The Great Terror

4 Old Bolsheviks Confess

fn1

This was extended during the war to provide for “the punishment of relatives of those who had been taken prisoner” (Svetlana Alliluyeva,

Twenty Letters to a Friend

[London, 1967], p. 196).

fn2

He was replaced by Akulov, who had been serving as Prosecutor-General. It was now that Vyshinsky received that post.

fn3

These dates are those given sporadically in the indictment, in the evidence of the trial, and in the Secret Letter of the Central Committee.

fn4

He is also mentioned by General A. V. Gorbatov as presiding in 1939 over the four- or five-minute farce which sentenced him to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He died in good odor in 1967 (

Years Off My Life

[London, 19641, pp. 117–18).

fn5

Just as the Czechoslovak investigation of the Slansky Trial made in 1968 established that “the individual sentences had been settled beforehand by the Political Secretariat” (

Nova mysl

, no. 7 [10 July 1968]).

fn6

For some reason, no evidence implicating Pyatakov is given in the printed version of the court proceedings. In fact, Reingold had incriminated him.

fn7

At the time, it is true, the Communists denied responsibility and claimed that they had been framed by their enemies. Georgi Dimitrov, at the Reichstag Trial, said, “This incident was not organized by the Bulgarian Communist Party … that act of provocation, the blowing up of Sofia Cathedral, was actually organized by the Bulgarian police” (

Selected Articles

[London, 1951], pp. 22–23). However, in a speech in 1948, he admitted and criticized “the desperate actions of the leaders of the Party’s military organization culminating in the attempt at Sofia Cathedral” (p. 203).