The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  Makedon was a Stalinist, and the first of the type I had encountered in prison. It is possible that after the death of Lenin the supporters of Stalin and Trotsky grouped themselves according to ideological considerations, but I hardly think so. I believe that the antagonism between the two leading figures in the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death was exclusively conditioned by the struggle for power. They were fighting for the succession and not about the way the revolution should develop. However, it may well be that the supporters of the two were guided to some extent by ideas and not by naked interests. I am speaking here of 1924; ten years later that was certainly not true. When I refer to “Stalinists” in 1935, I mean a type for whom the ideas of the great revolution meant absolutely nothing at all. They were generally men who recognized the power setup clearly and had only one aim: to rise as high as possible in the hierarchy. They learned the latest slogans by heart and used them mechanically without bothering to inquire about their meaning. At the same time they had a keen ear for what was called “Trotskyist contraband,” for “deviations” or for the slightest trace of criticism. They carefully held themselves apart from anything of the sort and they denounced it in their comrades at once. Every successful denunciation got rid of a rival in the struggle to climb.

  The extension of special privileges to the Party bureaucracy began in the thirties. Leading officials were given motorcars; they were allowed to buy scarce commodities at low prices; they enjoyed holidays at Government expense; they were given good furniture, apartments and even villas to live in, and so on. The higher they rose in the hierarchy the greater became their privileges. And they could rise only on the backs of others. This system resulted in a sort of natural selection of the most ruthless. Stalin knew that perfectly well, but he needed precisely men who would carry out their orders without conscience and without scruple. A man with a heart would have been a poor factory director at that time. He would have been moved by the misery of the starving peasantry. In those bitter years a type of Soviet official developed who was quite prepared to go forward over corpses if necessary. Only the word of the dictator was law for him. They did not think; they only obeyed. The ideas of the world revolution, socialism and the classless society had taken on a different meaning for such men. All they were interested in was to carry out the limited tasks set them by the Party and the Soviet Government and to wage a struggle against “political deviations” and for their own well-being.

  Makedon was one of these men. But how had he got here? He was a type I had not previously encountered in prison. Rozhansky, G.P.U. stool pigeon though he was, was a very different type. He had broken down from weakness, but although he had become a tool of the G.P.U. I am sure that in his heart he hated Stalin. The humanitarian ideas of socialism had not become strange to him. The others I had met in prison were either casual victims like Reibisch, or men like the Menshevik Rashkov, the Communist Bondarenko and the old Social Revolutionary whose name I have forgotten. They had been fighters for human liberty and in their hearts they hated all forms of oppression. Makedon must have got into prison by some unfortunate accident. From Stalin’s standpoint it was ridiculous to arrest such people. Makedon ought not to have been in a cell with us; he ought to have been on the other side of the examiner’s desk.

  At that time I had not yet discovered the mechanism set into operation by the arrests. I did not realize that the G.P.U. arrested anyone who had been denounced by any of their prisoners as his accomplice. A few months later the Makedons were to flood into the prisons in thousands. They came from all the economic and political bodies in the Soviet Union, and, in the end, even from the G.P.U. itself. Almost all the G.P.U. men who were examiners at the beginning of the purge were themselves in the cells by 1938, and by the middle of 1939 the personnel of the G.P.U. had almost completely changed. Perhaps at the utmost ten per cent had remained. Some of the others were in the cells with us. The rest had disappeared. The new men were mostly from the Komsomol: ambitious young fellows who quickly mastered the trade of repression.

  Makedon vigorously defended Stalin’s policy and the necessity for the mass arrests. Everyone in the cells was guilty for him except himself; he was “innocent” and he had been arrested in error. At first I was revolted by his stupidity, but later on I realized that his attitude was dictated by considerations of his own safety. Not only did he fear all his cellmates as possible witnesses against him if by chance he let slip a careless word, but he was also quite convinced that the cells were fitted with microphones which permitted the warders to hear what the prisoners said. After I had known him for about six months and he had realized that at least he could trust me not to betray him he took me into a corner one day and told me his real attitude in whispers. And then I realized with horror that even willing tools of the regime like Makedon were well aware that they were being used for the triumph of a criminal policy. Previously I had always thought that they were too stupid to understand what was happening. The confidential talks with Makedon showed me clearly that the members of the Stalinist apparatus knew perfectly well what they were doing, just as Hitler’s S.S. men knew. They refused to discuss it because they knew that any hesitation on their part would grave fatal. When the insanity of the mass arrests spread more and more and took its victims from their ranks as well they turned against the dictator in their minds—not because he had arrested millions of innocent people, but because he had disturbed their own pleasant existence.

  It was the end of August. I had heard nothing from the brikhalovka for a long time. No one had been taken away for interrogation, and then suddenly Makedon was called. He came back three days later looking tired and worn. It appeared that he had been kept there the whole time without even seeing the examiner. At first he was unwilling to speak, but after a while he sat down on my bed and began to talk in whispers.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch, nasty things are happening.”

  “What sort of things, Makedon?”

  “You can’t sleep at night in the brikhalovka because of the constant shrieking of women being beaten.”

  “Women!” I exclaimed. “That’s something new.”

  “It’s true,” he insisted. “It went on the whole night until six o’clock in the morning. I had to stuff my ears up with bread.”

  “But why only women?”

  “Oh, men are beaten too, but they don’t shriek so.”

  “How long has that sort of thing been going on? I never heard anything about it before.”

  “The fellows in the brikhalovka say it began about a fortnight ago. There was a fellow named Smirnov there. He came from Moscow yesterday to give evidence against Dubovoy. He said they had started the beatings in Moscow on the very same day, August 18th. There must have been general instructions.”

  “It’s difficult to believe. Did you actually see anyone who had been beaten?”

  “More than one. They brought one fellow in yesterday who couldn’t walk.”

  “You wouldn’t be stuffing me by any chance, Makedon?”

  He was insulted at this and declared that I’d learn all about it quickly enough for myself.

  He seemed sincere, but I knew he was a liar and I couldn’t believe him. I knew, of course, that the G.P.U. was prepared to use physical torture in exceptional cases, but Rozhansky had assured me that special permission had first to be obtained. But from what Makedon said, most of the prisoners were now being beaten up.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch, you can’t imagine what it’s like in the brikhalovka now. There are hundreds of people waiting in the cellars every night. Most of them have only just been arrested and they’re taken there first before they go off to the cells. They all say the G.P.U. is raiding day and night, and that people are sleeping already dressed and with their bundles ready. No one knows why his neighbor has been arrested and everyone is waiting for his own turn—not only Communists, but people who have never been Party members.”

  “If that’s anything like true, the G.P.U. must have gone off
its head.”

  “Don’t talk so loud,” he whispered urgently. “Walls have ears here. And don’t provoke such discussions with me. I expect the G.P.U. knows what it’s doing.”

  This was Makedon’s usual reaction to his own courage. When he feared he had spoken too openly he would reproach me for provoking him into dangerous talk.

  Our cell was on the fourth floor. Below was a small courtyard in which prisoners were exercised. They walked round and round in single file and we could just see the far end of the circle. In this way we could find out the number of men in each cell.

  In August, 1937, I was alone with Makedon for a couple of weeks. One morning he was listening at the door while I was cautiously looking out of the window. Suddenly I spotted Marcel. I could not see his face, and his head was shorn like everyone else’s, but only Marcel walked like that.

  “Makedon!” I exclaimed excitedly. “I think my best friend Marcel is down in the yard.”

  “You’re imagining it,” he said. “You couldn’t possibly recognize him from that distance.”

  “I can’t see his face,” I admitted, “but it’s the way he walks; there’s no mistaking that.”

  Makedon heard footsteps in the corridor and I got down from the window. When I looked out again a few minutes later a different cell was exercising.

  “You may be right,” said Makedon. “If you think you see him again tomorrow, shout ‘Marcel’ and see if he looks up—but get away from the window quickly before anyone else sees you.”

  The next day I did as Makedon suggested. There was no doubt about it. The man looked up. It was Marcel.

  My heart beat hard. Everything connected with my life before my arrest—even the most unimportant things—excited me. And Marcel was my best friend. In May the examiner had said to me:

  “Now, your friend Marcel, he’s a different type altogether. We shall probably release him.”

  It was Ryeznikov, and I had felt he was sincere, and hoped that Marcel really would be released. But now, three months later, he was still here.

  The next day when we went to the washroom I noticed the name “Alex” written on the black-painted wall in white chalk in Latin characters. At first I thought I must have scribbled it there myself absent-mindedly. I had chalk. But then when I went out I found it scrawled again next to the door. That was no accident. It was Marcel, I was certain. It meant that he was in one of the cells on our floor. Our cell always went first to the washroom, so Marcel’s cell must come afterward. In the night I considered what I should write to him. Any kind of communication between prisoners was strictly prohibited, and if the G.P.U. discovered illegal communications referring to the examination the consequences would be unimaginable. I therefore made my message as harmless as possible.

  I possessed a secret treasure: a piece of writing paper given to me by another prisoner. I tore it carefully in half. On one half I wrote a letter to the Prosecutor in which I formally protested against the examination methods, and withdrew my fictitious confession. Then I copied it on to the other sheet. The copy I folded up so that it went into a matchbox, then I hid the matchbox under the sill of the washroom window, jamming it into a crack between the bricks of the outside wall. It was impossible to see it from the courtyard, and if they searched the washroom they probably wouldn’t look under the window sill outside. And if by some chance they did I could say that I wanted to keep a copy of my letter in a safe place. Then I wrote on the wall with chalk the words “Marcel window,” and I waited eagerly for our next visit to the washroom.

  Marcel’s attention had been drawn to the window, and he found my message. With this a correspondence started that lasted a fortnight. Then suddenly it stopped and I heard nothing further from him. The last I heard was on November 5th, 1937. The electric light had failed and we were in darkness. Suddenly from the direction of the mass cells I heard a shout, “Alex!” It was Marcel’s voice. I shouted back at once, but it was impossible to carry on a conversation on account of the noise—the prisoners felt themselves safer in the dark. After a few moments the light went on again.

  Later I learned from a fellow prisoner that at the end of November Marcel had gone off to a camp to serve a ten-year term.

  One day at the beginning of September, Makedon was looking out of the window.

  “Alexander Semyonovitch,” he called. “Come and have a look at this.”

  I went over to the window and saw that the exercise yard was full of peasants. There were several hundred of them, mostly sitting on the ground with their bundles at their sides. None of them looked under thirty and some of them were real old patriarchs with long gray beards.

  “Perhaps they’re going off to camp,” said Makedon.

  “I shouldn’t think so. Look, they’re all still sunburned. They must be newly arrested.”

  “What, all that lot in one day!”

  The peasants sat and stood around in the yard until evening and then they were distributed among the various cells. We got only one in our cell. He was one of the younger ones, perhaps about thirty. He was tall and sinewy and his name was Semyon.

  “What have they arrested you for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “but it might be in connection with an affair I had with them about four years ago. They came for me and said I had stolen a sack of grain from the railway station, but I hadn’t. My wife was already swollen from hunger and she died soon afterward. They kept me in prison for three months, and then it turned out that a militiaman had stolen the sack. After that they let me go.”

  “But it’s hardly likely they’d arrest you now because they arrested you wrongly four years ago, is it?”

  “Oh, yes. They probably think that on that account I’m not a very good friend of theirs.”

  That sounded nonsense to me and I tried to pursue the subject, but it was sufficient explanation for him and if I didn’t care to believe it he saw no reason to argue. He was a quiet, peaceable, friendly fellow and cleaner than most. He rarely joined in our talk. Later on I learned that a thing is not necessarily untrue in the Soviet Union because it seems grotesque. He was right. Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested during the purge for no other reason than that at some time in the past the Soviet authorities had done them an injustice.

  The next day he was taken away for interrogation. He returned twenty-four hours later. We had just been taken out to go to the lavatory, and we found him there when we got back. He looked bewildered and upset.

  “Well, Semyon,” I asked sympathetically. “How was it?”

  “Bad,” he replied. “Bad. They beat me with a metal ruler. Look.”

  He pulled up his trouser leg and his shin was cut and bruised where the examiner must have struck him many times with a heavy ruler. I was horrified. I had not really believed Makedon’s story, but here was definite proof. They had started beating prisoners.

  Semyon’s experience was an interesting business altogether. It appeared that the examiner had shouted at him at once: “Now, you counterrevolutionary bandit, tell us all about your organization. Who recruited you and whom did you recruit?”

  Semyon was a simple fellow and this was quite beyond him. He didn’t know what to say, whereupon the examiner and his assistant immediately began to beat him up. After half an hour of this they sent him down into the cellar where his fellows in misfortune who had had more experience explained what it was all about. Six hours later he was called up again. This time Semyon gave the name of the chairman of his kolkhoz as the one who had recruited him, and the names of five other peasants with whom he had worked as the men he had recruited.

  I was shocked at the matter-of-fact way in which he had denounced innocent men.

  “But, Semyon, don’t you realize what you’ve done? They’ll all be arrested now.”

  “No, Comrade. They’re already arrested. They were just the ones the examiner wanted.”

  The peasants in this kolkhoz seemed to have been arrested before any formal depositio
ns had been drawn up against them, and the G.P.U. had had to start from scratch. The examiner had had to put the affair formally in order and provide justification for the premature arrests. On what principle these peasants had been chosen for arrest it was impossible to say. Perhaps the report of some G.P.U. agent in their village had been the decisive factor. Perhaps the G.P.U. had been collecting dubious observations on their part. Perhaps those who had been in trouble before had been taken. In any case, the organization to which they allegedly belonged had to be invented afterward and the compromising material collected in prison.

  The charges against them were relatively light. Most of them were merely asked to confess that they had carried on counterrevolutionary agitation and sabotage. They had planned to poison wells and burn down barns, and they had put a spell on Stalin and agitated against the grain collections. All mere bagatelles. But about twenty of them were in more serious trouble. They were accused of a plot to steal horses, ride into the nearest town and proclaim an insurrection. The church bells were to ring out and at that sign the countryside was to rise. Nothing of all this had actually happened: the wells had not been poisoned, the cattle had not been harmed, the barns had not been burned down, the horses had not been stolen, the bells had not rung out and the countryside had not risen. The whole thing was a complete invention.

  During the next few days the Kholodnaya Gora was flooded with peasants. Every day hundreds of them waited in the yard until evening, when the arrangements for their distribution among the various cells arrived from the G.P.U. We got another one, a young fellow named Boikov, who looked more like a townsman. He was not religious; he was in favor of collectivization; and in his spare time he studied astronomy. He was a good fellow and I took a liking to him.