The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  This time the commandant sent the strange petition to the G.P.U. The result was astonishing. A few days later the prison governor came to us and announced:

  “Cell Number 4 has the right to set out petitions every Thursday. Any prisoner wishing to do so must report to the warder first thing in the morning. No writing is to be done in the cell itself, but in the writing room on the fourth floor. Paper and pens will be issued there.”

  That was the first official sign of the coming change.

  For months the lavochka had sold nothing but bacon and sugar, but those prisoners who had little money to buy such expensive things wanted bread, herrings and other cheaper foodstuffs. At one time we should never have dared to utter such demands, but on one occasion when a medical commission visited us one of the prisoners mentioned the matter. Two days later we were led into the lavochka and there was everything—well, everything within reason—the heart of a G.P.U. prisoner desires. Unfortunately, I had no more money. I had used my last thirty rubles at the beginning of November, because I had not expected to be in prison beyond the end of 1938. It made a big difference, and now I was almost always hungry. My friends in the cell helped me and I earned a certain amount by my stories, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger.

  The prison diet was scientifically calculated. If a prisoner lay around all day and made no unnecessary movements, then it was just about enough to keep him alive. The prisoners grew thin (I lost about forty-four pounds in weight while I was in prison) but they did not die. Now that I no longer had any money to supplement my prison rations I had to husband my strength carefully. In the beginning, when there was enough room in the cell, I had always done physical exercises every day. I no longer made any attempt to do so, and when I went out to exercise I sat in a corner of the yard and contented myself with breathing in the fresh air and looking at the sky. The warders all knew that I was by far the oldest inhabitant, and nowhere does seniority count so much as in prison. I never allowed myself to be elected starosta. The work was too heavy, and, in addition, I didn’t want trouble with the Armenians. However, I had a good deal of influence in the cell discussions. At every succeeding crisis I proposed that an Armenian should be elected starosta, but the Armenians were wily enough to realize that it was a trap and they would never agree.

  They disliked me intensely, and they were particularly indignant about my lectures, because their lack of education prevented them from taking part. I then persuaded a friendly economist to hold popular lectures on political economy, but again the Armenians refused to join in. They were always thinking up some new intrigue. Gevondi, who had grown to like me, was constantly squabbling with them on my account, and in the end he broke away from the group altogether and came over to take a place near me. For the Armenians that was about the equivalent of a resignation from the Party—something quite fantastic and unprecedented.

  In our cell there were two colonels and a number of other officers, including a little Jewish captain who was so thin and unmilitary in appearance that it was astonishing that he ever got into the Army at all. However, he was a very capable military engineer. This Yakov Gorlin was a fascinating personality, with sad eyes, beautiful hands and supple movements. He was really a naïve man, which is an unusual thing for a Jew. Talking to him was like talking to an intelligent child who had lost his way in the woods.

  He had been brought up on a small estate in the Ukraine, whose owner was a minor aristocrat and a high official. Gorlin’s father was odd-job man about the place, and for this he was paid in kind and allowed to live in the servants’ quarters. Old Gorlin died when Yakov was still young, but his mother was allowed to stay on with her two children, who grew up as playmates of the landowner’s two children. Despite social and national differences, a deep attachment developed between Shura, the daughter of the place, and Yakov, but in the end they were separated by the outbreak of the revolution. Yakov went to Latvia, so that there was then a frontier between him and his old home. As a student he joined a Communist group and at the age of twenty-five he fled to the Soviet Union. He had no idea whether Shura was alive or dead, but he had never ceased to love her. He entered a military academy and became an officer, still trying to find his Shura. In the end he found her, but she was already married, to a Communist. Her two parents had both been killed. The marriage was unhappy, and it was not long before Yakov was more passionately in love with the beautiful girl than ever. But there was no happy end to the story; the girl committed suicide by taking poison.

  The Armenians made life difficult for Yakov. They jeered at his appearance and they would try to trip him up when he passed them to come over to me. Fortunately, a German prisoner named Wolf invariably took his part, and as Wolf was as strong as a horse the Armenians had a certain respect for him, but once when they succeeded in tripping Yakov and he hit back they fell on him with one accord. Wolf immediately rushed to the rescue and did great execution among them, but about twenty of them dragged him down.

  I, two Bulgarians and another German went to his assistance. A battle royal ensued, and the noise was terrific. The warder came running up, opened the cell door and stood there helplessly looking on. By this time all the nations were involved. Nerves had been frayed for a long time and this was a welcome opportunity to let off steam. In the end the governor himself arrived. At once the Armenians declared that I had provoked all the trouble in order to incite the various groups against each other.

  I waited until they had finished, then I attempted to explain matters, but by this time the governor was so angry that he was not prepared to listen.

  “Get your things together,” he said to me, and left the cell.

  The whole cell, apart from the Armenians, was indignant. Gevondi cursed his compatriots furiously.

  “You dirty lot of dogs,” he declared, “I’m ashamed to have grown up with you. You’re in the same trouble as everybody else and yet you want to make everybody’s trouble worse. You’ll all finish up badly, and not a soul will help you, and it’ll serve you right.”

  Among the Armenians was another white raven and he too took my side. However, I had to pack up my things, and I said good-by with a heavy heart to all my friends. Then I sat down and waited. Three hours passed before anything happened and then the governor returned.

  “Everyone pack,” he ordered. “You’re all leaving.”

  Everyone was furious with the Armenians. Not only should we lose the best cell in the prison but if we were now distributed among the other cells we should all get the worst places in them. Almost fifty prisoners had left for the camps without being replaced and we had had more room than at first.

  Ten minutes later warders arrived and we were all taken out and put into two other cells. Friends did their best to remain together. My nice place in the corner was gone. In the new cell my place was near the “Parasha,” and I was faced with the prospect of gradually working my way up to better quarters by sheer dint of staying longer than anyone else.

  My new cell was also full of national minorities. My immediate neighbors were two young Chinese, both of them about twenty. They were both charming lads, modest, helpful and unusually clean. They washed for half the cell with the aid of a little soap and a soup plate. They would wash away steadily for fourteen hours a day and somehow, working with the index finger and the thumb of each hand, they managed to get shirts and towels beautifully clean. It was a great boon to us. For over a year now permission to send dirty linen outside to he washed had been withdrawn. There was a laundry in the prison but no one was willing to use it because you never got the same things back. Anything any good was always stolen. In addition there was always the very real danger of losing everything if a prisoner happened to be sent away to a camp before his washing came back. In camp the possession of warm clothing and linen was a primary condition for survival.

  For their hard work on behalf of the rest of us the two Chinese were given extra food. The washing itself was an illegal activity. Formerly we had
been allowed to wash our own things when we went to have a bath, but now that was forbidden too.

  These two Chinese came from South China. There were one or two other Chinese in the cell, but as they came from Manchuria the two groups had to speak Russian to make themselves understood.

  Very few prisoners were now being taken out for interrogation and we were practically cut off from the brikhalovka. Rumors spread which we were unable to check; for instance, there was a report that the G.P.U. was already collecting material against Kaganovitch, the most powerful man in the Politburo after Stalin, and that Bondarenko, who was in charge of the Kharkov tractor works, had been forced to make compromising statements against him. However, several members of the Politburo had protested and demanded the resignation of Yezhov, who was still running amok like a rogue elephant. Startled by the protests of his fellow members of the Politburo, Stalin, it appeared, was preparing to stop him, and Beria had already been seconded to the G.P.U.

  The examiners certainly no longer beat prisoners so frequently and the “conveyer” had become a rarity. However, a new form of torture had been introduced. It consisted of shutting a man up in a cupboard and leaving him standing for forty-eight hours. Our two Chinese were constantly being taken out for interrogation. They were accused of espionage. They didn’t mind that, but the examiner insisted that they were spies for Japan, and as patriotic Chinese they were holding out. The idea of their being spies of any sort was ridiculous. They came of poor peasant stock and they had earned a frugal living by taking in washing. One morning they came back beaming: the examiner had allowed them to be spies for China instead of Japan. They were quite happy at the idea of having been spies for their own country, but they wanted nothing to do with their archenemy Japan. They explained their attitude to me: Japan and Russia were bitter enemies, and they constantly clashed. But Russia and China were closely allied. And they entwined their fingers to demonstrate the indissoluble bond between the two great peoples.

  There was another very interesting Chinese in our cell. He had traveled from town to town as a conjuror, setting up his booth in the market places. His equipment was worth about a hundred thousand rubles, so he counted as a bourgeois. In addition of course he was a private entrepreneur. On one occasion I wanted to speak to him, but I found it impossible to pronounce his name, and he sat at the other end of the cell, so I called over.

  “Hey, Chinaman. Come here. I want to speak to you.”

  Next to me sat an imprisoned G.P.U. officer named Eingorn. Indignantly he shook my arm.

  “Shut up,” he snapped. “How dare you shout that at him? He’s got a name just as you have, hasn’t he?”

  “Well, yes, but I can’t pronounce it, and I’m not trying to insult him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you are. How would you like it if someone shouted at you from one end of the cell to the other, ‘Hey, Jew, come over here!’?”

  That made me think, but I defended myself.

  “It’s not the same thing at all. The word ‘Jew’ has gradually acquired an insulting tone because we’re an oppressed minority and naturally rather sensitive. The Chinese aren’t.”

  “You’re quite wrong, Alexander Semyonovitch. They certainly are, and not only abroad either. In their own country they’re looked down upon by Europeans.”

  I had to admit that he was right. The incident showed me how thoughtlessly we often wound the national susceptibilities of other people. It also struck me that a prison cell was quite the right place for a G.P.U. man with such delicate feelings.

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” I admitted. “And yet you Russians are funny. You are brought up in the spirit of internationalism, and you talk about Lenin’s nationality policy, and yet at the same time you lock up all your national minorities.”

  “Don’t you think there are any organizations among them, Alexander Semyonovitch?”

  “Well, I’ve been here for two years now and I haven’t noticed one yet. And I don’t believe you have either. Now honestly, Eingorn, tell me, when you were an examiner did you ever find traces of a counterrevolutionary organization?”

  Eingorn refused to answer—whether out of caution, discipline or shame, I don’t know.

  During the past six months we had noticed that quite a lot of G.P.U. men had been arrested. The prisoners who came back from the brikhalovka had told us about it, but in the smaller cells in which I had spent most of my time in the Kholodnaya Gora I had not met any.

  The most interesting among them was a man named Braude. I had seen him about eighteen months before with Ryeznikov. In November, 1938, he had been arrested himself, and he came into our cell, where one of the prisoners whom he had beaten up immediately attacked him. Other prisoners intervened and dragged them apart. Later on I changed my place and sat next to him. He was reddish blond in color, small but powerfully built.

  “Why did you hit that prisoner?” I asked. “Did you really think he was a spy?”

  “I’m not an idiot. Of course I didn’t.”

  ‘Well, why did you do it, then?”

  He made no answer and I repeated the question.

  “I didn’t want to come here before I had to,” he said finally. “It’s not as agreeable as all that here.”

  “Did you hit him under orders?”

  “Don’t be silly. No one could possibly give such an order. It’s strictly against the law to maltreat prisoners.”

  “Well, then, I don’t understand why you did. What would have happened if you hadn’t?”

  “He wouldn’t have confessed.”

  “Why did you want him to confess when you knew perfectly well he wasn’t a spy?”

  “I didn’t want him to; others wanted him to. In any case, you’re too inquisitive. Leave me in peace.”

  I returned to the subject later.

  “What would have happened to you if he hadn’t confessed?”

  “Nothing in particular. I should have written a report saying that the result of the examination was negative and that the prisoner appeared to be innocent.”

  “And what would have happened then?”

  “He would have been released.”

  ‘Well, why didn’t you report like that?”

  “Who’s he in particular? I had twenty others like him, and not a spy among them.”

  “Supposing you had reported that they were all innocent, would anything have happened to you?”

  He laughed.

  “It would never have got so far. The first man would probably have been released, but the second case would have been handed over to another examiner for review. The third time I should have been put on the carpet. And the fourth time I should have been arrested and charged with sabotage. But I couldn’t get any of them to confess without treating them rough. For over a year we had had no time for a ‘conveyer.’”

  “But you said yourself that it was strictly prohibited to ill-treat prisoners, so why did you do it?”

  He refused to answer. I don’t think he was ashamed of himself; it was mere caution. However, we gradually became friends, and after a while I resumed my probing.

  “Was it really forbidden to strike prisoners?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now tell me one thing, Braude: the G.P.U. examiners all began to hit their prisoners at the same time. It was either August 17th or 18th. And it started everywhere at once: from Arkhangelsk to Odessa and from Vladivostok to the Polish frontier. How could that have come about without a definite order from a central point? Or isn’t it true? Were all the prisoners who came from other towns telling lies?”

  “No. It’s true enough. But there was no order to start it.”

  “Well, then, tell me how it was possible. How could all the examiners up and down the country all start beating their prisoners on a certain day without there being some sort of agreement or understanding between them?”

  “You ask too many questions. I daren’t talk. I’m not so free as you are. It’s worse
for us than for you in any case.”

  “Now listen, Braude: you know I’m not an agent provocateur. You know that better than anyone else. But I’ve been imprisoned here now for two years and I don’t understand what’s going on around me. I want to understand and you can help me.”

  “I’ll talk to you at night.”

  It was an exciting night for me. Braude began to talk a little more freely, but he was unwilling to call a spade a spade. He wanted to make only hints and leave me to guess the rest, but I wanted plain facts and I exploited my advantage to the full. I examined him as closely as any prosecuting counsel. Here was an opportunity of lifting at least a corner of the veil of secrecy which had hidden things from my sight for two years, and I was unwilling to spare him. He was to some extent dependent on me, because no one else was willing to talk to him or show him any comradeship.

  “Now, how was that with the beatings: did you get an order or not?”

  “There was no written order. It came about differently.”

  “Well, how did it come about?”

  “Between Stalin and me there are only two people. Do you understand now?”

  I got a shock.

  “Who are you, then, and what are you?”

  “Nothing in particular, just a Lieutenant of the Security Service.”

  “Well, how does it come about, then, that your relations with Stalin are that close?”

  “Think it over. How was it with you? Who was your superior administratively?”

  “It was Bukharin at first, then Armand and then Piatakov.”

  “Then you were closer to Stalin than I was. Both Bukharin and Piatakov had direct contact with Stalin. But if you take the last worker in the Soviet Union, there are never more than three persons between him and Stalin, either through the Party or the administration. A worker usually knows the director of his works. The factory director knows the chairman of the Chief Administration and he knows the People’s Commissar. And the Commissar is in direct touch with Stalin. It’s the same in the Party. The ordinary rank-and-file Communist is in direct touch with his district secretary, and all the district secretaries receive their orders from the Area Committee. And in many cases the area secretaries are in direct touch with Stalin. Others have to go via the Vice-Secretary of the Central Committee in Moscow. And so you see there are never more than three people between the simplest people in the towns and Stalin.”