(1)
In
1933 Victor Serge
was taken to the headquarters of the Communist Secret Police.
It was
a prison of noiseless, cell-divided secrecy, built barely into a block
that had once been occupied by insurance company offices. Each floor
formed a prison on its own, sealed off from the others, with its individual
entrance and reception-kiosk; coloured electric light-signals operated
on all landings and corridors to mark the various comings and goings,
so that prisoners could never meet one another. A mysterious hotel-corridor,
whose red carpet silenced the slight sound of footsteps; and then
a cell, bare, with an inlaid floor, a passable bed, a table and a
chair, all spick and span.
Here, in
absolute secrecy, with no communication with any person whatsoever,
with no reading-matter whatsoever, with no paper, not even one sheet,
with no occupation of any kind, with no open-air exercise in the yard,
I spent about eighty days. It was a severe test for the nerves, in
which I acquitted myself pretty well. I was weary with my years of
nervous tension, and felt an immense physical need for rest. I slept
as much as I could, at least twelve hours a day. The rest of the time,
I set myself to work assiduously. I gave myself courses in history,
political economy - and even in natural science! I mentally wrote
a play, short stories, poems.
(2)
Rutkovsky was one of the members of the Communist
Secret Police (GPU) who
interviewed Victor
Serge in 1933. He attempted
to get Serge to sign a confession agreeing that he had worked with
Anita Russakova against the Soviet government. Serge knew that once
he signed a confession he would be executed.
I can see
that you are an unwavering enemy. You are bent on destroying yourself.
Years of jail are in store for you. You are the ringleader of the
Trotskyite conspiracy. We know everything. I want to try and save
you in spite of yourself. This is the last time that we try. So, I'm
making one last attempt to save you.
I don't
expect very much from you - I know you too well. I am going to acquaint
you with the complete confessions that have been made by your sister-in-law
and secretary, Anita Russakova. All you have to do it say, "I
admit that it is true", and sign it. I won't ask you any more
questions, the investigation will be closed, your whole position will
be improved, and I shall make every effort to get the Collegium to
be lenient to you.
(3)
Alexander Orlov was a NKVD officer who escaped to the United States.
Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov
and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition
and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades. Stalin
came to the conclusion that, if he could prove that Zinoviev and Kamenev
and other leaders of the opposition had shed the blood of Kirov, "the
beloved son of the party", a member of the Politburo, he then
would be justified in demanding blood for blood.
(4)
The New Republic (9th January,
1935)
Up to last
Sunday 117 persons had been executed in Soviet Russia as the direct
result of the Kirov assassination. To what extent are Zinoviev and
Kamenev implicated in the plot. The hysteria of Karl Radek's and Nikolai
Bukharin's charges against them in Pravda and Izvestia
fails to carry conviction.
Russia's
right to crush Nazi-White Guard conspiracies or other plots of murder
and arson no one questions; few have anything but approval for it.
What is in question is the guilt of particular persons who have not
been tried in an open court of law.
(5)
Victor Kravchenko, I Choose Freedom (1947)
Hundreds
of suspects in Leningrad were rounded up and shot summarily, without
trial. Hundreds of others, dragged from prison cells where they had
been confined for years, were executed in a gesture of official vengeance
against the Party's enemies. The first accounts of Kirov's death said
that the assassin had acted as a tool of dastardly foreigners - Estonian,
Polish, German and finally British. Then came a series of official
reports vaguely linking Nikolayev with present and past followers
of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other dissident old Bolsheviks.
Almost hourly the circle of those supposedly implicated, directly
or "morally", was widened until it embraced anyone and everyone
who had ever raised a doubt about any Stalinist policy.
(6)
Gregory Zinoviev, speech at his trial
(August, 1936)
I would
like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty of
having been the organizer, second only to Trotsky, of that block whose
chosen task was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organizer
of Kirov's assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned
us; Stalin warned as scores of times; but we did not heed these warnings.
We entered into an alliance with Trotsky.
(7)
Lev Kamenev, speech at his trial (August,
1936)
I Kamenev,
together with Zinoviev and Trotsky, organized and guided this conspiracy.
My motives? I had become convinced that the party's - Stalin's policy
- was successful and victorious. We, the opposition, had banked on
a split in the party; but this hope proved groundless. We could no
longer count on any serious domestic difficulties to allow us to overthrow.
Stalin's leadership we were actuated by boundless hatred and by lust
of power.
(8)
The New Republic (2nd September,
1936)
Some commentators,
writing at a long distance from the scene, profess doubt that the
executed men (Zinoviev and Kamenev) were guilty. It is suggested that
they may have participated in a piece of stage play for the sake of
friends or members of their families, held by the Soviet government
as hostages and to be set free in exchange for this sacrifice. We
see no reason to accept any of these laboured hypotheses, or to take
the trial in other than its face value. Foreign correspondents present
at the trial pointed out that the stories of these sixteen defendants,
covering a series of complicated happenings over nearly five years,
corroborated each other to an extent that would be quite impossible
if they were not substantially true. The defendants gave no evidence
of having been coached, parroting confessions painfully memorized
in advance, or of being under any sort of duress.
(9)
The New Statesman (5th September,
1936)
Very likely
there was a plot. We complain because, in the absence of independent
witnesses, there is no way of knowing. It is their (Zinoviev and Kamenev)
confession and decision to demand the death sentence for themselves
that constitutes the mystery. If they had a hope of acquittal, why
confess? If they were guilty of trying to murder Stalin and knew they
would be shot in any case, why cringe and crawl instead of defiantly
justifying their plot on revolutionary grounds? We would be glad to
hear the explanation.
(10)
Victor Serge,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
And on 14 August, like a thunderbolt, came the announcement
of the Trial of the Sixteen, concluded on the 25th - eleven days later
- by the execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Ivan Smirnov, and all their
fellow-defendants. I understood, and wrote at once, that this marked
the beginning of the extermination of all the old revolutionary generation.
It was impossible to murder only some, and allow the others to live,
their brothers, impotent witnesses maybe, but witnesses who understood
what was going on.
(11)
Nikolay Krestinsky, speech at his
trial (12th March, 1938)
I do not recognize that I am guilty. I am not a Trotskyite.
I was never a member of the "right-winger and Trotskyite bloc",
which I did not know to exist. Nor have I committed a single one of
the crimes imputed to me, personally; and in particular I am not guilty
of having maintained relations with the German Secret Service.
(12)
Nikolay Krestinsky, speech at his
trial (13th March, 1938)
Yesterday, a passing but sharp impulse of false shame,
created by these surroundings and by the fact that I am on trial,
and also by the harsh impression made by the list of charges and by
my state of health, prevented me from telling the truth, from saying
that I was guilty. And instead of saying "Yes, I am guilty",
I replied, almost by reflex, "No I am not guilty."
(13)
Indictment against Pantelei
Yefimovich Gopkalo (grandfather of Mikhail
Gorbachev)
in 1938.
(a) He impeded harvesting
operations and thus created conditions for the loss of
grain. Pursuing the destruction of the kolkhoz livestock he artificially
reduced the fodder base by ploughing up meadows which resulted in
kolkhoz cattle starving;
(b) He obstructed the
progress of the Stakhanovite movement in the kolkhoz by repressing
Stakhanovites. On the basis of the facts stated heretofore he is charged
with anti-Soviet activities: being an enemy of the CPSU (B) and of
the Soviet system and having established ties with the members of
an abolished anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist organization, he carried
out their instructions of subversive acts at the 'Red October' kolkhoz
which were aimed at undermining the economic well-being of the kolkhoz.
(14)
NKVD
Secret Police report on Mikhail Gorbachev's
grandfather's interrogation in 1938.
"You have been arrested
on the charge of being a member of a counter-revolutionary right-wing
Trotskyist organization. Do you plead guilty?"
"I do not plead guilty.
I have never been a member of a counterrevolutionary organization."
"You're not telling
the truth. The prosecution has at its disposal precise information
about your membership of a counterrevolutionary right-wing Trotskyist
organization. Give us truthful evidence in the case."
"I repeat, I have
not been a member of a counterrevolutionary organization."
"You are lying. A
number of people charged in this case testified against you, corroborating
your counterrevolutionary activity. The prosecution insists
on obtaining truthful evidence."
"I deny the accusations
categorically. I don't know of any counterrevolutionary organization."
(15)
NKVD Secret Police
report on Mikhail Gorbachev's grandfather's
interrogation in 1938.
"You have been arrested
on the charge of being a member of a counter-revolutionary right-wing
Trotskyist organization. Do you plead guilty?"
"I do not plead guilty.
I have never been a member of a counterrevolutionary organization."
"You're not telling
the truth. The prosecution has at its disposal precise information
about your membership of a counterrevolutionary right-wing Trotskyist
organization. Give us truthful evidence in the case."
"I repeat, I have
not been a member of a counterrevolutionary organization."
"You are lying. A
number of people charged in this case testified against you, corroborating
your counterrevolutionary activity. The prosecution insists
on obtaining truthful evidence."
"I deny the accusations
categorically. I don't know of any counterrevolutionary organization."
(16)
Mikhail
Gorbachev, Memoirs
(1995)
I remember well the winter
evening when Grandfather returned home. His closest relatives sat
around the hand-planed rustic table and Pantelei Yefimovich recounted
all that had been done to him.
Trying to get him to confess,
the investigator blinded him with a glaring lamp, beat him unmercifully,
broke his arms by squeezing them in the door. When these 'standard'
tortures proved futile, they invented a new one: they put a wet sheepskin
coat on him and sat him on a hot stove. Pantelei Yefimovich endured
this too, as well as much else.
Those who were imprisoned
with him later told me that all the inmates of the prison cell tried
to revive him after the interrogation sessions. Pantelei Yefimovich
recounted all this just once - that very evening. Nobody ever heard
him speak about it afterwards.
(17)
Nadezhda Khazina, Hope
Against Hope (1971)
In the period of the Yezhov terror - the mass arrests
came in waves of varying intensity - there must sometimes have been
no more room in the jails, and to those of us still free it looked
as though the highest wave had passed and the terror was abating.
After each show trial, people sighed, "Well, it's all over at
last." What they meant was: "Thank God, it looks as though
I've escaped. But then there would be a new wave, and the same people
would rush to heap abuse on the "enemies of the people."
Wild inventions
and monstrous accusations had become an end in themselves, and officials
of the secret police applied all their ingenuity to them, as though
reveling in the total arbitrariness of their power.
The principles
and aims of mass terror have nothing in common with ordinary police
work or with security. The only purpose of terror is intimidation.
To plunge the whole country into a state of chronic fear, the number
of victims must be raised to astronomical levels, and on every floor
of every building there must always be several apartments from which
the tenants have suddenly been taken away. The remaining inhabitants
will be model citizens for the rest of their lives - this was true
for every street and every city through which the broom has swept.
The only essential thing for those who rule by terror is not to overlook
the new generations growing up without faith in their elders, and
keep on repeating the process in systematic fashion.
Stalin
ruled for a long time and saw to it that the waves of terror recurred
from time to time, always on even greater scale than before. But the
champions of terror invariably leave one thing out of account - namely,
that they can't kill everyone, and among their cowed, half-demented
subjects there are always witnesses who survive to tell the tale.
(18)
Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (1949)
In Tsarist days political offenders had enjoyed certain
privileges and been allowed to engage in self-education and even in
political propaganda. Oppositional memoranda, pamphlets, and periodicals
had circulated half freely between prisons and had occasionally been
smuggled abroad. Himself an ex-prisoner, Stalin knew well that jails
and places of exile were the 'universities' of of the revolutionaries.
Recent events taught him to take no risks. From now on all political
discussion and activity in the prisons and places of exile was to
be mercilessly suppressed; and the men of the opposition were by privation
and hard labour to be reduced to such a miserable, animal-like existence
that they should be incapable of the normal processes of thinking
and of formulating their views.
(19)
Nikita Khrushchev,
speech, 20th Party Congress (February, 1956)
Stalin
acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient co-operation
with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission
to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his
viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal
from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation.
This was especially true during the period following the 17th Party
Congress, when many prominent Party leaders and rank-and-file Party
workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim
to Stalin's despotism.
Stalin
originated the concept "enemy of the people". This term
automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors
of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made
possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms
of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed
with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent,
against those who had bad reputations.
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