The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  Davidovitch didn’t want to dismiss me because he knew very well how difficult it would be to find someone else to do the work efficiently. Commissariats and trusts fought tooth and nail for the services of good men, and if I had been a Russian I should have had a more responsible job. Even so, the building of our experimental station was a complicated business and it required scientific knowledge in addition to organizing ability. He fought shy of taking the responsibility for getting rid of me. Construction work was difficult in the Soviet Union in those days. Everything was in short supply. If you had enough cement you were short of timber. If you had both you couldn’t get the transformer you needed. If for the moment there were no supply difficulties you couldn’t get workers. Or perhaps you had workers and your credits hadn’t come through and you had to dismiss them because you couldn’t pay their wages. And when the building was finished the assembly difficulties would begin. Davidovitch himself was responsible for the building of our high-tension station, and the work had already been dragging on for five years, although it was not one-fifth of that involved in the experimental station. He knew perfectly well that if my dismissal were followed by an obvious decline in results the Party would want to know the reason why. He therefore dropped the matter for the moment and intrigued through the Party to make me give way. In the end I did.

  Things in the Institute went from bad to worse until finally our leading scientists decided to stand it no longer. They came together and wrote a complaint to the Central Committee of the Party and asked for the removal of Davidovitch and the reappointment of Leipunsky, who was then working in Cambridge at the Rutherford Laboratory. The scientific sector of the Party Control Commission was at that time under Modest Yessipovitch Rubinstein, a man who had traveled all over the world and spoke seven languages fluently. He was one of those Russian Marxists of the old school who happily combined the best traditions of Russian culture with those of the West. I knew him quite well and I explained to him what had happened at the Institute. He discussed the matter with a representative of the Central Committee and it was decided that a scientist should be Director of the Institute. That decision automatically meant the removal of Davidovitch. Unfortunately, it was months before we heard about it, and in the meantime the struggle went on, to the great discomfort of all of us and the great detriment of the work. Davidovitch launched a counterattack; he informed the Kharkov G.P.U. that Weissberg and Landau were the leaders of a conspiracy to sabotage the work for the Red Army. The comrades in the Party cell at the Institute hesitated; they didn’t yet know which side was going to win: the Director, who probably had the backing of the G.P.U., or the scientists of the Institute, who might be supported by the Central Committee of the Party in Moscow. Even the Kharkov G.P.U. was cautious and it made no attempt to arrest either Landau or me.

  Davidovitch was quite convinced that I was the ringleader of what he called the conspiracy. The protest to the Central Committee had been very cautiously formulated, and that made Davidovitch suspect my hand behind it. He found it difficult to believe that anyone who was not a member of the Party could have managed it so adroitly. Even for communications addressed to the highest Party organs in the Soviet Union there was a settled ritual. For instance, it was, ipso facto, a counterrevolutionary act to draw up a collective document signed by eight or more people. This was regarded as the first step toward political organization, and was counter-revolution. In order to avoid this trap we made several appeals, each of which was signed by no more than three persons, which was quite in order. Collective documents were, of course, often drawn up, but only by the Party; for instance, when all the ‘members of this or that collective farm signed a letter to the Beloved Leader and Father of the People thanking him for the happy life he had given them.

  Davidovitch was anxious for arrests. He felt, quite rightly, that once someone was arrested that would start the ball rolling, but the Kharkov G.P.U. was not sure of itself; it was unwilling to risk the arrest of Landau, who was a scientist with a world reputation, and it was equally unwilling to arrest me, because I was a foreigner, and in those days they preferred not to arrest foreigners. In this situation the G.P.U. preferred smaller game and it arrested a young assistant named Koretz who worked under Landau and had supported us in our struggle against Davidovitch.

  First of all Davidovitch had him expelled from the Komsomol. Allegedly he had made an attempt to conceal his social origin. He had drawn up two accounts of his past life, one, a very long and detailed affair, for the Komsomol, and the other, a briefer version, for the Institute. In his longer account he had mentioned that during the civil war, and driven by force of circumstances, his mother had traded for a short while to keep the family—she had sold potatoes and apples on the market. In the shorter version given to the Institute this detail had been omitted. However, the more de tailed biography was at the disposal of the Director and the Party Secretary of the Institute at any time, and so Koretz thought he had done everything which was required of him, as, indeed, he had. But Davidovitch wanted to deal our group a blow somehow and so he brought the matter before the Party and Koretz was expelled from the Komsomol as “a socially undesirable element.” A few weeks later he was arrested.

  A few days after the arrest the usual Party witch-burning was organized, and one member of the cell after the other rose to condemn Koretz as a secret enemy of the people, a foreign spy and so on—all in tones of the deepest conviction. At first I decided not to go to the meeting, but Komarov, who as an old Communist knew the atmosphere in the Party very well, finally persuaded me to do so.

  “Alex, if you don’t go it will be regarded as a demonstration. Perhaps they’ll arrest you too, or expel you from the country. This conflict won’t be settled here in Kharkov, but in Moscow. The Central Committee will speak the final word. If you stage a demonstration, you will only be playing into the fellow’s hands. The G.P.U. would regard it as a provocation.”

  It was perfectly true and I allowed myself to be persuaded. I did not speak against Koretz, but when the resolution condemning him was put I raised my hand with the rest. I still experience a flush of shame and discomfort every time I think of it. When I look back on my whole Party career, including the time I spent in the Soviet Union, I can find nothing I am more ashamed of.

  The arrest of Koretz drove our group “underground.” We were depressed and miserable and no one dared to say a word. Davidovitch was openly triumphant. Our research work suffered and I wrote to Moscow. My letter was acknowledged, but I was given no inkling of their intentions. Two months later Davidovitch felt strong enough to dismiss me. At that time I had business in Moscow, but he refused to let me go unless I gave him my word of honor not to speak to Piatakov or anyone else in Moscow about the situation. I refused and decided not to go. Instead, I rang up Moscow on the phone and informed them of the situation. A week later Davidovitch appointed the new Director of Construction and I continued my work under him. One afternoon—I had just come from the site and was lying down on the couch—my mother-in-law came in smiling happily.

  “Alex, do you know who’s just come back? Koretz!”

  He had been released that morning on instructions from Moscow. The members of our cell began to feel ashamed of themselves and to wish they had never denounced him. Obviously, he couldn’t be a spy or an enemy of the people, or anything of the sort, if Moscow ordered his release. The general feeling now turned against Davidovitch. The Central Committee in Moscow was stronger than the local G.P.U. in Kharkov.

  It was still a few months before Davidovitch was finally removed. Leipunsky was recalled from Cambridge and appointed Director in his place. That was in the autumn of 1935. At this triumph of good over evil, my courage rose again and I decided to stay on in the Soviet Union. I was bitterly to regret it.

  That was the story of the conflict in the Institute. It represented my first clash with the G.P.U., and from that point to my subsequent arrest was more or less a straight path. The G.P.U. were not prepar
ed to forgive me my triumph.

  In the interrogations which now followed Ryeznikov tried to make me admit that the dispute in the Institute had been a conspiracy led by me to sabotage the work of military importance carried on there. I resisted obstinately. He shouted and raved, and on one occasion he interrogated me for eighteen hours on end, but still I refused. One Friday evening instead of sending me back to my cell he had me locked in the washroom. The floor was under water and there was nowhere to sit down. In one corner was a foot-rack and I lay down on that. He left me there for fourteen hours and the next day—it was Saturday—he called me up to ask whether I had changed my mind. When I refused he sent me back to the washroom. In the meantime the foot-rack had been removed and I had to stand the whole time in about an inch of water. I hoped that at night I should be taken back to my cell, because on Sundays there were no interrogations, but he left me there until Monday morning.

  I could not lie down in the cold water and I just had to stand. Early on Monday I was taken back to Ryeznikov. It is difficult to describe how I felt and I must have looked terrible.

  “But, Alexander Semyonovitch!” he exclaimed when I was brought in, “what’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”

  “Oh, no,” I replied, “not in the least. This is just what a man looks like when he’s been left standing upright in water for forty hours, that’s all.”

  “How was that? Weren’t you taken back to your cell on Saturday?”

  “No, I wasn’t, and when I knocked the warder said he had no instructions to do so.”

  “Why yes, of course, I quite forgot. Forgive me, Alexander Semyonovitch.”

  Of course he had done it quite deliberately, and was now mocking me, but I still refused to admit defeat. He tried a different approach.

  “Well, let us take a look at your friends, Alexander Semyonovitch. Lev Davidovitch Landau, for example, is a declared enemy of the people and a Trotskyist. I hope you won’t deny that.”

  I made no answer. Landau was a highly complicated and interesting personality. He was the enfant terrible of Soviet physics. Even his appearance was quixotic. Solemn occasions always brought out the naughty boy in him. There were many dignified and bearded old gentlemen in the Academy of Science, but the twenty-seven-year-old Landau was head and shoulders above them. Although he was a brilliant theoretical physicist, he was never elected a member, probably because he never lost an opportunity to poke fun at their pompous dignity. Once after we had all listened to a lecture by Joffe he observed loudly:

  “Extraordinarily interesting what Joffe says, extraordinarily interesting.” And after a pregnant pause: “What a pity it’s got no relation at all to human experience.”

  We all laughed, but Landau, becoming suddenly serious, then proved his point trenchantly.

  One day someone high up in the Soviet counsels got the brilliant idea of establishing a hierarchy for scientists. A Government Commission was appointed with subcommissions in the provinces, to give each scientist his proper status. The highest grade was “Doctor of Science,” and the lowest was “Underscientist”—there was also an “Overscientist.” As the leading scientific institute in the Ukraine we came under fire, of course, and a commission arrived and discussed the whole important matter for weeks on end with the Director. On April 1st, an official prikaz appeared on the Institute notice board recording the result of their labors. The list was simply grotesque. Leading physicists were set down as “Underscientists” and modest assistants found themselves “Doctors of Science.” Many of those who had been harshly treated stormed off to the office to protest, only to find that the Director knew nothing at all about it. Inquiries revealed that Landau had brought in the list and told the Director’s secretary that it was official, and the innocent girl had stamped the document and put it up on the notice board. Everyone, except Landau, had forgotten that it was April Fools’ Day.

  He always seemed to have time for such tomfoolery and we rarely saw him working, but it was in this period that he wrote his most important treatises, and their production seemed to be much easier for him than their reading was to us. Needless to say, his fooling could sometimes be very tiresome, but there was no malice in it, and he was a man of great force of character. When he came up against hypocrisy in others he dissolved it with caustic mockery. It was quite clear that sooner or later he would come in conflict with the dictatorship and its bureaucracy, which was utterly humorless and had not the faintest understanding of humor in others. In addition, he was a man of great moral and civic courage. He said things openly and loudly which made less courageous mortals go pale even to be near when they were spoken. For a long time nothing but his great scientific reputation had saved him from the attentions of the G.P.U. Apparently that was over now. For the G.P.U. everyone who retained a trace of independence in his thought, or who had not entirely lost the critical faculty, was ipso facto an enemy of the people. Landau certainly came in that category.

  “Citizen Examiner,” I replied, “I don’t understand why you should ask me what sort of person Landau is. He’s a well-known Soviet scientist and you must know all the details about him far better than I possibly could.”

  “We want you to admit that all your friends were enemies of the people.”

  “But if Landau is an enemy of the people why don’t you arrest him?”

  “For the moment he is protected by his international reputation as a scientist, but that won’t help him much longer.”

  “Good, but in any case, Landau was never a personal friend of mine though I knew him quite well and liked him.”

  “Right, then we’ll take one of your bosom friends, the English counterrevolutionary Martin Ruhemann. What do you know about him? When did he first begin to work for the British Intelligence Service, for instance?”

  “It’s news to me that Martin Ruhemann is a counterrevolutionary.”

  “Well, what is he, then? A Communist perhaps?”

  “No, he’s an English liberal with strong leanings toward socialism.” “Don’t try to throw sand in my eyes, Alexander Semyonovitch. Is the English liberal bourgeoisie in favor of the socialist revolution, perhaps? You are either for the revolution or against it, and if you are against it you are a counterrevolutionary. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I must confess that I’m helpless against logic of that sort. I always understood a counterrevolutionary was a man who actively fought to overthrow the revolution, and I didn’t think the term included a British liberal who quite definitely sympathizes with what he calls the Soviet experiment.”

  “Don’t play the innocent. You know perfectly well Martin Ruhemann is a secret enemy who under a mask of friendly sympathy carries out the dirty work of the British Intelligence Service. All right, let’s leave Ruhemann and come to the leader of the whole gang, Alexander Ilyitch Leipunsky....”

  I must say that this was a blow that knocked all my concepts sideways. So Leipunsky was an enemy of the people too!

  “Now there’s one thing that isn’t quite clear to us,” Ryeznikov went on. “Who recruited whom? Did you recruit Leipunsky or did he recruit you?”

  “Did he recruit me for what?”

  “Why, for the counterrevolutionary Bukharinist organization, of course.”

  “I didn’t recruit him, and he didn’t recruit me. If you go on like this there’ll be nothing but enemies of the people left in the Institute. Landau, the most prominent theoretical physicist, is an enemy, you tell me. And now Leipunsky, a Communist and the son of working people, honored and respected by the Party and one of the best types of the new Soviet intelligentsia. It’s fantastic. Who is any good, then?”

  Ryeznikov jumped up, banged his fist on the desk and began to storm and rave.

  “You son of a bitch. You foreign bandit. You dirty traitor. You think you can carry on counterrevolutionary agitation even in the office of the official examiner. Perhaps you’d like to go back to the washroom? I can leave you there for a week easily.”

 
I said nothing. I was already tired and physically exhausted. The idea of going back to the washroom instead of to my cell horrified me.

  At that moment the door opened and a tall but corpulent G.P.U. officer entered. Ryeznikov sprang to his feet and I got up too. It was the new leader of the department, Captain Tomuyev. Azak had gone. Later on I learned that he had been swept up in the wave of arrests which followed the suicide of the chief of the Kharkov G.P.U., Maso.

  “I beg to report, Comrade Captain, that this man here, Alexander Semyonovitch Weissberg, is the most obstinate enemy of the people ever to come into my hands. There’s nothing to be done with him.”

  “Nothing to be done with him, Comrade Lieutenant? Come, come. We can still break every bone in his body, I hope.”

  These promising words were spoken in a tone of marked amiability and good humor. And when the captain had gone Ryeznikov himself became more friendly.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch,” he said, “later on you’ll understand how much I am doing for you. I’m trying to save you from a terrible fate, and you regard me as your enemy. However, I can see that you’re no longer in a fit state to think things over calmly now. Go back to your cell now and have a good sleep.”

  I breathed again. The relief at being taken back to my cell instead of to the wet washroom was so great that I experienced a feeling of real gratitude toward my tormentor. Once in my cell, I slept like a log. Even the loud twittering of the birds did not wake me up, and I first opened my eyes when the warder brought the tea. My head was clear and I felt much better. I recalled the amiable and good-humored tone in which Captain Tornuyev had uttered his terrible words. Azak had been an intellectual; Tornuyev was obviously a peasant.

  It was not easy to follow Ryeznikov’s tactics; he changed them so often. Now he was asking me to denounce my friends as counterrevolutionaries. I decided to ask him frankly. When I was called out for interrogation I found him apparently in a good mood.