The Gulag Archipelago (58 page)

[Lenin, fifth edition, Vol. 54, pp. 265-266.]

The extreme secrecy was natural in view of the importance and instructive impact of the measure. The crystal-clear line-up of forces on the class front in Soviet Russia was, to put it simply, spoiled by the presence of this shapeless, jellylike stain of the old
bourgeois
intelligentsia, which in the ideological area genuinely played the role of
military spies
—and the very best solution one could imagine was to scrape off that stagnant scum of ideas and toss it out abroad.

Comrade Lenin had already been stricken by his illness, but the members of the Politburo had apparently given their approval, and Comrade Dzerzhinsky had done the catching. At the end of 1922, about three hundred prominent Russian humanists were loaded onto—a barge, perhaps? No, they were put on a steamer and sent off to the European garbage dump. (Among those who settled down in exile and acquired reputations were the philos- ophers N. O. Lossky, S. N. Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyayev, F. A. Stepun, B. P. Vysheslavtsev, L. P. Karsavin, S. L. Frank, I. A. Ilin; the historians S. P. Melgunov, V. A. Myakotin, A. A. Kizevetter, I. I. Lapshin, and others; the writers and publicists Y. I. Aikhenvald, A. S. Izgoyev, M. A. Osorgin, A. V. Peshe- khonov. At the beginning of 1923, additional small groups were sent off, including for example V. F. Bulgakov, the secretary of Lev Tolstoi. And because of questionable associations some mathematicians also shared this fate, including D. F. Selivanov.)

However, it didn't work out
constantly and systematically
. Per- haps the roar with which the émigrés announced that they re- garded it as a "gift" made it apparent that this punishment left something to be desired, that it was a mistake to have let go good material for the executioner, and that poisonous flowers might grow on that garbage dump. And so they abandoned this form of punishment. And all subsequent purging led to either
the executioner
or the Archipelago.

The improved Criminal Code promulgated in 1926, which, in effect, continued right into Khrushchev's times, tied all the formerly scattered political articles into one durable dragnet- Article 58—and the roundup was under way. The catch swiftly expanded to include the engineering and techfiical intelligentsia; it was especially dangerous because it occupied a firm position in the economy and it was hard to keep an eye on it with the help of the Progressive Doctrine alone. It now became clear that the trial in defense of Oldenborger had been a mistake—after all, a very nice little
center
had been organized there. And Krylenko's declaration that "there was no question of sabotage on the part of the engineers in 1920 and 1921" had granted an all too hasty absolution. Now it was not sabotage but worse—
wrecking
, a word discovered, it appears, by a rank-and-file interrogator in the Shakhty case.

It had no sooner been established that wrecking was what had to be tracked down—notwithstanding the nonexistence of this concept in the entire history of mankind—than they began to discover it without any trouble in all branches of industry and in all individual enterprises. However, there was no unity of plan, no perfection of execution, in all these hit-or-miss discoveries, although Stalin, by virtue of his character, and of course the entire investigative branch of our judicial apparatus, evidently aspired to just that. But our Law had finally matured and could show the world something really perfect—a big, coordinated, well-organized trial, this time a trial of engineers. And that is how the Shakhty case came about.

K. The Shakhty Case—May 18-July 15, 1928

This case was tried before a Special Assize of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., under Presiding Judge A. Y. Vyshinsky (who was still the Rector of First Moscow University) ; the chief accuser was N. V. Krylenko (what a significant encounter!— rather like a handing over of the juridical relay-baton).

[And the members of the tribunal were the old revolutionaries Vasilyev- Yuzhin and Antonov-Saratovsky. The very simple folk sound of their family names inclines one to a favorable reaction. They are easy to remember. And when suddenly, in 1962, obituaries of certain victims of repression appeared in
Izvestiya
, whose signature was at the bottom? That of the long-lived Antonov- Saratovsky!]

There were fifty-three defendants and fifty-six witnesses. How spec- tacular!

Alas, in its spectacular aspect lay the weakness of this case. If one were to tie to each of the defendants only three threads of evidence, there would still have to be 159 of them. And mean- while Krylenko had only ten fingers and Vyshinsky another ten. Of course, the "defendants strove to expose their heinous crimes to society"—but not all of them did, only sixteen; thirteen wiggled back and forth, and twenty-four didn't admit their guilt at all. This introduced an impermissible discord, and the masses could certainly not understand it. Along with its positive aspects —which had, incidentally, already been displayed in earlier trials —such as the helplessness of the defendants and of the defense attorneys, and their inability either to budge or to deflect the implacable boulder of the sentence—the shortcomings of the new trial were fully apparent. Someone less experienced than Krylenko might have been forgiven them—but not he.

On the threshold of the classless society, we were at last capable of realizing
the conflictless trial
—a reflection of the absence of inner conflict in our social structure—in which not only the judge and the prosecutor but also the defense lawyers and the defendants themselves would strive collectively to achieve their common purpose.

Anyway, the whole scale of the Shakhty case, comprising as it did the coal industry alone and the Donets Basin alone, was disproportionately paltry for this era.

It appears that then and there, on the day the Shakhty case ended, Krylenko began to dig a new, capacious pit. (Even two of his own colleagues in the Shakhty case—the public accusers Osadchy and Shein—fell into it.) And it goes without saying that the entire apparatus of the OGPU, which had already landed in Yagoda's firm hands, aided him willingly and adroitly. It was necessary to create and uncover an engineers' organization which encompassed the entire country. And for this purpose it was essential to have several strong, prominent "wreckers" at its head. And what engineer was unaware of just such an unequivocally strong and impatiently proud leader—Pyotr Akimovich Pal- chinsky? An important mining engineer from as far back as the beginning of the century, he had been the Deputy Chairman of the War Industry Committee during World War I—in other words, he had directed the war efforts of all Russian industry, which had managed, during the course of the war, to make up for the failures in Tsarist preparations. After February, 1917, he became the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. He had been persecuted under the Tsar for revolutionary activity. He had been imprisoned three times after October—in 1917, 1918, and 1922.

From 1920 on, he had been a professor at the Mining Institute and a consultant to the Gosplan—the State Planning Commis- sion. (For more details about him see Part III, Chapter 10.)

They picked this Palchinsky to be the chief defendant in a grandiose new trial. However, the thoughtless Krylenko, stepping into what was for him a new field—engineering—not only knew nothing about the resistance of materials but could not even conceive of the potential resistance of souls . . . despite ten years of already sensational activity as a prosecutor. Krylenko's choice turned out to be a mistake. Palchinsky resisted every pressure the OGPU knew—and did not surrender; in fact, he died without signing any sort of nonsense at all. N. K. von Meek and A. F. Velichko were subjected to torture with him, and they, too, appear not to have given in. We do not yet know whether they died while under torture or whether they were shot. But they proved it was
possible
to resist and that it was
possible
not to give in—and thus they left behind a spotlight of reproach to shine on all the famous subsequent defendants.

To cover up his defeat, on May 24, 1929, Yagoda published a brief GPU communiqué on the execution of the three for large- scale wrecking, which also announced the condemnation of many other unidentified persons.

But how much time had been spent for nothing! Nearly a whole year! And how many nights of interrogation! And how much inventiveness on the part of the interrogators! And all to no avail. And Krylenko had to start over from the very beginning and find a leader who was both brilliant and strong, and at the same time utterly weak and totally pliable. But so little did he understand this cursed breed of engineers that another whole year was spent in unsuccessful tries. From the summer of 1929 on, he worked over Khrennikov, but Khrennikov, too, died without agreeing to play a dastardly role. They twisted old Fedotov, but he was too old, and furthermore he was a textile engineer, which was an unprofitable field. And one more year was wasted! The country was waiting for the all-inclusive wreckers' trial, and Comrade Stalin was waiting—but things just couldn't seem to fall into place for Krylenko.

[And it is quite possible that this failure of his was held against him by the Leader and led to the symbolic destruction of the prosecutor—on the very same guillotine as his victims.]

It was only in the summer of 1930 that someone found or suggested Ramzin, the Director of the Thermal Engineering Institute! He was arrested, and in three months a magnificent drama was prepared and performed, the genuine perfection of our justice and an un- attainable model for world justice.

L. The Promparty (Industrial Party) Trial— November 25-December 7, 1930

This case was tried at a Special Assize of the Supreme Court, with the same Vyshinsky, the same Antonov-Saratovsky, and that same favorite of ours, Krylenko.

This time none of those "technical reasons" arose to prevent the reader's being offered a full stenographic report of the trial or to prohibit the attendance of foreign correspondents.

There was a majesty of concept: all the nation's industry, all its branches and planning organs, sat on the defendants' benches. (However, only the eyes of the man who arranged it all could see the crevices into which the mining industry and railroad transportation had disappeared.) At the same time there was a thrift in the use of material: there were only eight defendants in all. (The mistakes of the Shakhty trial had been taken into account. )

You are going to exclaim: Can eight men represent the en- tire industry of the country? Yes, indeed; we have more even than we need. Three out of eight are solely in textiles, represent- ing the industrial branch most important for national defense. But there were, no doubt, crowds of witnesses? Just seven in all, who were exactly the same sort of wreckers as the defendants and were also prisoners. But there were no doubt bales of documents that exposed them? Drawings? Projects? Directives? Summaries of results? Proposals? Dispatches? Private correspondence? No, not one! You mean to say,
Not even one tiny piece of paper?
How could the GPU let that sort of thing get by? They had arrested all those people, and they hadn't even grabbed one little piece of paper? "There had been a lot," but "it had all been destroyed." Because "there was no place to keep the files." At the trial they produced only a few newspaper articles, published in the émigré press and our own. But in that event how could the prosecution present its case? Well, to be sure, there was Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko. And, to be sure, it wasn't the first time either. "The best evidence, no matter what the circumstances, is the confessions of the defendants."

But what confessions! These confessions were not forced but inspired—repentance tearing whole monologues from the breast, and talk, talk, and more talk, and self-exposure and self-flagella- tion! They told old man Fedotov, who was sixty-six, that he could sit down, that he had talked long enough, but no, he kept pouring out additional explanations and interpretations. For five sessions in a row, no questions were asked. The defendants kept talking and talking and explaining and kept asking for the floor again in order to supply whatever they had left out. They presented inferentially everything the prosecution needed without any ques- tions whatever being asked. Ramzin, after extensive explanations, went on to provide brief résumés, for the sake of clarity, as if he were addressing slow-witted students. The defendants were afraid most of all that something might be left unexplained, that some- one might go unexposed, that someone's name might go un- mentioned, that someone's intention to wreck might not have been made clear. And how they reviled themselves! "I am a class enemy!" "I was bribed." "Our bourgeois ideology." And then the prosecutor: "Was that your error?" And Charnovsky replied: "And crime!" There was simply nothing for Krylenko to do. For five sessions he went on drinking tea and eating cookies or whatever else they brought him.

But how did the defendants sustain such an emotional ex- plosion? There was no tape recorder to take down their words, but Otsep, the defense attorney, described them: "The defend- ants' words flowed in a businesslike manner, cold and profession- ally calm." There you are! Such a passion for confession—and businesslike at the same time? Cold? More than that: they appear to have mumbled their glib repentance so listlessly that Vyshinsky often asked them to speak louder, more clearly, because they couldn't be heard.

The harmony of the trial was not at all disturbed by the de- fense, which agreed with all the prosecutor's proposals. The principal defense lawyer called the prosecutor's summation
his- toric
and described his own as narrow, admitting that in making it he had gone against the dictates of his heart, for "a Soviet de- fense lawyer is first of all a Soviet citizen" and "like all workers, he, too, is outraged" at the crimes of the defendants. During the trial the defense asked shy and tentative questions and then instantly backed away from them if Vyshinsky interrupted. The lawyers actually defended only two harmless textile officials and did not challenge the formal charges nor the description of the defendants' actions, but asked only whether the defendants might avoid execution. Is it more useful, Comrade Judges, "to have their corpses or their labor?"