No Bolshevik law had proven more effective than Article 58. Colonel Shwartzman, like all NKVD officers, felt a great fondness for all 140 articles of the Criminal Code of 1926, the great literary work of the revolution. Every opus has its special chapter, story, poem, psalm, or song that captures the human spirit and in so doing transforms its capacity to create and to respond to beauty. The golden moment of this particular revolutionary epic was Article 58. Colonel Shwartzman treasured it with a special affection. Since the Lubyanka possessed no heart whatsoever, the secret police responded with an alternate human faculty, the imagination. There was ample room for this, since like all great literary works, the Criminal Code of 1926 permitted various readings. No other article so captured his NKVD fantasy, challenging him to invent, to devise, to contrive, and to fabricate.
Article 58 recalled happier, more hopeful days, but Colonel Shwartzman’s feelings went beyond sentiment. In great art a man can discover himself; he can develop in response to its liberating vision. Article 58 was his teacher; Article 58 had made him the fine Chekist that he was. With appreciation and devotion, the colonel performed as one of its finest explicators. So with an understandable pride, he warmed to the task. His exhilaration was suffused with a calm that came from confidence and from the very nature of the art form itself, which demanded precision and control. To the untrained eye, Article 58 with its fourteen sections seemed a drab, restricted piece of the Criminal Code concerned with crimes against the state. To the initiated, however, Article 58 was a sonnet awaiting the muses to grace its fourteen sections, wherein could be discovered the line, stanza, rhythm, and rhyme of counterrevolution.
Colonel Shwartzman turned to Section 1, on actions that weaken the power of the state. At once Grisha—for Grisha was the more artistic side of Colonel Shwartzman—saw the obvious interpretation of the prisoner’s actions. Hadn’t he raped the general secretary? Ah, but Stalin, it might be argued, had been smiling. That could be explained or even deleted, but the colonel (Grisha) was an artist; he sought the particular that illuminates.
“Dmitri, you have given us the broad outlines of your activities, but we will need details.” He tapped his pistol. “When you were with the general secretary, did you in any way harm him? It might even have been a gesture or a look.”
“Yes, I did, Citizen Colonel. Yes, I did,” the prisoner said in quick repetition.
“Good, let’s hear about it.”
“It was an awful thing.” The prisoner looked away. His eyes found the pistol and remained fixed upon its sheltering metal gleam, but his lips moved and his voice throbbed with his mortifying, stimulating story. “It will shock you, as well it should; night after night, it shocked me. In the moment of my greatest excitement, I lost all self-control, and I would reach down and squeeze Stalin’s balls . . . and as I squeezed, he pissed blood.”
The prisoner dropped his head in shame, but Colonel Shwartzman could barely keep from clapping his hands in joy. This was perfect. Under the recent revisions of 1934, Section 1b declared that any damage to the motherland’s might was punishable by death. The sonnet was a subtle, complex form: the general secretary’s inferior position suggested the motherland, but his balls and blood were pure masculine power.
It was even better than he had supposed at first glance: the colonel had worried that Section 2, armed rebellion, might elude him. Now it was inspired, the way everything was coming together. Section 2 defined armed rebellion as “seizure of power” and “dismembering any part of the USSR.” What greater seizure of power could there be than seizing Stalin’s balls? What greater dismemberment of Russia than dismembering the Defender of the Peoples himself? Thank heavens, Stalin had two balls—the traitor Trotsky was rumored to have only one!—the prisoner would be indicted (and confess, of course) under Section 1b for the right ball, since that carried the death sentence, and under Section 2 for the left. As for the actual dismemberment, that was no problem, for Article 58 was part of a greater work and was enriched by the entire opus. Article 19 explicitly stated that intent was sufficient grounds for conviction; indeed there was no difference between intent and commission of the crime itself. In any event, Stalin’s pissing blood could be interpreted as dismembering part of Russia. What could be a more essential part of Russia than the Beloved Leader’s lifeblood?
Section 3 would have daunted lesser talents. Since the USSR was not in a declared state of war, it was difficult to imagine in what way the prisoner aided or abetted by any means whatsoever the foreign enemy state. Article 58, however, was itself a gift of the imagination and inspired the daring. The colonel had fought in the Civil War against the forces of Britain, France, the United States, and other minions of world capitalism. The noble Red Army had driven them out of the motherland, but they had never surrendered. If the world’s only socialist republic were not at war with world capitalism, then the word war had no meaning. As for the prisoner’s assistance to a foreign power, that was clear. He had confessed to knowing Polish, English, French, and German and was in charge of foreign collections at the library.
“Dmitri, do you encourage people to read your books?”
“Oh, yes, I love the books. They were my life until—”
“And many of these—say the English ones, for example, were printed in New York or London?”
“Yes.”
“And the French in Paris.”
“Yes.”
“And you guided people to them and encouraged Soviet citizens to read them?”
“Yes.”
“And soldiers, too?” the colonel asked.
“I don’t exactly remember, but I must have,” Dmitri answered.
“Among all the people you helped in the great Lenin Library, don’t you think there were members of the glorious Red Army among them?” the colonel asked incredulously.
“If you put it that way, I am sure there certainly must have been,” the prisoner agreed.
“I should hope so,” the colonel concurred as he wrote, “Disseminating the vile propaganda of foreign powers at war with the beloved motherland among loyal members of the glorious Red Army.”
He had considered asking the prisoner to confirm his contacts with foreign operatives, but artistic sense weighed against it. Any mention of foreign embassies and their operatives would confuse the weak-minded as to the existing state of war.
Section 4, succor to the international bourgeoisie, posed no problem. In this case, Section 3 could be interpreted as including Section 4—and its incumbent punishment, of course. To do that, however, would be cutting corners, and in a work of art one did not cut corners; one embellished them.
“Dmitri, as an intellectual you must have friends like yourself,” the Colonel suggested.
“I never had as many friends as I would have liked,” the prisoner responded.
“Few of us do, but among the intellectuals there was always a heavy representation of Mensheviks. There aren’t so many Mensheviks as there used to be, but I’m sure you remember some,” he coaxed.
“Mensheviks? At first everyone was a Bolshevik or Menshevik, weren’t they?” Dmitri asked.
“You see, you must have known them well!”
“I suppose so. My landlord was one, I think, but he’s a very good citizen,” Dmitri stressed.
“Everyone thought you were a good citizen, too, didn’t they?” the colonel reminded him.
The prisoner nodded.
“It is only for the state security to decide who is a good citizen. Only we know.”
Again Dmitri Cherbyshev nodded.
“Good, what is his name? It’s a mere formality,” the colonel added.
“Ivan Molchanov,” the prisoner said hesitantly.
“Does the name Sergei Gasparov mean anything to you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Should it?” the prisoner inquired apologetically.
“I just thought it might. You might have heard it and don’t remember it,” the interrogator suggested casually.
�
�That could be. I’m not very good at people’s names unless they have written books.”
“I should hope so,” the colonel agreed, entering “Coconspirators Ivan Molchanov and Sergei Gasparov, agents of the international Menshevik bourgeoisie,” in the file.
As he wrote the name of his antagonist of the morning, he felt the warm satisfaction of tying loose ends together. True Chekist economy! It was just as well that he had been so lenient in not sending Gasparov to a punishment cell.
Colonel Shwartzman’s spirits flagged slightly as he approached Section 5, “Inciting a foreign state to declare war against the USSR.” Then suddenly he saw it! Just because the foreign capitalist states were at war with the USSR in Section 3 didn’t mean that they had declared war. If they had, then Section 5, the declaring of war, should have preceded Section 3. And it most certainly did not. Why not? Because of cases like this, when the USSR was involved in an undeclared war and an anti-Soviet agent like Dmitri Cherbyshev was working to invite a declaration of war in order to mobilize additional imperialist powers to fight against the USSR.
“No doubt some of the embassies here in Moscow must have sent their personnel to use the foreign collections in the library,” the colonel suggested.
“Occasionally they required books. I would send the volumes to the director’s office,” Dmitri answered.
“The director’s name?”
“Yuri Yasni.”
The colonel was pleased to involve the Lenin Library’s director. Different defendants for each section added a richness and breadth to the confession, not to mention the more obvious virtue of suggesting that the central defendant was a very big fish indeed.
Section 6, espionage, presented the colonel with a delicate problem. Since everyone in Moscow was a spy—with the aid of Article 19, intent equals the crime itself—this was usually the easiest of charges. But what was Dmitri’s spying? Stalin’s backside! Indelicate in the extreme. Spies invariably had contacts and accomplices. Here lay the great fear: might Stalin not be a suspect? Or at the very least a dupe? Nonsense! No one could suggest that the Genius of Humanity lacked revolutionary vigilance. He had purged the party and its leaders, finding spies, saboteurs, and wreckers everywhere. How could Dmitri Cherbyshev have snuck up his unsuspecting asshole? The colonel sat and pondered, and he was rewarded for his efforts. Under Section 6 one could be convicted just as easily for suspicion of espionage or contacts leading to suspicion of espionage. The colonel leaned toward the latter charge. For such a crime, the accused might be shot, but it left the target of his seduction several steps removed.
Finally, under contacts leading to suspicion of espionage, the colonel accused the prisoner of “clumsy attempts to penetrate the Soviet body politic from the rear.”
Wrecking in the classic sense was the subject of Section 7, “Subverting various elements of the economy such as industry, agriculture, transport, or the circulation of money.” The colonel hesitated; after all, he was dealing with the general secretary, even if indirectly.
“Dmitri, did you at any time offer the general secretary money?” the interrogator asked gingerly. He was afraid that the prisoner might answer that Stalin had offered him rubles. Then he would have a problem on his hands.
“No, I thought that in our society, we have very little need for money,” Dmitri answered, slightly bewildered. “I never asked, but I imagine he gets a respectable salary.”
“I’m sure he does, but I was inquiring into your relationship with the general secretary for the purposes of our report. In your extended and frequent encounters, did anything of value ever exchange hands?”
The prisoner sat up; his large, tired eyes kindled with the inward glow of memory.
“Yes, once. Only once. I remember,” he announced, very pleased with himself.
“Good. Let’s hear about it.”
“I don’t exactly remember why, but once he turned around and pinned a medal on my dick. A Hero of Red Labor.” The prisoner came as close to a smile as he had all day.
“What did you do with this valuable decoration?”
“Well, that’s just the thing. It was very uncomfortable. I just couldn’t get the thing off. It became a terrible nuisance. Finally, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. When I urinated, the metal rusted. The ribbon dried quickly enough, but the metal was completely destroyed. It rusted through and dropped off. You can imagine my relief when it did. I had already ruined my underwear. Even now—”
The colonel interrupted him. “Thank you, I think we have what we want,” he said, as he indicted the prisoner for “a thorough and protracted attempt to corrode the value of socialist labor and socialist institutions.”
When he arrived at Section 8, “Terror—including threats and attacks on party members,” the colonel decided to delete Stalin’s blood from Section 2 (“Severing any part of the USSR”) and identify the blood that the prisoner had squeezed from Stalin as the proof of a terrorist attack. He was pleased with the symmetry of the solution. Sections 1 and 2 referred to the state itself. Allotting the general secretary’s testicles, one each, to these sections had a pleasing parallelism, whereas the spilled blood provided a precise image of terrorist attack against a defenseless innocent.
Before he could fully relish the elegantly balanced poetries of terror, he faced the challenge of Section 9’s merciless specificity, “Destruction or damage by explosion or arson.” The colonel simply had no ideas. He fell back on the interrogator’s last resort: fishing.
“Do you recall any flames or fires during your sessions with the general secretary?”
“No,” the prisoner answered.
“Sparks?”
“No.”
“Anything that looked like a fire?” he suggested.
“No.”
“Maybe someone was flushed and ran a slight fever?” the colonel implored.
“I’m sorry,” the prisoner answered in disappointment.
“Yes, so am I,” agreed the colonel.
Dejected, they sat staring at one another.
“What about an explosion?” the colonel suggested in desperation.
“Explosion?” the prisoner repeated, as if it were the strangest word imaginable.
“Yes, was there anything that seemed like an explosion?”
The prisoner considered the question. “Just what I told you about earlier.”
“What was that?” the colonel wondered.
“In the moment of my greatest excitement, I lost control of myself, and that was when I squeezed the general secretary’s balls and he pissed blood,” the prisoner repeated.
The colonel sat up.
“You mean that was an explosive moment?” he asked enthusiastically.
“Yes, when I was most excited. You know how it is. It’s like you’re exploding,” he said delicately.
“You mean exploding like that?” the colonel confirmed.
“Yes,” the prisoner whispered.
“Wonderful,” the colonel rejoiced. “And this happened on more than one occasion?”
“Every night for two years!”
“Fine,” the colonel nodded and wrote, “Purposely polluted essential party processes through explosive acts.”
Section 9 had turned out surprisingly well. The colonel had always been sure of Section 10. He had seen its development from the very beginning. Under Section 10, any propaganda or agitation that appealed for the overthrow or weakening of the Soviet government was declared illegal. Such agitation might be oral or written. The prisoner had written to the NKVD that he wanted to confess. The NKVD received a great many letters of revelation, but the authors invariably revealed someone else’s wrongdoing. A missive begging to confess was a rare communication. Clearly this unusual letter—even the bizarre confession itself—contained an appeal to weaken Soviet power. Colonel Shwartzman made a note that the prisoner’s correspondence with the NKVD should be entered under Section 10. Documentary evidence, especially if written by the defendant himself, added
a certain completeness to the indictment.
Section 10 was a good piece of work, but it lacked the sense of discovery and spontaneity that informed some of his other masterstrokes. He was philosophical: that was part of the creative process; it couldn’t be all unalloyed joy.
The general secretary proved a complicating or an “aggravating” factor in Section 11, which declared that if any actions covered by the preceding actions had been the act of an organization, then they were to be viewed much more severely. As a general rule, any and all sexual activity fell under Section 11. After all, it takes two to tango. In this particular dance, however, the partner was Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. How could the prisoner have been a member of the organization and Stalin not? From the prisoner’s point of view, Stalin was a willing participant and, consequently, a member of the organization. Of course, such an idea was impossible! Adopting a literal interpretation of the events, the colonel therefore cited the general secretary for “his revealing participation as an undercover agent of the toiling Soviet masses.”
Colonel Shwartzman finished Section 11 and turned to the prisoner.
“Dmitri, in your letter to the NKVD, did you tell them the nature of your activities?”
“No, I just said that I wanted to confess some very inappropriate behavior,” the prisoner admitted.
The colonel turned back to his report, condemning Dmitri Cherbyshev both for “failing to denounce” the director of the Lenin Library for passing Soviet property to foreigners and for failing to detail his own crimes in his letter to the NKVD.
“Dmitri, in your professional capacity at the library, do you remember handling any books about the tsarist secret police, the Okhrana?” the colonel asked gravely.
“I’m not sure,” the prisoner mumbled.
“It’s very important that if you did, you did so as an employee of the Lenin Library,” the colonel insisted.
“In the foreign sections, we have some material, but—”
“No,” the colonel interrupted. “We want Russian books printed before the revolution that have sections discussing the tsarist secret police.”
Two for the Devil Page 5