The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  When a German engineer named Suckling appeared among the accused in the Kemerov trial, which preceded and prepared the way for the Piatakov trial, it created something like a sensation. Everyone both abroad and in the Soviet Union wondered how they had managed it. People in the Soviet Union were not surprised that Soviet citizens should confess their guilt even when they were obviously innocent. After all, they were absolutely helpless against the murderous G.P.U. machine, and their wives and children and other near relatives were available as hostages. If they broke away during the public trial and tore aside the veil of lies they could expect only torture and certain death. With a foreigner it was different. He could appeal to his embassy for protection. If he revealed the methods by which false confessions were extorted there would be an international scandal. So why did he confess? Perhaps there was something in it after all.

  Incidentally, I met this star witness for the prosecution in the Gestapo prison in Lublin some years later. He had also been extradited. He told me that his confession had been false from beginning to end and that he had made it under pressure, though he refused to say what sort of pressure, and I got the impression that the G.P.U. knew something disreputable about his private life and used it as a lever against him.

  To have a foreigner either as witness or as complaisant accused in a show trial was calculated to heighten the credibility of the indictment, and that was why the G.P.U. took so much trouble with me in the first six months of 1937.

  Ryeznikov never said frankly what he had in mind. He just made dark hints.

  “You’re funny, Weissberg, you know,” he said on one occasion. “You admit thoughts hostile to the state, but then you want us to believe that you went in for counter-revolution all on your own. Now that won’t do. We’ve got to know all about your organization. You weren’t just a bungling amateur. You were a leading figure, and you’ve still got a big role to play.”

  “Oh, what’s that?” I asked.

  “You can help us to land a really big fish in Moscow so that we can root out the last vestiges of the counterrevolutionary network in our country. If you do you will be rendering us a great service—and you won’t have cause to regret it.”

  “Do you think counterrevolutionary activity will ever cease here?” I asked with assumed naïveté.

  “If I didn’t believe that I shouldn’t be here,” he replied seriously. “We are destroying the class enemy and in doing so we are defending the basis of a classless society. Our Party increases its watchfulness against the class enemy and crushes him with a mailed fist whenever he attempts to raise his head, but at the same time it gives this country the freest democratic constitution in the world.”

  I often had to suffer such declamatory oratory from Ryeznikov. He was only repeating what he read in the newspapers, of course, but it was very galling not to be able to reply freely. I was in much the same position as the unfortunate collectivized peasants in the famine year 1933 when they opened their newspapers and read all about the well-being Stalin had brought to the Russian village—while they were chewing bark from the trees.

  After six hours of “interrogation” Shalit rose and pressed a button. I imagined that at last I was to be taken back to my cell, but no: a few minutes later in walked Ryeznikov, looking well shaven and fresh. I was half dead. I had sat on a stool for fourteen hours without being allowed to stand up and stretch my limbs. Standing up against a wall for hours and hours on end is bad enough, but sitting down is even more painful. When you stand at least you can change the weight from one foot to the other, but in sitting the tension is never relieved. Everything around the groin begins to swell and violent pains set in.

  Ryeznikov let me get up to go into his office. I staggered after him.

  “Citizen Examiner,” I said, “I am physically incapable of continuing this endless interrogation. Please interrupt it now and let me get some rest.”

  “No,” he replied, “we’ve lost too much time already. We must bring the examination to a satisfactory conclusion, but as soon as you’ve signed the deposition you can go.”

  And then it began all over again. For two hours he shouted at me. I hardly answered. At eight o’clock in the morning he rang for the guard.

  “Take this man back to his cell,” he ordered.

  I followed the guard as though in a dream, thankful that at last I could go “home.” I was taken below and allowed to go to the lavatory. Then I was given my food. There was more of it than usual. When I had finished—it was about ten minutes in all—the cell door opened again: interrogation.

  Ryeznikov made me sit down again on the stool and then he paid no attention to me at all. He received his subordinates, made telephone calls and went through various dossiers. From time to time he asked: “When are you finally going to confess, you son of a bitch, eh?”

  When he spoke I raised my head wearily and looked at him, but I made no answer and then my head sank down again. If I seemed to be nodding off Ryeznikov would wake me up with a thunderous shout.

  “Wake up! Have you taken leave of your senses? Going to sleep in the office of an examiner? Do you want to make a mockery of the Soviet power? Confess finally, and then you can go.”

  “This isn’t an interrogation any more, Citizen Examiner,” I muttered. “It’s blackmail. Please give me pencil and paper so that I can write to the Prosecutor. This is torture.”

  “During the interrogation all you’ve got to do is to answer questions and make statements. Afterward you can write to the Prosecutor as much as you like.”

  “When will the examination be over?”

  “When you’ve confessed your guilt, and not before.”

  “I can’t confess my guilt because I’m not guilty. So does that mean the examination will never end?”

  “Don’t you worry, you’ll confess, all right. The examination has now entered a new phase. You are no longer merely charged with counterrevolutionary agitation with words and conversations, but with facts: terrorism, terrorist attempts, diversionary activity and espionage.”

  “Citizen Examiner, I am quite sure you know the truth about me already. You know perfectly well all these wild charges are inventions from beginning to end. What interest have you got in making me confess untruths?”

  Ryeznikov had a new outburst of anger. He banged on the desk with his fist and shrieked at me.

  “You swine! You fascist provocateur! Do you want to challenge the Soviet power even here? Are you daring to suggest we want to extort invented confessions? Say that once again and I’ll report you at once to the chief and you’ll be thrown into Punishment Cell Number 3.”

  I made no answer. Rozhansky had already told me enough about Punishment Cell Number 3. I sat there on the stool only half conscious and hoping at least that when evening came they would send me back to Kholodnaya Gora. During the day the examiners relieved each other every four hours or so. At six o’clock I was taken down below again for about ten minutes. The cells in the basement had cement floors and were quite empty. As soon as the door closed behind me I lay down on the floor to stretch my limbs and relax. Within a minute I was asleep. I was waked up at once by a warder who brought my food. I wanted to go without food and sleep instead, but he refused to let me. He also forbade me to lie down on the floor. I obeyed him. I did not dare to offer open resistance to an order. At the end of ten minutes I was taken back to Ryeznikov.

  I still hoped that when night fell the interrogation would be broken off and I would be allowed to sleep. I could not believe that they intended to go on and on until I had agreed to sign. Rozhansky had said as much, but after his exposure I had no longer believed him. Sitting before Ryeznikov, I thought with horror of my talks with Rozhansky. Yes, he had been a tool of the G.P.U., but perhaps he had wished me well after all. In any case, his warnings were coming true. At first they had wanted only minor admissions: anti-Soviet agitation, opposition to the secret work of the Institute and so on. Now it was terrorism, diversionary activity and espionage.
Perhaps after all it would have been better to have taken Rozhansky’s advice and signed everything. It was no use thinking of that now; it was too late. There was nothing worse than diversionary activity and espionage. They couldn’t raise the stakes any higher than that. The time for compromise had passed, and all I could do was try to hold out. Perhaps they would give up in the end.

  At midnight Ryeznikov was relieved by Shalit, and then their intentions were perfectly clear. A new phase of the examination had certainly opened up: the endless interrogation. I learned later that this was a very popular technique with the G.P.U. The prisoners called it “the conveyer,” the endless moving band. An accused was kept under interrogation day and night until he broke down. As the examiners were regularly relieved, it could go on indefinitely. In the years 1936 and 1937 the G.P.U. rarely used direct physical torture. As I learned later, physical violence toward an accused had first to be sanctioned from above. When the mass arrests began at the end of August, 1937, physical maltreatment became general. Up to that period the “conveyer” was the utmost physical pressure they were allowed to apply. It was enough. It was as painful as any torture. But later on it had one grave disadvantage—it took up a lot of time. Until I experienced it myself I did not believe that a strong-willed man could be made to capitulate by mere interrogation alone. Some prisoners had even held out under torture, but I knew only one man who managed to resist the “conveyer.”

  The “conveyer” worked automatically and silently. After a few days a prisoner’s limbs began to swell. The muscles in the neighborhood of the groin became extremely painful and it was an agony to move. The examiner need do nothing. Shalit took pleasure in hammering away at his victim, but it wasn’t necessary. All the examiners had to do was to wait patiently. Time was their ally. For the prisoner suffering the tortures of the “conveyer” there was no break. If there were some point at which the torture must cease then a prisoner might be able to summon up all his moral strength and will power to hold out until then. But there was no such point. I can hold out another night, and another night and another night, he might think. But what then? What’s the good of it? They have all the time in the world. At some point or other I must physically collapse.

  In the second night Shalit hammered away at me for eight solid hours. It was a record even for him. I made no attempt to interrupt or answer him. My eyes were two balls of pain in a head that felt as though it would split open—but for the iron band being drawn tighter and tighter around it. For four hours Shalit repeated his favorite question:

  “Tell us about the Trotskyist, fascist, counterrevolutionary, terrorist, espionage and diversionary organizations which you built up on the territory of the Soviet Union.”

  At the end of four hours he called in a guard and left the room for a short while, perhaps to go to the lavatory. When he returned he went on again, but this time the sentence was rather different. I can’t remember the exact text, but in addition he shouted:

  “On your knees before the Soviet power, you fascist son of a bitch.”

  When Weissband relieved him at eight o’clock in the morning I was almost unconscious. Weissband allowed me to stand up for a few minutes. That was a tremendous relief. I am not a doctor and I know very little about pathology so I find it very difficult to describe the physical changes which take place during the “conveyer.” For the first few hours the immobility is a very great strain and after a while pains begin to make themselves felt all over the body. At this stage any change in position is a great relief.

  I was not taken down for my food until nine o’clock. Lavatory, wash and the meal all had to be over in ten minutes. Then I was taken back to the endless band. Weissband adopted a friendly tone and sought to make me give way—in my own interests.

  “You can’t stand it, Alexander Semyonovitch. What’s the use? You’ll ruin yourself physically, that’s all. And in the end you’ll have to give way. So why not now?”

  “But what can I do, Citizen Weissband? I can’t confess to things I haven’t done. Why should I deceive the Soviet power? Who would benefit by that?”

  Weissband made no attempt to refute my arguments, and I had the impression that he agreed with me. He just did his duty and he didn’t torture me more than he could help. He even—very much against his instructions, I am sure, for none of the others did it—occasionally allowed me to stand up for a few minutes to relieve the agony.

  In the afternoon Ryeznikov arrived in high good humor.

  “How much longer are you going to torment us?” he asked jovially. “We have to suffer with a bandit like you, you know. Come on now, let’s have a little peace at last.”

  I did not react at all to his mockery. He rang up someone on the phone. Dully I listened to what he said. Apparently the other man was a G.P.U. official who had been transferred to Kharkov and hadn’t found quarters.

  “Leave the old woman where she is and move into a hotel,” Ryeznikov advised him. “You’ll find plenty of willing wenches here.”

  I wondered vaguely why he spoke so openly about women in front of me until I realized that I was not a human being for him, but just a something which was being operated on and pressed into the right shape. He continued his talk and it was rather like lifting the lid of a cloaca. He was a strong and lusty fellow who liked his food and his drink, and apparently his favorite pastime was wenching. Why should he pretend to be anything different in front of me? He enjoyed life according to his lights. The only thing was that he had chosen a profession in which he was compelled to break human beings or be broken himself. However, it didn’t seem to worry him much. He carried out his instructions and left the responsibility to the people who gave them.

  A time was to come later on when many of the G.P.U. examiners ended up in their own cells, and then I got to know quite a lot of them from a different angle. Their psychological attitude was generally very similar to that of Ryeznikov.

  He did his best to make his work amusing. He was a prolific inventor of new abuse and it all had some sexual background. If he thought up another good one he was obviously pleased. All this spate of dirty abuse was poured out over me and the other prisoners at a time when the Party and the unions were campaigning up and down the country against the use of bad language as being uncultured, and an evil survival from the days of capitalist decay. Enlightened proletarians did not swear; it was just as important to stop using bad language as it was to learn to read and write. The campaign met with a great deal of success and even the most backward elements began to be won over. Not so the G.P.U. Bad language and foul abuse were used systematically and quite deliberately toward prisoners as part of the whole apparatus of intimidation. At the same time most G.P.U. men seemed to take a delight in it, and that was true even of many high G.P.U. officials whose rank was perhaps equal to that of a general in the Red Army.

  The method was ineffective where I was concerned. The humiliation was theirs, not mine, and it even made a change in the monotony. It was sometimes amusing to observe Ryeznikov trying to find some new heights to which to rise—or new depths to which to sink. It was worse with Shalit. He was a really nasty creature and unimaginative at that. He would use the same filthy expression a hundred times in succession, just as he repeated ad nauseam everything else he said.

  On the third day of the “conveyer” my condition worsened rapidly and soon became intolerable. The pains in the small of my back intensified to agony. From time to time 1 could just stand it no longer and I jumped up. There came a point when threats lost their efficacy. Weissband was the most humane of the three, and he would let me stand for a while. Even Ryeznikov relented a little when he saw that I was on the verge of collapse.

  The food I was given in this period was much better than usual, and the soup in particular was more nourishing. From the fourth day I was no longer taken down below for my meals; they were brought up to me and I had to eat them there. In this way I lost even that precious ten minutes and the walk up and down. When I had to go t
o the lavatory the examiner would accompany me, watch in hand. I was not allowed to close the lavatory door and the examiner stood in front of me the whole time. A few weeks earlier a prisoner had succeeded in hanging himself in the lavatory.

  Sometimes when I was having my food the departmental chief, Captain Tornuyev, would come in and in his broad, jovial voice he would encourage me to eat up everything.

  “Don’t leave a thing on the plate,” he would say. “If you don’t eat we’ll have to feed you forcibly, and you don’t want that, and neither do we.”

  I wondered why he thought it necessary to threaten me. At least the “conveyer” did not rob me of my appetite. I ate willingly and, in addition, it was a welcome interruption. Later on I learned why he was so anxious that I should eat: it appeared that a prisoner could greatly shorten his sufferings by refusing to eat or drink. After a day or so he just fell off the stool into blessed unconsciousness. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that or I would have tried it. Subsequently I went on hunger strike several times for various less important reasons.

  In the fourth night I was suddenly seized with a complete bodily cramp. Weissband was in charge at the time and it quite frightened him.

  “What’s the matter, Alexander Semyonovitch?” he asked. “Don’t you feel well?”