I began to think over the problem of Rozhansky, and in the end I found a psychological explanation that seemed to fit the case. He was an old revolutionary, but he had been unable to resist the physical and moral pressure of the G.P.U. Perhaps he was ashamed of having been so weak, and therefore everyone who still resisted reminded him unpleasantly of his own weakness. I irritated his amour-propre by not confessing, and everything he said about loyalty to the Party and so on was merely a rationalization to justify his capitulation. Perhaps it would be better to avoid the subject in the future.
That afternoon Rozhansky proposed an intelligence game. One of us would choose a great historical character, a soldier, a scientist, an artist or a ‘statesman, and the other would try to find out who it was in ten questions to be answered only with yes or no.
This game whiled away the time satisfactorily for days. Only Rozhansky and I could play it because Denin had never even heard of most of the figures we chose. As we went on we chose less and less likely names and each did his best to test the intelligence and knowledge of his partner. We were delighted to find that we were more or less worthy opponents. Occasionally I felt a twinge of conscience toward Denin, fearing he might feel out of it and become resentful.
A few days later a clash did occur. Denin attacked the piece-rate system and I defended it.
“At one time we were all against piecework, the stop watch and speeding up,” he said. “Now they’re doing exactly the same thing here only much worse. It’s all piecework, and the workers are being badgered to death. We always used to boycott records and for a very good reason, too. But record breakers are heroes now. Those who can’t make the grade go to the wall and can starve.”
“Comrade Denin, don’t you see that it’s a very different matter whether you do piecework for a capitalist employer or for a workers’ state?”
“What does the ordinary worker get out of it? He’s got to work much harder and he can’t even buy himself a decent pair of shoes.”
“But the surplus which results from increased labor productivity now flows to the state: that is to say, it benefits the working class as a whole.”
“Well, in that case why are we all worse off now than we were before?”
“Certainly not on account of the piecework system. The surplus value from increased labor productivity doesn’t go into the pockets of an exploiting class, but we’ve all got tasks now which we didn’t have before. We’ve got to catch up industrially with the capitalist countries, build up a powerful industrial system and supply our collectivized agriculture with tractors, agricultural machinery and artificial fertilizers. We’ve also got to equip a powerful army to defend us if we’re attacked. The state therefore has to use a very big part of the national product to make the necessary investments and meet the armament expenses. Thus we can’t use so much for ourselves as we’d like to.”
“Comrade Weissberg, we’ve heard all that for ten years now. First it was: Just you carry out the Five-Year Plan and then we’ll have everything we need. But as soon as we’d carried out the Plan they had another one ready. And at the end of both of them we were much worse off than we were before. I understand quite well that we’ve got to put money aside for industrial investments, but what’s happened to all the money we put aside in the past ten years? Why aren’t we getting the benefit of it now? In 1931, 1932 and 1933 I couldn’t buy a fifth of what I could buy with my wages in 1924, 1925 and 1926. Something’s gone wrong, I tell you. Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse.”
Denin was no fool. I had often spoken with workers who had complained bitterly, but not one of them had put it as clearly as Denin. But perhaps they had all thought it but not dared to say so. Was prison the only place left where a man dared speak his mind?
After the evening meal the warder took us out one by one to the lavatory. Denin went first. During his absence Rozhansky warned me:
“Alexander Semyonovitch, be more careful. Don’t get mixed up in that sort of talk with Denin. The man’s unreliable.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t any proof, of course, but I’m quite certain he’s a G.P.U. spy. I have had a lot of experience in such matters and I’m seldom wrong.”
“Supposing he is, he’ll get nothing out of me. I’m not a counterrevolutionary, and therefore I never talk like one.”
“Comrade Weissberg, you’re naïve and don’t know the ropes. A spy has to provide the material he’s asked for. And if he can’t find any he’ll invent it. He’ll twist and distort what you really did say until it sounds counterrevolutionary.”
“Well, he could do that anyway. I couldn’t stop him.”
“If you didn’t talk to him he would find it much more difficult. But do what you like. I’m only advising you to. Be more careful.”
I thought a great deal about this warning. Up to then I had still a certain feeling that it was Rozhansky who was the G.P.U. agent. His attitude toward truth, for instance, was inexplicable to me. However, he was clearly an exceptional character, and I put down much that he said to his past experiences and to a certain prison neurosis. My first suspicions gradually diminished, and when he now warned me against Denin he won me over completely and I worked out a new explanation for his strange attitude. Perhaps he was afraid of Denin. Perhaps when he defended the G.P.U. he wanted to present himself as a loyal supporter of the Soviet Government. On the other hand, he had spoken with a conviction which was almost religious. He had glared at me as though I were an impious enemy who dared to raise his hand against the holy of holies. No, I didn’t think a man could play-act as well as that, and certainly not a man of Rozhansky’s temperament.
That night I found it very difficult to get off to sleep.
Was Denin, after all, the spy? And was Rozhansky afraid of him? Was he play-acting after all for Denin’s benefit? But he could wait until Denin was asleep and come over and talk to me then. Or perhaps he was just as much afraid of me as he was of Denin. In this atmosphere it was very easy to lose a sense of proportion. After the big trials even the people outside no longer knew which was which and what was what. Denin, on the other hand, seemed to speak his mind as though he had nothing to fear. Perhaps that was just because he was a spy, perhaps his frankness was a trap.
One thing at least was quite clear: Rozhansky was a very agreeable personality, a man of lively temperament and deep passions, and therefore on the whole less likely to be a spy, whereas Denin was a much less agreeable type.
I had probably been lying there awake for hours when I noticed that Rozhansky was awake too. He got up, came over noiselessly to my bed and sat down on the edge. We began a conversation in whispers.
“Comrade Rozhansky,” I said, “Denin is asleep and can’t hear what we say. Tell me: Did you really mean what you said to me the other day?”
“Most certainly I did. I don’t joke about such matters.”
“Well, tell me, then: What is the use of making false confessions?”
“Alexander Semyonovitch, none of us knows the entire significance of what is going on at the moment. The Old Guard of the revolution is being destroyed. There’s hardly a man left at liberty who was a member of the Party before 1917. Not only those who sympathized with the opposition, but all the others as well, the old revolutionaries, former Mensheviki, Social Revolutionaries, Anarchists—in short, anyone who was in the least political in the days of the revolution. It’s something like a natural catastrophe. Do you ask the hurricane where it comes from and where it’s going? And does it answer if you do? But you don’t ask; you just look around for cover. Tall trees are uprooted, but the reeds survive. The blades lie flat and when the whirlwind is past they stand up again. If you take my advice you’ll do the same. It’s your only chance of surviving.”
“But in whose interests, or in the interests of what, is the whole thing taking place at all?”
“That I don’t know. We can only hope that the man at the helm knows where he’s going. Perha
ps one day we shall all know, if we don’t go under before that. But it’s our duty to the movement and to ourselves to bend now.”
“I can’t see why you use the word ‘duty.’ How can it be our duty to abandon our honor and our human dignity for an aim we know nothing about?”
“Alexander Semyonovitch, you’re still fighting for the honor of a flag and a uniform. You’ve come to this country with out-of-date ideas. Like Lassalle, who let himself be killed in a duel by a Rumanian boyar to defend the honor of an aristocratic strumpet. We’ve long abandoned the aristocratic officer’s idea of honor. All we care about is the aim, the final aim.”
“That’s all very well, but that’s just what I can’t see, the final aim.” “We have lost sight of it at a bend in the road, but Stalin can see it. At the next bend we shall see it again too.”
I made no reply. I looked at the man. He had fallen away to a skeleton. In all probability he was consumptive. It seemed hardly likely he would survive to see the aim again. He seemed to guess my thoughts:
“Alexander Semyonovitch, perhaps I shall never be free again, but the feeling of dedicating myself completely to the cause which was the lodestar of my youth, and the knowledge that even in the darkest night I can’t go wrong give me peace of mind. The aim of our struggle was great enough for millions of the best men and women of all ages and all nations to sacrifice themselves to it, and it’s still great enough for me. But your attitude is senseless, Alexander Semyonovitch. We’re none of us strong enough to swim against the stream. The rocks swirling along with it will crush us if we try. Let yourself go with the current and you’ll find peace. Perhaps one day you’ll even reach the shore.”
He went back to his bed. I said nothing, but my mind was in a turmoil. My discussions with Rozhansky were upsetting all my established notions of good and evil, of truth and falsehood, and my criteria of judgment. I even began to doubt the justice of my own cause, though 1 realized that nothing was more dangerous than just that. I resisted the poison which his words dripped into my brain, but in the weeks that followed I felt his influence becoming stronger than my own will.
Two days after that discussion Ryeznikov called me out for an interrogation. He was in a good humor.
“Well,” he asked, “how do you feel in your new surroundings?” “Thank you,” I replied. “Very much better.”
“There, you see; we’re not inhuman. And now I hope you’re going to stop tormenting us, because that’s what it amounts to. We must come to an agreement and finish off your affair.”
He took a sheet of paper.
“Let’s take the Anders affair again. You have already admitted expressing Bukharinist views to him.”
“I certainly have not.”
“Alexander Semyonovitch, now don’t provoke us again. We can’t put up with that sort of thing indefinitely. You did hold those conversations with Anders. Anders admits it and so did you earlier on.”
“I admitted the discussions with Anders and that I uttered certain criticisms, but I most emphatically deny that I said anything counterrevolutionary or that what I said had anything to do with Bukharin.”
“So neither Leipunsky nor Bukharin ever gave you any instructions? You thought it all out for yourself?”
“That’s right, neither of them ever gave me any instructions.” “Did you know Bukharin?”
“I spoke to him on a number of occasions in the Commissariat. After all, he was our direct chief.”
“Who first introduced you to Bukharin and when was it?” “Leipunsky in the summer of 1931. We both went to Bukharin to get permission to found a journal of physics.”
In the summer of 1931 when I first arrived in the Soviet Union I found that the work of Russia’s physicists was being published almost exclusively in foreign journals, particularly in the German Zeitschrift für Physik. There was no central organ for Russian physics in any world language, and Russian physicists were unwilling to have their work published in Russian because they feared being isolated from European and American scientific life. The physicists of the world form one big family and scientific progress is furthered by the exchange of opinions. Soviet physicists in Leningrad and elsewhere were working on the same problems as their colleagues in Pasadena, Cambridge and Berlin. The slightest progress made by any experimental physicist anywhere in the world was immediately published and thus became the common property of all. They all read German and English, and many of them French as well, but none of them—apart from the Russians themselves—read Russian.
I now proposed the founding of a journal for Russian physics to be published in Kharkov in both German and English. My Institute colleagues took up the idea at once and it was arranged that I should go to Moscow to put the idea before the Central Committee. As I had not been long in Russia I spoke very little Russian; Leipunsky went with me. Bukharin received us in a very friendly fashion. Leipunsky explained the whole proposal in Russian, and, turning to me, Bukharin spoke first English and then German, and I was astonished at his command of both foreign languages. His political career had already ended and the Party gave him only relatively unimportant posts. At that time he was in charge of the scientific sector of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry, but he was not an administrator and organizer like Piatakov. He was more of a thinker, even an artist. I often wondered how a man as sensitive as he undoubtedly was had ever been able to stand the bitter struggle through which all leaders of the Party must go. For a time he had led the Party with Stalin, and fought with him against Trotsky and Zinoviev. Up to that time he had been second only to Stalin but after the destruction of the Trotsky and Zinoviev oppositions Stalin had pushed him to one side.
He was a small, slightly built man with delicate features, and his manner was restful, almost gentle. He was soon won to my idea, and he immediately wrote a letter of recommendation to the Central Committee. Two weeks later the Central Committee gave its consent for the publication of the journal and I became its first editor.
After that I met Bukharin on various occasions in connection with Institute work, and he was always very willing to help us. He struck me as being out of place in the center of Soviet industry. Once I went into his office and saw an oil painting on an easel. It was a landscape, and Bukharin asked me whether I liked it. I said I did, and he told me it was his work. I think that picture and another one were exhibited in the Moscow Art Gallery that year. He also occupied himself a great deal with literary work, particularly since he had been forced into the background and no longer wrote on economic or political subjects. Later on he left the Commissariat for Heavy Industry and became editor of the government organ Izvestia. In 1936 when the first big trials began he was abroad, recuperating on the French Mediterranean coast. Platschek met him subsequently in Copenhagen. A few months later after Radek, giving evidence at the trial of Piatakov, had denounced him as the leader of a counterrevolutionary organization, he too was arrested. In the spring of 1938 Bukharin was shot.
He knew Stalin as well as anyone did. He had been the man’s friend. Did he think him incapable of such crimes? Or did he reckon on sentimental recollection of past friendship? It had always been said that Stalin was very fond of Bukharin; in any case, it did not prevent his sacrificing the man to consolidate his own power. Bukharin was not the only one who returned to his death in naïve consciousness of his innocence. In one of the first trials a witness mentioned the name of General Putna as a conspirator and a spy. At that time Putna was Soviet Military Attaché in London. Hearing about it, he rushed back to Moscow at once to clear himself of such a monstrous charge. He was arrested with Marshal Tukhachevsky, Yakir and the others and executed with them. Would a guilty man have returned, knowing that his guilt had already been denounced to the authorities? He can hardly have believed in the guilt of those who had already been tried and convicted on similar charges. And yet, knowing them innocent, why did he return and court deadly danger for himself? Did he believe that his own loyalty and devotion would save him?
Ryeznikov carefully noted down the dates and times of my interviews with Bukharin, and seemed to attach great importance to quite trivial matters. He urged me again and again to remember every single detail. Now in the latter years of my stay in the Soviet Union I had spent a great deal of time in the various offices of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry in connection with our experimental station, and it was quite impossible for me to say exactly when a particular meeting had taken place. All I could do was to give a general account, but Ryeznikov wasn’t satisfied.
“You’ve got a very good memory when it’s a question of finding harmless explanations for suspicious things. You’ll just have to remember the details of these matters—in your own interest.”
“Citizen Examiner,” I explained patiently, “I met Bukharin on a number of occasions, but it was several years ago and always in connection with the affairs of our Institute. Bukharin was then still in charge of the scientific department of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry. When he left I never saw him again. And that was absolutely all there was to it.”
“You won’t succeed in convincing us of that. The affairs of your institution were merely a blind to cover up your secret work. The sabotage of the past few years which almost brought us to the verge of ruin was all camouflaged in such harmless forms.”
I made no answer.
“You admit waging a struggle against the rationing system.”
“No, that’s going much too far. I waged no struggle against the rationing system, but I did criticize it and say that it was out of date. After the collectivization the income of all citizens was regulated by the state, and there were hardly any sources of income which were not under the state control. In such a situation therefore—and I certainly often said that—it was quite pointless to regulate the distribution of commodities in any other way than by money. The state could easily fix the consumption of each individual merely by regulating the amount of money he earned. If the sum total of money income is adapted adequately to the sum total of consumer goods available by a proper system of prices then ration cards become unnecessary. Ration cards are then only a sort of secondary money. I regarded that as unnecessary.”
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