travel books: Still, there has never been any explanation of the mystery of Nikolaiev. At the last of the great "treason trials," staged in March 1938, in which Yagoda figured as one of the main "confessors," the matter of Nikolaiev's first arrest and inexplicable release was brought out in open court. But Prosecutor Vyshinsky cut Yagoda short every time the latter tried to discuss it. "It was not like that," Yagoda observed several times when Vyshinsky purported to quote from the secret confession of Yagoda himself. No reference was made to Stalin's part in the investigation. No explanation has ever been given why Stalin was satisfied with the strange action of Medved and Zaporozhets in releasing Nikolaiev when seized with a revolver and a political diary. Nikolaiev's diary was obviously a central factor in the Kirov affair. It was referred to again and again in the Soviet press when Nikolaiev and sixteen of his comrades, all members of the Communist Youth, were executed after a secret trial. It was alluded to on numerous other occasions. But no word of it has ever reached the public. In the inner circle of the Ogpu, the atmosphere surrounding the Kirov affair was one of special mystery and gloom. Even the most intimate comrades at the Lubianka headquarters avoided discussing the subject. One day I put the matter up directly to Sloutski, chief of the foreign division of' the Ogpu, and asked him whether in his opinion the Leningrad secret police were implicated in the assassination of Kirov. He replied: " This case is so shady, you understand, that in general it is best not to pry into it. Just keep as far away from it as you can." The Kirov case proved as useful to Stalin as the Reichstag fire had to Hitler. Both marked the onset books

Books > Old Books > I Was Stalin's Agent (1940)

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VI
WHY DID THEY CONFESS?

Still, there has never been any explanation of the mystery of Nikolaiev. At the last of the great "treason trials," staged in March 1938, in which Yagoda figured as one of the main "confessors," the matter of Nikolaiev's first arrest and inexplicable release was brought out in open court. But Prosecutor Vyshinsky cut Yagoda short every time the latter tried to discuss it. "It was not like that," Yagoda observed several times when Vyshinsky purported to quote from the secret confession of Yagoda himself. No reference was made to Stalin's part in the investigation. No explanation has ever been given why Stalin was satisfied with the strange action of Medved and Zaporozhets in releasing Nikolaiev when seized with a revolver and a political diary.
Nikolaiev's diary was obviously a central factor in the Kirov affair. It was referred to again and again in the Soviet press when Nikolaiev and sixteen of his comrades, all members of the Communist Youth, were executed after a secret trial. It was alluded to on numerous other occasions. But no word of it has ever reached the public.
In the inner circle of the Ogpu, the atmosphere surrounding the Kirov affair was one of special mystery and gloom. Even the most intimate comrades at the Lubianka headquarters avoided discussing the subject. One day I put the matter up directly to Sloutski, chief of the foreign division of' the Ogpu, and asked him whether in his opinion the Leningrad secret police were implicated in the assassination of Kirov. He replied:
" This case is so shady, you understand, that in general it is best not to pry into it. Just keep as far away from it as you can."
The Kirov case proved as useful to Stalin as the Reichstag fire had to Hitler. Both marked the onset