So deep was the gulf between Stalinism and Bolshevism, so great Stalin’s need to eliminate all vestiges of the past and all witnesses, that the slaughter extended far beyond the ranks of active Oppositionists. In this long and bloody nightmare, not only politically active people were affected. Stalin extracted his spiteful revenge on the families of his victims, their wives, children and grandchildren, even their neighbours. The children of arrested Oppositionists were taken from them and put in special orphanages from which most of them disappeared. In the concentration camps, the prisoners were not even allowed to keep photographs of their children. The son of Bukharin’s wife, Anna Larina, was taken from her when he was only one year old and she did not see him again until 20 years later. At least she survived and was eventually reunited with her son. But this was the exception.
Sverdlov escaped the executioner by dying a natural death in 1919, but his brother was killed. Sergo Ordzhonikidze had been a close companion of Stalin for years, but although a close ally of the General Secretary, was horrified by the Purges and attempted to shield some of the victims. He committed suicide in 1937, driven to this act by Stalin.
An older brother, Papuliia, was arrested and shot after terrible tortures, and a falsified record of the interrogation was sent to Ordzhonikidze. Some of Ordzhonikidze’s closest friends and associates were shot, while many executives in heavy industry, appointed by Ordzhonikidze, were arrested. Stalin sent him the false depositions extracted from the prisoners by torture, with the comment “Comrade Sergo, look what they’re writing about you.” (R. Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 193).
Ordzhonikidze knew too much about Stalin. Like the other victims, his crime was that he was a reminder of the past. Many other Stalinists perished for the same reason.
In the whole history of the world labour movement, there is nothing similar to the persecution suffered by Trotsky and his followers. Trotsky’s entire family was wiped out in this murderous terror. His two sons-in-law, Platon Volkov and Nevilson were arrested as Oppositionists in the 1920s. After Trotsky’s deportation to Alma-Ata, his two daughters, Nina and Zinaida were deprived of all help, although Nina was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The persecution of her father and the imprisonment of her husband hastened her death at the age of 26 in June 1928. Both Nina’s and Zinaida’s husbands were later shot. Nina’s daughter Volina, born in 1925, was looked after by her grandmother, Trotsky’s first wife Alexandra Sokolovskaya. However, when Sokolovskaya was arrested, the child was taken into custody and disappeared without trace. Trotsky’s elder daughter Zinaida, who was also ill with tuberculosis and deeply depressed at the arrest of her husband and the death of her sister, applied for permission to join her father in Prinkipo, together with her small son, Vsevolod Volkov who was ill. This was granted, but when she was abroad, Stalin’s government treacherously revoked her citizenship. This blow, which cut her off from all prospects of ever seeing her husband and daughter again, finally unbalanced the mind of this unhappy woman who was already under treatment for deep depression. Zinaida committed suicide.
Her daughter Alexandra, whom she had left behind in the USSR, was sent to a concentration camp as soon as she was old enough. The fate of her mother Sokolovskaya was particularly tragic. Despite all the terrible suffering and adversity, she remained steadfast in her revolutionary activity, and paid the price. Exiled to Siberia in 1935, where the average life expectancy was two to three years, she died, having previously lost not only her children but her grandchildren also. By a miracle, Alexandra survived many years in the camps, although with her health undermined, and died in 1989. Only Vsevolod Volkov remains alive in Mexico, having survived one assassination attempt. Trotsky’s eldest son Leon Sedov, who played a crucial role in the International Left Opposition, was murdered by Stalin’s agents in Paris, while recovering from an operation in February 1938, on the eve of the trial of Bukharin. But the bitterest blow to Trotsky was the arrest of his younger son Sergei, who was not politically active and had stayed behind in the USSR when his father was exiled. Although not himself an active Oppositionist, Sergei conducted himself courageously. He refused to condemn his father, and was shot in 1937, although nobody knew about it at the time.
Trotsky had two sisters. One died a natural death in 1924. The other, Olga Kamenova, the wife of Kamenev, was first exiled after Kamenev’s arrest, then arrested again in 1935 and sent to prison and then a concentration camp. Together with thousands of other Oppositionists she was shot on Stalin’s orders in 1941. The persecution of the Trotsky family did not stop there. His nephews Boris Bronstein, and Yuri and Alexander Kamenev were all shot. His elder brother Alexander was another one of Stalin’s victims. Dimitri Volkogonov’s relatively recent biography of Trotsky is written from a blatantly anti-revolutionary point of view, and is generally of little value. However, he has had access to material from the KGB archives and other sources not previously available which serves to confirm everything Trotsky and the Left Opposition wrote about the Purges at the time. It is worth quoting what he says in this context:
Trotsky’s elder brother Alexander worked during the 1920s and 1930s as an agronomist in the Novokislyaevsk sugar mill in the province of Voronezh. As I was told by an inhabitant of the district, A.K. Mironov, Alexander was a learned expert who enjoyed the respect of the villagers. He apparently rode in a beautiful phaeton drawn by two fine horses. When Trotsky came under attack, Alexander was expelled from the Party, exiled, and made publicly to repudiate his brother. He underwent a marked change, shrinking into himself as if from the pangs of conscience. The recantation did not help him, however, and in the summer of 1936 he was suddenly arrested at night and the following year shot in Kursk prison as ‘an active, un-disarmed Trotskyist.’ Stalin’s long arm had reached them all, except the main target himself, his wife and his two sons.
After the deaths of Nina and Zina there was real fear for the safety of Trotsky’s sons, especially Sergei. He had not wanted to leave the country with his father, preferring to devote himself to his scientific interests. Uninterested in politics, Sergei had first wanted to be a circus performer, but then became interested in technology, completed polytechnic and became a teacher there. He was a professor before he reached the age of 30. He married twice and his daughter from his second marriage, Julia, is still alive in the USA. His first wife, Olga Grebner, a lively and intelligent elderly woman when I spoke to her in 1989, naturally endured Stalinist camp and exile. She recalled Sergei only fragmentarily: he had been a mischievous boy, and an amusing and talented man. Plainly, in the family it was the elder boy, Lev, who was the favourite. Olga and Sergei had married when he was 20 and she was 19.
“When the family was kicked out of the Kremlin to Granovsky Street,” she recalled, “we had nowhere to live. We took shelter in any corner we could find. Lev Davidovich was always welcoming. I was especially impressed by his lively, clever blue eyes. Outwardly, Natalia Ivanovna was not an interesting woman. She was short, fat and unattractive. But it was obvious how much they meant to each other. As I said, Sergei was talented, whatever he turned his hand to, he succeeded. When Trotsky was deported, Natalia Ivanovna said to me: ‘Look after Seryozha.’ He was arrested on the 4th March 1935. It seemed like a tragic play. Five of them arrived. The search took several hours. They took Sergei’s books and a portrait of his father. My husband was taken to the Lubyanka. He was there two or three months. They told him the charges: espionage, aiding and abetting his father, wrecking. Anyway, they sent him to Siberia. He was doomed.”
In January 1937, Pravda published an article under the heading ‘Trotsky’s Son, Sergei Sedov, Tries to Poison Workers with Exhaust Gas.’ At a meeting at the Krasnoyarsk Engineering Works, a foreman called Lebedev declared: “We have working here as an engineer the son of Trotsky, Sergei Sedov. This worthy offspring of a father who has sold himself to Fascism attempted to poison a large number of workers at this factory with gas.” The meeting also discussed Zinoviev’s nephew Zaks and the factory manager Subbotin, who was alleged to be protecting him and Sergei. All three were doomed. “Sergei was soon sentenced,” Olga Grebner recalled. “Some time that summer I received a postcard which he had somehow managed to send. It said: ‘They’re taking me to the North. For a long time. Goodbye. I embrace you.’” There were rumours that he was shot in 1941 somewhere in Kolyma, but Olga Grebner was not sure. In fact, he had been executed on the 29th October 1937. (D. Volkogonov, Trotsky, pp. 354-5.)