1937: A Year Soaked in Blood

a year soaked in blood 

In 1937 the New Year fell on Friday, a workday. So everyone worked. Building socialism and fighting foreign and domestic enemies apparently left no time or energy for frivolous celebrations.

The country had been living with a six-day work week for several years. Mondays and Fridays, to say nothing of Sundays, were declared vestiges of the pre-Revolutionary past. Now there was the first day of the shestidnevka [the six-dayer], the second day of the shestidnevka, etc. The 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th of each month were designated as days off. The only month when you could rest on the 1st was in March, to make up for the missing fifth day off in February. 

But on that first day of 1937 you were at least allowed to decorate a holiday tree, a tradition that had been renounced in previous years. Legend has it that Stalin was quite taken with the Moscow Art Theater performance of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Days of the Turbins, that he was enchanted by the Christmas tree decorated on stage by the Turbin family, whom history had slated for destruction. After watching Bulgakov’s play several times, at the end of 1935 the Great Leader permitted his people to once again decorate holiday trees. 

On the other hand, his decision may have had more to do with the fact that he had a little daughter at home, a child who had lost her mother to suicide in 1932. Whatever the case may have been, by the dawn of 1937, the most important holiday tree in the country had been installed for the second year running in the Hall of Columns of the Dom Soyuzov [House of Unions]. Of course, the holiday being celebrated was not Christmas, but New Year’s.

The Soviet people were supposed to rejoice and have fun. After all, they had so many causes for jubilation – the creation of kolkhozes, the construction of factories, the establishment of socialism and, of course, their own Great Leader and Teacher, Comrade Stalin. 

The front page of Pravda on January 1, 1937, did not read “Happy New Year,” as one might have expected. These times operated according to their own unique logic; the headline read, “The Great Helmsman is Leading Us.” 

The Helmsman had indeed steered quite a course. Nobody had taken the time to calculate how many millions had died of hunger during collectivization. Nobody had dared ponder how many millions were rotting away in camps or had simply been shot without trial. 

Perhaps Joseph Vissarionovich himself had stood before the New Year’s tree reflecting on how many enemies of the people he had already managed to destroy as he admired the sparkling of its many lights. Soon he would find out the answer: on January 1, newspapers called on “all Party and Soviet organizations and all Bolsheviks, whether Party members or not, to provide all possible assistance to those carrying out the general census of the population.” 

The census was set to take place on the 6th – the first day off of the New Year. The census results were shocking. It turned out that the population had suffered a horrific decline, a genuine demographic catastrophe. But none of this appeared in the newspapers. Instead, it was announced that the census had shown an increase in the well-being of the Soviet people. 

And the Soviet people rejoiced in their well-being. There was the rejoicing of the collective farm workers who had been sent to prison for scavenging the fields for stray ears of grain. There was the rejoicing of the industrial workers who had no rest from their lathes in the new factories that had been built at such terrible human cost. There was the rejoicing of the convicts who were still alive and had been given a chance to survive the meat grinder they were being fed into. 

If the newspapers are to be believed, songs like this one were sung by the people of Bashkiria:

Сверкают самолеты в небесах

Их крылья сделаны из светлой стали.

Да здравствует руководитель наш. 

Великий друг людей – Иосиф Сталин!

На наш любимы праздник – Первый май, 

Я в шелковой,  я в белой выйду шали.

Блестящим белым шелком вышьем мы

На знамени родное имя  Сталин.

Перед моим окошком для цветов

Друг изгородь плетеную поставил

Мы, как цветы  в ограде, разрослись:

Садовник наш – родной Иосиф Сталин.

Колхозная пшеница высока.

Она созрела – желтая, густая.

Мы весело, зажиточно живем:

Учитель наш – родной Иосиф Сталин.

Не белые растут в полях цветы, – 

Там алые раскинулись кустами.

Ведет нас к солнцу, впереди идет 

Цветок наш алый, наш товарищ Сталин.

Planes glisten in the heavens

Their wings made of bright steel.

Hail our leader – 

The great friend of people – Joseph Stalin!

On our great holiday, May Day,

I will go out in a white shawl of silk.

With bright white silk we will sew

The dear name of Stalin on our banner.

Before my window a friend has placed 

A wattle fence for flowers.

We have grown like protected flowers:

Our gardener is dear Joseph Stalin.

The kolkhoz wheat is high.

It has ripened yellow and dense.

We are living happily and prosperously:

Our teacher is dear Joseph Stalin.

It is not white flowers that grow in the fields,

Crimson ones have spread like bushes.

Leading us to the sun, walking ahead

Is our crimson flower, our Comrade Stalin.

And Ukraine, not to be outdone by Bashkiria, also raised its voice in song:

Никогда так не было 

В поле зелено

Небывалой радостью

Все село полно.

Никогда нам не была

Жизнь так весела

Никогда досель у нас

Рожь так не цвела.

По-иному светит нам

Солнце на земле:

Знать, оно у Сталина

Побыло в Кремле.

 Парни есть и девушки не в одном селе, 

Те, что речи Сталина 

Слышали в Кремле.

Не вмещает вод стольких

Ширь Днепра сама

Сколько есть у Сталина

Светлого ума…

Never before 

Have the fields been so green

Nor has the village

Been so filled with joy.

Never before

Has life been so gay

Never before 

Has the rye thrived so.

The sun shines on us on Earth

In a new way:

We can tell it has been

To see Stalin in the Kremlin.

There are lads and lasses in many a village,

Honored to have heard the speeches

Of Stalin in the Kremlin. 

The breadth of the Dnieper

Could not hold water to equal

The brilliance of mind

That Stalin has...

Factories and collective farms reported that the annual plans had been fulfilled and overfulfilled. Philologists, journalists, and teachers were all preparing for a rather odd celebration – the 100th anniversary of Pushkin’s death. The day of the poet’s demise was being treated just as ecstatically as the achievements of Stakhanovites, the builders of the country’s metros, or its Arctic explorers. 

Those at the forefront of production were given awards for their feats. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, was meeting with representatives of the industrial sector. (He had only about a month left to live before he would commit suicide.) 

On January 1, newspapers ran a long list of soldiers who had been awarded medals. Many of them probably did not live to see another New Year’s celebration – the summer of 1937 saw the beginning of a sweeping purge of the army that followed the trial of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was accused of plotting to overthrow the government. 

But for now, medals were being handed out left and right. Yakov Serebryansky was singled out, “For special services in the fight against counterrevolution” and awarded the Order of Lenin. Serebryansky’s services were truly remarkable. In 1930, he succeeded in kidnapping the leader of the Russian All-Military Union from France, General Kutepov. Serebryansky headed a group dedicated to removing anyone in the West who Stalin felt needed removing. In 1936, he managed to buy fighter planes in France and get them to the Spanish Communists. Serebryansky received word that he was being awarded a medal when he was in the midst of arrangements to kidnap Trotsky’s son. Things did not work out the way they were supposed to – his victim died of a botched appendectomy. Although, who knows? Perhaps that was all part of the decorated agent’s plan. 

Serebryansky, however, did not have many days of freedom left. In November 1938 he was arrested and sentenced to death. However, such a valuable agent was not actually shot. Most likely, he returned to his duties at the intelligence services. In the end, he died in prison, but only after Stalin’s death. At the dawn of 1937, Serebryansky was rejoicing with the rest of the Soviet people and trying on his new medal. Perhaps as a Chekist and a spy, however, he could already smell the ever stronger stench of blood in the air. 

The general jubilation over plans fulfilled, censuses, New Year’s trees in the Hall of Columns, and simply the fact that the Great Helmsman Stalin was presiding over the Kremlin, was accompanied by hatred toward those who would not let the Soviet People rejoice and celebrate. Enemies, terrorists, saboteurs, wreckers, and Trotskyites threatened from every corner. Your friend, wife, brother, boss, and even you yourself could turn out to be an enemy of the people, and as surprising as such revelations might be, they were sure to be correct. Mistakes were unlikely in such matters, and if they did occur, it just meant that “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” 

The NKVD agents worked tirelessly. The black police wagons set out every evening and in millions of homes, behind millions of doors, people lay awake, listening for footsteps on the stairs – and letting out a sigh of relief when they heard the knock on someone else’s door. 

With every day, more saboteurs were discovered. In January 1937, it even turned out that well-known Bolsheviks were wreckers: Radek, Pyatakov, and others. They were publicly tried in that same Hall of Columns where the New Year’s tree had so recently stood, encircled by frolicking children. Universal rejoicing was replaced with universal anger. The newspapers did not let up for a minute. The front pages yelled: “Blood curdling crimes,” “They wanted to sell out our motherland,” “A disgusting picture of human disgrace.” Radek and Pyatakov acknowledged their guilt, and acknowledged it, and acknowledged it. 

Lion Feuchtwanger, a marvelous writer who had fled Fascism, sat in the Hall of Columns taking notes for his book, Moskau 1937. This man, who had so insightfully portrayed the mechanisms of German Fascism in his novels, believed every word he heard in Moscow from men terrified for their lives. “When I witnessed the second trial in Moscow, when I saw and heard Pyatakov, Radek, and their friends, I felt all my doubts melt away like salt in water under the immediate impressions of what the accused were saying and how they said it. If all of this was fabricated or rigged, then I don’t know the meaning of the word truth.” And the entire Soviet people believed, or pretended to believe, everything that was said during the trials. With every day, their fury grew. It was like an Orwellian “Five-Minute Hate” session that stretched into weeks and months.

К стене, к стене иезуитов!

С них кировская кровь не смыта, 

Она их душит до сих пор.

Враги народа – их защита! – 

 И в гроб не влезет их позор!

На свалку человечий сор!

Up against the wall Jesuits!

Stained with Kirov’s blood, 

They choke on it yet.

Enemies of the people are their defense!

And their shame won’t fit in a coffin!

Onto the garbage heap of human trash!

The sentiments expressed by poet Mikhail Golodny were echoed by the polishing shop at the ball-bearing factory, by the women of the caramel unit at the candy factory, by doctors and teachers, by dairymaids and soldiers. They all obediently attended meetings and cast their votes in support of the death sentence for those who had committed all sorts of savage and monstrous crimes. 

It was revealed that the actors in the blood-drenched comedy playing out in the Hall of Columns had wreaked havoc throughout the entire country. They had set off an explosion that killed a host of miners in the Central Mineshaft in Kemerovo.  They had permanently crippled workers at the Gorlovsky Factory.  And in one small town they had specially arranged an auto accident that resulted in the death of an engineer from the local factory who had been riding his horse down the road. Letters from throughout the country poured in; meeting followed meeting. Word even came from New York that 20,000 American workers were demanding the death sentence for the scoundrels. And their demands would, of course, be met. Radek and Pyatakov would be shot – along with their assistants, secretaries, drivers, relatives, friends, acquaintances, friends of acquaintances, and those who simply were not energetic enough in demanding their execution. 

When summer came, Marshal Tukhachevsky was sentenced to death in a single day. Perhaps they were not able to force him to behave himself in a public trial. And a few months later they would shoot almost everyone who had tried Tukhachevsky, and their assistants, drivers, relatives, and simply those who were surprised that such famous heroes of the Civil War could have turned out to be traitors and spies.   

People tell stories about a street-car driver, a member of the Communist Party. When all the Party officials at his street-car depot were arrested, he was made depot party secretary. When the directors of all the depots were arrested, he was made a director. When all the deputy transport ministers in his republic were arrested, he was promoted to deputy minister, and then minister. All of this happened over the course of several weeks. Such were also the dizzying ascents of platoon commanders, instantly elevated to the rank of army commander, or lowly bureaucrats transformed into top administrators because everyone above them had been destroyed. 

And in the famous House on the Embankment, where all high-ranking government officials and military officers lived, the children from those families that had survived would make morbid sport of riding the elevators of the deserted sections of the building, ringing the doorbells of the sealed apartments whose residents had been led away, and taking the newspapers from the overflowing mail boxes. Those who had subscribed were now far away, and nobody took it upon themselves to cancel their subscriptions. 

And so, 1937 was a year of a horrific, bloody harvest of human souls. And when it at last came to an end, those who had survived once again decorated New Year’s trees and welcomed in the New Year, hoping for better things to come.