The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  Toward the end of April the interrogations ceased entirely. The regime in my cell became more liberal, and I was allowed to lie down on the bed during the day. I read through Le Rouge et le Noir once or twice again and I worked out mathematical problems on the walls. My thoughts were much occupied with the outside world. Would they take me from prison straight to the frontier, or would they give me a few days to wind up my affairs? Should I go back to Austria, or should I go to Finland or Sweden and get in touch with my English friends? What attitude should I take up toward the Party?

  I spent a great deal of the day lying down, and I hardly got up except for meals and exercise. The warders made no attempt to interfere with me. They too obviously thought that these were the last days of my imprisonment.

  On April 30th, the door opened and two armed and uniformed G.P.U. men came in. I had to strip while they searched the cell and all my clothing very carefully. Then they took away my books and newspapers.

  “The examiner permitted me to have those books,” I protested. “You’ll get them back if he thinks fit,” was the reply.

  On May Day I was very restless and not a little anxious. That search and the confiscation of my books had upset me. And now the warder suddenly refused to let me lie down during the day. Again I had nothing to occupy myself, nothing to read and nothing with which I could write on the wall. They had taken everything, including my “stylus.” Once again the day seemed endless. I thought over the mystery a great deal, of course, but I found no satisfactory reason for this renewed strictness.

  The inconclusive state of affairs went on for several days. I asked for permission to write to the Prosecutor again and this was granted. I explained the circumstances to him and asked him to look into the matter. The day after that I was called out for an interrogation.

  With Polevedsky was a man in a gray uniform that was unknown to me. I couldn’t tell whether he was G.P.U. or Army. At first I thought it might be the Prosecutor himself. He was a squat, broad-shouldered man of middle height, with a round Mongolian skull shaved completely bare and almost no visible neck. His complexion was fresh and healthy, and he looked like a man who enjoyed both physical and mental health and had a sense of humor.

  “Sit down, Alexander Semyonovitch,” said Polevedsky. “This is Comrade Ryeznikov. From today on, he will be in charge of your case. You’ve just about finished me.”

  “But I thought you said the preliminary examination was almost concluded,” I said in some surprise and anxiety.

  “No, Alexander Semyonovitch,” said the new man, addressing me directly. “In fact, it’s just going to start. I’m taking over and I can assure you I never start a thing I don’t carry through to the end—the bitter end if need be. You will talk all right, Alexander Semyonovitch. You can bet your life on that. I am a hard man and if I have to squeeze the life out of you you’ll talk first.”

  “But, Citizen Examiner,” I said, turning again to Polevedsky, “I understand that in Soviet law a preliminary examination must be concluded within two months of the prisoner’s arrest unless the Prosecutor himself gives permission for an extension. In my case...”

  “In your case the Prosecutor has given permission, Alexander Semyonovitch.”

  “May I see the written permission?”

  Polevedsky was about to answer, but the other banged his fist on the desk so that everything jumped.

  “No, certainly not,” he snapped. “Where do you think you are, in a sanatorium? You’ll see whatever I think fit and nothing else.” “As an accused person I have the right to demand that the law shall be respected where it guards me from arbitrary ill-treatment,” I declared.

  It was Polevedsky who answered:

  “When the examination is finally concluded you will find all the documents in the case in the file, including the written permission of the Prosecutor for the extension of the examination period.”

  Ryeznikov seemed beside himself at Polevedsky’s conciliatory tone. He stood up and glared at me.

  “So you want to teach us to obey the law, do you, you son of a bitch, you son of a whore? We’ll break every bone in your body before we’ve finished with you. You don’t seem to have been shown anything yet, but you will. Of course, if you confess your guilt and give us all the details of your organization that will be different. Then I’ll see that you get all you want to read and I’ll see that you get the full protection of the law. But for a man who stabs the Soviet Union in the back and tries to carry on the struggle even here there’s only force, and you’ll soon feel it. We’ll start tomorrow.”

  He rang the bell without consulting Polevedsky, and had me taken away.

  A new phase in my examination had begun.

  CHAPTER 5—Every Inch of the Way

  IT WAS TWO DAYS AFTER THAT BEFORE RYEZNIROV CALLED ME OUT FOR interrogation. He was just having his breakfast when I arrived. It was some time since I had received a parcel and I was hungry.

  “Sit down, Alexander Semyonovitch,” he said amiably. “Would you like something to eat?”

  I sat down but refused his offer of food. After his hostile and abusive attitude the first time we had met I now found his friendliness a little too much to stomach. But Ryeznikov was no fool; he realized at once the reason for my refusal.

  “Look, Alexander Semyonovitch, I’ve got to do my duty. You mustn’t take it in the least as a personal matter. You are waging war against us and I represent the interests of the Soviet state. I just have to use every possible means to bring you to capitulate. However, I’m not at all inhumane, and I don’t like eating when a hungry man is looking on.”

  Without waiting for an answer he put two sandwiches on a plate and set them before me. Then he rang and ordered tea. I was mollified. Both the sandwiches and the tea were good. It was a long time since I had drunk anything but hot colored water.

  When we had finished Ryeznikov lighted a cigar and leaned back in his chair.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch,” he began. “I’m just going to have a chat with you today and try to make you see your situation as it really is. Because you must capitulate, you know. You just must; we’re stronger than you are, and you must face it. If you don’t capitulate voluntarily we shall force you to. Why bother to continue a hopeless fight? We have ways and means, you know. You aren’t the first recalcitrant we’ve had to deal with. Do you want to ruin your health just for the pleasure of holding out for a while? If you’re wise you’ll do as we say straight away and save yourself a lot of unpleasantness. Just confess everything frankly and start a new life. You will spend a short time in a Soviet prison and after that you will be a respected citizen in the service of the Soviet Government again.”

  “Citizen Ryeznikov, what you are saying to me is nothing new. I’ve heard it all before. If I had ever done anything against the Soviet power I should have confessed it long ago. If I confessed to anything it would be a complete invention, and just because I am pro-Soviet I think it my duty to tell nothing but the truth, no matter how hard it may be. I can’t see that it would do the Soviet power any good if I confessed something fictitious.”

  “We don’t want you to confess anything fictitious; we want the truth. We want you to confess your membership of the Bukharinist organization.”

  “My membership of the Bukharinist organization? This is the first I’ve heard of it. It was always Trotskyist before.”

  “We’ve got more accurate information about you now. I have the documents here and I have questioned the chief witnesses myself. We now know you were one of Bukharin’s leading men in the Ukraine.”

  “I can’t think what gives you that idea.”

  “It isn’t an idea; it’s a fact. We’ve unmasked all branches of your organization. All your accomplices have already been arrested.”

  “Citizen Examiner, the thing is getting more and more fantastic. There’s not a word of truth in it.”

  “That fantastic web you and your friends wove nearly brought our country to disaster, but now we�
�ve laid you all by the heels.”

  “Citizen Examiner, I can only repeat what I have already said on a dozen and one occasions: I have had nothing whatever to do with anything of the sort.”

  He got up and fetched a dossier.

  “When I think of the proofs in here and see your assumption of injured innocence it almost makes me angry. How much longer do you think you can play this game with us, Alexander Semyonovitch?”

  “I’m not playing any game, Citizen Examiner. Before I was arrested I was told that the material against me couldn’t be shown until after my arrest. I have been under arrest for over two months now, but up to the present not a single proof of my guilt has been presented to me. Tell me at last what it is I am supposed to have done.”

  “I will, Accused. I will. But first of all I want to give you another chance. Confess before we overwhelm you with written proofs and confrontations with the witnesses. You will then be entitled to milder treatment. Here are pencil and paper. Go back to your cell and write a complete confession to the Chief of the Kharkov N.K.V.D. If you do that you’ll have a chance not only of being released but even of obtaining a much higher position than ever you could hope for normally. After all, you’re a very capable man and you could become a big man in the service of the Soviet Government, on condition, of course, that you cooperate loyally with us.”

  I was ready to reply that I had nothing to write, but the guard was already in the room to take me back to my cell. Ryeznikov handed him the paper and pencil and off we went.

  The next day I used the paper to write a detailed letter to the Military Prosecutor, describing my political development and pointing out how senseless and unmotivated the accusations against me were. In the evening I was called out again to Ryeznikov. I took the letter with me.

  “Have you written your confession?” he demanded.

  “No, because I have nothing to confess. But I have written a protest to the Prosecutor against the methods being used in my examination.”

  Ryeznikov snatched the letter out of my hand, glanced through it rapidly and then tore it up. He was white with rage.

  “You’ve never been in our punishment cells, it seems,” he bawled. “You think we’ve got to treat you nicely because you’re a foreigner. You’re mistaken. We make short work of foreign spies. Only Soviet laws are valid in our country.”

  “The whole point of my letter to the Prosecutor was to ask him to see that those laws were upheld in my case.”

  Ryeznikov snatched up a revolver that was lying on his desk and sprang toward me, waving it furiously before my eyes, and shouting a stream of abuse. I thought he was going to club me with the butt. However, he finally calmed down a little.

  “Accused, do you still plead innocence?”

  “I do.”

  “Then listen to this.”

  He took a document out of the dossier and began to read. It was a statement made by Rudolf Anders:

  “I first made the acquaintance of Alexander Weissberg in Berlin through Karl Frank, one of the leaders of the German right-wing opposition. We often talked about the Soviet Union. He criticized the policy of the Soviet Government on the question of collectivization and the rationing of staple commodities. As early as 1932 he was in favor of the abolition of rationing and the reintroduction of the free market. I gained the impression that in all fundamental political problems he shared Bukharin’s anti-Party and anti-Soviet views and was trying to win me over to them. He agitated against the policy of the Party and the Soviet Government and I am convinced that he was the head of an anti-Party Bukharinist group in the Ukrainian Institute for Physics....”

  “Is that enough for you, Accused, or shall I read on?”

  “I should like to read it myself. I find it difficult to believe that Anders wrote that.”

  He showed me the deposition. The signature was undoubtedly that of Rudolf Anders.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch,” he declared. “Remember so far you’ve had only a taste of our material. Take paper and pencil and go back to your cell and write what you’ve got to say now.”

  I was so depressed by the statement of my friend Anders that I made no reply. Mechanically I took pencil and paper and followed the guard.

  In my cell I sat down on the edge of the bed to think things out, but I was nervous and restless and found it difficult to concentrate. I sat on the bed perhaps for an hour when the wicket opened and the warder beckoned me over. For the first time he said a word more than was absolutely necessary.

  “Don’t you feel well? I’ve been looking at you from time to time for the last hour or so and you haven’t moved. Would you like a bromide to steady your nerves?”

  I was quite moved by his friendliness and I accepted the bromide gladly. Later I learned that he had been keeping me under observation at Ryeznikov’s special orders.

  After about an hour the soup arrived. I put it aside untouched and went on worrying. What were they really after, and how would it all end?

  So far their charges were not very important. I had never been a member of any opposition group, and I had certainly never been a Trotskyist. I had joined the Austrian Party from the ranks of Social Democracy, and for me Trotskyism was an ultra-left deviation in the Communist movement with which I had no sympathy at all. I felt that socialism could be victorious in Western and Central Europe only if the fatal split in the ranks of the working class was healed. That meant that Social Democracy had to be won over for a revolutionary solution and for a close alliance with the Communists. I greatly admired Trotsky as a brilliant writer and an honest revolutionary, but I regarded his policy as too doctrinaire to have any chance of winning over the Social Democratic workers. At that time we in the West had no idea what was at stake between Stalin and Trotsky, but we all obediently voted for the resolution of our Central Committee condemning Trotskyism and approving Trotsky’s expulsion from the Comintern. We had no choice. Whoever voted against the resolution was himself expelled from the Party. For a Communist it was the worst thing in the world to be expelled from the Party. At the time I joined the Party, Stalin had just begun his struggle against the right-wing Communists under the leadership of Bukharin. But in Russia all opposition in the Party had already been made illegal. Bukharin was no longer fighting for his policy; the Party was fighting against him. Bukharin himself remained silent. We learned about his ideas from the polemic of the official press against him. Later on, in the days of mass collectivization, the Communists in the villages were compelled by the Party leadership to pursue a policy which destroyed the basis of Russian agriculture. In the period from 1931 to 1933 millions of peasants starved. The Communists in the villages—or some of them, at least—raised warning voices, but everyone who showed the least disinclination to pursue the suicidal policy of the Party toward agriculture was expelled from the Party as a right-wing opportunist, i.e., as a Bukharinist, and often banished to the Far North. It wasn’t long before the Communists in the rural areas began to hold their tongues. There was no longer any bread. The peasants lay helplessly with swollen limbs in their huts, unable to go out into the fields to work. But the Party leadership sent Communist requisitioning commandos to seize the last good of buried grain. The Communists from the towns soon learned the real situation in the countryside but they no longer dared to report the truth about what they had seen. Gradually the Central Committee lost all control over the course of events. Stalin banished everyone who tried to tell him the truth, whether about the situation in Germany, China or the villages of the Ukraine. Communists began to hold their tongues and it was not long before all open opposition ceased. In this way the dictator cut himself off from all sources of honest information and lost all touch with what was happening. Blindly and obstinately he plunged on, and he finally called a halt only on the brink of utter disaster and after millions of peasants had died of starvation. Hardly seventeen per cent of Russia’s horses were left, less than ten per cent of pigs and sheep and perhaps a quarter of the horned cattle.{6} Tho
se peasants, usually the best farmers, who had protested were sent to the tundras as kulaks, though most of them were nothing of the sort.

  Everyone knew what was happening but no one dared open his mouth. In the beginning close friends might still talk to each other about it, but when the Great Purge began even that ceased. Bukharin had raised his voice in warning, but he was silenced, and at subsequent sessions of the Central Committee he too praised the wisdom of the beloved Leader. If the name to describe a humane policy toward the peasants was Bukharinism then in my heart I had always been a Bukharinist, but I had never belonged to any Bukharinist organization, for the one reason, if no other, that no such thing existed.

  The situation was no better in Germany. At Stalin’s direct orders the Communist Party adopted a policy which led the working-class movement to disaster, put Hitler in power and subsequently brought about the Second World War, which cost the Russian people dear. Some German Communists protested against the lunacy but they were denounced as right-wingers and Bukharinists although there was not the slightest organizational or even ideological connection between the German right-wing opposition and Bukharin. The German Communist Party crushed the opposition, expelled its supporters and continued Stalin’s disastrous policy. In consequence Communist and Social Democratic workers fought each other all over Germany, instead of fighting the Nazis, until both Communists and Social Democrats found themselves together in Hitler’s concentration camps.

  Every intelligent Communist able to see the facts as they were instead of through the distorting spectacles of scholastic dialectics was in opposition to the Party policy. Simple Party members instinctively sensed the danger but they remained silent for fear of expulsion. Between them the Communists on the left and the Nazis on the right destroyed every chance of a compromise government of the democratic middle. General election followed general election, and a profound political crisis of German democracy was added to the severe economic crisis which already racked the country.