The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  I had admired him for his courage. Most of us who had any intelligence at all disapproved of such methods just as he did, but we were afraid to say so for fear of expulsion. Ryeznikov’s questions about Karl Frank were much the same as those about Willi Stein. Out came the green folders, together with the announcement that Karl Frank had openly gone over to the Nazis. And then came a characteristic detail which has stuck in my memory.

  “When did you last see Frank?” Ryeznikov asked.

  “In the summer of 1932. I was on holiday at the Grundlsee in Austria. Fritz Houtermanns and I met him quite by chance....”

  “You always meet people ‘quite by chance,’” said Ryeznikov, interrupting me. “We don’t believe in chance. It’s not chance for us when a foreign agent goes abroad and meets his bosses.”

  I took no notice of what he said.

  “We began to argue,” I went on. “Houtermanns and I were both members of the Party; Karl Frank had been expelled. At first he teased us with what he regarded as various mistakes of the Party, but later on he grew serious. ‘You’ve just come back from the Soviet Union, I hear, Alex,’ he said. ‘I should very much like to hear an objective report of how things stand there. Come over to us and tell us all about it.’ ‘I’ll quite willingly tell you all I know,’ I replied, ‘but you’ll have to come to me.’ Karl Frank promised to come but he never did, and that was the last time I saw him.”

  “Didn’t you meet him secretly and hand over espionage material to him?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What political subjects did you discuss with him?”

  “It’s difficult to remember after five years.”

  “Think carefully.”

  “No. It’s quite impossible after this length of time.”

  “It’s odd: your memory always seems to go when it’s a question of remembering counterrevolutionary discussions.”

  “There were no counterrevolutionary discussions. I put forward the Party viewpoint and he argued against it. From that you can easily get an idea of what sort of discussion it was.”

  “We hold proofs, confirmed by Anders, that Karl Frank recruited you for the counterrevolutionary right-wing opposition.”

  “You can’t possibly have proof of what isn’t true. If Anders says that he’s lying.”

  When I left Ryeznikov’s room the following afternoon, Fritz Houtermanns was waiting outside in the corridor. He went as white as a sheet when he saw me. My appearance must have shocked him. We stood there looking at each other for a moment or so, but nothing was said, and then the guard took me away. Apparently Ryeznikov had summoned Houtermanns to hear what he had to say about our meeting with Karl Frank at the Grundlsee. Ryeznikov had no doubt deliberately arranged that I should meet him in the corridor in order to warn me that he could check anything I said about my life abroad.

  Subsequent interrogations referred to the trouble at the Institute.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch, we are now going to deal not with the underground work of your counterrevolutionary group but with your open revolt against the leadership of the Institute, against the Party and the Soviet Government. I hope you won’t deny that at least.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Citizen Examiner, but I do deny it most firmly. Our conflict with Davidovitch was not a revolt against the Party or the Soviet Government, but opposition to a man who was damaging and disorganizing the work of the Institute.”

  I joined the Ukrainian Institute for Physics (UFTI) in the spring of 1931. Its Director at the time was Ivan Vassiliyevitch Obremov, a scientist of the old school from Leningrad. The Institute itself had been founded at the instance of the doyen of Soviet physicists, Abram Vladimirovitch Joffe. A group of younger physicists under the leadership of Obremov and Leipunsky left Joffe’s Leningrad institute and went to Kharkov at the request of the Ukrainian Soviet Government to found a new scientific center there. It was the period of the first Five-Year Plan for the reconstruction of the Soviet economic system. Not only factories but also scientific institutes were being built. The Soviet Government expended huge sums in order to cover the land with a network of research institutes. In Kharkov alone over twenty new institutes were created. The most important of them was UFTI. Its lay-out made it one of the biggest institutes for experimental physics in Europe.

  When I arrived in March, 1931, UFTI was still at the beginning of its development. The administrative apparatus and the Party apparatus in the Institute were both quite small. The center of interest was the actual research work. No attention at all was paid to political questions and not a great deal even to industrial problems. The atmosphere was free and unconstrained. The scientists talked to each other quite openly and the Director was just one of us. There were no bureaucratic obstacles in our relationship to him, and quite often it came about that the majority of the physicists at the Institute overruled him and he accepted the majority decision. Alexander Ilyitch Leipunsky, the Vice-Director of the Institute, a young Communist and a very talented physicist, enjoyed most authority. Obremov was already an old man, and he had his whims and crotchets, much to our amusement. Later on Obremov retired from his post as Director of the Institute and Leipunsky took over.

  Leipunsky was an excellent chief. When any of us wanted anything from him we went to him in his laboratory and discussed the problem with him while he went on with his work. Leipunsky had a warm and friendly manner of dealing with people. Even when he found it necessary to refuse a request he did it in a fashion which was so conciliatory that none of us ever felt hurt. Quite generally he exercised his administrative authority only rarely and left it to the men he trusted to carry on as they thought fit. Under his leadership the Institute began to flourish rapidly. It developed, so to speak, both in breadth and in depth. New departments were opened. A huge high-tension plant was constructed for atom-splitting experiments. The low-temperature laboratory installed plant for liquefying helium to obtain the lowest possible temperatures. The radio laboratory worked for the War Department on ultra-shortwave problems and occupied itself with the problem of the wireless transmission of power.

  Ruhemann, Shubnikov and I worked together to harness low-temperature technique in the services of the Soviet nitrogen industry. Our department for theoretical physics, which was in charge of Lev Davidovitch Landau, was in constant touch with leading theoretical physicists all over the world, and in 1934, for example, a physics conference was organized in Kharkov which was attended by Nils Bohr, the famous atomic physicist, and other well-known physicists. In short, the Institute was allowed to develop freely to the great advantage of the Soviet Union. Left in peace, the scientists of the Institute would have produced valuable creative results in due course. But they were not left in peace.

  The process of enforced conformity which had set in everywhere after the conclusion of the struggle in the Party and the destruction of the opposition did not touch UFTI until the beginning of 1935. UFTI was still an oasis of freedom in the desert of Stalinist despotism. We did not take much interest in politics. We lived together in a separate community on the territory of the Institute and we had very little to do with outsiders. Such an idyllic and exceptional state of affairs could obviously not go on indefinitely. It came to an end on the day that the new Director, Davidovitch, took over. For a very different reason that very day was symbolic of the suppression of freedom throughout the country. It was December 1, 1934, the day on which the young student Nikholaiyev shot and killed Sergei Mikhlailovitch Kirov, the Secretary of the Leningrad Party Committee and a member of the Politburo. It was the day on which the development began which led directly to the Great Purge.

  Davidovitch came into the Institute with the firm intention of showing what he could do. Our scientific liberty he regarded as license and he was determined to put an end to it—to “Sovietize” us, as he put it. As it was, he felt the Director had far too little authority. Outside his office he put up a notice: “Interviews Wednesdays and Fridays from 3 to 5.” At first
we were inclined to grin. No one took advantage of the invitation. Almost every problem which arose could be settled without approaching the Director at all. We therefore ignored him and got on with our work.

  But one day he summoned Professor Shubnikov, the head of our low-temperatures laboratory. Shubnikov appeared at the stated time and was left cooling his heels for an hour. He then left a message with the secretary saying that he had work to do and that if Davidovitch wanted him he would be in the laboratory. Shubnikov’s experience was only the first of a series of pompous and tactless actions which greatly irritated our scientific staff. Davidovitch was a small-souled man with a narrow outlook but an overweening ambition. He insisted on his own importance as Director and sought to introduce that atmosphere of subordination which had arisen in recent years in Soviet factories. But the men he had to deal with were scientists of note, used to the liberty of action, which was essential to their work. They were all loyal and devoted to their jobs, but they were not prepared to knuckle under to a stupid and narrow-minded bureaucrat who was not a scientist and knew nothing about scientific problems.

  In his fight to “Sovietize” us and enhance his own position Davidovitch even violated the sacred principles of Soviet management. The most important of Stalin’s famous “Six Points” for the increase of labor productivity was “oneman management.” Everyone was to have only one immediate superior: for the workman it was his foreman (or brigadier, as he was called); for the foreman it was his departmental manager—and so on up the hierarchy. A factory director, for example, was not allowed to give orders direct to a workman and short-circuit the established channels. But Davidovitch was anxious to set the assistants against the scientists and so he ignored this principle, and one day he went over the head of Professor Shubnikov and gave Ryabinin, Shubnikov’s assistant, some special secret work to do for the Red Army. Now such work had absolute priority over all other, but our staff and our equipment were limited and a laboratory chief had to plan his work so that his resources were properly apportioned to the various tasks. Egged on by Davidovitch, Ryabinin was constantly demanding this or that item of equipment for work about which his chief knew nothing. Professor Shubnikov then went to Davidovitch and protested.

  It was exactly what Davidovitch wanted. If he could maneuver the leading scientists of the Institute into apparent opposition to the work for national defense his game was won. He did the same sort of thing in the other laboratories and before long the scientific work of the Institute was almost paralyzed.

  Now, in every Soviet institution, whether factory, office or scientific institute, there is a secret sector with a double function. On the one hand it controls the political reliability of every member of the staff on behalf of the G.P.U., and on the other it supervises any work in the interests of national defense. For instance, mobilization orders are kept in its safe. Everyone who does any work of national importance must first be approved by the G.P.U. All our leading scientific men had been approved, and there was thus no reason for Davidovitch to go over Shubnikov’s head.

  Almost every day he created new cause for friction, and eventually my turn came. I was in charge of the building of our new experimental low-temperature station, and the work gave me a great deal of independence, though formally I was subordinate to the Director of the Institute, in this case Davidovitch. In reality my instructions came direct from the Commissariat for Heavy Industry in Moscow.

  The former Directors of the Institute had always let me go my own way. I kept either Obremov or Leipunsky informed about the work in casual conversations; sometimes they gave me a friendly word of advice, and sometimes they even intervened with the Central Committee against this or that Soviet institution which had treated us unfairly.

  When Davidovitch was appointed I visited him as a matter of politeness and informed him about the purpose of the new scientific combination and the stage of the building and assembly work.

  It was not long before a clash occurred. It was very difficult to obtain machine tools, and I had fought a long and persistent battle in Moscow to obtain eight lathes and fraising machines. The administrative apparatus of the Institute was overloaded with incompetent officials who were incapable of obtaining the materials and so forth that the Institute required, but they cast envious eyes on my little machine park. Davidovitch now stepped in and ordered me to hand over the machines to the Institute proper. It meant that a few months later, when the workshops of the experimental station were ready to begin, I should have to go to Moscow and fight another battle for them, with much less chance of success. On the other hand, if the workshops were idle for lack of machines the responsibility was mine. Naturally, I protested, but Davidovitch insisted the national interests made his action necessary, and after that there was nothing more to be said.

  He was rather afraid of me because he knew that I was often in Moscow and had the ear of the Commissariat, and so apparently he decided that I must go. There were plenty of grounds for friction. I had kept down the purely administrative staff of the experimental station to an absolute minimum, and I employed only eight people in my office while Davidovitch employed about thirty for the same work in his. My technique was to pay my office workers as high a wage as the law would allow and to demand efficiency in return. No doubt Davidovitch often had to listen to unfavorable comparisons between his administrative staff at the Institute and mine at the experimental station.

  However, it was not actually Davidovitch but the G.P.U. who raised the question of surveillance. This passion for guarding everything had developed into a cancer in the body of Soviet economy. The largest single occupation was that of guard (watchmen, in other countries), and I think I am right in saying that there were more of these guards than metalworkers and miners put together. Our Institute had survived for years with nothing more formidable than a night porter to watch over it. That made the G.P.U. unhappy and on a number of occasions they tried to force us to employ more guards. When Leipunsky, and later on Gey, refused, the G.P.U. adopted a ruse. They sent some of their agents to break into the Institute and steal some of the instruments. The next day they sent for Gey, who was Director at the time, and reproached him bitterly with his lack of watchfulness, and to clinch their case they showed him the stolen instruments. Then they demanded that a watch system should be introduced which would have cost the Institute 88,000 rubles a year. To steal instruments worth that’ amount thieves would have had to drive up to the Institute with a truck. The guards were to cost far more than their presence could possibly save. Gey tried to make this clear to the G.P.U., but then they brought up another argument: secret work was being done in the Institute. A spy might break in.

  In fact the department of the Institute in which secret work was carried on was guarded by steel doors and it was watched. And further, even if a spy had managed to break in he would have found out nothing. He would have seen nothing but a confusing jumble of glass piping and wires, a number of pumps and motors, and all the usual apparatus of a physics laboratory. What was really secret was the result of measurements, and that was in the heads of the physicists concerned. Even their notebooks would not have been of much use to an intruder, so that a spy—even if he were himself a trained physicist—would have gained no information of any importance by breaking into the Institute. To find out anything he would have had to approach the scientists themselves, and they were not watched by guards.

  But it was useless to reason with the G.P.U. All you got was slogans in return. The favorite one was “Revolutionary watchfulness.” Stalin had issued it and the G.P.U. applied it everywhere, whether there was anything worth watching or not. The country had to pay the costs of such indiscriminate watchfulness, and keep up a vast parasitic apparatus of guards.

  One day Davidovitch informed me that he considered that as a foreigner I ought not to hold such a responsible position; I would have to hand over control to a Russian Communist and continue my work under him.

  I remember my discussion with him
very well. He had received me in his flat late one evening. The flat had been furnished at the expense of the Institute and he had chosen the furniture—and in very bad taste. In recent years it had become usual in’ Soviet factories for the director to have his flat furnished at the expense of the factory. It was just a straw in the wind. He was the first at our Institute to introduce the disagreeable custom.

  “Very well, Comrade Davidovitch,” I replied, “perhaps it’s necessary for political reasons. I will gladly give up my present work and return to my normal work as a technical physicist. But I can’t continue to do the same work in a subordinate position.”

  “Does that mean that you propose to give up your work at the station?”

  “Of course.”

  “That sounds almost like a withdrawal of labor. You know what that means.”

  I kept my temper with difficulty.

  “Listen,” I replied, “a bad organizer is better than two good organizers trying to do the same job. If I were to continue the work while someone else took the responsibility there would inevitably be conflicts and the work would suffer. But I’m quite prepared to carry on for, say, a month after the appointment of the new man in order to introduce him to the work.”