Yezhov in disfavor and Now Beria

“Stalin”

The specialty of this terrifying crone (Polina Nikolaenko, ‘heroic denunciatrix of Kiev’), responsible for the deaths of as many as 8,000 people, was to stand up at meetings and shriek accusations: Khrushchev saw how she ‘pointed her finger and said, “I don’t know that man over there but I can tell by the ‘look in his eyes that he’s an Enemy of the People.”’ This talk of the ‘look in the eyes’ was another sign of the Terror’s religious frenzy. The only way to rebut this was to answer quickly: ‘I don’t know this woman who’s just denounced me but I can tell from the look in her eyes, she’s a prostitute.’ Now Polina Nikolaenko appealed to Stalin. Her cover note catches her simplicity:

‘To the anteroom of Comrade Stalin. I ask you to give this declaration personally to Comrade Stalin. Comrade Stalin talked about me about the February Plenum.’ Her letter did reach Stalin, with devastating consequences for her enemies: ‘Dear Leader, Comrade Stalin,’ she wrote on 17 September 1937, cunningly exposing how the local bosses were ignoring Stalin’s orders. ‘I ask for your intervention in Kiev matters….’ ‘One connected to Enemies of the People cried, “It’s in her eyes, she’s two-faced!”’ Kosior, Ukrainian leader, and others ridiculed her ‘amidst noisy laughter’. ‘I was, am, will be devoted to the Party and the Great Leader. You helped me to find the Truth. STALIN’S TRUTH IS STRONG!.... Ten days later, Stalin swooped to her aid, telling the Ukrainian bosses:

‘Pay attention to Comrade Nikolaenko (look at her letter). Can you protect her from this audience of hooligans! According to my information, Glaz and Timofeev really are not especially trustworthy. Stalin.’ Those two men were presumably arrested while [Stanislas] Kosior survived for the moment. (p. 221)

NKVD のボス、Yezhov の冷酷さは激しさを増す一方、任務の重さから痛飲する。そしてBeria が表舞台に登場する。

Constantly drunk, Yezhov sensed Stalin was, as he later wrote to his master, ‘dissatisfied with the NKVD work which deteriorated my mood still further’. He made frantic attempts to prove his worth: he was said to have suggested renaming Moscow as ‘Stalinodar’. This was laughed off. Instead Yezhov was called upon to kill his own NKVD appointees whom he protected…. (p. 243)

‘Now I am done for!’ sobbed Yezhov in his office, as he went on executing any prisoners who ‘may turn against us’. On 29 September, he lost much of his power when Beria was appointed to run the heart of the NKVD: State Security (GUGB). He now co-signed Yezhov’s orders. Blackberry tried to strike back: he proposed to Stalin that Stanislav Redens, Beria’s enemy married to Anna Alliluyeva, become his other deputy. There was no hope of this.

Yezhov sat boozing at his dacha with his depressed cronies, warning that they would soon be destroyed, and fantasizing about killing his enemies: ‘Immediately remove all people posted in the Kremlin by Beria,’ he loudly ordered the head of Kremlin security during one such bout, ‘and replace them with reliable people.’ Soon he said, in a slurred voice, that Stalin should be killed. (pp. 247-248)