Eastern Approaches

by Fitzroy MacLean

  And if, in fact, there had been a conspiracy, what more natural than that the thinkers, the ideologists, should have made common cause with the men of action, Tukachevski, Yagoda? What more natural, too, than that to the Tukachevskis and the Yagodas, finding themselves in positions of great power, should come the idea of using that power for their own ends. Tukachevski was known to admire Napoleon. As a soldier? Or as a man? An officer of the Imperial Army, he had shifted his allegiance quickly enough, when his interests demanded it. Might he not do so again? And Yagoda. In the service of the State he had shown himself utterly ruthless and utterly unscrupulous. Might he not, with the vast power at his disposal, be tempted to pursue a personal policy? And if he did? Was he not the man who held Stalin’s own personal security in his hands? It was an alarming thought.

  What more natural, too, than that any potential opponents of the regime should seek, and receive, outside support, among the enemies of the Soviet Union? Some of them had, in the course of their normal duties, had contact with foreigners. Tukachevski, in the old days, had had many dealings with the German General Staff; had been to Paris. Krestinski had been to Berlin, Rakovski to London and Tokio. Rosengolts had lunched and dined at the British Embassy. Had these contacts really been innocent?

  And the ‘wrecking’? Inefficiency? Or stubbornness? Or malice? Or a combination of all three? In any case a phenomenon which the enemies of the regime, if they knew their job, would be bound to exploit. Something which called for the most ruthless counter-measures.

  Looking at it like that, it was possible to see how, in the minds of those concerned, if not in reality, the idea of a conspiracy might have grown up.

  Who had thought of it first? The conspired against or the conspirators? Probably the former, at any rate in the concrete form in which it was now presented.

  But the conspirators, with their minds working along the same lines as those of their inquisitors, would have had no difficulty in following their line of argument, especially if, in the back of their minds, there lurked a suspicion that if only they had had the chance they might in fact have acted in the way they were supposed to have done.

  Once this basis for an understanding between the two parties had been established, the rest would follow naturally. It only remained to prepare the idea for presentation to public opinion, to dress it up in its proper ideological clothes, to paint in the background, to accentuate darkness and light, to link the various scenes so as to present a more or less coherent whole. This, for trained minds, accustomed to such work, was mere child’s play.

  And if, unexpectedly, any of the puppets did not wish to play the parts allotted to them? Everyone has his weak point. Some would be afraid for themselves, some for their wives and children. We knew that the families of the prisoners had all been arrested at the same time as they had.

  The resistance of others could be broken down by more subtle means. All kinds of strange tricks can be played with the human mind, given time and patience.

  Time and patience. Most of the prisoners had been in prison for a year or eighteen months. During that time, they would have been cross-examined for days, for weeks, for months on end. They would have been confronted with statements signed by their fellow prisoners, by their closest friends, by their own wives and children, incriminating them hopelessly. They would have felt betrayed, helpless and utterly alone. They would have been reminded of half-remembered episodes, not very creditable to them, perhaps, not very easy to explain, and invited to explain them. They would find that all kinds of seemingly unconnected incidents in their lives had a way of fitting into a pattern, which, taken as a whole, was seen to be utterly damning. They would have been subjected to many different kinds of pressure, sometimes physical, sometimes mental. The N.K.V.D. were reputed to make sparing use of actual torture, as practised by the Gestapo. But there were other ways. Lack of sleep, lack of food, soon sap resistance. In the cells the heating could be left off in winter; left on in summer. A drunkard — Rykov, for example — could be deprived of drink or suddenly given as much as he wanted. Sudden plenty, a carefully timed bribe, could be as demoralizing as the worst privations. There might be some, Tukachevski, for instance, whose resistance was too strong to be overcome, whom nothing would induce to play their allotted parts. For them was reserved liquidation by administrative measure, without a public trial.

  And Bukharin himself, a man of a different calibre from the others, for whom personal considerations had long since ceased to exist, whose whole life for years past had been the Party, how was he to be induced to play his part, to declare himself a traitor to all that had been most precious to him?

  Once again the answer was to be found in his own words. Faced with death, he had felt the need of a cause to die for, and, for him, a lifelong Communist, there could only be one cause: the Party; the Party which he had made and which was now devouring him; the Party, disfigured and debased beyond all recognition, but still the Party. In other words, he, too, had had a weak point: his loyalty to a cause. Others had confessed for their own sakes or for the sake of their families. His confession had been a last service to the Party.

  A last service … How could this fantastic nightmare serve the Party, or anybody else?

  In a number of ways. Primarily, it seemed, the whole trial was a political manifesto, a carefully worded fable designed to convey a number of carefully selected messages to the hazy minds of the Soviet population. That was why it was necessary for there to be so sharp a contrast between good and evil, between darkness and light, for the characters to be portrayed in such crude colours, to correspond so accurately to the conventional figures of Communist Heaven and Hell.

  In the first place Good would be seen to triumph over Evil, and, so that even in the haziest mind, there could be no possible doubt as to the meaning, it would be Absolute Good, with wings and halo, triumphing over Absolute Evil, with horns and tail. That was the leitmotif: that it does not pay to rebel against established authority. The trial would serve, too, as a reminder of the dangers besetting both the Soviet State and the individual citizen. It would help to keep up the nervous tension which, extending to every walk of life, had become one of the chief instruments of Soviet internal policy. By making people suspicious of one another, by teaching them to see spies and traitors everywhere, it would increase ‘vigilance’, render even more improbable the germination of subversive ideas. The stories of foreign spies, of foreign designs on the Soviet Fatherland, would serve to make the population shun foreigners, if possible, more rigorously than before. Much, too, would be explained that had hitherto been obscure. Shortages, famines had been due, not to the shortcomings of the Soviet system, but to deliberate wrecking. The purge, even, would now be seen to be the work, not of the benevolent Father of the People, but of the Fiend Yagoda, working without his knowledge and against his will. Now the purgers were being purged; the wreckers liquidated and the designs of the foreign spies finally thwarted. Soon peace and plenty would reign.

  For months past, to the exclusion of all other intellectual activities, judges, prosecutor, prisoners and N.K.V.D. had been working at high pressure on the production of this legend, as authors, producers and actors might work on the production of a film: piecing together the real and the imaginary, truth and illusion, intention and practice, finding connections where none existed, darkening the shadows, heightening the highlights, embodying it all in the fifty volumes of evidence which littered Ulrich’s desk. Inevitably, as work progressed, as their production began to take shape, the distinction between truth and illusion would become in their minds more and more blurred, would be replaced by a kind of pride of authorship, an attachment to accuracy, which, in court, on the day, would cause them to argue with each other, to correct each other on points of detail, which in fact bore no relation to reality, which existed only in their imagination.

  In their imagination, in everybody’s imagination. In Ulrich’s imagination; in Vyshinski’s imagination; in the imagination of th
e N.K.V.D. interrogators; in Yagoda’s imagination; in the imagination of the Soviet public.

  Perhaps even in Stalin’s imagination. That was the most terrifying thought of all. How did the Supreme Puppet Master view the proceedings? With the complete detachment of a metteur en scène? Or with the acutely personal interest of a man who finds that his medical attendants are murderers and the arrangements for his personal safety are in the hands of a bitter and unscrupulous enemy? Was the ruler of the Soviet Union a cold and calculating schemer, deliberately eliminating, after first carefully blackening their names, all those who might embarrass him? Or was he a sufferer from persecution mania whose weakness was exploited for their own ends by a gang of unscrupulous police spies?

  Of his interest in the proceedings we had direct proof, for at one stage of the trial a clumsily directed arc-light dramatically revealed to attentive members of the audience the familiar features and heavy drooping moustache peering out from behind the black glass of a small window, high up under the ceiling of the court-room.

  It was long after midnight. Still talking, we walked back through the dark, frozen, empty streets to the court-house. The judges had still not concluded their deliberations. In the court-room a little group of foreign correspondents were wearily awaiting their return. They were listening to Cholerton of the Daily Telegraph who had been in Moscow for twelve years and knew more than any of us. He was talking about the trial.

  ‘What do you make of it, Cholerton?’ we asked.

  He tugged at his beard, and his eyes twinkled.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I believe everything. Everything except the facts.’

  It was four in the morning when the judges returned. For the last time the doors were flung open and Ulrich sidled in. Under the ghastly glare of a battery of arc-lights and to the accompaniment of whirring cinema cameras, the prisoners filed into the dock.

  In a level voice Ulrich read out the verdict, while all remained standing. The prisoners were found guilty of all the crimes with which they were charged. Once again they were recapitulated: murder, wrecking, espionage, treason. For twenty-five minutes he droned on. At last he reached the last page and, turning it, read out a list of names:

  Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich, it began,

  Rykov, Aleksei Ivanovich,

  Yagoda, Genrikh Grigoryevich,

  Krestinski, Nikolai Nikolayevich …

  Fourteen other names followed. Then, amidst complete silence, he read out the sentence: TO BE SHOT.

  Then, scarcely noticed, followed the names of the three prisoners who had been sentenced to terms of imprisonment: Bessonov, Rakovski and one of the doctors, Pletnev. When we looked we saw they were no longer there.

  The proceedings were at an end. The door in the middle was flung open, and Ulrich marched out. For the last time, the little door at the side was opened and the guards closed in round the eighteen condemned men. They had heard the sentence impassively, and now, impassively, they filed out to their death. The last to go was Yagoda. As he reached the door, he stopped for an instant and looked back. Then he also turned and went out, and the door shut after him.

  Chapter VIII

  Chinese Puzzle

  THE snows melted. The ice broke and came thundering and crashing down the river past my windows. With the return of warmer weather, my thoughts once again turned to travel. But this time my itinerary, as things turned out, was chosen for me.

  After my return from Central Asia in the autumn I had, largely in order to justify my prolonged absence from my desk in the Chancery, tried my hand at writing up my experiences. As it was a long time since any first-hand information had been received from Russian Turkestan, my report attracted more attention in London than it would otherwise have done, and on the strength of it I acquired a largely spurious reputation as a Central Asian expert. Meanwhile, events in another part of Central Asia were causing concern to the Foreign Office and feelings verging on alarm to that more sensitive Department of State, the India Office.

  Few inhabited areas of the world are more remote and, to the ordinary traveller, more inaccessible, than Sinkiang, or, as it is also called, Chinese Turkestan. On the maps Sinkiang is simply shown as an ordinary province of China, but, though much can be learnt from maps, they do not always tell the whole story.

  Geographically Sinkiang is separated from China by the formidable expanse of the Gobi Desert while its inhabitants are for the most part not Chinese but Turkis, akin in race and language and religion to the inhabitants of Russian Turkestan. Since it first became part of the Chinese Empire half way through the eighteenth century the history of Sinkiang (its name means the New Dominion) has been one of sustained turbulence. Both the Provincial Government and the population have rebelled, sometimes together and sometimes separately, against the hegemony of the Chinese Central Government. Matters were further complicated when, in the nineteenth century, both Great Britain and Russia began to take an interest in this rich, semi-independent province. But Russia had one great advantage. The journey across the Himalayas from British India took six weeks on foot. The natural gate to Sinkiang was from the newly conquered Russian territories in Central Asia. Russian goods gradually squeezed out British competition in the bazaars and the Russian Consul-General’s armed escort of Cossacks behaved with increasing arrogance, driving all before them as they galloped through the bazaars.

  With the Revolution, Russia temporarily set aside all thought of expansion and withdrew from Sinkiang. Cossacks, Consul-General and traders disappeared from the two main towns, Kashgar and Urumchi. The Chinese Central Government reasserted its authority with that long-suffering perseverance so characteristic of the Chinese, and British Indian trade and traders once again reappeared in the bazaars.

  But, in the nineteen-thirties, the Soviet Government once more took up, in Sinkiang as in other parts of the world, the threads of Tsarist policy. Once again Russian Consuls arrived at Kashgar and Urumchi; Russian goods made their appearance once again in the bazaars.

  There followed a period of the kind of confusion in which Sinkiang has long specialized. The Tungans or Chinese Mohammedans revolted against the Provincial Government. The Provincial Government appealed for help, not to the Chinese Central Government, who in any case had their hands full elsewhere, but to Moscow. Moscow intervened rapidly and effectively and Soviet troops and aircraft soon accounted for the Tungans. When the Russians returned home, they left behind them considerable numbers of technical and other advisers, who continued to help the Provincial Government. History repeated itself. Russian influence increased, the position of the British community became more and more precarious. The Indian traders in the bazaars found themselves boycotted. Even the British Consul-General at Kashgar was practically a prisoner in his Consulate. He was moreover largely out of touch with the Provincial Governor, or Tupan, who resided at Urumchi, several weeks’ journey away, and who in any case was generally believed to be no more than a Soviet puppet.

  In 1937 the Tungan revolt had finally collapsed. By the beginning of 1938 Soviet influence seemed firmly established and the position of the few remaining British Indian traders was extremely precarious. Economically they were slowly but surely being squeezed out and, what was worse, were liable to sudden arrest and ill-treatment. The protests of H.M. Consul-General, when he could find anybody to protest to, remained unheeded.

  It was at this stage that the scheme was evolved of sending me on a mission to Urumchi to contact the Tupan and plead with him for better treatment for the Indian traders and also for H.M. Consul-General. It was felt, so the telegrams said, that the fact that I came from H.M. Embassy at Moscow would lend weight to what I had to say.

  It seemed to me highly improbable that I should meet with any success, but I was delighted at the prospect of another visit to Central Asia, and at once I started looking out my rucksack.

  But I soon discovered that this time my travelling arrangements were not to be quite so simple as on previous occasions. The authorities a
t home insisted (quite properly, I suppose) that I should not set out without having first applied for and obtained through official channels everything that was needed in the way of passes and visas. Furthermore they suggested that the Embassy should inform the Soviet Government of the project and invite them to use their influence with the Sinkiang authorities to facilitate my journey. This, it seemed to me, finally disposed of any chance of success I might ever have had. But I went ahead with my arrangements nevertheless.

  First I visited a friend of mine at the Chinese Embassy. He seemed slightly embarrassed when I mentioned Sinkiang, but nevertheless promised to ask his Government by telegram for authority to grant me a visa. I next called at the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to see the head of the Third Western Department, Comrade Weinberg. Having reluctantly agreed to receive me, he listened sardonically while I told him of my plans and expressed, in strict accordance with my instructions, the hope that the Soviet Government would use their influence with the Sinkiang authorities to facilitate my journey. The mention of Soviet influence in Sinkiang gave him his cue. He could not, he said, imagine what made the British Government think that the Soviet Government had any special influence in the province of China I had mentioned. It was not the practice of the Soviet Government to interfere in the internal affairs of China or of any other country. If I wanted facilities for travel to China I should apply to the Chinese Government. He, for his part, would be delighted to grant a Soviet exit visa if and when I required one. As a special favour he would even give me a letter of introduction to the Soviet Consul-General at Urumchi, who was a friend of his.

  Feeling that I had been scored off heavily, but not decisively, I went back to the Chinese Embassy. Permission to grant me a visa had duly arrived from the Central Government and my passport was handed back to me covered with impressive-looking hieroglyphics. Had the Central Government informed the local authorities of my impending arrival? I inquired. They had. What had been the reply? There had not yet been a reply. The local authorities in Sinkiang were sometimes a little slow in answering.