Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia: 1934-1941. - book reviews

National Review, July 15, 1996 by Robert Conquest

IF one is writing about the Terror, it is surely necessary to familiarize oneself with the material. Examples of the contrary abound here. There is a reference to "the unidentified Litvin." M. I. Litvin, one of Yezhov's closest aides, was head of the NKVD's key Secret Political Department from May 1937 to January 1938, when he became NKVD chief in Leningrad. Similarly with E. G. Evdokimov: he is given here as one of those who survived. He didn't: he was shot with the whole Yezhov gang in 1940.

Thurston is even muddled about the fate of Yezhov himself, one of his leading characters. He notes Yezhov as present at a meeting of seniors before the Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, and can add only that he was arrested a few days later and, according to various sources, shot for "groundless repression" in July or some other date in 1940. In fact, we have long had the full documentation on his end: he was arrested on April 10, 1939, and shot on February 4, 1940. The accusation included illegal repression, but the main charges were of plotting to assassinate Stalin and of espionage for Britain and other countries.

The author gives much space to Ryutin, and to his famous anti-Stalin platform (describing it rather oddly as "virulent": in fact, given its Marxist - Leninist approach, its characterization of both the man and his dictatorship is hardly to be faulted). But of this major bugbear he can only conclude that, "sent to a labor camp, Ryutin survived until 1937 or 1938." In fact, he had been sent not to a labor camp, but to a "political isolator," and was brought back in the autumn of 1936 with a view to being put on public trial. In November, he signed a statement refusing to confess, and was shot in secret in January 1937, with other leading figures.

Such faults are, moreover, found in broader contexts. Thus, on the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and the other generals in June 1937, Thurston suggests, on the basis of vague rumors, that there was indeed a military plot against Stalin, even saying of one of the generals that "Putna was probably guilty of treason." Putna and the others were all fully rehabilitated nearly forty years ago, and more recent publication of interrogation and trial material shows that it was all a fake. In connection with this case, the author devotes several pages to the role of the White emigre General Skoblin, quoting from and approving a contemporary report in the London Times of his wife's trial in France which commented that the allegation that Skoblin himself (who had by now disappeared) was a Soviet agent "was not substantiated." It has always been clear that he was indeed a Soviet agent: and this is now proved (Moscow News, December 22 - 28, 1995). Smuggled out to Spain, he was liquidated surreptitiously, so that his wife might think him still alive -- a deception often practiced in the Soviet Union itself.

At every crux, something goes wrong with either Thurston's facts, or his interpretation, or both. The suicide or murder (officially heart attack) of Grigory Ordzhonikidze in February 1937 is a case in point. Thurston holds that Stalin "would not" have acted against an old and valued ally -- not a good analysis in view of Stalin's record. But we have a number of testimonies to their mutual discontent at this stage, one of which Thurston himself quotes. Even more striking is what Stalin said in his speech to the crucial "February - March" 1937 plenum. Thurston quotes the published version of the speech at length, though even a quarter of a century ago I was able to write of it that it was "believed to differ considerably," chiefly by omission, from what he had actually said. This is now confirmed by the publication of the original text. In this, one major difference is an attack on Ordzhonikidze, which Stalin reverts to twice, blaming him for having kept his contact with his old anti-Stalinist comrade Lominadze secret from the Politburo -- much the same offense as that of some of the 1936 "Trotskyites."