The Gulag Archipelago (49 page)

It is of interest that all the witnesses in this trial, beginning with the unfortunate wife, tried to give testimony helpful to the accused and to befuddle the prosecution. (Which would have been impossible in a political trial!) Krylenko explained their conduct as the result of a narrow-minded, philistine attitude, be- cause they felt like outsiders as far as the
Revtribunal
was con- cerned. (And might we ourselves be so audacious as to advance the philistine hypothesis that in the course of a year and a half the witnesses had already learned
to be afraid of
the dictatorship of the proletariat? After all, it took a lot of nerve to turn in the interrogators of the
Revtribunal
. What would happen to you after that?)

The accuser's line of argument is also of interest. After all, just a month earlier the defendants had been his associates, his comrades in arms, his assistants. They were people who had been inalienably dedicated to the interests of the Revolution, and one of them, Leist, was even "a stern accuser, capable of hurling thunder and lightning at anyone who attacked the foundations." What was he to say about them now? Where was he to look for the causes of their fall? (A bribe was not enough in itself.) And, of course, it is clear where he looked: in their
pasts
, in their biog- graphies!

Declared Krylenko: "If we look closely" at this Leist, "we will find highly interesting information." This is intriguing. Was he an inveterate adventurer? No, but he was the son of a professor at Moscow University! And not an ordinary professor, but one who had survived twenty years of reaction by his indifference to political activity! (And who, notwithstanding that reaction, had been accepted by Krylenko as a consultant.) Was it surprising, then, that the son turned out to be a double-dealer?

As for Podgaisky, he was the son of an official in the law courts . . . beyond doubt one of the reactionary, pogrom-organizing Black Hundreds; otherwise how could he have served the Tsar for twenty years? And the son, too, had prepared for a career in the law courts, but then the Revolution had come—and he had wormed his way into the
Revtribunal
. Just yesterday all this had been depicted in a very favorable light, but it had suddenly be- come repulsive!

More repulsive than them both was, of course, Gugel. He had been a publisher. And what intellectual food had he been offer- ing the workers and peasants? He was "nourishing the broad masses with low-quality literature," not Marx but, instead, books by bourgeois professors with world-famous names. (And we shall soon encounter these professors as defendants too.)

Krylenko is enraged and marvels at the kind of people who have sneaked into the tribunal. (Neither do we understand: What kind of people are the workers' and peasants' tribunals composed of? Why had the proletariat entrusted the task of striking down their enemies to people of this particular kind?)

And as for Grin, the lawyer, a man with an "in" on the in- vestigating commission, who was quite able to get anybody off scot-free, he was a typical representative of that subspecies of the human race which Marx called "
leeches
on the capitalist structure"—a category including, in addition, all lawyers, gen- darmes, priests, and also . . . notaries.

It appears that Krylenko spared no effort in demanding merci- lessly severe sentences, without reference to "the individual shad- ings of guilt." But some kind of lethargy, some sort of torpor, overcame the eternally vigorous tribunal, and it just barely man- aged to mumble six months in jail for the interrogators, and a fine for the lawyer. And only by availing himself of the authority of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee "to punish without limitation," did Krylenko, there in the Metropole, con- tinue to hang ten-year sentences on the interrogators and five on the lawyer, plus full confiscation of his property. Krylenko thundered on about vigilance, and he almost managed, but not quite, to get the title of
Tribune
he so coveted.

We recognize that among the revolutionary masses at the time, as among our readers today, this unfortunate trial could not but undermine faith in the sanctity of the tribunal. And we there- fore proceed with even greater timidity to the next case, which concerned an even loftier institution.

C. The Case of Kosyrev—February 15, 1919

F. M. Kosyrev and his pals Libert, Rottenberg, and Solovyev had first served on the Commission for Supply of the Eastern Front (back before Kolchak, when the enemy forces were the armies of the Constituent Assembly). It was discovered that there they had found ways to siphon into their own pockets from seventy thousand to a million rubles at a time; they rode around on fine horses and engaged in orgies with the nurses. Their Com- mission had acquired a house and an automobile, and their major- domo lived it up in the Yar Restaurant. (We aren't accustomed to picturing 1918 in this light, but all this was in the testimony of the Revtribunal. )

But none of this, to be sure, was the
case
against them. No charge had been brought against any of them in connection with their activities on the Eastern Front; they had even been forgiven all that. But wonder of wonders! Hardly had their Commission for Supply been disbanded than all four of them, with the addition of Nazarenko, a former Siberian tramp and convict pal of Kosyrev in criminal hard labor, were invited to constitute . . . the Control and Auditing Collegium of the VChK—the Cheka!

Here's what this Collegium was:
it had plenipotentiary powers to verify the legality of the actions of all the remaining organs of the Cheka
, the right to demand and review any case at any stage of its processing, and to reverse the decisions of all the remaining organs of the VChK, excepting only the Presidium of the Cheka!" This was no small thing. This Collegium was second- in-command in the Cheka after the Presidium itself—it ranked immediately below Dzerzhinsky-Uritsky-Peters-Latsis-Menzhin- sky-Yagoda!

The way of life of this comradely group remained just what it had been before. They didn't get swelled heads; they didn't get carried away. With certain individuals named Maximych, Lenka, Rafailsky, and Mariupolsky, "who had no connection at all with the Communist Party," they set up—in private apartments and in the Hotel Savoy—"lavish establishments where card games with table stakes as high as a thousand rubles a throw were the order of the day, along with heavy drinking and women." Kosyrev acquired a rich establishment of his own (costing 70,000 rubles) and, in fact, did not even draw the line at hauling off silver spoons and goblets, and even ordinary glassware, from the Cheka. (And how did all these objects get to the Cheka? ) "And this was where his attention was concentrated, rather than in the direction of ideas and ideology, and this was what he took from the revolu- tionary movement." (In the very act of repudiating the bribes he had accepted, this leading Chekist, without blinking, volunteered the lie that he possessed 200,000 rubles from an inheritance in a Chicago bank! Evidently, as far as he was concerned, there was no conflict between such a circumstance and world revolution!)

Now how did he propose to make proper use of his super- human right to arrest anyone at all and release anyone at all? Clearly, one had to find a fish with golden roe—and in 1918 there were not a few such fish in the nets. (After all, the Revolu- tion had been carried out too quickly; they hadn't found every- thing—how many precious stones, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings the bourgeois ladies had managed to hide away!) Then one had to make contact with the relatives of those who had been arrested through some reliable middleman.

Such characters also pass before us at the trial. There was Us- penskaya, a woman of twenty-two. She had graduated from the St. Petersburg Gymnasium, but hadn't gone on to the university— the Soviets had come to power—and so, in the spring of 1918, Uspenskaya appeared at the Cheka to offer her services as an in- former. She qualified on the basis of her appearance, and they accepted her.

Krylenko has this to say about informing, which in those days had a different label: "For
ourselves, we
see nothing shameful in it, we consider
this
to be our duty . . . the work itself is not dis- graceful; once a person admits that this work is necessary in the interests of the Revolution, then he must do it." But, alas, it turned out that Uspenskaya had no political credo! That's what was awful. She declared: "I agreed in order to be paid a fixed percentage" on the cases which were turned up, and, beyond that, "to split 50-50" with someone else . . . whom the court protected and instructed her not to identify. Krylenko put it in his own words: "Uspenskaya was not a staff member of the Cheka but worked at
piece rates
." And, incidentally, the accuser, under- standing her in a very human way, explains that she had grown used to having plenty of money, and that her insignificant salary of 500 rubles from the Supreme Council of the Economy was nothing at all, considering that one exercise in extortion—for example, helping a merchant get the seal removed from his store—would net her 5,000 rubles, and another—from Meshcherskaya-Grevs, wife of a prisoner—would bring in 17,000. For that matter, Uspenskaya served only briefly as a mere stool pigeon. Thanks to the help of certain big Chekists, in a few months she became a member of the Communist Party and an interrogator.

However, we don't seem to be getting to the essence of the
case
. Uspenskaya had arranged a meeting between this Meshch- erskaya-Grevs and a certain Godelyuk, a bosom pal of Kosyrev, in order to reach an agreement on her husband's ransom. (They had initially demanded 600,000 rubles!) But unfortunately, by some still unexplained means, the arrangements for that secret meeting became known to the same attorney, Yakulov, who had already done in the three bribe-taking interrogators and who, evidently, felt a class hatred for the whole proletarian system of judicial and extrajudicial processing. Yakulov denounced them to the Moscow Revtribunal, and the presiding judge of the tribunal, recalling perhaps the wrath of the Council of People's Commissars in connection with the three interrogators, also blundered in terms of class premises.

[In order to temper the reader's indignation against this leechlike snake, Yakulov, we should point out that by the time of Kosyrev's trial he had already been arrested and was in custody. They had found a
case
to take care of him. He was brought in to testify accompanied by convoy, and we are certainly entitled to hope that he was shot soon afterward. (Today we are surprised: How did things reach such a pitch of illegality? Why did no one mount an offensive against it?)]

Instead of simply warning Comrade Dzerzhinsky and working it all out in the family, he hid a steno- grapher behind the curtain. And the stenographer took down all Godelyuk's references to Kosyrev, and to Solovyev and to other commissars, and all his stories about
who
in the Cheka
takes
how many thousands. Then, as per the stenographic record, Godelyuk received an advance payment of 12,000 rubles, and Meshcher- . skaya-Grevs was given a pass to enter the Cheka that had already been filled out by the Control and Auditing Collegium, by Libert and Rottenberg. (The bargaining was to continue there, inside the Cheka.) Then and there Godelyuk was caught! In his con- fusion, he gave testimony against them! (And Meshcherskaya- Grevs had already gotten to the Control and Auditing Collegium, and they had already ordered her husband's case transferred there
for verification
.)

But just a moment! After all, an exposé like this sullies the heavenly blue uniforms of the Cheka! Was the presiding judge of the Moscow Revtribunal in his right mind? Was he really tending to his own business?

But it turns out that that was the nature of the
moment
—a moment totally hidden from us in the folds of our majestic history! It seems that the Cheka's first year of work had produced a some- what repellent impression even on the Party of the proletariat, which still hadn't gotten used to it. Only its first year had passed; the Cheka had taken only the first step on its glorious path; and already, as Krylenko writes, although not very clearly, a "dispute" had arisen "between the court and its functions and the extra- judicial functions of the Cheka ... a dispute which, at the time, split the Party and the workers' districts into two camps." And that is how the Kosyrev case could come up—whereas everything had gone smoothly before—and reach all the way up to the top- most level of the whole state apparatus.

The Cheka had to be saved! Help! Save the Cheka! Solovyev asked the tribunal to allow him inside the Taganka Prison to visit Godelyuk (who, alas, was not in the Lubyanka) so as
to chat
with him. The tribunal declined the request. Then Solovyev managed to
penetrate into Godelyuk's cell
without the help of any tribunal, and—what a coincidence!—at that very point Godelyuk became seriously ill. ("One can hardly speak of evil intentions on Solovyev's part," Krylenko bows and scrapes.) Feeling the approach of death, Godelyuk shakily repented hav- ing slandered the Cheka and asked for a sheet of paper on which to write his recantation: it was all untrue; he had slandered Kosyrev and the other commissars of the Cheka, and everything the stenographer had taken down behind the curtain was also untrue!

[Oh, how many themes we have here! Oh, where is Shakespeare? Solovyev passes through the walls, flickering shadows in the cell, Godelyuk recants with failing hand. And all we hear about the years of the Revolution in our plays and our films is the street singing of "Hostile Whirlwinds."]

"And who filled out the passes for Meshcherskaya-Grevs?" Krylenko insisted. They hadn't materialized out of thin air, cer- tainly? No, the chief accuser "does not wish to say that Solovyev was an accessory in this case, because . . . because there is in- sufficient evidence," but he advances the hypothesis that "citizens still at liberty who were in danger of being caught with their hands in the till" might have sent Solovyev to the Taganka jail.