The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  “Platschek isn’t really political at all. He was here for a few days and he talked a lot of airy nonsense, that’s all. He’s a first-class physicist, and therefore he was invited to pay us a visit. He’d be about as useful as a secret agent as I would be a tightrope walker.”

  “We have examined the Platschek case from all angles,” he declared weightily. “It’s one of your favorite tricks to pretend that your agents are all simple persons who couldn’t say boo to a goose. But you can’t fool us. We expose the counterrevolutionary no matter what the mask.”

  The case of Platschek was a striking example of how dangerous a little humor can be in a country of totalitarian dictatorship. Theoretical physicists regarded him as an experimental physicist, while the experimental physicists regarded him as a theoretical physicist. In reality he was something between the two, a sort of liaison officer. He came from a wealthy family and he didn’t have to earn his living, so instead of taking a permanent appointment he went from one famous physicist to the other. For a few weeks he would stay with Nils Bohr in Copenhagen, and after that perhaps a couple of months with Fermi in Rome. At the same time he was a very amusing fellow and people liked him. He would make the most ridiculous jokes and tell the absurdest stories. We tried to persuade him that he was wasting his talents flitting around the world, and on one occasion he actually agreed to accept a professorship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but in his inaugural lecture to a packed hall he thought it necessary to inform his audience that the Jews weren’t really a people at all or Hebrew a language, and that it was only by a miracle of God—such as one would, of course, expect in the Holy Land—that the children on the streets could make themselves understood to each other. One can imagine what sort of effect that kind of airy persiflage had on the newly baked nationalism of the Jews. Platschek stood it for a year, and then he packed up his things and began his wanderings again. He went back to Germany, where he made the most outrageous remarks about Hitler, who was already Reich Chancellor. Lèse-majesté of that sort was dangerous to life and limb, and Platschek’s friends breathed again when he moved on. He came to visit us in Kharkov on a number of occasions. The last time I met him was at the beginning of December, 1936, in Moscow. I was living in the Hotel Moskva at the time and he rang me up to arrange a meeting.

  “‘Where shall we meet?” I asked.

  “In the street named after the traitor,” he suggested. I knew what he meant, the Bolshaya Dimitrovka. That was its name before the revolution and it had nothing whatever to do with Georgi Dimitrov, who, although not a German, had been charged with treason at the Leipzig trial, and was now Chairman of the Communist International. Platschek was only joking; in reality he had a great admiration for Dimitrov on account of his heroic attitude at the trial—but what about my telephone censor? I slammed down the receiver angrily; the man was impossible. When we met I reproached him for his lack of consideration. He looked at me pityingly.

  “This country’s going to the dogs,” he declared. “All sense of humor is disappearing. I can see the decline in you. Twelve months ago you were almost human.”

  It was quite impossible to make him see reason or to curb his caustic tongue. I gave up lying. I stayed in Moscow and he went off to Kharkov with my permission to use my rooms. When I came back I learned what had happened.

  In a discussion with Barbara and Martin Ruhemann, Platschek had declared that the Third International was a waste of time now that Lenin wasn’t there to keep it in order. All revolutionary forces ought now to be organized in Trotsky’s Fourth International. Barbara Ruhemann was a convinced Stalinist and she opposed the idea vehemently. Platschek was delighted to have drawn her and he provoked her more and more. Martin Ruhemann listened quietly and grinned. He knew it was silly to take Platschek seriously. Not so Barbara, who was boiling with indignation, and the next day she told Party Secretary Komarov the whole story. That put Komarov in a cleft stick. He had no interest in baiting Trotskyists, and he was very sorry Barbara had told him. However, if she had told him she might tell others, and if he suppressed the report the G.P.U. might get to hear of it and pounce on him. That could cost him his post, his Party membership and perhaps his liberty. Unwillingly, therefore, he sat down and wrote out his report.

  The G.P.U. did nothing about Platschek. He was a foreigner on a short lecture tour and in a few weeks he would be gone, but the stick was good enough to beat me with. For some years they had been collecting material against me without coming across anything of any importance, and now here was a real live Trotskyist, obviously an agent of the Fourth International, a pet subject of abuse in the Soviet press since the days of the Zinoviev trial, and the man was a close friend of mine and I had placed my rooms at his disposal.

  When I came back and heard the story, I realized the danger at once, and I took Platschek to one side.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m not reproaching you. You just don’t understand the situation here. However, it’s gone so far this time that I’ve got to disassociate myself from you for my own safety. Don’t misunderstand my motives therefore when I must now ask you to go and live somewhere else.”

  After that I went to the Institute and asked them to find Platschek a room in a hotel, and he moved out the very same day. As far as I was concerned that settled the matter, but not for the G.P.U. At last it had an objective fact it could use against me. Most of the indictments were based on statements extorted from arrested men. Conversations were invented which had never taken place; facts were invoked which had nothing to do with the truth. But the discussion between Platschek and Barbara Ruhemann had really taken place. It was too good to be missed.

  It was true that I had not taken part in it or even been present at it. In addition, the things Platschek had said were not punishable by Soviet law. He had expressed political opinions which were not in accordance with those of the Party leadership, but he was not even a Communist. There was no room for any charge of treason. And where did I come in anyhow? I had what was a big flat by Soviet standards, and therefore the Institute expected me to put up foreign visitors from time to time. Was I therefore responsible for their political opinions?

  For my examiner the situation was perfectly clear. Platschek was an agent of the Fourth International. The Fourth International was an organization which sent spies and saboteurs into the Soviet Union to work in the interests of capitalism. Platschek had stayed in my flat at my invitation. Therefore I was a spy and a saboteur. What could be clearer? All that remained was to get me to confess that I was, in fact, a spy and a saboteur, and the preliminary investigation could be satisfactorily concluded.

  I tried to convince my examiner that Platschek was a confirmed joker and that it was absurd for the Soviet authorities to take him seriously.

  “You must try to understand,” I explained patiently, “that Platschek was brought up in countries where the sense of political responsibility as it is understood here just does not exist. When he is talking he says whatever comes into his mind and sounds amusing. The next time he may very well say the opposite. He never has to think of his position or his liberty no matter how he talks.”

  “Platschek is an inveterate Trotskyist,” answered my examiner inexorably. “We have exact material to show it. He came to give you secret instructions. Now, what instructions did ‘he give you?”

  I gave up. Either he couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. Whichever it was, the situation was equally hopeless. He shouted, stormed and threatened. He demanded that I should confess that Platschek had given me secret counterrevolutionary instructions, and he also wanted to know to whom I had handed them on, and how much had already been carried out. The interrogation became more and more monotonous. He kept repeating the same words and I kept answering in the same words. Finally I was too exhausted to say anything, and then he called off the interrogation and sent me back to my cell. I undressed and went to bed. It was about eleven o’clock. I had been in bed for perhaps half an hour when a warder opened th
e wicket.

  “Your name?” he asked.

  He had the usual chit in his hand for the examination of a prisoner. I thought there must be some mistake; I had just had a six-hour interrogation. I told him my name.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “Interrogation.”

  I got dressed and followed him. I was still a little dated when I sat down opposite the examiner.

  “Are you prepared to confess at last or do you intend to continue the struggle against us?”

  It was too much, and I said nothing.

  “You fascist swine,” he shouted. “How much longer do you think you can play this game with us?”

  I still said nothing.

  “Take care. In our cellars you’ll lose your dumb insolence quickly enough, I warn you. Now come on, out with it.”

  I remained silent.

  “Where is the illegal material Platschek gave you? Don’t try to treat us as though we were fools. A Trotskyist spy comes to you and all you talk about is the weather, what?”

  I could still find nothing to say.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch Weissberg, we have treated you humanely up to now. We wanted to make things easy for you. But you mustn’t think we haven’t ways and means of dealing with refractory prisoners. We have all the material we want to hand you over to the courts. Your discussions with Platschek, Anders and Komarov are all known to us.”

  “With Komarov!” I exclaimed at last. “What’s the matter with Komarov? He was our Party Secretary.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. All you’ve got to do now is to sign this.”

  He had drawn up the deposition about the Platschek affair in such a way that every detail sounded suspicious. There were no direct falsehoods, but the whole thing had such a slant that anyone reading it would have thought that a plot against the state had been revealed. I can no longer recall the details and it was a method adopted only in the first, and more humane, phase of my imprisonment; later the examination methods became cruder: the examiner no longer falsified the statements of the accused, but forced him by physical pressure to make false statements. I began to read the deposition. After a few paragraphs I stopped.

  “You should mention here that as soon as I returned from Moscow I asked Platschek to leave my rooms on account of that very discussion.”

  “I certainly don’t intend to take up space with your inventions.”

  It was a point in my favor and therefore he was unwilling to record it. Naturally, I had not told them at the Institute why I wanted Platschek out of my rooms; I had merely said that as I now worked a good deal at home I needed the room he was occupying. The whole thing now appeared as: “After my return from Moscow, Platschek left my flat because there was not enough room.”

  “Citizen Examiner, I have explained to you very carefully why I turned Platschek out of my house and I want the reason recorded.”

  “You fascist bandit, do you think you can lay down the law to me?”

  “How you formulate your questions is your affair,” I said firmly, “but my answers must go down as I give them.”

  Polevedsky sprang up and seized me by the throat.

  “Citizen Examiner, you have no right to use violence against me,” I protested.

  “Oh, is that so?” he asked mockingly. “Well, I’m going to settle your hash.”

  He left the room and returned with a uniformed guard.

  “This prisoner is refractory and insulting,” he said. “Make the consequences of such conduct clear to him.”

  The guard produced a document from which he began to read out paragraphs of the prison and remand regulations. He warned me against insulting the examiner and enumerated the punishments which could be imposed, including isolation in the punishment cells. At the end of it I still refused to sign. Polevedsky gave way a little and agreed to reformulate the sentence I objected to. Then I read on. The whole thing was full of similar biased slants, falsifications and omissions. It was impossible to correct it. I refused to sign it and declared that it must be entirely rewritten in accordance with the facts. After that the two of them shouted at me for the next three hours. At the end of that time Polevedsky broke off the interrogation.

  “Take that slimy hound back to his cell,” he said. “We’ll break every bone in his body before we’ve finished with him.”

  It was just before dawn when I got back to my cell. Perhaps there was another two hours for me to sleep in. I fell onto the bed in my clothes and slept at once. About an hour later the warder was there again.

  “Dress,” he said. “Interrogation.”

  I was already dressed and I staggered after him, drunk with lack of sleep.

  “I have rewritten the deposition,” Polevedsky informed me when I arrived, “and if you don’t sign it now you’ll go straight into Punishment Cell Number 3. I’ve got no more time to waste with you.”

  I read through it. One or two minor amendments in my sense had been made, but the general bias of the whole remained. But I was too tired to fight any more. I signed.

  When I look back on this period of my imprisonment now and compare it with what was to come later, I am astounded at the amount of energy and nervous force I expended in fighting to obtain accurate depositions. Only a few months later prisoners were forced under intolerable pressure to invent stories which had no relation to facts at all. The fight for accurate depositions was a sheer luxury which Polevedsky and I were still able to afford in those very early days of the Great Purge before the vast wave of mass arrests came along to drown all finesse.

  The next day I was called out to see Captain Azak.

  “How much longer do you think you can keep up this sort of thing, Alexander Semyonovitch? At first you were always asking us for concrete facts, and now you’ve got them you’re still not satisfied. Your friendship with the Trotskyist agent Platschek is quite enough. It’s silly to go on.”

  “Citizen Captain, I have told the full truth about Platschek and my relations to him and I have nothing further to add.”

  “Why didn’t you immediately report this discussion and inform us there was an agent of the Fourth International in Kharkov?”

  “Because Platschek isn’t an agent of the Fourth International; he’s not a politician at all; he’s just an incorrigible joker.”

  “You won’t get away with that, Alexander Semyonovitch. If he’s so unpolitical why did he have to praise just the Fourth International, and not the First or the Second?”

  I just didn’t know the answer to that one.

  “The worst thing against you,” he went on, “is that you failed to report the affair, and so gave the enemy time to escape.”

  “But a report was made to Komarov, and Komarov was our Party Secretary. It was his business to pass on the report to you, and he did.”

  “Komarov is as much a Trotskyist as you are. It will be his turn next, and very soon. We let our birds flutter around for a while perhaps, but they don’t escape the net in the end.”

  I thought it just as well not to point out that the arch-Trotskyist Platschek was safely abroad.

  “We’re going to call witnesses now and the confrontations will soon make you realize that to hold out further is hopeless. You’ve still got a chance to get off lightly, but if you continue the struggle against us we shall have to take very severe measures.”

  Then I was taken back to my cell. What Azak had said about Komarov disturbed me. Komarov was a man of rather gentle disposition, and he had always been just and humane. Not like a Stalinist at all. He was not a careerist of the type that rises by treading on the backs of others. Perhaps Azak was right; perhaps he had been secretly in opposition all the time.

  I recalled a talk I had had with him in his room, a sparsely furnished den of the student’s type. I sat on a wobbly chair and he sat on the edge of his bed. We talked about the collectivization of agriculture.

  “You know, Alex,” he had said, “the struggle against the kulaks was a very difficult period. On two occasio
ns I was fired at in the village and once I was wounded. I shall never forget 1932 no matter how long I live. The peasants lay helpless in their huts with swollen limbs. Every day new corpses were taken out. And yet we had to get bread out of the villages somehow and fulfill the plan. I had a friend with me. His nerves weren’t strong enough to stand it. Petya,’ he said one day, ‘if this is the result of Stalin’s policy can it be right?’ I let him have it hot and strong and the next day he came to me and apologized; said his nerves were getting frayed. He was a good, honest fellow, and I didn’t report what he had said.”

  It occurred to me now that Komarov might have been sounding me. Perhaps he wanted to see how I would react. Perhaps what he presented to me as the doubts of his friend were really his own, and he wanted to see if I showed any signs of sympathy. Perhaps, in fact, he rejected the whole insane agricultural policy of the dictator just as heartily as I did.

  I had been in Russia for seven years, and that was the first time I had heard—no, not heard, sensed—an undertone of criticism. Usually Communists defended the Party policy uncompromisingly, and I had always thought they had completely lost the critical faculty. Later on, in prison, I met hundreds of Russian Communists and I never met one who supported the Stalinist policy of enforced collectivization and the extermination of the so-called kulaks. This policy ruined the main productive resources of the country; ten million peasants died of starvation and a vast slaughter of cattle took place. Every Party member knew these facts, but they said nothing and continued mechanically to praise the Great Leader of the People. At first they kept their real opinions for intimate friends, but once the Great Purge began even that stopped and soon there was not a soul, friend, wife, husband, brother, to whom anyone dared confide a thing.

  So perhaps Komarov really had been an oppositionist in secret and had tried to “recruit” me, as the G.P.U. would have said, in this talk. I thought back: two months previously I had not been able to decide just what it was the G.P.U. suspected me of: being a foreign spy, or merely being in opposition. But now things had become much simpler. The big trials had more or less amalgamated these two categories of “enemies of the people” and it was seen that Trotsky, “the opposition Communist,” had conspired with Rudolf Hess, the representative of the Führer, while the Communist opposition had allied itself with international fascism and adopted espionage as its favorite weapon in the political struggle. Thus the dilemma no longer existed; in the eyes of the G.P.U. I could be both an opposition Communist and a foreign spy. It greatly simplified matters.