The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  Then I would go back to the bed and lie watching the gradually fading light. Sometimes the sad strains of Ukrainian folk songs sounded far into the night. I had dreams, usually of happy things: memories of my youth; playing ball on the Ramberg; walking on the terrace of the Grundlsee with the wonderful view over to the glistening massif of the Backenstein. Yes, life had been beautiful.

  We had not had too much money, but enough, and we were sensitive enough to enjoy the beauties of nature and works of art. We had worked hard, played hard and kissed the girls. What in God’s name had made us want to change the world? What unrest had entered into our blood? Was it a feeling of sympathy with those whose lives were such a bitter struggle? And yet we had numbered ordinary working men among our acquaintances, and they had had their Sundays and their holidays, and sometimes they had owned a motorcycle or a collapsible boat. And they had enjoyed skiing in the mountains.

  And how did life here compare with it? A constant mad rush, and a total lack of freedom even in private life. Even recreation was fully organized. There was very little left that people could call their own. In the evening they would meet under a tree, and sing songs or dance to an accordion. And only a few young people did even that; I saw it for the first time in prison. The others were always rushing off to something or other. Certainly they were learning, striving to master science and technics with grim determination. Would they be happy later on? Surely man needed liberty and security before he could be happy.

  I forced myself to think only of pleasant things. I took refuge in the memories of my youth. I thought of the tours I had made through Italy: of Florence, Venice and Rome. I remembered visiting the Vatican.

  “It seems wrong that all this beauty is concentrated here in Italy,” I said as I walked with a friend through the great halls. “The rest of the world has so little of it. When we come to power we shall have to distribute these things more fairly too.”

  After all, we were very young.

  Unfortunately, there was one thing that always dragged me back from my pleasant memories to my present unenviable state, and that was constant hunger. For some time I had been dependent entirely on the prison food. My prison account was exhausted and I could no longer buy anything from the prison canteen. I had lost all contact with Lena, and a new order had been issued forbidding the sending of parcels. Not only that, but the food grew worse. There was soup only once a day in Kholodnaya Gora. In the evening we were given a thick oatmeal porridge, and not much of that. When I first saw the portion I was shocked into asking the warder:

  “Is that all?”

  “It is,” he replied. “This isn’t a sanatorium.”

  It was something that he had even replied. Usually they merely nodded wordlessly or shook their heads. I asked to see the block commandant, and when he came I asked for paper and pencil. He explained that he had no right to give me any, but he promised to approach the examiner. He was quite a young fellow, tall with long, fair hair. The prison regulations were severe, but he was always calm and friendly. You could feel his sympathy. I never heard him use threats or even raise his voice, not even if a prisoner misbehaved. He was very popular and obviously totally unsuited to his job. I wondered at his courage. In a place full of spies how could he hope to be humane for long?

  He lasted about three months and then he was replaced by a petty mean-minded brute who took pleasure in tormenting us. As I learned later from a returned prisoner, our friend had been arrested and sent to a labor camp near Arkhangelsk.

  But my most pressing problem was hunger. I was always hungry. My physical reserves had long ago been burned up, and now I felt the lack of nourishing food very keenly. At six o’clock in the morning we received our ration of bread. It was black, damp and chalky. I always divided it into six small pieces so as to eat it with some sort of system during the day and save a last bit for the evening. But the flesh was weak and before the morning was out I was usually bread-less. By the time evening came I was starving. I lay on my bed, looked at my square of window and thought of all the wonderful meals I had had and I invented many more. I recalled the look of Vienna’s famous pastries and I sought to recall the smell of grilling steaks and other succulent foods. In my mind I ate the finest dainties, and somehow it seemed to help. It was a strange form of substitute satisfaction. When it was quite dark and the electric light went on I would dismiss my daydreaming and get up.

  Sometimes there were days on which the warder who ladled out the soup gave me an extra plate. When there was any left over he would divide it among those who had no money. On such days it was unnecessary for me to dream of food. I lay on my bed and looked at the first stars in the blue sky and let myself be lulled by memories of sentimental airs. The torments of the constant interrogations and the torture of the “conveyer” were already long past. They hardly seemed real any longer. I can readily recall my mood on such evenings; it was a gentle sadness and a great sympathy for the world in its sorrows and for myself in my own.

  After I had had about three weeks of this the cell door opened to admit a new prisoner. He stood in the middle of the cell with his bundle and looked around.

  “Well, can you beat it?” he demanded. “They say I’m a spy.”

  He spoke German.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Reibisch,” he replied. “I’m not German, by the way, I’m Czech. At least my mother was; my father was German.”

  “Where did you work here?”

  “In the Kharkov Locomotive Works. I was a mechanic.”

  “How long have you been in the Soviet Union?”

  “Since 1921.”

  “That’s a long time. I suppose you’re a Soviet citizen now?”

  “No, I never wanted to be because if I were I should have lost my INSNAB book.”

  The INSNAB was the co-operative stores for foreign engineers and experts, and it always had much better supplies than the ordinary Russian shops. In the years from 1929 to 1933 when things got worse and worse INSNAB still had everything and at reasonable prices. I was, of course, entitled to buy there, but at first I had refused to do so because I had thought it unworthy of a Communist to take privileges refused to others doing the same work. Then something strange occurred. The ordinary Russian co-operative, which usually had only bread and sugar to sell, refused to take my registration. The manager wanted to see my former co-operative card.

  “But I’m a foreigner,” I objected. “I’ve only quite recently come from Berlin.”

  “Then bring me your Berlin card. I must have a card to show you were formerly drawing your rations elsewhere. My orders from the Commissariat are most strict.”

  “They don’t have rations in Berlin,” I pointed out, “and if you belong to a co-op there you don’t have to sign off. What’s the point of all this anyhow?”

  ‘Well, we have to make sure that no one draws rations twice, say once in Berlin and again in Kharkov.”

  “Berlin and Kharkov are rather a long way apart to do that, aren’t they?” I ventured. “In any case, as I’ve said, there’s no rationing in Berlin. You can go anywhere you like and buy anything you like.”

  He was a man of rather limited mentality and this was quite beyond him. He just didn’t believe there was anywhere in the world where you could buy what you liked and as much as you liked. I also had a strong suspicion that he didn’t know where Berlin was I did my best to enlighten him, but I was butting my head against a brick wall.

  I mentioned the matter to Leipunsky and he took me to R.K.I., the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection. The Chairman of this Commissariat was Comrade Riappo, a highly intelligent and obliging fellow who spoke German fluently.

  “But you should register with INSNAB,” he said.

  “Yes, I know, but I don’t want to. As a member of the Party I don’t think it right that I should take advantage of privileges which the Soviet Government has introduced for non-Communist specialists.”

  “Comrade Weissberg, you mustn�
�t be awkward. If the Soviet Government has arranged that you should register with INSNAB then it will create a bad impression if you refuse to do so. It will look like indirect criticism of the way we do things, a sort of indirect demonstration against the Soviet Government. If you take my advice you’ll register with INSNAB at once.”

  I took his advice. Foreign workers who could register with INSNAB were tremendously privileged over their Soviet comrades. Not only could they buy things unobtainable elsewhere, but they could buy everything very much cheaper. It is no exaggeration to say that with equal nominal wages the purchasing power of a foreign worker privileged to buy at INSNAB was ten times as great as that of his Soviet colleague. I could therefore well understand that Reibisch was unwilling to surrender such enormous advantages in exchange for Soviet citizenship.

  “Are you a Party member?” I asked.

  “No, I was never in the Party.”

  “Well, how on earth did you get to Russia at all, then?”

  “I was a prisoner of war in Russia and I didn’t go home until 1920.

  I found things a bit difficult, and as I knew the Russians badly needed skilled workers I came back.”

  I learned later that Reibisch had found things a bit difficult in Czechoslovakia because he had come into conflict with the criminal law. He had fled to Russia to avoid the consequences. In Russia he had married a Russian girl and gone straight.

  “What have you been arrested for?”

  “They’re arresting all foreigners now,” he replied, “and even all Russians who’ve been abroad. And it doesn’t matter when they were abroad, fifteen years ago or only last week.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” I probed.

  “I’m not blind. I can use my eyes and ears and put two and two together. There are twenty thousand workers in my factory and you learn a thing or two that way. One foreigner after the other disappears, and any Russian who has, or has had, any sort of connection with other countries disappears as well.”

  “What do you think happens to them?”

  “They’re kept here for a month or two, then they get their sentences and off they go to camp.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Well, almost invariably their wives are told to bring them warm underwear and clothing. Everybody knows what that means.”

  “And what about the foreigners—do they go to the camps as well, do you think?”

  “I don’t know; but all the Russians do, and once they’re gone you don’t hear anything more about them. No one ever comes back.” “When were you arrested?”

  “A fortnight ago.”

  “And what does everybody think about it all?”

  “They don’t know what to think, and not a soul dares to say anything.”

  Reibisch was not a very intelligent man and his company was not very inspiring. I almost longed to be back again in solitary, particularly because he disturbed my evening daydreams. About ten days later another prisoner arrived who was more to my liking. He was a young fellow who walked with a pronounced limp. Normally, it appeared, he needed a stick, but they had taken that away from him. His name was Bondarenko, and he was half Polish, half Ukrainian. He came from the neighborhood of Borislav in Eastern Galicia.

  “How did you get to Russia?” I asked him.

  “My father works in the oil fields and he was always sympathetic toward Communism. I worked for the Party even when I was only a boy. I crossed the Polish frontier into Russia twice on Party missions. I took part in a training course here and I was to have gone back to Poland to work, but the Poles caught me crossing the frontier. I tried to get away, but they opened fire, and I was hit in the knee. That’s why I limp. I was in prison for a year. After that I worked illegally for the Party and then I was sent back to Russia via Danzig.”

  “What are you in here for?”

  “I don’t know. They seem to be arresting everybody.”

  “What do you mean? They can’t be arresting ‘everybody: “

  “I mean all the Polish emigrants. At the beginning of March they arrested the leader of our club. Two weeks later they arrested the secretary of the Party cell. Then they arrested the five members of the club committee, and after that the rest of us. I was one of the last. I expected it, of course, and I’ve brought in a lot of hard-baked bread I collected. Everybody said you don’t get enough to eat in prison.”

  “And that’s very true,” I confirmed. “Did they keep you in the inner prison while you were under examination?”

  “Only for two days. The examiner said I was a counterrevolutionary and a spy in the service of the Polish Defensive, and that we had all worked for the separation of the Ukraine from the Soviet Union. You never heard such rubbish in your life. What we really worked for was to separate Western Ukraine from Poland and join it to the Soviet Union.”{9}

  “Well, are you going to say what he wants you to?”

  “Do you think I ought? I don’t know what to do.”

  “No, I don’t think you ought. You ought to resist.”

  “The examiner told me that Kapik—that was the leader of our club—had signed, and that quite a number of my friends had too. Do you think he was lying?”

  “He might have been. They do lie if they think it serves their purpose. On the other hand, it is possible that they gave way under pressure and signed.”

  Bondarenko was a frank and honest youngster and very different from most of the Ukrainians I knew, who were usually extremely reserved and very embittered. Bondarenko was quite different and we soon became very good friends. I learned a good deal about the revolutionary movement in Eastern Galicia from him, and also about the miserable conditions of the workers in the oil fields.

  “A single man can just about exist on the wages,” he said, “but a married man with two or three children can’t. There are one or two sources where the water has a high salt content, and the workers boil it and sell the residue. It’s forbidden, of course, because there’s a Government salt monopoly, and sometimes they’re caught.”

  It was a mystery to me why the Soviet authorities should want to imprison a young fellow like Bondarenko. He was a proletarian and therefore belonged to what the Soviet Government told us was the Soviet ruling class. He had been active in the Communist revolutionary movement from boyhood on. His smashed knee was part of the price he had willingly paid. He had been thought worthy of a two-year course in the Soviet Union in order to be sent back to Poland for Party work. Why were men like him now considered dangerous? It was difficult to understand what the G.P.U. was up to; what they did was more than a mere crime; it was the grossest stupidity. Bondarenko was transparently honest, and in a very short space of time I knew his whole outlook. Never at any time did I have the slightest cause to suspect that he was really a covert oppositionist, or possibly something worse. For one thing, he was not really interested in Russian politics; all his attention was concentrated on his own country and the tasks waiting for him when he returned. For him Stalin was a sort of foreign potentate who had to be respected but who did not really concern him very much.

  A few days later Reibisch was taken off for interrogation and it was three days before he returned. In these three days Bondarenko and I came very close to each other, so much so that I felt I could talk openly to him.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what do the people really think? What do they suppose is the meaning of all these arrests?”

  “They don’t talk any more. And if they do they don’t say what they really think. They always say: ‘The leaders of the opposition have done something or other and now ordinary people have got to pay for it.’”

  “And what do you think about it?”

  “I’m one of those who don’t talk.”

  After that we were silent for a while, but each of us knew what the other was thinking.

  “Do you think there will be a change of policy before long, Henrik Pavlovitch?” I asked him a little later.

  “After Stalin’
s speech we were all hoping there would be, but then came the Tukhachevsky affair. It really upset the Russian comrades. When the executions were announced they were terribly shocked. ‘Just imagine that such traitors could get to the head of the Army,’ they said. It’s good they were all exposed in time.’ That’s what they said when they said anything.”

  “Do you think they really believed it?”

  “I don’t know whether they did or not.”

  “What about you, Henrik Pavlovitch: did you believe it?”

  He looked at me for a moment or two and then he lowered his voice:

  “Not really,” he said. “But what’s the reason for all this, Alexander Semyonovitch? Perhaps you know; you know a lot and you’ve read a lot.”

  “I’ve no more idea than you have,” I replied.

  I was very glad to discover, as I had suspected, that Bondarenko was as skeptical as I was. But we still took good care not to express our real opinions. Walls might well have ears.

  “Did you hear about the Maso business?” he asked.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “One day he shot himself in his office. He was found by his secretary. There was a letter open on his desk, but the G.P.U. took it and the room was locked up. That letter was dangerous. Most of those who discovered what was in it were arrested. The evening before he shot himself Maso had made a number of copies and forwarded them to various highly placed comrades in Kiev and Moscow. In the end so many knew what was in the letter that it was impossible to suppress it.”

  “What was in the letter, Henrik Pavlovitch?”

  “It’s dangerous to talk about things like that,” he replied in a low voice.

  “You can trust me. Where did you learn about it?”

  “From a Russian comrade who worked in the G.P.U. offices. He’s under arrest himself now.”

  “What was in it?”

  “It was a terrible thing, Alexander Semyonovitch. After all, the man was an old Chekist and the head of the N.K.V.D. for the whole Kharkov area. Thousands of people had been arrested at his orders. Then he shot himself and wrote a letter like that.”