The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  Sborovsky was the first Communist I met who went further.

  “When Lenin seized power he had a comparatively short period of dictatorship in mind, and he thought it would end with the civil war. Well, it didn’t happen that way. The dictatorship went on and on and grew more and more totalitarian. And it wasn’t a dictatorship of the working class, or even of the Party, but of a single man. But that development started in the very first days of the revolution. The Constituent Assembly should never have been overthrown.”

  Sborovsky had remained a socialist and a revolutionary, but he subjected even the fundamental principles of the revolution to stern criticism. He had not given up in despair as so many had. He revised his theories and still hoped for socialism, while he followed the sinister developments around him with open eyes and bitter skepticism. If ever freedom returns to Soviet Russia then men like Sborovsky—if they survive the prison camps—will be the leaders of the new Russia.

  CHAPTER 12—The Anteroom of Hell

  IT WAS JUNE, AND THE WEATHER WAS HOT.

  In winter they had begun to cover up the cell windows with a sort of shallow sheet-iron box open only at the top. For a long time we observed the progress of this work in Block III where criminal cases were confined. They reached us at the end of May. After that we were in artificial light day and night, and we lost our precious view of the courtyard.

  However, despite the metal boxes in front of the windows we were not completely cut off. With a piece of glass and a great deal of care and patience we succeeded in boring a small hole through the sheet metal. We could also get into touch with neighboring cells by tapping. In the night when everything was quiet we could hear tapping from below, but so could the warders. However, we managed to establish touch with the cell below in a very simple fashion. The sheet-iron box was not flush with the wall, and at the bottom there was a small space, while the top was open altogether. We rolled up a note and tied a piece of thread round it and then lowered it through this space into the top of the window box below. The prisoners below saw the note and replied in the same fashion. We also succeeded in passing tobacco from one cell to the other.

  Unfortunately, our old friend the block commandant left and his place was taken by an unpleasant type, a man who was servile to those above him and brutal to those below. In midsummer, when it was very hot, he collected thirty or so prisoners from the various cells and sent them all off to the punishment cell. Their offenses, all minor matters such as not getting up promptly in the morning, being found in possession of a stump of pencil and so on, had been noted weeks before but nothing had been done about them. I was one of his victims.

  I had already spent five days in the punishment cell in the depths of winter for having stolen a piece of paper to write a letter to the Central Committee. Now I was to have another week for lying down during the day. In winter it had been bitterly cold in the punishment cell, particularly as the small opening in the larger window had been kept open, and I had been dressed only in shirt and pants. Alone in the cell, I had saved myself from pneumonia by constantly doing physical exercises. I had been unable to sleep.

  But now in June it was worse. Over thirty of us were squashed into one small cell. All we could do was to stand upright. This time, in the full heat of summer, the window was tightly closed. The temperature rose tremendously. Up to that time I had not given much consideration to the fact that the human body is a wonderful central heating apparatus. The atmosphere in the cell was like a Turkish bath. Men in the punishment cells received no midday or evening meals and only half the normal bread ration. Not that that mattered very much: it was too hot to think of eating. We stood there naked, the sweat pouring off us, and wondered whether to risk breaking the window. Within a couple of days the floor was slimy with sweat. We literally panted for air. On the third day a criminal prisoner was put in with us. His name was Mirogod, and he got us to lift him up and without more ado he smashed the window with his fist. But even that didn’t help much because the weather was so hot.

  All our protests were ignored, but Mirogod was tough, and he began to shout at the top of his voice and hammer on the door. We politicals regarded his performance with astonishment. When he refused to be quiet he was dragged out and put in a strait jacket and left in it for six hours. But it was less disagreeable to be lying in a strait jacket on his own than to be free with us, and when they brought him back he immediately began to bellow.

  “Fetch the doctor. Fetch the doctor, you sons of bitches. You dirty brutes. Do you want to bake us alive? I’ll—your—, you rotten lot of whoresons.”

  It was impossible for them to keep him quiet. I learned that he spent most of his time in the punishment cell or in a strait jacket. He was only a small man, but he had a fiery temperament. He was fair-haired and his face was covered with pock marks. The strange expression in his eyes suggested mental derangement. He bellowed for three hours without stopping. Then the face of the governor appeared at the opening of the cell door.

  “What do you want, Mirogod? Come here.”

  Mirogod stayed where he was.

  “It’s the doctor I want, not you, you bloodsucker.”

  “The doctor’s not there for you,” declared the governor. “This is a punishment cell, not a sick ward. Unless you keep quiet at once I’ll give you thirty days more and report you to the examiner. Come here, I tell you.”

  This time Mirogod pushed his way forward. Next to the door stood the pail in which we relieved our physical needs. “Parasha,” the prisoners called it, a diminutive of Praskovya, a Russian girl’s Christian name. Suddenly Mirogod picked up the heavy pail and emptied its foul contents through the cell trap door over the governor, accompanying it by a stream of unmentionable abuse and curses.

  We were horrified. We knew only too well that it might end in a G.P.U. punitive expedition and mass executions. None of us had ever witnessed such violence on the part of a prisoner before.

  And nothing happened; nothing at all, except that they nailed up the broken window from outside with a board.

  The next day two doctors arrived and opened the trap door. A stream of cool air swept in and the sweat steam in the cell condensed immediately. A thick white mist concealed our faces from the doctors, and they started back. Then they opened the door and asked whether anyone felt ill. Two hours later the window was opened.

  That was a relief, but within a few hours the temperature rose again. I was comparatively lucky. I was standing near the window and a thin stream of cooler air flowed slowly over the inclined sill. The whole current of air was only a few inches wide. I lifted my burning hands up to the cool air and opened my mouth to gulp it in. Then those standing near me noticed my advantage and we took it in turns. After another two days some of the prisoners were taken out and we were then able to squat down.

  In the morning we were taken to the washroom. Each of us laid down in turn at full length over the four basins and all the taps were turned on full. For half a minute each of us enjoyed that wonderful soaking in cold water. We all thought it was a certain method to get pneumonia, but none of us suffered any ill effects.

  After my week in the punishment cell I was taken back to the ordinary cell, and little Gevondi threw up his hands in horror at the sight of me.

  While I was in the punishment cell I had missed the monthly lavochka day on which the canteen manager came round to take orders. It was particularly unfortunate because I needed a little extra food to build me up again. I asked Gevondi to let me have a pound of his bacon, promising to return it the following month.

  “Don’t do it,” said Makedon. “In the meantime you might go away, or Weissberg might, and then you’d never see your bacon again.”

  But Gevondi was made of different stuff.

  “You’re a poor fish, Makedon,” he said. “For one thing Weissberg won’t go away. He’s a fixture here. And if God helps me and they send me to Persia, I’ll gladly leave behind all I’ve got. And if I get out I’ll send you money
too. But now Weissberg needs the bacon more than I do.”

  Makedon really was an inferior character and riddled with envy. He found it hard to bear if a fellow prisoner had anything better than he had or knew more than he did. In April we had almost come to blows. We were talking about life in the Far North. One of the peasants asked how long it stayed dark there. Someone replied that it was about two and a half months.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Makedon roughly. “I was in the Far North. The darkness lasts a hundred and twenty days.”

  “How long the darkness actually lasts at any particular spot depends on the latitude,” I pointed out. “In the Arctic Circle the night lasts twenty-four hours. At the Pole itself it lasts six months.”

  Makedon knew at once that he was wrong, but it made him furious to be corrected and he raved and stormed to prevent my explanations to the peasant, and the whole thing ended in an uproar.

  At the end of April he had to go into hospital for a couple of weeks, and we all sighed in relief. It was the best period we spent together. Misha organized lecture courses and I taught physics for two hours every day, and then Sborovsky took over. When Makedon came back peace and quiet were at an end again. I offered to give him personal instruction so that he could take part in the courses and make up for what he had missed. But his pride wouldn’t allow him to agree. He had to know it all already.

  By the beginning of July all his money had gone. Only Gevondi and I were now left in the cell, and we gave him part of our food every clay. The Armenian could not resist pointing the moral.

  “What would you do now, Makedon, if we were like you? You’d have nothing to eat.”

  Even Makedon was impressed against his will, and after that things were a bit easier. But he had at least one good point: he was extremely clean and tidy. When all the rest had gone, and he was left behind with Gevondi and me, he asked the warder for two buckets of water and a cloth, and then we all set to work. We washed the cement floor several times and rubbed and scrubbed every part of the cell. When we had finished it smelled fresh and sweet again, and we were proud of our job.

  I was in regular contact with the adjoining cell. My correspondent, so to speak, was a teacher of languages. He tapped through the news of the fall of Eikhe, Kossior and Postishev, all members of the Politburo, and then he added:

  “Fascism has begun in the Soviet Union.”

  I was indignant and tapped back:

  “D—U—R—A—K”—idiot!

  After that I refused to answer his tapping for a while, and when I later agreed I insisted that it should be in German, for fear of our conversation being “overheard.”

  My indignation was real. Despite my experiences in prison I was still capable of honest anger at any suggestion of a parallel between the Soviet Union and fascist countries.

  To our dismay, the day after we had cleaned our cell so thoroughly we all had to leave. We were put into the adjoining cell, which was occupied by five prisoners, including my “correspondent,” who looked exactly as I had imagined him. Immigrants are always at a disadvantage as compared with natives, and we had to install ourselves as best we could on the floor. There we sat and sorrowed for our own nice clean cell. In the evening we heard new prisoners being put into it. We got in touch with them as soon as we could.

  “How many are you?” they tapped.

  “Eight,” we replied. “How many are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  I thought there must be a mistake and got them to repeat it. Up to then fifteen had been the maximum. But no, twenty-four it was. With so many in a cell it would become difficult to breathe. To make quite sure I tried again, and again the answer was twenty-four.

  The next day six more prisoners were put into our cell, making our number fourteen. But they had not even arranged themselves to their satisfaction when the door opened again and nine more were put in. That was twenty-three. We all had to get up to make room for the newcomers.

  “There’s not any more room even on the floor,” I said to the warder. “Where are they going to sleep?”

  “It won’t be for long,” he replied and closed the door.

  We waited in vain for two hours and nothing happened. At six o’clock the night warder came on duty. We knocked on the door and kept asking him to do something to find a place for the nine extra prisoners. After about an hour the cell door was opened and we breathed a sigh of relief. But instead of taking away our nine surplus prisoners they pushed ten more in.

  We protested furiously, but it was no use. We were tired of standing up all the time. We waited until it was time to turn in and still nothing happened, so we began to hammer on the cell door. The warder came.

  “I can’t take any prisoners away,” he replied. “Only the governor can do that. It’s no use your making a fuss.”

  “Call the governor, then.”

  Another hour passed and we hammered on the door persistently. At last the governor arrived.

  “Who was that kicking on the door?” he demanded.

  No one answered, and he repeated his question. Still no one answered. Then he addressed me as the oldest inhabitant.

  “Weissberg, who’s been kicking on the door?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I wasn’t looking.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I don’t know what the others want,” I replied, “but I want to go to sleep and there isn’t enough room to lie down.”

  If I had spoken in the name of the others that would have been an illegal conspiracy.

  “When are all these men going to be taken away so that we can lie down?” asked Gevondi.

  “I don’t know,” replied the governor. “They’ll stay here until the N.K.V.D. orders them to be put somewhere else. I’ve no control over where they go.”

  “Then get in touch with the N.K.V.D.,” I said, “and ask them to make arrangements so that we can lie down.”

  “I’m warning you, Weissberg,” he retorted. “I know who it is stokes up the cell. You calm down or it will end badly for you.”

  And then he went away, leaving us speechless. There were now thirty-three men in a small cell. We squashed together in order to make a little room on the floor so that six men could lie down, and that was the best we could do. Every two hours the six on the floor had to get up and let another six lie down. None of us had a watch, of course, and it was very difficult to judge the time fairly. They elected me starosta and I did my best. We were all quite certain that things would come right the next day: this couldn’t go on. But it did. We began to hammer again, and again the governor appeared.

  “Now listen,” he said. “It’s no use your hammering. It won’t make the slightest difference. You must fix things up as best you can. You’re not the only ones.”

  We decided to go on hunger strike. As soon as the warder noticed it the governor arrived again.

  “Why haven’t you eaten your food?” he demanded.

  No one replied.

  “Weissberg, why aren’t the prisoners eating their food?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, why aren’t you eating your food?”

  “I’m too tired and hot to eat,” I replied. “When you can’t sleep or even lie down and the place is like an oven it takes your appetite away.”

  The governor departed. By midday the scene in our cell was a repetition of the punishment cell. We had all undressed and we were bathed in sweat. The window was bigger but the sun burned down pitilessly on the sheet-iron box in front of it, while at least the window of the punishment cell faced north and was out of the sun.

  In the evening the governor came again. He said nothing to us and no one said anything to him, but he took Makedon away. That was very peculiar. From our tapping we had discovered that there were still twenty-four prisoners in our old cell. In the adjoining cell to our left there were only three, and in the cell beyond that only one. Why were they inflicting this torture on two cells
only? The great majority of the prisoners in our cell had been through their examinations and made their confessions. All they were waiting for now was for OSO to rubber-stamp their sentences.

  That evening three more prisoners were taken out. That left twenty-nine, and it was a little easier for us to take turns on the floor. The cell was about thirteen feet by seven. On one side were two folding iron bedsteads, one above the other, and on the other side there was one. In Tsarist days there had been only one bedstead in such cells. When the beds were down there was a space of about sixteen inches between them. As starosta, I put four men sideways on each bed with their feet on the other bed, and there they lay, eight men alternately head to feet. Another double row of men lay in the same position under the bed, but as the legs of the bed took up space there was room for seven only. That was fifteen men fixed up. There was rather more space on the window side than near the door, where the night stool took up some room. In addition, it was rather cooler near the window. There I managed to fit in another six men, but they were able to lie on their sides only. However, in that position on a cement floor the hip bone soon begins to hurt intolerably. The three men with their heads to the right wall lay with their faces turned toward the window; the other three lay with their faces turned toward the cell door. Each man had the legs of his opposite number on the other side on his chest. Every two hours they all turned over at a given signal. In the space between the beds and the cell door, I managed to fix up four other men according to the same system. In this way twenty-five prisoners were accounted for. There were four men left and the upper bed.