who had benefited under the Tsar and capitalism were untrustworthy. One collective farmer suggested segregating people who had fought against the Bolsheviks during the war and formulating a special article to prevent their participation in elections.

Another asked the state to restrict voting rights of former merchants, landlords, as well as factory and mine owners, because, quote, all of them are enemies of laborers, and must not have the right to vote or be elected.

I. P. Plotnikov, a worker and party member, summed up this distrust, arguing that members of religious cults should not be eligible to be elected, quote, as religion is an irreconcilable enemy of socialism. End quote. Throughout this period of international intrigue, the Soviet Union also found itself in a whirlpool of bitter domestic. The ripples of impact from the decisions made during this era are impossible to calculate, but we will do our best to position and frame them within their epoch.

In mid-January nineteen thirty-five, the leadership of the insurgent cell known as the Zenovite Center. Grigory Zanoviev was sentenced to ten years in prison for forming an illegal opposition to the CPSU, conspiring to commit terrorist acts, and being directly responsible for the assassination of Kirov. G. E. Evdokimov, I. P. Bakaev, and Lev Kamenev were also sentenced to eight And five years respectively.

The second part of the trial took place on January twenty third, targeting the leadership of the NKVD in Linenville. twelve were tried for having received information about the preparations for the attempt on Kirov, as well as having failed to take the necessary measures to prevent the assassination, despite having every possible means of arresting it.

Given the crimes, these sentences were also very light. Boltsevich got ten years in prison, and the other eleven received between two and three years in prison. But the sentences of two agents in particular, Zaporozhets and Medved, under the orders of Yagoda, were especially odd. Despite having been convicted of having prior knowledge of the assassination and not acting upon it, they were given each two years.

They were taken from their holding cells, not by a car meant for prisoners, but in a much more luxurious government vehicle. When they arrived at the White Sea Canal camps, Medved came by train in a special compartment. According to one prisoner there, he stayed in the personal room of the overseer of the complex, Rappaport, and was wearing an NKVD uniform without insignia.

The pair of former agents then went on to Solvetsk in the same privileged manner, before moving on to Kolima, once the ice of the Okhotsk Sea made that trip possible. There they were given important posts immediately. Zaporozhets, in particular, was head of the road building administration within the complex. Two days after the NKVD trials, Sergei Mrochovsky, boss of the Trotsky Printing Presses in 1927, was arrested.

Walter Kravitsky defected from the Soviet Union in 1937, gleefully cooperating with U.S. intelligence. He gave the Western powers his prediction based upon personal knowledge of the Molotov Ribbentrop. He aided the British in arresting Soviet agent John Herbert King, and eventually Donald McLean, as well as John Kerncross. He claimed that Stalin was involved in Kirov's assassination, which we now know is unequivocally false.

He also claimed that Murchowski was interrogated for 90 hours by NKVD officers under instruction to force him to confess to being a terrorist, with Stalin calling every couple of hours to find out if he had broken. A process which would have been quite difficult considering Stalin was in between the 16th Congress of the Russian Soviets and the beginning of the 7th Congress of the Soviets of the USSR. Less than five days, during which he was in a special Politburo session.

Stalin was advocating for secret elections to be included in the upcoming constitution against Avil Yenukids, who suggested open, uncontested elections. But even beyond that, thanks to a massive release of previously classified materials, we now know that when Murchowski was arrested and his belongings were subsequently searched, Officials discovered notebooks dedicated to and filled with the addresses of Trotskyists still operating in the USSR.

They found an extensive, systematized archive of both the illegal Trotskyite Center from the late 1920s as well as Smirnov's group, which Soviet officials believed had been liquidated in 1933. They found original copies of documents related to supposedly rehabilitated Trotskyists who had been sent abroad by the party, as well as correspondence related to organizing with Trotsky, Rakovsky, Murolov, Veloborodov and other leading Trotskyites.

And that isn't the end of it. In fact, many of these revelations will change the way in which we view this period dramatically. For example, the idea that these trials were based upon confessions, typically referred to as forced confessions, with no material evidence, is demonstrably false. The reason as to why most evidence was not presented to the public, we will discuss briefly in a bit, and then in depth during the conclusion episode of the Stalin Eras.

When, on the night of december sixteenth, nineteen thirty four, the first wave of members of the Trotskyite Zenovievite Counter Revolutionary Organization were arrested, A subsequent search uncovered several firearms with ammunition and various documents and letters implicating them in the broader conspiracy.

Let us now consult our favorite right deviationist and anti Stalin agitator. Grigory Tokayev from his nineteen fifty five memoir, Betrayal of an Ideal, as to whether a Zenovievite cell existed in Leningrad and what their intent might have been. I returned to Moscow from the Caucasus early in October 1934. Not only was I not rested, I had worn myself out and grown much thinner. The inward tension and the incessant need for vigilance had exhausted me.

Now to my other anxieties was added something I had never anticipated. I found myself at a conference of the military under. No special approach was made in advance. I was merely taken on a plausible pretext to a place the existence of which I could never have suspected. Observed and chosen, even though it was by people who were prominent in the state and whose views I largely shared, was in itself disturbing.

Equally so was the further proof which this meeting afforded to the importance of the opposition and the fact that we were, perhaps, on the verge of great events. The conference was presided over by an army officer of the highest rank. I found myself among people who, until that instance, I had believed to be completely loyal Stalinists. Among them was an exceptionally beautiful young woman to whom her husband, ADC, had presented me at a party during the last Mayday festivities.

I had danced with her once or twice, and she had then invited me to her house. Saying with a laugh, You needn't be worried, my husband isn't jealous. Now I discovered what this meant. Her husband was a key figure in this military underground context. As I sat next to her, I was overwhelmed with the realization of how true it was that Stalin Could trust nobody.

It occurred to me to wonder at the great distance I myself had travelled from my initial loyalty to the regime. It must indeed have been a long way if these people to whom I owed no allegiance thus trusted me. How confident they already felt of me was revealed later in the evening. Publicly, before the whole meeting, with military curtness, they put to me a question to perform a certain action, What I cannot state here, which was necessary for their anti Stalin work. Was I ready for such a step?

Never before had I been called upon to make so momentous a decision at such short notice and in so little time. I knew that such a request as theirs could be made only if it was unavoidable. I also realized what my refusal would mean. They would never trust me again, and the proof they had just given me of their confidence was priceless to me. I said I would do what they wanted, whenever they wished.

In the name of the assembled men and women, the chairman thanked me. What was required of me was quite simple and concrete. The preparations were not my concern, and they were to take some time. In October, I was told that, for an unforeseen reason, the event had to be put off until November. Then there was another postmone.

As such, the party needed to initiate a new registration of members and subsequently develop better controls. Perhaps this gave the conspirators anxiety that their machinations had been revealed to the party leadership.

According to the testimony of the assassin Nikolaev, as well as that of his wife, preparations for the assassination began in April of that year. After all, A revoked party membership card which granted Nikolaev access to the Smolny Institute on the day he murdered Ken.

This arrest occurred in October of 1934, and police records, along with the 1989 memoir of NKVD agent Alexi Rybin, both corroborate Yagoda's testimony. Further, Kirov's personal bodyguard, Borisov, was killed in an automobile accident on his way to the Smolny Institute the day after Kirov's murder. Borisov was on his way to give account of all the difficulties he had had in getting to the institute the day before.

The automobile accident occurred while he was riding in the back of an NKVD truck. He suffered fatal head injuries. The other passengers and the driver were not injured. Yagoda would implicate Zaporozhets in Borosov's death. After Kirov's assassination, Tokayev informs us of the depth of the conspiracy. There was indeed no doubt as to the seriousness of the assassination of Kirov. were most serious since the Soviet Union had been founded.

The shot which had killed Kirov was aimed not only at him, but at the very heart of the Politburo. He was perhaps the best orator among the leaders, and the most loyal, most consistent, and most fanatical Stalinist in the country. He was also a magnificent organizer.

Let us briefly return to Yagoda, because he plays a major role in the tangle of

By extension, we can probably believe former NKVD Officer Ribin when he wrote. With the help of the assault Bulanov, Yogoda tried hard to get rid of Menzinsky, who suffered greatly from And bronchitis. After getting rid of Mengensky through poison, Yogoda was now free to do his evil deeds while masking himself in the cloak of a Bolshevik, patriot, and falsifying documents in court.

Rybin also complained of Yagoda's orders to the agents. While terrorist investigations typically took at least thirty days, Yagoda ordered them done in ten. Trotskyite and anti Soviet Ante Chiliga Eras wrote in his memoir that after the conviction of Zanoviev and Kamenev, they were sent to the Verkhne-Yuralsk political prison, where Chilika was being held. He reported that Zenoviev arrived with a bunch of books on fascism, a subject in which he was showing special interest. More on that later.

At the same time as those connected with Kirov's murder were arrested, another 100 people were arrested and tried in a closed trial. The verdict was handed down and they were all shot. This sent shockwaves through circles of the less convicted citizens of the Union. Capital punishment had not been used often since the conclusion of the Civil War. It sent ripples through the rest of the world as well. The capitalist press latched onto it as a gotcha regarding so called communist oppression.

What was not known to any of them, perhaps a mistake on the part of the Soviet government, Was that the people arrested and executed had no connection to Zanoviev nor Kirov's murder? They were a mixture of former white guards and white sympathizers dispatched by the Nazis to cross the borders of Poland, Latvia, of Finland into the USSR. According to Soviet diplomat to England, Ivan Maysky's diary, the governments of all three countries. assisted these terrorists in their crossing.

Once the monarchists had crossed, they were to make contact with the Murders from among Soviet citizens. Additionally, over the previous months, there had been a number of assassination attempts on Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, and others. But the USSR could not bring the terrorists to open trial without risking a stoking of the conflict with Germany, as well as the three states through which the whites had crossed.

Meisky wrote at the end of this entry, Our policy is a policy of peace. We do not want to risk peace because of the machinations of terrorists paid by the Nazis. Shoot eighty to a hundred people is Of course, a difficult and unpleasant thing, but it is still better than to risk the lives of millions of workers and peasants on the battlefield. We must never forget the beautiful words of French revolutionary Mirabeau, who 140 years ago said that a revolution cannot be made of lavender oil.

And perhaps this paradox best describes the policy of the Soviet Union during wartime. Year. Why so many people were executed after the Kirov assassination? She replied. 103 persons were executed as members of murder gangs who crossed the Soviet border with revolvers and hand grenades to commit murder and other acts of violence against the communist and Soviet officials.

Such gangs have existed ever since the Revolution drove out the White Guard armies, but Berlin gave them shelter after Hitler came to power. They have for two years, since Hitler's ascension, been bragging in newspapers in Berlin and Yugoslavia of their successes in murder and destruction beyond the Soviet frontier. These cases were handled by border guards until the assassination of Kirov aroused a storm of popular resolutions, calling for drastic action against the terrorists.

A court martial, composed of well known members of the Supreme Court, thereupon made rapid cleanup of all these cases in the court. Cities, publishing the fact that the terrorists had been armed when arrested, had run the border from Poland and Romania. and had plotted and carried out murders. The trials were secret, since the open discussion of details was tantamount to accusing several governments of acts that rank as causes of war.

This, in turn, led to a Shahja Spiegel, who was working as a contractor for in tourists, and according to GPU reports from nineteen thirty one, was an agent of the German secret police. doctor Tates then led to Gruferman, expelled from the RSFSR. twenty for criminal activity while operating as a member of a Czech trade delegate.

Grufermann, who the NKVD report states is undoubtedly connected with Polish counterintelligence, had recently filled out a visa application at the Plenipitentiary Mission in Warsaw. Dr. Tates was removed from work at the Kremlin.

In March of nineteen thirty five, Asked to be dismissed from the military after, according to his diary, the commander of the brigade, whom he had confronted, suggested that he should work with their right wing military conspiracy group, because the alternative would be to fall into the hands of

chief of the political department of the Red Army, Jan Gamarnik, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs at the time, and a nebulous others he didn't want to name. dated to nineteen thirty three, was dug up after a source in the Kremlin mentioned that the cleaning crew was gossiping about quote slander overheard from employees of the Kremlin Library.

The letter revealed an apparent infiltration of the library by Kamenev's sister-in-law, former Princess Bebutova, who had since changed her name to Rosenfeld, along with another former noblewoman and daughter of a Kolchak officer who had served.

Stalin titled, quote, On the Procedure of Making Arrests, end quote. Took the warning from April and made it official policy. This amendment stated that Arrests in all cases, without exception, can henceforth be carried out only with the consent of the relevant prosecutor. If it is necessary to make an arrest at the scene of a crime, officials from the NKVD authorized to do so by law are obliged to immediately report the arrest to the appropriate prosecutor for confirmation.

The amendment goes on to require explicit approval for arrests of members of the CC and Politburo, of officers and enlisted personnel in the Red Army, of any citizens of the Autonomous Republic. Of railway and water transport personnel, as well as many others. This, in our opinion, constitutes an unusual strategy for individuals who were supposedly extracting false confessions to persecute oppositionists in the world.

according to US Ambassador to Moscow, bullet, because the Soviet government had an intense fear of Japanese attack. A few days later, the head of the Japanese Embassy in Moscow, Sako, came to see Bullet, told him that he had been given information from an absolutely authoritative source that the Comintern would meet on the twentieth. Sako claimed that he had seen a copy of the resolutions which would be proposed. and gave Bullet a quick summary. The intelligence turned out to be genuine.

Browder and Foster from the Communist Party USA were present and planning to speak out against the United States. Bullett needed to get his ass in gear, bullying Soviet Ambassador Litvanov. Secretary of the Comintern and later president of the based German Democratic Republic, Wilhelm Pieck, referenced, Englishmen and Negroes. great communist family, end quote, in his speech, without specifically calling out the United States.

The passing of the Johnson Act in nineteen thirty four prevented U.S. citizens and institutions

And yet Bullet wrote about a brief flash of optimism, which would last one day before Litvanov again shot him. I have no indication of interest in revival of credit negotiations in the world. From Osinsky, Radek, and Bukharin, who dined with me recently. Osinsky, at the moment, is considered the leading Soviet authority on the United States, and his intense interest in this subject seemed to me to indicate that the Kremlin was in.

He began with an admission that, when he was sent, again, into exile in nineteen thirty two, Tomsky connected him with the foreign department of a Soviet publishing house, Sotsegis, He said that Tomsky interviewed the first time. That the Sotzegis employee was, quote, our guy from Slepkov's group, end quote. Zanoviev went on to connect Evdokimov to himself and a number of others, as well as Kamenev to Sokolnikov.

Remember, Siliga's memoir noted that when Zanoviev arrived in the political isolator, he brought with him a bunch of books on.

Divided into five cells. Virtually none of the cells were aware of the membership or movements of the other. In late November, after two months of unwinding one block of Trotskyites and Ukrainian nationalists, which spanned the arrest of thirty two folks, A non party former teacher at the Theatre Technical School in Kiev. who had since moved to Gorky, testified that when he left, he transferred leadership of the insurgent group to a Nierchuk, with recruitment assigned to Samoilovich.

Over the course of the investigation, in addition to the testimonies and confessions, the NKVD confiscated various firearms, texts on terror tactics, Substantial Soviet and foreign currency, gold, as well as counter revolutionary literature.

Stalin had almost certainly lost faith in Yagoda at this point. The NKVD boss had allowed intentionally, unintentionally, or through neglect, all of this to occur virtually unimpeded. The investigation of the Kremlin plot with the library personnel in summer 1935 had been led by deputy of the NKVD, Yezhov.

So despite the fact that Yezhov was one of the figures who signed the opposition statement during the nineteen twenty seven Congress, Stalin began to specifically ask for Yezhov to follow up on items he felt needed summary or investigation to present to the Politburo. Finally, the director of the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, Ivan Fedetov, implicated in the Gorky Prison Conspiracy, explained his connection with Valentin Olberg, whom he had met in August of 1935.

According to Fedotov's interrogation, On the twenty eighth of february nineteen thirty six. Of whom he had no prior knowledge. came to his office at the institute and said Greetings from abroad. Aren't you expecting a letter from an old man? Which was, of course, super secret code for I'm a Trotskyite stew. Olberg had sent his brother Pavel to Gorky at the end of 1934 so that, in the event Valentin was confronted regarding his movements, he could claim he was visiting his brother.

We need to take a moment to breathe here because this is the point at which everything shifts. Certainly there was an uptick in the Soviets uncovering and subsequently arresting conspirators, but the impact of this began to be felt by the people. And it was generally understood as a good thing among the more sympathetic elements of the population. mostly peasants and frontline workers.

But the uncovering of the group at the university in Kiev, followed by those at the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, and then an industrial university at which Fedotov took his internship, Then at the Arzamas Soviet Party School and so on, meant closer inspections of a large number of university faculty was necessary. And these inspections and occasionally further arrests.

The intelligentsia of the USSR began to panic, and many students became disillusioned as well. These kids, young adults, They didn't understand the long legacy of the opposition, and so some of them reacted in ways which seemed rational to them. With disbelief and resentment. Additionally, older revolutionaries who had been politically inactive in recent years As some of their greatest heroes and old comrades, like Zanoviev and Kamenov, go down and responded in the same way.

The dissatisfaction hung like a dark cloud over huge segments of the population for years. We will discuss the contradiction we believe is embodied here in the conclusion episode. For now, let's get back to this damn conspiracy.

Speaking of insurgents among the intelligentsia, Valentin Olberg got a job teaching Western history, of which he knew a decent amount, at the Pedagogical Institute in Gordon. Perhaps more importantly, Fedetov believed Olberg got his name from someone in Berlin. From November 1933 to January 1934, Fedotov had worked in the party committee of an automobile plant where he met a German by the name of Muller, who had been expelled from the KPD for being a trotter.

Muller told Fedetov that he had been sent to the USSR to agitate against the party. Muller claimed that the leadership of the Trotskyite movement in Berlin had come to the conclusion that eliminating the leadership of the USSR could only be achieved through assassination and terrorist struggles. Muller told Fedetov that the directive had come directly from Trotsky. When asked if Mueller had heard this from Trotsky directly, Fedetov said No. This snow was a big one.

Fedotov told Muller about the Trotsky cell in Gorky, who in turn told Trotsky's son Sedov when he left the USSR in early 1934, who then directed Olberg to go to Gorky. Fedotov told Olberg about the recent arrests of individuals connected to Gorgi prison who chided him, saying. You shouldn't have been confused after Nikolayev shot. I will help you, but you also need to be more active.

Trotsky believes that our people in the USSR are doing a lot of propaganda for the cause, but that this does not decide the outcome of the party. The main and most important thing is to thoroughly organize and carry out the murder of Slavs.

The archives have either been purged of the investigation materials from the first two months of Olberg's arrest, or they have not been released yet, as some of the referenced interrogation records are not present. Regardless, the first document available, dated March 8, references several previous interrogations which we do not have. But it is an important one in its own right. After the interrogator catches Olberg in a lie, and references back to a previous admission, Olberg admits.

That Sedov had told him that there was a center of Trotskyites and Zanovievites who had formed a block in the USSR, which included Smirnov, Kov Taradse, Smilga, and Murchov. The interrogator points out that these men are all Trotskyites. He asks Olberg if there was a block with Zenovievites, who were the members? Olberg then drops the names of Kamenev and Bakayev.

This answer opened the door for the interrogator, who performs a top-10 anime death scene by asking the purpose of the block. And when that is explained, he asks how a block could be established considering the social strata of the USSR. Wahlberg replies, I will answer specifically. Sedov, for example, told me, if there is a son of a kulak who will honestly fight under the banner of Trotskyism, he can and should be recruited for work.

He also told me that in the conditions of a national republic, for example, Ukraine. One can rely on nationalist elements while pointing out that nationalist shades will not play a leading role, since the organization sets its main task to overthrow the current leadership of the party. Sedov also claimed that not every person who served the whites in 1918 to 1919 is a white guard today. Lenin once said that the working class must go with the entire peasantry against the landowners and capital.

Now the time has come when the Bolshevik Leninists are obliged to go with the entire dissatisfied population against Bonapartism and the usurper dictatorship. This was forwarded to Stalin by Yezhov, which began the process which would necessitate the August trial. With Olberg testifying to direct connection. Of, about the plans of terrorism as well as the establishment of the block, the individual cells could no longer claim ignorance of the tactics of the others.

The next big reveal came during the interrogation of A. G. Cullodin, who had been expelled from the party in nineteen twenty eight. Trotskyite shit. Served exile for one year, came back, was able to rejoin the party and to study at university in Moscow. Was expelled from the party again in 1933 for Trotskyite agitation. Finished university and became a senior inspector of the grain distribution department of the US.

In one of his investigations, Kolodin stated that one of the nine people he had known as a Trotskyite was GF Dmitriev, who was a teacher at the Military Transport Academy. Kolodin went on to say that he had pushed Dmitriev, arguing the need for an armed uprising on the outskirts of the USSR or in industrial centers. Dmitriev disagreed with Kolodin, contending that they should establish cadres within the Red Army before they could consider uprisings.

When Kolodin asked if he felt like that was possible, Dmitriev replied that he and Kolodin had like-minded allies in the military academy, that their beliefs were a sort of political barometer. An earlier testimony implicated an insurgent group in Tomsk, Siberia, which in turn implicated a group in Novosibirsk. In Novosibirsk, still serving his sentence from 1927, was one Nikolai Murilov, whom we mentioned in the Part 2 narrative.

He was the Moscow military garrison leader, close to Trotsky, and led the Moscow group during the failed anniversary putsch. Murilov was one of the very few trots from that group who didn't capitulate. It turns out this was fully intentional. Murilov was to be the ideological leader and organizer for all the Trotskyite formations in Western Siberia, which is where most of the exiled Trotsk would end up. He was working on organizing a political hunger strike at the point at which he was arrested.

When officials searched his home, they discovered an archive of letters to Murilov from Trotsky's Almaata Days. Extensive correspondence with numerous Trotskyite exiles up to 1935, an archive of Trotsky's literature, and an illegal Browning revolver.

The next break was an interrogation of Olberg's wife, Betty Augusta Frida Otovna. For one, after being confronted with contradictions in her testimony, she named Kurt Landau a number of times, bringing him to the NKVD's attention for the first time. But something more important followed. When asked about who in Berlin knew of Olberg's trip to the USSR, Betty named her parents, along with a number of other people, including Muller, Landau, and Kurt Robel.

She also mentioned, off hand, that there was a delay which kept Olberg from leaving in December nineteen thirty two, which forced him to leave March of nineteen thirty three. Trouble in getting a fake passage. March 15th. Smirnov's ex-wife, Alexandra Sadanova, was interrogated. Rykov and Bukharin were implicated in a discussion about the establishment of a bloc at the end of nineteen thirty and into nineteen thirty one.

On March 21st, after a series of questions regarding the names of hidden Trotskyites, she dropped the name of Goltzmann. Sadonova claimed she had no idea whether he was actually a hidden conspirator, but that he and Smirnov had kept closely connected, and so she suspected as much. Goltzmann, along with Olberg, further connected the conspiracy with Trotsky through Sudov, though this wouldn't be exposed until closer to the trial date.

On march twenty fifth, nineteen thirty six, Yagoda sent Stalin a top secret summary of the main defendants, as the NKVD saw them at that point, ones they felt they could prove conclusively were guilty. Notably, this list still does not include Zanoviev, nor notable others who were connected. Clearly, the NKVD didn't feel they had enough evidence to convict them, or Yagoda was protecting them. Either way, the suggestion from Yagoda was

Based on the materials of the investigation, in order to defeat the Trotskyist cadres, I consider it necessary. One. All Trotskyists who are in exile and are actively working should be arrested and sent to distant camps. Kolima Ukta.

He said that if a direct link to terrorism was established, that execution should be sought, but that each individual case needed prior approval from the Central Committee. We should also note that from the extensive collection of investigation materials at our disposal, it seems as though, while cooperative, Yagoda was in a hurry to finish the investigation and pin the entire connection to Trotsky on Smirnov.

There was also a plan to install a machine gun on the roof of the massive shopping mall across from the mausoleum in order to fire at attendees. This last plan was scrapped, as it was unrealistic. In late April, during an interrogation, Mikhail Bukovsky mentions a Katskal Gorovich, who claimed responsibility for organizing Trotskyists within the Red Army. As Bakovsky was drafted, Gurevich relayed to him that there were a number of individuals throughout the military who were Trotskyist minded.

Bakovsky is pressed on the names of these people, but continues to claim throughout the interrogation that he did not know any of the specifics. This would begin a very long investigation, resulting in another trial in nineteen thirty seven, the details of which are forthcoming. On April 28, 1936, Edward Goltzmann was arrested. A co-signer of the Opposition Platform in 1927, he was now working as head of a theatrical costume rental warehouse.

You yourself may find it difficult to imagine how a costume warehouse guy might become central to a conspiracy of this magnitude, but the Soviet government had no idea.

The last major break in the case arrived on the eighth of May, as Valentin Olberg's brother, Pavel, revealed the truth of where Olberg obtained his fake hunter and passport. During previous testimony, Pavel mentioned that Valentin had moved to Prague, fearing repression from the newly ascendant Nazi government. When asked where his sister-in-law, another member of the conspiracy, lived at this time, Pavel mentioned that she was a German citizen and had moved back to Berlin.

But since the NKVD knew that the man's brother was still living in Berlin during and after this, Pavel was caught in a lie, and eventually admitted Valentin's connection with the Gestapo. The counterfeit passport in question had been seized the day Valentin Olberg was arrested in early January 1936.

But up to this point, all individuals involved in the conspiracy had carefully skated around Valentine's method of acquisition. According to Pavel, Prague based Slavic studies professor, Vladimir Tukolevsky, slowly talked him into being a Gestapo agent as well, as Pavel was barely getting by as a tutor. On the Gestapo payroll, Pavel worked to identify immigrants in Prague returning to Germany, making around five thousand Czech crowns.

Pavel, knowing of his brother's struggle in getting to the USSR for more than a few months at a time, suggested that Tukolevsky might be able to help. After the three met together, Tukolevsky offered to pay for Valentin's passport, but Olberg rebuffed him, wanting to use the 13,000 Czech crowns which Lev Sedov had given him instead. Perhaps Olberg did not wish to be indebted to a Gestapo agent, or rather, he did not want to be further indebted to a Gestapo agent.

Regardless, Pavel already owed Tukalevsky some favors, and once in the USSR, he contacted the German Embassy in Moscow, and through code, a doctor Hensel. We believe this could be Nazi Party member and later councillor with the Reich Aviation Ministry, Dr. Friedrich Hensel, but have been unable to verify at this point. Pavel went on to name Kurt Robel as a fellow Gestapo Stooge, but stated that they did not meet. Robel feared he was being followed and fled back to Germany.

And so, finally, after eight months of investigation, Yagoda sent the draft resolution on june nineteenth, nineteen thirty six, to General Secretary Stalin, which aimed to bring before the Supreme Court. Forty-six people connected to and with the most vital roles within the conspiracy. twenty three people to bring before the Military College of the Supreme Court in Leningrad, and thirteen people to bring before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Kiev. Thus the unraveling Began.

But the entire system was built and maintained by the party for communists. as the party saw it, for the workers in general. This created an antagonism, which we will discuss in depth in the conclusions episode. The idea that Stalin simply pointed at people who were then arrested and forced to confess. If this was ever plausible, is now rendered demonstrably false. Again, thanks to this massive release of documents.

CC members could not be arrested without permission from Stalin, which Stalin did not hand out lightly. which meant that before these people were even arrested, a considerable amount of corroborating evidence and testimony had to be established and followed up on first. For example, Roddick is first mentioned in regards to the conspiracy to assassinate members of the Politburo in early 1935. but wasn't arrested until after the Zanoviev Komenev trial in summer nineteen thirty six.

In fact, the day before the trial began, Stalin sent a letter to Yezhov and Kaganovich stating that the question of Radak's arrest should be dropped for the time being. The same is true for Bukharin. Putna, a prominent member of the military conspiracy, was mentioned in May of 1935 as involved in this conspiracy, but was not even demoted until early nineteen thirty-seven.

If anything, it could easily be claimed based on this evidence that, rather than being overzealous and paranoid, the Soviet government was too slow and too cautious.

Not only of prominent Soviet revolutionaries or counter revolutionaries, like Zanoviev and Bukharin, but also from the diaries of run of the mill party members who were arrested or feared arrest for political reasons. This is why the NKVD didn't need to torture prisoners to get information. Isolation from the world at large, and worse, isolation from political engagement was torture enough for dedicated communists.

This is why those arrested would plead and appeal and deny and lie until they were convinced that no one would believe them. If they were going to be isolated upon release anyway, they might as well admit and be granted death, or at the very least, to be seen as honest upon release.

With enough time outside their particular echo chamber, they often saw things differently anyway.

These trials were not for the West. They weren't even for apolitical Soviet citizens. These trials were for the dedicated party members who the leadership knew or believed were all that mattered for the future development of socialism. Furthermore, publicizing physical evidence would run the risk of showing other conspirators their hand. Those who had not yet been captured or discovered would know precisely what material items the government possessed, which would render their revelations moot.

To be clear, physical evidence was used during interrogations. It was shown to the accused in order to provide evidence against the lies told in an attempt to draw out confessions. But apart from that, it should be noted that even in that bastion of liberty and constitutional rights, the United States of America, treason trials are done exclusively behind doors. Further, all that was needed to convict someone of treason in the United States in 1936 was two credible witnesses or a confession.

And even today, if an RST admits guilt, no evidence is needed or even presented in court. The claims from Western press and the so-called leftists today, even before the release of these documents, is completely ridiculous. The Soviet Supreme Court had confessions, material evidence. Circumstantial evidence and what we will call theoretical evidence, through the supposedly materialist way in which the conspirators justified the motive for their seditious actions.

He immediately sent a letter to Stalin denying any charges made against him, again, without knowing what they were, and gave a very convenient speech to the staff of Izvestia, where he worked. Condemning the accused and the at large opposition to which he supposedly no longer belonged. Notably, and perhaps without knowing of Raddock's removal, Reykkoff also sent a letter to the Politburo asking to be placed as prosecutor for the trial.

I ask your permission to make this statement at the trial not for any personal interests, but solely because it seems to me it can be useful for the party. I am entirely and completely with the party and its leadership. He went on to say, twice in two paragraphs, that all the conspirators needed to be shot. His request to replace Raddock was, of course, refused by the Politburo.

A note, written on the document by an unknown member of the Politburo, reads In view of the fact that both during the investigation and at the end of the trial, several defendants mentioned their connections with the right deviationists, including Comrade Rykoff, it is considered inappropriate for Comrade Rykoff to act as a public prosecutor. The defense refused counsel, did not call for witnesses, or attach material.

Kamenev moved to ask that one of the witnesses, Yakovlev, be interrogated after him, which was granted by Fysinsky and Ulrich. The primary defendants, Kamenev and Zanoviev, were joined by their accused co conspirators. Day one of the trial was extensive, but in general, the defendants admitted to various crimes, including plots to assassinate Stalin and other high ranking Soviet officials. It also highlighted the alleged connections between defendants, foreign agents, and the Gestapo.

All of the defendants were given the opportunity to speak and cross examine other defendants and witnesses. The foreign press, despite the efforts of some editors back home, sent sympathetic summaries to their respective home offices. According to NKVD records, there was a tendency to exaggerate the testimony of those working in the Red Army. Reingold's testimony gave a general impression that the plot was not fully uncovered.

Again, according to the NKVD, there was an emphasis on the demoralization of Zanoviev and the grotesqueness of Kamenev. It was even noted. There are no attempts as usual in the past to cast a shadow over the process by depicting it as a dramatization.

On the contrary, the testimony is conveyed in a completely serious tone, along with a number of details and descriptions of the external situation. German correspondents are trying to use the testimony to portray the situation in the party and the Red Army as gloomy. the mention of the Gestapo was conveyed, for now, in a calm tone. Notably, the Japanese correspondents sent nothing back after day one.

The French correspondents, the report states, were the most secretive. They are interested in the trial, in their words and As material for studying Trotskyism, whose activity in France is attracting attention, and whose activity should increase in connection with the formation of Doriev's party, with which the Trotskyists will automatically be forced to come into contact.

Jacques Doréot was a former French Communist Party member, expelled oddly, for his support of a united front against fascism. He and Trotsky were both members until Trotsky's expulsion in 1929. Doriot went on to form the French Popular Party, which was itself a fascist party, collaborating with Nazi Germany during the war. The German correspondents downplayed the Gestapo role, pretending that it wasn't a serious claim.

The word choice of the NKVD agent here lends credence to the idea that the high ranking Soviet leaders did not fabricate claims. Again, the Japanese did not send any reports on day two. In fact, they did not attend the trial. On 21st, Tomsky appeared before a closed session of the CC to defend himself against accusations made during the trial itself. Raddock wrote an article. The Trotskist Zenovia fascist gang, and it's Hetman Trotsky.

The same day, Rukovsky wrote another entitled There should be no mercy.

The third day of the trial brought a bit more depth to the foreign correspondent's perception of the cast of characters. According to a top-secret NKVD report on the matter, Smirnov impressed them with his smarmy retorts. They lauded Kamenev's appearance and manners. More confusion begins to show in remarks about the self-flagellation of the accused. As is the usual interpretation in so-called democratic judicial practice, the report goes on to say.

There were remarks made about the procedural side too, different from the one adopted in Europe. Factual data about the accused, their biography, place of residence are not disclosed, there is no documentation, etc. According to Gilles Habas, who spoke frankly on this topic, the trial will weaken the prestige of the Comintern and increase sympathy for Trotsky among the non-proletarian strata of the West.

In one of their telegrams, the Germans noted with satisfaction that the connections of the accused with the Gestapo were not emphasized, but were mentioned only in passing. The articles by Radak, Piatikov, and Rukovsky were met with interest and caused some sensation, but the impression was ultimately negative. The sincerity of the authors was questioned since two of them were compromised in the testimony of the accused just the day before. Again, the Japanese correspondent did not show.

Secret discussions had begun between the Czech president Benes and Hitler in an attempt to create a non aggression pact in the event of war. The USSR sent notice to Norway, where Trotsky was staying. As a result of facts exposed during the trial, the USSR requested of Norway That if they were interested in ongoing relations with the USSR, that they would no longer grant asylum to

It would be four short years before the consequences of his actions caught up with him. But we'll get to that in another section.

At the conclusion of the Zanoviev Komenev trial, the remnants of the conspiracy were scattered and terrified. The executions led them to the inevitable conclusion that, if they came clean, they would be dealt with similarly. And if they stayed hidden, they risked being named by any number of people still being interrogated.

It was clear the urgent need to deeply conspiratorialize the members of the center, minimize personal meetings between them, and eliminate the practice of simultaneous meetings and meetings of the center's members.

In this confession, Putna admits to being an active member of the military group of this organization. This is the first mention of which we are aware, pertaining to a specific military conspiracy. Kutna was friends with Smirnoff, with whom he fought in the Fifth Army during the so-called Civil War. Putna had also signed the Statement of the 83 in 1927 at the Party Congress in support of the opposition.

In 1931, in a meeting with Setov and Smirnov in Berlin, Murilov's role was taken over by Dreitzer. This decision was likely made as a result of Murilov's exile and special position as one of the few who hadn't capitulated. It further placed him in a prime spot to agitate and coordinate among political prisoners. Again, according to Putna's first interrogation, the goal of the group was to take a defeatist position in the event of war, which most at this stage had taken as an inevitability.

Then, after a series of embarrassing defeats, the group would remove Roshalov by force and take control of the army, then the government. This changed in 1935 when a plan to assassinate Varoshalov was put into effect.

For example, Reingold, while claiming the two were involved, never admitted to personally speaking with them about the block. And Kamenev, who also named them, never admitted clearly to negotiating with them either, instead, going through Tomsky. Probably the most significant occurrence during the trial was a proposal from Stalin and Jadinov to remove Iagoda as head of the NKVD and appoint Yezhov in his place.

This same proposal, which was made to the Politburo, included an additional suggestion to remove Rykhoff as well. Despite insufficient evidence to warrant an investigation at this time, there was still too much evidence to allow him to remain as People's Commissariat of Communications at such a crucial time.

Sokolnikov, still in custody, made interesting confessions in early October of 1936. He claimed that in 1934 he met the publisher of the British Russian Gazette. Stafford Talbot, whom he knew from his previous position as plenipotentiary representative in London. They met with the intention and by the direction of the Trotskyite-Zenovievite leadership to establish connections to the British and French government.

Knowing Talbot had those connections, Sokolnikov told him that the current Soviet government was not mature enough for the volume of socialist measures being undertaken. That he and his comrades considered it necessary to give foreign capital the opportunity to participate in the economy in order to give it the necessary boost to maintain socialist measures.

Talbot, in turn, agreed to help him establish contact with conservative politician and soon-to-be Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and conservative politician and soon-to-be secretary to Winston Churchill, Robert Boothby. It is important to note that in the investigation, Sokolnikov mentions that one of his follow-up meetings never happened, as Talbot did not visit the USSR again.

A follow-up investigation found that the NKVD had denied Talbot entry at the time on the grounds that he was an established British intelligence officer engaged in espionage activities on the territory of the Union. While all of this was being uncovered, a case against the saboteurs of a West Siberian mine, Kemerovo, was put together and scheduled for november nineteenth.

Vyshinsky and Yezhov wrote the draft indictment with the intention to conduct the trial with open doors, calling witnesses and bringing in experts to verify the claims of the confessions and statements. In other words, to cater to the Western press's claims of Soviet trials being staged. Of course they would claim as much anyway, so it was likely a moot point. One of the people indicted was a German citizen, Emil Stickling.

the indictment explicitly stated that all who were sentenced would be executed. This caused a lot of anxiety and became fodder for anti-Soviet propaganda for the Nazi government. Stickling was sentenced to death, but the German government negotiated this down to 10 years in prison.

It must be understood that without a certain equating of the social structure of the USSR with the capitalist powers. The government of the bloc will not be able to remain in power and maintain peace. Allowing German and Japanese capital to exploit the USSR will create large capitalist interests on Soviet territory. Those strata in the village that have not overcome their capitalist psychology and are dissatisfied with the collective farms will be drawn to us.

The Germans and Japanese will demand that we will relieve the tension in the village so we will have to make concessions and allow the dissolution of the collective farms or withdrawal from the collective farms. This means we must retreat. We must firmly understand this. How far and to what extent we must retreat to capitalism is difficult to say now. This can be specified after coming to power.

and Primore and the Amur region to Japan. on the topic of Japan, Trotsky's own accounting of further concessions was We will have to cede Sakhalin oil to Japan and guarantee her oil supplies in the event of a war with America. We must also allow her to exploit gold. We will have to agree to Germany's demand not to oppose her in seizing the Danube countries and the Balkans, and not to interfere with Japan in seizing China.

The prosecution cited the results of the recent Central Naya Mine Sabotage trial, that of a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Gorlovka. Two chemical plants in Voskresensk and Nevsky as evidence connected to this trial. This included a number of technical examinations to prove intentional sabotage, which resulted in the deaths of numerous citizens, as well as crucial material damage, which the Union would need in the event of war.

Also of note at this time, the massive Hearst press machine. Owner of nineteen major US newspapers spanning every major city, including two in New York, Signed a contract with the Nazi government, who agreed to pay them$400,000 a year to be their international mouthpiece. Hurst didn't disappoint, carefully crafting the narrative surrounding the USSR, which many still parrot to this day.

This is my first day to start work on the All Union Census. Now I will be busy with this until January 7th. Today I feel cheerful, healthy, and in a very good mood.

1936 was significant for me in many ways. Yes, I grew up and became better. Perhaps I did not become an adult, but there is something unshakeable inside, independent of frequent changes. And how much I have read. Yesterday, I celebrated the new year in a completely different way. Thoughts up. night fill me with joy. Friends, we gathered There were only a few of us.

The candles on the tree were burning, everyone was happy and drinking champagne, midnight struck, I was a little drunk. Mokla was sitting next to me, I kissed him. Then we shook hands and I wrote a letter to Natasha, something incoherent but tender. Then we became sad. Dark in one of the rooms. How I loved everyone. And I wanted to cry.

The neighbors you see find it inconvenient to put her in their room since they live in cramped quarters. They don't call an ambulance because they don't want to pay twenty five rubles. All this is happening in an apartment belonging to scientists. I don't think that anywhere in the world is a professor forced to live in a little bit. Conditions, I occupy two rooms in an overcrowded apartment. Six people including two of them. Children live in these two rooms. I cannot be alone for a minute.

He just wanted to write. But in a misappropriation of funds scandal related to one of his trips, he had begun to raise eyebrows in the desperate times of the late nineteen thirties. I feel like I'm in a mousetrap. There is little trust. Little attention is paid to my work at Vox. At work, petty people without a brain and without morals diligently do their dirty work.

In the family, the children, Lena and Olya, as recently revealed, are capable of lying very badly and do not have simple family relations with me. Natasha, the eldest daughter, never even visits me. Does not call, does not write, like a stranger, perhaps even an After the article in Pravda, despite the response published there, the attitude towards me and many comrades became extremely reverse.

This is what we need to do in this case. My wife and I discussed. It is clear that all this cannot be left as is. Bureaucrats, schemers, my own daughters, and family circumstances seem to be pushing me out of life and towards the grave with their combined efforts. I will make one last attempt and send a letter to the Politburo.

Foreign Affairs Chief Litvinov was deeply concerned about this. If the Soviet government allowed the mention of Nazi Germany's connection to such acts, specifically receipt from a Nazi agent of a bomb by a member of the terrorist organization, the Soviet government would have to respond loudly and vocally in protest. Wars had been started for less.

In this case, Litvanov suggested that testimony related to this incident be given behind closed doors. Further, that Germans only be executed if absolutely necessary. The Union couldn't afford to provoke the Nazis.

The article makes several more confirmations that Piatakov and Trotsky met. Another paper notes that Lake Eangen in December nineteen thirty five was frozen over completely and would have been an ideal place for a German plane to land inconspicuously, refuting one of Trotsky's denials that such a thing would be impossible. In the end, of the seventeen people indicted, Sokolnikov, Radik, Stroilov, and Arnold were given eight to ten years in prison. The remaining thirteen were sentenced to death.

With the documents which have very recently been declassified, we can now say with confidence that the defendants' statements were their own. That they were not forced to write anything, that they were not promised leniency or threatened with deaths or persecution of their families. They certainly hope for leniency, but that their families would not be persecuted, but there was no delusion among them as to the likelihood of that.

The closing statements of some of the defendants are incredibly powerful and fascinating. If we could cite them all without making an additional five episodes covering the trials, we would. But since we cannot, we will cite one section of Carl Raddox, who, at the time, was certain he would be executed. He understood everything clearly. and he made a chilling plea that we wish had been listened to more clearly.

Perhaps this was the reason that the citizen judges sentenced him to ten years instead of death. He said, I will return to the name Dreitzer a little. The state prosecutor said that we would return to this name, and I will return to it in one context, which was not examined here. When Dreitzer did not appear in Moscow for seven to eight months, I could think that this was a conspiracy.

But when Dreitzer had not appeared in January, having received an invitation from me to come to a meeting, came to Moscow and did not appear, then it became clear to me that Trotsky, on the basis of the correspondence he had with us, Seeing Piadakov's rebuff and our doubts about the defeatist line was creating some new devilry on par with the parallel center. I see this is the fact that Dreit surpassed us in nineteen thirty five.

When I read the trial material about the United Center, there was not a single fact that I knew had been overlooked by others. This means that some third organization was operating here. And finally, when Piatakov returned from abroad, he mentioned in passing about his conversation with Trotsky, that Trotsky had told him that a cadre of people who had not been corrupted by Stalin's leadership was being created.

But when I read about Olberg and asked others whether anyone knew about Olberg's existence, no one knew about it, and it To me, that Trotsky was creating here, in addition to the cadres who had gone through his school, an organization of agents who had gone through the school of German fascism. Did I know before the arrest that it would end in arrest? How could I not know about it if the head of the organizational section of my bureau, Tivill, was arrested?

If Fridilund, with whom I had met very often in recent years, was arrested. I will not name other names. I can name a dozen more people who often met with me. The answer is as follows I was one of the leaders of the organization. I knew that Soviet justice was not a meat grinder, that there were people of varying degrees of guilt among us, that we, the leaders, had to answer with our heads for what we did.

But that there was a significant layer of people whom we had brought to this path of struggle, who did not know the basic, I would say, guidelines of the organization, who were blindly trudging forward. If the question was raised here whether we were tormented during the investigation, then I must say that it was not me who was tormented, but I tormented the investigators, forcing them to do unnecessary work.

For two and a half months I forced the investigators by contrasting the testimonies of other defendants to me to reveal to me the whole picture, so that I could see who confessed, who did not confess, who revealed what. This went on for two and a half months, and one day the head of the investigation came to me and said You are already the last one. Why are you wasting time and delaying? Not saying what you can show. And I said Yes, I will start giving you testimony tomorrow.

And the testimony that I gave from the first to the last does not contain any correction. And so, citizen judges, I will finish this last word with the following. We will answer to the full extent of Soviet law, believing that your sentence, whatever it will be, is fair. But we want to meet it as a conscious people. We know that we have no right to tell the masses that we are not their teachers and But we want to say three things to those elements who were connected with us.

The first thing. The Trotskyist organization had become the center of all counter-revolutionary forces. The right-wing organization, which has contacted it and was on the way to merging with it, is the same center of all counter-revolutionary forces in the country. The state power will cope with these terrorist organizations. We have no doubt about this, based on our own experience. But there is a half.

An eighth of all Trotskyists in the country. People who helped us without knowing about the terrorist organization, but sympathizing with us. People who, because of liberalism, because of the party's opposition, gave this help. We say to these people, when a shell ends up in a steel hammer, it is not so dangerous. But when a shell gets caught in a propeller, there may be an accident. We are in a period of great tension. In the pre war period.

To all these elements in the face of the court and in the face of reprisal we say, Whoever has the slightest crack in relation to the party, let him know that tomorrow he could be a saboteur. He could be a traitor, if this crack is not carefully repaired by frankness to the inn before the party. Second, we must tell the Trotskyist elements in France, Spain, and other countries, and there are such.

The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown that Trotskyism is a wrecker of the workers' movement. We must warn them that they will pay with their heads if they do not learn from our experience. And finally, we must say to the whole world, to all who fight for peace, Trotskyism is a weapon of the warmongerers. We must say this with a firm voice. Because we have learned this, we have suffered for this. It was incredibly hard for us to admit this, but this is a historical fact.

And we will pay with our heads for the truth of this fact.

followed by an ominous mention of who had set him on the path of opposition. Ask my wife personally. Only she will name them. A few weeks later, Yezhov sent a letter to Stalin, who was on vacation in Sochi. The Politburo had tasked Yezhov with informing Tomsky's family of the funeral arrangements, and to see if Tomsky's wife would give Yezhov the name of the figure mentioned in his suicide letter.

She revealed a number of things to him. First, that Mikhail had spoken to her of suicide for a long time the evening before he went through with it. He even wrote the letter in front of her. That his close friend Borovsky was present on the morning of the suicide, and, according to her, also knew what was about to happen. Neither of them tried to stop him. According to his wife, he calmly took a weapon, went for a walk alone that morning, and shot himself in the far corner of a park.

Deputy to Yezhov, Georgi Molchinov, had already been to Tomsky's Dhaka in Bolshevo, just north of Moscow, after they heard of the suicide. Molchinov recovered the letter to Stalin and subsequently delivered it. But Tomsky's wife refused to give Molchinov the name of the person Tomsky referenced, stating that she would only give it to Stalin, but mentioned that it was not a member of the Politburo.

But when Yezhov spoke with her, she said quite directly that Genrik Yagoda, head of the NKVD, played an active role in leading the rightist And had been regularly supplying them with intelligence on the issues of the Central Committee. Yezhov went on to say that even before Tomskaya's revelation, after reading Tomsky's letter to Stalin, Yagoda suggested that Tomsky had likely named him motivated by a desire for revenge.

Yezhov argued to the Central Committee that it was likely Tomsky wanted to give a quote counter-revolutionary kick from the grave, end quote. After following up in the files, Yezhov claimed that he found nothing concrete regarding Yogoda within them, but that there were signals about the existence of the block and terrorist work. in nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty four, which went quote unnoticed.

One of Stalin's closest friends, according to his bodyguard, was Sergo Orjokenice. Orjokinitze also sent him a letter at this time. Sergo's worries were quite clear. that they needed to be very careful with the military probes, lest the wreckers begin naming anyone and everyone, in order to destroy the military from within and the faith of the people from without. A prophecy, perhaps.

There is no more communication on the Yagoda matter in the archives until January twenty fifth, nineteen thirty seven. But the twenty sixth of september, nineteen thirty-six, was the last time that he sent any official NKVD reports. We aren't sure if the documents between those dates were purged, haven't been declassified, or were simply not archived to avoid anything getting back to Yogoda before he could be investigated.

In late January 1937, Yezhov sent a report to Stalin detailing financial issues he had discovered, going through files and evidence to which he now had access as head of the NKVD. The report states that there was a secret fund kept by Yagoda and his deputy Bulinov, known only to the two of them, Molotov and Stalin. It consisted of money and treasures acquired via confiscation, discovery of caches, and from detained contraband.

Yezhov suggested handing it over to the People's Commissariat of Finance, which was done, because of market fluctuations and the value of diamonds on the international market. The fund was valued at around ninety-two million dollars, adjusted for inflation to December of twenty twenty four. The paper money portion of the fund was apparently formed back in nineteen thirty. No one knew how much was in it originally, but cash exited the fund regularly and was never replenished.

According to Bulanov, ninety percent of the fund was spent on NKVD workers and their wives to go abroad for quote treatment. This was in addition to known funds which were distributed by the government for the purpose of these trips.

A couple of days later, senior major of state security Alexiv sent a report regarding a case in the early 1930s related to the Ryutin affair. At the time, Alexeev was the head of the NKVD branch in Western Siberia. Alexeyev, apparently, motivated by the removal of Yagoda, sent a report to Yezhov, stating that, in the course of the Ryutin investigation, Alexeev had uncovered evidence which suggested that the group had made plans to assassinate Stalin.

Perhaps more importantly, the plot was led by Uglinov, who was arrested, released, and reinstated to the party at that time, along with Bukharin. We'll get to this when we discuss Bukarin in a special upcoming bonus episode. For this section, the key is that Yogoda.

Upon hearing of Alexei's discoveries related to the assassination plot at that time, in the early 1930s, immediately sent a cipher to the man telling him that the matter had been forward to the Central Committee and to immediately transfer all of the prisoners and confiscated documents to Moscow, despite them having just arrived at the prison in Siberia.

Because only a few people involved in the conspiracy were sentenced, and because most of those who were had been released before their term ended, Alexey became suspicious. Further, after Uglinov was exposed again with Bukharin during the testimonies of the reverse center trial. Alexeyev was convinced that the matter had been covered up by Yagoda at the time.

If the conspiracy hadn't been obscured in this way, he argued, the entire block could have been exposed in the early thirties before much of the damage was done. On February 20, 1937, Yagoda, now head of the People's Commissariat of Communication, submitted his last official report before his arrest.

It was a note regarding Rykov, who previously had the job, and the ways he had clearly used his position to intentionally sabotage the communication network of the USSR in order to sow confusion and chaos. Ironically, Yogoda would end up in the same proceedings as Rykov.

We haven't found any evidence of this, although we now know that Khrushchev had five cases of files from this period destroyed, as well as Biria's entire archive, so we can't guarantee that this wasn't the case either. What we can say with the materials available to us. is that Ojo Nakidze had received a series of letters over the years from prominent Georgian left deviationist Lomanadze, who formed a left-right coalition against collectivization in the early 1930s.

These letters were presented to the Central Committee in December of nineteen thirty six. They made clear that Orjonikitse had known about Lomanadze's views and had said nothing. Further, two weeks before his death, Ojo no Kidze had given an extremely angry and accusatory speech to the various leaders of the main departments of heavy industry, of which he was in charge.

He got a lot of pushback from them, and the issues he brought up related to widespread sabotage did not diminish. In fact, multiple reports of sabotage continued to pour in over the following two weeks. Any of these factors, or any combination of them, might have led Ojo Nekidze to the decision to take his own life.

As night approached, on the twenty third of february, nineteen thirty seven, the plenum of the Central Committee was called to order by Molotov, who turned the proceedings over to Yezhov. The NKVD chief relayed the latest findings of the organization regarding the accusations leveled against Bukharin and Rykov at the previous plenum, which had been interrupted and postponed at the request of Stalin in order to allow for further investigations.

Over the course of the next four days, Bukharin and Rykov explained themselves in a back-and-forth with members of the Central Committee. As was generally the case in such settings, Stalin barely spoke. But as those proceedings closed, Stalin delivered a speech announcing the special commission of 36 CC members, chaired by Mikoyan, to decide how to deal with Bukharin and Rykov. The commission was split four ways. Some wanted to simply exclude them from CC membership.

Others advised for a military tribunal with a possible outcome of execution. Still others, a trial with ten years set as the maximum sentence. The final group wanted a trial with no maximum sentence set. This last proposal argued for bypassing Soviet courts and handing the cases over to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. It was this proposal which prevailed.

A resolution reflecting the proposal was presented before the entire Central Committee, who adopted it without amendment, with unanimous consent, and with the abstentions of Bukharin and Rykov. Again, we will cover Bukharin in depth in a bonus episode in the future. The plenum continued for over a week, with the discussion of elections, lessons learned, the number of wreckers convicted in each department, agriculture, and so on.

But on the second of March, Yagoda made a speech to the plenum, attempting to take responsibility for the failures of the GPU slash NKVD. He states he should have concentrated power better.

that he shouldn't have trusted his deputy, which Stalin warned him of in nineteen thirty five, that they should have followed up on Olberg when they received his letters to Sedov. That they should have investigated the industrial incidents, and Transport incidents as sabotage instead of accidents, but that he had learned his lessons and would implement corrections in his future work. but his realignment came too late. Things had already begun to unravel.

That same morning a telegram arrived in Moscow from the NKVD station in Leningrad, relaying the story of a prosecutor there, who had shot himself in his apartment. According to the man's friend, who had spent the previous three nights with him, The prosecutor heard, incorrectly, that Yagoda, Rykov, and Bukharin had been arrested. That two top officials in Leningrad had also been arrested. The prosecutor had feared that he was next.

Nine days later, Vyshinsky filed a report stating that, in a number of prisons, political prisoners were receiving benefits not granted them by the law. For example, some lived in the apartment of the warden. Others were not locked out of any buildings and could go wherever they pleased, including to storage rooms, where they had access to confiscated passports, party cards, and so on.

On the 29th of March, arrest and search warrants were issued and executed for Genrik Yagoda. On April 2nd, he was interrogated for the first time. He was presented with extremely damning evidence, but was smarmy throughout, and pleaded ignorance to everything. Within the week, a report was delivered concerning the search of his belongings. This search included his apartment, storage rooms, his Dhaka in Ozerki, his office, and his personal possessions.

Investigators found cash amounting to roughly$27,000 in today's money, over a thousand bottles of wine, almost 4,000 pornographic images, 11 pornographic films. Nineteen revolvers and Twelve hunting rifles, two combat rifles, ten ancient daggers, antique and ancient coins, modern gold and silver coins, three grand pianos. A rubber dildo, as well as an incredible number of expensive coats, furs, boots, silk.

carpets, tobacco, foreign records, cameras, and on and on. Trust us, the full list would take all day to read. Lastly, though, five hundred and forty two pieces of Trotskyite and fascist literature were found among these items. The 26th of April is the next interrogation protocol available, although it is clear from the notes and transcript that there were others in between. In it, Yagoda opens up, stating that his introduction to the conspiracy.

Began with friendships formed with Rykov, Bukharin, Tomsky, and Uglinov, forming a core of high-ranking writists. He goes on to say that in 1928, they had a meeting in which it was decided that, since he was already deputy of the GPU, he would distance himself from the rest of the group and pretend staunch support for the party. In the event of an exposure of the right faction, Yagoda promised to attempt to direct attention toward the local rightists, protecting the leadership.

In the cases of the Ryutin group, the Bukarin school Smirnov's Trotskyist group in thirty three, and Kirov's murder, Yagoda and his deputy, Molchinov, whom he had blackmailed into becoming an accomplice back in the late 1920s. moved the investigations to Moscow immediately, in order to weaken any connections And when forced to liquidate the groups, indeed focused on local conspirators, so that the leaders could only ever be accused of passive participation or inaction.

While making these moves exposed him to possible scrutiny, He was far too deeply involved to do anything else, and the block formed between the rightists and the Trotskyites in the early 30s, combined with the internal strife within the Soviet Union during collectivization, made the group feel nigh untouchable. Invincible.

Since most of the major players were off the board, a regime change was unlikely, internally, particularly one with him in mind, post counter revolution.

Knowing that war was on the horizon, and assuming that the Soviets would lose to a military attack on the front and a peasant uprising on the rear, Yagoda began to Quietly and subtly ingratiate himself to the German intelligence systems in order to secure a position in the post-war state. However, he denied that he acted out this part of the plan with any effectiveness or meaningful action, and he was removed from the NKVD before he could make contact with the Germans himself.

Still, he admitted that the Germans likely knew about him, since he was connected to them through Radic. Raddock met with him in the summer of nineteen thirty six, as the noose was closing on the neck of the Trotskyists, in order to inquire how much he would be able to protect them. According to Yagoda, he told Radik Bukarin had connected the two that he likely wouldn't be able to help at all, given how much power Yezhov had gained over the investigation, but that he would do his best.

Yagoda admitted to organizing the murder of Yezhov through his contacts still in the NKVD, in order that he wouldn't be discovered. The plan was to use a family member of Yezhov so that it would not look like a political murder. Investigators brought Raddock in again, based on this new information, and asked him about the connection.

Raddock insisted that Yagoda was full of shit, that Yagoda had told him to connect with the Germans as a part of a super secret plan of the Central Committee, that he had never met with Yagoda to ask about the prospect of help. He maintained that if this was the intent, Raddock would have asked Bukharin to go to Yagoda, since a foundation of trust was already present between them.

Raddock went on to add detail to this relationship, among many other things, but we don't have the time to cover them in this series.

Vyshinsky recommended an investigation into the regional NKVD office and the immediate instruction that all of these methods cease with a threat of severe punishment. At the same time, Yezhov sent a request to allow the trial of 18 prisoners arrested for sabotage and espionage. At this point, the number of cases was coming in so quickly, the Central Committee could no longer keep up with requests for trials, which typically required CC approval and were addressed one by one.

This included a frustration which arose in the early 1930s when the block was made between the Trotskyites and Zenovievites. According to Yagoda, Trotsky, having been expelled from the country and cut off from the construction of the USSR, was angry and impatient. But the Rhyths did not need to be hasty. They had not been exiled or even particularly persecuted. Therefore, the adventurism of Trotsky and Zanoviev was dangerous for them.

They began to try to distance themselves from the terror tactics, instead playing the long game of a so-called palace coup at the onset of war. Speaking of war, on the twenty first of may, Bushinsky created a list of people summoned to the upcoming May twenty-fifth military council meeting. In it, he marks those implicated substantially, such as Tukachevsky, implicated somewhat, like Rogovsky, and implicated only a little, like Mezhanov.

Obviously, this was early in the process, but it is important to note that of the 157, with the request to summon an additional 21, only 28 are marked for investigation. Even more notable is that most of those selected, excluding the highest ranking officers, operated within the same regions or in the same departments.

The list of those entangled increased substantially once the investigation was in full swing, but the clustering of suspects by geography and organization lends credence to the argument. That these were organically uncovered, rather than this being a premeditated purge of Stalin's enemies. The next day, Yezhov sent a report to Stalin, listing approximately 4,000 people living in Moscow who had been expelled from the party at various times for participating in anti-Soviet activities.

Of those, twenty five hundred were persons repressed for terrorist or espionage activities, and of those twenty five hundred, fifty were unemployed. The logic, as Yezhov explained it, is that unemployed citizens who were formerly persecuted were likely engaged in hostile work. This speaks to a targeted investigation based on the lessons learned regarding the patterns of Nikolaev preceding his assassination of Kirov.

Yezhov proposed special measures to address these individuals in a draft resolution. This resolution proposed that those who had belonged to Trotskyite, Zanovievite, or other anti-party groups in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev should be expelled from any administrative positions. An exception was made for old cadre workers, who were at one time involved in those groups, but had not shown any activity since.

The families of those who had been executed or sentenced to five or more years as a result of work for those groups were to be evicted from Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiv, and moved to non-industrial areas. The areas to which they were moved would be required to provide them with housing, and able-bodied members would be guaranteed work. Those who were not able bodied would be granted state support. The resolution was adopted by the Central Committee a day later. Clearly, they were preparing for

On May 24, a proposal was adopted by the Politburo to expel Marshal Tukachevsky and Politburo member Radzetak from the party for participation in espionage work for Nazi Germany. Two days later, Tukachevsky agreed to independently disclose everything, rather than submit to interrogation. Red Army Commander Yakir would do the same thing a week later.

After the military conference announced these arrests, a discussion began amongst those who had suspicions of friends and associates of the arrestees. The conference also, important for the purpose of verifying the validity of the arrests, analyzed and confirmed the details of Tukachevsky's massive confession booklet. Notably, again, as always, Stalin exercised caution, rather than demonstrating the paranoia or bloodthirsty vengeance which is often attributed to him.

He would defend people at times when there was inconsistency or ambiguity in the accusations and evidence. It was during these proceedings Bukarin finally requested to be summoned so that he could confess his part in all of this. On the military front, Marshal Voroshilov sent orders on june eleventh for all commanders, military commissars, chiefs of staff of regiments, members of military Soviets, and heads of political departments.

Select two workers to begin training as deputies. Almost certainly, this was in an effort to ensure that, in the case of treason, there would always be someone who could step in quickly. It would also add further insurance that if a high-ranking member was engaged in subversive or suspicious activity, there would be a democratically selected official, not in the chain of command, to turn them in.

On the same day, the Supreme Court of the USSR convened to hear the trial of the arrested military leaders. As was usual, the Western press claimed it was another frame up, that this one was held behind closed doors, surely because the defendants were military men and wouldn't crack as easily as the others. We now have the transcripts of that closed session, which were classified until a few years ago.

Not only do none of the defendants appear to be under duress, but they give very detailed statements and confessions with questions and counter questions. If this was fiction, it would have taken someone of the caliber of Tolstoy, but with the efficiency of a dime store novelist, given that Tukachevsky had only been arrested ten days prior, and the others only four to five days earlier.

To imagine that investigators broke them and then fed them each scripts, which contained consistent and overlapping evidence, and which all of these men were able to memorize in a few days, is patently ridiculous. All were convicted by the military tribunal and shot the following day.

But back to you, Goda. On June 16, 1937, driver of the vehicle which picked up Kirov's bodyguard, Borisov, for questioning on December 2nd, 1934, admitted that Borisov had been killed intentionally, saying Mali, who was sitting in the cab with me, ordered me to drive quickly to Smolny. I began to speed. On the way, when someone was crossing the street, Mali ordered me not to turn the car but to run over those crossings.

I received the same order from Mali regarding the traffic policeman on Vojnova Street and Chernyeshevsky Avenue. However, I I did not carry out those orders from Mali. Mali, when the vehicle was at full speed, with his right hand, opened the car door, and with his left, grabbed the steering wheel and quickly turned it to the right. The car turned so sharply to the right. I grabbed Mali by the coat with my right hand and at that moment completely lost the steering wheel.

Seeing that the car had climbed onto the sidewalk at full speed and was quickly moving into the wall of a house, I dropped Mali, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and turned it sharply to the left. As a result, the car did not crash into the wall of the house but only caught the passenger door. When I got out of the car, Borisov was dead, lying in the back of the truck.

Thus the incident occurred, not because the car was faulty, as I showed in 1934, but due to the direct fault of Malik, who caused the accident, and the murder of Borisov.

Iona Yakir was, at the time of the meeting, in command of the Ukrainian front, where a large contingent of nationalists would happily join the Nazis. This would mean that an attack by Germany would be most successful there. Arakan and Milch discussed, upon the military defeat of the USSR and the subsequent military coup, how the USSR would join Germany, according to Tukachevsky, and open a southern front together.

Yagoda had already created codes and ciphers through which the conspirators and Germans could communicate.

On the seventeenth, Yezhov sent a report to Stalin outlining the need to create and allow Troikas, at this point only in the West Siberian territory, to try extrajudicial cases involving insurgents. The NKVD leader there, Miranov, had already arrested 382 people connected with two different terrorist organizations, citing a total of 1,317 members identified by them. While cases involving executions previously required Supreme Court approval, the volume coming in was too high.

Yezhov made a request to the C C plenum five days later, citing thirteen different groups, adding, I have listed only the most important ones. In addition to these, anti Soviet formations have been uncovered in almost all regions and areas, uniting the rightest. Trotskyists, Zenovievists, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and others. All these anti-Soviet fascist groups, although each had a separate task, were closely connected with each other.

Around nineteen thirty three, when the defeat of the Rightists, Trotskyists, and others was finally determined, on the initiative of various groups, a united centre of centers some call it a contact centre was created. which united the Rhythmists, Trotskyists, Zanovievists, military conspirators from the N K V D, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and others.

The United Center of Centers included Rykov, Tomsky, and Bukharin from the right socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks, Yanukidze from the military group and the group of NKVD conspirators. Kamenev and later Sokolnikov from the Zenovievites and Pyatakov from the Trotskyists. The center of centers, being connected with the fascist government circles of Germany, Japan, and Poland on the one hand.

and the foreign representatives of the anti Soviet parties of Trotsky's, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries on the other, in contact with these circles, using methods of duplicity, developed work in the direction of implementing its plans to seize power. The Central Committee approved the proposal for Troikas to be formed to expedite the process of investigation, trial, and sentencing. The final decision of execution still required approval from Moscow.

Given the infiltration by Yagoda, certainly his loyal agents had shielded many conspiracies, and thus the leaders needed to review all cases involving probable treason or sabotage. On july second, nineteen thirty seven, A deputy of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR sent a request to liquidate the Troika there, since they felt that the inability to carry out sentences made the bureaucratic process more time-consuming with no obvious benefit.

A special meeting of the C C Plenum decided that, since the majority of those engaged in terrorist activities were former Kulaks, or other exiles who had been allowed to return to the territory, that Troikas could be formed, with permission to execute in these cases. They were still required, within five days, to submit a list of the members of those Troikas, and those subject to execution, along with a separate category of those less hostile, to be expelled again.

This was altered to one month later in July. The regional leaders sent lists of the different categories with the numbers that they were requesting to divide into appropriate categories. These lists were received by Yezhov and then brought to the Politburo, who reviewed and either confirmed the requests or denied them. At some points the Politburo was meeting ten or more times in one day to review them. This is the true story of the so-called Stalin killing lists.

Stalin neither designed the lists nor determined the sentences. He may have personally seen some of them, but their approval was not his decision to make. At one point, Khrushchev Head of the Moscow Oblast had to request two more people to help review the cases before passing them on to the Politburo because there were so many. Simultaneously, a rash of mass poisonings began taking place in some of the collective farms.

On July 5, the head of the NKVD for the Omsk region sent a letter to Yezhov. In it, they tell a story of Yagoda's previous boss, Menjinsky, who was feeling ill in 1933, saying that he was close to death.

At four o'clock in the morning on may first of that year, a Moscow line rang for Salin in his apartment in Simferopol. There was a long silence, but eventually Menjinski spoke to say that it was too cold for him to come and visit Salin again. Aline, confused, responded that it was not at all cold and that he should visit again. But the line suddenly went dead.

Salin immediately called back, but the Moscow operator informed Salin that the line had been damaged somehow. A few days later, Salin received news that Menjetsky was dead. The reviews of the Kirov files and the interrogations of those involved found that two NKVD officers in Leningrad, in order to hide the fact that Nikolaev had been detained and released twice, destroyed a number of files on the morning of the murder.

On the 12th of July, Yezhov's deputy, Fronovsky, ordered a stop to the Troikas. The leaders were asked to gather information and meet on the 16th to discuss with him and Yezhov how the operation should proceed moving forward. The minutes, resolutions, etc about that meeting are either not present or not yet available from the archives. Nor are the records of the meetings of the Politburo for reviewing the Troikas.

We believe it is safe to assume that the volume of cases uncovered and submitted were so large that the Politburo could not afford to keep meeting a dozen times a day.

A report from the head of the Ukrainian NKVD to the chiefs of the various departments on july twentieth, nineteen thirty seven reads People's Commissar Comrade Leplevsky has ordered that by eleven o'clock in the morning, a report signed by you or your deputy on the results of the operational investigative work for the past twenty four hours must be submitted to him through me.

The report includes the results of interrogations of the most important arrested persons, indicating when he was arrested, what he Two recruited him. Names as participants in the conspiracy Who he personally recruited, which of the named persons were arrested, and who confessed. The certificate should include the most interesting facts and data from the testimony of those arrested. The Daily Report form is attached to the first.

The interrogation protocols are to be sent to the People's Commissar immediately after printing. And Comrade Leplevsky has ordered that each interrogation protocol must be accompanied by a certificate signed by the investigator about the persons involved in the testimony. indicating who they are and whether they have been arrested. I have requested that information on the results of the operational investigative work be provided exactly by the specified time.

Again, speculating, it seems that this was probably an adjustment made which allowed the Politburo to feel better about delegating the review of each case to the local level. A flurry of reports followed this decision regarding the need to move this NKVD center here, cancel vacations, increase. etc. to compensate for the extra work. Quite clearly, things were beginning to spin out of control.

The Politburo also approved a measure to arrest all German nationals working in the defense industry and to deport those they believed were high risk. The Soviet government was under the impression that the war with Germany was imminent. On the twentieth of july, Stalin received a report that two crows had been killed, which had rings attached to their legs with a series of numbers and Germany inscribed on them. Though their purpose was unclear.

One supposition was that these birds were being used to study the direction of winds with the aim of sabotage with fire andor bacteriological agents. A statement was delivered by an NKVD leader in the Far Eastern sector, in which he admitted connection among a number of people involved in the military and NKVD conspiracies. This included Alexander Orlov, the guy who exposed the Trotskyites in Spain.

A telegram came in from Voronezh asking for an increase on the limit of cases which could be categorized for the Troikas. It was signed by CC members Molotov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, and Chubar, as well as Vorosilov and Kalinin from the Supreme Court. Again, Stalin had no hand in this decision which led to the nightmare which followed. Further evidence, against the perspective that he orchestrated the purges, that he was the driving force behind the mass executions.

though subject to imprisonment for eight to ten years, varies widely by region. Further, the resolution specified The approved figures are approximate. However, the People's Commissars of the Republic level NKVD and the heads of the regional and provincial NKVD departments do not have the right to independently exceed them.

Any independent increases in figures are not allowed. The reduction of numbers, as well as the transfer of persons designated for repression under the first category to the second category, and vice versa, is permitted. Families of those sentenced to the first and second categories, as a rule, are not subject to repression.

The operations were to be completed within no more than four months to avoid an ongoing persecution. Instructions were given for reporting, arrests, record keeping, confiscation, etc. They were to keep minutes of every meeting. The minutes from Troikas were to be sent to the head of the operational group, who would then attach the relevant parts to the investigative files of the convicted person.

Certainly, while we have no idea the true extent of the various conspiracies and terrorist organizations. The central Soviet government trusted regional leaders to act reasonably and trusted in the evidence of the existence of those conspiracies. The Politburo took precautions, perhaps as much as they realistically could, to prevent this from going off the rails, at least as much as they could, given the threat of an impending and devastating war.

And yet the numbers are difficult to swallow. They were extensive, and a resistance that strong should have warranted a more comprehensive investigation. It should have warranted a realignment of policy to address the contradictions which gave rise to the opposition. Knowing that they were not evil or paranoid, we can only assume that they felt backed into a corner and under pressure to address a difficult problem quickly.

It is, of course, easy for us to criticize in hindsight, but criticize we nevertheless should. Perhaps criticize is is even the wrong word. We should evaluate the material conditions in which this situation arose, try to understand why these decisions were made, and do our best to learn what lessons we can from the mistakes. All the same.

There were so many NKVD operations happening simultaneously. They were pulling hundreds of cadets from the UGB, or State Security School, to send them into the field. For his part, Stalin was attempting to figure out as best he could, from a theoretical standpoint, not having the time or resources to be on the ground. On August 3, 1937, he sent a directive to the secretaries and regional committees of the National Party.

He felt as though the main reason for continuing discontent among the rural populations was as a result of the NKVD carrying out work. Only in a closed manner. End quote. And directed them to hold, by district, two to three open trials in order to show the people the reason for these repressions. August sixth, a paper in Frankfurt. a mouthpiece of the Nazi propaganda machine, began to spin wild stories of

five hundred thousand political prisoners being used as slave labor to build the Moscow Volga Canal, with quote, no one knows how many dead. End quote.

Pot and kettle. The next day, NKVD deputy Fronovsky issued a circular, expanding Order 00447, which allowed the repression of Kulaks and anti-Soviet conspirators to include cases of armed robbery. robbery with violence, repeat criminals, escapees, unemployed repeat offenders, and non party persons who were unemployed. These cases were to be sent to the Troikas and carried out in, quote, the shortest time possible, end quote.

He asked for the Troikas to report to him personally, every five days, with the details of how many cases were considered, how many individuals were executed, how many were sent to prison, and how many robberies were committed within that five day span. As far as we can tell, this expansion of Troika power was not reviewed or approved by the C C, the Politburo, nor the Supreme Court.

Another circular from the head of the Ukrainian N K V D that same day makes clear that, at least in Ukraine, secrecy was the name of the game. no one was supposed to be present in the interrogation aside from the investigator and one assistant. Reports were only sent to the head of their respective departments, and so on. On the 8th, another memorandum was sent from Fronovsky, declaring that only convicts of the second category, imprisonment, were to receive the verdict of the

Of the Troika. The first category, execution, were to be handled internally by the NKVD. This edict was not signed by the C C or the Politburo or Stalin. Not even Yezhov, for that matter. The hints of conspiracy begin to show themselves.

The same was done for Novosibirsk on october twenty third. Again, none of this was approved by any member of the Central Soviet government.

On the tenth of August, archival materials from the Tsar's secret police, the Okrana, and an interrogation of the head of the Gorky Secret Archives was sent to the central NKVD office about Yagoda's early activities as an anarchist nicknamed OWL. who was an active participant in an anarchist group in Nizhny, Novgorod. His involvement in this group, however, was as an informant for the Okrana.

The interrogated employee stated that he had read the file when it was removed by Gorky NKVD director Pograbinsky. The man could give the file numbers, but not exact dates. On the 17th of August, Colonel Fedorov, head of the Odessa NKVD office, sent a directive to all Ukrainian field offices. In it, he begins by chiding them. He goes on to say that in a meeting between the regional Troika and the People's Commissar in Ukraine, he found that the quality of cases submitted were very poor.

Some of those arrested weren't even sure why they were being arrested. In a majority of the cases, while the suspects were found guilty of the basic crimes charged, they had nothing to do with any insurgent or sabotage groups.

Federov ordered the heads of the interdistrict operational groups to check the quality of the investigations, reviewing all files before submission to the Troika. It ends with a warning that if they do not get their shit together, there will be quote. strict administrative penalties. End quote.

On the twentieth, the People's Commissar of the N K V D in Ukraine, the one who was complaining about how slow Troika proceedings were going, sent a telegram to Yehov. Ukrainian NKVD had a problem. all of the prisons in Ukraine could hold, cumulatively, twenty four thousand seven hundred and fifty five prisoners, As of the date of the telegram, they had forty-three thousand people in custody.

Their solution was to speed up the cases, since only thirty to fifty per cent of those in the first category execution ended up in the second category after the trial.

Under no circumstances was Stalin mindlessly signing off on executions. He would read the report, indicate who he felt needed to be arrested, who needed to be looked into more, and ask what questions he had. In other words, he was concerned and intent on finding the truth. Sadly, most of the details of what was going on at the local level were kept from him and the rest of the CC.

At first, interviews and articles showed the relief of the general population at the depth of work being done to root out those enemies of socialism who were consistently undermining it. But by the end of the operation, there were very few who still felt this way.

There were other serious cases going on at this time, including one in which A mass infestation of mites among grain reserves was uncovered. Vyshinsky headed this investigation, discovering that terrorists within the State Agricultural Institute had been behind it. almost twenty thousand tons of grain were ruined by this method. Train crashes were happening, ships were being bombed, real sabotage was taking place, which is why it was so easy to assume.

That the NKVD was carrying out necessary operations, and why the treason was so easy to hide. Without the excesses, Yezhov was sending only the final reports to Stalin, those which declare this group or that group liquidated. It probably felt like a huge success.

On october fifth, nineteen thirty seven, the head of the NKVD in Kiev made a report of errors he felt he saw in the operations being carried out through the Troikas. They are not dissimilar to the complaints of Colonel Fedorov back in August. And yet, on November 4th, Yezhov, coming up against the four-month deadline for the operation, sent a letter to the Ukrainian NKVD saying that it was moving too slowly.

December tenth was the final day, and there were to be no petitions to extend the deadline. And yet, on december eleventh, Yezhov extended the deadline to january first, nineteen thirty eight. November fifteenth, Vyshinsky, as chief prosecutor of the USSR, sent a warning that far too many cases which shouldn't have been sent to the Troikas were He warned that using the special order of the Troikas to expedite normal criminal cases was unacceptable.

He attached sheets with a number of cases of this type on it.

The requests for an increase to the limit for cases was flooding in by the first week of December. The report of the entire operation, once concluded, came out in mid January. 248,271 former Kulaks one hundred and sixteen thousand five hundred and six repeat criminals. 162,594 counter-revolutionaries, and approximately 30,000 uncategorized people were arrested under the operation of Order 00447.

Of those two hundred and thirty nine thousand two hundred and fifty two people were executed, and three hundred and fourteen thousand one hundred and ten people were sentenced to prison terms of eight to ten years.

At the end of December, Yagoda was again interrogated, following information linking him to Maxim Gorky's doctor, L. G. Levin. Levin was also Menjinsky's physician. Here, probably tired from spending months in prison waiting for them to complete his case, Yagoda addresses various connections yet to be made. as well as other issues surrounding the deaths of Gorky, Gorky's son, and Manji.

On February 25, 1938, Yagoda was given the results of his preliminary investigation, after which he declared that he did not have anything to add, did not have any statements to make, and did not want anything. defence attorney. His trial, along with that of Bukharin, Rykov, Kristinsky, Rakovsky, Rosenholz, and others, was scheduled for march second, nineteen thirty eight, in Moscow, presided over by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court.

Back on january fourteenth, nineteen thirty eight, Vyshinsky had ordered that departments carefully check complaints by families of those arrested, who were subsequently fired from their jobs. On the twenty fourth, a report from the prosecutor's office named twelve cases, which were never sent to them for review, but, upon review, were instances when the evidence against the accused was flimsy at best. And yet each of the convicted were executed.

He was, more or less, asking for fabricated evidence against those who were suspected of sabotage. Reports along these lines continued to stream in. Two things were happening simultaneously at this time. On one end, people were trying to unravel the extent of the excesses of the NKVD operation, and attempting to hold those responsible accountable.

On the other end, the staggering results of the operation were such that the leadership of these areas or departments who had apparently not noticed or willfully ignored all that transpired, therefore allowing it to become an unmitigated disaster, were being criticized publicly and losing their positions.

A draft letter in the archives, written by Yezhov, but clearly in response to concerns from the NKVD of the Orjanokidze.

However, in the process of This correctly conducted enormous operational work, there were criminal actions that can be qualified as nothing other than the actions of an enemy who had penetrated our ranks and managed to carry out all the

actually took place. The regional and district NKVD offices carried out arrests based on random, unverified information.

During the investigation, the employees of the regional apparatus and district departments of the NKVD subjected the arrested to brutal beatings and abuse, using the most ingenious methods The beaten arrested were then placed in common cells where they were forced to show signs of beatings in order to influence the other arrested persons by the threat of beating. People who had nothing to do with the investigation were involved.

The beaten prisoners were taken to city outpatient clinics for treatment. They were given visits with family members. All of this was nothing more than a deliberate discrediting of the NKVD organs, a manifestation of blatant,

Given the extreme weakness of accounting and information work, at the beginning of the operation, it was necessary to especially carefully, promptly, and at a high political level, direct and conduct work on the operations in order to eliminate the enemy's most active and senior members. Instead, they mostly arrested anti-Sovietism.

Members of church clergy Church activists, individual bearers of anti-Soviet and anti-Colco sentiment, rank-and-file rebel and white guard members, etc., while the most covert and organized cool. Guard and spy formations remained undiscovered. The lack of the necessary operational political focus in mass operations also led to the fact that little attention was paid to nationalist formations such as Moknovists and Petliurists.

their connection with foreign immigrant centers, and their intertwining with foreign intelligence services.

There were a large number of reports based on these devices from Yezhov to Stalin, surrounding the ongoing trial of Bukharin, Yagoda, and the others in the indictment. From every walk of life intelligentsia, military, factory workers, etc., as well as foreign diplomats. As a general rule, Soviet citizens had no issues believing the legitimacy of the trial. But the foreign diplomats were, at this point, firmly convinced that the entire thing was a plot by Stalin to shore up power for himself.

This, of course, is the narrative of anti-communists to this day. On the twelfth of march nineteen thirty-eight, the military collegium, consisting of the chairman, Ulrich, his deputies, State Prosecutor Vyshinsky, his secretary, and two defense lawyers convened to discuss sentences for those convicted in the case of the anti-Soviet right Trotskyist bloc. Eighteen of the defendants, Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda included, were sentenced to the highest measure of criminal punishment execution.

Pletnev, who was complicit in, but did not take active part in, the murder of Gorky's son and first deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Kubachev, was given twenty five years. A special exception to the 10-year rule, generally the maximum prison sentence in the USSR at the time. Under this same exception, Trotsky's old pal, Christian Rakovsky, was given twenty years.

And Bessanov, a diplomat who confessed to being the primary go-between for the German fascist military and the Trotskyists, was given fifteen years. Those with prison sentences had them calculated from the moment of arrest. Essentially it included time served.

As soon as the trial was over, Ryschinsky was frantically trying to mitigate the damage which the NKVD had done and, in some cases, was still doing. On the one hand it is Walk back anything, because the moment they did, requests poured in from everywhere, appealing arrest.

On the other hand, they couldn't be allowed to continue. There were four times as many complaints received by the prosecutor's office in February and March of nineteen thirty eight than there had been in the entirety of nineteen thirty seven. There were still many ongoing investigations which were urgent and legitimate. But how would they sort out the truth from lies at this point?

Interestingly, head of the NKVD equals Far Eastern Territory, Lyushkov, was a major cheerleader for repression of the military conspiracy, consistently requesting permission to arrest high-ranking Red Army officers. It is interesting, because Lushkov would soon defect to Japan and state very publicly in the media that the entire military conspiracy didn't exist, and that it was a fabrication from Moscow.

On April 11, Vyshinsky sent an order denying district prosecutors from ordering the arrests of anyone connected to counter-revolutionary crimes without approval from the regional prosecutor first. Molotov was sent to review numerous regions.

By mid May, Vyshinsky was sending orders and warnings for all sorts of departments around the world. By the end of May, there was a 44% decrease in the number of people arrested, as compared to April. On the other end, the results of the investigation from the previous summer's military tribunal were coming to fruition for good or ill. but much more well orchestrated.

lives even to this day. How many were genuine or not will require an investigation at a later date, as we do not have the time to do so now.

Subdivided, creating a system less susceptible to manipulation by small groups of individuals. On September 23rd, Yezhov sent a letter to the Politburo laying out the things he felt or Concerns before the Politburo or the CC, and instead trying to find solutions himself. He requested to be relieved of his duties. The CC ordered Yezhov, Biria, Bushinsky, Riv. Malenkov to develop a new directive on the issue of arrests, prosecutorial supervision, and conduct of investigations by the NP.

A report from November states that from October 1st, 1936 to November 1st, 1938, The NKVD arrested one million three hundred and ninety-one thousand two hundred and fifteen people. And nearly six hundred. sixty eight thousand. were put to death.

On November twenty fourth, Yezhov's request to be relieved of duties was granted. Birya moved into the role of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

On august fourth, nineteen thirty nine, Yezhov's interrogation record gives an outline to the plot. It's possible that this was a conscious conspiracy. It is also possible that Yezhov confessed or was told to confess to a conspiracy in order to give everyone a way to clean up the mess, so-named Yezhov China, in a way. We don't have enough information to make a judgment call either way at this point, as only a small portion of the remainder of this investigation has been made available so far.

Biria cleaned house as the new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. He dug into thousands of cases, trying to clear anyone he suspected was innocent, going back through the files from nineteen twenty seven onward. He moved all requests for pardon away from the power of the NKVD and into the hands of the Supreme Soviet, in order to create more transparency.

We must acknowledge the failures, tragic failures of this operation, one born out of a necessity to address the very real cases of treason and sabotage. One which yielded very real results. One which might have made the difference between the Soviet Union surviving the coming war or being crushed between two fronts.

The idea that the convictions of the high-profile trials were based solely on confessions is also false. There are mountains of letters, confiscated counter-revolutionary texts. weapons and other such incriminating evidence. The farce of the rehabilitations is also far. Dangerously so. The archives have contained hundreds of complaints, responses, requests, and decisions with regards to the NKVD, particularly Operation 00447 under Yezhal.

Khrushchev and those who came after him could have declassified and released all files related to this period, and it would have painted a much clearer picture of what was going on. But they chose not to, instead, cherry picking tiny portions of speeches or letters from Stalin to make it look like he was responsible. Because if they had released the more incriminating information, it would have been clear that he wasn't involved any more than any other member of the Politburo.

Our conclusions episode to the Stalin Eras will touch on these in a bit more detail.

Despite a long, bloody rivalry, Chinese communists, in a bid for survival, now found themselves in a united front with their domestic adversary, Cheng Kai-shek, the leader of the Kumintang Party and the Republic of China. The genocidal campaign unleashed by Japan on China led to a major uptick in support from the Soviet Union.

As the anti fascist struggle raged on in the Iberian Peninsula, the Soviets made the tough Strategic decision to reduce, though not stop, the amount of material support to the Spanish Republic through 1937 and 1938. This was done to funnel their finite resources to the China. Chinese resistance, as well as to counter the more immediate threat posed by border skirmishes with Japan. Border skirmishes which had been interpreted as testing the boundaries preceding a full-scale invasion.

First Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vladimir Potemkin, is noted as expressing hope that the Chinese resistance would ultimately make Japan incapable of successfully invading the USSR. On this point he was correct. However, we will soon see that the Red Army directly contributed to this outcome as well. Through 1938, the Soviet Union found itself split on two fronts, fighting undeclared anti-imperialist wars against a united faction of fascist states.

Which had cultivated extensive anti-Soviet networks within its borders. By early 1939, the fascist rebel forces of General Francisco Franco had thoroughly defeated the remnants of the Spanish Republican government. Franco's new regime quickly achieved official recognition by the Western powers.

Soon after, an increasingly embattled Stalin was provided with a comprehensive debriefing on the Spanish Civil War by the Spanish Communist Party, who gave him some sense of clarity on what was or rather what wasn't possible when it came to forming an anti Hitler coalition in Western Europe.

At this point, it had been six years since the USSR began in earnest to form such a coalition with Britain and France. Six years of failure and rebuffs from their supposed allies And after having exposed high ranking conspiracies and uncovering networks of numerous sabotage and other anti-Soviet intelligence operations on Soviet soil, It was clear to Stalin that the window to prevent an apocalyptic attack on the socialist motherland was narrowing.

Soviet leadership was of the position that the governments of Britain, France, and other Western powers were chomping at the bit for Nazi Germany to unleash their genocidal program against the USSR. And end the communist menace once and for all. However, they also knew this was not the position of everyday people in Western Europe, who were both better at reading geopolitical situations and more humane than their liberal democratic leadership.

For example, a Gallup poll indicated that an overwhelming 87% of Britons were in support of forming a collective security alliance with France and the USSR. It was only a year prior that the Munich Agreement, heavily promoted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Resulted in the dismemberment and absorption of Czechoslovakia by Germany to satisfy the Nazi thirst for Lebenspromp. A process which ended in May of 1939 with the entire country beyond the Sudetenland now

For a taste of the theatrics the West engaged in regarding these failed negotiations to build an alliance, here is an example of who earnestly Peace and who didn't. As noted in the 1961 text, The Origins of the Second World War.

It was a third mistake to have sent a junior official to negotiate with Russia and later on servicemen of less standing than were sent, for instance to Poland or Turkey. Behind it all is a deep, insuperable aversion to Bolshevist Russia, such as was not shown in dealings with Hitler or Mussolini, And whether it was justified or not, it was certainly not conducive to success in very difficult negotiations.

The spirit of Munich will also destroy it. The Soviet Union is clearly forced to defend itself against the Nazis. It is necessary to prepare the Soviet people for war. Look at me talking, the old pacifist. Publicly she told people to find understanding by reading the Soviet papers and tasked with which she understood to be perhaps downplaying the significance of the moment. She continued in her diaries. We had to calm people down, our own and foreigners. No, I kept.

This is not a change in the course of our foreign policy, but it should show London and Paris that the patience of the Soviet people has run out, that the time for persuading and negotiating with them is over. She later mused. I understand that in Moscow it is more convenient to have not Litvanov, but a new figure at the helm of the NKID. But is Molotov such an aggressive man and a military special?

And so the talks continued, limply under Molotov. While the same game was played, the Soviets replying promptly and urgently to proposals, while the British often took several weeks to respond. But as Colintai noted, the patience of the Soviet people had now run out and they weren't going to play anybody's fool.

This extensive report contextualized contemporary infiltration within a long history, going back to the late 19th century through the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and World War I. It specifically noted that Japanese activity was especially intense in recent years, and that this followed a classic pattern.

Once Japanese intelligence targeted an area for military intervention, they first filled that area with spies and sabotage groups. This had been the case in Korea, Manchur, and was now occurring in Mongolia and the Soviet Far East. This report, among other classified and yet to be declassified materials, encouraged the highest echelons of Soviet government to carry out a series of mass operations, which led to arrests. Deportations and executions in the Soviet Far East.

Notably, after the outbreak of war in China, the problem-plague population transfer of almost 172,000 Soviet Koreans on the border to the Central Asian republics was carried out in September 1937. This mass operation marked the start of large-scale ethnic deportations in the USSR which occurred during the war years. While clearly motivated, rightly or wrongly, by concerns about subversionary elements in these border populations,

In the case of Soviet Koreans at least. Pro-Soviet sources have argued the deportations were conducted in part to save Soviet Koreans from being exposed to the extermination campaigns and wartime brutality Imperial Japan had wrought all over Asia. We note this now not only to underscore the dire wartime state of affairs in the Soviet Far East in the late 1930s, but also to demonstrate further why Stalin and his team found it strategically necessary to shift their military focus.

from supporting the Spanish Republicans to securing their own borders. We assure you we're not being facetious here. We ask that our listeners take the time right now to look at a map of the world.

Now observe the large border shared between modern day Russia with Mongolia and China, which at the time was being invaded or already occupied by Imperial Japan. It simply is not a materialist position to consider it more feasible to have decided on a mad dash through Western Europe over more immediate border concerns. No one in the USSR, least of all Stalin, rejoiced in the fall of the Spanish Popular Front government in nineteen thirty nine.

Whatever conflicts arose between international left wing forces there, the reality is that without the prolonged support of the Soviet Union, their government would have been crushed mercilessly in nineteen thirty six. Now. Back to the far eastern front. Within a week of Litmanov's sacking, which signaled a new Soviet foreign policy in Western Europe, Border skirmishes on the Mongolian-Manchurian frontier, precipitated by the Imperial Japanese Army, began to heat up quickly.

These skirmishes then erupted into a full blown military conflagration, which is not popularly. A conflict which one modern historian called, quote, the most important battle of World War II you never heard of, end quote. From May to September 1939, the Red Army and People's Army of Mongolia engaged in combat with Imperial Japan in the Battle of Khalkin Gol, known in Japan as the Nomahan Incident.

The Red Army forces were led by then little known General Georgi Zhukov, who, as the result of the recent Red Army purges, found himself quickly rising through the ranks. That summer the Japanese strength at the border was estimated at around eighty thousand soldiers. 180 tanks. And four hundred and fifty aircraft. Soviet strength had reached approximately 50,000 soldiers, supported by 498 tanks and armored vehicles, along with 581 fighter planes and bombers.

The months of intense fighting was made difficult by quicksand, deep ravines. Sand dunes characteristic of the region. Varying estimates have casualties into the multiple of tens of thousands. This was more than the border skirmishes, which has typified Soviet-Japanese relations this decade. This was an undeclared war. And while this war continued in the Soviet Far East, the Western powers had all but surrendered to Hitler's expansive ambitions.

The only play available to the USSR after the fall of Spain was to make a deal with the devil, to delay fascist expansion from the West, and to avoid war on two fronts.

This can be seen in the secret protocols of the pact. saw Eastern Europe divided into spheres of influence between the two powers in the case of a euphemistic quote sudden political realignment in Europe, end quote. Spheres of influence which correlated heavily to future war buffer zones, resource centers, and manufacturing hubs.

Through this agreement, the Soviets had obtained influence over the Baltics, a region the USSR was forced to abandon during the Civil War twenty years prior, despite the existence of short-lived Soviet republics in the region. Little known in the West is that central to these talks was the Soviet goal of reaching a definitive conclusion to the undeclared war in the East. Though the Soviets were outmatching their foe on the eastern border, the prolonged conflict was draining.

Knowing the close diplomatic ties between Japan and Germany, Molotov angled during the discussion of the non-aggression pact for Germany to exert influence over its ally in order to rein in its imperialist intentions against the USSR. This point is clear in the documentary record. Nazi German ambassador Schulenberg, summarizing his early talks with Molotov, noted Quote Finally, and this seems to me the most important point, M. Molotov demanded that we cease to support Japanese aggression.

A few days later, on august sixteenth, nineteen thirty nine, Schulenberg was ordered by Ribbentrop to inform Molotov that the Germans were ready to conclude a non-aggression pact. And quote, to exercise influence for an improvement and consolidation of Russian Japanese relations, end quote. After a few more discussions, Ambassador Schulenberg provided Molotov a summary of their agreements.

We are in agreement with the idea that a non-aggression pact, a guarantee of the Baltic states, and Germany exercising influence on Japan, While the Soviets in part signed this pact to press German influence over Japan, they were still determined to follow through with a complete military victory at Khalkin Gul. In fact, as talks were finalizing, Zhukov led the Red Army and soldiers of the Mongolian People's Republic on a final offensive to smash the Japanese Sixth Army.

the resilient Japanese put up a fight, but gradually their soldiers came to realize the flimsiness of the official propaganda regarding the invincibility of the Imperial Army. They suffered incredibly heavy casualties, without winning a single battle in months. General Zhukov, in his autobiography. Great attention was then paid in the Japanese army to ideological brainwashing of soldiers against the Red Army.

Our army was pictured as technically backward, and was compared in combat capacity to the old Tsarist army back in the days of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. That is why the Japanese soldiers saw during the Battle of the Kalakangul when they were subjected to the powerful assault of Soviet tanks, aviation, artillery, and well organized infantry came to them as a big surprise.

Also in his autobiography, Zhukov published a letter received from Mongolian comrades at the conclusion of the conflict, which read, Dear brothers, men of the Red Army, we brave commanders and political officers of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army, operating in the Khalkangol area, send you the warmest greetings in the name of the entire working people of Mongolia.

You, the defenders of our land against the Japanese invaders, and congratulate you on the successful encirclement and complete rout of the samurais who had stolen into our country. Our people will inscribe in golden letters in the history of their struggle for freedom and independence, your heroic fight against the Japanese horde in the area of Kalkangor. Were it not for your fraternal and selfless aid, we would not have had an independent revolutionary Mongolian state.

Were it not for the aid of the Soviet state, we would be faced with the same lot as that of the people of Manchuria. Japanese invaders would have overrun and plundered our land and our hard working herdsmen. This has not happened and will never happen, because we are being helped and saved from a Japanese invasion by the Soviet Union. Thank you, and many thanks to the Soviet people.

Zhukov himself concluded, The men of the Mongolian army admired the fighting skills of the Soviet troops, but we Soviet soldiers too were no less delighted by the heroic exploits of the Mongolian troopers and their commanders.

As noted by historian and anthropologist Dennis Bartel, the Battle of Khalkingol did not receive much attention in Western mass media at the time, which was more focused on the aftermath of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact. and on the Nazi invasion of Poland, which happened at roughly the same time frame.

As the Non-Agrgression Pact was signed on August 24, 1939, to the shock and confusion of many, Stalin rightly understood that the Soviet Union had saved their socialist experiment from fighting an unwinnable war on two fronts. After three years of social upheaval, purges, and trials, it appeared the external threat had been addressed as well. Finally, a brief respite from the storm of capitalist encirclement had been reached. But the question remained.

For how long? A week later, on september first, nineteen thirty-nine, Nazi forces steamrolled Paul. In the eyes of Western Europe, this was the emergence of a new cataclysmic global conflict which was now encroaching on their borders. But this did little to trouble Stalin. After all From the Soviet Union's perspective. They had been at war for years.

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