The Restoration Game (15 page)

At the outbreak of the imperialist war I was temporarily swept away by the patriotic tide and sincerely and enthusiastically volunteered for military service. In my later application to join the Bolshevik Party I claimed that I had joined the army in order to carry out revolutionary work within the ranks but this was at best an exaggeration in retrospect. However I can say quite honestly that my experiences at the front shattered my illusions and by 1916 I was giving an attentive ear to such distant echoes of the genuine revolutionary position as reached me. After the February revolution I joined the Bolsheviks and broke decisively with the S-Rs in terms of politics though not in terms of my fundamental orientation. However I categorically deny that I was in any way involved in or sympathetic to the “Left” S-R counterrevolutionary uprising of 1918 and in fact I took part in its suppression. I served honourably in the Red Army during the civil war. I furthermore categorically deny that my contacts with L. D. TROTSKY all of which took place in my capacity as an officer and as a Party member during the civil war were in any way a cover for participation in his counterrevolutionary or anti-Party activities, of which no one had the smallest inkling at the time.

If during my Red Army service the “left” side of my political character was dominant I must admit that the experiences of the war, famine, peasant uprisings, and it must be added occasional excesses that I witnessed had a profoundly disturbing effect on me and in my civilian work it was the right-populist side that again came to the fore. My research in ethnology and folklore bears strong marks of both a “peasant” (in reality, kulak) orientation and also of a bending towards Krassnian “nationalism,” likewise a covert sympathy for the Krassnian “legend of the returning hero” and the so-called Krassnian truth. In a similar manner, I strongly sympathised with the NEP and later with N. BUKHARIN's Right deviation, at the same time retaining a personal admiration of L. D. TROTSKY while disagreeing with his “Left” political line.

It was that stubborn “hero”-worship that led me to refuse to accept the decision of the overwhelming majority of the Party to expel L. D. TROTSKY and his supporters after their provocation of November I927. For this I was justly expelled from the Party. However I remained politically close to the position of the Rights and of N. BUKHARIN. During my exile in Kazakhstan [several lines blacked out in original] in short, the intensity of the class struggle around collectivisation and denomadisation shattered my morale and drove me to seek out some contact with the Rights inside the Party. On this basis I spoke to A. SLEPKOV during his visit to Alma Ata in late 1932 or early 1933. He appraised me of the contents of the Riutin Platform and I agreed with it, notably in respect of its call for the sharpest struggle against the leadership of J. V. STALIN, a “return to the New Economic Policy,” an end to collectivisation, etc. He told me that on the basis of this platform a fighting agreement had been reached by the Rights with the followers of L. D. TROTSKY allied with those of G. E. ZINOVIEV and L. B. KAMENEV such that the former “Left” and Right were in complete accord with respect to not only the “removal” of STALIN but also economic policy and the policy towards the peasantry and collectivisation, which at that time weighed very heavily on my mind. He urged me to pretend to capitulate, recant, and make every effort to worm my way back into the Party, which I did. However I was unable to maintain contact and this conversation was my sole participation in the organisation of the Rights.

In Krassnia I completed the writing of my former “academic” work, giving it a particularly pernicious slant and even inserting into it oblique references to the notorious so-called secret of the Vrai or Krassnian truth into which I had been initiated as a boy by (as was normal in such cases) an elderly goat-herd. So subtle was I that this work succeeded in being published and even proclaimed as a triumph of Soviet ethnography by the University of Krasnod. I should say at this point that all those formally responsible for this publication were cruelly deceived by me and were not complicit in the bourgeois and feudal-tribal “national” distortions that I had smuggled into the work.

I should also say that once I had got back into the Party I became so caught up in the great work of socialist construction that for long periods my counterrevolutionary inclinations were far from the forefront of my mind. Nevertheless they caught up with me. In 1934 I was assigned to negotiate purchases of mining equipment with a British trade delegation, which included representatives of the former capitalist owners of the Krassnian copper mines, the Ural Caucasian Mineral Company. Under the influence of a morally and politically corrupt relationship with one such representative, a young woman named EUGENIE MONTFORD, I approved the purchase for the State Mining Trust of a mining-shaft hoist that I knew did not meet the requirements of shock-working and the Stakhanovite movement, counting on my continued covert opposition to Stakhanovite methods of work to keep the use of the hoist within what I considered safe limits. I also gave away to the aforementioned E. MONTFORD state secrets pertaining to the copper industry. I firmly deny that I knew at the time that E. MONTFORD was connected to the Intelligence Service of British imperialism and that the Ural Caucasian Mineral Company was notorious for financing Whiteguard conspiracies.

The new hoist was delivered a few months later. On the adoption despite my opposition of Stakhanovite methods of work in the mine, the hoist failed in operation with tragic consequences. If I had had the moral courage to admit right away at the meeting adopting the new method of shock-work that I had speculated on the continued success of my opposition to Stakhanovism for the safe use of the hoist, the appalling loss of life and limb and the grievous cost to the national economy would not have taken place. In the light of my grave responsibility I admit to the charge of wrecking, as well as to participation in the counterrevolutionary organisation of the Rights and, in the case of my published thesis, to wrecking in the sphere of nationalities. I however deny that my wrecking activity was directed by the Rights or the Trotskyites or was conducted in the interests of hostile foreign powers.

Addendum

10 November 1937

After further reflection and interrogation I withdraw my evasive statement in the concluding paragraph of my above confession and fully admit that my wrecking both economic and academic was carried out on the direct instigation of A. SLEPKOV under the direction of Y. L. PYATAKOV and with the collusion of N. BUKHARIN and that it was directly aimed at undermining the defence capabilities of the country in the interests of British imperialism's long-standing aims in the Caucasus region. I further admit that I was fully aware from early in my acquaintance with her of the connections of E. MONTFORD with the British Intelligence Service and that she maintained clandestine contact with me through coded letters in the form of letters of a personal nature.

[Signed] A. Arbatov

Witnessed: [signed]

V. Beryozkin, NKVD, Krassnia.

4.

Note by me (Lucy): After reading the above—the last written words of a man whose name I'd known for years, and who was connected to me in a way I'll make clear in a minute—I felt severely shaken. I got off the bed, padded through to the kitchen, and refilled my tumbler of red wine. Back on the bed, I took a few quick sips, then scrolled on to the next set of pages. It was the confession of the man who'd witnessed—and, no doubt, extracted—the confession I'd just read.

Transcript of interrogation of former NKVD officer V. BERYOZKIN

15 May 1940

The accused began by spitting out vituperative slanders against the organs of State security, the Party, etc. and by offering to sign any confession set before him on the alleged grounds that as he was accused of having beaten confessions out of innocent people he had no intention of any confession being beaten out of him. He was assured that the investigation commission had no intention of applying methods of physical pressure and that nothing less than a full and sincere confession from his own lips or by his own hand would be accepted.

After being given some time to think this over, the accused BERYOZKIN reconsidered his position and began to talk freely. He stated:

“I don't give a shit what YEZHOV has or has not confessed to. If he, the late chief of the NKVD, is a hidden enemy and has been all along then your glorious leaders are even bigger fools than I have always thought. Speaking for myself I have been a hidden enemy from the very first day, from 1921. Before that, I was an open enemy. I fought in the Great War, I fought in the Southern White Army of Deniken and after its rout returned to Krassnia, which at that time was part of Menshevik-ruled Georgia. I was one of the Krassnian so-called bourgeois-national intelligentsia, or truth-keepers as we call ourselves. We considered that our best hope was to align with the enemies of Georgian nationalism, which at that time were the Bolsheviks, despite the fact that in all other respects I sympathised with the policies of the Menshevik government of Georgia, particularly their repression of the Ossetes and other such peasant scum. I concealed my past, falsified my class origin, joined the Bolshevik underground, and took part in the Red Army's liberation of Georgia from the Mensheviks. At that time I had the great satisfaction of shooting Georgians, Ossetes, Mingrelians, and Chechens. Steeled by that experience I was given a responsible position in the Krassnian division of the Cheka of the new, Bolshevik Georgia. I used my position to eradicate Georgian influence from our national culture. I built up within the Party and Cheka a close-knit association of loyal Krassnian truth-keepers, whose names I need not mention because you have already rooted them out.”

The accused was pressed on this point but gave no names other than those already known to the investigation. He further elaborated on his group's bourgeois-nationalist orientation and relations with the Rights throughout the last two decades. With regard to his recent counterrevolutionary activities he said:

“Yezhov' s directive, and the circular of the Central Committee dated [blacked out in original] with regard to quotas for [blacked out in original] of suspect categories of the population were a godsend to us. It was like being given a hunting licence. Naturally we had speculated on the possible victory of the Rights but as the saying goes ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ We immediately set about finding ‘hidden enemies' within the ranks of the Party, the Soviet
aktiv
, the technical intelligentsia, the collective farmers, Stakhanovites, and so forth. We rapidly over-fulfilled the quota for [blanked out in original] based on what you now call ‘confessions extracted using impermissible means.’”

Questioned about the case of former Academician A. ARBATOV, the accused BERYOZKIN said:

“I knew of ARBATOV from before the War as a dedicated revolutionary and naturally as an enemy of the Krassnian nation and of the Empire. I had no knowledge of his activities until his return to Krassnia in 1934. When I read his book
Life and Legends of the Krassnar
I was shocked to the bone. He had dared to hint at matters of Krassnian truth which are not for public discussion.”

The accused stubbornly refused to specify what these matters were and continued:

“Our method of disposing of ARBATOV was, so to say, ‘straightforward.’ Certain members of our group implanted in the trade-union apparat of the State Mining Trust posed as militants and Stakhanovites and accused him of virtual wrecking through his opposition to increasing fivefold the regular load carried by the pitshaft hoists. By this and other methods we succeeded in getting our ‘Stakhanovite' motion passed at a meeting of the works collective. This had the expected result of causing a mining disaster when the overloaded hoists gave way. ARBATOV had opposed the motion and written a protest to the Trust management and to the oblast Party committee but nevertheless felt he bore a heavy responsibility for not taking more decisive measures. This and not ‘impermissible methods,’ is what led him to confess to wrecking.

“As for the rest, what had he done? He had hero-worshipped the yid leader of the Red Army. He had exchanged some bitter words years ago with a representative of the so-called Rights in Kazakhstan, at a moment when your great STALIN's policies had led to [blacked out in original]. He had become infatuated with a young British lady who by nature of what you call her class position was bound to have some connection or other with the Intelligence Service. That was quite sufficient for us to get an indictment and confession in the atmosphere of two years ago. Apart from that, he was sincerely devoted if not to your STALIN then to what you call ‘socialist construction’ and ‘the defence of the Motherland.’”

Asked what he called these, the accused spat.

He went on to say:

“I know exactly what is in store for me. I have no illusions about that. I have no fear of death. I know the truth and with my Vrai forefathers I laugh at the lies of the priests about Hell, and with my brothers I spit on the lies of your Red professors about annihilation. I know there is a better world beyond death. The joke is that you too will go to that better world, and perhaps sooner than you think. Hitler will in a year or two have all of you Bolshevik swine hanging from telegraph poles, just as we did with your kind under Deniken.”

In this final sortie the accused thus added direct counterrevolutionary agitation and agitation against the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty to his admitted crimes against the Party and State and, no further evidence being required, the sentence of death by shooting was applied forthwith.

[signed] A. I. Klebov, NKVD Special Commission of Investigation into the crimes of the Yezhov gang, Krassnia AR.

5.

The time on my laptop showed 11:15. My knees quivered inside the dressing gown.

I scrolled up and down, almost giddy at the weirdness of seeing my great-grandmother's name on the same page as names I'd hitherto only seen in history books. Bukharin and Trotsky, Stalin and Yezhov, now, quite suddenly, stood out in my mind as vividly as my image of Great-Grandmother Eugenie as a slip of a girl, in her pirate days. I knew of Stalin, Trotsky, and Bukharin from high school in the US (and not, you may be surprised to learn, from elementary school in the USSR, where none of them were mentioned in front of children) and as for Yezhov…I knew about Yezhov through having read a sensational paperback about Beria, his successor as head of the secret police and (some say) his executioner, just as Yezhov had himself executed his predecessor, Yagoda, who himself was widely suspected of and had indeed confessed to murdering
his
predecessor, Menzhinsky…. Killing your predecessor and getting killed by your successor went with the job, as did—if the successive successors were to be believed—being an agent of several imperialist secret services and a sworn enemy of Soviet power.