Eastern Approaches (15 page)

When all the prisoners had had their say, the court adjourned to consider their verdict. It was half-past nine at night. Sentence would not be pronounced for several hours. Chip Bohlen and I walked through the icy streets to his flat in the American Embassy to get something to eat. We could not take our minds off what we had seen and heard. For ten days we had spent eight or nine hours a day at the trial. We had thought and talked of little else. It had come to be part of our lives. Now, over dinner, in a normal atmosphere once more, we tried to find a theory which would fit the facts as we knew them.

It was not easy.

If what we had heard in court was the literal truth, if, ever since the Revolution, the highest offices of State had been held by a band of traitors, spies, murderers and wreckers, whose sole aim had been to overthrow the Soviet regime, if the whole regime had from the start been riddled with treachery and corruption, how was it that such a galaxy of talent, with such opportunities, had obtained so small a measure of success, how was it that their most important achievements had been to spoil a relatively small quantity of eggs and butter and to hasten the demise of an elderly littérateur, who for forty years had been suffering from an incurable disease? For five years Yagoda, a notoriously ruthless man, had controlled the all-powerful N.K.V.D., had had under his command the Kremlin guards; had had in his power the doctors who attended Stalin and the other leaders of the Party and Government; had had his private laboratory for the preparation of special poisons. Why had he not used these opportunities to eliminate all those who stood in his way?

If, on the other hand, the men now standing their trial had in fact been loyal servants of the regime and the charges brought against them nothing but a tissue of lies, then an answer was no easier to find. What possible purpose could it serve to invent such fairy-tales; to murder, on purely imaginary charges, a large number of key men, and, in the process, to proclaim gratuitously to an already sceptical and hostile
world that for years past the Soviet Union had been ruled by a gang of ruffians?

And the accused themselves? If they were innocent, why did they confess? It was hard to believe that torture or drugs alone could produce such ready admissions, such closely reasoned statements, such eloquent speeches. If, on the other hand, they were guilty, if there had really been a large-scale conspiracy against the regime, why did they not seek to justify themselves, why was it that none of their speeches contained a word of criticism of a system of which they had been such bitter opponents?

The answer to some of these questions must lie, it seemed, in Bukharin’s last speech. It was, in the first place, a matter of ideological, of psychological atmosphere. Such things, he had said, could only happen in the Soviet Union.

One knew what he meant.

For twenty years past, everyone in court, prisoners, judges, prosecutor, guards and spectators, had lived in the tense atmosphere of unreality, tension, oppression and suspicion which we had come to know so well. Before that, the older ones amongst them had lived in the tense conspiratorial atmosphere of revolutionary circles in Tsarist Russia. On top of this, the accused had endured additional strains and stresses. For years they had known the fear of impending liquidation. Then had come the final shock of arrest, the long-awaited knock on the door at midnight; then the long months of prison, the unceasing interrogations.

All, judges and accused alike, had, for the greater part of their lives, been subjected to propaganda, so constant, so intensive, so insidious, as to leave its mark on the strongest intellect. All had been cut off, as only Soviet citizens are cut off, from any contact with the outside world, from all normal intellectual and political influences, from all valid standards of comparison. In a sense, all their minds must work along the same lines, along different lines, that is, from the Western mind.

Was it altogether surprising that, with this mental background, they should at times have difficulty in distinguishing between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the hypothetical, that their faculties should become blurred, that they should lose their objectivity?

Besides, all were Party Members, deeply impregnated with Communist dogma, their conduct ruled by a Party Line. For them any deviation, however slight, was a crime. To disagree, even mentally, with the leaders of the Party on some minor point of doctrine was as unforgivable as to commit a seemingly much graver crime, as to plan their physical destruction, for instance. ‘Having once deviated from Bolshevism,’ Bukharin had said, ‘we were inevitably, irresistibly forced into the position of counter-revolutionary bandits.’ If they had deviated, the rest followed.

Already, the whole problem of guilt and innocence was reduced to a simpler form. In the past, when political discussion had still been admissible, Bukharin and Rykov, Krestinski and Rakovski had all differed openly from Stalin. On the face of it, despite subsequent disavowals, it was improbable that they had since become convinced of his infallibility or that they could be reconciled to the grim new form which the Soviet regime had assumed under his sway. There was much about it that must shock them, much of which, when they remembered the structure that they themselves had planned to build, they must disapprove.

Disapprove. There, already, was something to go on. Enough for Stalin, at any rate. The former seminarist had learnt at an early age the power for evil of ‘dangerous thoughts’. The old revolutionary knew from his own experience that, in Russia, every difference of opinion carries in it the germ of a conspiracy. The tribesman, the guerrilla, knew the importance in irregular warfare of thinking quicker than your opponent, of getting your blow in first, before his intentions have had time to take shape.

And if, in fact, there had been a conspiracy, what more natural than that the thinkers, the ideologists, should have made common cause with the men of action, Tukachevski, Yagoda? What more natural, too, than that to the Tukachevskis and the Yagodas, finding themselves in positions of great power, should come the idea of using that power for their own ends. Tukachevski was known to admire Napoleon. As a soldier? Or as a man? An officer of the Imperial Army, he had shifted his allegiance quickly enough, when his interests demanded it. Might he not do so again? And Yagoda. In the
service of the State he had shown himself utterly ruthless and utterly unscrupulous. Might he not, with the vast power at his disposal, be tempted to pursue a personal policy? And if he did? Was he not the man who held Stalin’s own personal security in his hands? It was an alarming thought.

What more natural, too, than that any potential opponents of the regime should seek, and receive, outside support, among the enemies of the Soviet Union? Some of them had, in the course of their normal duties, had contact with foreigners. Tukachevski, in the old days, had had many dealings with the German General Staff; had been to Paris. Krestinski had been to Berlin, Rakovski to London and Tokio. Rosengolts had lunched and dined at the British Embassy. Had these contacts really been innocent?

And the ‘wrecking’? Inefficiency? Or stubbornness? Or malice? Or a combination of all three? In any case a phenomenon which the enemies of the regime, if they knew their job, would be bound to exploit. Something which called for the most ruthless counter-measures.

Looking at it like that, it was possible to see how, in the minds of those concerned, if not in reality, the idea of a conspiracy might have grown up.

Who had thought of it first? The conspired against or the conspirators? Probably the former, at any rate in the concrete form in which it was now presented.

But the conspirators, with their minds working along the same lines as those of their inquisitors, would have had no difficulty in following their line of argument, especially if, in the back of their minds, there lurked a suspicion that if only they had had the chance they might in fact have acted in the way they were supposed to have done.

Once this basis for an understanding between the two parties had been established, the rest would follow naturally. It only remained to prepare the idea for presentation to public opinion, to dress it up in its proper ideological clothes, to paint in the background, to accentuate darkness and light, to link the various scenes so as to present a more or less coherent whole. This, for trained minds, accustomed to such work, was mere child’s play.

And if, unexpectedly, any of the puppets did not wish to play the parts allotted to them? Everyone has his weak point. Some would be afraid for themselves, some for their wives and children. We knew that the families of the prisoners had all been arrested at the same time as they had.

The resistance of others could be broken down by more subtle means. All kinds of strange tricks can be played with the human mind, given time and patience.

Time and patience. Most of the prisoners had been in prison for a year or eighteen months. During that time, they would have been cross-examined for days, for weeks, for months on end. They would have been confronted with statements signed by their fellow prisoners, by their closest friends, by their own wives and children, incriminating them hopelessly. They would have felt betrayed, helpless and utterly alone. They would have been reminded of half-remembered episodes, not very creditable to them, perhaps, not very easy to explain, and invited to explain them. They would find that all kinds of seemingly unconnected incidents in their lives had a way of fitting into a pattern, which, taken as a whole, was seen to be utterly damning. They would have been subjected to many different kinds of pressure, sometimes physical, sometimes mental. The N.K.V.D. were reputed to make sparing use of actual torture, as practised by the Gestapo. But there were other ways. Lack of sleep, lack of food, soon sap resistance. In the cells the heating could be left off in winter; left on in summer. A drunkard — Rykov, for example — could be deprived of drink or suddenly given as much as he wanted. Sudden plenty, a carefully timed bribe, could be as demoralizing as the worst privations. There might be some, Tukachevski, for instance, whose resistance was too strong to be overcome, whom nothing would induce to play their allotted parts. For them was reserved liquidation by administrative measure, without a public trial.

And Bukharin himself, a man of a different calibre from the others, for whom personal considerations had long since ceased to exist, whose whole life for years past had been the Party, how was he to be induced to play his part, to declare himself a traitor to all that had been most precious to him?

Once again the answer was to be found in his own words. Faced with death, he had felt the need of a cause to die for, and, for him, a lifelong Communist, there could only be one cause: the Party; the Party which he had made and which was now devouring him; the Party, disfigured and debased beyond all recognition, but still the Party. In other words, he, too, had had a weak point: his loyalty to a cause. Others had confessed for their own sakes or for the sake of their families. His confession had been a last service to the Party.

A last service … How could this fantastic nightmare serve the Party, or anybody else?

In a number of ways. Primarily, it seemed, the whole trial was a political manifesto, a carefully worded fable designed to convey a number of carefully selected messages to the hazy minds of the Soviet population. That was why it was necessary for there to be so sharp a contrast between good and evil, between darkness and light, for the characters to be portrayed in such crude colours, to correspond so accurately to the conventional figures of Communist Heaven and Hell.

In the first place Good would be seen to triumph over Evil, and, so that even in the haziest mind, there could be no possible doubt as to the meaning, it would be Absolute Good, with wings and halo, triumphing over Absolute Evil, with horns and tail. That was the
leitmotif
: that it does not pay to rebel against established authority. The trial would serve, too, as a reminder of the dangers besetting both the Soviet State and the individual citizen. It would help to keep up the nervous tension which, extending to every walk of life, had become one of the chief instruments of Soviet internal policy. By making people suspicious of one another, by teaching them to see spies and traitors everywhere, it would increase ‘vigilance’, render even more improbable the germination of subversive ideas. The stories of foreign spies, of foreign designs on the Soviet Fatherland, would serve to make the population shun foreigners, if possible, more rigorously than before. Much, too, would be explained that had hitherto been obscure. Shortages, famines had been due, not to the shortcomings of the Soviet system, but to deliberate wrecking. The purge, even, would now be seen to be the work, not of the benevolent Father of the People, but of the
Fiend Yagoda, working without his knowledge and against his will. Now the purgers were being purged; the wreckers liquidated and the designs of the foreign spies finally thwarted. Soon peace and plenty would reign.

For months past, to the exclusion of all other intellectual activities, judges, prosecutor, prisoners and N.K.V.D. had been working at high pressure on the production of this legend, as authors, producers and actors might work on the production of a film: piecing together the real and the imaginary, truth and illusion, intention and practice, finding connections where none existed, darkening the shadows, heightening the highlights, embodying it all in the fifty volumes of evidence which littered Ulrich’s desk. Inevitably, as work progressed, as their production began to take shape, the distinction between truth and illusion would become in their minds more and more blurred, would be replaced by a kind of pride of authorship, an attachment to accuracy, which, in court, on the day, would cause them to argue with each other, to correct each other on points of detail, which in fact bore no relation to reality, which existed only in their imagination.

In their imagination, in everybody’s imagination. In Ulrich’s imagination; in Vyshinski’s imagination; in the imagination of the N.K.V.D. interrogators; in Yagoda’s imagination; in the imagination of the Soviet public.