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But his present demonic outburst was left in the air. Vyshinsky turned back to Levin. Levin now developed the Kuibyshev and Gorky murders, and Yagoda confirmed them. Towards the end of the morning, when Levin was going into the detail of Gorky’s death, Yagoda suddenly said, “May I put a question to Levin?” Though such cross-examination by defendants had been usual practice in the previous days of the trial, Ulrikh hastily replied, “After Levin finished his testimony.” Yagoda, making it clear that his question was immediately relevant, insisted. “This concerns Maxim Gorky’s death!”

Ulrikh, evidently fearing the worst, cut him off, “When the accused Levin finishes, then by all means.” He shortly ordered a thirty-minute adjournment. After this Vyshinsky said, “… I think the accused Yagoda wanted to put questions to the accused Levin.”

The President:

Accused Yagoda, you may put questions.

Yagoda:

I ask Levin to answer in what year the Kremlin Medical Commission attached him, Levin, to me as my doctor, and to whom else he was attached.

¹⁵³

When this question had been answered, with no reference whatever to Gorky’s death or to any of the other crimes, Yagoda said he had no more questions. It will be seen that what he wanted to say before the adjournment cannot have been the same as what he actually asked after.

Levin was then questioned by his “defending lawyer,” Braude. Two points were made. First, Levin said of the “directing organization” behind the murders, “I knew nothing about it. I learnt about it only at the trial itself.” He then reiterated what was evidently, in one way or another, a powerful motive for obeying those capable of carrying out such measures: “What frightened me most was his threat to destroy my family. And my family is a good, working, Soviet family.”¹⁵⁴

The court had earlier announced an Expert Commission of five doctors. The morning session of 8 March concluded with the following exchange:

The President:

Have the expert witnesses any questions to ask the accused Levin?

Shereshevsky and Vinogradov:fn4

The expert witnesses have no questions to ask; everything is quite clear.

¹⁵⁵

The evening session of 8 March saw the evidence-in-chief of Bulanov (Yagoda’s personal assistant) and of Yagoda himself. Bulanov, a veteran NKVD officer—he had been in charge of the expulsion of Trotsky from the country in January 1929—testified to the special version of the planned coup involving Yenukidze, Yagoda, and the seizure of the Kremlin, and developed its links with the Tukhachevsky group and with Karakhan’s German negotiations. He went on to say that Yagoda had protected Uglanov and Ivan Smirnov in their interrogations and had ordered no search to be made when Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested. He implicated all the old NKVD chiefs in the plot, and described how Yagoda had ordered Zaporozhets to “facilitate” Kirov’s assassination, and how Zaporozhets had released Nikolayev on his first attempt and later killed Borisov. It must have seemed curious that Yagoda, arranging through Zaporozhets to let Nikolayev in to kill Kirov, had not thought to do something similar in Moscow by the agency of Pauker and Volovich, in charge of Stalin’s personal security, and both now implicated as plotters.

A new crime was now developed—Yagoda’s attempt to kill Yezhov after the latter had taken over the NKVD in September 1936. Bulanov and another officer, Savolainen (whose case was sent for separate trial), had sprayed a mercury solution six or seven times in Yezhov’s office, and on the rugs and curtains, together with some other, unidentified poison.

Bulanov went on to describe a special poison laboratory that Yagoda had had fixed up under his personal supervision. Yagoda was, Bulanov said, “exceptionally” interested in poisons. This laboratory is believed to have really existed (Yagoda had been a pharmacist by profession before the Revolution). Given the characters and the motivations, this is one crime which appeared to be possibly genuine: Yezhov’s health, it was alleged, was “considerably impaired.”¹⁵⁶ But a recent Soviet account quotes Yezhov at his own interrogation a year later as saying with a smile that obviously people could not get into his office so easily, and that he had made the whole thing up “to look better in Stalin’s eyes.”¹⁵⁷

On the medical poisonings, Bulanov remarked, plausibly enough, “As far as I know, Yagoda drew Levin into, enlisted him in the affair, and in cases of poisoning generally, by taking advantage of some compromising material he had against him.”¹⁵⁸

Bulanov asserted that Kazakov had indeed visited Yagoda, in spite of the latter’s denials. Kazakov again confirmed this. Vyshinsky then put it once more to Yagoda:

Vyshinsky:

After this testimony, which establishes your part in the poisoning, do you continue to deny it?

Yagoda:

No, I confirm my part in it.

And then:

Vyshinsky: