Eastern Approaches (12 page)

The old man, his tired, cracked voice barely audible, had launched into an account of how in 1908 (or was it 1909?) he had been Chief of Police at Kotelnich and had paid the prisoner thirty silver roubles to betray his comrades. Sometimes he seemed to lose track of what he was
saying and Ulrich, like a showman cracking his whip, had to bring him back to the point. To the accompaniment of delighted titters from the crowd, he completed his statement. Then it was Vyshinski’s turn. ‘Do you really remember the prisoner after all these years?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ piped the old man, ‘I remember him, but he was younger then.’ ‘And so were you, I suppose?’ said Vyshinski. This sally was altogether too much for the crowd. They roared and bellowed and stamped on the floor, until even the old man woke from his torpor and looked about him in dazed surprise.

And now, having played his part, he was on his way back down the room. The door opened and he shuffled out, back to whatever limbo he had come from.

He had been a success. There was no doubt about it. True, his evidence had added nothing to what the prisoner had already confessed; indeed, it was altogether superfluous. But that only made it the more valuable. If the prosecution could produce a witness to prove in such a spectacular manner something that had happened thirty years ago and that in any case didn’t really need proving, then clearly it followed that they must be able to prove with equal ease all the more recent crimes with which the accused were charged. At this thought, a ripple of satisfaction ran through the audience. The nasty taste which the Krestinski episode had left in their mouths had been taken away. Vyshinski preened himself. It had been a master-stroke.

Gradually the trial moved towards its climax. Bit by bit the web was woven more closely round the accused. Sitting there day after day, listening to statement after statement, cross-examination after cross-examination, from early morning until late at night, in the dingy winter daylight and under the stale glare of the electric lamps, in that strange, tense atmosphere, one found oneself unconsciously yielding to the power of suggestion beginning to take what was said at its face value, seeking to follow prosecutor and prisoners step by step through the intricate labyrinths of the structure that they were building up, beginning to assume, as they assumed, that it really existed. Gradually, one came to grasp their mental processes, to understand what was going on in their minds, to see how in time the same ideas and doubts and
half-memories might take root in anyone’s mind, one’s own, for example.

Then, not a minute too soon, the court would adjourn, Ulrich would waddle out to his dinner, the prisoners, dim ghosts, would fade through their little door, and one would emerge, as from an unpleasant dream, to find oneself outside in the fresh air listening to the reassuring chatter of the newspapermen, to the old Moscow hands recalling what had really happened in 1929 or 1932, and how Trotski, or someone else, could not possibly have been where he was said to be.

But the real struggle was still to come. As the trial progressed, it became ever clearer that the underlying purpose of every testimony was to blacken the leaders of the ‘bloc’, to represent them, not as political offenders, but as common criminals, murderers, poisoners and spies. Again and again came the revelation, following on a long catalogue of improbable misdeeds, that the instigator of this murder, of that piece of sabotage, of those treasonable conversations with the agents of a foreign power, had been Rykov, or Yagoda, or Bukharin.

Particularly Bukharin. To him, it seemed, belonged the role of arch-fiend in this grim pantomime. He had been behind every villainy, had had a hand in every plot. It was he who had planned to murder Lenin in 1918; who had decided on the dismemberment of the Soviet Union; who had plotted with Tukachevski to open the front to the Germans in the event of war and with Yagoda to murder Kirov and Maxim Gorki, Menzhinski and Kuibyshev; who had instructed his myrmidons to establish contact with the agents of Britain, Japan, Poland and Germany, with the White Russians, with Trotski, with the Second International; who had organized agricultural and industrial sabotage in the Ukraine, in Siberia, in the Caucasus, in Central Asia; who had planned, first, a peasant rising and civil war, then a palace revolution and
coup d’état
. Each prisoner, as he blackened himself, was careful at the same time to blacken Bukharin. Methodically, the old picture of the revolutionary fighter, the Marxist theoretician, the friend of Lenin, the member of the Politbureau, the President of the Communist International, was demolished, and a new portrait substituted for it: a demon, complete with horns, hooves and tail, a
traitor, a spy and a capitalist mercenary, a sinister figure, skulking in the shadows, poisoning Soviet hogs, slaughtering Soviet stallions, slipping powdered glass into the workers’ butter. Lurking memories of a glorious past were obliterated. No one could have any sympathy with such a miserable wretch. Each fresh revelation was greeted by the crowd with murmurs of rage, horror and disgust. Clearly the method chosen was having the desired effect, was working satisfactorily.

Working satisfactorily, that is, so long as Bukharin himself took no part in the proceedings. But, when, as sometimes happened, Vyshinski, leaving the prisoner under examination, turned to Bukharin for confirmation, things did not go so smoothly. Even when he admitted the crimes with which he was charged, he had an awkward way of qualifying his admissions, of qualifying them in such a way as largely to invalidate them, of slipping in little asides which made complete nonsense of them. Besides, he did not answer the Public Prosecutor with at all the same deference as did the other prisoners. He seemed to treat him as an equal, even as an inferior. At times he actually seemed to be making fun of him, and even the good Party men in the audience caught themselves laughing at his sallies.

And his cross-examination was yet to come.

At last, on the evening of March 5th, Ulrich announced that it was Bukharin’s turn to be cross-examined. The morning had been devoted to the interrogation of Akmal Ikramov, until a few months before Secretary-General of the Uzbek Communist Party. Prompted by Vyshinski, he had readily revealed that, under personal instructions from Bukharin, he had, with Faisullah Khojayev, for years past, sought to wreck the industry and agriculture of Uzbekistan, with the ultimate object of converting it into a British colony. Bukharin, he said, had visited him more than once at Tashkent and reproached him with not doing enough damage. A suitable frame of mind having thus been induced in the audience, the stage was now set for the appearance of the villain in person.

As Bukharin rose to his feet, there was a stir of interest in the crowd. This was the big moment; this was what they had been waiting for. A stir of anxiety too; for might not the old fox have some trick in store?

But they were soon reassured. Immediately the accused made a full confession of his guilt. Almost too full, for, having declared himself one of the leaders of the Rightest-Trotskist ‘bloc’, he forthwith announced that he accepted entire responsibility for any and every misdeed which might have been committed by the ‘bloc’, whether he had had any knowledge of it or not.

This, of course, was satisfactory, but not, it seemed, exactly what was wanted. Vyshinski started in to elicit some more details. But it was not easy to pin down the prisoner to concrete facts. Soon he was launched on an account of the ‘bloc’s’ economic programme. Their first divergence, it appeared, had been on the subject of industrialization. They had considered that it was being carried too far too quickly; that it was putting too great a strain on the budget; that it was defeating its own object and having a harmful effect on production. They had also had doubts about the collectivization of agriculture, had disapproved of the way in which the Government had treated the richer and medium peasants, the
kulaks
, of their mass liquidation, in fact. Gradually, they had moved towards the idea of a system of State capitalism, with smaller collective farms, prosperous individual peasants, foreign concessions and no State monopoly of foreign trade. On the political side, they had evolved in the direction of bourgeois democratic liberty, with more than one party. It was this oppositional tendency, carried to its logical conclusion, that had led them to consider overthrowing the regime by force and to their various other sins of thought and deed, to the project, finally, of a
coup d’état
against the present rulers of the Soviet Union. …

Ulrich and Vyshinski began to look annoyed. This was not at all the kind of thing that was wanted. It was essential that Bukharin should appear, not as a theoretician, but as a common criminal, and here he was, quite his old self, evolving a reasoned political and economic theory, and, what was worse, one that for some people might not be without attractions. It was unheard of that a prisoner at a State trial should declare that he had opposed Stalin’s policy because he had come to the conclusion that it was wrong, and yet this in effect was what Bukharin was doing.

Hastily Vyshinski raised the question of espionage. Bukharin had
been in Austria before the Revolution in 1912 and 1913. Had he not had some contact with the Austrian police? Had they not recruited him as a spy? The answer came back like a flash: ‘My only contact with the Austrian police was when they imprisoned me in a fortress as a revolutionary.’ And almost immediately he was back in the realm of political theory. When the court adjourned later that night, Vyshinski had made little progress in the desired direction.

Next day, March 6th, was a Rest Day — twenty-four hours in which to prepare Bukharin for the next phase of his cross-examination, and induce in him a more amenable frame of mind. But when, on the seventh, the court reassembled, though showing signs of strain, he was as resilient as ever. His tactics varied. To some charges he replied blandly that he personally had no knowledge of the events referred to, but that he was nevertheless prepared to accept responsibility for them on behalf of the ‘bloc’. To others his answer was that he didn’t happen to have committed the crimes with which he was charged, but that it would have been a logical consequence of his conduct had he done so and that he was therefore quite ready to admit his guilt, if it would give any pleasure to the Public Prosecutor. Sometimes, displaying all his old dialectical skill, he amused himself by picking holes in the arguments advanced by the prosecution, making free use of such terms as ‘nonsense’ and ‘absurd’. On several points he remained absolutely firm. He refused to admit that he had ever contemplated murdering Lenin; or that he had ever been the agent of a foreign power; or that he had ever agreed to dismember the Soviet Union or to open the front to the Germans in time of war. Nor did he once consent to play the prosecution’s game by incriminating his fellow prisoners.

Vyshinski tried arguing; he tried blustering; he used every quibble of a second-rate pettifogging lawyer. Still Bukharin stood firm. Vyshinski re-interrogated several of the other prisoners, eliciting from them the most damning statements. Bukharin flatly contradicted some and dismissed the others as
agents provocateurs
, while others he cross-examined himself, quickly disposing of their allegations.

Then Vyshinski called Rykov, Bucharin’s close friend and associate and, allegedly, co-leader of the ‘bloc’. ‘You will surely not suggest
that your good friend Rykov is an
agent provocateur
,’ he said triumphantly.

Former President of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars, Lenin’s successor, Molotov’s predecessor, Rykov, as he rose to his feet, was a pathetic figure, tall, with hunched shoulders, swaying slightly, red-nosed and bleary-eyed, his straggling beard wagging unsteadily as he looked round him. Always known for his addiction to strong liquor, he now seemed to have gone to pieces completely. Already, under cross-examination, he had admitted everything that had been required of him, his incoherent utterances punctuated by inane giggles. But still Bukharin held out, and even the poor creature Rykov seemed somehow to rally at his example, refusing after all to betray his friend.

Again and again, on different pretexts, Vyshinski raised the issue of espionage. At all costs the prisoner must be shown to be a criminal, and a criminal hired by the enemies of his country. But Bukharin, unshaken, continued to expound the ideology underlying his alleged conduct and calmly to deny the specific charges brought against him. ‘And so you consider yourself an ideologist?’ said Vyshinski. ‘Yes,’ replied Bukharin, quietly. ‘You, I suppose, would rather I said I was a spy, but I don’t happen to have been one.’

For Vyshinski the most important task of all was to show that Bukharin had planned to murder Lenin in 1918. If he could do that, nothing else would matter. The accused would be finally and irretrievably blackened. The legend of his friendship with the Great Master would be finally disposed of; turned against him, in fact, so that he appeared as an arch-traitor, a Judas. But already the cross-examination had lasted for many hours and still Bukharin showed no signs of weakening.

On the contrary, he was just beginning to get into his stride. 1917, 1918, that was his period, the heroic period of the Revolution. Stalin and Molotov by comparison had been small fry then, and no one had heard of Vyshinski. It was all coming back. Here, he was on ground where few could follow him. With authority he described the intricate relations between Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, Left-wing Communists; the intrigues; the plots; the counter-plots. Described them as one who had played a leading and a creditable part
in it all. Described them as no one else living was qualified to describe them.

No one else living … If the situation was to be saved, witnesses must be raised from the dead. Like a conjurer producing a particularly fine rabbit from his hat, Vyshinski raised them. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I might be allowed to call as witnesses the Left-wing Communists, Jakovleva, Ossinski and Mantsev and the Left-wing Social Revolutionaries Karelin and Kamkov.’