No Hope for Yezhov

皮肉なことに粛清を忠実に実行「しすぎた」Yezhov と彼の周辺に危険が及ぶ。

The darkness began to descend on Yezhov’s family where his silly, sensual wife (Yevgenia) was unwittingly to play the terrible role of black widow spider: most of her lovers were to die….

Yezhov learned that Beria was going to use Yevgenia, an ‘English spy’ from her time in London, against him so he asked for a divorce in September. The divorce was sensible: in other cases, it actually saved the life of the divorcee…. It seems that Yezhov was trying to protect his wife from arrest….

Their world was shrinking daily: Yezhov had managed to have her ex-husband Gladun shot before Beria took control of the NKVD, but another ex-lover, the publisher Uritsky, was being interrogated. He revealed her affair with [Isaac] Babel (a writer). Yezhov’s secretary and friends were arrested too…. (p. 250)

[Yevgenia] signed off [to her letter to Stalin]: ‘I feel like a living corpse. What am I to do? Forgive my letter written in bed.’ Stalin did not reply.

When [Zinaida] Glikina’s arrest made her own inevitable, Yevgenia sent a note bidding Yezhov good bye. On 19 November (1938), she took the Luminal (that Yezhov had given her).

At 11 p.m., as she sank into unconsciousness, Yezhov arrived at the Little Corner, where he found the Politburo with Beria and Malenkov, who attacked hem for five hours. Yevgenia died two days later. Yezhov himself reflected that he had been ‘compelled to sacrifice her to save himself’. (pp. 250-251)

Beria, whom Stalin nicknamed ‘the Prosecutor’, was triumphantly appointed Commissar on 25 November, and summoned his Georgian henchmen to Moscow. Having destroyed the entourages of the Old Bolshevik ‘princes’, Stalin now had to import Beria’s whole gang to destroy Yezhov’s. (p. 252)

… Beria expanded the Terror to include anyone connected to Yezhov, who had not only appointed Stalin’s brother-in-law, Stanislas Redens, to run the NKVD in Kazakhstan but had even requested him as his deputy: this was the kiss of death…. (pp. 255-256)

At Kuntsevo, [Stalin’s son] Vasily heard Beria demand that Stalin let him arrest Redens. ‘But I trust Redens,’ replied Stalin ‘very decisively.’ To Vasily’s surprise, Malenkov supported Beria. This was the beginning of the alliance between the two who would not have pressed the arrest without knowing Stalin’s instincts…. Beria is always blamed for turning Stalin against his other brother-in-law but there was more to it than that. Stalin had removed Redens from the Ukraine in 1932. He was close to Yezhov. And he was a Pole. Stalin listened to Beria and Malenkov and then said: ‘In that case, sort it out at the Central Committee.’ As Svetlana put it, ‘My father would not protect him.’ On the 22nd, Redens was arrested on his way to work and was never seen again. (p. 257)

Svetlana lost another part of her support system: Carolina Til, the dependable housekeeper, that cosy link to her mother, was sacked in the purge of Germans. Beria found her replacement in a niece of his wife Nina from Georgia….

スターリンはNadya の兄の妻で、かつて愛人だったZhenya とよりを戻そうとするが、危険を感じた彼女はさっさと再婚する。

Zhenya Alliluyeva was a widow but she was convinced her husband had been murdered by Beria. Was she guilty about her relationship with Stalin? There is no evidence of this. Her husband had surely known (or chosen not to know) what was going on, but the relationship with Stalin, such as it was, had already cooled in 1938. But now Stalin missed her and made a strange, indirect proposal to her. Beria came to see Zhenya and said: ‘You’re such a nice person, and you’re so fine looking, do you want to move in and be housekeeper at Stalin’s house?’ Usually this is interpreted as a mysterious threat from Beria but it is surely unlikely that he would have made such a proposal without Stalin’s permission, especially since she could have phoned him to discuss it. In Stalin’s mind, a ‘housekeeper’ was his ideal baba, the khozyaika. This was surely a semi-marriage proposal, an awkward attempt to salvage the warmth of the old days from the destruction that he himself had unleashed. It was unforgivably clumsy to send Beria, whom Zhenya loathed, on this sensitive mission but that was typical of Stalin. If one has any doubt about this analysis, Stalin’s reaction to Zhenya’s next move may confirm it.

Zhenya was alarmed, fearing that Beria would frame her for trying to poison Stalin. She swiftly married an old friend, named N.V. Molochnikov, a Jewish engineer whom she had met in Germany, perhaps the lover who had almost broken up her marriage. Stalin was appalled, claiming that it was indecent so soon after Pavel’s death…. (p. 258)

Between 24 February and 16 March 1939, Beria presided over the executions of 413 important prisoners, including Marshal Yegorov and ex-Politburo members, Kosior, Postyshev and Chubar…. Now he suggested to Stalin that they call a halt, or there would be no one left to arrest…. (p. 261)

On 10 March 1939, the 1,900 delegates of the Eighteenth Congress gathered to declare the end of the slaughter that had been a success, if slightly marred by Yezhov’s manic excesses….

Yezhov was on ice yet he still attended the Politburo, sat next to Stalin at the Bolshoi and turned up for work at Water Transport, where he sat through meetings throwing paper darts….

‘Well what do you think of yourself? Are you capable of being a member of the Central Committee?’ Yezhov protested his devotion to the Party and Stalin – he could not imagine what he had done wrong. Since all the other members were being promoted, the dwarf’s bafflement is understandable.

‘Is that so?’ Stalin started mentioning Enemies close to Yezhov.

Yezhov was determined to spread the guilt and avenge his betrayal by destroying Malenkov, whom he now denounced. On 10 April, Stalin ordered Yezhov to attend a meeting to hear these accusations…. Beria and his Georgian prince-executioner, Tsereteli, opened the door and arrested Blackberry, conveying ‘Patient Number One’ to the infirmary inside Sukhanov prison. (pp. 262-263)

そして欧州は戦争へと向かう。

Europe was on the verge of war and Stalin turned his attention to the tightrope walk between Nazi Germany and the Western democracies…. (p. 264)