[A-List] USSR: the 1930s Red Army plot

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This was forwarded to Marxism-Thaxis by Mark Jones on 23 March 1998 as
part of a response to something Ted Grant had written about
Tukhachevsky. It comes from a now defunct website. My apologies to those
who are familiar with this but it is likely that some here will find
this useful. I've tidied it as best I can but there are a few minor
errors which cannot be repaired. - MK


A clandestine anti-Communist organization in the Red Army

In general, the purges within the Red Army are presented as acts of
foolish, arbitrary, blind repression; the accusations were all set-ups,
diabolically prepared to ensure Stalin's personal dictatorship.

What is the truth?

A concrete and very interesting example can give us some essential
aspects.

A colonel in the Soviet Army, G. A. Tokaev,  defected to the British in
1948. He wrote a book called Comrade X, a real gold mine for those who
want to try to understand the complexity of the struggle within the
Bolshevik Party. Aeronautical engineer, Tokaev  was from 1937 to 1948
the Political Secretary of the
largest Party branch of the Zhukovsky  Air Force Academy. He was
therefore a leading cadre. When he entered the Party in 1933 at the age
of 22, Tokaev  was
already a member of a clandestine anti-Communist organization. At the
head of his organization was a leading officer of the Red Army, an
influential member of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee! Tokaev's 
group held secret conferences, adopted resolutions and sent emissaries
around the country.

Throughout the book, published in 1956, he developed the political ideas
of his clandestine group. Reading the main points adopted by this
clandestine
anti-Communist organization is very instructive.

Tokaev  first presented himself as a `revolutionary democrat and
liberal'. We were, he claimed, `the enemy of any man who thought to
divide the world into `us' and `them', into communists and
anti-communists'. Tokaev's  group `proclaimed the ideal of universal
brotherhood' and `regarded Christianity as one of the great systems of
universal human values'. Tokaev's  group was partisan to the bourgeois
régime set up by the February Revolution. The `February Revolution
represented at least a flicker of democracy ...(that) pointed to a
latent belief in democracy among the common people'. The exile Menshevik
newspaper, Sozialistichesky Vestnik was circulated within Tokaev's 
group, as was the book The Dawn of the Red Terror by the Menshevik G.
Aaronson .

Tokaev  recognized the link between his anti-Communist organization and
the social-democrat International. `The revolutionary democratic
movement
is close tothe democratic socialists. I have worked in close
co-operation with many convinced socialists, such as Kurt Schumacher
....  Such names as Attlee,  Bevin, Spaak  and Blum  mean something to
humanity'.

Tokaev  also fought for the `human rights' of all anti-Communists. `In
our view ...there was no more urgent and important matter for the
U.S.S.R. than
the struggle for the human rights of the individual'.

Multi-partyism and the division of the U.S.S.R. into independent
republics were two essential points of the conspirators' program.

Tokaev's  group, the majority of whose members seem to have been
nationalists from the Caucasus region, expressed his support for
Yenukidze's  plan,
which aimed at destroying Stalinism `root and branch' and replacing
Stalin's `reactionary U.S.S.R.' by a `free union of free peoples'. The
country was to be
divided into ten natural regions: The North Caucasian United States, The
Ukraine Democratic Republic, The Moscow Democratic Republic, The
Siberian Democratic Republic, etc.

While preparing in 1939 a plan to overthrow Stalin's government,
Tokaev's  group was ready to `seek outside support, particularly from
the parties of the Second International .... a new Constituent Assembly
would be elected and its first measure would be to terminate one Party
rule'.

Tokaev's  clandestine group was clearly engaged in a struggle to the end
with the Party leadership. In the summer of 1935, `We of the opposition,
whether army  or civilian, fully realised that we had entered a
life-or-death struggle'.


Finally, Tokaev  considered `Britain the freest and most democratic
country in the world'.

After World War II, `My friends and I had become great admirers of the
United States'. Astoundingly, this is, almost point by point,
Gorbachev's program. Starting in 1985, the ideas that were being
defended in 1931--1941 by clandestine anti-Communist organizations
resurfaced at the head of the Party. 
Gorbachev denounced the division of the world between socialism and
capitalism and converted himself to `universal values'. The
rapprochement with social-
democracy was initiated by Gorbachev  in 1986. Multi-partyism became
reality in the USSR in 1989. Yeltsin just reminded French Prime Minister
Chirac  that the February Revolution brought `democratic hope' to
Russia. The transformation of the `reactionary U.S.S.R.' into a `Union
of Free Republics' has been achieved.

But in 1935 when Tokaev  was fighting for the program applied 50 years
later by Gorbachev,  he was fully conscious that he was engaged in a
struggle to the end with the Bolshevik leadership.

`(I)n the summer of 1935 ... We of the opposition, whether army or
civilian, fully realised that we had entered a life-or-death struggle.'
Who belonged to Tokaev's  clandestine group?

They were mostly Red Army officers, often young officers coming out of
military academies. His leader, Comrade X --- the real name is never
given ---was a member of the Central Committee during the thirties and
forties.

Riz,  lieutenant-captain in the navy, was the head of the clandestine
movement in the Black Sea flottila. Expelled from the Party four times,
he was reintegrated four times. Generals Osepyan,  Deputy Head of the
Political Administration of the Armed Forces (!), and Alksnis  were
among the main leaders of the
clandestine organization. They were all close to General Kashirin.  All
three were arrested and executed during the Tukhachevsky  affair. A few
more names. Lieutenant-Colonel Gaï,  killed in 1936 in an armed Colonel
Kosmodemyansky,  who `had made heroic but untimely attempts to shake off
the Stalin oligarchy'.

Colonel-General Todorsky,  Chief of the Zhukovsky  Academy, and
Smolensky, Divisional Commissar, Deputy Chief of the Academy,
responsible for political affairs.

In Ukraine, the group supported Nikolai Generalov,  whom Tokaev  met in
1931 during a clandestine meeting in Moscow, and Lentzer.  The two were
arrested in Dniepropetrovsk in 1936.

Katya Okman,  the daughter of an Old Bolshevik, entered into conflict
with the Party at the beginning of the Revolution, and Klava Yeryomenko,
Ukrainian widow of a naval aviation officer at Sebastopol, assured links
throughout the country.

During the purge of the Bukharin  group (`right deviationist') and that
of Marshal Tukhachevsky,  most of Tokaev's  group was arrested and shot:
circles close to Comrade X had been almost completely wiped out. Most of
them had been arrested in connection with the `Right-wing deviationists'
'. Our situation, wrote Tokaev,  had become tragic. One of the cadres,
Belinsky, remarked that we had made a mistake in believing that Stalin
was an incapable who would never be able to achieve industrialization
and cultural development. Riz replied that he was wrong, that it was a
struggle between generations and that the after-Stalin had to be
prepared.

Despite having an anti-Communist platform, Tokaev's  clandestine
organization maintained close links with `reformist-communist' factions
within the Party.

In June 1935, Tokaev  was sent to the south. He made a few comments
about Yenukidze  and Sheboldayev,  two `Stalinist' Bolsheviks, commonly
considered as typical victims of Stalin's arbitrariness.

`One of my tasks was to try to ward off an attack against a number of
Sea of Azov, Black Sea and North Caucasian opposition leaders, the chief
of whom was B. P. Sheboldayev,  First Secretary of the Regional
Committee of the Party and a member of the Central Committee itself. Not
that our movement was completely at one with the Sheboldayev--Yenukidze 
 group, but we knew what they were doing and Comrade X considered it our
revolutionary duty to help them at a
critical moment .... We disagreed on details, but these were
nevertheless brave and honorable men, who had many a time saved members
of our group, and who
had a considerable chance of success.' `(In 1935), my personal contacts
made it possible for me to get at certain top-secret files belonging to
the Party Central Office and relating to `Abu' Yenukidze  and his group.
The papers would help us to find out just how much the Stalinists knew
about all those working against them ....
 
`(Yanukdize) was a committed communist of the right-wing .... `The open
conflict between Stalin and Yenukidze  really dated from the law of
December 1st, 1934, which followed immediately on the assassination of
Kirov.' `Yenukidze  (tolerated) under him a handful ... of men who were
technically efficient and useful to the community but who were
anti-communists.' Yenukidze  was placed under house arrest in mid-1935.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gaï,  a leader of Tokaev's  organization, organized
his escape. At Rostov-on-Don, they held a conference with Sheboldayev, 
First Secretary of the Regional Committee for Sea of Azon--Black Sea,
with Pivovarov,  the President of the Soviet of the Region and with
Larin,  the Prime Minister. Then Yenukidze  and Gaï continued to the
south, but they were ambushed by the NKVD near Baku. Gaï  shot two men,
but was himself killed.

Tokaev's  opposition group also had links with Bukharin's  group Tokaev 
claimed that his group maintained close contact with another faction at
the head of the Party, that of the Chief of Security, Yagoda.  `(W)e
knew the power of ... NKVD bosses Yagoda  or Beria  ... in their roles
not of servants, but of enemies of the régime'.

Tokaev  wrote that Yagoda  protected many of their men who were in
danger. When Yagoda  was arrested, all the links that Tokaev's  group
had with the leadership of state security were broken. For their
clandestine movement, this was a tremendous loss.

`The NKVD now headed by Yezhov,  took another step forward. The Little
Politbureau had penetrated the Yenukidze--Sheboldayev   and the
Yagoda--Zelinsky   conspiracies, and broken through the opposition's
links within the central institutions of the political police'. Yagoda 
`was removed from the NKVD, and we lost a strong link in our opposition
intelligence service'. What were the intentions, the projects and the
activities of Tokaev's group?

Well before 1934, wrote Tokaev,  `our group had planned to assassinate
Kirov  and Kalinin,  the President of the Soviet Union. Finally, it was
another group that assassinated Kirov,  a group with which we were in
contact.'

`In 1934 there was a plot to start a revolution by arresting the whole
of the Stalinist-packed 17th Congress of the Party'. A comrade from the
group, Klava Yeryomenko,  proposed in mid-1936 to kill Stalin. She knew
officers of Stalin's bodyguard. Comrade X had refused, and `pointed out
that there had already been no less than fifteen attempts to assassinate
Stalin, none had got near to success, each had cost many brave lives'.
`In August, 1936 ... My own conclusion was that the time for delay was
past. We must make immediate preparations for an armed uprising. I was
sure then, as I am today, that if Comrade X had chosen to send out a
call to arms, he would have been joined at once by many of the big men
of the U.S.S.R. In 1936, Alksnis , Yegorov, Osepyan  and Kashirin  would
have joined him'.

Note that all these generals were executed after the Tukhachevsky
conspiracy. Tokaev  thought that they had in 1936 sufficiently many men
in the army to succeed in a coup d'état, which, Bukharin  still being
alive, would have had support from the peasantry.

One of `our pilots', recalled Tokaev,  submitted to Comrade X and to
Alksnis  and Osepyan  his plan to bomb the Lenin  Mausoleum and the
Politburo.

On November 20, 1936, in Moscow, Comrade X, during a clandestine meeting
of five members, proposed to Demokratov  to assassinate Yezhov  during
the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of the Soviets. `In April (1939) we
held a congress of underground oppositionist leaders to review the
position at home and abroad. Apart from revolutionary democrats there
were present two socialists and two Right-wing military oppositionists,
one of whom called himself a popular democrat-decentralist. We passed a
resolution for the first time defining Stalinism as
counter-revolutionary fascism, a betrayal of the working class .... The
resolution was immediately communicated to prominent personalities of
both Party and Government and similar conferences were organised in
other centres .... we went to assess the chances of an armed uprising
against Stalin'.


Note that the theme `' was shared in the thirties by Soviet military
conspirators, Trotskyists,  social-democrats and the Western Catholic
right-wing.

Soon after, Tokaev  was discussing with Smolninsky,  a clandestine name
for a leading officer of the Leningrad district, the possibility of a
attempt against Zhdanov.

Still in 1939, on the eve of the war, there was another meeting, where 
the conspirators discussed the question of assassinating Stalin in the
case of war. They decided it was inopportune because they no longer had
enough men to run the country and because the masses would not have
followed them. When war broke out, the Party leadership proposed to
Tokaev,  who spoke German, to lead the partisan war behind the Nazi
lines. The partisans,of course, were subject to terrible risks. At the
time, Comrade X decided that Tokaev  could not accept: `We were, as far
as we could, to remain in the main centres, to be ready to take over
power if the Stalin régime broke down'.

`Comrade X was convinced that it was touch and go for Stalin. The pity
of it was that we could not see Hitler  as the liberator. Therefore,
said Comrade X, we must be prepared for Stalin's régime to collapse, but
we should do nothing whatever to weaken it'. This point was discussed
during a clandestine meeting on
July 5, 1941.

After the war, in 1947, Tokaev  was in charge of discussions with the
German professor Tank,  who specialized in aeronautics, in order to
persuade him to come work in the Soviet Union. `Tank  ... was indeed
prepared to work on a jet fighter for the U.S.S.R.... I discussed the
matter with a number of key men. We agreed that while it was wrong to
assume that Soviet aircraft designers could not design a jet bomber, it
was not in the interests of the country that they should .... The
U.S.S.R. as we saw it was not really threatened by external enemies;
therefore our own efforts must be directed towards weakening, not
strengthening, the
Soviet monopolistic imperialism in the hope of thus making a democratic
revolution possible'.

Tokaev  recognized here that economic sabotage was a political form of
struggle for power. These examples give an idea of the conspiratorial
nature of a clandestine military group, hidden within the Bolshevik
Party, whose survivors would see their `ideals'recognized with the
arrival in power of Khrushchev,  and 
implemented under Gorbachev.



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